from an e-mail sent earlier today, witht the subject heading "time is an asterick":

Well, time may not really be an asterisk, but I always thought that's what David Byrne sings on "Once in a Lifetime' ... the problem is, apparently, the end lyrics are improvised and do not appear on the official lyrics for the song, and therefore there is a good chance I can be mishearing the entire damn lyric.*

Craig

*This is a long way to go to basically say: "what time are we meeting tomorrow?" Not to harp on the issue, but I don't think we decided on when, exactly, and while I don't mind arriving early, I'd hate to arrive late.** So, yeah, did we actually decide when? :)

Craig

**Hello, by the by. How are you today?***

Craig

***I realize that the concept of "today" is merely our limited consciousness' way of defining a set moment; that it does not actually exist and that there are simply immediate moments in time (and that "time" should either be used in quotations or appended with an asterisk****) as defined by our consensus reality.

Craig

*****Well, time may not really be an asterisk, but I always thought that's what David Byrne sings on "Once in a Lifetime' ... the problem is, apparently, the end lyrics are improvised and do not appear on the official lyrics for the song, and therefore there is a good chance I can be mishearing the entire damn lyric.*

Er, yeah. That last entry was pretentious wasn't it?

It wasn't intended to be that way. Really, I was just trying to work shit out in my brain. But, come on; when you're discussing destiny and freewill how can you not be pretentious. Besides, you all know I wasn't talking about what I was talking about because I couldn't talk about what I was talking about. Damn Setec Astronomy. Well, that and the fact that too many people who know me read this blog. I never should've told people I have this thing. I should've found a pseudonym, set up this on Blogger's on servers, and then I could've blogged to my heart's content about everybody I know without fear of retribution.

God, how boring would that have been?

So, let's see. quarter to 11:00. I'm not sure I should go to bed yet. I went to bed early last night. Well, early for me, at any rate. And I had one of my more fucked-up dreams. It started hanging out with this chick that may or may not have been Christy Brinkley. I can't say for certain, but when Billy Joel called me because he was in an accident (apparently because he was drinking), I felt awkward for being with who i was with; which makes me think it may have been his ex-wife.

Anyway, Billy-boy disappeared and suddenly I'm hanging out with the Keanu-Reeves version of John Constantine and we're being pursued by the witches from Charmed who have gone completely evil, and we're seriously about to kill us. I wasn't sure why these supposedly good witches had suddenly gotten evil, but, well, there you are. Fortunately, Ian McKellan, who may or may not have meant to have been Gandolf in my dream, used a spell that banished the witches to an alternate dimension. We knew it wouldn't hold them but it did buy us time to prepare for the final confrontation. Which, alas, never happened because I woke up about three minutes before my alarm was due to buzz and couldn't get back to my dream.

I have to say, that was probably one of the nerdier dreams I've ever had. And I can't tell if I had this dream because I went to bed earlier than usual or if it was because I had only eaten my dinner a mere two hours before turning in. I heard, somewhere, that going to sleep on a full stomach causes more vivid dreams. I think, tonight, I shall consume an entire box of ho-ho's and put this to the test.

Anyway. I suddenly discovered that my April 7th post was missing the first two paragraphs. I actually had to post that entry at work on Friday morning because Blogger was acting all sorts of odd on Thursday and I couldn't post the damn entry; so I e-mailed it to my office e-mail account and quickly hopped on and off to post the damn thing. So go back and read the first two paragraphs which, while not providng your life with the contentment and closure you've been searching for, will at least put the rest of the entry in a little more context. Plus I sound all pretentious again, and I know that's Terry's favorite part of my blog.

I kinda want to post about the Tori concert. If nothing else to counter-balance the whole anti-Amos current my blog seems to have had lately. (Although, to be fair, my previous entry's title was an directly indirect reference to "Yes, Anastasia") I wrote in my travelogue--a journal Aline gave me as a present back in 1999 which has, over the years, become the journal I write in whenever I go on a trip--both on the way to the city and back from it and at the very least it makes for an instant blog entry . . . but that would be too easy, even for me.

Well, I'm off to bed. Don't say I didn't warn you.

It's strange the way angels work. The problem with the either/or scenario of pre-destination versus freewill is that the Universe is too big for just one option. Infinite space means infitne probability and the most humbling thing I can think of is as world where it is possible for everyone's choicees to be their own and yet still live their lives through inevitibility.

I dialed into VH-1 without meaning to. There could have been a hundred different videos shown, but on that day at that moment it was "Silent All These Years" by Tori Amos. That was thirteen years ago.

Neil loved Rush. He played some of their music for me, but I wasn't interested. The only way his parents would let him see the band in concert was if he got a friend to go with him. This was April 1990 and I was six weeks away from Fair Oaks--going to a concert petrified me. But he was my best friend at the time. I spent the entire concert asking "Is this Tom Sawyer?" It wouldn't be until Fair Oaks, rooming with Pat, and listening to his copy of Presto that I began to become interested in the band. Wasn't until September, when Neil made me copies of their early albums, that I began listening to something other than Presto. I wouldn't start liking 2112 until January of 1992. By nthen I stopped being friends with Neil. And it was around that time that I dialed into VH-1 without meaning to. . . .

Tara liked Rocky Horror; I was opnly vaguely aware of this. She would tell me about her and her friend dressing up and going to showings. It sounded like fun, but I never intended to speak to her after high school graduation. But I needed new friends and she asked if I wanted to go to a showing. So I did. We went twice in the summer of 1993, and even though people in college knew about Rocky Horror, it wasn't until October of 1995 that I would see the show in Paramus, see a flyer on campus advertising auditions for a midnight-style performance of the show, produced by this acting group, Players. In January of 1996 I walked into the Players' office and saw a drawing of Tori Amos posted on the cork board. The drawing had the caption "The future Mrs. Hale." I didn't know who Mr. Hale was.

It's not a question of me doing an impression of King Lear versus the hurricane. It's not really a matter of Life happening while you're making other plans. I am neither raging against the dying of the light nor do I hold the delusion that these things are on that grandiose a scale. Really, I don't mean this to be a pretentious as it sounds.

Maybe it's not a question of inevitability at all. Maybe it's the exact opposite. Eveything becomes inevitibile when you live in repetition. Call it coincidence or angels in disguise; whatever It is, maybe it isn't attempting to force me down a set path but trying to keep me from it. The funny part is, in the end, I still get to choose which one it is.

It's 11:00. My sliding glass door has been open since I got home. It's raining but still cool and I've had a strong summer breeze keeping me company all evening long. I've just read eight issues of The Authority, written by Warren Ellis when he was in his prime, battling a cranky internet connection on a tantrum and attempting to work on an idea Sean and I cooked up when we were bored at work. I love my apartment. I love my life.

Tomorrow it's off to New York City and Tori Amos. Can I tell you how utterly indifferent I am to this concert? I'm only midly curious to see if, against all improbable odds, she plays a Rush cover during the "Piano Bar" section of her concert. (I submitted five Rush songs including "YYZ", which is an instrumental. I should've gone with "Closer to the Heart" because if Tori had to choose between playing a Rush song or taking a bullet in the head, "Closer to the Heart" the only Rush song that I think she'd consider playing instead of choosing the bullet. But I digress.) But I'm more looking forward to the after-concert fesitivites where I'll actually be able to catch up with Rob, Sam, and Mia. And if all goes well both Chris and Christine will be joining us as well, so this could be a very fun evening. Even with the concert.

Yeah, so I've soured on Amos. It was obvious when, at the last time I saw her, I was more thrilled to see Ben Folds than Tori; I knew then that the romance was gone and not coming back. But it's so rare that love affairs end when they're supposed to. I need to forget about her for five ot ten years, then rediscover her, like stumbling across old love letters you'd forgotten about; opening them up and being able to have that detached enjoyment that comes from remembering what was even though it no longer is. But as fate would have it, Tori's "Cooling" just came up on my MP3 player and the song still works. There was a reason I was such a Tori die-hard for over ten years. Still, it'd be nice if I could feel this without having to do it nostalgically.

Anyway, the real problem of the evening is how the hell I'm getting there. I'm looking at train schedules from Trenton, which, even at 5:00 on a Friday, is probably no more than thirty minutes away. A train from Trenton to Penn Station would take roughly an hour and fifteen minutes. The money is negligable--once you factor in the tolls and parking, I'd spend that much if I drove. And a definite schedule beats the game of Russian Roulette I'd be playing if I drove in. After all, going into the city on a Friday night isn't a quick run regardless. Factor in having to drive from Sotuh Jersey and battle all the northbound turnpike traffic and I honestly don't know if I'd be able to get into the city in three hours.

But if I do the train, I'm on a train schedule. Figuring the concert gets out at 11:00 and I want to actually spend time with people afterwards, then the earliest train I can take is the 12:42 AM train. Which puts me into Trenton at 2:07 AM, and there'd still be another 30 minute drive to my apartment. Have you taken a train ride? Those things are boring as fuck. When I took the train from Baltimore to Newark, it was an 8:00 train that got into Newark around Midnight and I could barely stay awake then . . . Not sure I want to take that boredom at 1:00 in the morning.

Driving is easier. Time-wise it may actually work out to the same thing, but as long as I plug in a good, loud CD then I'll have the adreniline rush to get me home no matter what hour. But that still leaves a large questionmark regarding whether or not I can get into the city in time.

If all the problems in my life were this bad....

Well. I should actually try going to bed before midnight for a change. I'll figure out what I'm doing tomorrow when I get into my car and drive away from the office.

Saturday is my Philadelphia day, wherein I plan (provided I don't come home so late from NYC that I wind up sleeping the day away) to get so lost in the city that you may never hear from me again. Sunday is Spending My Tax Return Day, as I get some new threads, and maybe a chair for the living room. Or a barbecue for the porch. Did I mention I love my apartment? Fuck yeah.

So what the hell are you doing this weekend?

Thanks again to BoingBoing, although this ironically ties into something Mike and I are researching because of Bright-Matrix.

The way Google ranks work, in part, is that when a site is indexed, Google's algorithms calculate it's placement due to its popularity. That popularity is determined, not by how many people click a givenlink, but by how many other wbe sites link to the web site in question. For example: my V for Vendetta site is as high on the list due in large part to the amount of people that have linked to it.

(This ties into Bright-Matrix insofar as our customers wondering how come they aren't ranking higher in Google searches even with the META tags we put on their page. Just in case you were wondering.)

Now, the catch is, it isn't just a matter of being linked, but how you are linked. For example, if I wanted this blog to be linked, it wouldn't be enough if the people who linked me typed something like "Craig's blog, The Electric Wire, can be found here" that wouldn't do me jack shit in terms of Google ranking, because when Google examines that link, it categorizes the link by the words used in the hypertext. Thus, rather than categorize the link under "The Electric Wire", it will place it under "here". No go on, Google the keyword "here". Needless to say, you won't be finding my page near the top any time soon.

However if the hypertext actually includes the words "The Electric Wire" (ie: "Go read Craig's blog, The Electric Wire), well then, now Google has an accurate keyword description to categorize my site properly.

(This, by the by, was how in 2003 people would Google the phrase "miserable failure" in and the results would be for President Bush. Because people did this: miserable failure and Google picked up the keywords inside the hyperlink.)

Anyway, with all this in mind, some people out to put this sort of trickery for a good cause; namely, Delocator.net. Delocator is a non-profit website that is a directory of independant coffee shops, helping support these places from being crushed by the Goliath known as Starbucks. The problem is, Delocator is afraid to actually mention Starbucks on their site for fear Starbucks will slap them silly with a lawsuit. Thus the problem: if you want provide an alternative to Starbucks, how do you get people to find you while going a Google search for Starbucks when you don't actually mention starbucks on your website?

The answer: get a few hundred people to start linking to your website like this: Starbucks Delocator, wait a week, and see what Google does as a result.

Another joy found off BoingBoing . . . Nakheel, a Middle Eastern deveoplemt company is building 300 man made islands in the shape of the world just off the coast of Dubai. The islands, when complete will be developed for private homes, luxury resorts, and whatever else the investors feel like.

I love this for several reasons:

1) Imagine the engineering feat this will require. The money (Some 1.8 billion dollars), the resources, the sheer egotism of the project.

2) For some reason, extravagant feats like this remind me of The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The old wonders were expressions of ability in the service of a higher goal, often religious in nature. But whether the God is Zeus or the Almighty dollar, it's still amazing to see what can be accomplished.

3) Can you believe that corporations and investors have the ability to waste their time on ridiculously obscene luxuries like this, where the price of the islands start at some 4 million dollars, and we've got people dying of starvation and poverty?

4) Their website is really cool. Websites tend to be tree-like in structure; you start at the main page and, literally, branch out from there with your sections and sub-sections. But this Flash-driven site takes the grid-theme of its design and applies it to the layout. At each page, links on each side take you to the next part of the grid. You don't have to go "backwards" and "forwards" around the site--direction is an illusion on the web--you can go up or down or left or right, or "jump" around unconnectedly. It's a very neat, very slick design and it works great.

5) Really, 4 million bucks ain't as much as it used to be. Who wants to go in with me on an island? I think we should buy Hawaii.....

Because I can come home, whip open my sliding glass door, sit down at my computer and, whilst typing away on my blog, enjoy the ever-so-fine breeze of an absolutely gorgeous Spring day as it blows through my apartment.

Because I can put my MP3 player on random and have it play while I go outside with my lawn chair, sit on my porch, and enjoy the next hour or so of sunlight while listening to my music.

I love my apartment.

That is all.

John Paul II vs. Jennifer Aniston: Who's More Important?

Hair Style
Jennifer Aniston: hair cut influenced millions of women.
John Paul II: wore a beanie to cover his bald spot.

Advantage: Anitson.

Transportation
John Paul II: the Popemobile.
Jennifer Aniston: I don't see any Anistonmobile; do you?

Advantage: Pope

Peak Influence

Jennifer Aniston: At her show's peak, 52.2 million people watched her; has 2.82 million links on Google.

John Paul II: Leads approximately one billion followers; 60.8 million links on Google

Advantage: Pope.

Fashion Sense
Jennifer Aniston: wears whatever's trendy.
John Paul II: wears robes and (when not wearing the beanie) a kick-ass hat.

Advantage: Tie. Pope's got cool threads, but put Aniston in a miniskirt and I'll show you "Hallelujiah!"

Friends
Jennifer Aniston: Joey, Rachel, Phoebe, Chandler, Monica
John Paul II: God.

Advantage: Well, they're all imaginary people but, I hate to admit it, if you had to choose an imaginary friend, being friends with a Supreme Being has to trump a bunch of semi-self-involved New Yorkers.

Breathing
Aniston: Breathing.
Pope: Not breathing.

Advantage: Aniston.

Final Score
John Paul II: 4
Jennifer Aniston: 3

Well, the numbers do not lie. While Jenny certainly is no slouch in comparison, at the end of the day, John Paul II does rate higher.

But I'd still rather watch all-day coverage of Aniston than the Pope.

Saw Sin City on Sunday.

Meh.

It was a rather surreal experience, actually. Comic fans do nothing but gripe about the changes made to their beloved stories once they're adapted for a motion picture, and I know I've done my fair share of bleating on that subject. But comic fans are shit out of luck in this area when it comes to Sin City. This was 98% straight out of the comic. Shot-for-shot, line-by-line, I've never seen anything like it. Sure, I giggled like a fanboy on crack during X-Men 2, but I could have sat down in the movie theater with the Sin City comics and (with a handful of minor exceptions) read along precisely without missing a beat. For the first time, a movie based on a comicbook that will succeed or fail solely on the strengths (and weaknesses) of the comicbook. Dialogue sounded dumb? Frank Miller's fault. Didn't like the stories? Blame Miller. Too violent? Too sexist? No scapegoat this time.

Let's get some of the boring stuff out of the way: The direction was great. Frank Miller knows how to draw and Robert Rodriguez knows how to direct. You ain't going wrong in that department, period. The acting was, overall, well done. Brittany Murphy can't act her way out of a paper bag, but beyond that everyone else was passable to fantastic. The standout was easily Mickey Rouke's Marv. He nailed the character perfectly, easily surpassing Bruce Willis' Hartigan and Clive Owens; Dwight. (Both Willis and Owens seemed to struggle with the movie's many monologues; Willis improved over the course of the film but Owens never sounded comfortable delivering the lines; but Rouke hit every note.)

Understand also that the comicbook is literally black-and-white; no grayscale shading. There's light and dark, and it still allows for the illusion of depth that a black-and-white-only scene in a film can't convey. Yet what Rodriguez and his crew does with lighting effects (real and digital) still evoke as powerful a mood as what Miller accomplished with his pen.

Much has been made about the degree of violence in the movie, and I don't think I've read a review yet that hasn't used the "M" word. I'll admit, watching all that in a public movie theater was a mite uncomfortable. But, again, the extremity of it all is deliberate. Women get treated poorly in this movie, but the men aren't exactly coming up roses in comparison here--every one of them is a killer, they get beaten to a bloody pulp, and if you did a body count comparison, just as many (if not more) men die as women. I think people's reactions to the sex and violence says more about our culture's view of them than anything the movie implies.

Don't get me wrong. Sin City is a check your brain at the door kinda story. Yes, it's pulp detective fiction/film noir amped to 11. Yes, the dialogue is overly hokey, the characters are two-dimensional archetypes, and the sexuality is so gratuitous it becomes grotesque. But, somehow, it seemed to work better in the comic. It didn't seem as ridiculous, as preposterous as it plays out on the screen. The plot holes seemed bigger, the stories less enjoyable. I've read those stories over and over, but it took me seeing it in live action to realize just how dumb it is.
Yes, it's supposed to be over the top. But hearing that kind of hyperbolic dialogue for two hours straight, actually seeing the ridiculous costumes of the prostitutes, the endless barrage of blood and bullets . . . there's a reason why story elements get changed in adaptations of one medium to another; sometimes, some things don't work as well on the screen as they do on the page.

I'm still trying to decide if it was simply too much of a good thing. The movie consists of (mainly) three stories. The first one, "The Long Goodbye" is the best. The middle story, "The Big Fat Kill" is the weakest, because the whole thing is one extended shootout but the reason behind it all isn't strong enough to justify it.("The Big Fat Kill" is a sequel to another Sin City story, and much of the ending only pays off if you're familiar with the earlier story.) It also doesn't help that the cardboard-cut-out-characters don't give you anything to sink your sympathies into. The last, "That Yellow Bastard" falls somewhere in between. More meat than the middle story, but there are no characters in it have the kind of (hyper)humanity as Marv does in "The Long Goodbye". I also think the actual yellow bastard doesn't work very well on screen. Like the comics, his skin is banana-yellow; I think this would have been an excellent case for the movie to not have remained so faithful to the comic and toned down the extreme representation. But then again, that would rather be against the whole point of the movie, wouldn't it?

That all three stories were told exactly like the comics, with none of them able to fill out an entire movie, shows you just how superficial they all are. I think the pacing of each story could have been adjusted to allow a better flow. Some scenes felt rushed and yet there were also stretches where I wished to Holy Hell that they'd just get on with it. Conversely, had this movie been only one or two stories, it wouldn't have been as interesting. That thdre are so many stories in the movie helps sell the concept of the city being as important as the people; this would have been lost had only one story been told, or if the stories were extended beyond their original length.

I'm also surprised that the stories were (mostly) shown in their entirety, without cutting back and forth between them. At first I thought it might've helped the pacing problem to keep the stories running simultaneously but, in retrospect, that would've led to jumping from one over-the-top fight scene to the next, which would've been even more disjointed, and the sginal-to-noise ratio would've been even worse.

What a bizarre experience to see a comic so faithfully, adoringly, lavishly reproduced on the big screen. I've rarely seen a movie so simultaneously rewarding and dissapointing. I hope never to experience that again.

Terri Schiavo's Blog

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

(Thank's Mitch!)

And, while I'm laughing at a person's slow and ridiculously publicized death, I hereby ask that you submit your best "Johnnie Cochrane, Frank Perdue, and the Pope walk into a bar/arrive at the gates of Heaven" joke in the comments section.