An earlier Star Wars script
Bits and pieces of the Star Wars original movie remain: Adventures of the Starkiller. I’ve scanned through the script several times over the years but I’ve yet to read the whole thing from beginning to end. That’s going to take some real willpower.
It’s part of Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Scripts - which seems to be a very dangerous place for science fiction movie fans to lose hours of their life very quickly.
University of Washington Digital Collections
Jim sent me a note about the Centralia Massacre, which led me to read about the nearby Everett Massacre. Lots more interesting Washington history for the browsing here: ::: Special Collections :::.
Eric's Favorite Quotes, V
The believer is happy, the doubter is wise.
– Greek Proverb.
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
– Tennessee Williams
After the ecstasy, the laundry.
– Zen Saying
A beginning student complained to his master that the meditation practice of following the breath was boring. The Zen master unexpectedly grabbed the student and held his head under water for quite a long time while the student struggled to come up. Finally, he let the student go.
“Now how boring is your breath?” he asked.
– Zen Mondo
The only practice that is worthwhile is to ask: “What is this?” WHAT IS THIS?
– Zen Saying
Don’t just do something. Sit there!
– Thich Nhat Hanh
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
– Jack Kornfield
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SCIFI.COM – The Lost Room
I finally got around to watching the SciFi.com miniseries The Lost Room. It was really good. I watched the first episode last night and the second and third tonight.
Nice concept of cursed objects with special powers that can be combined together. Pretty damn fine acting, too. I especially liked Roger Bart as The Weasel and Dennis Christopher as the obsessed Ruber. In a way, it seemed very much like a Stephen King novel, just avoiding being over the top.
It would be great to see it as a series or come back as another miniseries. It certainly left many open story lines, but I can’t imagine them easily reassembling the cast. Maybe if it can be shown again on another network it can build interest and momentum.
Raymond Chen – Iced-over roads + people who can't drive = very expensive (and dangerous) game of billiards
A follow-up to yesterday’s Portland smash-em-up video of cars on an icy hill: this includes an interview with the young man who took the video, with commentary and, at the end, an on-foot view of the car carnage:
Unbelievable video of people in Portland, OR who should know better trying to drive down an icy road. (Direct WMV link. Interview with the person who shot the video, but you’re going to have to put up with the inane local news-anchor chatter. That last link includes images of cars that, yup, struck the fire truck.)
They said this was at SW 20th and Salmon in Portland… let’s see if I can find a map…
MTVs Rock the Vote Screws Up Big Time
Via Blake Ross: Blake Ross on Firefox » Not the best way to “rock the vote”.
What happens when you’re full of good intentions but too damn lazy to check what you’re linking to: Rock the Vote – Home
You put in a beautiful link to learn more about Dr. Martin Luther King to what surely must be an official site. Unfortunately, the site that seemed legit to the blink of the eye is full of hate and white supremacist diatribes. None of which are too kind to Dr. King. Five seconds of actually using the site would have revealed the deception.
Score one for hate. And laziness.
Update: I checked in this morning and this has been fixed to point to a proper site now, not the one indicated on hover in the status bar in the image above.
Puget Sound – More Snow For You!
From King5: Puget Sound hit with new snow
This video from Portland shows what happens when you mix wintry roads, hills, and determined (foolish?) drivers.
I met a fellow yesterday who is from the Northeast US and passed something on to me: most of the roads, in say Boston, started as roads used by horses. Horses can bear loads on only so much of a grade of road, so the roads were put in to be gently sloped, rather than laying down a grid pattern. This meant that there’s less slippage as such on those evolved roads. Out here, we’re all about the grid baby, geography allowing, and thus have some crazy hills that are fine 99% of the time but totally impassible when you get a dusting of winter.
What’s frustrating is that this stuff is not expected to melt today; it will get a little slushy and then refreeze. I hope it’s all gone for good by the end of tomorrow. Huge globs of snow are falling off of the trees now.
A strange thing I learned: kitty litter can be used as a snow and ice preventative. When I tried to get the cleaning ladies car up the hill to our house yesterday, I scattered some kitty litter about in attempt to provide traction.
Nope. No good. It wasn’t sandy kitty litter but rather pellet like litter. Probably clay based.
But this morning, where I scattered the kitty litter yesterday, is all melted. It prevented the new snow from sticking plus melted the snow and ice that was there. Hmm! Something to think about when our next time comes.
Just hopefully my road doesn’t become the hang-out for the neighborhood cats.
Oi! It's snowing again!
I peeked outside a couple of times early this morning to see if there were any snow flakes to worry about. Nope. Nope. And Nope.
Then I actually got up to looked carefully: stealth snow! Small flakes that zing by quickly without getting enough attention to be seen out the window from across the room.
I took Bella out for her morning walk and the stealth snow quickly changed to big fat fast falling cover everything again snow. And it’s still going. Okay, Northwest metropolitan snow is supposed to cover everthing, be ooooh’d and aaaaah’d over, and then quickly melt and disappear. We’re going on a week with snowy, icy roads and the promised rain to melt all this away is no longer promised.
It makes no sense to slip and slide around on the icy roads, so, it’s another day remoting it in for me.
Eric's Favorite Quotes, IV
To understand God is to listen, listen to Jesus and Muhammed and Buddha; but don’t get caught up in the names. Listen beyond them; listen to God’s breath.
– Zen Saying
All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.
– Kabir
A clearly enlightened person falls in the well. How is this so?
– Zen Koan
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate – that’s my philosophy.
– Thornton Wilder
“Who is there?” asks God.
“It is I.”
“Go away,” God says.
Later…
“Who is there?” asks God.
“It is thou.”
“Enter,” replies God.
– Western Mondo
Begin at once to live.
– Seneca
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Movies – Hard Candy and The Descent
I watched two DVDs this weekend while Elisa is visiting her Mom:
- Hard Candy – tables turned on a suspicious adult who might be a sexual predator.
- The Descent – adventurous ladies spelunking running into mishaps and horror.
Both are kinda horror movies. Well, okay, The Descent is 110% horror. I recommend both, but you have to be into subjecting yourself to the subject matter.
Hard Candy is certainly horror for any adult indulging their naughty side in chat rooms with young people (perhaps it is this generation’s Fatal Attraction, meant to scare them back onto the straight and narrow road). Hard Candy is also a wonderfully filmed and put together movie. I cannot believe the focus control used in the movie. It is super human. There are scenes where the focus point can’t be more than four inches wide, and the camera is moving and the actress is moving and still, it all stays in focus.
If you’re into understanding movies and movie making, its behind-the-scenes extras is fantastic. Just like the movie, the discussion of getting the movie funded, how it was made, and how post-production and the premiere went is tight and well put together.
And the movie had me squirming in my seat and exclaiming “Holy crap!” several times.
And I loved the dialog. The writer, Brian Nelson, said he thought of Buffy The Vampire Slayer as a strong female role and you can see that in the dense, fast, smart dialog that Hayley had.
The Descent didn’t need the Crawler cave adversaries to make me any more scared or exhausted. After seeing news reports of Vietnamese soldiers who would squirm along tunnels just wide enough to hold a body, I started having nightmares of being caught in a tunnel – like having to turn around when there wasn’t enough room.
Scenes like that, where the cavers were crawling and twisting through tight spaces, had me curled up on the couch in suspense. Then it goes to all hell.
A cast of powerful, all women adventurers was refreshing, too.
Both of these movies are a bit of a change for me, too. I’ve been focused on safe flights of fantasy in my movie watching for years now. When I was in my early twenties, I was focused on movies full of angst and the terrible trials of being human. Then I had my own trials. Those movies offered no escape, no lessons that I didn’t already know. So now, bit by bit, I’m gravitating to more challenging movies. And I’ve got some catching up to do.