Saturday, Sept. 11, 2004 - 12:25 a.m.

Ewe 3: Rise of the Machines

Addendum a day later: since it's in keeping with the title of this entry, I'll mention that I just made a trip to the dollar theater and saw The Fresh Prince in his latest hit, Robots Just Don't Understand. I took it for granted that virtually none of it was based on Asimov except for the laws of robotics and the robot brains being composed of a positronic matrix. I don't consider that a loss, however, because I consider it bad science fiction to suggest building household objects out of antimatter. That's just a bad idea. And unnecessary--I bet Asimov was clinging to some vitalist concept that you need some exotic, otherworldly stuff in order to have sentience. But is consciousness possible without autopoiesis? That's one to ponder. Anyway, although I read a bad review of this film, and I guess I agree with the criticisms, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. Its world was nearly as immersive as the world of Blade Runner. The film's mood could not even be ruptured by The Fresh Prince's ceaseless wisecracking. And I found some of the scenes nearly as terrifying as Starship Troopers (the movie). I mean, it's not the best movie ever or anything, but I would have been proud if I had made it. I could not understand how The Fresh Prince could have muscles almost as big as the top-heavy governor of Californina, yet his character was supposedly able to keep his figure while eating so much pie.

I thought The Stepford Wives might be more of the the same, but I was very disappointed. What could have been a suspense thriller or a screwball comedy or a social commentary failed to be any of those. It had potential, but they never ran with it. And they used the word "robot" loosely to mean "mind-controlled human". Sloppy. In between movies, I caught the end of White Chicks, which was far creepier.

After months of the US Postal Service telling me to see Shrek 2 (and even cancelling stamps with Shrek's image) I finally saw the movie. I was amazed by the attention to detail, though some of the details were off, such as bats sleeping at night and unsynched lips in a few scenes. Still, it had even more wacky anachronisms than the first one. I guess I should be used to it by now that even a movie like this one, with it's explicit anti-consumerism message, is used to sell all sorts of crap.

If you're not a regular reader of Anarchy Man's Blog, you're really, really missing out. It's now replete with emotional poignancy as well as keen radical analysis. In his latest post, he brings his unique perspective (and his body) to the Republican National Convention protests.

A new Zogby poll indicates that half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York State citizens overall say that some U.S. government leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act." Holy shit! I had no idea that there was so much dissention among the sheeple. This, plus Bill Moyers tackling the unanswered questions of 9/11 on his show tonight could indicate that the 9/11 truth movement has passed its tipping point and is about to flood into the mainstream. Michael Ruppert's book is being released this month as well.

I know I promised a report on the Feral Visions Gathering, but I've chosen to prioritize other stuff such as learning XML (I did not get that job, by the way) and getting better at Flash animation which is giving me a repetetive motion injury (click and drag = bad).

I know that Arundhati Roy is a liberal, but in this speech, I only found a few points to disagree with, and I thought the rest of it kicked much ass.

After 3 months of singing Operation: Mindcrime daily, I thought I'd give my neighbors a break and sing something else. For the last few weeks I've switched to singing Dream Theater's Images and Words album start to finish each day. It's a tad easier, but still a robust workout. I also found midi tracks for all the songs, so no more singing along to the album for me. I still have a few rough spots, but I predict that within a few weeks, I'll be able to say with confidence that I'm as good as James LaBrie. I've also been broadening my practices by singing some tunes by Jane Siberry and Lamb of God.

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