Wednesday, June 28, 2006

In honor of the new strangers with candy movie, i'm going to post my favorite memorable quotes from the show, courtesy of imdb.com.

Jerri: "Orlando, you can't be a pilgrim. The pilgrims had snowy white skin to match their pure Christian souls. They didn't sacrifice coconuts to their monkey gods."

Jerri: "Dear Diary, I'm sorry for all those hateful racist things I said about you. Everything's changed; I'm in love... something you would never understand you dirty, dirty, dirty Jew diary. Just kidding, just kidding. Jerri Blank."

Mr. Noblet: "Following his violent revolution, Gandhi was devoured by his followers."

Jerri: "I don't understand the point of this."
Coach Wolf: "The point, Jerri, is for you to learn a valuable lesson."
Jerri: "Which is?"
Coach Wolf: "Well, if I told you the lesson, you wouldn't be learning it. I'd be teaching it."

Mr. Noblet: "Can anyone tell me the tragic irony of the Trojan War? Tina?"
Tina: "Um, that horses are friendly creatures yet a hollow, wooden one was used to destroy Troy?"
Mr. Noblet: "Wrong and no. Anyone else? Chip?"
Chip: "That the mighty warrior Achilles was killed by a small cut to his ankle."
Mr. Noblet: Chip is wronger. OK, here it is. The tragic irony of the Trojan War is that though it was fought over Helen, who was young and beautiful, by the time they rescued her ten years later, she was old and ugly.
Tina: But wasn't recovering the king's wife reward enough for the Greeks?
Mr. Noblet: Tina, an ugly woman is never a reward.

Tammi: "Are you thinking about having sex already?"
Jerri: "Does a pimp carry a razor?"
Tammi: "I don't know... "
Jerri Blank: "Trust me, they all do. "

Mr. Noblet: [reading a note he confiscated from Jerri] My vagina is on fire. I'm trying not to scratch it, Orlando, I'm afraid it will get infected. P.S. I just know I'm going to win homecoming queen. That will show those sons of bitches, especially Noblet.
Okay, really soon i am going to stop posting about things in the Times, or at least try to mix it up a little. it's just hard, because that's what i read when i'm at work. so anyway, i was just reading a piece by Caryn James (yay, i just figured out to do that text link-y thing) that criticizes the Adam Sandler movie "Click" for ostensibly bearing the moral message that technology distances us from our families, while at the same time actually encouraging the public's technology fetishism by enabling them to see a cool fantasy gadget. Now, she is completely right in her claim. What is off about the article is her condemnation of the dual nature of the movie. Reading James's description of the movie reminded me of one of the great Ming Chinese novels which i've read last semester for a Chinese literature class.
"Plum in a Golden Vase," or "Jin Ping Mei" is one of the dirtiest books i've ever read, going pretty graphically into the sexually depraved lives of its main characters. But the book is actually a strict Taoist-Buddhist text that is extremely condemning of the main characters' activities, and shows how ultimately turning away from a righteous path to seek sexual pleasure will lead to one's downfall. Beyond serving to demonstrate how they lead to one's downfall, however, the sexual activities in the novel serve another purpose. Like Adam Sandler's fabulous remote control, they allow the reader, to not simply ignore or deny their desire, but to satisfy it through fantasy. Like the desire for sex, the desire to purchase a new and exciting gadget permeates our society. At this point, the plethora of ipods, digital cameras, computers, and cell phones available has made it nearly impossible to avoid craving the newest gadget on the market. "Click" allows us to revel in this craving, and by clearly taking it over the line of reality into pure fantasy, makes the desire into an abstract concept that we are more capable of contemplating. While our desire has been raised in this more contemplative state, the movie then provides its moral message. Now it is the viewer's job to reconcile the morals of the movie with their desire for new products. Because they do not actually have the opportunity to purchase the product, the movie allows for a test run of the choices they will make in their lives. When they are faced with such choices in the real world, as they obviously will be, they will not be unaccustomed to having to make a moral decision while they are experiencing a strong desire. Therefore, they will be more likely to make a level-headed decision. Therefore, in your face Caryn James.
From the New York Times:
"The technology is being seen first in Japan because emergency regulations there require cellphones by next year to have receivers using the satellite-based Global Positioning System to establish their location."

What? What!? Not to sound paranoid, but sometimes there are these little signals that we are headed into a 1984, Brave New World, etc future. So Japan is going to use cellphones as people locaters? That is a scary thought. And it's one of those things you can't really do anything about. If they start doing it in the US, I bet no one's going to say anything about it. Especially if it enables cell phone features like the one the article's about, where you can point your cell phone at a building and it'll tell you what it is.
Example:
Guy 1:"Ooh, ahh, what a cool building. hey friend, look at my cell phone's info on this building."
Guy 2: Does not respond, because a sniper bullet has just hit him in the back of the head.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

at the risk of making this a blog entirely devoted to me bitching about computer problems, i feel i must give my devoted readers an update on the state of my ibook. the state, dear readers, is terminal. i took it in to j&r music world today, and they told me that it was unsavable. no, that's not true. i can't believe i'm lying on my blog. the truth is, they said that i would have to send it back to apple, and they could fix it for 250/300 dollars. but i've sort of already fallen in love with the new mac laptop, and i want it to be mine. it's really hard for me to justify this, because i only got the ibook last year. i am not the sort of person who buys a new computer every year, and my budget can't really support it. but it can't not support it. i mean, i could do it. but i worry that i'll feel guilty. i hate computers, and how damn appealing they are.
ok, i'm cutting myself off from writing any more on this post.

Monday, June 26, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/books/27rowling.html
You can't fool me, JK Rowling. I'm on to your clever ruse, hinting that you're going to kill Harry Potter in the last book. I've read six of your books, and I know how sneaky you are. You would never let such an important clue slip in accidentally. Nice try though, and thanks for keeping us on our toes.
<3
Amanda
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/24/movies/24andr.html
haha. i got a kick out of this article, about the loss of a robotic head made to look and talk like philip k. dick. my two favorite things from the article: 1) the reason it's lost is that its creator forgot it in a carrier bag on an airplane. 2) apparently, the hardcore fans of Philip K. Dick call him "PKD". cute, very cute.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

ok, this is my second shot on a real blog entry, as the first one was truly catastrophic, somehow causing my computer to completely self-destruct so that it has been completely unusable for the past two days. my fingers are extremely crossed that it will be fixable, as i was stupid enough not to back up any of my files or pictures, even after a scare last week. that's what makes me feel like i kind of deserve this. after the last time my computer crashed, i was like, i should just burn all this shit to a cd so i don't lose it, and then, out of sheer laziness, i never got around to it.
so anyway, along the same lines, i wanted to do an entry about shitty computers. not my shitty computer, but other shitty computers. i recently read an article in the Times about how Dell's sales have plummetted, and the executives are at a loss as to the cause of this devastating decrease in sales. i'll tell you why sales have gone down, Dell executives. IT'S BECAUSE YOU MAKE SHITTY COMPUTERS. i have firsthand experience with the shittiness of Dell computers, because i used to own one. that is, until it died exactly a week after the one-year warranty had expired. and i am not the only person i know to have experienced this exact problem. literally, i think Dell makes computers that self-destruct immediately when they are no longer responsible for them. and maybe at first they weren't like this. obviously, as Dell was first becoming the big name in PC's, everyone was talking about how high quality they were, and all the computers mags etc gave them excellent ratings. my theory is that once Dell realized they had enough fame to carry them for a while, they started filling their computers with sawdust and letting their customers deal with it when the damn things collapsed. Not cool. so when i read that article, i laughed. then i went back to my room and saw my much more expensive ibook in a state fairly similar to that of my Dell computer from a few years back, and i cried.

Friday, June 23, 2006

look ma!

I can't believe I just did it, I just made a blog. Okay, I'm at work right now, so I'm not going to write an actual entry. But I thought it would be nice to mark the occasion. Let's hope this goes better than my high school experimentation in livejournaling.