There was a relatively small thunderstorm that knocked out electricity. It also turns out that it fried our Ethernet/DSL line so we have been offline for approximately 2 days. Well, we called AT & T and we fixed the main hub of connectivity. Well, the technician who was sent over was God-sent. He told me about this website/program called VirtualBox and as I write, I am running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn in a virtual box! I am so impressed that Ubuntu detected my wireless settings without me having to configure anything! A;; it required was: basically install the VirtualBox program, create my guest Operating System, download a Linux distribution (or distro. Take your pick at Distro Watch!) and hit ‘Go’. Man, Ubuntu looks good. Now, I have to play with my latest toy. Thanks, Daniel from AT & T from going above and beyond your call of duty! Ciao.
My take on Knocked Up
I wouldn’t normally take the time to write a review about a movie I disliked, but as I was reading Jane’s review, and voicing my opinion she simply suggested that I should write a review in rebuttal of the points she made. Well for starters, I don’t think that what she said was off base per se, but I will just add a few points about what she didn’t say about the movie and it’s main characters.
In summary, Alison and her older sister could easily be seen as superficial and over identified with the material world. A very unattractive quality to those interested in living for a deeper purpose. As a an avid fan of horror movies, psychological thrillers, and many films that are a down right nasty expression of human nature, I am not one to be offended by a film’s portrayal of human nature, shock factor, and the like. It does make me uninterested however, when the protagonist’s shallowness is portrayed as “normal.” In fact, it probably is “normal” by todays standards to frequent night clubs as a mature adult and get your news from Entertainment Tonight in the evenings after a hard days 9-5 it . After all club hopping is something any “normal” healthy, successful young adult should enjoy, right? And in Alison’s sisters case, a 40 + year old married woman. Yes, I know, to a certain degree the females’ materialistic attitudes and shallow behavior was intentional but I began to lose my moral compass in the film as the only relatively redeemable characters, primarily the sisters husband, and secondly, the stoned loser did nothing to dissuade the insanity.
The movie, Knocked Up, had a few nuggets.
Okay, Knocked Up is rated R and by God, rightfully and sinfully so. 🙂 It hits the right notes to attract males and just enough to keep the females happy. By box office accounts, this movie has done well. This movie struck me as having an anti-abortion stance and not justifiably so. The basic premise of the movie is this: girl gets effing drunk, and has a one night stand with a man. Said man is epitome of stoner nation in America i.e. jobless with crazy-as-hell friends who are just as uncouth as he is. Eight weeks later, she ends up with a bundle of joy. What to do? First of all, Alison (girl who gets preggers) lives with her sister (plus husband and kids) in an apparently spacious mansion. This means she has a warm and supportive place to stay with her pregnancy. Her mom counsels her to consider things carefully, but the movie writers expose their anti-abortion bent with a sentence they make Alison’s mom utter, “… when you get married, you’ll have a real baby.” What was up with the ‘real baby’ line? The mother-to-be is not in denial of the fact that her fetus will morph into a ‘real’ baby soon. In fact, it will make no difference to the mother-to-be, IMHO. We, the viewers, can see that the arguments to terminate the pregnancy are just as strong for the arguments to keep the baby i.e. she’s got a good job, good place to stay and a good environment overall. Contrast that with the real life situations that unprepared mothers find themselves in: shitty job, shitty environs, and the list goes on. The good thing is that some unprepared mothers will look beyond that and still keep the baby. The point is that there’s not that big solution (i.e. the instinctive keep-the-baby chant) to this problem. Anyhow, back to the movie, some lines struck a few chords within me such as the need that women feel to want to change their partners for better or worse, living and letting your partner live, resolving conflicts, etc. I could definitely learn a thing or two from this movie, believe it or not. Heck, I probably learned what NOT to do in a relationship. The biggest issue was the lack of communication between both couples. Or I should say, inability to communicate without deterioration into a shout-fest. It largely puts a lot of the blame for relationship woes on women and maybe it does that unknowingly, having fallen into the easy (and funny) way out of things. I do wish they had developed the plot between Alison’s sister and her husband so that we could see how they managed to salvage their marriage. I was a bit disturbed by Alison’s proclamation that her sister & her sister’s husband were miserably unhappy with each other. Oh well, I guess there’s always sequels. Read this review at Slate for more on what was wrong with this movie, but it’s still a must-see movie anyway. It says very articulately, what I feel about this movie. I saw this movie for the princely sum of $2.00 (no tax added) with Matt who took something away from it too. He’s disdainful of modern day movies and their penchant for silliness. 🙂 I dragged him screaming and kicking to see this guy flick even though Daniel, his friend, was the one who suggested that we go see it. In other news, I’ve received semi-official confirmation from the powers-that-be (via email so it still doesn’t feel very official). In other words, say hello to your friendly neighborhood CPR. 😀
The movie, Descent.
Well, well, well. I’m on round two of “negotiations” i.e. another look-see or interview. Just when I was lamenting to Matt about how things didn’t seem so good. An interesting thing that happened today: I actually turned down an interview. I was mentally kicking myself about it, but Matt reminded me of the facts: city was 3.5hrs from where I currently live. My riposte to that was: we could move! However, right now, that would be not-so-smart of me because I surely haven’t exhausted all my chances in this city. I’m excited and really psyched. In other news, I saw the movie “Descent” with Paul and Matt. This movie made me mad, in a good way. First of all, they should bill this movie as “required viewing” for would-be spelunkers or cavers. This is a horror movie and the premise is this: group of 6 girls who are ‘experienced’ and outdoorsy types decide to go caving. This is a fun trip to do with your girls except there are several things that go wrong namely: their ‘leader’ forgets a book that details the entrance & exits; another ‘leader’ conveniently forgets to file a “flight plan” of where they’ll be so in other words, no one knows that they’re there; another ‘leader’ forgets to inform the others that the cave they were currently in was not the cave they thought they would be visiting. Ostensibly, said leader does this because she wants them to claim the cave as theirs. Give me a break. Anyhow, they get trapped in the cave and start getting stalked by some humanoid creatures. Straightforward, right? They get the horror down and I liked the movie up until the screenwriters made a serious error in judgment on who they killed off and who they didn’t. It was like the screenwriters lost their sense of direction once their characters were trapped in the cave. There is an unexplained killing of the main ‘leader’ by another caver and it really pissed me off. In honor of the dead main ‘leader’, here are my suggestions for real-life group spelunking:
- Subject everyone to a psychological test to isolate and drop-faster-than-a-hot-potato those who are most likely to wig out on you when it’s pitch-black or wiggling in a tunnel.
- Subject would-be cavers to a virtual simulation to buttress the psychological tests and ditch nutcases.
- If you are the group leader, ensure that you hold the sole flashlight versus everyone turning on all their flashlights and running out of light energy at critical moments.
- In order to prevent Wandering Wilhemina’s from taking off after seeing “daylight” which is truly phosphorus glowing in the cave (which WW would know if she had taken her basic Caving 101 classes); feel free to give WW a stinging slap to jolt her senses back into place.
- If a group member is wigging out on you in the cave, feel free to bestow another stinging slap on said group member’s face.
- Â This one’s for group members: feel free to be more interested in specifics of where you’re going, what you’re doing to avoid going to no-man’s land.Yes, it’s cool to be an “extreme sports” person, but temper your exuberance with a little bit of common sense!
Finally, check out synopsis/review from Hollywood Reporter.
Things on my mind
After trying several free off-line feed readers, I settled on FeedDemon and paid for the service. Since then, it’s been indispensable to me because I keep in touch with odd technologies and have my pulse on the news media. Especially, since I don’t have a cable subscription, I need to get my news fix somewhere. 🙂 Needless to say, having my finger on certain blogs can be irritating especially on the eve of a certain company’s launch of a product *hint*iPhone. It was all I could do to keep from screaming. How someone can spend that much on a phone is beyond me. I’d rather invest in buying a DSLR camera than waste that much money on a device that a glorified iPod. That’s the price as a darned Laptop these days! It galls me to no end especially when I see people use it as a status symbol. The sad part is that those people will never even use the iPhone’s full capabilities. It’s a damn shame, but their damned prerogative.
In other news, I’ve just finished reading 2 books by Erich Segal titled “Doctors” and “Acts of Faith“. They were both incredibly moving and I love his style of story telling. I’m currently a 3rd titled “Prizes” and it sounds very promising. Paul has a library of really good books and I’m just scraping the surface. Once I’m done with the library, I’ll scour his library of DVDs next. 🙂 Another thing that has been on my mind pertains to etiquette after an interview and especially after a request for one’s references & particulars has been made. This happened for me over a week ago and I haven’t heard anything back. My initial instincts are that I didn’t get the job which would suck. However, I’m sorely tempted to just make an inquiry to confirm that the death knell has been sounded. I hate no knowing and I’m apparently on the verge of being plunged into not-knowing-ness. Ahh, c’est la vie.
What’s the deal with Podpress?
Okay, for over a week, the Podpress plugin author’s site has been down. I’ve just read on the WordPress.org site that they didn’t have enough money to keep the site running. Really? His plugin was very popular and I can imagine that must have tasked his webhosting providers. However, I think something else is at play here. Still, I have been able to pick up the pieces of my blog w/out podpress. I have relied on the 1pixelout plugin to play my mp3 files. Now, if only I can get WordPress to delete the extra user that Podpress added without my request. Grrh. I had thought Owen Winkler’s Role Manager plugin would help me do the trick of deleting the “Premium Subscriber” role, but it doesn’t work with WordPress 2.2. series. Enter another Role Manager plugin by Thomas. And Voila! It did the trick. 🙂 Now, all I have left to do is find a way to remove the meta cruft that Podpress left behind. It’s one of the messier plugins that doesn’t do a clean uninstall. This behaviour by the plugin gives me cause for pause as to the true cause of the site’s downtime. Almost like wanting the WordPress community to pony up money before further development can occur. 🙂 Now, I’m just being gossipy here. In any case, I won’t be installing this plugin anymore.
In other news, Matt’s been wanting me to read a book by Eckhart Tolle titled “A New Earth: Awakening to your life’s purpose.” For whatever reasons, I’ve avoided reading the book, but I promised him I’d start today so wish me luck. 🙂 I’m more of a fiction buff, but we’ll see how I do.
The highs and lows
I’m discovering that I can be a very impatient person sometimes. It’s frustrating to feel like someone else holds your future in their hands, but I know that there are always other options i.e. there’s no one sole option. It’s always a question of whether or not one is willing to go against the odds or dare the consequences. Anyhow, it’s been 4mths on the job market and I’ve got 4 interviews under my belt. The first 3, I knew would be bust because I hadn’t squared out my immigration paperwork. As He would have it, the 4th interview came right as things started turning around with respect to my USCIS stuff. I’ve got a 5th one in the works that should happen next month. Matt’s very happy for me and I’m happy for me. I really want to stay in this part of town, this city and in this state. Granted, there are not many jobs here, but I’m hopeful that I’ll find the right one/fit for me. That said, I’m not averse to moving. I’m not necessarily tied down to GA and Matt isn’t either. It would be foolish of me to discount moving although the chances of getting a job out of state are not any better than GA. Georgia’s got a thriving biotechnology industry. Hell, I live next to a university so right now, my targets have been set on working there. Wish me luck. In other news, this one is sure to make my momma smile. lol. I blended some tomatoes that Matt’s coworker gave him from his garden and made a banging stew. 🙂 No beef/chicken due to the horrendous prices. However, we just ate some potatoes with the stew and Matt’s verdict: awesome. Not that he had any other choice of words. 😀
Before I forget to write about this ever, did I tell y’all that I went to see Live Free or Die Hard a while ago? That movie was awesome! From the start to finish, I was rooting and cheering for Bruce Willis and Justin Long all the way. That was a heck of an action movie and I’m inclined to go see it again. It helped immensely that I saw it at the fabulous dollar theatre I live close to. Some googling action on your part will give you the brief synopsis of the movie. The fight scenes are just fabulous and sometimes, a bit of a stretch but done in a way that will leave you cheering rabidly. lol. The directors knocked this movie out of the ballpark. Go see it! Ooh, my brother, Nick, is having his b-day on the 22nd. Here’s wishing him a wonderful 24th and many more good things to be had out of the year!