loonyblog.

From an article in the Washington Post:

Other Republicans and Bush administration officials, some close to Powell, also expressed concern that the Iraq war plan, with its “rolling start” using a relatively small force, was based on faulty assumptions that the Iraqi government would quickly collapse. Moreover, there is fear among some officials, especially in the State Department, that postwar diplomacy, if handled poorly, could result in further U.S. estrangement from allies and international institutions.

Reading stuff like this doesn’t make me any less queasy about this war. Especially not when I read something like this (from the same article):

“The only one who can reach the president is his father,” one former senior official said. “But it is not timely yet to talk to him.”

The picture being painted these days of our illustrious leader is of a man with cotton balls stuck in his ears, who only listens to a select number of people, and even then, only when they agree with him. For everyone’s sake, I really hope that’s not the case.

Like I did last time, I’ve posted a netomat-powered doodle board (click the read-on link to see it). It’s still very much a work-in-progress, but it’s come a ways since the last one, and I think you’ll find it to be a bit less buggy, and generally easier to use this time around.

So go nuts, and if you want to clear off previous entries, use the pull-down history menu to scroll back to the first iteration.

Read the rest of this entry »

You know, I’m all for alternative interior design (lord knows my “piles o’ crap everywhere” aesthetic isn’t for everyone), but this Star Trek apartment (found through Sarah Dyer’s blog), is just hideous. Let’s say for a moment that you really did want to live in some kind of Star Trek apartment…leaving the $2 million price tag aside, would you really want to have a kitchen that looked like a bathroom? Come to think of it, the whole place looks like a giant toilet. Although…I wonder how much closet space it has?

For those who want More, Moore, More, Entertainment Weekly has an interesting Q&A with the director of Bowling for Columbine. He talks about his controversial Oscar speech, along with his plans for the future. Apparently his next project is tentatively titled Fahrenheit 9/11, and deals with the Bush administration’s actions after 9/11. Sounds like fun to me.

Being a news junkie, I’ve become fascinated with how various news outlets have dubbed this war. Here’s a list:

CNN, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The BBC have all stuck with “The War in Iraq”, which is probably the most accurate, although Reuters’ “The War in the Gulf” is pretty accurate as well (if slightly non-specific). ABC News is much more blunt, choosing instead “The War with Iraq” which implies that it’s one whole country against another. Given that there are Kurds and non-aligned people in Iraq, this is a little misleading. Newsday makes a similar choice, with “Conflict with Iraq” which is totally wishy-washy. And then there’s “The War on Iraq” which is similar to ABC and Newsday, but with a strange, detached quality to it, which is used by Time Magazine and The Nation. Incidentally, this is also the one used by The Onion, who use that along with the possibly more accurate, “Operation: Piss off the Planet.”

Being more conservative than most news outlets, FOX News has chosen “Operation: Iraqi Freedom” to emphasize our plans to liberate the oppressed peoples of that war-torn nation. CBS News totally chickens out, and doesn’t even mention Iraq in their title, “America at War”, which is so ambiguous that it could mean Iraq, or the war on terrorism, or the war on illiteracy. I bet they saved a bundle by recycling their old graphics for this.

Fully embracing the cowboy mentality our president gets accused of, the NY Post has gone with “Showdown with Sadaam.” Yeehaw! MSNBC doesn’t fare much better with their title, “Target: Iraq” which makes it sound like an assassination, or a complete leveling of the country, and not the rough n’ tumble war we’re fighting.

And then there’s the good ol’ New York Times and their title, “A Nation at War,” which I suppose is the same as CBS News’ title, but feels like it has less hyperbole (the name of this country has been abused enough lately). A fine choice for this country’s most respected paper.

You have to wonder how long it took them to come up with these titles. I forget who it was, but someone mentioned in a blog a week or two before this war started that they found it disturbing that somewhere, someone had an MP3 of the music that would be used as a lead-in for CNN’s war coverage.

After searching around for the better part of a month to find out what happened to Dragon.ca (as detailed in this blog entry) I’ve finally come across solid proof that the company is no more.

I base this on a handful of stories I heard from other people who were left hanging by the company (some of whom have been screwed out of money — I got lucky there) as well as the total unresponsiveness from their web site (which has officially shut down), and finally this forum post at Gone Gold, where a former supplier reports that Sanjay Mehta, the founder of the company, “took the money and ran.”

As I said, I’m lucky in that I wasn’t screwed out of money by this, but I know there are people who were. If you, or someone you know is out of money, do yourself a favor and contact your bank or credit card company now while you still stand a chance to get that back.

One of the fun things about having your own website is looking through your referral logs to see where people are coming from. Thanks to the very diverse set of articles, contributors and subject matters covered by loonygames, I get some really wacky ones, and because I maxed the site out for search engine coverage, I’m among the top of the results for many of them to boot.

And so here, in no particular order, are a few of the funnier ones:

• How to get drunk (I’ve very proud of this one)
• tivo michael moore acceptance speech
• 13 (Who types a prime number into a search engine, anyway?)
• alice through the looking glass (Another one I’m proud of)
• captain immy
• breast reduction
• business card designer crack (What a strange collection of words this one is)
• large anime breasts

And of course…my suite of Sims terms:

• sims polygamy
• the sims death
• the sims sex
• how to make the sims have sex

Anyway, get a load of this hidden text that was discovered on NY Press’ site. There’s some very, very weird stuff in there, and it’s hard to figure out what exactly its purpose is.

The big question on everyone’s mind today seems to be what it was that caused Roman Polanski to win last night. One theory posited by Reuters is that it was because of the war in Iraq, while 8Bit Joystick, in a fit of angry irrationality, claims the only violent movies recognized by the academy are those about Nazis.

I’ll get to my thoughts in a minute, but first let me fully debunk 8BJ’s claims. Previous violent films to be recognized by the Academy include Platoon (1987), The Godfather I & II (that’d be 1973 and 1975 respectively), Braveheart (1996), and The Deer Hunter (1979). What Jake seems to be unwilling to accept is that Gangs of New York was neither a popular movie, nor was it a particularly well-liked movie both in and out of Hollywood. And that means a whole lot more than how violent it is.

But that aside, I’ve been trying to come up with my own theory for why Polanksi won, and I’m coming up pretty short. As best as I can guess, there was backlash suffered from the over campaigning for Scorsese and Chicago by Miramax and Harvey Weinstein, which led to many voters moving on to the next on their list. Or simply that people were so divided between those two, that the votes were split completely, allowing for a small lead to put Polanski over the top. But honestly, I haven’t a clue why he won. Personally, I think it’s great. He deserved it for Rosemary’s Baby, he more than deserved it for Chinatown, and among the other nominees, he deserved it this year as well. Good for him.

One last fun bit of Oscar trivia…this article at MSN Entertainment (spotted on OscarWatch) points out that Spider-Man’s Kevin O’Connell broke the record for most Oscar losses, having missed out on his 16th award when he lost the sound category to Chicago. Keep at it, Kevin! If Randy Newman can win eventually, I’m sure you will too.

Well, it was quite a show, wasn’t it? Before I get to my general thoughts
on the evening, the results of my annual bet with my father: for the third
time in the roughly 15 years that we’ve been doing this thing, I’m saddened
to report that we tied, and it’s all thanks to Nicole Kidman. I must say, I
really was surprised that she won, and it really did have to be a close call
with her and Renee Zelwegger. Still, I owe the fact that I didn’t lose to my
long-shot pick of Pedro Almodovar for screenplay, and I’m perfectly happy to
take a tie as opposed to the shame of losing outright.

Some other thoughts on the results:

• Re: Michael Moore’s speech: you give an award to Michael Moore, that’s
  what you get. I agreed with what he was saying, but wish it wasn’t quite
  as angry as it was. But then, I wouldn’t have expected anything less from
  him, and something different would have felt phoney.
• Was it just me, or did Diane Lane look absolutely stunning? If the way
  you dress to the ceremony is what determined the winner, she should have
  gotten that best actress award.
• Adrien Brody? Roman Polanski? Good gravy, who saw that one coming? All
  hard-earned awards to be sure, but very surprising. Also surprising was the
  audience’s favorable reception of Polanski’s name being called. Given his
  past, there just as easily could have been some boos.
• The winner of the best speech award goes to Conrad W. Hall, for that loving
  tribute to his father. Really touching, and that award was well deserved.
• Runner up goes to Adrien Brody, who managed to give a message of
  peace without being blunt or angry. Very classy.
• Nicole Kidman looked this year like Jennifer Connelly did last year. Gorgeous
  women looking frumpy. It’s a crime, really.
• It’s definitely a shame Eminem didn’t accept his award or perform his winning
  song…either would have been an entertaining moment.
• The show felt a lot more thrown together this year…the gathering of past
  winners was nice, but kinda pointless. And what was up with not performing
  the winning scores?
• He didn’t win, but I think I’m going to have to run out and buy Philip
  Glass’ score to The Hours. The snippits played during that best picture
  segment reminded me of how good it was. And while Glass didn’t win, at least
  he lost to Elliot Goldenthal for his decidedly un-Oscar-like score for Frida.
  Very surprising, but at least it was a quality soundtrack.

So there you have it…another Oscar year behind us. While it wasn’t included
in my bet with my Father (or mentioned in my article at Shacknews), I was pleased
to see my off-the-books prediction for The Chubb Chubbs be accurate. Pixar
is always the favorite for the animated short category, but Mike’s New Car
just wasn’t up to their usual quality level (being basically a DVD extra, this
was to be expected). If you missed some part of the show, here’s the
full list of winners, care of the official Oscar site. G’night everybody!

We’re only a few hours (okay, like nine) away from the Oscars…yee haw! If
anyone’s interested in a printable ballot, you can feel free to use the
one I threw together for my father and I. Although be warned, it only has
the categories we’re betting on, so stuff like makeup, sound and sound editing
aren’t on there.

Heather’s out of town again, which is probably a good thing,
since she goes to sleep early, and the Oscars always run late. This way I
can be as loud as
I like, especially when the phone starts ringing in between awards.

Between now and game time I have some minor things to do, including looking
at an apartment, but mostly I think I’m going to sit here and try my best not
to run out and buy a Game
Boy Advance SP.

Being home sick sucks. Being home sick, with a hangover really sucks. Being
home sick with a hangover, in 63 degree weather with a landlady who leaves
the heat on really sucks. But I’m not complaining, really…I’m just bored,
as my head hurts too much to do anything constructive, and I don’t think I
can take the kind of existential gobbledygook that is Xenosaga right now.

Have you tried the
netomat-powered doodle board yet? There are 19 tags so far, and they keep
coming…this is a great little experiment. One quick thing: you can erase the
current contents by using the drop-down menu to go back to the very first entry.
If you
don’t
see
it there, click next to the toolbar within the applet and it should show up.
You can also clear things by selecting individual objects and clicking on the
delete button, but that would take ages to do.