Long time, no write . . .

Wow, it's been May since I last updated this thing. I guess the bloom has kind of fallen off the rose for me on the whole blogging thing. Still, I feel like I should be doing something with this thing. I'm just not sure what.

I've got a couple of ideas, so hopefully I'll get something more interesting up in the next few days. This entry is really mostly about saying, "Watch this space."

Random Video: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

So, I'm really looking forward to the arrival of this movie next year, but it wasn't anything about the movie that caught my attention when I watched this video diary. I was shocked to see how young Edgar Wright looks. I was expecting this grizzled filmmaker. Maybe balding, maybe a little bit of a paunch on him. Turns out the guy, who according to IMDB is older than me, looks like he's still sixteen or seventeen. Weird.

500 Days of Summer

I happened across this trailer for "(500) Days of Summer". I love that it's made up of still images spliced together to show movement (Okay, I suppose that's what all movies ultimately are, but you know what I mean). I also love the song in the trailer. Apparently it's titled "Sweet Disposition" and it's by a band named Temper Tramp. Hadn't heard of them before I saw the movie, but I'll be keeping an ear out for them now.

I did get a chance to see this movie last month at the Atlanta Film Festival and I loved it. It is easily my favorite movie of the year so far (sorry Star Trek, it was very close, though). I'll drop in the regular trailer, too, just in case you want to get more of an idea of what the film is about.

Frame & Sequence

I've recently begun converting my old slides, taken for a college class called Frame & Sequence, into digital files. These were taken in the fall/winter of 1995 in New York City. I really liked the photo I've got posted above. The others are of varying quality (a few blurry ones to be sure). I've put the first of many sets up on my Flickr account. Feel free to take a look.

Haiku Book Review - Rocket Man by William Elliott Hazelgrove

A well written book,
Tale of suburban ennui.
I quite liked this book.

Haiku of the Week: Time

Daylight Savings Time.
A twice annual hassle;
Time to spring forward.

I Watched the Watchmen

I've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of this film since seeing the trailer last summer. Well, it has arrived, and while I think the movie has its flaws, overall I enjoyed it very much.

My primary complaint is one that I've been anticipating since seeing that first trailer. What's with all the slow-motion? The use of slow-motion in various places throughout the movie was a stylistic choice that I found a little annoying. To be fair, it didn't bother me quite as much as I would have expected, but still, I could have done without it. I also felt that the pacing of the movie got a little bogged-down in the middle section. This is where I think the reviewers who have complained that the movie was too faithful to the book may have a point, because there are places where the pacing feels more like that of a 12-issue comic series than of a 2-hour (or whatever) movie.

Those complaints aside, however, I'm very pleased with how the movie turned out. The cast was spot on and the art direction and costumes were great. I have to give credit to director Zack Snyder (and whoever else may be responsible) for the biggest deviation from the original story. Without getting into spoiler territory, I think the change in the ending works quite well, and I think I may even prefer it to the original (maybe, I'm still working it over in my mind).

The movie certainly matches the source material for denseness (in a good way), so much so that it will probably only be after additional viewings that I'll be able to solidify my thoughts on it. As I said, I definitely enjoyed it, though I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't already read the book. If you have read and enjoyed it, then the movie is probably worth a look.

Haiku of the Week: Clog

The snot clogs my nose.
Sniffle, cough, cough, I am sick;
Head colds do so suck.

Haiku of the Week: Sleepless

Brain will not turn off;
Sleep will not be forthcoming.
Put time to good use.

Customer Survey

I was catching up on my "This American Life" podcast episodes, and came across this one from January 2nd. The final act of the show was about a salesman who, as part of an exercise from some training seminar, had his wife complete a brand marketing survey about him (I'd encourage you to listen to the show, my crappy description is not doing it justice).

I liked this idea. So I decided to post a customer satisfaction survey. Being lazy I just found a generic one on the web and replaced the product name with my name. I encourage any family, friends, and random Internet wackos who feel so inclined to fill it out.

Part One: Product Overview

1) What do you consider to be the best aspects of Jonathan?


2) What do you consider to be the worst aspects of Jonathan?


3) Please rate the following features of Jonathan, with 5 being the highest rating and 1 being the lowest:

Attractive Appearance
Helpful User Documentation
Great Customer Satisfaction
Customer Service Support Staff
Low Cost


Part Two: Product Usage

4) How many times a week do you use Jonathan?

Hundreds of times a week
More than 100 times a week
More than 10 times a week
More than once a week
Less than once a week

5) Did you own any previous models of Jonathan?


Part Three: Product Expectations

6) All of us here at Jonathan's Journal want to know if Jonathan has met your person-related expectations. Please choose from the following selections:

Jonathan has greatly exceeded my expectations
Jonathan has slightly exceeded my expectations
Jonathan has met my expectations
Jonathan has fallen short of meeting my expectations
Jonathan has completely failed to meet my expectations.
Other:


7) If Jonathan failed to meet your expectations, could you please tell us what the problems are?


8) I would recommend Jonathan to others.
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Undecided
Agree
Strongly Agree

Haiku of the Week: Game

Playing the long game;
It must be done with great care.
Will I have patience?

A geeky internet quiz after my own heart

I found this post over at Newsarama. Someone created a quiz inspired by the story arc running through the Green Lantern books. Which Lantern Corps wants you? As a lifelong GL-nerd I was gratified to get Green Lantern Corps as my result, though I would have expected to be more of a Blue Lantern. For those not in the know, here are the different colors and what they're supposed to represent:

Green - Willpower
Blue - Hope
Yellow - Fear
Orange - Greed
Red - Anger
Indigo - Compassion
Violet - Love
Black - Death

Haiku of the Week: Late

I am a day late,
But I have come now to post.
A deadline was missed.

Haiku of the Week: Sleep

I am so sleepy;
My eyes will not stay open.
I need a long nap.

Words & Pictures No. 9: To Do

Wow! I can't believe how much I've managed to accomplish today.

Everyday I make a To Do list with the things I need to work on. It's usually about as long as this one and I usually only get a third of the way through it at best. Stuff I don't get done gets rolled over to the next day. But today . . . I've been energized. Focused even. I am getting stuff done. I may actually manage to complete the list today!

Hm . . . What'll I do tomorrow?

Haiku of the Week: Simple

Nothing is simple,
Excepting for me that is.
I wish that were true.

Words & Pictures No. 8: Inauguration

Watched the inauguration and am unbelievably happy and hopeful about the new administration. President Obama is entering office with an unprecedentedly high approval ratings(well, I suppose Washington might have been more popular, but they didn't poll quite as obsessively back then). I hope he doesn't waste it. He's off to a good start by mandating the closure of Guantanamo. I'm waiting to see what's next.

Candy

Two, three, not enough;
Four, five, six, I still want more.
Seven, I feel sick.

Words & Pictures No. 7: And You Thought You Had A Crappy Job

I'm forced to wonder, how do you end up as the guy that sticks his upper body up an elephant's rear end? Is it something you have to go to school for? And what does that want ad look like?

Haiku of the Week: Mail

A big heavy box,
Must go to the post office.
Pity the mailman.

Words & Pictures No. 6 - The Mating Habits of the Arctic Pygmy Snowman

Like salmon swimming upstream to spawn, every January the Arctic Pygmy Snowman heads south. Furthur and further south the snowmen march stopping only once they have reached a climate warm enough to begin melting their frosty epidermis. It is here that the snowmen begin to reproduce. For many years it was a mystery how this reproduction took place, but scientists now theorize that the evaporating snowman epidermis rises into the upper atmosphere where it mingles with the evaporate of other snowmen. Wind currents blow the vapor northward where it eventually comes down as frozen precipitation. This snowy residue builds up and is eventually formed into a new snowman. From there, the cycle continues.

Look Who's Been Knighted

How did I miss this news. Sir Terry Pratchett, how awesome is that (and if you don't know how awesome that is, then you clearly haven't read any of the Discworld books, so you should get right on that)?

Of course, the article isn't all good news. Apparently Sir Terry was recently diagnosed with a form of early-onset Alzheimer's (another bit of news that I appear to have missed).

So, to recap: Ridiculously happy about knighthood but very sad about the Alzheimer's.

Haiku of the Week: Patience

Wait. I hate to wait;
What I want I want right now.
I have no patience.

Resolved

So, the new year has begun. It is traditional, on the occasion of a new year, to make a list of New Year's Resolutions. I'm generally not one for this particular tradition, but, in the interest of creating content for this very blog, I suppose I can give it a go.

1. Find a new job. This is less a resolution than it is an imperative. Unemployment/underemployment ceased being fun a while back, so it's time to find a paying gig.

2. Finish something (writing-wise). I'm great with beginnings and okay with middles. It's the endings where I run into trouble. I can never seem to get to them. I'm going to try and be more disciplined this year and try to finish at least one of the many unfinished projects I've got lying around.

3. Learn to cook . . . something. I've become convinced that I would eat healthier if I knew how to cook actual food rather than reheat the frozen stuff that I eat way too much of. Couple that with my recent fascination with reality/cooking shows like Kitchen Nightmares and Top Chef and I think that maybe I'd like to be able to cook.

4. Renew my love of film. In recent years, while I've kept up with the big studio releases pretty well, I haven't ventured much out of that catagory. I need to reconnect with the independents, the foreign, and the classics.

There's a good list. It remains to be seen how well I'll do with it.

Words & Pictures No. 5 - A New Year

The image of the baby New Year and the elderly Old Year is a weird one. Anthropomorphising a concept like time just seems a little strange, but if you think about it the metaphor does hold up (at least in my hemisphere.

So, a year has a 12 month life-cycle. That first month is its infancy, so you can't really expect much from it, and January is kind of like that. The first half of it is largely just a holiday hangover, after all. And it's a cold month, and cold feels a little static, un-energetic; nothing's happening. February is the toddler month and the month where baby New Year learns to show affection (i.e. Valentine's Day). March and April would be adolescence and the teenage years respectively. As rainy as April is reputed to be, that would tend to fit with the idea of the moody teenager. Then comes May and New Year enters adulthood. June and July, summer months, would be New Year at it's prime.Not-so New Year starts to feel it's age starting in August and in September it notices that it's hair (i.e. foliage) is starting to change color and/or fall out. October the year sees its end approaching and begins to contemplate mortality (with Halloween). As the year winds down in November it is time to reflect on its life with gratitude (Thanksgiving). Then comes December where the weather's colder and the days are getting sholder, and then finally the life of the year ends on December 31st.

Of course, when one year dies, a new one is born. So really, when you think about it, a better metaphor for the change of the years would be the life of a phoenix rather than a human life span.