Re-tooled 1940's propaganda poster [of justice]

Brilliant.

JohnnkyK, read this now! Forget for a second that I still haven't replied to your last email. Go read this!
http://www.minimumeffort.com/nutshell.html

• Billy Wilder - Wilder was a writer, producer and director. To many filmmakers, including Cameron Crowe who absolutely idolises him, Wilder is the gold standard. 'Spirit of St. Louis', 'Seven Year Itch', 'Stalag 17', 'Double Indemnity', etc.
• George Roy Hill - Oh my. Hill won an Oscar for his direction of 'The Sting. He filmed Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s 'un-filmable' book 'Slaughterhouse Five' and did great justice to John Irving's 'The World According to Garp'.
• Leo McKern - A great actor and comedian (he was Rumpole). And an Aussie, to boot. McKern was very a prodigious actor and in high demand for most of his career.
• Ward Kimball - A legendary animator, writer and producer. One of Disney's '9 old men'
• Richard Harris - If you don't know... well, if you don't know who this is don't tell me.
• James Coburn - Ditto. ;)

• Harrison Ford is still hot even if he is showing his age (and, yes, he's supposed to play Indy again, nonetheless).
• Geena Davis. Oh. My. God. Did she look awesome or what. *drool*
• Brendan Fraser is such a cute person. And he's so much funnier than most people know.
• Renée Zellweger. I was in fear for her the safety of her eyes. I thought her cheeks were going to swallow them whole. WTH is with that? She looked like some giant kewpie doll.
• I cried a little when Olivia De Havilland came out and I definitely did for Julie Andrews' spontaneous standing ovation. And Luise Rainer... OK I really cried for her. It's so good that she is not forgotten by an industry that has, at times, treated her poorly. She was a unique and individual person back when such a thing was frowned upon in Hollywood. It's good that Hollywood is giving her due. It's sad they turned her away from them all those years ago. She could have contributed so much more (after winning two, count em, TWO consecutive Oscars).

• Adrien Brody was so wonderful to watch when he, to everyone's surprise (he was up against Nick Cage, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Caine and Jack Nicholson for god's sake!), won best actor for his role in Roman Polanski's 'The Pianist'. His sentiments about peace were low-key but so very pognant. And it was great how he got the orchestra to stop! heh! And then Polanksi himself wins best director (I still have question about some of the seedier bits of Polanski's past, but no one can deny he is one of the great directors of the last 100 years). I'm dying to see this movie.
• 'Lilo & Stitch' lost, but it lost to Miyazaki's 'Spirited Away' so it was no big surprise. Otherwise, it would've taken animated feature easily.
• Conrad Hall won, posthumously, the cinematography statue for 'Road to Perdition'. (Extreme trivia: His dad wrote 'Mutiny on the Bounty'). I haven't seen it, but I am a fan (he was the cinematographer [and won for an Oscar] for 'American Beauty', nuff said).
• LOTR:TTT won, deservedly so, the visual effects statue. They were up against Spider-Man and Star Wars:Episode II - The Longest Title.
  
  I'm not gonna go into the 'Bowling for Columbine' speech, but I must (in the interest of fairness) point out that my friend and yours Andy Ihnatko seems to be after Mr. Moore about some possible innaccuracies. Wild. Apparently Roger Ebert is cc'd on the email volleys between Andy and Mr. Moore. Andy? Dude, I never knew you were so aggressive! That marathon musta done something to you, brah. hehe (but, seriously, go get em, champ)
  
  Oh! And 'The Chubbchubbs' won best animated shot. I loved this one! Go find it somewhere and watch it. It's hilarious!

  Posted by Maggie at 12:34 AM Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

For some reason this is incredibly easy to imagine. ;)
Dammit that's funny!
Thanks, Kel, for pointing it out. And thanks whoever made it!

I almost forgot... perhaps other, more thorough, US Douglas Adams fans know this (and UK and Aussie fans knew all along) but... I just saw a car recently that made me go "OH! Duh!" (and made Sarah just say the "Duh!" part in my direction hehe)...
I saw a Ford Prefect.
It's a freakin' car!
I thought the name was just funny because of the odd sound and word combination. Doh! Click below for a pic.

1949 Ford Prefect

I don't think I can say it any better than this quote from Alaska's Governor, Frank Murkowski:

"When future historians are writing about the 20th century Senate, Senator Robert Byrd will surely be remembered as one of the giants who followed in the footsteps of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster."

Recent speeches by Senator Byrd

Thanks, Dave, for pointing out the new ones

Terry Jones/Monty Python fans might be interested to know that Terry Jones sometimes writes for the Observer. As you can imagine, some of them are hilarious. Be sure to look for the January 26th entry. ;)
Search Observer.co.uk for Terry Jones.
(Thanks to Gina/Nikki for pointing this out.)

VH1 has callously and bluntly shut the door to Mac users.
Considering the surge of users moving to Mac OSX and the fact that, despite being a small part of the market, we are still millions strong VH1 isn't even trying.
Wanna do your part to make our voice heard in corporate media world?

A campaign has started up after this short exchange
http://www.livejournal.com/community/macosx/1029564.html?view=6109116

So help out!
Send mail to help@vh1mail.com
You can use John's form letter (below) if you'd like.

Dear VH1,

As a Macintosh user I tried visiting your site, and so have many other Mac users, with a variety of browser formats (Internet Explorer, Camino/Netscape/Mozilla) and unfortunately we -- and there are many of us -- were unable to properly view your videos. While you are seemingly supporting semi-standard media formats like Windows Media and Real Media, which can play in Mac OS, for some reason these videos are unplayable on our systems. Not to mention the fact that the site doesn't seem to work properly on Mac OS (OS X). This is troubling since Mac OS X is built on the Unix foundation and fully supports industry standard protocols, including java, html, tcp/ip and so on.

Why is your site unfairly discriminating against Mac users? Surely you don't want to deny anyone access to your website? Surely we 30 million+ Mac users deserve more than this? Surely you would rather have a website that supports open standards and would allow access by any user, including Linux, Unix, FreeBSD and Mac OS X? Windows users may be the majority, but I would hope that the millions of other users are not just second-class citizens. Please take this into consideration. We would like to visit your site, and help support VH1 but given the situation as it stands we are unable to properly do so at this time due to the aforementioned.

Sincerely,
[your name]

Quite an odd thing to see when going out to check the post box. Makes sense, I guess with the cinema right up the road. Still... I was all "what the #%*$?"

Immigration just called to let me know that, as about 11am today, I can work!

Our case agent called and said he wanted to let me know personally and that he was mailing me the letter/document/thingo. It sound like he felt bad he'd taken so long. I assume that's why he called personally. Raise the roof, strike up the band, batten down the hatches, fire the vole cannons, etc. Woohoo!

*runs off to polish up resume*

So... if you need a break from world events...
This is absolutely incredible! Find the alien and trade riffs! I don't know how much stuff is in it.I imagine the scientific answer is "lots"!
http://www.trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/

I found it through some comments at Wils site (re: the new Strong Bad email which turned out to be a game. If you're not a Strongbad (or Homestar Runner) fan, this will not make sense. heh

PS - I should probably mention I'm working. :) Got a programming contract for a gaming network. It's good to have something to work at again. :)

(Random visitors should note that, while I live in Australia, I am still an American citizen.)

I believe in the ideals that caused Roosevelt to utter those words, "united nations", in 1942. I believe in the concerns and desires that and brought the organisation fully into being in 1945. I believe in the things the UN stands for, its reasons for being. Does that make me a 'bad American'?

UPDATE: John Howard just committed Australia to George's War™. And he confirmed that Bush woul be making a speech in a few hours that would cover the 'when is it war' question.

❑
I don't believe in blind political following (sometimes labeled 'patriotism' far too easily and quickly. and mistakenly...) as a healthy human pursuit any more than I believe in it in one's religion. After all, man is the one usually doing the leading. And man is flawed. I believe in questioning, keeping ones eyes and ears open and keeping and eye out for the cliff's edge, not just having faith I won't be lead there. I've seen and heard people in my country deride and mock those who blindly follow and later turn around and state that not following your President's will was un-American, un-patriotic.

I don't believe in this war. I don't trust in George W. Bush's motives (nor do I believe we fully understand what they are) and I do not trust in his intelligence and morals. Here in Australia (I don't know how much actually gets shown 'at home') we've seen some very poor attempts by US officials to plead the case for this war, and we've seen most of that evidence crumble to dust when the light of scrutiny was played upon it. We've seen Bush on TV proclaiming the support of Australian troops after PM Howard has assured his people that no such committment has been made yet (and, yes, this says as much bad about Howard as Bush). History is rife with examples of leaders acting in their own interests to the detriment of their people; what reason do I have to believe the current leaders won't do the same? None. It's up to me to be diligent and questioning. And that's a right all Americans should be allowed to exercise without molestation or derision.

Recently a man received a note from an airport inspector who said that he or she "don't appreciate your anti-American attitude". Why? Because in his bag he had an war protest sign. Does wishing and working for peace make one un-American? A bad American? Well, I believe something different. I believe that not questioning, that following blindly or viewing the world through red, white and blue glasses makes for a bad America.

One thing's for sure, it makes America look bad in the rest of the world.

❑ Other thoughts...

So on the 16th (Aus. time), in my private diary, I said I believed the war would start by Tuesday. Now I'm certain of it. And the World is not happy about it.

• The Phillipines is growing reluctant and Arroyo is 'rethinking plans to hold joint military exercises' . You might not realise it, but America has a bloody past in the Phillipines which saw the slaughter of... you guesed it... Muslims.


• Pakistan is pleading for the US to allow more time and says Iraq is cooperating. Pakistani Muslims demonstrating all around the nation.


• China's new FM, despite having plenty of his own worries, is also pleading for the US to hold off.


• British commons leader Robin Cook resigns in protest, the first but possibly not last cabinet member to take a stand. Gets standing ovation for his commitment to vote against war. Andy Reed and John Randall have already left posts in the government over Blair's stance on Iraq.

So... Wil posted a link re: some guy doing research for a paper on why we blog. He asked his readers to trackback on it and here's mine. Why do I blog....?

Well, I've kept a livejournal for quite some time now, but this is my entirely public blog. I use my blog to leave notes for myself and my friends back in America. I started this blog to sort of document my move to Australia to be with my girlfriend (Australia has more liberal immigration policies. America does not recognise same sex partners in any way).

I like being able to leave little mental trails behind me and it's already helped me get dates sorted out when filling out tons of paperwork for DIMIA.

I blog as a sort of communion with my friends and as a way to help me keep my life 'documented' for the future. I don't see any end in sight. I've been doing it since June of 2001 and I still update frequently.

That's my story. Pretty simple. Blogging just makes sense. It's simple and it provides me with a literary outlet. Nuff siad. :)

"This action today is a small but symbolic effort to show what ignorant small-minded people we can be", said some reactionary redneck. The idea came form some other ignorant rednecks in Beaufort, NC.

OK, it doesn't say that, but it oughta. So are Americans going to start calling the French 'frogs' again? Maybe then it'll be OK to call the Germans 'krauts' again. I swear to god it's like the kid at school who takes his ball and won't let you play cuz you don't let him win... It's no longer about ideals, it's about superiority...

This is bigotted, extremist, narrow-minded egotism at its worst:
French Fries Get New Name in Congres

At least the French govermnet aren't quite as ignorant:
"The French Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment, except to say that french fries actually come from Belgium. "

Props to Wil for the link.

I got the first of the iMonkeys up at the iMonkey shop (other than the Pirate Monkey logo). It's... Agent George F.!


At the iMonkey Shop