Happy birthday, dad.
Birthday
Happy birthday, Robin. The previous year was a really rough one, let’s try and make the coming year a better one for you.
Cheerful
There’s so much about this videoclip that is so inherently funny that I don’t even know where to big. The car? The helmet? The dancing? In the end it brightens my mood considerably. :)
In Which I Ruin Christmas
I have a recurring dream in which I kill my uncle. He’s the youngest of my mother’s brothers and sisters, and by far the least stable, and that’s saying something. He’s quick to anger, volatile, and has settled most of his disputes with his fists. He has that killer mentality that I’ve never been able to grasp, and it’s a surprise he hasn’t killed anyone yet (as far as I know, at least.) It’s as if all of the nastiness in my mother’s family was rolled up into one person, or perhaps it was because after having had eleven children, my grandmother had nothing good left to give him when he came along.
My mother has told me, in no uncertain terms, that he is not to come to her funeral. In my dream he does show up and it is my task to let him know that he is not welcome. Of course he refuses to leave. The last time we spoke I was nothing but a teenager and he thinks he can still treat me like one. He can’t, and predictably he loses his temper. He tries to hit me, but I’ve anticipated the moment since the time I woke up that morning and I duck low and spin around him taking his back. I’m surprised at how powerful he is as we go down. I scramble and get an arm around his throat. I sink in the choke with my other arm and wrap my legs around him to keep him in place. He trashes around so wildly that he breaks most of my face with the back of his head. It doesn’t matter, however, because the more he trashes around the sooner he’ll use up his oxygen. I cut off both his cortical arteries as I squeeze with my one arm and push down on the back of his head with my other. It doesn’t take very long before he passes out. Once he does I don’t let go until they drag me off of him. By that time it’s too late, he’s dead and my mother’s funeral is nothing like she wanted it to be.
I have no idea why I don’t let him go once he’s out.
Primer
Primer [2004]
Director: Shane Carruth
Actor: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan
Writer: Shane Carruth
Abe and Aaron work full time jobs as engineers. In their spare time they work on creating a new superconductor out of Aaron’s garage together with two others. A creative difference drives the group of four apart, and Abe and Aaron focus themselves fully on the superconductor. They build a small prototype, and for the longest time they can’t get it to work. Once they finally do, they notice strange things about the machine that they can’t quite explain yet. When one of the test samples shows signs of a build up of exellerated fungal proteine they struggle to understand what’s happening. If their sample spends some time in the machine, it comes out with enough fungal proteine on it equally five or six years of time passage. Slowly but surely they realise they have accidentally discovered a way to influence time. They both become obsessed by the machine and finally manage to develop the machine to the point where they can travel six hours back in time. The only problem is that they leave behind duplicates of themselves…
This movie is absolutely amazing. Complicated and hard to follow, but amazing. If you like Pi, then go and see this film. It boggles my mind, but in a good way. Also, it won the top award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, and it was made at a budget of $7000, but manages to never look cheap. Wow, wow, wow.