The more things change, the more we want them to be like they used to be. (Except for when we don't.)

Back in the 1970s I spent a lot of summer nights in local drive-in theaters south of Seattle. Victims of changing demographics, the video tape player, and rising land prices of the 1980s, drive-in movies are rare today. Rarer still is the drive-in that runs a three or four movie slate on weekend nights with a single price per car-load; making itself into a place for youth with nothing else to do to hang out on a hot summer evening.

So, thirty-five plus years ago I was among the thousands of local kids flocking to the Valley or the infamous El Rancho (aka the 'El Rauncho', home of the triple feature 'cannibal night' on Thursdays). We would pack a car with beer, snacks, and teenagers and spend our night talking and laughing and, sometimes, watching the movies.

One of the perennial features of those triple and quadruple feature nights was a chase film that has since become a cult classic: Vanishing Point. Perhaps the victim of a bad distribution deal or some other factor which made it cheap to show, it seemed like Vanishing Point came back to the drive-ins two or three times every summer. In any case I must have seen it a good half dozen times back then, but I never quite figured it out. Vanishing Point is a very strange story, which ends with its beginning or begins with its end, and seems to come as close to making sense in between as you possibly can without actually getting there. The whole thing is imbued with a quirky philosophy, from the dialogue to the very structure of the movie.

The teenage me loved it.

A few years ago I rented the video and it didn't hold up so well. To my older eyes the philosophical messages seemed a bit heavy handed and obvious. Still, that DVD did bring back to mind those nights of beer and marijuana-fueled laughter. It helped me to remember being seventeen and as free as my dodge van could make me.

For some reason I got to thinking about Vanishing Point when I was drifting off to sleep in my hotel room last week. I got to wondering if perhaps someone should re-make the movie as a modern piece. To make some of the same existentialist points. To try and illuminate the modern condition in the way the original tried to illuminate the aftermath of the Summer of Love.

So imagine my surprise when just last night I was scanning channels, looking for stuff to Tivo, and I ran across a 1997 remake of Vanishing Point starring (of all people) Viggo Mortensen. Kismet, no?

No.

I watched the movie tonight and, great ghu, it was awful. The only philosophy in the whole thing was a muddle of bad libertarian thinking and a short burst of completely misinterpreted American Indian spiritualism. And the worst part? They tried to put an actual story into the story, giving the main character an understandable motivation.

OK. That wasn't actually the worst part. The worst part is the way they completely broke the ending, by grafting on an actual ending in place of the unassailable oroborosian logic of the original.

I still think Vanishing Point is a movie that could be remade into something at least as good as the original. But if that wish leads to made-for-TV crap like this, I'd rather do without. Just like I'd rather download a movie than watch it through the smeary windshield of a car full of teenagers and smelling of stale beer.

You see, the more things change...

In response to holyoutlaw posting the Fart in the Duck song, I give you the Indian Nipple Song!


So, dish herpes on the head! Pull slinky and make me fart!

(1) I want days which are about about fifty hours long.

(2) I want to download and watch this, but I have to wait a week.

(3) I want some more people to come with me to the Cinerama the evening of May 7 to see the premiere of the new Star Trek movie. I pre-bought tickets in case it sells out, so let me know! I don't want to be hawking tickets in the line.

(4) I want to ride my motorcycle around the North Cascades loop over a weekend, soon.

(5) I want to lose fifty pounds.

(6) I want to find several acres of remote forest land at a price I can afford.

(7) I want the news media to talk about something else than Swine Flu and Arlen Specter.

(8) I want to get all the paperwork finished for Anita's estate.

(9) I want to finish the lyrics to a bunch of songs I have in my head.

(10) I want to want nothing...

What do you want? Let's make this a meme!

ETA: A link to the Darwin Day site.

Although, actually, I've met Neil Gaimen and he is a sweet guy. I can't believe he would ever do this to a stupid reviewer.

Besides, they deserve to suffer more...

About six months before Anita passed away I set up a new website for myself, using my full name for the domain. (It was jackwilliambell.com, but I'm not linking; more on why later.) The hosting company took care of the domain name and I did a quick and dirty home page intending to revisit it as part of my sekrit projekt, then added a couple of other domains to the account (using a separate registrar) which I actually did things with.

Then Anita passed away and I found myself having a hard time making progress on the sekret projekt. Actually that and, quite frankly, pretty much anything else. Over time I kind of forgot about it. My other registrar warned me about those domain names when it was time to renew, but my hosting company apparently didn't. (Instead they claim they automatically renewed my personal domain for me as part of my paid service.)

Only apparently something else happened. The domain consisting of my name was transferred to one of those outfits which pick up domains and sell them to the highest bidder. I didn't even notice it until a couple of months ago when I started trying to drag myself out of my funk and get caught up on my personal projects. I then contacted my hosting company, who expressed mystification. They had no record of it being transferred and showed it still in my name.

So I tried to figure out how it got transferred. That started a long process of non-discovery where I found out that, apparently, no one keeps track of this stuff. I even contacted ICANN and stuck with it long enough that I managed to talk to a real person over the phone. They couldn't even tell me what company actually did the transfer because a third party Internet privacy firm was acting as a cut-out -- and they had no contact info anywhere!

So I gave up last weekend and filled out the form on the website my domain was now pointing to. I made them an offer of $50, but stated that I wouldn't pay any more because it just wasn't worth it to me. This is the response I got back (I am including the contact info on purpose):

Hello Jack

I am following up on your recent email regarding jackwilliambell.com.

I regret that the offer you presented via our online form was not sufficient to meet the reserve for the domain.
You can make an increased offer or if you would like information on the seller's asking price for the domain, let me know.

If you wish to no longer receive emails in regards to this domain, please reply with "unsubscribe" in the subject line and I will remove you from my follow up list for this domain.

Best Regards,
Jacob
AcquireThisName.com
jacob@acquirethisname.com

This was my response:

Enjoy the domain then. I have no interest in paying some exorbitant amount to get the domain back. Especially considering that there may be an issue with how it was transferred. (Note: I'm not certain about the transfer problem, but that is what my ISP says. If I can ever get the records of the transfer I might know for sure. But that turns out to be extremely difficult.)

Since the domain only applies to me -- no one else could possibly want it -- and it is just going to cost you money every year, I hope you choke on it.

Bitter? Not really. But, even if it turns out there wasn't an issue with the domain transfer, your entire business model is based on a suspect morality. Like following behind people and waiting for them to drop something, then grabbing it quickly and insisting they pay you for it if they want it back. Perhaps not illegal, but certainly a whiff of carrion about it.

In the meantime, if you decide to cut your losses, my $50 offer stands for another month.

Jack

Yeah. Can you smell that smell?

Yeah, I took the stupid test. Weird how I made 'Cool Nerd King' by scoring high on everything except awkwardness...

And all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

But that's because I use a trackball!

I've been snowbound alone here in the house, with only one visit to a nearby food court, for about four days now. But it isn't like I haven't been working. No, indeed. I've been busting ass trying to get a Linux-based media player component working, waking up early and working late. In the process of which I came to realize that I have a love/hate relationship with GNU Make.

Don't worry if you have no idea what I just said. It doesn't matter. And I'm too sleep-deprived to care if I make sense. Sorry.

Time to get me some sleepy time, I think...

Featured on Boing Boing today. These are mine and live in my cube at work. I won them a couple of years ago in a costume contest!








If you zoom-in (keep clicking on the picture) you can see that the packaging graphics use Seattle (including Space Needle) as the city under attack by the giant teddy bear.

Last night I was left to my own devices as my grandson and daughter went to the Seattle Torchlight Parade.

I had been invited to a friend's house for food and talk in the afternoon, but unfortunately wasn't freed up until too late to go. So what to do? Well, there were some summer blockbuster type moves I wanted to see. But which one?

How about both? And how about some capsule reviews...

The X-Files: I want to believe: Basically just a two hour TV episode. Nothing about aliens or grand conspiracies. No further exploration of the (unfinished) grand story arc of the series. There is some bizarre grossness drawn directly out of urban mythology. You do get to see Mulder and Sculley in bed together. The acting was excellent. There is a surprise guest towards the end. Recommended if you are a fan, otherwise you can skip it.

The Dark Knight: This is essentially a do-over movie and, quite honestly, it is a better movie than the original Batman-vs-Joker with Jack Nicholson. Yet somehow I still wasn't that thrilled. Yeah, the Joker steals the movie in this one. Yeah, even the writing was a little better than just about every other Batman movie since they put 'KAPOW!' in sans-serif on the screen. It just seemed, well, like another summer blockbuster. Why bother with a recommendation; I'm sure you have already seen it.

It appears I am extra-curmudgeonly today...

Sometimes it seems like McCain is pandering harder than a speed-crazed pimp with a stable of twenty-dollar hookers. His latest? He feels Michigan's pain...

No-one who has seen downtown Detroit can doubt that Michigan is going through hard times. But I dare any committed Republican to show me the real doctrinal difference between what McCain just said there and what Obama has said recently.

And then there is his flaccid response to Phil Gramm's statement that, economically, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners." After disavowing Gramm, McCain either pandered harder or misinterpreted Gramm, take your pick, by saying "I don't agree with Senator Gramm. I believe that the person here in Michigan that just lost his job isn't suffering from a mental recession."

Uh... John, Phil wasn't talking about the people who just lost their jobs. He was talking about the people with money who run companies and who took the other guy's job away because they believe we are in a recession and are therefore making cuts. The one is certainly dealing with a real recession, but Gramm was saying that the other isn't. (Although maybe he will make a real one by, for example, cutting other people's jobs.)

Oh, and John? Phil has a degree in economics. (Making him as likely to be right as any other economist.) What you got?

Oh! Yeah...

Some people are wondering what happened to the Obama they supported during the primaries? Meanwhile John Scalzi demonstrates why he gets all the link love with a little rant about who gets to call who an elitist.

As always, I'm the guy who hates the leading politicians on both sides. That means I get to say "I told you so." when people complain about Obama acting like a politician. I should point out that this doesn't mean you shouldn't vote for him in the general elections. It just means you have to be a realist. He obviously is and, quite honestly, that raises his credit with me...

Kirk vs. Picard. Are there parallels in religious doctrinal debates?

So there I was at Penguicon for three days. In that space of time I never touched a boob. (Not even my own as far as I can remember.) Nor did I see the infamous buttons. (Not that I knew to look for them.)

Yet that seems to be the only thing the entire blogosphere wants to talk about in relation to Penguicon ever since. I guess boobies always win out over Singing Tesla Coils; no matter which side of the argument you fall on.

Me? I'm all for personal freedom and for people being able to make choices. No means no. Yes means yes. The absence of either is a default no. It doesn't matter whether you are talking about touching a part of someone's body or eating a bite of their chocolate bar. Each person gets to define their own limits.

That includes the toucher as well as the touchee: Should I have known about this 'Open Source Boob Project' I wouldn't have participated. I know what boobs feel like and, while I do enjoy them greatly, it isn't something I want to reduce to groping strangers in a hallway. I'm not wired like that.

So I missed it. And, frankly, I'm glad I missed it. But then I didn't rub Vernor Vinge's bald head either. (Something that apparently was quite the rage there and something which I want to do far less than I want to rub titties.) I managed to miss talking to John Scalzi at every opportunity. I blew off a crapload of programming. I never met 'the XKCD guy'. I didn't slam a single jello shot or quaff a single pirate rum ration.

In other words I missed a lot of other things, many of which interested me more than 'Open Source Boobs'. Life is like that...

You know, just because a GPS says go this way doesn't mean you have to go that way. Especially driving a large bus. Or, in the words of the GPS manufacturer, "Stoplights aren't in our databases, either, but you're still expected to stop for stoplights."

This little incident occurred in Seattle's own Washington Arboretum and, admittedly, you don't need a GPS to screw up that bad. (Anita and I once passed a large truck that had attempted the same trick in the same spot, but was clearly moving somewhat slower than the bus mentioned above.) The part that gets me is the way both the driver and his employers are attempting to blame the GPS for the damage.

Atheist and evolution blogger P.Z. Myers was ejected from a screening of a pro-creationism film because the director didn't want him to attend. The punch-line is delicious!

There are so many things you have to deal with when a spouse passes away. Bank accounts, titles, bills. Anything that is in the spouses name or in both names is affected. Even mundane things like car insurance.

We had 'Esurance'. (Yeah, the one one advertising on TV with a cartoon spy girl about how easy to use their online system is.) This morning I tried to remove Anita from our policy, which is about to renew. Their online system provided a button for this next to Anita's name, but the transaction failed every time I clicked it. So I called their customer dis-service center.

There I was told that I couldn't remove a spouse from the policy without providing a copy of the death certificate. I explained that death certificates cost $20 each and require me to do extra work. Besides, what if Anita just wasn't driving anymore?

Sorry. They have to have the death certificate.

OK. Try this then: We cancel my insurance policy with Esurance and I start a new insurance policy with the guys who advertise on TV with a computer animated gekko. Would that work?

Yes. That works fine. They thank me for calling.

Somehow I suspect I am going to be dealing with a lot of this kind of crap over the next few months...

End result? A case study in the Lancet. Of course...

The pseudoanonymous 'Robert Cringely' is going to the moon! OK, actually, he has announced his entry into the Google Lunar X Prize. Cringely plans to timebox it at 18 months, succeed or fail. It isn't clear if this is going to be a PBS special, but the smart money goes that way.

One hopes this effort will be more successful than his last foray into aviation on a short schedule...