Ok, a little morbid.

"There was no rage in him ... It was just like he was a robot or something." An attack in Canada.

From Bike Nashbar:

You may have noticed we experienced
an outage on our site. We want to
apologize for the inconvenience.
Our lead hamster went missing and
we had to recruit a newbie. He stumbled
a bit but figured out the wheel quite
quickly, is up to speed and doing great!

AVP2: Requiem

It begins with an Alien baby incubating inside a nameless Predator. There is some kind of gene exchange (known in our species as "boning"). Out comes the Alien-Predator, or Predalien, hybrid.

We must resist reading too much into the semantic redundancy of this love-child between an Alien that is also a predator and a Predator that is also an alien, lest our brains work themselves into an infinite logical loop and a seizure.

Is this normal behavior for Aliens? I do vaguely remember a Sigourney-Alien hybrid in one of the later Alien movies, but was that the same deal? Wasn't Sigourney herself a hybrid in that, or something? No, she was artificially inseminated by an Alien? Your best Alien-loving friend or even a cursory glance at Wiki can answer this question, but ... do we care?

This movie certainly does not; it barely acknowledges any prior movie in either venerable franchise except the first AVP movie, which in comparison seemed much more respectful to its ancestors.

Alien and Predator movies are supposed to be about a single man or woman's experience with the respective creature. Sigourney started with a supporting cast, but ultimately it was her experience against the beast that remained. Arnold went it alone (with only hormonal assistance) against the dreadlocked Predator.

In this movie, an entire cast of hapless townspeople get skinned, dissolved, pierced, beheaded, shredded and sliced. An entire helicopter full of people also survive until the end. This ain't the airlift of Saigon (which, incidentally, was unfortunately named "Operation Frequent Wind"), people. We are looking for the chosen one. Instead we are given a waste of time and a flaccid ending that only huge Alien fans will find insightful. I bemoan this lost cinematic opportunity, and you should, too.

Do take the time to explore the nooks and crannies of this site.

The cockroach quote comes from a site maintained by an interesting guy with what appears to be a tidy little online business.

A gem that I came across on the web today:

"By the way, I stopped going to my grandparents house in the woods when I was 13. I woke up to those HUGE cockroaches EATING MY ARM WHERE I HAD APPARENTLY DROOLED. I still have a scar more than 20 years later."

Rambo: a review

"There isn't one of us that doesn't want to be someplace else," John Rambo says, holding a drawn arrow at the eyes of the second meanest guy in the movie. Any fourth sequel will tickle the ironic bone: does Rambo speak for the audience?

But then we remember that we have chosen to watch this latest installment in the chronicles of one man's experience with post-traumatic stress disorder. We are drawn like moths to the light of Stallone. We pine for the violence and moral clarity promised by a sextagenarian. We are man-children of the seventies and eighties, bearing fond memories of various (but not all) Rambos and Rockys.

"This is what we do, who we are," Rambo insists. "Live for nothing, or die for something. Your call." Fortunately, the commitment asked of the audience is much less severe: about eighty minutes.

The requisite moral map places the Burmese government at the evil end, and they distinguish themselves with acts of amazing brutality. The good side are the oppressed and mostly unarmed Karen people. Lest we mistake armament for evil, two other groups offer an alternative axis: the whining and unarmed Christian missionaries, and the badass mercenaries who attempt their rescue. If on this map north is evil and south is good, then west is pacifist and east is an ammo dump full of balls. Your call.

In this well-defined world, Rambo and his friends find it difficult to express themselves with any precision, as demonstrated in the following exchange with a female missionary who may or may not be stalking this ripped sixty-year-old:

Missionary: "If everyone thought like you, nothing would ever change."

Rambo: "Nothing does change."

Missionary: "Of course it does. Nothing stays the same."

Rambo: "Live your life, because you got a good one."

Missionary: "It's what I'm trying to do."

Rambo: "No, what you're trying to do is change what is."

Missionary: "And what is?"

A pause.

Rambo: "Go home."

But we are primarily interested in what Rambo leaves unsaid. He communicates most effectively behind a fifty-caliber machine gun, reducing an entire company of bad guys to chunks of meat. Given sufficient ammunition, Rambo may rid the Burmese countryside of government-sanctioned rape and murder. Given sufficient steroids, Rambo may continue his bulging heroics well into his seventies. Given enough Rambos, our adolescent thirst for blood and gore may one day be fully quenched.

Until then: speak not, Rambo. Shoot, and shoot often.

Um, dude

This may have some impact on my financial well-being.

Seoul, 1962

My mom and most of her siblings

Flashback: Maui

Things to do in Hana, Part Deux

Flashback: Ko Tao

The train pulled into Chumphon just before five in the morning, an hour later than scheduled. I waited in a flourescent-lit bus depot with a number of other foreigners and their big backpacks. An hour later a "digital bus" took us to the ferry, which then motored for three hours across a calm sea. Representatives of diving outfits courted the foreigners on board. I was not bothered by anyone other than a Brit named Guy; the Thais seem to believe that the Asian foreigners speak no English and, in any case, have had their tour all booked in advance.

On the ride out to Chalok Ban Kao beach I decided I would get my advanced open water certification while on Ko Tao. I was tired, dirty and hungry. It was the path of least resistance.

I spent the rest of the day getting clean and walking around a bit. By the end of the day I felt miserable and a little lonely. Then I fell asleep and had my first full night's sleep since arriving in Thailand. Once I had slept for thirteen hours I felt superb.

Back in Bangkok, I had seen a toad on the sidewalk and taken it as a sign of the latitude. On Ko Tao, while attempting a shower in the morning, I was greeted by a spider the size of my hand. When I tried to kill it, the beast demonstrated supernatural speed and went away into a corner in the shower. Its size was such that its movements could be heard. I then saw a foot-long gecko next to the spider.

The next day a second spider of similar stature turned up in another corner. Later that afternoon the two joined above the sink in apparent copulation. This was too much to bear. I switched rooms.

And now, as I type this, there are ants coming out of my keyboard with each keystroke. If this is biodiversity, then let the earth be damned.

Flashback: MBK Center

I spent my last day in Bangkok confined to a gigantic shopping mall called MBK Center.

I had earlier left my backpack at the train station and then visited Chinatown, only to find that it was simply too hot and that it was, well, a Chinatown. MBK Center promised air conditioning and an authentic Bangkok experience, because modern Bangkokers who can afford it spend their time in big malls.

Unless the people here figure out how to air-condition the whole of Bangkok, I'm afraid this mall thing will continue to thrive. I killed four hours shopping for a pair of cheap sunglasses. I managed one for 99 baht, but by then the six-floor mall had completely defeated this hardened semi-native of New Jersey. I then left the mall and stepped into the dense steam outside. I lost liters of sweat in minutes. It was raining, but I swear the raindrops were just forming in place and sticking to my body. I got the hell back to the train station and waited for my ride out of the city.

Recent developments in this world

A Wall Street firm managed to orchestrate among its counterparties a sudden and complete loss of faith in its financial health, and found itself dead in the water overnight. Capitalism revealed itself (again) to be a religion supported mostly by faith. I propose we begin working on an economy based on hope, or love.

Alex's father recently passed away from pancreatic cancer. In all he had only two weeks to ready himself. Four weeks ago there was the news, reluctantly received through his son Alex, who had practically dragged him to the hospital. Then there was a rapid decline, followed by a short but labored passing that Alex found difficult to witness.

May Egon rest in peace.

Live Free, Die Hard: A Synopsis

Bruce Willis steps into a high-but-not-high-enough-budget film fathered by a deadbeat Apple commercial and reared by the Department of Homeland Security before being sent away to boring school in New Hampshire. Death and destruction follow in Detective McLane's footsteps. A Ryan Seacrest-lookalike cyberterrorist employs a trailer full of dorks who hack into the central systems of major national and global institutions, much to the dismay of the dorks manning the stadium-sized control rooms. South Asians are hard to spot among the actors playing the dorks, and this reminds the audience that they are watching fiction. Everything else in the movie is convincingly realistic. Macintosh overcomes his innate pussiness, but PC is nowhere to be found. It turns out that McLane's daughter was once spared a horrible death by a vivid premonition of a roller coaster accident, but you can't cheat death, you see; it will take you one way or another to the Final Destination 4.

What? Oh yes. I did not last until the end.

February 27

I apologize to the moon, whose effect on this world is subtle, and cerebral.

February 25

Dear Diary,
I did not leave my apartment today, choosing instead to observe the world from the safety of a wooden platform. And, oh my, what a world it was. The forty-yard dash and the Wonderlic. Clinton urging us for honor and shame. A blur of daily personal responsibility. Sunlight peeking over the southern roofline of W. 90th and into my kitchen. Visitors from the world across the river. A mild awakening in the repopulated heart. In this right state of mind it is possible to believe that there is a pattern to a string of events both local and otherwise. It follows then that the pattern must mean something, not only to the world at large but to me. This should be reason for joy, but all I can muster is a nod and a pot of coffee. The joy may come yet; maybe tomorrow, maybe next year.

Some people tend to measure a sentence or a stretch of discourse against the yardstick of depression, but what I am trying to communicate has nothing to do with that. Dear reader (all three of you) -- understand that I am constantly trying to talk around things that cannot be explained, because things that can be explained by inferior minds are always at peril of becoming untrue, and I am in the business of truth. I urge you to try it as well -- there is real fulfillment, not emptiness, in discarding the desire to understand and to explain.

The rarely seen

I climbed out of the 86th B/C station around ten and was walking over to Columbus when I saw that everyone else was standing still and looking up at something high over my shoulder. When I turned around I saw the shadow of our own planet cast upon the moon.

Did I expect vampires? Werewolves, unicorns? Yes, yes and don't be silly.

I nearly took a picture but I didn't. "Look everyone, see this brown dot in the sky."

In the end I kept walking. It might be more interesting from the other end to witness what would be an earth-induced solar eclipse.

The Repopulated Heart

"Using SDS, a detergent that will be intimately familiar to anyone who has carried out a western blot, the scientists were able to decellularize the old rat hearts, leaving just the extracellular matrices, but no endothelial cells, cardiomyocytes, or other cell types one would expect to find in a normal heart.

Once this technique of decellularization was perfected, the next step was to repopulate the organ with new cells, obtained from newborn rat hearts. When the repopulated ECM was continuously perfused with a culture medium supplying nutrients and oxygen, the repopulated hearts showed spontaneous contractions on day four, and by day eight were able to pump."

Ars Technica

Your chopsticks hover over my California rolls

Your chopsticks hover over my California rolls
that lie configured against the cold blue porcelain;
The table beneath reveals a rough, gnarled grain.

Your elbow enables your shoulder, which anchors
the turn of your neck, which directs your gaze to the window,
outside which stand a twisted tree, a street lamp. Go, go.