CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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POLARITY 242

Monday, May 14, 2007

this entry brought to you by belle and sebastian, "song for sunshine"


Le Moustache "What would you think if I shaved my moustache?" asks Marc of his wife, in this French art-house film. She'd never seen him without a moustache before, and he'd wondered how she would like it if he shaved it. After doing so, however, she fails to notice it. When she denies that he ever had one and all of his friends from before he shaved his mustache don't realize what he's done, Marc falls into the grip of a horrible existential quandary-- is everyone else crazy, or is he crazy? I thought this sounded like an awesome plot to a movie. What it ended up being was one of those weird arty films that is so deeply poetic that, unless you really dig movies that every single image ends up meaning something else, you're not sure what you think of it when you're done-- especially since the movie lacks humor or puzzle-like symolism, ala a David Lynch film. Ultimately I enjoyed it, because the existentialism is portrayed in a somewhat whimsical way, with extremely subdued, almost pedestrian cinematography; it seems more curious than depressing. Still, what starts off as a sublime premise ends up meandering into boredom toward the end before finally reaching any sort of payoff, which is unfortunate; it feels unneccesarily stretched out, even though it's only 86 minutes long. I liked it in the end, but Le Moustache is more of an oddity than the kind of movies I wanted to compare it to..

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time A skeptics' guide to debunking holocaust deniers, psychics, alien abductions, and people who believe Intelligent Design should be taught in school, and goes a good length at attempting to explain why otherwise logical people have a lapse in logic when it comes to certain subjects. This has been a subject that's fascinated me from my late teens until now, and writer Michael Shermer is as thorough and specific given the relative shortness of the book overall (it's only 384 pages, and in audiobook format took just over four hours to listen to). What I really enjoyed about the book is that while it assumes its reader is an intelligent person and doesn't believe the things he's debunking, Shermer is surprisingly unpretentious and, having come from a background of previously believing a few weird things himself (he once had an alien abduction experience and used to believe in weird, faddy new age supplements to help improve his performance at cross-country biking-- both of which he debunks in the book), he is pleasantly without cynicism. It's not that he doesn't think that there couldn't be aliens, or that there couldn't be a God-- it's just that the evidence used to prove the existence of both are false or at least unsubstantiated because they don't stand up to the scientific method. I found Why People Believe Weird Things, despite the scholarly pedigree, to be surprisingly fluid and easy to read, and overall an extremely refreshing, thought-provoking experience.

BestofYoutube.com A few weeks after I got into podcasts, I thought to myself, you know, it would be wonderful if there was some kind of YouTube podcast. I don't normally have enough idle time to go through the selected videos every day, but if it came to my Ipod automatically that would work perfectly. Then I discovered the Best of Youtube podcast which is very handy. Every day on the website they have several "best" videos-- I don't know what the selection process is, but I haven't been let down once. It's great for potty time at work.

The Playmate Database I've mentioned before that the women in Playboy don't do anything for me nowadays. They're all extremely vanilla, and are often so airbrushed any sort of individuality has been completely erased. Michelle said that she didn't think they were ever really meant to be sexually arousing, and I said that she was wrong. I'd seen some older Playboys from the late 60's through the 70s, and the women were hot. With a little bit of searching I found a rather comprehensive database with every Playmate from the beginning through 1989. As of this writing their 1990s section is down for some reason, and they haven't gotten any from the 2000's uploaded at all (if you're curious, I found another site with just the centerfolds throughout the years, but they don't go past 1990's as well... but for the 90s, you can at least make a comparison). If you're not old enough to remember a time when the Playmates used to actually be interesting, get a good look at the overwhelmingly gorgeous Victoria Valentino, who was Playmate for September 1963.

The promo video for Queens of the Stone Ages' next album, Era Vulgaris Besides also having just about the coolest cover art of all time, QOTSA's nest album has a video starring the two broken lightbulbs from the cover that absolutely frigging sweet. It's hilarious, gives you a great sneak at the new single "Sick Sick Sick", and it has spawned a catch phrase amongst my friends, family and I: "Yeah, you know what you did." I've probably seen this like, eight times.


THE BAD

The idiots who accuse Alec Baldwin of being a bad father over the voicemail he left I feel bad for Alec Baldwin. Here he is, in the middle of a very public custody battle, stressed, and when he attempts to be a good father and straighten out his daughter by leaving a "Wait 'til I get home" voicemail, somebody went and made this family matter public and people are judging him for it. I've heard the entire voice mail, and any parent that claims they wouldn't say the exact same things when their 12-year-old has gone overboard is lying. People are saying he's threatening his daughter-- which is what every single parent does every single day. Wait until your father gets home! Wait until we get home, Missy, you're going to be in big trouble! He's essentially saying the same thing, and yet people are acting like he's being some sort of fire-breathing demon. Elsewhere, people point out his usage of the term "greedy little pig", which I admit is being extremely harsh-- but it's not the worst thing in the world a parent could say to a child for one thing, especially since the word "pig" was in relation to the greediness, not in relation to her appearance. Secondly, we all know that Baldwin is in the middle of a stressful time for his family, and any parent under a lot of stress is going to say a few things he or she didn't mean to say. Besides that, she's 12, not 4, and anyone pretending that 12 year olds are innocent are completely forgetting what actual 12 year olds are like. I, as an adult, have told a 12 year old I was in charge of she was dressing like a slut. Was that too much? Or was that exactly the kind of language I knew would make her stop and listen to what I was saying? All that I hear when I hear this message is an angry father who is sick of putting up with something his bratty 12 year old has been doing repeatedly despite his protests, and, due to stress, went slightly too far, like we all do from time to time. The fact that he called her up later and apologized for blowing up at her before the voicemail was leaked on the 'net, in my mind, completely makes up for his slight overreaction. To anyone who has accused Baldwin of being anything other than a Dad rightfully peeved at his daughter: Grow the fuck up.

Ministry When I was in high school, I had a lot of friends who were into Ministry, and right as I was getting into Nine Inch Nails, well, lets face it, everyone was into Nine Inch Nails, but there were a few who would sit there and claim that all NIN was doing was ripping off Ministry, who was, therefore, better. I'd heard a few tracks here and there and was never very much impressed (and I remember specifically watching a Ministry video back in the day and thinking, wow, Rob Zombie is totally ripping this guy off, what with the top hat, the long ratty beard, the sunglasses, and the exact same sound), but I'd never heard a full album. A few days ago I went and downloaded Filth Pig, and was beyond annoyed with how bad it was. Yeah, I get it. It's dark. And aggressive. And all that other metal bullshit. But every song is in the exact same tempo with the same effected guitars and the exact same filter over all the vocals rendering them undecipherable. What's more, Nine Inch Nails is nothing like them. Sure, there's a passing similarity; they both use textures over their guitars, and, uh, they both, uh. Have drums. But then, Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin sound kinda similar too, in the way that they both play in rock bands. Yet this whole "NIN is a rip-off of Ministry" argument is something I've heard every now and again from fans of industrial, a genre that hasn't been relevent in 15 years. I have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, and it's obvious Al Jourgenson feels the same way: Reznor and Jourgenson have worked on several projects together, so there was no bad blood. Industrial Music fans suck.

Paris Hilton's jail sentence I normally don't gloat about someone's jail sentence unless they did something really really bad. But the thing about Paris Hilton's jail sentence is that she won't learn her lesson-- she's going to label herself a victim, and what's worse is there's some weird Valley Girl chicks out there who actually care about Hilton (wherever the fuck they are-- I certainly don't know any) who will wear a "Free Paris" shirt unironically. I mean, can you imagine getting a 45 day jail sentence and have your lawyer threaten to appeal? Can you imagine being that spoiled and that pointlessly wealthy?

Rachel Ray Who in the hell is Rachel Ray, and what makes her so damned special she has the right to suddenly appear everywhere with nobody bothering to explain who she is? I don't even see any tabloid covers that say "Rachel Ray, the Hit ______, And Her Secret Story!", they just say "RACHEL RAY" as if I already knew who she is and could give a shit.

The price of CDs I used to be the first to say that CDs weren't very expensive. 11 to 12 bucks has always been the price I pay for CDs, because I don't shop in stupid places with inflated prices. I've never set foot in a Best Buy or a Sam Goody's with the intent on buying music, because 18 dollars is too fucking much. And this has always been the case. And I always felt like 12 bucks was a sweet spot because you listen to a CD many more times than you would, for example, see one movie at a theater. But nowadays with CD sales at the lowest in the history of the format, one of the answers should be very obvious: some places still sell CDs for around 20 bucks, and this needs to stop. CDs should never go higher than 10 dollars in this current marketplace, and if they averaged around 7 bucks, you'd have a much higher percentage of people actually out there and buying CDs. Sure, there's always going to be people who refuse to pay for music for whatever reason, but most people I know still go out and want a hard copy of things they care about, especially if they've had a harddrive crash.
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on this day last year on this day last year, it was a mother's day entry. the reason i didn't do one this year is, well, because i said everything i could say last year. anyway, this entry is about all the stupid shit that boys do that mothers have to put up with.
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with love from CRS @ 2:30 AM 

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