An image of a ruined mill, deep within a gorge in Sorrento, Italy. This shot took my breath away. Andrija the filmmaker wants to find an excuse to write a movie around this.

I remember this song from Faraway, So Close! but I'm having trouble finding the soundtrack. I think that is the only place the song appears.

... He just needs to escape from the aliens.

That was a British review of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." But I think Roger Ebert's review sums up everything I've heard about the film so far. Click here for the full review.

""Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination."

And this is from a man who really enjoyed Michael Bay's early films. Read his review of The Rock and you'll see how Bay's descent into BAYSPLOSIONS with BOOBS makes him miss the halcyon days of, oh, ten years ago.

It'll be the biggest film of the summer. Everyone will say it rocks. I'll give you the one thing most guys want to see from the film right here:

From porphyre, some interesting articles on the art of cyberwarfare designed to keep the communications lines open with Tehran.

Want a nice clue as to how I sound right now? Visit Youtube and check out a few of Tom Waits' songs. This one in particular is a good example.

I have to remain silent today. It's the only chance I have to clear all this out.

I'm tempted to blame Nathan Explosion for my current condition after he spent that one episode talking about his summer cold. Seriously, how the Hell does this happen?

-> Saturday: All systems green. I get a ton of cleaning done, and scrub the bathroom to the point it looks like a bathroom not shared between two guys. Great day overall, feel very accomplished.

-> Sunday: Go to a birthday cookout for the friend of a friend, who turns out to be one of my contacts at work. Good time is had by all, even though my throat gets kinda scratchy thanks to the breeze kicking charcoal dust at me. But, we have a lovely game of baseball with a cheap plastic ball which was immediately deformed into a dodecahedron.

On the way home, trapped in traffic hell, still have a scratchy throat. But doesn't feel that bad. It's not until later that night that the throat and the voice begin to go away. by the time I go to bed, I'm freezing to death. I have a fever, yet I'm so cold I burrow under the covers.

-> Monday morning: No sleep is had. I go from boiling to freezing. I try and keep hydrated but to no avail. When I try and talk, nothing comes out but a Tom Waits-esque growl. Force to call in to work because two of my cold rules are broken (no sleep & a fever). Find out - my boss has also called in sick! Not fun.

So, it's Gatoraid, sleep, Dayquil, Nyquil and sleep all day today. I have to get fit. I have a guy to train at work on case creation, Knowlegis and other items.

It arrived in the email today. My second letter back from an agent after my third attempt at finding representation. It was another very nice, professional response - the account manager in me was quite pleased - but the content brought me no joy. Another polite "Thank you, but no thank you."

Both letters thus far have commented on a lack of enthusiasm for the concept. Not enough to create a pattern by the Moscow Rules, but it gets close. I'll have to see how the third reply goes. The next agent on the list is rather old-school and prefers printed query letters sent via postal mail.

Were it not horribly unprofessional I'd be tempted to break out my grandfather's Royal and start writing out the letter there. Maybe I'll just settle for some nice paper...

And persistence. Lots of persistence:

From blackflame2180:

This came up in a conversation with my lady. She noted I used the Moscow Rules as guidelines for every day life. Especially the Auric Goldfinger rule: "Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times is an enemy action."

"You love tradecraft and investigative stuff. Why didn't you become a spy?" Which reminded me of a very young Andrija, who drew a picture of himself in his forth or fifth grade class of himself, in black, sneaking outside a window with a bug and a knife. Andrija the spy. I'd thought about being a spy, just like I'd thought about being a planetary astronomer (early influence of Carl Sagan in my life), a journalist (early influence of another Carl in my life), a filmmaker, a spy and a novelist.

Why didn't I go those routes? Mostly voices, internal and external, saying I couldn't do it. I'd make a terrible spy, I didn't have the drive or energy for filmmaking or journalism, or my math skills were not up to astronomy. These days, I'm not entirely sure if it's true - I could have done all those things, if they'd clicked with me in the right ways, or I had enough drive.

So, in the alternate universes out there there is:

- Andrija Popovic, overworked field operative for the Central Intelligence Agency in Eastern Europe, trying to convince his station chief to authorize bugging the home of a Serbian nationalist in Belgrade will net folks the location of Radko Miladic.

- Andrija Popovic, journalist, trying to get column inches on a story about a Virginia state Senator blocking transportation funding to Northern VA unless VDOT agrees to use a wife's cousin's company for subcontracting work.

- Andrija Popovic, filmmaker, trying to wrangle filming time on the streets of Washington DC for a cyberpunk political thriller while directing commercials for SATURN technologies with a transhumanist bent.

- Andrija Popovic, planetary astronomer, working late nights trying to figure out the cause of unexpected weather pattern readings from a probe recently landed on Titan and refusing to accept "Ancient Cylon Baseship" as an appropriate response.

And yet, all those guys are here, in me, as seeds. They're still part of me, not the predominant part. And I can still contact them when needed as another Andrija, one I'm hoping to grow. Andrija the author...

Actor David Carradine found dead in Bangkock.

Who needs IKEA when you have xenomorphic furniture?

Frankly, I thought it would be, well, more like this. The basic premise of the musical and the characters were explained to me in a car ride, years back, with all the narrative succinctness of a squirrel on speed. And the basic rundown of the main characters - especially the filmmaker, whom I was supposed to automatically like - grated on me.

Oh, look, privileged kids with decent parents pretending to 'suffer for their art' and getting addicted to smack and infected with HIV in the process. There was no context, just a jumble of "Oh i love this" and "Oh, this is so amazing" and "Oh, they won't compromise their beliefs by getting bullshit jobs."

Frankly, I admire artists who work hard to make a living at that art, or are willing to take a job waiting tables so, at night, they can keep their dreams alive. From all the descriptions, it sounded like these guys weren't even trying to do anything but starve and remain 'pure.'

Seeing the show in context helped immensely. I also think seeing it with the two original Broadway leads helped quite a bit as well. The main characters were not beatified for their actions and 'purity' but shown as quite flawed, hiding in their work to avoid confronting this thing called the real world, and the people there.

My favorite characters in the show were the ones who the ones who had jobs (or, for Tom, had a job as long as he could stand dealing with the people there). In some ways, I think that's a very pure form of artistic rebellion: Fuck you, I'm going to follow my heart and not starve at it, thank you!

But everyone got their moments and were shown as pretty rounded characters, flaws and glories, and I rather liked it. Of course, now I'm hoping Passing Strange makes it to DC at some point. I've wanted to see this since I heard a few pieces of the songs and the storyline. Not sure if others would like it, but I love the songs there. And a good amount of blues-heavy guitar in anything from Broadway is always appreciated.

One ironic note: outside of Rent there were several buskers and people from an art commune playing and selling magazines, books and CD's. During the break, I went outside with my ladyfriend and saw one approach a well dressed couple, asking if they were interested in purchasing a book.

My notes were thus: "A well dressed man recoils in horror as a real Bohemian tries to make a living, selling art outside of Rent." And he did - his eyes widened in shock, as if the book was a knife or pistol, and he took a step back.

*smile* People are interesting...

From greygirlbeast some amazing videos from Saturn electronics. One on the evolution of technology:



And one which needs to be seen to be explained:



Transhumanism in commercial society.

The bride danced, lace wings on the edge of her dress in the wind like Stevie Nicks. She was the happiest person I've ever seen.

The City of Heroes MMO game released a neat little tool: A mission editor, allowing people to design their own missions and rewards.

To the surprise of the designers, and shock of no one else, people immediately began to exploit the crap out of it.

I'm interested in seeing how far people went. Was there a 'help the old lady across the street, get max XP' quest?

Well, I have new photos from Free Comic Day 2009. Just click on the link and follow it to my Flickr site.

Seeing DC in film is an odd thing for me. I look to see where they've actually taken the time to shoot here, and where they've cut corners. When they do take the time to film, they enjoy mixing up the geography a bit.

State of Play is a good example. The most glaring thing is the use of the Roslyn metro station to represent a station closer to Adams Morgan. A more subtle change was taking a friend's waterfront apartment complex and moving it into Crystal City.

But it did put a personal thrill in the film. "Dude, Russell Crow's being stalked in my friend's apartment complex. I've walked through there before!"

Once again, I will have to post my usual warning about being terribly sick. I've been told this latest and most severe instance of plague is due to me:

(a) Not eating well - not having good protein in the morning, not controlling my junk intake and not keeping hydrated.

(b) Not maintaining my vitamins - My doctor told me I had a severe vitamin D loss when he did my normal blood tests for cholesterol.

(c) Sticking with an "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" attitude - I'm a bit of a workaholic in some ways. I will drag my ass into work even if I feel terrible. It takes major sleep loss for me not to go into work.

So, to combat this I actually took today off and slept. I'll be crashing early this entire week, making sure I stay hydrated and watching what I eat. I will continue to do this until I cease, well...



Update: I hate this body. I hate that I'm fine one moment, but the moment I'm at work, I'm wracked with coughs. I try to keep my nose clear, but it still drips down into my lungs. I hate this body.