Archive for December, 2009

Sunday Night Ramblings, Part II

Monday, December 14th, 2009

I accidently clicked the “Add New” and now I’m expected to be intelligent, witty, insightful, interesting and all those other Slashdot moderations.

I’ve been slightly discouraged reading (and answering) all the attempts at spam this Blog receives. There seems to be two approaches, one is the obvious google-bombing style; stuff your comment post with as many links and keywords as you can. It doesn’t really matter if they are not that all related, it’s all good for the grand Google.

The other, more disheartening one, the spam contains a comment so generalized, careful not to say anything at else, but yet, trying to appear sincere, that it might appear real to some. I have extracted some fun answering those, as you might have noticed. I was thinking maybe I’d get famous and popular by writing those angry, yet funny replies to obvious spammage. I suspect this will be a type of activity that will get old soon and paying any amount attention to it loans some credibility to the whole activity.

I think spamming reveales one usually wisely hidden aspect of the existence of humanity, namely that we continue to exist solely for the actions and dedication of those who decide to pull _more_ than their own weight. “It’s not my business”, “somebody else can take care of it, there were plenty of other people”, “I couldn’t do anything, I would have only messed everything up”, “I don’t have time for it”, “I have other problems”. If it weren’t for those people, the people who make preceding type of comments would wear us down. Spamming is the unfortunate side-effect of the fact that we have those people.

Now, how’s that for some rambling?

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Sunday Night Ramblings, Part I

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

I just finished re-watching Soylent Green (1973) a rather nice piece of 70’s dystopian sci-fi. The story doesn’t quite follow the Harry Harrison novel (Maker Room! Make Room! (1966)) but it has that distinct 70’s quality about it, from the time when we were last to scared for about over-crowding, destruction of the biosphere, climate change etc. It has a scene were two of the main characters eat a supper made out of Real beef and some warn-out vegetables, stolen from a scene of crime. And its the best meal they’ve had in a long time, or ever.

Funnily enough, the most modern thing in the film, an early arcade game Space War (1971) is the most dated thing in the film. I think one can draw a certain rule from here: If a technology is new, don’t portray it in any work claiming to be set in the future, you’ll just get it’s whole impact wrong and it ends up looking cheesy and dated.

The film was Edward G. Robinsons last, he died 9 days after his last scene. His last scene was a nice piece of 70’s cynical view of the future. Robinsons character goes to “home”, a place to have a nice, dignified death. You lie on a bed, you have 20 minutes to listen your favourite music and watch lovely landscapes. The main character, played by Charlton Heston, have to talk to him before he dies. According to IMDB, Heston was the only one knowing that Robinson was dieing of cancer, so his tears in the scene were real.

Another piece of nice 70’s cynicism of the future, were young women called furniture. Yes, they were part of an apartments facilities and Heston’s character casually has sex with one of them, in the same way he steals soap, booze and food from the apartment.

Ohh, 70’s, I miss you so…

Posted in Current Matters | 2 Comments »