this is water, this is water, this is water...

february 3rd

Change is good.

same procedure as every year

also happy new year miss sophie and happy new year imaginary constructs -mumblelard

(image via Dinner for One)

happy old year and also thank you enjoy

(image via Rudolph’s Shiny New Year)

progress

As it wakens from its sleep mode, the ice cream factory’s industrial strength scanmegacopyprinter supplements its more mundane progress bar with an animation of the space shuttle launching, rendezvousing with the international space station, and opening its bay door to allow a culminating spacewalk.  Thank you scanmegacopyprinter software developers for this inspirational micro-cinematic interlude.

a shadow is falling over creation, something vast is stirring in the dark…

…time is bleeding, shapes of things once lost are moving through the veil, the darkness heralds only one thing, the end of time itself.

(sharing the dreaming with the Elder of the Ood via Doctor Who:The End of Time*)

*I didn’t even have to ask.

aurora borealis

1. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
2. Rudolph’s Shiny New Year
3. The Year without Santa Claus (Heat Miser! but we also love Heatmiser!)
4. Frosty the Snowman
5. How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
6. The Nightmare Before Christmas
7. Twas the Night Before Christmas
8. A Christmas Story (game day)
9. Home Alone

And this years roster of possible new recruits (suggestions welcomed)

1. Scrooge
2. Scrooged
3. Die Hard
4. Miracle on 34th Street (‘47 not ‘94)

(image via the Rankin-Bass classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)

i miss vandalism, do you miss vandalism?

Violence against property can be so cathartic. Busting up some beer bottles with a .22 is alright but it isn’t the same as throwing a brick through a big-ass window. We just smashed some pumpkins off the back deck into the ravine below but that just whetted my appetite. Sometimes I miss the self involved little punk that got to break shit without thinking about the consequences to others.

(image via The Office)

your revolution is over, mr. lebowski. condolences. the bums lost

One of the authors of the Declaration of Independence (the original, not the compromised second draft.)

(slipstream Lebowski via The Whiskey Bravo)

…il est temps pour toi d’en vivr une nouvelle!

Friday night was movie night with the girls. It was their turn to pick this week, and they chose the recent Pixar release, Up. My parents took Finn and Fallie to see it in the theater, but Floyd and I had not seen it yet.

I had not paid much attention to the marketing and had little in the way of expectations for the movie. The girls enjoyed re-watching it, and the movie has many charming qualities, but I cannot say I enjoyed it.  I was not prepared to watch a movie about dead wives and abandoned dreams, and I am not ever prepared to watch movies about miscarriages, no matter how true or how beautifully presented.

I did not take any notes after their baby died. I don’t think the girls had many questions anyway.

The talking dogs were funny.

…and so it was until the day a false sun exploded over trinity

The clock is ticking, brothers and sisters, counting down to Armageddon. The worm reveals himself in many guises across this once great land; from the intellectual elite cruelly indoctrinating our children with the savage blasphemy of Darwin, to the craven Hollywood pagans, corrupting them in the darkness of the local bijou, from the false prophets cowering behind our nation’s pulpits to the vile parasites in our banks and boardrooms and the godless politicians, growing fat on the misery of their constituents. The signs of the end times are all around us, etched in blood and fire by the left hand of god. You have but to open your eyes, brothers and sisters. The truth is that the Devil is here. The Anti-Christ, the Child of Lies, the Son of Darkness walks among us cloaked in the flesh of a man. Does the Lord not weep at this degradation? Does He not tremble with righteous fury? And shall he not seek retribution? I open my eyes and I see a black sky that tears apart and screams with a voice that is thunder, ‘Rise up, rise up brothers and sisters and take your place at my side. For you shall be my scythe and your face shall shine like a thousand suns and the streets shall be sanctified by the steaming black blood of the heretics.’ And together brothers and sisters, together we shall build a shining temple, a kingdom that will last for thousands and thousands of years.

This is the moment that Brother Justin Crowe finally comprehends the evil nature of both his gifts and his destiny. He has just discovered that his foster father’s greatest sin was saving Justin’s life. The black orbs that are his eyes become, from this point on, the indication that he is fully possessed by this evil nature.

Carnivàle with its Depression era dustbowl setting was canceled after only two seasons. The writers originally intended for it to span six seasons and culminate with the Trinity nuclear test at the Alamogordo. Floyd and I have enjoyed re-watching the series over the past week, and I find myself wondering how successful it would be if it were being aired now during our Great Recession. Comparisons between these two financial events are common, but re-watching the series in this context has forced me to contemplate the consequences if their similarities are extended into the future.

(image via Carnivàle)

those floating mexican skeletons were right, my life is over

On an unrelated note, for the past week, Floyd and I have been using the Batman voice to narrate the mundane details of our domestic existence. When I accidentally used the Batman voice to address another neighborhood parent at the school bus stop early one morning, Floyd was literally DOL and almost wound up ROSL.

(image via Community, updated watermark via mumblelard)

an audience with the duke (featuring Harry Dean Stanton! as “Brain”)

For a recent movie night with the girls, we watched the 1981 slipstream cult classic, Escape from New York, written, scored, and directed by John Carpenter.

My notes on this movie night are sparser than usual, because my notebook was commandeered for a large portion of the show, but some of the topics of discussion included:

• Snake’s eyepatch.  Did he really lose his eye or is he trying to preserve his night vision for close combat below decks? The skull girls are big fans of pirate lore. (Further research has revealed that Snake did lose use of his eye in a formative incident.)
• Smoking is bad for your lungs!
• Why only 22 hours? There are two MacGuffins in Escape from New York. The MacGuffin that motivates Snake to complete his mission in the time allotted consists of microscopic capsules that will blow open his carotid arteries, killing him, if he doesn’t return in time. The girls had no problem understanding this one. The MacGuffin that motivates the government to retrieve the president within the 22 hours is a cassette tape he is carrying that will strengthen their position at some diplomatic conference, but which will lose its value after the conference is over. What is on the tape? Why can’t the conference be delayed? (Because. Just because. The girls and I have discussed, and they understand, that the role of the MacGuffin is more important than its actual details, but we agree that the cassette tape conference deadline in Escape from New York is frustratingly vague.)
• It was six hours on the life clock but only five minutes in real-time! (Go Fallie!)
• Molotov Cocktails.  Cabbie, played by Ernest “Double MacGuffin” Borgnine, uses Molotov Cocktails to ward off hordes of attacking night crazies.  This spawned a dialogue between Finn and Fallie about the exploration of Tuckaleechee Caverns near Townsend, Tennessee. When relating the early exploration of the caverns by two local boys, the tour guides their described the gas filled bottles that the boys used to light their way and explained that their configuration was exactly the same as a type of bomb called a “Molotov Cocktail”. (I wonder how long ad hoc spelunking and ad hoc explosives will be linked in their minds.)

Re-watching this for the first time in at least ten years, its relatively tame depiction of post-apocalyptic New York surprised me when compared to my memory of the decaying penal colony, but I still enjoyed the experience.

This movie has come up several times in the weeks since we watched it together.  I think that Finn and Fallie are going to remember Escape from New York for a long time.

tumbler on tumblr (previously)

(image via Gone in 60 Seconds)

the escape

(image via Escape from New York)