. . . as in a slow death spiral toward the end of the semester. The first day — maybe week — starts off full of energy from students and teacher alike, but beginning from such heights only invites a fall. Such energy and enthusiasm can never be sustained, at least not without use of [...]

No, not fall leaves — that comes in a couple months, and then I rake. Tonight summer leaves. Gone. Kaput. Sayonara. I don’t care anything about equinoxes and Labor Days and any other way to measure the end of summer and beginning of fall. It ends the moment I enter Buttrick 206 tomorrow, Wednesday, August [...]

Second in my recent string of alternative reality films is The Thirteenth Floor. Not as good as Dark City by any means, but not entirely bad either. Mention of it pops up in the literature I’ve been reading (yes, I still read occasionally), so I felt obliged. It’s basically a B+ film that has an [...]

Preparing for my first-year writing seminar (”Self & Cyborg in Japanese Animation”) has led me to a few relatively unknown films (i.e., flopped at box office despite critical acclaim) that have themes relevant to some of what I’m doing in that class, namely issues of reality vs. fantasy/illusion/simulation. Dark City actually bears thematic resemblance to [...]

I don’t know how I missed this piece by Bill Maher the first time around. Thank god for YouTube.

On other issues, Bush said it would take the world time to view the war between Israel and Hezbollah as a loss for the Islamic militant group.
“The first reaction, of course, of Hezbollah and its supporters is, declare victory,” Bush said. “I guess I would have done the same thing if I were them, but [...]

I got another request for permission to use one of my Flickr fotos, this time from the editor of Tripmaster Monkey (”the cheeky news site for the Asia-savvy” “yellow journalism served fresh daily”). They want to include the truly bizarro Taitsu-kun Doritos photo in their “Postcards from the Rim” series. Who knew this chance pic [...]

“Leaving before we complete our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe in freedom,” Bush said Wednesday.
UPDATE: Seems I’m not the only one whose [...]