They were doing a pop culture piece on NPR this evening on radiation as a bogeyman throughout the history of film. Presumably this was prompted by the perceived nuclear danger in Japan which has been dwarfed in terms of injuries and death by the earthquake and tsunami which precipitated it. I missed the beginning, so I may have missed my guess. The giant nuclear ants from Them! got a mention, a film I watched with my dad when I was little. The piece ended with On the Beach, a post-nuclear war disaster film starring Gregory Peck with a depressing ending based on the book by the same name by British-Australian author Nevil Shute. I feel like by now I should have seen this film, if not read the book, but I haven't. Anyway, they ended the piece with a mournful rendition of Waltzing Matilda that sounded like it must have come from the film, which annoyed me because I don't think our national song belongs in that film. I am going to add it to my netflix queue to confirm.

Thinking about Babel, which as mentioned in the previous post I saw yesterday. I’m not giving anything away by saying that the story is divided into three largely unrelated stories. The connection between the stories is tenuous, but they drive each other. The central characters for two of the stories have been nominated for best supporting actress: Adriana Barraza for her character Amelia in Mexico, and Rinko Kikuchi for her character Chieko in Japan. I wonder how unusual it is for a picture to receive two nominations in the same category like that. Anyway, the nominations, and the award if it follows, would be well deserved for either. Kikuchi (26) delivers a particularly believable performance of a deaf teenager.

It makes me wonder though, why “supporting” and not “starring”? It seems mainly because they aren’t Brad Pitt or Cate Blanchet, who received top billing. Their performances were good, but not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination. It seems to me the Mexican and Japanese stories are just as important, and much more interesting than the Moroccan (American centric) story. Making the American and Australian actors the stars and the supporting actress nominations for the non-native English speakers reinforces the belligerent Ugly Americanism of Pitt’s character, who sees the world revolving around himself.

Some recent found objects...

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Hand sofas/chairs which remind me of Arrested Development

Old Nintendo Famicom Console.

That last one if for Tyler. It was the Japanese version of the Nintendo 8-bit NES that rescued the video game industry back from the jaws of death. I saw it in a store window, though it is only for decoration, and not for sale.

I’ve been reading about the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii on both Slashdot and in The Economist, and it is interesting the different ways in which they cover the video game industry. They quoted a Nintendo exec as recognizing that the video game market, in Japan at least, is shrinking and that Japan, unlike Sony, is trying to engage non hard core gamers, rather that trying to fight to regain supremacy from Sony or Micro$oft of a shrinking market. Why I think this is historically interesting, is because Nintendo flourished in a market considered dead in the early 1980s, largely due to the way the marketed the NES. That and the fact that the hard core gamers have turned on Sony recently means that Nintendo has an opportunity.

Went to a “Japanese” restaurant with some co-workers. If I were in the states and with my friends or family I would probably call it a “Sushi” place, but that didn’t seem to be the term used here^[1]. This place had a conveyor belt and you just picked up the stuff that you wanted as it went by. This concept has always seemed cool in theory, but also a little bit sketchy in terms of health, but the fish turned out to be quite fresh, and I would probably go back again.

The good news is that my co-workers are actually pretty cool. I keep telling people that there are no Jeffs where I work now (my adventures with jeff were chronicled here, here and here.

Jeff

There are many things that I miss about working at The Company, but Jeff is not one of them. I do miss my collaborations with Adil, Tiffany, Ed and Ed a lot.

I was excited yesterday because my iPod finally came back to me. I wasn’t sure they would actually do it, but they replaced it, so this is actually my third iPod (I checked and it has a different serial number), my second replacement by the same warranty, so that extended warranty was actually worth it for once. Would I get another iPod? I’m not sure, I mean I love having the thing and it is super simple to use, but as far as reliability it doesn’t score well. My friend e and her husband both have iPods and both are giving them trouble at the moment (one sounds like it has died, the other is having the same sort of problems that mine did before it finally died). Theresa’s died recently too. In my own experience their ability to fix things appear to operating at only about 66%, and you only get a good result if you call up and yell at them. I was actually super courteous both times because Theresa used to work in a call centre and people who work in places like that don’t deserve to have abuse hurled in their general direction, you do (however) have to be insistent when block your path with red tape. On the other hand when I actually have a working iPod it is hard to imagine life without it! I think I would actually get another iPod, but I’d get the AppleCare Extortion Plan up front this time, because although there was more hassles than there should have been, they did fix things in the end. That does count for a lot.

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1. I think traditionally Sushi refers to the rice or something, but Americans at least usually use it to refer to the whole thing

SR-71 Blackbird

We were talking a about going down to Moab, but Don has gotten sicker, so we went to the air museum instead. (more...)

I knew a girl once who called herself Ronin Slayer. According to Dictionary.com:

Ronin : In Japan, under the feudal system, a samurai who had renounced his clan or who had been discharged or ostracized and had become a wanderer without a lord an outcast; an outlaw.

It suited her. Sometimes I wonder what she is up to. Whatever it is, I wish her well.