My Top-Ten Films of 2011

I'll try to keep this brief. My co-woker Jeff introduced me to QT's Top-10 list last year. I loved it. This year, his official list was met with a bit more controversy (visit here if you're interested.) Anyway, it got me wondering what my Top-10 list would look like, and after much consideration, I decided to create it. If you want more explanation on my list.

1) "The Artist"
2) "Drive", "Midnight in Paris"
3) "Rango"
4) "Horrible Bosses"
5) "Crazy Stupid Love"
6) "Attack The Block"
7) "The Descendants"
8) "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"
9) "The Adventures of TinTin"


-- Honorable Mentions --
"Moneyball," "Young Adult," "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," "Kung Fu Panda 2"

Time Travel: Impossible?

I'll keep this brief. I was thinking about time-travel the other day. Don't ask me why. Anyway, I was thinking about it, and I think I disproved it. OK, so in my opinion, it is impossible. A very basic observation about the internet proves this: people upload videos, posts, blogs, news stories, etc... all day long, all year long, right? So, if time travel were possible, wouldn't someone in the future have thought to upload pics or something of what the future looks like? Wouldn't we be able to see future posts and news stories? If, for example, you went to Google and searched for "Box Office sales 2023," wouldn't we be able to access that in this time period if it was uploaded to the internet in 2023? Thoughts?

Tribute To "1984"

This book literally changed my many of my views on life and government. This was my first ever blog post (I posted it on myspace years ago) and, naturally, I thought I'd repost it for my (two) readers. :) Thanks, Jen and Gwen:

"So, I read the book "1984" quite recently, which was one of the many goals I had this summer that I accomplished. The book is famous for its prophet-like portrait of the future of the world in 1984 (the book was written in 1949, I think) and it's true-- that aspect of the book was absolutely awesome. But what I think is far more fascinating is the love story between Julia and Winston (those who have read the book will know what/who I'm talking about), and the emotions the author succesfully reaches into your soul and grabs out of you. What this blog really is, is a tribute, so to speak, to one of the saddest and greatest romance tales I have ever read. Keep in mind, this will be a very long post (so if you don't have the time, don't read this) as I will be putting long quotes from the book to show how and where the author makes you fall in love with the characters he has created. "

" It was the middle of the morning, and Winston had left his cubicle to go to the lavatory. A solitary figure was coming towards him. It was the girl with the dark hair. They were perhaps four meters apart when the girl had stumbled and fell almost flat-on her face. A sharp cry of pain was wrung out of her. Winston stopped short. A curious emotion stirred in [his] heart. In front of him was en enemy who was trying to kill him; in front of him also was a human creature, in pain.... Already he had instinctively started forward to help her. She held out her free hand to him, and he helped her up. In the two or three seconds while he was helping her up, the girl had slipped something into his hand, There was no question that she had done it intentionally. It was something small and flat. It was a scrap of paper folded into a square. On it was written in a large unformed handwriting: I love you. For the rest of the morning it was difficult to work."

" Her youth and prettiness had frightened him-- he did not know the reason. 'What is your name?' said Winston. 'Julia. I know yours. It's Winston-- Winston Smith.' 'How did you find that out?' 'I expect I'm better at finding things out than you are, dear. Tell me, what did you think of me before that day I gave you the note?' (He did not feel any temptation to tell lies to her. It was even a sort of love offering to start off by telling the worst.) ' I hated the sight of you,' he said. 'I wanted to rape you and then murder you afterwords. Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a cobblestone. If you really want to know, I imagined you were a member of the Thought Police.' The girl laughed delightedly, evidently taking this as a tribune to the excellence of her disguise."

" Presently they fell asleep for a little while. When Winston woke... he did not stir, because Julia was sleeping with her head in the crook of his arm. A light stain of rouge still brought out the beauty of her cheekbone. He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experince to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to the sounds outside. Surely, there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary."

" Both of them knew-- in a way, it was never out of their minds-- that what was happening now could not last long. There were times when there impending death seemed as palpable as the bad they lay on, and they would cling together with a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five minutes of striking. Often they gave themselves up to daydreams of escape. Their luck would hold out indefinitely, and they would carry on their intrigue, just like this, for the remainder of their natural lives. Or they would commit suicide together. Or they would disappear.... It was all nonsense, as they both knew. In reality there was no escape. 'We are the dead,' Winston said. "

" 'Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the best thing for us to do would be to simply to walk out of here before it's too late, and never see each other again?' 'Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several times. But I'm not going to do it, all the same.' 'We've been lucky,' he said, 'but it can't last much longer. We may be together for another six months-- a year-- there's no knowing. At the end we're cartain to be apart. do you realize how utterly alone we shall be? When once they get hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that either of us can do for the other. If I confess, they'll shoot you and if I refuse to confess, they'll shoot you just the same. The one thing that matters is that we shouldn't betray one another....' 'If you mean confessing,' she said, ' we shall do that, right enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you.' 'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-- that would be the real betrayal.' She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said finally. 'It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything-- anything-- but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you.' "

" But-- he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment-- one body that he could thrust between himself and the (his worst fear I can't spoil for you. sorry.) ________. And he was shouting frantically, over and over: ' Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her! Tear her face off, strip her to the bones! Not me! Not me! Julia!'

" 'They can't get inside you.' she had said. But they could get inside you. Something was killed in your breast. He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. Actually it was by chance they had met. He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak, [but] he saw she was about to speak. 'I betrayed you.' she said baldly. 'I betrayed you.' he said. 'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something-- something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.' 'All you care about is yourself,' he echoed. 'And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer.' 'No,' he said, 'you don't feel the same.' "

Sticks and Stones: A Tribute to the Book "Lullaby" by Chuck Palahniuk

Hello, Reader,

Whenever I read a book that really speaks to me, I gather up some of the simple yet memorable quotes from it, and turn it into a kind of mini-book-tribute. I do this this to, not only praise the work, but also to give those who have never read an idea of how the book is written, to show what idea(s) spoke to me, and to give the simplest version of that written idea in a smaller, semi-creative way.  This is the second tribute I've done, but its the most recent. Hope you enjoy.

"Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can hurt like hell.

     Imagine immortality, where even a marriage of fifty years would feel like a one-night stand. Imagine seeing trends and fashions blur past you. Imagine changing religions, homes, diets, careers, until none of them have any real value. Imagine traveling the world until you’re bored with every square inch. Imagine your emotions, your loves and hates and rivalries and victories, played out again and again until life is nothing more than a melodramatic soap opera. Until you regard the birth and death of other people with no more emotion than the wilted, cut flowers you throw away.

I think we’re immortal already.

      Anymore, no one’s mind is their own. You can’t concentrate. You can’t think. There’s always some noise worming in. Singers shouting. Dead people laughing. Actors crying. All these little doses of emotion.

      Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed. He’s making sure your imagination withers. Until it’s as useful as your appendix. He’s making sure your attention is always filled.

     And this being [filled], it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.

Here’s Big Brother, singing and dancing, force-feeding you so your mind never gets hungry enough to think.

     We’re living in a teetering tower of babble. A shaky reality of words. A DNA soup for disaster. The natural world destroyed, we’re left with a cluttered world of language. Big Brother is singing and dancing, and we’re just left to watch. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but our role is just to be a good audience. To just pay attention and wait for the next disaster.

Power, money, food, sex, love. Can we ever get enough, or will getting some make us crave even more?

What I’m talking about is free will. Do we have it, or does God dictate and script everything we do and say and want? Do we have free will, or do the mass media and our culture control us, our desires and actions, from the moment we’re born? Do I have it? I don’t know the difference between what I want and what I’m trained to want.

Here’s Big Brother singing and dancing so I don’t start thinking too much for my own good.

     No one wants to admit we’re addicted to [entertainment]. That’s just not possible. No one’s addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it: more channels, a larger screen, more volume. We can’t bear to be without it, but no, nobody’s addicted. We could turn it off anytime we wanted.

[And] these people who need their television or stereo or radio playing all the time, these people so scared of silence: these are my neighbors. These sound-oholics; These quiet-ophobics.

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but here we go again.”