Black Swan

I don't really write these things, cause if you watch it, you watch it, if you don't, you don't.

BUT, Black Swan was an incredible production-side portrayal of an interpretation of Swan Lake with an actual character transformation of the main ingénue, Portman, who struggles with her darker side revealed by her foil, Kunis, in order to succeed as a ballerina playing the role of both swans. Black Swan reveals what it takes for Portman to overcome her oppression of absolute control and naivety as well as the control of her overbearing mother - who projects her own failure onto Portman - executing her character's role as a ballerina perfectly. This is one of the best produced movies I've seen as it seamlessly combines classical ballet and cinema with intense cinematography, pushing you to the edge of your seat.

For the guys who aren't sold, there's some serious girl-on-girl action between Kunis and Portman towards the end. If you're feeling uncouth enough, be a little flippant to break the intensity of the theater by just standing up in the middle of the scene, throw your hands up in the air, and shout "yesssss!"

silver linings

Christmas is around the corner and some of us have been absolute angels and have nothing to fret about. But for the rest of you, yep, it's been a little rough. You're surrounded by raging !@#$%&%$. Maybe you're customer of the month down at your local voodoo shop and you've run out of demented things to do the dolls. Or perhaps you've been making up profanities because there don't exist words harsh enough for those you hate or that @#$%monkey!@#face%$#&clown%@#$sucker who just cut you off the other day in the %$#%iest @#$% traffic. Well, anyway, getting coal might be the least of your worries. But in case it does dampen your holiday spirits, look at the upside.

1. Coal is great for grilling.

2. Coal generates 54% of electricity.

3. Coal gives sight to snowmen.

4. Burning coal will speed up global warming, turning the vastest and coldest of lands into little tropical islands. You like little tropical islands, don't you?

5. Coal is an allotrope of carbon. With enough pressure and heat, you'll have diamonds.

6. Coal is a commodity and it's trading at about $71.15 per short ton. The naughtier you are the more coal you get, the more coal you get the richer you are. And by simplified transitive property, the naughtier you are, the richer you'll be!

7. If you're in Utah, heck, you get a stocking full of the official state rock. Well, if you're in Utah, that should be punishment enough. kidding...

8. Silver linings of clouds are a result of fly ash from burning coal. No coal no ash, no ash no silver linings. Sorry, I made that up.

9. If you're a Jew, you got nothing to worry about.

So buck up, it's ok to be a little naughty. Merry Hanukkah!

freethinkers

paula cole, i'll tell ya where the heck all the cowboys have gone. but first, tell me where all the freethinkers have gone?

we're such boxed up folk. and the farther we run from it, we just run into another box labeled hipsters. this past week, i was at the corner of jefferson and mcclintock with about a dozen and a half kids. college kids. the light was green going my way and there was no protected left, but the crosswalk said stop. not a car in sight. i crossed. i looked over my shoulder to see if anyone would follow suit. they stared back in disbelief. freshmen.

did we all go to college to become conformists?

inception: the subconscious ninja of marketing

to date, i have pumped roughly 3,320 gallons of 76 gas. roughly put in 58,240 nonacademic searches into google. so what kind of subconscious ninja would it take to break me away from brand loyalty and habit?

blizzcon transcendentalism

there are few things that are as transcendental as music. everyone can enjoy a good beat. it's a universal language without words, infinitely more popular and understood than esperanto by any measure. it invokes nationalism, sorrow, joy, and when you're in the club, it brings out the moves. there is music that will complement any type of mood. you can listen to erik satie while enjoying a gallery full of degas or bump up some metallica when you hit the dunes on that atv. alternatively, you could be doing absolutely nothing but watching stallone blast the burmese militia away to the first blood theme or watch leo and kate make hanky panky to 'my heart will go on.'

nothing to boost your aromatherapy like some soothing music. nothing to max out your emo like dashboard confessionals. sit for a minute and think of the mood you're in and what you want to listen to. change up your tuneskies and see how your mood changes. put on your favorite songs and think of what memories they bring up.

ready, set,

my goals for this year were discovering and honing my passions and, in spirit of the recession, downsizing - really trimming the fat. i've done a great job of the former, and a half decent job of the latter, but it seems my work load has increased. projects seem to multiply quicker than mrsa on a petri dish so it's high time to implement the brilliant up or out of the cravath system. 6 monthsish per venture to reach the next stage or out. my weakness is persistence, the last man standing. so here's me drawing hampers to throw the towel in.

dear stephen hawking

for every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction. what if, in the context of ideas, there is an equal and opposite idea? further, what if there is a conservation of brilliance. throw this on a bell curve. subsequently, for every pickin brilliant idea you come up with, someone is fishing with dynamite - chucking them in the air upwind - or worse, chasing good ole nessy with nukes. with this, i petition that you produce more mediocre work to avoid plaguing the world with inversely equivalently inane ideas. exhibit a. thank you.

- village idiot

boogie scapegoat

the more i think about it as i lay in bed rather sleepless, tony hayward almost got away with the bp incident. it wasn't his fault...per se.

we haven't sat around blaming the toyota maelstrom on watanabe or leaded toys on eckert, but we certainly glared at brown for hurricane katrina and glowered at davis, eventually leading to the second recall in history. of course, ford's nasser got shat on as well for sitting around willing tires to explode, right?

anyway, this makes me wonder why some get the boot, and others get lavish compensation in light of some seriously questionable offenses (ahem, mozilo). bp certainly wasn't looking to kick hayward out, but due to delayed and inadequate response, people were becoming furious and demanding accountability. while it's easy to hate a large corporation (i.e. walmart), you just can't derive any joy from hating an inanimate object. so of course the hate started piling onto hayward. and then the bloke decided to go sailing. i'm not saying he didn't deserve a day off, but couldn't he have absconded elsewhere? well, i've gotta say that was the straw that broke the camel's back. while bp didn't intend to give hayward the boot, the opportunity rapidly hit a haitus with the last act. so in saving face for the corporation, they kicked out the face of the company, who had drawn all the anger. the kleenex was covered in boogies, so why not just toss it out?

gomboc mind cuss

fate is a rather curious thing. it's a multidimensional collision of serendipity and murphy's law possibly extending beyond the space-time continuum. the improbable alignment of events in such a way that results in a rather statistically improbable outcome. all in all, it's quite the mind cuss for me. i'd consider myself a scientist - loosely, if you will - whether physical, social, or other. so to believe in the concept of fate is a bit of a leap of faith, something i don't prefer to rely on. yet we could say i was fated to believe in fate. roll your eyes, here it goes.

but really, there must be some formula that quantifies the whole shebang, or we can promote or relegate it to nature's design. pi? gomboc? fibonacci? nautilus? fractals? tessellations?

so every once in a while, ask yourself how you got where you are. how events have played out given that you chose this path in the last fork you came across. why you came across the people you came across. people enter your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime. there is reason even in that season.

next time you hit that snooze button, think of how the rest of your day will change and the ripple effect it will have on person x displaced y degrees from you in 50 years. maybe you narrowly dodge a ridiculously gnarly accident on the freeway, bump into someone you spend the rest of your life with, or come across someone who can use your help. a certain commercial bores you at a particular moment and you change the channel and see something you later end up discussing with someone. the fortune cookie you chose from the dish - the fact that you're at the restaurant at that day at that time and asked for the check at that particular moment.

of course we can toy with the concepts of karma, optimism, pessimism, and the like - dragging them into a perfect tessellation of an equation - in the sense that we have become beings with endless predilections that tend us towards some events more than others, resulting in predictable outcomes. what comes around goes around?

dear jamba juice

I AM A HUGE FAN of your culture, mission, and products. i maniacally promote your brand and forward coupons and events widely. but brand loyalty can be like yesterday's meal - great at the time, but sh*t tomorrow. i am writing to implore that you never again use the paper cups for smoothies. here's my story:

i crave your smoothies on most normal days, and a hedonist, i indulge myself more often than not. on sleepless nights, i have counted the hours till opening, and on long days, i have broken many a statute and limit to place the last order of the day. for the most part, i hem and haw between two or three drinks, but you could give me anything and i'd love it. regardless, its always an original 24 ounce, whose breadth and depth i know so well, the rounded plastic lid usually with an iota of smoothie oozing out around the straw hole. i firmly grasp the styrofoam cup, sturdy and insulating. i know its dirty secret - that it leaves behind tiny flecks of your logo inside from the last cup in the stack, but no matter. i yank off the remainder of the straw's cover and take in that cool, fruity goodness. i close my eyes as the calming satiety rolls over me.

BUT WAIT!

this time, it was all wrong. i heard my name and reached for my drink. COLD. WET. something was terribly awry, like an m&m that melts in your hand. my jamba juice, not yet a minute or two into this world, was sweating all over itself. the damage was done, it had pissed all over my hands. i instantly realized that my drink was in a PAPER CUP! sacre bleu! and things only got worse. there were hard fragments of something i'm still not sure what, but i spat them out. and if this unfamiliar object condensating all over my hands with a rock boost wasn't bad enough, the sonofab*tch slipped right out of my hands and took a whopping dump all over the front mat of the third street promenade's gap. i actually meant to exit uneventfully, jaywalk right back to your store, and ask for my drink to be replaced sans rocks. but i fumbled making michael vick look better than jerry rice, and here's the kicker. you made me feel like an a**hole and i apologized profusely to gap's staff for your blunder.

your smoothies are dense and, i'm quite certain, would outweight 24 ounces of most drinks. throw a dense smoothie mix into a paper cup and it only creates a puddle of water. but start drinking that sucker and guess what, there's nothing to support the empty part of the cup, and you're stuck with a bottom heavy baby. so my hand was sufficiently wrapped two-thirds up on the cup when the opening folded in on itself as the slippery bastard simultaneously dropped out from my grasp. were i jim carrey in the truman show, we could cue back the incident and i could tell you which came first. but because i haven't subscribed to instant replay, you're just going to have to take my word for it that both events were mutually inclusive. subsequently, i find your change to paper cups inanely reckless and blatantly reprehensible. so to summarize, smoothie + paper cup --> slippery + heavy --> diarrhea on the floor.

albeit a socially responsible person, i don't care if you're moving away from styrofoam for environmental concern. no more paper cups.

all in all, the damage has been done. however, i am willing to retract half of my outburst for a modest sum of $11,800,275 for my troubles, but will gladly settle for a free drink.

i'll take two please

PEOPLE WANT TO BE white. As comedian Louis CK facetiously strews about, "Here's how great it is to be white. I can get in a time machine and go to any time and it would be f*cking awesome when i get there. That is exclusively a white privilege."

It's true, white folks have been the oppressor in a lot of different places in a lot of different times, including the present. They have been the superior power and we have this idea that it's f*cking great to be white.

Forget it, I don't have any more energy to be metaphysical today.

google still rules my life

i was catching up on my google reader (5am is perfect), and i noticed apple seemed to dominate the business management feed. then i saw this:

Apple is the world's largest technology company

then i saw this:

Shares in Apple rose as much as 2.8 per cent on the Nasdaq index yesterday, making them worth ten times more than they were ten years ago.

so i immediately opened my ticker feeds. $250.94 a share, down 1.96% from yesterday. market cap indeed at $228.34 billion with microsoft in fact trailing behind at $221.64B. all true, but the investment aspect was buzzing in my head more. ten fold return over ten years. but with late 08/early 09's market volatility, there was more. with a mid january low of $82.33 a share, the market had a fire sale. so compared to a decade ago, it was barely worth three times more.

forget about outperform now. with enough puts, calls, shorts, you could have made enough to retire. daytrade.

give me healthcare or give me death

patrick henry got his liberty alright, but he died of stomach cancer 23 years later. there is no such thing as right to healthcare. of course, by developing a complex government, bells, whistles, legislature complete, we can create these so called rights and define them, morality in tow. but of course, there's the concept of basic human rights. sure, we're all born free and equal, for a millisecond or two. and then life comes into focus and everything becomes relative. but all that aside, how can we say that healthcare is a right? it's a privilege. it's a privilege to be born or even living in a developed country. it's a privilege to be in an area with healthcare or some semblance of it. it's a privilege that darwinism doesn't predispose some of us to cancer, diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and the works. it's a privilege to have potable water, devoid of typhoid, hep a, cholera, and schisto. it's a privilege to have all of our basic human needs met in excess that we begin to think that access to healthcare is a right. it's a bloody privilege to be able to eat healthy, to have a job that pays enough and gives you enough hours in a day to make healthy eating a priority, to even know what health is. yes, these are all privileges.

as a wealthy nation where (fabricate large number) percent of the population suffers from issues where people around the world would consider it a privilege to have to worry about such things, sure, we are obligated to provide support abroad. but locally, the government is also responsible. but until every government pays for every medical student to attend school and pays for every hospital in every nook and butt crack of the world for every patient, healthcare can not be a right. if your country does not have a government, please disregard, crawl into a hole, and cross your fingers.

lock, paper, scissors

we like our freedom even if we don't exercise it. we like our democracy even if we don't go to the polls. there's just comfort in knowing there are options and that we don't live in a totalitarian state. nevertheless, we program people how to think.

mental associations are a curious thing. take deadbolts for instance - the name alone sounds fierce enough to stop a burglar. but then again, the imprinted mental image is so effective that even the dumb burglars feel hampered.

these are the bare facts. windows are made of glass that shatter with mild force and you can easily kick in most doors. so then we put in alarm systems. but even if your alarm system dialed the feds, a crook could probably make it down the block - monet in hand - before anyone showed up.

so honestly, there's nothing more than a stack of papers we call the Constitution et al., a fearsome deadbolt, and a bunch of glass keeping thieves out of your home. and you thought you were thinking what you wanted to think.

nra forever? sweet dreams.

failure

IN A TRAGIC WAY, society has ingrained us to think failure as a default in the case that a plan doesn't proceed quite as anticipated. well, i guess that's not so much the tragedy as the associations we circumscribe around it. it's high time that we shift this paradigm encased in disappointment, misery, and so on - which subsequently causes us to stand in the way of ourselves.

clearly, i won't let my children succumb to these roles and the ensuing dismay. they will learn that failure is not all the horror it's made out to be. they will learn to be flexible and have contingencies in the event that something does not go as planned. and with each bungle, they will become harder, better, faster, stronger. hit it kanye. of course, when they really do eff up, i'll just have to beat them senseless to relay the disappointment and culpability. kidding.

buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

opine sounds quite like whine. some people walk quite a fine line here.

i'm right and you know it

i've had the privilege to be awkward and to have grown up very differently from most. subsequently, i see a lot of things in a different light. of course introspection plays its part and i am bent on changing every paradigm.

this week, i think it should be about shifting from the stalwart "i'm right" position over to the "based on my experiences and assumptions, this is the way i see things." let's face it, trying to be right has led to many an altercation, divorce, disowning, beating, homicide, and the list goes on. aside from the fact that we're too full of sh*t to ever admit we're wrong, we should all accede to this compromise. with that, i rest my case against 31.6% of misinformed voters - yeah, you republicans. ;)

58 degrees and homeless

about half an hour ago, i headed down the alvarado exit off the 101. my usual homeless guy wasn't there. turf war? shift change? anyway, a woman was standing in his place. i was reading her bio condensed onto cardboard, wondering if they all buy sharpies to make their signs or if they all share the same sharpie. regardless, she looked like she was in her twenties so i was a bit taken aback. i gave her my change and then crickets. my default proclivity seems to straddle the liminality of idiot savant or autistic. we stood in silence. she finally broke it with, "most people usually ask a question, but since you don't have any, i don't know what to say." i love people, but sometimes i'm awkward...

white powder

as many know, i'm not one to just sit around on my duff if there's ever a problem. subsequently, i've written some pretty epic letters to corporate offices. i recently rolled into jiffy lube for an oil change, and when i hopped back in, i noticed white glove powder everywhere. i happily dug up this letter from april 07:

I am thoroughly dissatisfied with the quality of service and lack of concern for customer and employee health at Jiffy Lube. Subsequent to each visit I have made, there have been oil prints inside my car including on the driver's side door, the steering wheel, the door handles, and the dash. I have noticed that this is a result of the mechanic driving the car forward with the same bare hands that have changed the oil. Thus, this not only exposes myself to motor oil, but the mechanic as well. Used motor oil can present a threat to health through skin contact, skin absorption, inhalation, or ingestion, all of which can occur as a result. Thus, I am disappointed with the lack of concern for occupational safety in addition to customer exposure. Research suggests that occupational exposure to motor oil increases the risk for arthritis (Sverdrup et al., 2005). By implementing the use of disposable gloves, employee exposure would be limited and disposal following oil change would reduce transferrence of oil into the interior of vehicles. I am not sure if this is already a policy and there is a lack of implementation and enforcement or simply if it has not come to the attention of your occupational health personnel. Regardless, I appreciate your time and consideration in this matter.


Sverdrup, B. et al. Association between occupational exposure to mineral oil and rheumatoid arthritis: results from the Swedish EIRA case-control study. Arthritis Research & Therapy 2005, 7: R1296-R1303.

don't be a bystander. create the change you wanna see. :)