Gary Sinise’s 1992 remake of the John Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men was long and boring, but strangely compeling. Sinise plays George, a migrant worker in Californa during the Great Depression. George is joined at the hip to a giant named Lennie Smalls, played by John Malkovich.

As the movie opens, we see Lennie and George fleeing from a posse, George has done some very bad thing, and they had to get away, hiding among the reeds in a creek to throw off the bloodhounds. From there, the story revolves around them as they seek work at a Barley farm, doing hard manual labor as they desperately try to stay out of trouble.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit and thought it was …

Chuck Fouts - Jun 5, 2007

I enjoyed the book quite a bit and thought it was an excellent window into the life of two generations ago. I hadn’t heard of the movie but your “long and boring” along with the “but one worth watching” has me confused. Is this a good movie for the replication of the original story, for the mind set of watching the vagaries of life, or for the performance of the actors themselves. To be honest Malkovich has worn me thin over the years but I could watch Cool Hand Luke every year or so without getting too tired of it.

From my pal Chris Cool (yes, that is his real name…). His band EYESUPONUS is playing Icthus this weekend

Thanks to all your support and all your votes, we will be playing the
Ichthus Festival in Wilmore, KY this weekend!

The festival is Thursday 14th - Saturday 16th. There are three stages: the
main stage, the Deep End stage, and the Edge stage.

We are scheduled to play Saturday at 3:40 pm on The Edge stage. If you are
at the festival, please come and hang out with us for our 25-minute set. We
wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you all, and EYESUPONUS truly appreciates
the love and support we have gotten throughout this entire process. I hope
to see as many of you there as possible.

Just downloaded the public Windows beta of Safari from here, and I must say I’m impressed…

It’s really fast, and it automatically imported my Firefox bookmarks.

Guess this is apple’s plan, eat Windows from the inside out :-)

My daughter is now 14 lbs, 10 oz, and 25 inches long, and 4 months old.

Back to your regularly scheduled ranting.

You forgot “and cute as a button”.

Jeff Roberts - Jun 1, 2007

You forgot “and cute as a button”.

Our church Wednesday night group is reading Making Room for Life.

The book extols simple living, but not in the systematic, hair-shirted way others have. Instead, it takes some biblical principles as axioms and wraps modern problems around them. The main axiom is the “Hebrew Day”, which you could also rename the “Agrarian Day”. That is, a daily schedule defined, as its name implies, by daylight and darkness–daylight is for productive work, darkness is for rest and individual/communal recuperation.

I’d have to take the “radical” option - move to a …

Jeff Roberts - Jun 2, 2007

I’d have to take the “radical” option - move to a condo where the only chores are indoor ones, and where my neighbors are right in my face, since we’re all going to be so neighborly anyway.

Interesting Consumer Price Index chart, from 1978 to now

Basically, some items are going up much faster than inflation (Cost of college being #1) and some are flat to declining (cost of cars, televisions).

I’ve got this theory that people are buying more expensive cars because of zero down, 0% interest loans that encourage them to get overextended. This leads to debt-slavery, meaning you become accustomed to always having a car payment, even though that (probably) isn’t necessary.

Yes, it had lots of plot holes, but it was light-hearted, escapist fun. I liked it because it didn’t take itself too seriously, electing to scream at the audience “Sure, WHY NOT?!”

The special effects are very well done, and the acting’s decent, if tounge-in-cheek.

We liked it, too.

“Do they look happy?!” Jeff Roberts - Jun 3, 2007

We liked it, too.

“Do they look happy?!”
“Naw, they look saaad.”

qsort([]) -> []; qsort([Pivot|T]) -> qsort([X || X <- T, X < Pivot]) ++ [Pivot] ++ qsort([X || X <- T, X >= Pivot]).

(taken from ‘Programming Erlang’ by the pragmatic programmers).

That’s just…beautiful. Quicksort in 4 lines. Nothing extraneous, just the pure recursive algorithm.

Erlang is bending my mind, but that’s okay…it needs a little kick every so often.

As we’re all a little down about Joey leaving for the summer, I suggested we go test-driving. Whitney’s been jonesing for minivans since Maria arrived, and I thought a test-drive of two of these behemoths would get it out of her system, or redirect her at something smaller like a Mazda5.

Nope.

Her current object d’amour:

That’s a Sienna LE.

That was the best rated mini-van when we purchased…

Chuck - Jun 0, 2007

That was the best rated mini-van when we purchased one back in 2003. We ended up buying a Honda Odyssey since was also highly rated but cheaper by a few thousand at the time. Love the Honda except for the fact that there is more road noise than I find acceptable. Friends of mine that didn’t like the stigma associated with a mini-van ended up buying the Honda Pilot.

Link

Teenagers have a wonderful term for this self-deception: “We suck less.” Being less bad is not good. Teens recognize, rightfully, that being better off than terrible is still fairly terrible.

Revelation of the morning:

“Piano Man” by Billy Joel is LIMERICKS!

He says, son, can you play me a memory?
Im not really sure how it goes
But its sad and its sweet
and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger mans clothes

Now john at the bar is a friend of mine
He gets me my drinks for free
And hes quick with a joke
or to light up your smoke
But theres someplace that hed rather be

There once was programmer from Kentucky.
In finding an office, he was unlucky.
They cleaned out his bin,
And gave it to Min,
A PM who was much more plucky.

* * *

Wow…just…wow.

I just wanted to tell you and remind others that we are leaving Monday,
May 28 for Tanzania, Africa. We will be traveling until May 30th, due to a
14 hour layover in London, England. Please pray for our team of 7 for a
safe flight and time in Africa.

:-) May your journey be blessed from Him above, from Whom all blessings flow.

There’s a new ‘Pirates’ movie

* * *

In other news, Alea iacta est. More to follow.

Pirates of the Caribbean

In sum: What the hell was that?

It was long: 168 minutes. Trim 30 or 40 minutes, and call me in the morning.

It was confusing. Isn’t there some screenwriter rule against more than 4 double-crosses in the same scene? Everyone betrays everyone else. As you might expect, this makes it tough for the audience to understand their motivations or actions.

The action scenes explode without context. Who’s fighting whom on which ship, and by the way, which way is UP? When you can’t answer any of these questions as a viewer, you’re watching an overwrought mess.