Author: Chuck
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I can’t stop it I don’t know how it works!
I watched Thank You For Smoking a few weeks ago, but I was so let down by the ending I didn’t know what to make of it. Surprisingly, the whole Don Imus scandal puts it into perspective. Thank You For Smoking plays out as a well-produced, well-performed, cleverly-written story that seems to be building up…
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One of Them
I think I missed the cut-off date for talking about this week’s episode of “Lost,” but it’s kind of difficult. For one thing, I feel guilty. Maybe I’m seeing something that’s not there, but it feels like the show’s in desperate-to-please mode, like a dog that’s been scolded for getting on the couch too many…
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Consumer breakdown
(WARNING: Yuppie-in-denial complaining follows. If you’re the type who’s offended by the petulant whining of the over-privileged, you’ll want to skip this post. And a couple of the next posts, too. For that matter, you probably want to skip this whole blog.) These past few months have been kind of a test of will power…
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SHODAN and Max
Maybe you’ve heard about Telltale’s Sam & Max games, and you’ve had your little mouse-clicker thing hovering over the “buy” button, but you’ve stopped yourself. “I’m tempted,” you say, “but I’m a strict adherent of post-modernism, and I would only play a game with self-referential humor about videogames and the burgeoning ‘internet’ phenomenon that all…
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A
Fans of Lore Sjöberg’s, especially the Book of Ratings, should take a look at his latest experiment. I’m a fan. It’s one of the only cases where adding all the new media internet video podcast hoopla actually improves the original material.
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Your papers, please
Apparently, it is possible to be too ignorant of the state’s rights vs. federal rights issue, and too complacent in the idea of a Democratic majority in congress magically making everything better. I was totally ignorant of the RealID Act and that it’d progressed so far. Ars Technica has an article about Real ID and…
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Hellboy + Obakemono = Nerd Bliss
Normally, seeing my favorite things come together three separate times in one week would be downright eerie, but I don’t think Hellboy: Sword of Storms counts. For one thing, it’s old news. It was aired on Cartoon Network back in October, and due to a TiVo mishap, I’m just now catching it on DVD. For…
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A Million Little Pieces
I’ve wasted way too much time today reading the internet hubub about how a webcomic was ripped off by an art thief. Actually, “art thief” isn’t as good a description as “some dude who makes crappy drawings from internet catchphrases and puts them on T-shirts and paintings and has made obscene millions doing so,” but…
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So Like Us
Speaking of set detail and “Battlestar Galactica,” I think I may have uncovered more shocking evidence that the colonists have connections to Earth. This has all happened before, and it will all happen again: Like all of the Battlestars, the Galactica relies on NEC’s Multisync Series for the brightest, sharpest LCD displays in the entire…
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Many anal-retentive Bothans died to bring us this information.
I was just watching a few minutes of the original “Battlestar Galactica” series, and because I’m a nerd, I noticed that the displays and panels in the Vipers were full of English text. Because I’m a really big nerd, I started to wonder what that means in the context of the series as a whole.…
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Idiot Box
Back when I was writing columns for SFist, one of the things I kept harping on was that Apple should make a DVR. If they could do for television what they did for the iPod, that’d be huge, right? An interface for TV as slick as OS X, without as many of the weird limitations…
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Mutual of Omaha’s Annoying Kingdom
I’m sure the San Francisco Animal Control People do a fine job with the fixings and the basic health exams and all that. I just think it’s irresponsible for them to be releasing pets without doing a proper psychological examination first. The problem, see, is that my new cat is batshit insane. There are plenty…