Hello, My Name is . . .

 Political Stuff  1 Response »
Mar 292010
 

While reading Slashdot this morning, I came across this story:

“Raleigh City Councilman Bonner Gaylord is offering to name his unborn children after the co-founders of Google Inc. in an attempt to convince the company to build a high-speed Internet network in Raleigh.”

While lots of communities lately have been making offers to rename their stadiums, landmarks and towns after corporations in a bid to lure in local investment, this is the first time I’ve seen someone offer to name their as yet unborn children after a company’s founders simply to get a network.  Granted, there have been stories about parents naming their kids after their favorite brand – “ESPN Real” being one a fellow Slashdotter pointed out – but most of these have been driven by a parent’s (misguided, in my opinion) desire to make their child stand out in some way.  What makes this story stand out, is that this is the first instance I am aware of where a parent is voluntarily offering up his child’s identity to a corporate host.  What’s worse, to me anyway, is that he seems to be doing so to get a better Internet connection.  Call me foolish, but there is not enough porn in the world to justify this kind of stupidity.  It’s one thing to rename a building, but a child? Continue reading »

Finding Friends in the Films

 Film Stuff  2 Responses »
Mar 262010
 

“Do you go to the movies?  Find a friend in the films?” – “Movies”; The Hothouse Flowers, Home

I learned to love at the movies.

As a kid of about six or seven, I would watch the Sunday morning cartoons on TBS (then called “Channel 17” in Atlanta), which were followed at around 11:00 o’clock by a morning matinee of a classic black and white films.  It was here that I first saw Bogey and Bacall, Powell and Loy, Tracy and Hepburn, Astaire and Rogers, Garland, Gable, Lombard, Davis, Crawford, Grant and Olivier.  I can remember sitting on the floor in front of the television, slightly sleepy, but riveted to movies whose themes I could barely understand.

It was the look of things that first drew my attention, the mixture of light and shadows combining to create a mood that influenced the story as much as the plot and the acting.  Be it the dark shadows and lousy lives of the punished in the noirs, or the bright crystalline glamour of the MSM musicals, where nothing was ever dirty, and every story had a happy ending, the flickering light tripped something inside my subconscious that made me sit up and listen to the tales being told.  I didn’t always get what I saw, but I was hooked and knew here was a thing that could teach me something. Continue reading »

First Post

 Site Stuff  Comments Off
Mar 242010
 

Welcome to my little corner of the web. FAC8SGAPHFB5

While I’ve been a geek now for over twenty years, I had avoided establishing an online presence as I initially saw it as taking on a completely unnecessary extra burden.  After all, if you spend all day staring at a computer monitor rearranging bits and bytes into coherence, why the hell would you want to do the same when you got home?  And for free?

As time has gone by, though, my need to write has begun to overwhelm my reservations, and recent professional circumstances have placed me in a position where I am being encouraged to write more.  So here we are.

This site will be, above all, a personal blog.  I’ll be writing about whatever interest me at a given moment, which means a wide range of topics will be explored.  Deep thoughts, social commentary, essays about movie and books, personal exploration, geek notes and analysis, and the occasional “writing experiment”.  While I like to consider myself a fair commentator, I do have strong opinions and a flair for what one of my professors once called “linguistic ornamentation.”  Translation: the language here will not always suitable for children.

My initial intent is to post at least once a week at a minimum, and I’m shooting for roughly 1000 words per essay.  As the site is brand new, I’ll be leaving the commentary queues open and feedback is appreciated, even if it consist of a litany of “UR teh suXors!”.  I’ve established many internet presences over the years, so I’ve also made it easy to find me on some of the other sites and services I lurk around.  Anything posted here will be announced on multiple other social sites, so that readers may follow in their own preferred way.  I’ll try my very best to respond to every direct message received, as long as time and tide allows.

One last thing, though: Comments should be civil.  Spammers and outright jackassess will be smote with the ban-hammer, which has a physical counterpart named “Roger”.