liberty punk "the irony of the information age is that it's given new respectability to uninformed opinion."
Monday, May 17, 2004
"Ten Easy Steps..."
Responding to a reader's e-mail, Ben Weasel explains how to acheive success in punk rock.
On an unrelated, only semi-interesting note: It would seem there is not a single self-proclaimed Objectivist on Friendster. I know, I know: MySpace is where it's at these days, but I'll be damned if I'm making a fake profile for that one too. Anyway, if you're on Friendster, try doing an Interests search for "objectivism," then listen to the crickets chirp.
Jason Roth of SaveTheHumans.com has a take on the Moore/Disney conspiracy/taxbreak helicopter/unicorn swamp-creature/moon-landing deal that I hadn't thought of. Much like Scorpio the Rooftop Sniper in that movie, Roth hits it right between the eyes.
(A better analogy would have involved "hitting the nail on the head," but I don't recall Scorpio as being much of a carpenter (he was more of a people-shooter), and I was helpless to stop myself from including a Scorpio reference and an imdb link; I am outta control, so watch out.)
The other day, I popped 'A Fistful of Dollars', a fantastic film with a now-legendary score by Ennio Morricone, into my trusy DVD player. My intention was to compare it to Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo,' the 1961 Western-styled samurai film on which 'Dollars' was based, since I had just watched 'Yojimbo' a few days before.
Anyway, my point is this: I don't know how to pronounce "Morricone."
My other point is that the movie I put in after 'Dollars' was 1994's 'Wolf,' starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer (and James "Always Plays A Dude Who Is WeirdAboutSex" Spader), and guess who wrote the music for this one? That's right: Ennio Morricone.
Small world!
So is it "Morrie-cone?" Or "Morri-cone-ey?" "Morrichoney?" I want to be able to throw his name around like I'm cool, but I need to know how to pronounce it first, or else the opposite effect will be achieved.
Reading it made me want to go through my DVDs and see how many movies I've got with him in them. Off the top of my head, I'd guess five, though it's probably more, because he seems almost ubiquitous.
...is the greatest thing, ever, in the entire history of the universe.
If I had enough $, absolutely nothing short of dying would prevent me from obtaining it. I would buy it even if I went blind, even if I had both legs chopped off, even if I was reduced to nothing but a talking, breathing head with wires coming out of it. Even if a wizard (or perhaps a sorcerer of some kind) turned me into some variety of small woodland creature that is incapable of enjoying said item to its fullest extent, I would still devote every resource at my disposal to making said item mine.
To recap: It is the single most spectacular thing that has ever blessed the Earth, which it does simply by existing upon it.
Been lurking a while on the Objectivism Online forums, checking out what people have to say about X, Y, and Z. While a considerable amount of useful and applicable knowledge can certainly be gleaned from perusing the forum's countless posts, it's interesting to note some peoples' reactions to what they perceive as "subjectivist" (that is, "the doctrine that all knowledge is restricted to the conscious self and its sensory states").
It's also pretty disheartening to see the treatment some people get for simply daring to use the word "Objectivism" when talking about an issue that hasn't been covered in any "official" Objectivist texts.
It's one thing (the correct thing) to denounce, and even be intolerant of subjectivism, but it's something else to ban people from posting simply because they had the (apparently) gigantic balls to suggest such outrageous ideas as actually applying Objectivist philosophy to problems that Rand didn't explicitly address in her writing before she died. This is the difference between "Randroids" and just plain-ol' don't-take-no-shit Objectivists. I like to consider myself one of the latter, not because I've read everything Rand's ever written (which I haven't) and not because I pride myself on my own intolerance of genuine irrationality (which I do), but because I try my absolute damndest to use the basic principles of the philosophy as the backbone of my own worldview. It appeals to me because it's the gee-whiz rightest and least contradictory set of principles I've ever come across. It's the best way to look at reality, because it's the only way that refuses to back down from the fact that reality is reality, regardless or what you, or I, or Johnny Lunchpail say it is. That's the bottom line.
Anyway, for kicks, compare the attitudes of some of the mods on the Objectivism Online forums to those of the people who run SaveTheHumans.com
Objectivism and the capacity for appreciating humor are not mutually exclusive, no matter what some people might have you believe.
What's the deal with saying that people who complain a lot are "whinging?" Whinging? "Whinn-jing?"
It's "whining." You whine. You don't whinge.
Just what the fuck is going on around here, anyway?
/abrupt subject change
Anyone out there in internet land know anything about Adobe Premiere Pro? Specifically, I'm looking for a good way to use it to achieve that ever-elusive Holy Grail of "film look" when working with digital video.
BEGIN LESSON Y'see, film looks the way it does because it's showing you 24 frames every second, one after another. Video, on the other hand, is showing you 30 frames a second, interlacing every other stripe of one frame with every other stripe of the next (so it's almost sorta like 60 half-frames a second), and it looks too "real" for some people, sometimes. Like me, like now. Film looks, well, more cinema-like. Without much tweaking, digital video looks amateur-cheapy a lot of the time. END LESSON
I know there are film-look plugins available for Premiere Pro (and other nonlinear editing software), but the prollem is that they're not free. I need free. I was wondering if there are any settings I can play around with to drop 6 of every 30 frames (and have the frames display progressively instead of interlaced) while keeping the audio the way it is. If anyone knows anything about this, please oh please drop a comment.
Actually, if anyone has anything at all to say about anything at all related to digital video, or film editing, or filmmaking in general, or films in general, or the fact that this August 6th Memo thing is a stupid-crazy jerkoff circus, say something in the comments.
