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Sometimes when people post disaster-relief information to Facebook or Livejournal there's a self-serving "Look at me! I'm doing a good deed!" undertone that I find extremely irritating, which is why I don't often do it myself. The floods in middle Tennessee hit pretty close to home, though, so I'm making an exception. A ton of people lost their homes and their jobs, and anything you can afford to give would be much appreciated. For detailed information and links, see:

http://cheathamchamber.org/Default.aspx?OID=41&CID=1491

So there's this website for Lost nerds called Lostpedia -- I've been lurking there on and off for about three years. I had a couple of hours to kill this morning so I started browsing around on the forum. In the off-topic section there's this 1500-page long thread where members post pictures of themselves. I picked a page at random, started looking at pictures, and lo and behold, halfway down the page there's a post from someone who lives in my town, who posted a picture of herself and her fiancé. Her fiancé is also named Chris, and I work with him.

Weird, weird, weird. If I wake up on a mysterious island tomorrow, I'm going to be sooooo pissed.

OF COURSE! The Locke Monster is going to offer each of them a new life, and the parallel-reality stuff that's running concuurent to the island stuff is actually the epilogue to the show -- these are the new lives they'll be given (which would imply that they will nearly all end up siding with the Locke Monster against Jacob -- or Jacob's ghost, or whatever.)


Oh, LOST, how I've missed you.

NO, I do not have a card.

NO, I do not want a card.

YES, I am sure I do not want a card.

NO, I do not care how much money I will save. I have enough cards already.

NO, I do not care how easy it will be to sign up. I am in a hurry. I hate public places. I hate you.

In THE BOX, Richard Kelly's loose adaptation of Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button" (or more accurately, the 'Twilight Zone' version of the Matheson story, which jettisoned the original ending in favor of a more frightening but less meaningful twist), Cameron Diaz and James Marsden play an Everycouple whose lives are sent into turmoil by the titular box, which appears on their front doorstep one night with a note that says they will be receiving a visit from "Mr. Steward" (played by Frank Langella with a mangled CGI face) the next day at 5:00. Inside the box is a red button which, when pushed, will cause two things to happen: (1) Someone they don't know will die, and (2) they will receive a million dollars in cash, tax-free.

Since there would be no movie otherwise, Diaz does indeed push the button, and Steward shows up with a briefcase full of money and collects the box. When he is asked what happens next, Steward replies that the box will be reprogrammed and given to someone else, "someone you don't know." This is where the original story ended, but unfortunately, the movie is just getting started. What follows is a boatload of ever-increasing weirdness that is eventually explained away as a secret alien mindfuck experiment. You see, Steward was struck by lightning and died, but his body was taken over by a Martian who is now running around performing convoluted morality tests on NASA employees. No, seriously. What ever happened to a good old-fashioned anal probe? And just in case you decide to call bullshit on this entire endeavor (an endeavor which involves sending the subjects through stargates and taking over the minds of many of their friends in order to push them in whatever direction the aliens want them to go), Kelly namechecks Arthur C. Clarke's famous dictum that "any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" in order to cover up all the plot holes.

As in Kelly's first film DONNIE DARKO, the plot-logic invoked to explain away all the surreal weirdness is so artificial and silly that it ruins the entire film. Thankfully, all that crap about "living receivers" and the "manipulated dead" was left out of the original cut of DARKO, which made for a much stronger movie. Unfortunately that didn't happen with THE BOX, whose storyline is much more dependent upon such ridiculous contrivances.

My grade: D+

You know, if I'm expected to do someone else's job as well as my own, I damn well better get two paychecks next week. Just saying.

I'd like to take a brief moment to publicly thank the Kingsport Public Library, whose massive selection of science fiction titles was a highlight of my childhood years. This was the place where I first discovered Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin, James Tiptree, Jr., Isaac Asimov, Nancy Kress, the anthologies of Gardner Dozois and Terry Carr, and so many more.

Here's to you, Kingsport Public Library! May you continue to entertain and inspire further generations.

Of all the issues facing America today, why is it health care reform that's bringing all the crazies out of the woodwork? Speaking as someone who once had to pay $2,000 out-of-pocket for a chest x-ray and a five-minute consultation, at a point in my life where I was working 30 hours a week for $6 an hour, I have no problem at all with "socialized medicine."

I have been fucked in the ass by a nasty computer virus. If I stay on the Internet for more than five minutes, a shitload of tabs will suddenly open up all at once in my browser, causing everything to crash (this happens in both Firefox and Chrome.) My speakers randomly spout out, "Hey guys, I'm looking at gay porn!" I can't access Facebook, I can't access Gmail, I can't watch flash videos. Every time I try to do a Google search I get redirected to a porn site, and my desktop background was replaced by a close-up picture of somebody's asshole with the words "Welcome to the Gay Nigger Association of America!" written underneath. Classy.

Oh, and this thing apparently completely destroyed my antivirus program, and it also won't let me open any executable files so there's no way for me to download another. I have no idea what to do.