I'm really bad with titles . . .

A few nights ago I had an as-of-recently rare evening with no social or scholastic obligations. Whenever I find myself with several hours and nothing to do, I invariably turn to my terabyte external hard drive, which houses a modest collection of about 350 movies.

The movie I chose to watch was "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," a movie that I've seen several times, though not for at least a year. I chose this title for no particular reason, and even debated whether or not I wanted such a dramatic and tragic film to help me relax. For the most part, it is the film's ending that brought me to write this post. I'm not sure how many of you have seen this movie, or what you remember of it, but the last scene is one that I find incredibly disturbing on a level that extends well beyond the actual moment. (I'm afraid to write spoilers, but I'm sure that if you don't know what I'm talking about you're intrigued enough to seek out the movie and see it for yourself.)

To get to the point of my post, this ending has a strong effect on me every time I watch it, but my reaction now is not nearly as overwhelming as it was the first time I saw it. My initial viewing of the movie left me in tears for hours, and I was so disturbed and sickened by the fate of McMurphy that I actually vomited. (The base of my reaction was much deeper than simply seeing McMurphy, but to philosophize on that would take more time than I can give at the moment.) As I said, I no longer have such reactions to the film. I cry, of course, but only for a few well-controlled minutes, which I think is probably the normal reaction. But watching it a few nights ago made me think of that first time and also made me wonder if any other movie had elicited such an intense and consuming reaction from me.

I couldn't think of any, but I wonder if any of you have had any similar responses to anything in movies, or other media for that matter. I don't mean similar as in necessarily negative, but similar in terms of intensity. Has anything you've watched in movies, read in literature, seen in art, or heard in music struck you in such a powerful and particular way that you are forced to succumb to (what was for me) an uncontrollable emotion?

Er...what?

Nancy Cartwright is the voice of Bart Simpson. Nancy Cartwright is from Kettering, Ohio. Nancy Cartwright is a Scientologist. Nancy Cartwright is coming to a local high school, Ohio to do a radio theater play with the high school's thespians to support the school district

The play they are performing is "If I Were You" by L. Ron Hubbard.

Maybe he was a great science fiction writer. Perhaps this particular text has absolutely nothing to do with Scientology.

I still have a big problem with this.

On Bodies

I like watching volleyball. It's only minimally because I like the sport.

So, the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour plasters temporary tattoos of its corporate sponsors on the athletes' bodies. Shoes, energy drinks, sports medicine, fruit juice, rum, and hotel chains. I find this disturbing. I understand that volleyball players are more scantily-clad than most other athletes, and the lack of clothing offers less ad space. Putting your company name on a jersey you made or provided money to make is one thing. Branding athletes is another. I just feel like bodies should be off-limits.

Oh, and also, I was just informed I'm watching The "2009 AVP CROCS™ CUP CHAMPIONSHIP KENTUCKY GRILLED CHICKEN™ CHICAGO OPEN."

Why I hate the internet (and the world generally)

I will partially reproduce with comments this conversation below I happen to be in a similar situation currently:

1) Is is possible to run the Windows version of R across all four processors?

2) I was under the impression that R for Linux supported multi-threading by default. Am I correct in this assumption? If not, is it possible for Linux R to multi thread, and how do I go about configuring this?

It seems reasonable to be asking an R reading list questions about whether or not the R framework can work in parallel, but we get this response:

> 1) Is is possible to run the Windows version of R across all four
> processors?

No.

That's it. I'm not truncating here for the sake of proving a point. The guy just disregards the question entirely.

Continuing the response:

> 2) I was under the impression that R for Linux supported multi-threading by
> default. Am I correct in this assumption? If not, is it possible for Linux R
> to multi thread, and how do I go about configuring this?

Your impression/assumption is wrong.

Taking someone's obviously false misconception and ignoring the obviousness of the question but instead, INSTEAD, throwing it back in their face with an assault on their reasoning ability! BOOYAH!

A few emails later (after an interesting argument about how C works):

> Will snow be anyway useful for this, or multithreading must be made
> explicit (I don't know how) within the C code, or there is nothing we can
> do?

Please do your own homeork on what snow (etc) do, and how multithreaded
BLAS work (and the ones I am familiar with are C code and use pthreads --
OpenMP is another possibility).

I get it that he's British. I get that he's a stats prof. I get that he works at Oxford. But seriously, why does he insist on reading the R boards and then only respond with asinine remarks? If you're too busy to help people find information about this software package, maybe you shouldn't spend the time to get on and flame them. Seriously, that last email was basically "I'm emailing you to tell you I can't email you."

I hate trolls. Here's the closest thing I've come to understanding them:

Ridiculous

THATS A NEW ONE!

Murder in my neighborhood?

Now I have told one of you about the news from a few streets over. Just incase you don't get local news- THIS-is all anyone can talk about. In the news, it sounds like a guy killed his wife and hid the remains in the garbage, using bleach to clean up, and also reported his wife missing to make himself look innocent.

Here is my question, is this media bias towards sensationalism? Probably. Should friends and neighbors assume the wife is dead because she is missing, and remains ( thought not publicly proven to be hers have been found) Does suspicious evidence like bleach bottles mean that he used it to destroy evidence. As of last night, the man in question was not held on murder charges, but harming official business and the like. So should we read into what the news says and form our own opinion, or should we try to wait and see what the evidence shows. I keep thinking in my head, innocent till proven guilty. However I may try I am finding it very hard to hope this is not the way it looks. I keep hoping the wife will turn up, and everything will be fine. that area has one large cemetery near by and a smaller one. Who knows what may or may not have happened.

As if trying to hope of a good out come and believing the best in people is not enough, there is the chilling fact that this is just a few streets over, for those that know, on the other side of the park from me. My grandpa is buried in the cemetery down the street, I drive the street in question and pass that house at least once a week. Violence is common in our world. Murder rates are high in cities. And while i did not know these people personally, it is forcing me to realize just how much we can never know or guess about others and the human condition.

Politics!

I've gotten a lot more politically active lately, actually sending letters to those who are supposed to represent me in my government. So far I've written letters to the White House, two U.S. Senators, two State Senators, and a State Representative with regards to various issues.

A couple weeks ago I sent an email to my senators regarding "don't ask, don't tell." Today, I got a letter back from Senator George Voinovich (R). It's actually sort of exciting to have received any acknowledgment at all. Here's part of what it says:

On March 31, 2009, Representative Ellen Dausher (D-CA) introduced H.R. 1283, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act of 2009. H.R. 1283 would prohibit the military from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation against any member of the Armed Forces or any person seeking to become a member [...] H.R. 1283 is currently pending in the House Armed Services Committee, and has not been introduced in the Senate. Should H.R. 1283 or similar legislation come before the full Senate, I will be sure to keep your views in mind.

Slightly dismissive, perhaps. I don't know how much writing letters helps, but when I think about the fanatics who want and believe the opposite of myself, I am sure that some of them write impassioned letters to their representatives, and often. I can't bemoan injustice while I do nothing to try to change it.

more of the same

Perhaps this doesn't warrant a new post, but hey, they're free!

Speaking of the post below this one and the music found in Wes Anderson movies, you should go here just for the weirdness if nothing else because there is a fictional soundtrack for the next (fictional) Anderson film. This fictional soundtrack for a fictional (speculative) movie was created by none other than Nicholas Gurewitch, who of course did Perry Bible Fellowship.

I would like to point out that this is an excellent example of...that thing where you encounter something and then encounter it again really soon and it seems really weird. There's a name for it. After I posted about the word "salvo" all those months ago, that thing happened where I found out the name for that thing while I was stumbling through wikipedia, but now I don't remember and have no way of finding it again. Drat.

I get a lot of songs stuck in my head*. It happens a couple of ways. One is that the lyrics and music will repeat themselves in my head, like I'm subconsciously singing it to myself. The other way is that I will actually hallucinate that I am hearing the song. It's happening right now. It doesn't happen in silence, but when there's white noise around. I'm really hearing something, but my brain molds those sounds into this particular song I was listening to a few minutes ago.

How did that song get stuck in my head? It popped into there because I saw the word "recompense." That threw me into the line "If it's time to recompense for what's done." Do you recognize it? I didn't. It's a Nick Drake song. From The Royal Tenenbaums. I don't have the song, but it's prominent in the movie and easy to hear.

Oddly enough, I don't usually notice the music in movies unless it's in the forefront or my attention is artificially drawn to it. I suppose you generally shouldn't notice the music, or at least the score, unless the filmmaker does it deliberately to add meaning. I don't know, I've never studied film.

However, in the course of my detective work in trying to figure out what song it was, I found this website which discusses the music in that film and the extra layer(s) of meaning it provides. I happen to love the film, and if you don't that's okay, but the way music is selected to provoke exactly the right emotional reaction has always fascinated me, and it's sort of about that.

* Obsessive-compulsive to the max, but at least there's always music in my life.

Backstory: The comments on youtube are some of the vilest, least intelligent things I've ever read.

I like to think I hold myself to high ethical standards, and in reality I do my best not to hurt anyone. But when I read/hear/watch hateful bile, it makes me want to grasp people firmly by the shoulders and just shake them. Really hard. I know that this wouldn't convince anyone or solve anything, but it would restore my personal sense of the world's justice.

I feel better. By the time I finish writing down my big long rant, I'm calm enough to realize that what I said was just angry ranting. That's why I delete posts. :)

Sidebar: there aren't enough slurs against white guys / heterosexuals / christians / the dominant group. Because they're the dominant group. Let's get on that.