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in theory, there is nothing wrong with remakes. some of the greatest films we have are technically remakes (maltese falcon springs to mind). however, as a general rule, one should only remake a film under some form of the following scenerio: good story or premise, but the execution of the film was flawed (or outright sucked) in some way. miscasting, shoddy script, terrible acting, poor directing, bearing only a passing resemblance to source material and so on. a film doesn’t necessarily need to be bad to warrant a remake. lynch’s dune is a good example here, as i’d say it’s an enjoyable movie, though not because it adheres overmuch to what goes on in the novel (granted, half of the novel consists of what people are thinking…damn you ominscient narrative voice!). in straying from the source, it is flawed and ripe for a remake (which is happening. again).

alas, too often remakes are spawned by the “hey, let’s update a classic (or at least, a good film)!” school of thought. “you’ve got mail” is the sort of neferious result you get. these films are a bad idea. there is no reason to remake a good movie, because the original does not vanish into the ether after a few years. even the idea of “updating” a film tends to be misguided, at best. on the face of it, remaking “guess who’s coming to dinner” as “guess who” and reversing the race roles is not that bad of an idea. replacing spencer tracy with bernie mac and sidney poitier with ashton kucher however, was that bad of an idea.

all of this rambling is a roundabout way to ask just who the fuck thought remaking “akira” as a live action film was a remotely good idea? seriously, who thought that?

folks, this is what happens when you decide “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in regards to keeping your damn software up-to-date.  when it does finally break, nearly a decade and a half later, no one can fix it.  why?  because you have a vendor app that was written with Borland C++ 4.5, and i can’t get my hands on that to create a debug version of the exe, that’s why.  and XP doesn’t want to let a 16-bit windows debugger run (there is probably a workaround for that, but dear fucking god!  you’re still using a 16-bit system!). 

honestly, we even keep the damn cobol on the back end at the current version, and that language used to use punch cards.  not to mention that it pre-dates, well, me.  but no.  i’m stuck supporting your shitty little system and learning all about obsolete versions of languages, since you never saw fit to upgrade from FoxPro 2.6a and your app apparently uses Clipper to read dBase III tables.  it’s not even comprable to learning latin; i’m learning etruscian instead.

i’d smack whomever is responsible for this system never being upgraded or having the business moved to a different system.  but i don’t know who they are and i suspect they are in iowa.

why does your current advertising campaign hate the english language?  “Let’s Holiday the Season”?!?!?!  does your ad company not actually know the difference between nouns and verbs?  what dim fuckwit signed off on this crap?

unless you are specifically targeting the semi-literate to unliterate demographic, i’m going to assume this will be corrected.  once you realize what a horrible, horrible crime against language you’ve committed.

shit, that’s never going to happen, is it?  fuck you, i’m going to the home depot then.

well folks, the winter trade meetings are set to begin soon for baseball, and for those of you who haven’t been following the hot stove news, johan santana might be available.  as a result, perhaps in sorrow and lamentation, it seems someone has dumped a shitload of acid into the water supply for the twin cities.  why, you may wonder, would i think that?  because the good folks at firejoemorgan kindly directed me to this bit of sheer lunacy.

now, if you don’t know much about baseball, i’ll tell you why this is such a horribly, horribly, horribly bad trade.  here’s the proposed trade:

twins give:

• johan santana (very good lefty, free agent in 2008)
• joe nathan (good closer, but 33, free agent in 2008)
• carlos silva (um, filed for free agency already, so they can’t actually trade him)

sox give:

• jacoby ellsbury (potentially great center fielder)
• dustin pedroia (AL rookie of the year)
• jon lester (good 4/5 slot lefty)
• jonathan papelbon (great closer, better than nathan, also only 27)
• clay bucholz (pitched a no-hitter in his second MLB game, could be fantastic)

 so, for one year of santana, one year of nathan and no years of silva, the sox should, uh, trade 5 of their best young players, all of whom have had success in the majors?  and the writer of this article wonders why the twins GM hasn’t gotten this deal done?  um, cause it has as much chance of happening as i have of flying to the moon by flapping my arms rapidly?  perhaps that might be why.  what’s sad is that, despite this being on the “drunken call in to sports radio” level of trade ideas, this man was paid to produce this.  god help us all.

it’s not condo fees.  it’s not having no yard.  it’s not even the petty jackasses who pettition management to have your car towed cause they think your back seat is too dirty.

no, it’s that it’s 72°F outside right now.  at 1 in the fucking am.  and i’m in shorts, sweating.  why?  because the dimwits have never heard of weather forecasts, and switched the AC to heat last week.  seriously, i know that highs in the 80s is not normal for october.  but that’s what the past week has been.  right now it’s humid, hot and sticky.  i feel like i’m in florida.   with no AC.

granted, roasting a chicken tonight probably didn’t help matters, heatwise.  but that’s beside the point.  it’s still bloody hot.

back pain really, really sucks.  at least the cause of it is cute.

lucky for him, the little lead weight.

i caught part of a show on the discovery channel last night, about time (in general). during the segement i watched, the host (a physicist, i think) was discussing the possibility of discovering a biological means to circumvent death. the premumption was this is a possibility, provided we figure out how to either shut off the cell aging process, or kept cell replication turned on. either way, the implication is there is no biological need to die, so let’s figure out how to prevent death.

this is a very bad idea.

why? everyone supposedly wants eternal life (although, to be precise, everyone actually wants eternal youth, as swift so kindly points out to us). what’s wrong with living forever? well a couple of things.

first and foremost, to the best of our knowledge matter is finite. if one does not die, one never returns to the system. on it’s own, this is not particually much of a problem. where it becomes one is when one reproduces. consider this: there are currently a bit over 6 billion humans alive. imagine if suddenly, no one would ever die of old age again. now imagine birth rates don’t change. how quickly would we run out of, well, everything? just because one doesn’t die of old age, doesn’t mean one cannot starve to death.

so, do we allow only childless persons to live forever, on the condition they be sterilized? or, even grandfather in all living persons, on the condition the human race cease reproduction? who would agree to that? what other options are there? exoplanetary colonization? still a long way to go towards achieving that.

ah, but if no one dies, then time is no longer important, right? we could hold off on reproduction untill we find a solution to potential over population, right? perhaps. but consider how one’s thinking grows more conservative with age. would this be stopped by halting cell aging? or would people grow ever more stubborn with the passage of centuries? innovation is, typically, driven by youth because of the lack of experience.

often, our philosophies deal with dualism. without darkness, the can be no light. without conflict, no peace. without sorrow, no joy. is the same true of life and death? will we still be truly living, in more than a biological sense, without knowledge of our mortality? this same show, wondering about how we can excise death, also claims knowledge of death as foundation for human culture and belief systems. we believe we are the only animals on the planet attuned to our own mortality (well, the show’s writers do; i don’t necessarily agree). one could then argue, if one still felt the need to make humans special, that self-awarness is not sentience; knowledge of mortality is. would then, immortality remove our sentience? a semantic point, perhaps. but it would change humanity, and not necessarily for the better.

the prospect of a cessation of one’s existance is certainly frightening. i’m in no hurry to experience it myself. however, it also seems necessary. we know that upsetting the balance of systems creates chaos until they can regain equilibrium. immortalizing all humans would certainly unbalance nearly every ecological system we know. what would the cost of regaining it be? i don’t think it’s worth it; not even for myself or my loved ones. too much else would be lost.

accidents happen. rather often, actually. generally, it is taken as a good thing to actually stay at the scene of an accident and make sure everyone is okay. it seems, however, that is not the case in austin, tx.

now, i’m of the mind that, upon hitting a child with your car, getting out to check on him and make sure you didn’t kill or seriously hurt him is laudable. no one wants to run over a kid (well, usually). so, upon seeing a driver get out and check on said injured child, what is the reaction of bystanders? to try and beat the fuck out of the driver. and to then beat his passenger to death, for the sin of trying to prevent them from beating the fuck out of the driver. nice going folks. way to insure no one will ever stop again, if they think they hit someone.

meanwhile, the kid is hurt, but not too badly.

i’d like to apologize to you for what happened today. i know we’ve been walking that 3 mile loop for a few weeks now, and you haven’t seemed to mind at all. in fact, you seemed to enjoy it. so, surely you can understand why i thought you’d agree it was time to see if we could run for one of those miles. yes, i know we haven’t actually done any running, well, since we were on the track team in high school. but still, it seemed like the next logical step.

i was wrong. i see that now.

please forgive me. and, uh, let me stand up, too? please? i have to pee, and i don’t want to wheel this chair to the bathroom…