I fell asleep watching Winter's Bone. How did an IMDB reviewer make that movie sound promising? Basically a girl walking around the woods asking people if they'd seen her drug dealer dad. And the backwoods people reacting guardedly or being openly hostile. Boring, and not many hot redneck girls. Surprise. (Looking through some other imdb reviews, I think they're written for movie makers or something. Lots of emphasis on atmosphere or artsy aspects. They need to put more emphasis on the "this movie sucks" aspect of the reviews. Lesson learned: don't believe imdb reviewers.)

And today I booted up my xbox to find that my saved game of Batman: Arkham Asylum was gone. I was going to write a glowing review of the game because it's really quite good. But apparently it has saving issues and lots of people online have had their saves corrupted. (And then other forum deadheads tell them "you can't shut down while it's saving," or "you can't switch to game of the year edition" or other unrelated banalities. Forum bottom feeders almost never have any answers, especially in video game related forums.) I wrote a scathing 2-star review of the game on Amazon, so I'm not feeling as frustrated about it any more. I'm just not sure if I want to replay the first 10 hours of the game.

soulpainter: Me too. I was standing in the main square. Batman had been standing still for a couple of minutes. I then decided to quit, which I did, correctly, through the menus. The game was not saving, and I did everything correctly. Next morning when I went into the game. Guess what, its stuffed. If anyone wants a copy of Arkham I think mine is still half way up the street...

The stylists at the hair butchery have found a new way to mess up my hair. I told the lady "Number 3 on the sides, a finger's width on top" just like I always do, but this lady had other ideas. First, she had a number 3 razor, but her preferred razor uses like the metric system or something, and so she just had "the equivalent" of a number 3.

Then, instead of a finger's width she used a comb and gave me "the equivilant of a finger's width". So instead of having hair that's 3/4s inch long, I have a 3/4 inch shapeless sphere of hair around my skull. I wasn't very happy. But then I went to visit Puja tonight.

Puja: Oh, you got your hair cut.
me: Yep, thanks for noticing. I'm not totally happy with it.
Puja: Why? It looks good... It looks better than your usual haircut.
(Thanks Puja!)

I hate shopping for shoes. You'd think it wouldn't be too bad because shopping online lets you see hundreds of different shoes and filter by style, size and color. But it still sucks because the current state of the shoe industry sucks.

I would wear normal business shoes like a regular adult but they are so, unbelievably uncomfortable. It's like walking in wooden Holland shoes. I'd have to become one of those people who take their shoes off in the office or at someone else's house as soon as they arrive. Yuck.

There was an episode of Grosse Point where the main actress, who was always mean and condescending toward everyone, had to gain a bunch of weight for a movie role. Suddenly she became super friendly and was asking production assistants' names and doing favors and stuff. The staff decided that she had always just been hungry. I'd be like that. Gone would be the friendly, witty, Joe, instead I'd be thinking all the time about how much my feet are killing me. And you can forget walking around DC. I'd be cabbing everywhere.

Running shoes on the other hand are super comfortable, but any one can tell with a glance that they're running shoes because they all conform to that distinct sneaker look with bright colors and fancy tread. Even if you try to compensate by wearing a suit or something it'll look silly. People will think you're wearing a swimming suit underneath to head out to the beach after work. Why can't they try to disguise running shoes as something more formal? I'm not to impress fellow athletes with the style of my shoe. They should make running shoes for non-athletes. I'm not running anywhere, I'm just trying to get through my day.

And why the heck do shoes all cost so much? $100 for a pair of shoes that aren't Nike pumps and it isn't 1991??? Crazy! Where is the money going? I should start a shoe company.

Some quick movie reviews.

You Again: This one was terrible. I was hoping for something like Just Friends, where Ryan Reynolds as a "cool adult" visits home and finds himself being pigeonholed back into his geeky role from high school. But this one was all about women acting like junior highers. Like Mean Girls, but with adults and not as clever. And no normal, straight-man characters to express disbelief and every character's immature. I can't believe I sat through this whole thing.

Centurion: Also terrible. There's a reason you never heard about this movie. It's not as bad as that King Arthur movie with Kiera Knightly, but it's close, and in a similar style but with more sweeping landscape shots a la lord of the rings. (More specifically, imagine that part of the beginning of The Two Towers when Aragon, Gimli and Legolas are running across the plains tracking the orcs. Probably half of this movie was like that scene, but with 6 dudes running away from a bunch of people tracking them on horseback, while the camera cuts from one group to the other and back again.) The other thing this movie had was lots of quick shots where a random guy gets his head smashed or something and blood splatters everywhere. I think there was a big battle scene that was just a series of quick shots of random guys getting hacked in the head or limbs. I guess that's kinda what war is. Things this movie didn't have: comic scenes, dramatic scenes, believable characters or interesting dialogue.

Never Let Me Go: This movie was surprisingly quite decent. I'd seen the movie The Island and the preview for this movie so I had a good idea of what to expect. The movie also starts out pretty slow and never really picks up speed (about a quarter of the way into the movie the story jumps 10 years and all the actors change. It was a little disorienting ). Some of the details about the science or the society seem a little far fetched but these far fetched aspects were sorta crucial to the story. I really enjoyed the way we saw the characters handle tragedy towards the middle and end of the film, which is what the movie really wanted to be about. Pretty good stuff.

Paper Man: This movie was pretty good too. I've never much liked Lisa Kudrow but I didn't totally hate her in this and all the other actors did well portraying believable characters. The story was interesting, the dialogue decent. There was a bit of comedy, a bit of drama. There was a slight plot twist that surprised me. Some of it was a little slow but all in all I liked this one.

(from a review of Action)
But the real stars were the writers. The show seems like it’s all about Peter Dragon, but it’s just as much the story of nebbish writer Adam Rafkin (or was it Alan Rifkin?…). Fighting to retain every sensitive allegorical scene in his magnum opus, Beverly Hills Gun Club (like the ritual slaughter of the pandas), Rafkin is the perfect counterpart to Dragon’s consummate amoral Hollywood insider.

I went to One Lounge yesterday because Kate was having a party there. First of all, I'm not a huge fan of that place. The music is too loud, the bartenders too rare, and the whole house-like architecture is a little weird. Plus it loses points for not having partitions between urinals in the bathroom.

My main story from the night is that there was some poor guy at the place trying to dance with any girl he could find. He'd just walked up to girls and asked them to dance, not taking no for an answer. I was just standing somewhat nearby and talking to another guy, and three times random girls either: started making frantic gestures like she wanted help, or she jumped over and just started talking to us, or in one case a girl grabbed my arm to start dancing with me instead.

So now I think that the ultimate wingman is probably a super persistent yet repellent guy. You just have to set him loose, give him about 10-20 seconds with a girl to creep her out, and then swoop in for the save. It almost sounds unethical.

(comments from a jpost article about Stuxnet)
Barak Bard: 2010 may be the first year for which the Israel Prize will be given to "Anonymous".
Stephen: 0010 0101 1001 0010 11001 Did you get it? Now if not, take PC and throw into a big fire. The virus comes and goes, it enters and exits without leaving a trace on your hard disk. As long as there is one infected computer in Iran it will quietly sit there awaiting instructions. When you change all the computers, that is into the great bonfire, the virus will return as the angel of death on those new computers. The G-d of Israel is on cyber attack to those that blaspheme his name and his chosen people. Read the Bible and how Pharaoh was taught a lesson. This a today's plague, no frogs, just viruses.

I bought a EEE PC netbook just before winter break and I'm not very happy with it. First, the keyboard is difficult to type on. It's a compact keyboard, but even more compact than the usual laptop keyboard, and it's not very sensitive. I had no trouble typing quickly on my old laptop, but on this thing I have to deliberately push every single button or it won't recognize the presses. Also the touch pad is way too sensitive and obtrusive. So I touch it all the time and it loves to click out of the field I'm typing in. Or it will click back to the beginning of the field and I'll find myself suddenly typing at the beginning again. Between making sure to press each key firmly and being careful not to touch the touchpad, my typing speed is down to like 10 words per minute.

It also has some major software problems, but those are my fault. And I could fix them, if only using the thing wasn't such a nightmare. Its wireless network seems slow too for some reason. That might be a software issue, though I've updated the drivers and windows thinks it's working fine. Other than that, it has some great hardware packed into it, and it rocks at performing tasks, so long as you don't actually have to type or interact with it. It's good at decoding videos and right now I'm mostly just using it as a server. It's not quite what I was hoping for it.

I got all dressed up and came into the office but the attorney I'm meeting with isn't until Wednesday. I had written the wrong date on my calendar somehow. Grr.

(Playing poker with some cousins. Someone called for a game of Screw Your Neighbor, which other players negatively characterized as not being a game of skill. It was a long game, and people sorta started to go their separate ways, getting food and watching tv, as they lost. At the end of the game there were only 3 people left at the table.)
Mike: So is that it? Did you ruin our game with your long-winded game of chance?

Tonight I sat through Mean Girls on TNT or USA or something, even though it was rife with commercials, was censored (probably not much because it's only PG-13 I think, but I'm sure they edited it for content/time), and I have the DVD of it somewhere in the apartment. Is it a new low in laziness? No surprise: I'm having a hard time getting back on work like I should be.

On the other hand I set up my laptop to serve videos to my ps3 which has proven to work well for watching small files. My network makes 720p stutter and I didn't even try anything bigger. I'll talk about the holiday break when I post photos from there.

I watched Mama Mia over at Rachel's new place. We were waiting for Verizon to show, but they apparently cancelled her appointment because someone had written that her building doesn't get FiOS. Mama Mia was better than I thought it'd be, but still not great. Too much Abba. And it's very broadway-ish but without great characters. Lots of daddy talk/drama that doesn't pay off into big drama. (Rachel hadn't seen this but somehow I did- Chris Klein Audition tape)

I have an annoying attorney interview at 1pm tomorrow. This guy loves to fly over from the west coast for some reason. Maybe he likes to get away from his family. It's like my fourth meeting with him and the case (surprise surprise) is going no where. I need to wear a tie, put on my polite face, and find us an office to meet in. Ugh. Office rooms are hard to come by these days.

I'm having a hard time sleeping. It's my guilty conscience.

(Whitney and Joe are visiting San Francisco)
me: The wax museum is great! I remember when I went it was a super hot day, which is rare in San Francisco, and most places don't AC, but then we went to the wax museum and it was nice and cool, and full of weird wax people.
Whitney: Yeah... Black people are weird.
(then I had to tell Whitney that she had in fact misheard my comment, and we weren't going to be getting into another one of those conversations)