Claire's blog

[imdb page] This is the second of the 3 [unrelated] feature-length animated films directed by René Laloux. Animation connoisseurs might remember René Laloux from Fantastic Planet, an amazing movie that often occupied my thoughts during my childhood. It had amazing aliens, multiple societies, sentient pets, inexplicable species, and possibly an ethical message as well. This movie was not as good as Fantastic Planet, but it was still entertaining. Science-fiction and animation go together well. But there was little social commentary in this movie, and both the number of differnet characters and the varieties of different alien species & encounters are less in Time Masters than in Fantastic Planet. And the movie has nothing to do with the Time Masters anyway, it’s mostly about a boy lost in an alien forest, and a ship’s attempt to make it there and rescue him. Now, all that’s left to do is to watch Gandahar. [UPDATE 4/12/2008: Yes, this is probably the least good of the 3 movies Laloux did.  Gandahar was indeed better, and I remember more of Fantastic Planet now, too.]
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This Is Your Brain on God. Very interesting article about research into stimulating your brain to make you perceive God. Other research has already shown that our brain has been hardwired to have religious experiences from the start, so this is the next logical step. By the way, Comcast HDTV sucks. Just look at these screenshots. Comcast is a shitty company. Drop them now. Find alternative ISPs using http://www.broadbandreports.com.

Reporter videotapes cheerleading competition; charged with felony possession of obscene matter depicting sexual conduct of a person under 18! So… um… Why isn’t the school in trouble for hosting public competitions that depict sexual conduct of persons under 18? Now the reporter will fail security clearances, even though the charges wont stand. Looks like the system can fuck you, even if you don’t deserve it. Or maybe the guy had more on the videotape… But videotaping a cheerleading competition is grounds for your arrest and search of your videotape?!?! Hello? It’s a public event. Photographers rights! Buuuut… SCHOOLS ARE STUPID… SO… When an athletic girl strains ligament, is hospitalized, put in a brace, given crutches — guess what happened next? (This was Hillsborough — I assume the same one where they dump arrested cripples onto the floor to make sure they are handicapped.) The school took her crutches away from her — FOR NOT HAVING A DOCTOR’S NOTE — causing her to further damage her knee. And have surgery. Inevitable lawsuit ensues — and I hope they get millions. YOU DON’T DO THAT.

WAR ON TERROR: U.S. tortures their prisoners of war – no shit – more news from Captain Obvious. How many of these accounts have to come out for this to stop? Does nobody give a shit that we are treating some individuals as bad as China or Nazi Germany? The constitution was specific: ALL persons have rights, not just citizens. When the constitution talked about voting, it said “citizens”, not “all persons”. Duh. But the global government does not care about constitutional rights — hell, United Nations Secretary-General stands behind the censorship of Fitna. I seem to remember appeasement didn’t work with Hitler in World War 2 — so why are politicians trying to appease fundamentalist muslims who want to censor anything that might offend them? If the United Nations is supposed to define human rights, why be a fucking hypocrite about free speech? FUCK YOU, secretary-general Ban Ki-moon — this IS about free expression, contrary to your attempt at doublethink by stating otherwise.

SCIENTOLOGY IS A DANGEROUS CULT: IRS documents leaked (full pdf). Another great leak brought to you by ANONYMOUS, the full version of the Church Of Scientology IRS-related documents. Grab this while you can. Grab this now, and own a piece of history regarding how Scientology deals with money. Probably about as bad as Sony BMG, which was raided in France, and found to be operating their network with pirated software. Now they are being sued for piracy. Remember Sony going out of its way to sue anyone who “pirates” any of their technologies, and to even stop modchips? They’re hypocrites (just like the UN today). What are they thinking? They’ve rootkitted their customers, they’ve idiotically sued a great accessory shop because they dared to sell their PSPs, and now this? All I can say is: Another day, another shitty Sony story. Viva la France!

Special thanks to Aaron E & Dave O — for the trumpet and putting the 2 pics together (which meant I didn’t use the single-photo one Dave O made for me, but I think he did the healing brush part?).

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So, “The Dude” (guy-with-a-mullet-in-Sterling) called at like 9:30AM today, leaving very loopy message: “Hi, this is Steven with your kitten. Uh, i want you to come by and pick it up right away. Because we have to get your baby. Uh, right away. Ok. (Gives phone number.) Come by and get your baby. (Gives number again.)” We were going to just avoid him until next weekend, when we were planning on being in the area, but finally around 4PM we decided to go get the cat and get it over with.
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We have groups of people attacking goths, other groups of people (600 large) literally “hunting emos” — real violence being perpetrated for no good fucking reason whatsoever. Meanwhile, “terrorists”, many of who are innocent, language in Guantanamo — 2000 days and counting. And LinkedIn now has RSS feeds! (more…)

Penelope Cruz to engage in steamy lesbian sex scene with Scarlett Johansson in Woody Allen(YUCK)’s upcoming “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”. At least, according to this fansite. This is the best girl-on-girl news since the (confirmed by both) tryst between Jenny McCarthy and Jenna Jameson!

TSA Forces Woman To Remove Nipple Rings For Flight — ***NOT*** POLICY. Just an example of how the everyday american loses their rights. You don’t fight TSA, or they can taser you to death and have you arrested. So what happens when they ask you to do something they have no legal power to do, and you need to go somewhere? You apply a pair of pliers to your own nipples, that’s what.

WAR ON DRUGS: New York Governor Admits Past Cocaine, Marijuana Use, Few Are Bothered. If someone can be president or governor after doing the stuff — they certainly shouldn’t be arrested for doing the stuff.

You heard that right. *OFF-DUTY* officer shoots at moving vehicle. Officers are not actually generally not allowed to shoot at moving vehicles EVER, because it’s too dangerous to the public, and any occupants in the vehicle who aren’t responsible for driving it away. In this case, he not only hit the mother twice, but he hit her 8-year-old child in the knee. Both were hospitalized for five days.

Fuckface officer WAS NOT EVEN ARRESTED, or tested for alcohol, FOR SHOOTING AN 8-YEAR-OLD IN VIOLATION OF POLICY WHILE OFF DUTY.

This is the America everyone voted for?

ARTICLE: http://www.fox6.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=cb56fb87-54cd-4a16-87ba-78be29c2978b&rss=tick
BACKUP: http://www.badcopnews.com/2008/03/26/woman-her-and-8-year-old-child-shot-by-nutcase-san-diego-california-police-officer-franklin-white-in-road-rage-incident-says-rain-of-bullets-was-attempted-murder/
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http://wikinews//Church_of_Scientology_Operating_Thetan_documents_leaked_online

The 612-page manual for Scientologists written by L. Ron Hubbard contains instructions for the eight different Operating Thetan levels including ‘clear’ and OT8.

Most of the manual is typed from a computer, while the packet contains some hand written notes by Hubbard himself who also signed them. The manual also contains letters by Hubbard to individuals who have passed the according levels.

A link to the actual 17-meg PDF is HERE. Everyone grab this. This includes stuff that was only kept on a ship, because it was considered too dangerous to Scientology to keep this information on land! But now we all have it, muahahaha. ALL HAIL XENU. (more…)

So I tried to watch a YouTube video fullscreen while eating lunch today. BAM. Firefox (2) crashed. Okay, this happens sometimes. So I rerun it — and it bitches about not being able to upgrade because some files are in use. They aren’t! I ps and kill processes just to make sure, but to no avail. So I use IE to download Firefox3 beta4. Oh, 6 out of 7 of my plugins are not compatible? Fuck you! Progress is bad! Anything I build should last until I die, and the futility of having what you build be torn down is what makes most people stay computer novices.
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My good friend Evan has started a blog, called “Rerun’s Runons”. The address is: http://rerunsrunons.wordpress.com/.
(It’s a wordpress blog, so there’s a comment feed too!)
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So, Scientology is deprogramming for Christians?!?! News to me, but it’s quite intriguing.

With ANONYMOUS’s ongoing Scientology protests making ongoing headlines for weeks, The Church Of The Subgenius was bound to respond, and did so with their “Message To Anonymous From The Church Of The SubGenius“, which was more a less an invitation for ANONYMOUS to join the party in New York on X-Day. But now someone — seemingly a Scientology shill — has posted a video basically intimating that if you side against Scientology, you are siding Pro-Christian, because Scientology is actually about deprogramming Christians!! News to me, but they go into more detail about it, and it’s quite interesting:

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If you think things in America are that different from China, just remember to take a sanity pill every once-in-awhile and to realize that things here are still BAD — very very BAD. Arguably freedom is worse off in America than it has been since McCartyhism. When Tibetans can’t even protest to Free Tibet in front of the fucking UN building with a Tibet flag on it, without officers beating, clubbing, and threatning to kill them — realize that the freedoms we have here are barely left. With the powers that be making big bucks off of trade agreements with China, dissent against China is synonymous with dissent against Big American Business. And Big American Business can most certainly influence how the police treat peaceful protesters. Observe for yourself:

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When I woke up and turned the TV on today, all the pixels were random colors. I could not see the screen. I could press the power button on my remote, and the power light on the TV would go out, without the TV turning off. Even the power button on top of the tv would not usually work. I did manage to get it to turn off and on a few times, but the buttons would not usually work. Finally, I yanked the power cord from the back of the tv and plugged it back in, and everything was fine.

If this thing doesn’t last 35,000 hours like my CRT, I’m going to have to stand behind all my original statements about HDTVs vs CRTs, and the inferiority of HDTVs. If only it didn’t look so damn good.
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Starbucks hates Wiccans? We’ll see what the lawsuit eventually says. Smoking while pregnant found to be neglible (but not harmless) during the first 5 months of pregnancy. Sounds like an interesting study whose results are bound to be very unpopular, and thus highly contested due to the irrational emotions children bring out in people. I blame DNA.

ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: Cop’s tactics in arresting a DUI cause a man to go into a permanent coma. He was never charged. 17 years later (3/2008), he is charged with murdering disc jockey Donald Munsey. This is what happens when you ignore a problem. Penalties for police should be GREATER than those for civilians, not less. Those with more power must also have more responsibility for those actions. Christ, even Peter Parker’s uncle knew that. Either way, the growing trend is hurting both the people, and the law itself, because many have little respect for the law when they behave like this. And did Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Office in Maricopa County treat alcoholic inmate worse than a dog? Sheriff had bragged about treating dogs better than humans at their jail. Inmate dead from lack of medical attention. “Jurors won’t much like an alcoholic who steals from his family. But they also might recognize that being arrested is not a death sentence. And that once a person is in Maricopa County jail, he’s our responsibility.” Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s attitude and actions are quite pathetic to me.

1) SPOILERS: Spoilers will now be handled by displaying text as white-on-white.If you want to read the spoiler, simply drag the mouse over it to hilight it. Now I will no longer need to waste my breath providing spoiler warnings. Expect much of my movie reviews to be invisible like this. I hate spoiling, but I always want to talk about spoilers after watching a movie. This is a good compromise. Here is an example/test spoiler: At the end of The Sixth Sense, [highlight]→ it turns out Bruce Willis was dead the entire movie!!!!!!!! I’ve seen this trick used on other sites before. What do you think?

2) LINKS: Certain words will be automatically linksvia an auto-link list that I maintain. So expect a lot more things to become links in the future. If I mention things like “my sister“, Carolyn, 4NT, NoMeansNo — my script will automatically make these into links. Should save time for me, while increasing exposure for all.
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Right At Your Door was a movie about a terrorist attack in Los Angeles, and specifically how it affected one couple. I guess this would be considered a thriller. There was indeed a high amount of tension throughout the entire movie, enough to keep us quite interested throughout. Fear of terrorism may be an easy string to pull, but it doesn’t diminsh the excitement of wondering how it’s all going to turn out. There were also parallels between the couple, Carolyn & I, and September 11th. We enjoyed this as something you would watch once ever. Read on for more in-depth review. Some spoilers ahead, but there will be additional warnings for those spoilers.
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Well, ANONYMOUS’s war against the dangerous cult of Scientology has been going quite well. It looks like The Church Of The SubGenius is inviting them to X-Day:

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CENSORSHIP/RELIGION: Network Solutions takes down website for hosting anti-Islam movies — free speech online is controlled by only a few corporations, and they just want everyone to get along so that we keep buying stuff. When your domain name holder can pull your account at any time, you don’t truly have the freedom to express what you want. Avoid NetworkSolutions, and avoid GoDaddy. Go elsewhere for your needs; these guys are not YOUR friend, not even when you PAY them.  But you can still watch it on Google Video HERE.

Speaking of religion… SCIENTOLOGY IS A DANGEROUS, CRIMINAL CULT: Read about Gareth Cales and Sean Carasov — it looks like Scientologists poisoned Sean Carasov’s cat, then had him arrested for “threats” which have not been disclosed, much like Keith Hanson. Ultimately, on the protest day, Gareth had to have the police intervene to keep them from being followed into the subway. This is scary stuff. All Scientologist leaders should contract cancer and die. The world would be a much better place. All hail ANONYMOUS and XENU! 6AUP602!

WAR ON DRUGS HURTS CHILDREN (VIDEO SEGMENT): Douchebag U.S. Prisons Deny Man Temporary Release So Dying Daughter Can Have Last Wish – To Hug Her Father. Um, what about a conjugal visit? Man is in jail on a drug conviction. Remember: Drugs are victimless crimes. It probably hurt the child a lot more to lose a father, than how much “society” was hurt by the father’s actions. Yet here, a child has become a victim to a compassionless system; the American Justice system — which imprisons the most non-violent people of any system in the planet. Laws are not Morals, and in my book, non-violent criminals are, for the most part political prisoners.

Speaking of children…Child tasered to death after Mom makes him return to store he works at to face discipline for stealing Hot Pockets …. I guess before tasers, they would’ve shot him in the head? Of course, if you shoot someone unarmed, you tend to get sued. But if you TASER them & they die from “exicited delirium”, then a cop gets to blame the victim, avert the lawsuit, AND get away with cowardly murder. This is the 3rd taser death this week, and at least the 2nd time in a week I’ve read about a mother losing her son because she called 911. This is why I propose a softer “811” manned by people who actually risk their lives by not shooting anyone they perceive as a threat. It would basically be handled like the stereotypical people in white who bring you to the insane asylum.