Lisa and I just got back from Serenity, and we give it all four thumbs up. Some points, without spoiling anything:

1: It is kind of like two episodes of Firefly in a row; there is a definite dividing line in the middle of the movie. The second half is The Business.

2: If you've never seen Firefly, you're still going to like Serenity. Firefly provides all the backstory of the characters, of course, which the movie couldn't do in two hours. But I didn't see one thing that I thought someone that didn't see the series wouldn't understand. The obverse is also true; the movie won't spoil anything in the series.

3: There is only one change from the story the series layed out; it is minor. Otherwise, the movie pretty much picks up where the series left off.

The special effects are really quite good for what is a relatively low-budget sci-fi movie. This movie cost about a tenth as much as Phantom Menace to make, and it is easily ten times better.

So, run, don't walk, to the theatre and check that shit out. Highly recommended.

Whee! Tom Delay indicted! Bill Frist is next on the chopping block! Maybe Blunt will get called to the carpet too! (The current temporary Senate Majority Leader paid $88,000 in 2003 for reasons unnamed to one of the people indicted in the same scandal that Delay is part of.) We're looking at a lot of open seats. I'm gonna call 2006 the year the dems take back the Senate.

For those of my loyal readers not in the United States, it's like this: a Republican is someone that says one thing and does another. A Democrat is someone that says a lot of things and does nothing. I'm sure there are parallels in pretty much any country's political system, but you have to take in to account that we have 12 nuclear powered aircraft carriers, so it's a bit more exciting.

We have a newspaper just for this town (of less than a thousand people.) It has a tendency to be comically bad (to wit: a couple weeks ago, the banner headline was "Area Residents Chock On Smoke") but today's episode takes the cake. The front page above-the-fold story is this:

Trinity Lutheran Church invites the public to a St. Francis Blessing Of The Animals on Saturday. Bring your dogs, cats, goldfish, hamsters, or any other species for this time of prayer and blessing for the pets we hold dear.

This place kills me.

That's right, kids. Serenity opens on Friday. w00t, etc. You must see this movie, even if you've never seen Firefly. (And if you haven't seen Firefly, what the fuck are you doing on my webpage?) The effects house that does the space battles, Zoic Studios, is one of the only groups of CG programmers that understand that there is no air in space. Their absolutely stellar work can be seen every week in Battlestar Galactica, and the final sequence in Serenity is supposed to be Oscar-worthy.

(A side note: I had never heard of Firefly until I saw the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, and was so floored by the effects I went hunting for the house that did them. I ordered the DVD box set off Amazon that day, sight unseen, on the strength of their Galactica work.)

Well, on the one hand, the lead character didn't get shot at the end of _this_ season. On the other hand, how can you have a civil war when there's no civil? Fucking cliffhangers. I swear.

While it's true that the Interwebs are just chock-a-block full of useful information (and that's sarcasm, right there, if you weren't paying close attention) once in a while some little piece of prose climbs above the din. This is an example of what it looks like when someone types "hey, the Emperor has no clothes on." Kited from jwz.

Lisa and I took a day off yesterday to recharge our batteries, since we've been working nearly non-stop for the last two months. We drove to the coast, which is about an hour and a half from here. Lincoln City, specifically, which is a town I lived in when I was in... ummm... 4th grade. It has grown quite a bit since then, from a wide spot on the 101 to a wider spot on the 101. It isn't as "cute" as Depot Bay or Newport, but it has actual beaches, which those other two towns distinctly lack.

Now, a caution is in order. The Oregon coast, while being extremely pretty, is dangerous. Not a good place to frolic in the waves at all. Between the orcas, the sharks, the undertow, the riptides, the rocks, and a water tempature that hovers around 39 degrees most of the year, it's not somewhere you're gonna have a real good time in the water. Add to that the nearly constant rain, the mid-60s summertime air temp, and a perpetual 20 mph wind, and all you're left with is pretty.

Luckily, it is _really_ pretty, so it all comes together in the end. We did a bit of shopping, a bit of eating, a bit of hiking, and a bit of sight-seeing. Good times were had, and now we're ready to face another month or two of 7-day work weeks of 18 hour days.

Which brings me to my point: don't ever think for a minute that being self-employed means you're on easy street. In actual fact, you usually work twice as hard as you would at a normal job, for half the money. Of course, any success is your success (just like any failure is your failure.) No one else can take the credit or the blame. It's all on you. The hardest thing about being self-employed is realizing that once in a while you literally _must_ stop. Otherwise you get irritable, burned out, and end up wondering what the point of it all is.

Words to the wise.

Man, I just watched the trailer for George Clooney's new movie, Good Night And Good Luck, about when Edward R. Murrow stood up to McCarthy. It looks absolutely fantastic. Check it.

Interesting that he shot it in black and white. The film takes on the look of a psycho-thriller, almost. I'll be first in line when this hits the theatre.

How the fuck did I miss this? And why didn't someone buy it for me? The streets of Mill City, Oregon _really_ need something like this to scare the fucking rednecks. And someone like me needs to be driving it.

Okay, I've decided to go where the wiles of creative fortune will take me, and work on the Scanalyzer record. At the rate we're going, this will almost certainly be the next Posi release.

The album, as you've no doubt determined by now, will be co-written and co-produced by Wade and myself. It is quite noisy. I don't know if Powernoise is the right genre, as it is a bit more musically sophisticated than the general offerings in that catagory, but it is heavy as hell, make no mistake. We made the basic tracks early last year, before DT started, in one marathon writing session. After that, we kind of put it aside, as DT, the Micronaut album, Atomica, The Big Move, and various other things competed for attention. However, with my mood lately, it seemed like an appropriate time to take another look at the content, and I've been steadily whipping it in to shape for the last couple weeks.

Anyways, cover art is on the way to being completed, and the album is about 50% together. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

I'm a fucking heel, I'll admit it. Wade's podcast is up and I didn't mention it here. Well, I'm mentioning it now, aren't I? Go there. Listen. Seriously.

Oh, yeah, there's a chunk of the new Scanalyzer up in that bitch, as well as some other tasties.

Here, and here you see the Leader Of The Free World writing a note to Condi Rice during his time at the UN today. Something tells me this isn't Photoshopped, since it's from Reuters.

I just picked this up off the Looper's Delight list. I don't know of the original source, so I just copied it here in its entirety. Nothing like formenting a little heated conversation:

Dear Red States...

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking just the Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.

We get the Statue of Liberty. We get Hollywood and Yosemite... You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom and Enron. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that the new country will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your politicians and evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with high morals.

Just to get you revved up for the coming ultra-partisan battles viz. NOLA and Judge Roberts.

Dear God, Bush's wildest wet dream is about to come true. Don't believe me?

Here's my favorite quote:

The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations.

Following that line of logic, under the guildines of the new doctrine, Bush would have been perfectly within his legal rights to nuke Iraq. That's some food for thought.

From Bill Maher's closing monologue, Friday night:

Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans…Maybe you're just not lucky!

That about sums it up, right there.

I can't figure out why these fucking cunts are needed here when the 82nd Airborne is on the ground. Are we paying for Blackwater to be in NOLA with our tax dollars? From Joel Johnson's blog. There's no god-damned way those guys should be walking around the streets of New Orleans with guns. The lawsuits that are going to come out of this situation are going to be amazing.

That said, you can't kind of help but feel bad for 'em. They're just hopped-up ex-jarheads on a Mission, and now the world is going to come crashing down on them, the first time one of them shoots a reporter or someone like Joel Johnson. (And it _will_ happen. These guys hunt for bear. They aren't equipped, mentally speaking, to deal with domestic security.)

I don't particularly care for Bill Maher; I usually watch his show, but sometimes his Libertarianism just rubs me the wrong way. And his monologue is predictably stupid every week. But I do like his New Rules, and the closing editorial. Last night was one for the record books; if you have a chance to catch it, the last Rule is something the fuck else.

The transcript will be here when they put it up, usually Monday.

I imagine some of you have seen this already. It's a Kodak Gallery slideshow, and a comprehensive one, of one person's experiences before, during, and after the storm. I suggest you go through the pictures one by one and read the captions rather than just auto-playing it. Quite a piece of work. (Stole from JWZ...)

I've had the hardest time working on music since this whole Thing went down. Every time I've booted up Nuendo, the only shit I can create basically turns in to powernoise. So I decided to go with the flow and work on some Scanalyzer tracks for the time being.

This is the maddest I can recall being at the Government in a long time. I was _really_ pissed at Bill Clinton when that whole shit went down, but I can't think of another time I got this mad at the Government itself. Usually I'm upset with the "moral majority" that voted this fucking choad in to office, but I don't really blame the administration. I mean, they're in charge, right?

But watching fuck-ups of this magnitude, and on our own soil, natch, well, I'm just fucking furious. The (lack of) value of nepotism is beginning to show; the current head of FEMA got the job by being a previous head of FEMA's roommate. The chief of staff and deputy chief of staff of FEMA got their jobs by being part of Bush's campaign. I got in an argument with a previous employer when Bush first took office. I asked how he could vote for someone who was demonstrably stupid, and he said that it wasn't so much Bush, but his "team" that he voted for.

I dunno. I blame Brown for actually taking on a job that turned out to be more than he was qualified to do, and I blame Bush's "team" for giving him the job in the first place. I still don't blame Bush. That's like getting mad at a cat for scratching your sofa. I mean, it's a cat. Cuddly but ultimately quite stupid.

Mike Fisher put up an excellent rundown of the behind-the-scenes at the White House. Go read.

Sometimes, you can't even make this shit up. I mean, seriously. Read this article about firemen from Utah who volunteered to work the disaster zone. Pay special attention to the final paragraph.

I think I've come to the conclusion that the buck stops with the President; that is to say that he is ultimately responsible for the abilities (or lack thereof) of the people he appoints to oversee various aspects of the Federal Government. Now, that said, it is becoming blatantly obvious who is at fault with all of this. A list of incidents. The first article is from FEMA's own website.

FEMA tells first responders not to respond first.

FEMA turns down Amtrak's offer of help

FEMA turns away experienced firefighters.

FEMA turns away Wal-Mart supply trucks.

FEMA stops Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel.

FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food.

FEMA won't let morticians enter New Orleans.

FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen floatila from delivering aid.

FEMA doesn't utilize 600-bed hospital ship provided by Navy.

FEMA turns down Chicago's massive offer of aid.

FEMA stops delivery of generators.

Even more here. I'm left to wonder exactly what FEMA is using, or what aid they are accepting. This is gone out of the realm of utter insanity in to, like, Dante territory. I just don't get it. If this guy is given a presidential medal of freedom after this, I swear to christ I'm moving out of this fucking country.

So they cancelled Daily Show for last week, and with good reason, I suspect. It wasn't a time for humor or sarcasm, but a time to get a grip on the magnitude of the disaster, and start dealing with it.

However, they're back on Monday, and I fail to see how Jon Stewart won't be just completely ruthless. This stuff is like manna from heaven for him; the Administration has made such a colossal cock-up of this whole thing that even normally pro-Bush organs like the Washington Post are calling him to the carpet. I am intrigued to see how a more liberal program like the Daily Show will take the administration to task.

Plus, now that we have a better understanding of what occured and how it could (should) have been done differently, humor is a good antidote to the general malign, I think. Just as it was after 9/11 and the Daily Show and Letterman began their broadcasts again. (Remember what a relief that was, even if you didn't watch those shows?)

In any case, Sean Carmack will post his story tomorrow, and we'll get an insider's view of what happened. Until then, I leave you with this.

I've proved once again that I can kill a dancefloor faster than anyone ever imagined. What I don't understand is as follows: I play Joy Division and everyone just stares, then the DJ after me, his first track is some current band that sounds _just_ like Joy Division, and it packs the floor. There's some wannabe goths out there, I just want to warn you.

Anyways, Greg and Melissa Royal proved once again that they are certifiably insane. I think that Melissa kind of tricked Greg in to driving to Portland from Sacramento, by implying that SMG was playing. Poor guy.

I'll return to my ranting shortly, but I'm taking a breather. (It's nice to have that luxery.) I would like to say that General Honore should be president. I don't care if he's a Republican or a Democrat. That guy is _all_ business, and knows how to treat people and get a hold of a situation. Unlike a certain group of "leaders" I could name.

Those of you that are distinctly of the Old School may remember Sean Carmack, who used to post here quite a bit. He moved to NO a couple years ago, and I totally forgot. He wrote this morning to say the following:

New Orleans is dead... I just can't believe what I saw and had to do to escape. The news is only finally starting to catch up on what was going on there.

He will put up his story in a couple days, once he gets his act together. Are there any other newsgroupers from the affected area that I'm forgetting?

Coulda seen this coming a mile away: Halliburton hired for cleanup.

Don't forget, if you're in the Portland area, Lisa and I will be at Noir tonight for the fabulous Atomica release party. I'm given to understand I'll be the DJ for at least an hour or two.

Mapquest info.

I just want to say up front that (a) I can't beatmix for shit, and (b) I don't spin any of that new-fangled craptacular bullshit that passes for "industrial" these days. Gang of Four? I'm your guy. You wanna hear EN's Headcleaner? I have four different versions. The Spermacide mix of Dogs Of Lust? Gotcha covered. But my collection is distinctly lacking when it comes to Apop/VNV/whatever.

Muuhhahahahaahaha!!!!

But sometimes it helps. Maybe we don't talk like it all the time, but this is what the voice in our head sounds like.

As it turns out, NBC is airing their Red Cross telethon without a 7-second delay. I figured this out right about the time that Kanye West said "George Bush does not like black people."

Just heard from Bart over at WTII. Our friends Cut Rate Box are from New Orleans. Greg, the lead singer, got out okay with his wife, but lost his house, all his gear, pretty much everything. Clint, the other half, lives in Boston; however, he is from NO, and his family lost their business and house.

Great. It's just come out that the director of FEMA was so good at his last job, lead council for the Association of Arabian Horse Owners, that he was fired for gross incompetency. How did this guy come to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency? That will be an interesting conversation in the days to come.

MoveOn has made a page for people able to offer housing to victims of the hurricane. We offered up our spare bedroom, and you should too. Go there.

Okay, I've got something special for you, a little something to brighten your day. The second Posi Perfect Album Side is up at the kPOSI site. I did this one, and it contains six songs that have never been at all, by anyone. There is a just-completed Micronaut remix, two unreleased SMG tracks, an unreleased Scanalyzer track (with vocals, natch...) and two, count 'em, TWO songs from the upcoming Chris Randall collection. It is a 29 meg MP3, and I explain each track in detail. Go get it.

Rich Deacon sent me a couple links this morning which, if you're a total info junkie, you can mainline. (My info veins are getting a little spotty. I'm gonna have to get these ones between my toes or something. And yes, that's the nastiest metaphor I think I've ever come up with here.)

First up, we have a NOLA Info Wiki. I'm all wikied out, truth be told, but if you scroll down a bit, you'll see live feeds for the radios of NOLA police, FEMA, and a bunch of other ineffectual entities. You can listen to any number of govermental agencies be confused in real time. Hit it.

This second link is a pair of channels. The first is the National Guard's B (non-tactical) channel, and the second is the NOPD main frequency.

(It should be noted that these streams are getting a bit of traffic, so you'll be lucky to get a feed during the daylight hours.)

This one is interesting. It's a LiveJournal blog by an employee of DirectNIC. He is, interestingly enough, a Crisis Manager for that company. He and his team stayed on in NO to provide IT management during the hurricane, and they have inexplicably managed to keep a data line open to the outside world during all of this. His blog is illuminating.

And for the end of my morning link fest, I give you this Reuters article. I don't think that many Americans fundementally grasp the situation we're in as a nation because of this, and this article may help that fact sink in. To throw myself a metaphorical life preserver, our economy is a very large ship. It has just taken a hole at the waterline roughly equal to 5% of our GDP. It won't sink, but for the forseeable future, it is FUCKED.

Yeah, it may be the major mouthpiece of the Liberal Biased Media, but there's only one paper of record, and it had the following to say; these will be in tomorrow's Times. (Of course, you need to register to read.)

The Krugman op-ed is particularly scathing. He reiterates my point of a couple days ago, with the following: "The administration has, by all accounts, treated [FEMA] like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals."

The other, and more shocking, piece of journalism is the front-page above-the-fold story, which you can read here. In particular, I again quote the Louisiana Director of the Dept. Of Homeland Security. He drops the following bomb, saying that the entire operation has been "carried on the backs of the little guys for four goddamn days, the rest of the goddamn nation can't get us any resources for security."

There's some food for thought.

From Reuters: Bush administration funding cuts forced federal engineers to delay improvements on the levees, floodgates and pumping stations that failed to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, agency documents showed on Thursday.

From Ashville Times: Remember Road Warrior?

Interesting to note that, as Laz pointed out, Condi Rice had the time to take in a Broadway show yesterday. Dick Cheney is _still_ on vacation in Jackson Hole, WY, and may come back next week at some point, and Terry Ebbert, the Louisiana Director of Homeland Security has this to say:

"This is a national emergency. This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

I know there are a couple people on the board that are playing the role of apologist, but quite frankly, when this is over (if it is ever over), there better be heads on pikes in front of the fucking White House. If the directors of FEMA, Homeland Security, and DoD don't lose their god-damned jobs over this... oh, wait... they won't. Of course. Because incompetency is rewarded in government service.

Man, I don't want to politicize this fucking mess, but there's really no way around it. Check this: FEMA has thoughtfully provided a list of charitable organizations to donate to in this time of crisis. First on the list is Red Cross, a (more or less) secular organization. Look at #2. Wonder what that is? So did I. Operation Blessing is the outreach arm of Pat Robertson's organization. How 'bout that? Could you think of about 750 organizations that at least pay lip service to being secular that would be better entitled to that money? I can.

The Onion has put their entire archives online. Which is unnerving in the extreme, mainly because they're unusually prescient sometimes. Can I get a witness? (Note that article was written in 2001.)

This link is especially for Dave, who was pondering how other nations might offer help in the wake of this. Make sure to read the whole thing. Then read this, from KOS:

On tonight's news, CTV (Canadian TV) said that support was offered from Canada. Planes are ready to load with food and medical supplies and a system called "DART" which can provide fresh water and medical supplies is standing by. Department of Homeland Security as well as other U.S. agencies were contacted by the Canadian government requesting permission to provide help. Despite this contact, Canada has not been allowed to fly supplies and personnel to the areas hit by Katrina. So, everything here is grounded. Prime Minister Paul Martin is reportedly trying to speak to President Bush tonight or tomorrow to ask him why the U.S. federal government will not allow aid from Canada into Louisiana and Mississippi. That said, the Canadian Red Cross is reportedly allowed into the area.

Canadian agencies are saying that foreign aid is probably not being permitted into Louisiana and Mississippi because of "mass confusion" at the U.S. federal level in the wake of the storm.