I’m starting to enjoy living in the Cultural Apocalypse

Ok, so this is the least original post ever, as this clip has to be everywhere on the Internet, but wow.

I mean, wow.

ICYMI: The Today Show plays Rock Band! @ Yahoo! Video

The Day After Tomorrow

It’s been a long time, but for no real reason I decided to watch this movie last night. It’s fantastic. The weather is the bad guy. How awesome is that? It doesn’t even try to make sense. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a 15 year old, despite clearly being in his mid-20s. Again.

I know it’s an old movie and this isn’t news, but I really think its awfulness will stand the test of time. I think my favourite thing about the movie is that it somberly points out the folly of rejecting the knowledge humankind has gained from science and then takes incredible liberties to make the plot more interesting.

In fact, for a humanities-riddled luddite like me, it was more interesting to read reviews like this one than actually watch the film.

And Jake Gyllenhaal can outrun a tidal wave in water up to his chest. LL Cool J once outran a great white shark in water up to his chest. They should have a race.

A short little post. I miss my camera.

I miss my camera because I saw a really good band tonight, and I was reduced to taking a picture with my four year old (i.e. ancient, apparently) phone. But I can’t even get that photograph onto my computer because the infrared on my phone and that on my computer don’t jive for some reason.

Maybe it’s just meant for an apple remote?

Incidentally, my affection for the Planet of the Apes movies has been greatly enhanced by a forgiving nature. A nature that continues despite the utter rubbish contained in the sequels, particularly.

The Dark Knight…

… is incredible. Wow. How insightful. It was so good I’m now going to watch Planet of the Apes sequels, just to try and balance out my universe.

Another big week ahead, and I don’t have much plans, other than stealing an idea and reading crazy amounts of books, as usual.

In other John goes to the cinema on his own when Sunday is feeling slow news, the new trailer for Watchmen is crazy awesome. Thank you Zack Snyder.

I would go to a cinema just to see this trailer on the big screen again.

Though, if you watch it on the youtube site and not just here, you’ll see comment bubbles in the video itself at the start. What’s that about? Don’t do this, youtube, for crying out loud. Viddler does it reasonably well, but don’t get carried away.

The most worrying thing for me personally about this trailer is that it makes me think I could stop despising Billy Corgan and go back to liking the Pumpkins again. I think too many 90s singalongs are affecting my brain in a strange way.

I didn’t write about E3 all week, but…

I really, really want to play Rage, Far Cry 2, and if I don’t get to play Animal Crossing: City Folk in the next twelve months, I might freak out.

Also, best video ever:

Apple, there’s only so much more of this I can take.

I hate this guy:

Apple and I have an unhealthy relationship.  The company makes products, which I buy.  These products invariably break shortly after the basic warranty runs out, at which point I go ahead and replace it with the updated model.  I am a sucker.  I am the whitest of the white.  I am Apple’s customer base, personified.  They dish it, I take it.

I got an iPod Touch pretty early on, and so I paid for an update so I could use Mail and similar applications once they decided to make it work for the iPod Touch as well as the iPhone.  I ended up being fairly grateful for that, as I used the services a lot.  But now I’m done.

Apple wants to charge me $9.95 to update my iPod to 2.0, so that I can use applications, essentially.  Considering the fact that the applications cost money themselves, I am less than impressed.  It’s not like the iPod Touch was cheap to begin with.

Apple does this crap knowing that the average Apple customer will just put up with it, but why should we?  I was looking forward to Monkey Ball on an iPod and using it as a remote for my computer (I’m one of those people) but I can’t look at myself in the mirror if I hand over a penny for a SOFTWARE UPDATE THAT I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DOWNLOAD FOR FREE.

It’s disgusting, and I’m getting sick of it.  I’m kind of stuck with Apple computers now, and there isn’t an MP3 device that realistically rivals the iPod, but I’m not going to get nickel and dimed like this anymore.  I still love you Apple, but you suck.

Who likes to rock the party? We like to rock the party!

Travis doing his thing. from John Harney on Vimeo.

Come on blog, you know I WANT to hang out with you!

So, I haven’t written on my blog in way, way too long.  First, I had computer issues, but since then something else has happened.  My blog has become way too jealous, and it’s damaging our relationship.  I guess it’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time with different things recently.  It’s not that I still don’t need to write on my blog, but work is important too.  And though my blog will glare at me accusingly, I still have to come in to work and face this:

And this:

My blog wanted us to have lunch, but I really don’t have the time, and more of the books might get angry.  I fear them more.

At this point, I think my face is turning into a book.

I have to have gotten through two hundred of these by the end of this year.  Why doesn’t my blog understand?  I value the relationship but work is important too.  Le sigh!  Why must it be so hard?

It feels nice to feel foreign.

My time in America is regularly punctuated by a sudden realization of the obvious.

I’m in America.

It happens all the time on the motorway, driving past these huge signs for fast food joints and ‘family restaurants’ reaching up into the sky.  It happens whenever I drive past a car mechanic business that chose to use the word ‘lube’ in its title.  It happens when I get in my car and realize that I drive EVERYWHERE now.

This weekend just past was chock full of such moments.  My personal favourite was my unwitting recreation of every horror movie I’ve ever seen involving young people and a map.  It never dawned on me that sitting in my well-lit car in an abandoned petrol station in East Texas with nothing but my mapquest print-out and an innocent look was tempting fate.  Luckily for me I made it out alive.

The following day I traipsed around the only supermarket in said East Texas town with a fellow reveler asking loudly if he thought they had champagne.  He replied in the negative, I got my miniature football helmet from a vending machine and we left.

So not only am I being Americanized, but I’m turning into an obnoxious city person as well.  What fun.

——–

My blog is back!!  I have a computer again!!  Life is good!!

Broken computer update.

It’s still dead.

I still don’t have a computer.

It still sucks.