nathandemick.com

Whoop, changing it again!

I can’t seem to ever settle on a site design. The new one is here. Update your links?

No comments · Written by Nathan at 12:00 am ·

HHGTTG

I saw the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie tonight, and illegally as well, I might add. Yes, I desecrated the memory of Douglas Adams by pirating the posthumous movie edition of the somewhat-beloved first part of the (five part) trilogy. In reality, I’m glad I didn’t pay to watch it. If I hadn’t read the books and listened to the radio show, I would have had no idea what was going on, and why anything was anything in that disjointed movie. I feel sorry for those people going in who hadn’t experienced Hitchhiker’s Guide in another media format; I would imagine that nothing in the movie made sense to them.

I must give at least some credit: the flick starts strong, staying at least somewhat close to the radio program/book, with Arthur’s home and the earth getting demolished, Arthur and Ford’s subsequent mishaps on the Vogon ship, and their rescue by the Heart of Gold. Here is the first real introduction to the Zaphod Beeblebrox character, who is played really quite well (for the first half of the movie, anyway). Unfortunately, Trillian also makes her appearance, which marks a continuous dragging point: the actress is really, REALLY bad.

From there the movie is locked in a downwards spiral: entirely new scenes are added, which go absolutely nowhere. About half an hour is devoted to Zaphod losing his second head (which somehow makes him remedial). Trillian gets captured by Vogons only to be saved again in a pointless fashion. Zaphod has to get some kind of “point of view” gun from the computer Deep Thought, which also has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the movie. Did I mention that the movie was locked in a downward spiral? It gets worse.

In addition to all the pointless additions (which don’t even have the merit of being funny), the LURVE between Arthur and Trillian is made a central plot point throughout the movie. It just seems impossible for people to create a movie with no horribly written love-interest subplot. I really don’t know how much of the script was written by Douglas Adams, but if it was his decision to include that tripe, I’m not sure I have the cognative capacity to understand his rationale.

The movie ends in a totally pointless matter. No major plot points are resolved; in fact, there is no plot. The only resolution is that Arthur and Trillian are now in love and happy. I know that Douglas Adams couldn’t write a cohesive story very well, but this movie takes it one step lower. I read Douglas Adams for the humourous writing style; take that away, and you don’t have much left.

When the movie ended, I felt pretty bad. It was bright and flashy with interesting special effects, but there was no substance. One good point was a well-played Marvin, voiced by Alan Rickman. Other than that, however, the movie was mostly a disappointment. Let the viewer beware.

3 comments · Written by Nathan at 1:06 am ·

my solution to a moral dilemma

I went into work today feeling the hatred towards mankind. Thursdays are long days for me, and I don’t have Friday to look forward to, since I also work on Saturday. I also managed to come down with a mild cold, which didn’t help my mood. It seems that my recent sicknesses have been stress-induced; this time, I think traveling across Japan for two days didn’t help my blood pressure at all. To top it all off, I went in today and discovered that I accidentally skipped teaching a class last week. Now, it’s not like I totally blew off some major class. I had 15 minutes of teaching time in a 1 and 1/2 hour class; they basically threw in that 15 minutes just to be tools. The Japanese teacher probably didn’t even KNOW I was supposed to be in there, and I sure forgot about it. However, the upshot of all this is that I left work 12 minutes early, which means that I have over 10 minutes of “lateness” for this month, the consequences of which is that I don’t get my 10,000 yen bonus for April. A few months ago, I resolved that if for any reason I lost my bonus, I would also take a few sick days that month. The rationale behind that is that if you use a sick day, you lose the bonus, but if the bonus is already lost, then sick days equal paid holidays.

If I wasn’t such a moral person, I would have walked right back out the door this morning, claiming sickness, because like I said, Thursdays suck. But I felt kinda guilty about all the students: there would be absolutely no one to take my place. I then decided to take Saturday off, because I really only teach one class that day, the rest of the time is filled with “office hours,” where I do absolutely nothing. Even after I decided that, however, I still felt guilty. I’d been reading bits of the Bible that talk about how you should basically suck it down when dealing with employers, even if they are morons. The idea, I guess, being that you show that you have a properly Christ-like attitude, you’ll eventually get your reward, etc. etc. So, deliberately screwing over my employer by calling in sick (even though they screw me every chance they get) seemed immoral.

At the same time, though, if I don’t skip work, I get nothing. I have to WORK! If I do skip, I get a nice, uninterrupted 7-day vacation, and there’s no downside because I already lost my monthly bonus. So, to solve this dilemma, here’s what I did. I decided that if I was accepted for that position in Osaka, I’d work on Saturday, because then I’d leave the darn school in two weeks. If I didn’t get it, then I would skip, because I’d be all bitter and whatnot, for not getting a technology-related job, again.

I’m skipping work on Saturday :P

5 comments · Written by Nathan at 9:26 pm ·

More ways to waste time

bash.org (I should be sleeping)
2channel (one of these days I’ll wade through this)

No comments · Written by Nathan at 1:26 am ·