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| Monday, September 26, 2005 04:58 PM |
| Rapt, Grackle, and Fop |
 by Fëanor |
- Happy birthday, poppy! You're my favorite lady.
- Obligatory weekend roundup:
- Saturday poppy and I went to my Aunt and Uncle's house somewhere in Pennsylvania (my geography is a bit sketchy) and spent some time with my family. We ate food, celebrated some birthdays, talked, cooed at bloginator's baby, and then cooed at videos of bloginator's baby. My Uncle also took my Dad out and showed him the engines of all of the cars that were present. I'm not sure what that was about.
Anyway, one of the subjects that came up was "Lost," so naturally we talked about "the numbers." For those who don't follow "Lost," allow me to sum up (as there is too much to explain): there's this series of numbers which keeps coming up in the show, and they seem to be cursed or have some kind of magical power. This morning, my cousin sent me an email forward (which has also apparently popped up on numerous message boards) discussing the possible meaning of the numbers. It's strange stuff, and I suspect it's hogwash, as a Google search could not confirm the existence of the man it mentions, or his theory (although it did, God help us, turn up a blog on the numbers). I will reprint it here in its entirety (typos and all) for your perusal in the hopes that one of you will be able to debunk or confirm it:I recently found an interesting natuarlly occuring thoery found in our world that states everyone has a mirror image somewhere in the world. You may have heard of this. Its called Roussau's genetic mirror theory, and I must say it is very interesting. Roussau's genetic mirror theory says that everyone in the world has an exact twin somewhere, however according to the theory you never encounter this person, by laws of probablitly and other natuaral occuring phemnomen. Its the theory that was devised by a French Mathematician named Marseille Roussau in the year 1988. He used a series of numbers to explain his theory. Now I know you're not going to believe this but here goes.
4 8 15 16 23 42
Let me explain...
The 4 stands for 4 degrees of separation (not 6 or 7 as commonly stated.) Roussau believed that everyone in the world was connected by four different people. So in theory could meet yourself by using four different people connected to you. Example: Your brother's, boss's, neighbor nephew, knows your mirror. Hard to believe, I know but keep reading.
The 8 stands for the eight continent, or the only place in the world where you could meet your mirror. He calculated it to be somewhere in the south pacific. Now we know its not actually as large as the other contintents but its used figurtively because everyone in all 7 continents could meet there mirror on the 8th universal continent.
The 15 stands for the chances of you acually meeting yourself on this place, as in 15 out of 4,815,162,342. Look at the second set "815." Ring any bells? Interesting huh?
The 16 stands for the maximum amount of people that could encounter thier twin all at the same time. Think about the number of main characters.
The 23 is the number of years apart your twin and yourself are. You are not the same age as your twin. By chance and probablity it takes 23 years exactly for the same genes that made you to be connected again to form another you.
The 42 stands for the maximimum number of years your twin and yourself can be alive at the same time. However people do die at diffferent times so thats why everyone isn't dead at 75. For example my twin was born on Sept. 6 2003 b/c i was born on Spet. 6 1980. Now that doesn't mean i will die in the year 2045, I could, but its not set in stone. My twin could die when he is 16, and then the whole thing starts over again.
This is all very complicated and I don't know how well I explained it but the connections with the show are too coinidental to not be real.
Roussau and his team (wife, included) went to the 8th continent. You can figure out how they died and why by the numbers and equations. It also fits with every character. You can predict when they will die. There are others on the island who are twins of the survivors, but have been there 23 years longer.
There is a book Roussau wrote 16 years ago in 1988 when he came up with the theory. Thats where I got it from.
- On Sunday, I dropped poppy off at her book club meeting, scarfed down a quick lunch, and then headed up to northern Jersey to catch a nearly empty screening of Transporter 2 with some friends. Here's a tip for you, something I've learned from bitter experience: don't see Transporter 2. It's really, really dumb.
I know, I know. You're saying, "Of course it is, you fool! What were you expecting??" The answer is: more. Something that was at least as good as, and possibly even better than, the original film, which itself was, admittedly, quite ridiculous. But Transporter 2 fails to deliver even on these low expectations. The screenplay, though apparently composed by two grown men, sounds like something that was written by a thirteen year old boy with emotional problems and a poor grasp of English. The dialogue is stilted, clumsy, and just horrendous, from beginning to end. It doesn't help that all of the acting is equally stilted, clumsy, and horrendous (I'll except Jason Statham and Alessandro Gassman from this criticism, as they do all right given the circumstances, but I certainly will not except Matthew Modine, who fails to even cough well). The only scene in the entire movie that is believable is the one during the opening credits, in which Jason Statham is just sitting in his car, waiting and breathing. Btw, in case you thought they might be exempt, the story and characters are also ridiculous, overdone, and cliche.
Buried amongst this towering pile of garbage, however, are a couple of rare gems, in the form of fantastically choreographed and executed fighting/action sequences, the best one being a scene involving a hose which I'd actually already seen on the internet a week or so ago. There are far too few of these scenes, however; the final climactic battle with the ultimate bad guy doesn't even count, as it mainly consists of Jason Statham and this other guy (who was established as a powerful sword fighter earlier in the movie apparently just to tease and disappoint us, as he never actually gets into a sword fight with anybody) rolling around for a while in an impossibly out of control airplane.
Even the lanky girl running around shooting things in her underwear is a disappointment, as she's too weird-looking and too poor an actor to actually be very attractive. So, unless you have an extremely high tolerance for incredibly stupid action films, give this one a pass. Just download the fight scenes off the website and you'll have seen most of the best stuff in the movie.
- On my way up to the movie, and on my way back, I listened to the Eagles game on the radio. This was a surreal, tense, dramatic, and painful experience. The opening of the game was nightmarish, the ending miraculously joyful. As Akers limped forward to kick the winning field goal, and then collapsed in a screaming, weeping heap on the ground, I even shed a tear or two. Akers is football; Akers is metal.
- I haven't seen Serenity yet--in fact, I haven't even finished watching the last DVD of "Firefly" yet--but I'm still pretty excited about the news that most of the cast is signed on for two more movies. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean there will be two more movies; it just means the same folks will be in them if those films end up coming into existence. Let's all cross our fingers and wait for those box office numbers...
- In other Whedon news, there's further rumors on a possible upcoming Spike movie, courtesy Amy Acker (Fred on "Angel"). She says Whedon told her the movie will be about Spike and her character Illyria from "Angel." I think the appropriate response to this news is, "Nnnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooo!!!" Some people I know hate what Whedon did with Spike's character, what with the wussifying and the bringing back to life and such. Me, I was willing to go with it. But I really hated the character of Illyria. She went from being a monstrous, unstoppably evil god-like organism (which was boring and lame; how many of those has Joss Whedon introduced now?), to Arnold Schwarzenegger from Terminator 2--a heartless alien being learning the strange and humorous ways of the humans. Gack! I'll admit there were some scenes with Illyria that worked, but her storyline as a whole was just stupid and hackneyed and dull. I really hope Whedon doesn't waste a movie on her.
- The Penny Arcade guys took one of those high class shopping magazines that they give you in airplanes and did their crazy thing with it. The results are predictably amusing.
- Speaking of Penny Arcade, don't miss today's news posts, either. They include some wonderful stories about Harlan Ellison. If you've read any of his fiction, you probably already suspect he's a ridiculously self-important windbag; turns out that's true. (To be fair, the man does have some good ideas, many of which have been turned into pretty excellent TV shows and movies. But he's also an awful writer.)
- More Katamari! Wired News has good things to say about the sequel to Katamari Damacy, We Love Katamari. Those two games are two of the most important reasons that I keep going on about needing to own a PS3. poppy and I are very much looking forward to rolling all kinds of things up into big balls. We Love Katamari even adds some fun new challenges into the mix, like racing, building a snowman, and helping a sumo wrestler to get bigger by rolling him into food. Sweet.
- I was skeptical when Kung Fu Monkey linked to a serialized/blogged novel called Dingo. I was skeptical because he said it was written by a friend of his, and because it was being blogged. How good could it really be?
But I gave it a chance, and now I'm hooked. It's strange, well written, funny, and mighty intriguing. Unfortunately, the RSS feed on it doesn't seem to work, but KFM's RSS works fine, and he always lets us know when a new chapter is posted, so there you go.
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