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Patrick Kaze

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Sexy optical illusion [May. 22nd, 2009|05:09 pm]

HardTime :: Illusion from ze frank on Vimeo.

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(no subject) [May. 4th, 2009|02:17 pm]
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(no subject) [Apr. 30th, 2009|11:10 am]
A weird little story I'm surprised I never heard:

Stalin’s youngest child (and only daughter) caused an international sensation when she defected to the United States in 1967.

In 1970, Frank Lloyd Wright’s widow became convinced that Alliluyeva was the reincarnation of her own daughter, also named Svetlana, who had died in a car crash in 1946. Wright persuaded Alliluyeva to visit her, and encouraged her to marry her daughter's widower, William Wesley Peters. Alliluyeva agreed. The couple separated after 20 months, and divorced in 1973.

At left, Svetlana with her father in Moscow in 1935.
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What you could be doing today [Apr. 10th, 2009|12:10 pm]
You could consider seeing Observe and Report. Or, you could just read:



The Legend Of the Mall Ninja


Also, someone said that my Tac Team doesn’t get training. Not true. We meet at the range every night and shoot 400 rounds each through weapons that closely resemble our duty setup. We also practice unarmed combat. I am a Master of three martial arts including ninjitsu, which means I can wear the special boots to climb walls. I don’t think any of you are working as hard as I am to be prepared. I asked a serious question about tactical armor and I wanted a serious response. If you want to laugh at somebody, try laughing at the sheep out there who go to the mall unarmed trusting in me to stand guiard over their lives like a God
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My week, summarized [Apr. 3rd, 2009|03:29 pm]
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On a full weekend, on time, on pie [Mar. 10th, 2009|04:14 pm]
Friday night: pub run with billiards, and later dancing at Mighty. Bedtime: 2:30am

Saturday: helping [info]colonelhandsome move into his awesome new digs, with late-night Watchmen showing after that. Bedtime: 2am

Sunday: challenging kung fu class, then long walk to store and back with heavy bags, then using contents of said bags to start making pies for my work group
*. Bedtime: 2am. Also: DST, ouch.

Monday: long day at work, 'craft raid until midnight, baking the rest of pies afterwards. Bedtime: 4 am.

Tuesday: pie eating with work group, muscle soreness, utter exhaustion, and the realization that I am a little older than I was the last time I had this same realization. Got me some pies, though.

*The pie thing: last year around April we were discussing a major update to the servers. The initial target date was the end of the year, which I thought was kinda nuts, and in a moment of rashness I said I would bake pies for the whole team (12 devs, 8 testers, 4 PMs, assorted others) if we hit it. Well, we shipped it, just barely, though it wasn't clear until a few weeks ago that it would really stick. This is why I am tired and currently have 3 pies in my office (2 apple 1 cherry) and 3 more in the fridge (pumpkin, chocolate custard, banana cream).
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Another awesome movie scene [Mar. 9th, 2009|02:03 pm]
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The past 48 hours, in a picture [Feb. 12th, 2009|03:34 pm]


(I'm the crab)



In not-entirely-unrelated news, next week is Crab Week. Next week, I am the sledgehammer, and life will be my melted butter, and crab will be the ... crab.
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Trapped in the graph [Jan. 28th, 2009|04:10 pm]
If you read only one sociological analysis - infused with literary commentary and festooned with crisp graphs - of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet today, it should be this one.

The graph has a very dense core and two peripheral structures. The structure on the right consists of Pimp Luscious, Bishop Craig, Reverend Mosley James Evan, and the Peace Within Choir. While entertaining in of itself (why is the pimp in church in the first place? and did you notice the blind prostitute?) the scene involving these characters is as peripheral to the story as it is to the network.


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(no subject) [Dec. 25th, 2008|12:38 am]
Back in the deep south from whence i came. Already missing friends but glad to be with family.

My uncle Jim now has a job in a Bass Pro Shop, and either it is a poorly named store, or bass fishing has become a more wide-ranging activity. highlights of their holiday catalog include:

- Sega Bass Fishing for the Wii. This was featured on the catalog's cover. Sign of the times.

- sig sauer semiautomatic pistols with changeable grips.

- novelty wall plaque: "old hookers welcome"

The weather has taken a turn for the weird. It is t-shirt warm outside, and rainy. In the summer this is tornado weather.

A very merry christmas to you.
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things I don't get asked [Dec. 12th, 2008|03:43 pm]
Behold! A meme I just made up

At work you are known as that weird guy/girl who: opens the little creamer thimbles and tests them individually before adding them to my coffee. They go ... stale, I guess. They're actual half-and-half, but pasteurized, and preseved who-knows-how. So they don't go bad, but they do develop this really chalky offtaste that even in small quantites can render my coffee undrinkable. So I test! Failure rate is around 40%.
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please, chris dane owens, shine on me [Dec. 10th, 2008|05:52 pm]
This is surely the greatest music video ever directed (by a former special effects director, made for a musician whose dreams covered your Trapper Keeper).



Awesome!
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Anger management [Dec. 10th, 2008|11:32 am]
My OLD method of dealing with road rage: barking at the offending driver, on the theory that since road rage comes from a primal place, giving explicit voice to those primitive urges will both soothe the mind and make me feel ridiculous enough to not respond with more bad driving.

My NEW method of dealing with road rage: yelling "Merry Christmas!" at them. It's surprisingly satisfying. Not sure if it will work past the 25th.
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An exemplary Bond vs. an existentially challenged Batman. [Dec. 2nd, 2008|01:58 pm]
Currently waiting on a memory leak test to complete. Time to let out some punchy thoughts on movies.



No Q, no Moneypenny? No grotesque gimmicky villian? An underwhelming Bond girl?

Alright, I'll grant you that last one, but who are you people who want to go back to the submersible Lotuses and the entendres so over-the-(Onna)top that they don't even deserve to be called double? What part of "franchise reboot" did you not understand? Seemingly every year they remaster, recollect, and recommentary a DVD box set of the Bond ouvre. Go watch those. In fact, just don't look to the theaters anyway, because if they made another Die Another Day it would only see light as a direct-to-DVD release.

Quantum of Solace is pretty much just a bonus feature for Casino Royale. That still makes it a better Bond movie than most. A better movie movie than most. Daniel Craig stalking exotic locations like a panther. Perfectly good exotic cars destroyed in perfectly good chase sequences. Glamour, mystery, betrayal.

The plot in the second half of the movie might be opaque if you're not up on your Bolivian water politics ... but then, you probably should be. The fight over water privatization in Cochabamba is a case study in the perils of the issue. This century is going to see a lot of Cochabambas.

But I digress. Bottom line: Quantum of Solace is a better movie than The Dark Knight Returns.


whatwhatWHAT?

Yeah, I said it. Dark Knight - mild spoilers ahead- tried to transcend the logic of comic book movies, but wound up undermining itself. The movie dares to ask, as Frank Miller's graphic novel did, whether the Joker only exists because Batman exists, and whether or not we'd be better off without them. But the urgency, the sheer reality of the violence, makes the question more real. The judge's assassination early in the movie sets a brutal tone; the panicked evacuation of Manhattan cements it. The Joker wasn't Batman's foil, he was Batman's curse upon the world, a curse with a very high body count. In a more comic-booky movie ... no biggie. In this movie? Too much.

And then you add in that final bit with the cell phones, and put a heavy dollop of moral ambiguity on the whole technology, as if ambiguity were something the movie needed more of. Besides, it robs the climactic battle of its moral urgency when he spends much of it fighting misinformed, well-intentioned cops.

Look, Batman navigates a world of moral ambiguity, but he's still above it. Though tormented by inner doubt, he's still the answer, not the question. Dark Knight turned him into the question, from everyone's perspective: the cops', the public's, the audience's, and his own.

Also: the cowl looked clumsy, like he was trying to armor his face. That's why he wears a target on his chest. Also: not nearly enough time spent just being Batman, slipping through shadows and punching people in the face. Also: when thinking about lost loves, Batman doesn't moon, he broods.

In summation: Bond is more Bond than ever. Batman is less Batman than could be hoped for.
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and yes, there would be monkeys [Nov. 20th, 2008|12:05 pm]
My dream architecture is heavily integrated with the natural environment. I want cities with elevated walkways so that forest can live below. Every roof should be a living roof, and the border with the wild should be at least as near as the nearest window, if not closer.

Sometimes I fantasize about a different path of technology; what if we'd mastered plant breeding, then genetics, long before mettalurgy? We would grow houses from the ground, and everyday objects really would grow on trees.

And I'd live in a place like this

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The deadliest color [Nov. 19th, 2008|02:18 pm]
Presenting the real trailer

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ah, the umami of delayed vindication [Nov. 11th, 2008|01:21 pm]
To Mrs. Abernathy, my AP Biology teacher: I told you so.

In a study published in the journal Nature in 2006, a team of scientists reported that receptors for the basic tastes are found in distinct cells, and that these cells are not localized but spread throughout the tongue. That said, other studies suggest that some parts may be more sensitive to certain flavors, and that there may be differences in the way men and women detect sour, salty and bitter flavors.

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I wonder if they've been saying it when discussing the election [Nov. 10th, 2008|03:47 pm]
I'm belatedly typing up notes from my trip.

Driving through CA highways on the way to Bakersfield, I scanned the radio for NPR and instead found many Christian stations occupying the same end of the dial. One caught my ear for a few minutes, during which I heard this PSA, which I swear I am typing up as verbatim as possible.

"Do you think about the Second Coming? These are difficult times, and when you and are family are talking at the dinner table, a lot of hard things get discussed. Maybe your daughter needs expensive dental work. Maybe your son has been hanging around with the wrong crowd. Maybe there are layoff rumors at work. These are serious issues, but always remember that in the long run it won't matter, because Christ will return in glory and establish a heavenly kingdom. So when you finish these hard conversations, always close with the words 'And Then Jesus Will Come For Us. Amen.'"
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The elation [Nov. 6th, 2008|04:36 pm]
One promising president forward, one ugly proposition backwards.

But Tuesday night there was joy and camaraderie, friends and I toasting to hope. My street was quiet, but my step was light, my belly full of homemade rum raisin apple pie.

I still know that Obama is a politician, and a Chicago one at that. The best we can hope for is that he will achieve admirable results; I suspect we will not want to examine his means too closely. But that hope is what it's all about, the reason we all go insane every 4 years, the idea that This Time It Will Be Different. It never is, but it always is, in ways you didn't expect. That's progress.

On Prop 8 - the fight continues. I'll still come to your wedding, whatever the state thinks it is. At least we have a good idea of where the battle is now, because it's not the courts, not anymore.

Meantime, a few messages via ZeFrank:



... and a map showing county-by-county vote balances, adjusted for population:

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and many more! [Oct. 31st, 2008|11:22 am]
Happy birthday [info]schoonergirl!

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