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Do all Asians look alike to you? Take the Test and find out. Here’s an interesting fact about me. I was almost perfect with the women, and almost completely screwed up the men. I guess it’s all what you pay attention to. Anyway, I split the ticket for 9 out of 18 which puts me just slightly above normal.

So, TiVo recorded Gilmore Girls for me last night. And, that’s good because I feel like Gilmore Girls is one of the few really good shows on right now (although I am sort of getting into Lost).

The thing is, I get it off of satellite, and there was a crazy amount of rain here in Southern California. Rain means rain fade. I lost signal, and I didn’t get like 15 or 20 minutes of the show recorded.

Arghhhhhhh!!!!!!

So annoying! But, fortunately I live in the time of the internet where content is never more than five or six clicks away. OK, actually, it was a little more than that away. I was pretty sure somebody would have posted a torrent for the show, but first I had to find it. I tried a few Google searches with predictably bad results. I knew there was this one site out there that catalogs all that stuff *Cough*SuprNova.org*Cough*, but I couldn’t remember the name of it. That meant even more searches to try to dredge it up.

Finally, I find a seed for the show, and I start downloading it, and it says it’s going to take 100 hours. 100 hours? For 1 hour of TV? WTF internet?! I started, and then I found another seed that was only going to take 8 hours, so I started that one, and then I went to bed. I woke up and still didn’t have the full show. I had to wait another hour+.

Really, we should be able to get these things a lot faster than this shouldn’t we? I mean don’t get me wrong. It’s great that we can get them at all. Mother nature with her silly rain can’t stop me, but I thought the whole idea of torrents was that it made downloading fast (I know the real idea was that it offloads the bandwidth for really popular files, but isn’t it also supposed to make it fast?).

Anyway, I finally got the show, and I come to find out it only ran 43 minutes anyway. I’d only lost the final 2 minutes to rain fade. What the hell is that? Ten hours for two lousy minutes of programming.

Update: I just realized the reason the run time is so low is because they cut the ads. Duh! But, that means I didn’t lose nearly as much of the show as I thought. They must load up a lot of ad breaks at the end of the show or something. I swear TiVo said I was missing a good 15 minutes.

This straw art is amazing. I’ve seen some cool things done with paper origami, and I’ve seem some lame things done with balloons. I had NO idea that there were people who were so creative with straws.

The Final Cut. is a fantastic movie. If you can get to see it, you really should. In the world of the movie, there are these implants that parents can purchase for their children. From birth to death, the implant records everything that the person sees or hears. When the person dies, an editor goes through the person’s life to distil everything down to the essence of the person. Family and friends then gather to watch these as sort of a memorial.

With that as a premise, the movie is able to explore a lot of really interesting ideas. How are our memories of an event different from the actual event? How can memories of an event shape who we are? What are the implications for society in a world where every single moment is being recorded and could be viewed at some later date?

I found it all very thought provoking because I’ve noticed in myself a tendency to experience an event very differently when I’m there with a camera. Rather than being there in the moment, it’s almost as if I’m there in my memory — constructing how I’m going to remember it as it happens.

I would love to have augmented memory — sort of a life TiVo that would let me rewind a couple minutes, hours, years whatever. That’s not what the implants in the movie are though. The people can’t access them. In most cases, they don’t even know they have them until they’re told sometime around their 21st birthday when they have to come to terms with the idea that all the things they did as kids will be viewed by somebody when they die. I would absolutely hate something like that. It’s really interesting to think about though.

If you like thinking about stuff like that, then i would highly recommend this movie.

Fellowship 9/11 is a bit tedious, but then so is the guy they’re skewering. I never saw Fahrenheit 9/11. I’m probably sympathetic to the message, but I can’t stand the messenger. Still, from what I can gather from clips and things I heard, this looks like it’s probably a very successful parody.

Somebody help me out here. Is Japan really into freaky crap like Zentai Woman, or do they just do this stuff to confuse Westerners?*

* I know there’s a tremendous amount of ethnocentricity implicit in that question, but I mean come on. Nobody could be genuine about stuff like this could they?

The Ketchup Conundrum is a great read. I had no idea that flavor balance was such a precarious thing, or that so much thought and research went into creating mass market foods. Now, I want to go have a burger with a great big dollop of ketchup, but as with wines, I’m afraid that my palate won’t be sophisticated enough to recognize why I like it.

Man, Jon Stewart went on Crossfire and took the whole show to task with both guns blazing.

Samples:

BEGALA: Well, it’s because, see, we’re a debate show.

STEWART: No, no, no, no, that would be great. To do a debate would be great. But that’s like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition.

(LAUGHTER)

CARLSON: Jon, Jon, Jon, I’m sorry. I think you’re a good comedian. I think your lectures are boring.

STEWART: Now, this is theater. It’s obvious. How old are you?

CARLSON: Thirty-five.

STEWART: And you wear a bow tie.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

CARLSON: Yes, I do. I do.

STEWART: So this is theater.

CARLSON: I do think you’re more fun on your show. Just my opinion.

STEWART: You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

Wow! Frank Horvat knows a think or two about making photographs. Really nice stuff.

You know, I was blown away the first time I saw the “Games Without Frontiers” video. There was something so strange about seeing little kids dressed up like adults at a dinner party.

I just saw the video for “Y Control” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. That video is MESSED UP. Little kids dragging a dead dog around and cutting off their hands with axes and crap. Very creepy and disturbing. This page claims to have a link to it (Real). I didn’t test it, and I don’t know how long it will be a valid link.

I was just thinking tonight that it didn’t feel like we were getting close to Halloween, but maybe now… I don’t know. It was a really creepy video.