Diego Basch

A while back I was visiting Xtian and noticed he had a book on his shelf titled 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. The title annoyed me, I imagined some marketing drone thinking “1001 movies you must see” is not good enough, let’s tag the “before you die” for emphasis.

Or maybe they were actually planning on writing a sequel, “Movies You Must See After You Die”. In that case, I can suggest some titles which I wish I had waited until the afterlife to see:

The Village – I see dumb movie.
Crossroads – All roads lead to vomiting.
Kazaam. Ka-boom!
Beyond Borders – Beyond boredom.
Little Black Book – Big brown poop.

If that is not enough, see How to find a bad movie.

Joi Ito comments on an international campaign against extremism. I completely support it, of course. Extremists are the scum of this planet of ours, and must be eradicated. I shall vow not to rest until the very last of them has been eliminated.

Now seriously, this begs the question: what exactly is extremism? Isn’t this an arbitrary definition? It seems to me that the concept of extremism presuposes a continuous (perhaps one-dimensional) political spectrum, where “reasonable” people stay relavitely close to the “center”. Perhaps one man’s extremist is another man’s moderate. Besides, the label should be qualified by the thing that’s being taken to the extreme. Extreme violence? Extreme intolerance? Extreme skiing? Extreme Programming?

I am all for fighting against violence or discrimination, but I don’t think we need yet another “ism”. It seems like their intentions are good, but they should have picked a better name. A campaign against such a diffuse term seems a bit, uhm, extreme.

Via del.icio.us, I read an article stating a number of relatively obvious ways to build traffic to your weblog. It talks about how you should promote it, write interesting content and other earth-shattering revelations of the sort. Here I propose a number of other ways to increase your traffic for those out-of-the-box thinkers out there:

1) Become famous for some reason such as being a world-class athlete or the CEO of a successful company and only then start a weblog.

2) If you fail to achieve fame based on your talent or intelligence, resort to other tactics such as committing a crime and blogging about it (disclaimer for you two-digit IQers out there: don’t do it, this is only a joke). It worked for that girl who killed her mother and the Native American teenager responsible for one of the recent school shootings (I don’t even remember their names and I’m not looking them up). Maybe the increased ad revenue will help you pay a a half-decent lawyer.

3) If the above fails, use your technical skills: write a piece of spyware that can infect millions of computers out there and turn them into zombies. These machines will spam everyone in the world telling them about your weblog.

4) If you are female, become an intern at the White House or the Senate and write about your sexual exploits. If you do it right, it doesn’t even need to be true. And if it is true, you probably don’t even need the stupid weblog traffic.

5) The arch-villain approach: build some evil-sounding device with the potential to destroy a vast region of the planet and tell the world that you will only refrain from using it if weblog reaches ONE HUNDRED BILLION page impressions within twenty-four hours.

6) The creative idiot method: Who said it you had to limit yourself to internet traffic? Put the computer server containing your weblog in your car and drop it on the freeway during rush-hour. Technically, you have succeeded in some way because of your clever interpretation of the rules. Also, remember that you are not really a loser, just “special”.

7) Blog early, blog often. Start blogging in 1996 (may require uninvented time-travel technology). Post one article per hour. By now Google has indexed your tens of thousands of entries, including all four of the interesting ones.
Do the SuperBowl: a 30-second spot is guaranteed to get you a lot of eyeballs and perhaps even take down your server. True, it will cost you a couple million dollars but with the number of millionaires at an all-time high perhaps this is not as farfetched as it sounds.

9) Copy, copy, copy. Take a successful site such as The Best Page in the Universe, Boing Boing or even the New York Times and rip them off shamelessly. Make sure they know about it and get really pissed. While you are at it, post a torrent to the new Star Wars movie or whatever Hollywood blockbuster du jour. If you play your cards right someone may even sue you and you’ll get lots of attention. There is no such thing as bad publicity, is there?

10) Write a dumb article about how to build traffic to your weblog and wait for others to make fun of you and link to it as I did above. After all, it worked for her.

Without a doubt, San Francisco is a good place for a vacation. It has a great culinary scene, amazing landscapes, lots of cultural attractions and a benign climate. As a place to live, though, it’s highly overrated. Here are a few reasons:

- Getting around. I know of no other city where it’s harder to get from point A to point B. Cabs are unreliable and expensive. Buses are insufficient, infrequent and slow. The parking situation is untenable. The hills and long distances often make walking impractical. Have you ever given up on a restaurant after driving around the area for forty-five minutes in search of a parking spot? Get used to it. I was having an online chat with a friend a couple of days ago when he said “gotta go move my car, brb”. Yes, in SF you will memorize the street cleaning schedules. You will move your car to an empty block after the truck has passed so you can hold a spot for a week. Fell St has an extra lane open during afternoon rush-hour traffic (until 6 pm). It’s entertaining to walk by at 5:57 and watch the dynamics as drivers put their hazards on and sit there waiting for the new hour. Two minutes after six, there are no spots left. Have you ever given up on going out at night because you don’t want to “lose your spot”, which would entail driving around for an hour and parking half a mile away, on the other side of the hill, on a street where the tow truck will be waiting to take your car away at 6:59 am? Ok, so you choose to do away with your vehicle and use public transportation. Well, buses come by whenever they please and move slower than an elderly snail on Valium. There’s the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) which crosses the city in one direction and only runs until midnight. It stinks (hmm, what does BART rhyme with?). If teleportation ever becomes a reality, my bet is that it will be invented in the Bay Area.

- Property values. If you are rich, you can afford a decent place to live in SF. For the rest of us, finding a convenient house or apartment requires a PhD in black magic. Do you want to be warm in the winter? No problem, it will only cost you $800/month in electric bills. Do you want a parking spot? Sure, it will cost you $250 a month and you will have to call your neighbor so that she moves her SUV out of the driveway when you want to get out.

- No summer. This one is a matter of taste. I personally like having at least one month a year during which I can wear shorts and a short-sleeve shirt, and not worry about being cold. San Francisco’s four seasons are: Spring, Fall, Spring redux and The Return of the Fall. I like warm nights, SF has maybe one or two a year. You can scratch this one if you like permanently cool weather. In that case, Alaska is cheaper and you pay less taxes.

Matt sent me a link to an incredibly funny review of the final Star Wars episode. As excellent as it is, I believe the author was more intent on writing a witty piece than reviewing the movie objectively. Here’s my own review, just because (spoilers to follow).

I loved this movie without reservations. Yes, it has flaws galore and it has no shortage of haters. So what. To me, it transcends the definition of a movie. It did something for me that no other film had done before. It took me back to the late seventies, a time when I was a little boy who dreamed of becoming an astronaut one day. For a little over two hours I completely suspended my disbelief and immersed myself in the inconsistent reality of the Star Wars universe.

As is to be expected, this movie contains an endless succession of special effects. Strangely, I was barely aware of them. Much more interesting to me were the relationships between the characters in this greek tragedy. I could not help but to put myself in the place of Anakin/Darth Vader and feel sorry for the way he was being used by both sides. I hated the Jedi and their pseudo-zen-like philosophy of detachment. At one point Anakin asks Yoda for advice concerning his fear of losing his wife Padmé, her death foreseen in his nightmares. The old muppet Jedi says something to the effect of “just learn to let go, she will be with the Force”. This is the same Yoda who in the Empire Strikes Back will tell Luke that “the future is always in motion” (may the Magic 8-ball be with you, Skywalkwer). No wonder Anakin turns to the Dark Side.

I liked the acting on this one. This is not a Shakespeare play, it’s not about deep, powerful monologues looking to be shown in 30-second clips at the next Oscar ceremony. Hayden Christensen was decent as the tortured Jedi whose life goes to Sith (could not resist the bad pun, sorry). Natalie Portman does not get much of a chance to act, as a pregnant wife always awaiting her husband’s visits in between battles. Obi-Ewan McGregor is fine, I am sure he wanted to have his character act in a more nuanced manner but Lucas would not allow it. Emperor Palpatine is a great villain, makes you want to watch the Return of the Jedi so that you can see him die.

My favorite scene in the movie was the first-person shot of Darth Vader’s mask being put on for the first time. I usually don’t like sad movies very much but for some reason this one hit the spot. Go watch it if you haven’t already.

The purpose of this post is to bridge a gap. I started this weblog back in 2003 along with the one in Spanish and posted thirty-odd entries over nine months before becoming another victim of blog burnout.

Now, 18 months later, I am bringing it back from the netherworld of zombie journals out of curiosity. I wonder whether I can have the consistency to post content that is interesting to myself and perhaps to others. Still, I know better than to make any promises.