Month: November 2009

Disturbingly, it appeared to be a cranky bear.

• Red letter day: for the first time in about two years, New West Health Insurance got something right the first time! #
• Is it common for two-month vaccines to turn a baby into the antichrist, or are we just lucky? #
• Coen is sleeping so peacefully right now. It's a good thing he doesn't know he will be jabbed with needles later today. #
• Getting somewhere. #
• Worth paying attention to: RT @bradrourke: Poll: Veterans Ready To Serve On Home Front: http://bit.ly/FTdwb #
• What do I need to do to be able to run Windows Visual Basic applications/templates on my MacBook? #
• Note to Samsung ML-3051N printer owners: my print cartridge lasted several thousand pages after "replace toner" light started blinking. #
• Looking for people to help me start "double-entendre Tuesday" (#DET) and "that's what she said Thursday" (#TWSST). Tweet it on! #
• Double-entendre Tuesday: writing an article about a financial entity "taking a position behind a banker". Hey! Ho! #
• And from another job ad: "if you don't have any samples, i will need to see you to 'get a feel.'" Hey! Ho! #
• Just saw a job ad looking for someone who can do "proper English sentence making." #
• In my latest Missoula Notebook column, I'm taking Walter Sobchak's advice and drawing a line in the alley. http://bit.ly/1Ivxsm #
• Coen would like all of you who are not in earshot to know that, in his opinion, today sucks. #
• Scary thought for the day: in less than 2 months, stuff from the 1990s starts being "20 years ago." #
• Today's H1N1 clinic at Sentinel HS now opened to children 6 months-4 years old, according to MTPR. Until 5 pm. #
• Vaccinated! Well, half vaccinated anyway. #
• Already about 100 people in line for flu shots at Sentinel HS. Clinic starts in 30 minutes. #
• If only the health-reform bill had been more liberal, maybe more conservative Democrats and all the Republicans would have voted for it. #

• "Yours will not be as exact." #
• I thought Jason Kottke knew everything: RT @jkottke: Why do cashiers write on $20+ bills before putting them in the register? #
• Break's internet is out. Probably not the worst thing, in my case. #
• "I guess I should've read it," said Brenner of the contract." Well, yes. http://bit.ly/2vNE0P #
• If anyone is having any difficulty waking up every 15 minutes between 5 and 7 a.m., you can borrow Coen if you want. #
• Coen's Scream Style is immensely powerful and immune to nearly any weapon.\ #
• Matches, Vladimir Nabokov, and (missing) the premiere of V, all rolled into one column over at Went West: http://bit.ly/RLEPG #
• Playing with matches, Vladimir Nabokov, and the premiere of V, all rolled into one column over at Went West: http://bit.ly/RLEPG #
• Mailbox size limits that it's possible to actually reach are so 2001. #
• Does anyone know the children's book about a boy who befriends a Martian and has to explain Earth to him? Circa 1980s, early chapter book. #
• Two hours of sleep is the new four hours of sleep. #
• "Iraqi security forces at hundreds of checkpoints have been relying on a hand-held wand." #
• Favorite things: raindrops on roses and the "encumbered but not yet invoiced" dollar-total cell on my project-tracking spreadsheet. #
• Thanks, internet: from looking up a technical term for some paying work to watching a video of a man opening a bottle of wine with his shoe. #
• Guy at next table is paying bills by writing paper checks, taking pictures of them with a digital camera, and uploading them online. #
• Birth Center is birth ready, but hospital ban poses problems. Hebl's patients lobbying Community. http://bit.ly/3yOOfN #
• Need to talk to someone who knows their prison/meaningful counterculture tattoo symbology, preferably among hobo subculture of northwest. #
• Amused by a sentence I just wrote that included the phrases "remote wipe" and "users can self service." #
• What a silly thing to do, Councilman Hendrickson. http://bit.ly/1wVl59 #

I like reading about crazy people, so I enjoyed the recent New Yorker profile of movie director James Cameron.

The occasion for the profile is the upcoming release of his new science-fiction movie, Avatar. I’d heard about this movie, the plot of which revolves around human efforts to subjugate an alien race on some distant planet, and figured it would be the kind of cheesy CGI mess that sci-fi movies cursed with unlimited money usually turn into these days.

Then I came to this part of the New Yorker profile:

“The digital elements of “Avatar,” [Cameron] claims, are so believable that, even when they exist alongside human actors, the audience will lose track of what is real and what is not. “This film integrates my life’s achievements,” he told me. “It’s the most complicated stuff anyone’s ever done.”

Intrigued, I clicked over to the trailer and saw… the kind of cheesy CGI mess that sci-fi movies cursed with unlimited money usually turn into these days.

What is it that happens to movie directors that causes them to be so impressed by this stuff? If I were the studio head that gave this guy $230 million to make this film, I’d have a very sinking feeling right about now.

Thank God he made Aliens before digital animation got “advanced” enough to rely heavily on.

Over at the Missoula Notebook, I take a look at the latest chapter in the story of one midwife’s fight to bring a birthing center back to Missoula. Just as she completed work on her new center’s first birthing room, the local hospital banned her from its premises.

This matters more than you might think:

While most mothers who begin their deliveries at a birth center finish there, some end up transferring to a hospital (usually for non-emergency reasons, such as changing their minds about receiving an epidural). Naturally, if one of Hebl’s patients transfers to the hospital, she will want Hebl to come with her, but-in early October-Community Medical Center banned Hebl from its premises under threat of arrest.

Read the rest here.