It does seem Maryland Driver's are the worst of the DC area *BIG GRIN*

When you saw this slashdot poll you immediately thought of Joey.

Informative comparison between V for Vendetta and Brazil by Matt Feeney. (Via Reason’s Hit and Run) A number of friends have seen V and said it was a good experience. I am glad I read this review because it gives me a better understanding of the themes in both films.

This excerpt most perhaps the most reveling

This tight, almost psychoanalytic focus points to a telling difference between V for Vendetta and Brazil. Whereas V for Vendetta adopts the highly movieish perspective of an avenging Übermensch who has himself escaped the tyranny that ensnares everyone else, Brazil observes the totalitarian order from within. It presents the subjective experience of administrative tyranny. And it presents this tyranny not as expressing the conscious design of an evil omnipotent dictator everyone can wholesomely hate, but as an inexorable process that slowly envelops the individual trying to navigate it.

In this light I am far more likely to see Brazil than V for Vendetta.

Why?

I am far more likely to believe and enjoy a story about the screwed up nature of life that leads to totalitarian behavior than some grand design, because if government experience has taught me anything grand designs and conspiracies don’t really work. Someone talks or people screw up. Blind evil is easy in theory to believe, but life is more of a random series of coincidences.

I got a lifetime fill of conspiracy theories answering the phone on the Hill, so I don’t have time to waste on one more.

My work has me calling people all around the country. In the process I often get told I need to call another number. Funny thing is the way the person expresses a number often reveals a measure of their view of the outer world.

Most people use ten digits, including the area code, in the phone number. Here in Arizona we have had multiple area codes for more than ten years, first two area codes and now we are up to five. That said it is common place here and in other metro areas to give all ten numbers lest you pick the wrong area code.

But a few times a month I call some place that just might not be living in the latest century. Okay that's not fair, the person I am chatting up trying to get information doesn't think outside their area code. They give me seven digit number minus the area code. While it could be by chance I rather doubt it.

I think it gets more that these people are often stagnant and don't get out in the wider world. It's not just a structure issue, when I ask if it's their area code in a polite tone their response is a shocked attitude that they quickly confirm, but the truth in their voice is evident that they assume the world lives only in their area code.

Maybe there is another explanation for their attitude, but I suspect I am right.

(Via the Onion) Hilarious, reminds me of an altered Kent State shirt I happen to know off in very poor taste.

Fun little comparison to blogging and homebrewing to journalism by Glenn Reynolds in the Economist (Hat Tip: Kottke). As a home brewer, I like the analogy and it works for me, because blogging is what you make of it much like homebrewing. For instance in the last few months I have brewed a Holiday Ale, Russian Imperial Stout and Rye Brown Ale. Not even the local brewpubs have brewed such a diversity. Likewise blogging here tends to be a mix between technology, beer, and whatever else strikes my fancy. With the diverse nature of individual backgrounds some people blog about poker, politics, or modern film making.

Like homebrew some sites produce such quality you stop and wonder why they don’t charge for the stuff and other stuff reminds you of a rotting skunk (thankfully I have not had that issue with my beer). Perhaps it’s part of the reason I enjoy both activities because you never are quite sure of the outcome and the more you do it the better you get at it, in theory at least.

Lastly like homebrewing, blogging is pretty simple and nearly anyone with some effort can do it, mostly it just takes a little time and work.

It arrives at last. Our first decent snow of the season, hopefully not the last. A drop in the bucket for all we lack, but a sign of hope.

On a certain understanding it’s like a farm family seeing the rain after a near crop-killing drought. It does not repair all the dry spell, but it can and does for a moment give us hope.

Our forests here need the snow no less than Iowa needs the rain. The other option is a summer of closed forests and potentially life-threatening forest fires.

So while non-locals complain, those of us that call Flagstaff and the mountains of Northern Arizona home see it as a thankful blessing.

A beginning... we silently hope... of a real winter.

So I haven't been writing enough a friend reminded me not so long ago. I have spent the last few weeks pondering how to make it again part of my daily life. Exploring various options with no clear answer as of yet. But in the interim I have decided on an idea to start the process.

100 posts here over the next hundred days.

Some silly, some serious, some arbitrary goal to make writing a daily habit. The rules are simple between now and June 22nd I'll post a hundred enteries to my blog. Simple linking posts or quizes like the recent beer post won't quailfiy, but otherwise the topic and length will be a matter of my descretion. Posts may occur multiple to a day since I know there will be days I'll be unable to post.

Simple concept and a public commitment to do some writing it will be fun to see where it goes.

Where did I get the idea? Perhaps Hugh had a bit of influence.

Let's have some fun.

This certainly fits...

You Are Guinness

You know beer well, and you'll only drink the best beers in the world. Watered down beers disgust you, as do the people who drink them. When you drink, you tend to become a bit of a know it all - especially about subjects you don't know well. But your friends tolerate your drunken ways, because you introduce them to the best beers around.

This is one of the funniest things I have read in a while. Hat Tip:Hugh