stevengharms.com

Cruise, a devoted follower of the bizarre Church of Scientology, said: “I was much happier in previous existences when I wrote plays, composed music, conquered nations, discovered continents and developed cures for diseases”I only took my present form because Bingodulla, whom all Scientologists worship as the Supreme Thetan, selected me to spread the gospel of Scientology to the glib, uninformed masses.

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Originally uploaded by sgharms.

While I was in Houston a few weeks ago my Grandmother asked me if I would like to take my grandfather’s old boots. He died about this time last year.

It’s sorta like I got one more birthday present that I didn’t expect.

On the way out of IAH I had a got a mean boot-shine put on.

On Veronica Mars (with cute-as-a-button Veronica portrayed by Kristin Bell) V-to-tha-M caught this bit of dialog that could be played out in most corners of my office building:

Pete: How can you even have an opinion on Ubuntu if you haven’t tried it? 2.6 kernel, live CD that even had GNOME 2 point 0 the day Warty Warthog came out.

Mac: I’m sorry! I am perfectly content with OS X. I have all the awk, grep, and sed that I want without any need for that pitiful font deuglification.

Pete: But…but…but…the fonts are deuglified, and it’s free. Fine, you know, live in the dark ages.

Mac: I know what I like - and I like what I know.

Veronica: Hey, that iPod mini is something else, isn’t it?

The winner? Mac and her support of Mac OS X. Pete’s on about application level stuff (Gnome, big deal) and stuff that he’s clearly too stupid to know is not a real selling point (2.6 kernel, great, some obscure floating-point bug was addressed, way to go).

Mac shows herself to have serious sysadmin fu. If she’s using awk, sed, and grep with any degree of power (especially as a high school student) that’s seriously excellent.

She also brings my favorite hammer down on Linux: it’s still freaking ugly after 10 years, burning a DVD is a gigantic pain, and the fonts are ugly compared to Mac OS X.

Newsflash from the front: Drugs have kicked our ass.

Wow. I love space stuff. The Spirit rover, atop a mountain, caught sight of several dust devils crossing the Martian surface.

It seems Spirit is using the same CSS file for color scheme as my blog. styles-site.css?

Miu von Furstenburg’s blog hosts pictures of Tom Cruise as a whacked-out Dorothy from Oz…[LINK].

Update:: According to a recent post at defamer.com, Cruise’s PR droid lawyer asserts that was actually his sister.

Wow, my opinion of him has totally been elevated.

In an email thread the following was written by me:

———————————————————————————————————————— From: Steven Harms (stharms) Subject: RE: NPR Story - “Google’s New Message Service Includes Voice” And their lightweight, open-standard (Jabber, etc.) and play nice with new platforms. Google’s making Andreesen’s predictions come true. Works great on my Mac

You see that I made an error there, I typed their instead of they’re. That’s just what can happen when you type quickly and don’t proofreed.

I noticed the error and re-replied:

From: Steven Harms (stharms) Subject: RE: NPR Story - “Google’s New Message Service Includes Voice” Egredious spelling error i was thinking “their lightweight client” but the situation called for they’re. I apologize. steven

Responded a recipient:

To: Steven Harms (stharms) Subject: RE: NPR Story - “Google’s New Message Service Includes Voice” grammar, spelling - what’s the difference.

Is it grammar when the intent (thinking “they are”) was right but the spelling (their) was wrong? Or was it spelling when it ruins the grammatical intent?

Strikes me that this is a question of the locus of the intentionality of the subject. If I intended one thing it becomes a grammar error, if I knew the difference between the contraction of they are and the possessive form their then I made a spelling error. It’s a presentation error that changes dependent upon the mindset of the author.

So I talked to my gal, she’s a copy writer by profession, whether this was a spelling error or a grammatical error. After about 5 minutes of sucking down pearl tea she said, “I think you have a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem there.” I told her i was proud to be a linguistic ouroboros.

Back when i was growing up The houston Press was a shrunk down little quarter-size newspaper that had the events of the day (at Fitzgerald’s or Zelda’s, generally), reviews (where I first got the prompting to buy the incredible Dummy by Portishead), and adds for “theraputic massage.”

While visiting recently I picked up another issue to see how things had progressed in the intevening decade or so. On page 72 of the August 4th edition, D.X. Ferris reviews a 90’s boxed set and makes the following evaluation.

Pantera, “Walk”
Significance: Pantera kept metal alive when Metallica was writing bad ballads and following them with sequels
Good or Bad:Pantera friggin’ rules, dude. Dimebag, RIP.

I will now type the air-guitar athem that is my favorite Pantera song: “Respect.”

(duh duh da da da)
RE!
SPECT!
WALK!
(duh duh)
What did you say?!
RE!
SPECT!
WALK!
(duh duh)
ARE YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?!
ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?!
(duh duh da da da)

On the topic of Pantera in the nineties, one fit for public consumption, the other in the “read more” section.

1. Beavis talking a la a father to his surly teenage son, Pantera.

Pantera, go mow the lawn! & Pantera, this beer is warm, get me another! & treat you step-mother with respect Pantera! Oh, what is that a tear Pantera? Is my little girl upset?

(more…)

“There are a lot of humorless people in the world, but I don’t want to know them.”
…on Charlie Rose

Susan Waxman’s much blog-discussed article in the NYT seems to mark a watershed moment in re-defining the relationship between uppity movie snobs ([HERE]) and the uninspiring auteurs of moronic, trite, summer fare, or at least the studio heads that pay their bills.

The part of Waxman’s article that attracted my attention were these quotes by Marc Shmuger of Universal Pictures:

Shmuger, vice chairman of Universal, said Hollywood has been too focused on short-term box office payoff and not focused enough on what he called “the most elemental factor of all” - the satisfaction of the moviegoing experience.

IN THEATERS NOW: Bewitched Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo Stealth