06 Sep 10 Betty Bowers’ Christian Sex Tape
Another hilarious and irreverent video from the brilliant Deven Green. The ‘Christian Sex Tape’ is fab-u-lous!
Tags: Betty Bowers, christian, christianity, Deven Green, sex, sex tape
26 Aug 10 The Alcubierre Warp Drive
I have a couple solar masses and a few milligrams of negative mass/energy sitting around. Anyone wanna go into the backyard, have a few beers, and experiment on the cat?
The Alcubierre drive, also known as the Alcubierre metric or Warp Drive, is a speculative mathematical model of a spacetime exhibiting features reminiscent of the fictional “warp drive” from Star Trek, which can travel “faster than light“, although not in a local sense.
In 1994, the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a method of stretching space in a wave which would in theory cause the fabric of space ahead of a spacecraft to contract and the space behind it to expand.[1] The ship would ride this wave inside a region known as a warp bubble of flat space. Since the ship is not moving within this bubble, but carried along as the region itself moves, conventional relativistic effects such as time dilation do not apply in the way they would in the case of a ship moving at high velocity through flat spacetime relative to other objects.
Read more about the Alcubierre Warp Drive on Wikipedia.
Tags: sci fi, science fiction, Star Trek, warp drive, wikipedia
09 Aug 10 My fancy beer sticker collection…in my cubicle
On long Mondays like this, when the weekend has passed too fast, I find myself looking fondly on my collection of fancy beer stickers. Ahhh…delicious.
Tags: beer, breweries, fancy beer, job, work
19 Jul 10 Inception: Movie Review
Easily the best movie of 2010.
Today’s movies are drivel. At least, that’s been my consistent opinion since Lord of the Rings stopped coming out in 2006. It appears that movie theaters have settled for the near-constant stream of celebrity-voiced CGI movies, disgusting romantic comedies, week-kneed anti-hero action movies, and indy movies (all of which feature Michael Cera). So, my expectations were really high when the first reviews came back on Inception declaring it to be both cerebral, beautiful, and a true ‘movie’.
And it was. In a movie where typically reality is questioned, a very strange or complex substitute to reality is given. The Matrix has you think that humans are enslaved by robots, What Dreams May Come substitutes a new-age conception of an afterlife, Dark City has a world in perpetual night…and so on. But Inception eschews all the complex technical descriptions of ‘reality’ by simply stating that it’s all in a dream–upfront! And by putting the world of Inception into a dream, a shared common element among all filmgoers, they skip over needless dialogue and backstory and essentially establish a world of infinite possibilities.
The movie starts with the conception of a heist movie–a team must be assembled to achieve vast corporate riches in the near future, with some of the rewards being only the things that people with connections can grant–amnesty. This team each has their own specialties: researching a mark, providing funding to the group, architecting the dream, etc etc. But the movie then takes a wild twist–instead of stealing something, the group needs to plant something–an idea.
Even when the movie dives into action scenes or the multi-layered dream stories, all literally stacked upon each other in rapid succession, your brain needs to keep up with the multiple stories. One amazing scene, shot all at once, involves the characters in the back of a crashing van, all plugged into a dream machine; in the dream itself, they are in a hotel whose gravity reverses and switches. The incredible and complex way the stories interact with each other leave you absolutely shocked; when the characters are linked into the subconscious of someone being defibrillated, a huge electrical storm brews on the horizon.
While some of the movie is a bit needlessly complex–the explanations around the subconscious, limbo and time compression–the implications of this technology are incredible. You enter a dream world where time passes at twenty times the speed of reality–and if you enter a dream there, it passes at 400 times the speed–and if you enter a dream there, it passes at 8,000 times faster–and so on. You can eventually enter a state where you can spend lifetimes within a dream, creating your entire reality, with the possibilities only limited by your imagination.
Combining action layered across dreams and multiple realities, you are captivated, entertained, and enthralled all at the same time.
Christopher Nolan, he of the recurring actors and actresses, pulls together a lot of familiar faces for his latest: Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe and others. And, in a clever nod to the latest two generations, he pulls in Leonardo DiCaprio (who’s really coming into his own as a mature, serious actor since the disaster of Titanic) and Ellen Page (capturing the millennials who think her life’s work is Juno). The entire acting cast was superb and did a good job of showing a kind of concern that strikes you as real but not melodramatic. A romance plot in the midst of this story (between Page and Dicaprio, for instance) would have absolutely annihilated this movie.
Everything else about the movie was perfect. Grade A acting, storytelling, character development, artistic direction and graphics. I was captivated from the beginning all the way to the end–which, in my favorite way–still leaves you guessing at the nature of reality.
Grade: A+
16 Jul 10 Nearly all of these made my list.
Check out the list of the Cerebral Sci-Fi Films That Wipe Our Minds. An absolute must-see guide for the movies I love and deeply embrace! On another note, I am going to go see Inception this weekend, and likely fall in love with it.
17 Jun 10 Finding a Job in the Twin Cities
Recently, I’ve helped a few more friends in their job search with some of the vast advice I have on how to find a job. In regards to this, my motto has become “I’ve made a career out of losing my job.” Here’s the email I sent, with minor changes for privacy. Enjoy and let me know if you use this with success!
Lucky for you, I work in job and recruitment marketing and deal a lot with companies who simply cannot get the best candidates because those candidates never see their jobs. They either aren’t listed online in search engines, or can’t afford job boards, or they simply don’t know how to market their various positions out to candidates to receive the best candidates for their positions. That’s where my company and I step in–and, having done this for a while now, I’m all-too familiar with the issues facing people searching for jobs.
Don't utilize newspapers or flyers. Save a tree.
Minneapolis-St. Paul consistently have great employers. Minneapolis hosts five Fortune 500 companies below, as well as a Dow Jones Industrial composite company (3M), and numerous medium- and small-size firms. Minneapolis is consistently rated as one of the most technologically advanced workforces and workplaces. Here are some companies you should check out:
Other companies with great local reputations are Best Buy, Wells Fargo, IBM, ING Group, Qwest, UnitedHealth Group, Guidant, Honeywell , 3M, Ecolab, General Mills, St. Jude Medical, Thomson Reuters, Lawson Software, and Securian Financial.
For all these major companies, I’ve linked their Careers page which lists hundreds of jobs you would never see, typicallym unless you went there. These jobs do not appear in search engines results and do not get moved out to the job boards on any regular basis! Check all of these out and start to compile a listing of jobs you’ve applied for.
Job boards!
Job boards are ubiquitous and these days, full of spam. If you want to work for a specific corporation (e.g. Target, Best Buy, etc) then it’s best for you to go to their respective careers site, but definitely check out these boards as they have some of the better jobs, or some of the broader markets cornered. In all cases, try to get around the job board and find either an email address, phone number, or company name/contact line where you can circumvent the board and go directly to the company in question you are applying to.
Work with contractors!
Sometimes the best way to get your foot in the door or just provide for yourself for 3-6 months is to get a contract position. That way you can attach a new title and new experience to your resume, and show that you’re moving in a direction and picking up steam. There are a lot of great tech firms in the Twin Cities that have consistent openings.
- Robert Half, http://www.roberthalf.us/
- Aerotek, http://www.aerotek.com/
- Manpower, http://manpower.com/
- The Creative Group, http://www.creativegroup.com/
- ITR Group, http://www.itrgroupinc.com/Home.aspx
- Analysts International, http://www.analysts.com/Pages/default.aspx
…to name just a few. In every case, you’ll be working with a recruiter whose sole purpose is to land a candidate within a requested timeframe. This takes fast turns and sometimes, fast decisions on your part in regards to what sort of work you’d be doing. Recruiters at these agencies will look for jobs for you and it’s best to use them to supplement your own job searching. Have about 2-3 of them working for you with copies of your resume to find you a good job.
Generic corporate branding with floor reflections. Eventually, you just don't see it anymore.
And some general interview and working-with-recruiters tips:
1) Say what they want to hear. Really. If you can manage to drop a few terms from the job description–even if you’ve only Wikipedia’ed them–that’s fine. Just stay one page ahead in terms of training and get yourself in the door. In many cases, lower-level technical positions don’t need a B.S. in computer science or any sort of hard training (the positions that do, and have an impact on lives, safety, or industry, you’ll never get to), so you might as well give the benefit to the employer to bring in a fresh, new perspective on things and get technical training at the same time. Wing it!
2) Make a custom resume and custom cover letter for every application. Sometimes, these jobs that you’re applying to are not routing to recruiters, but rather to field HR agents who can handle up to 100+ requisitions at a time. Seeing the same ol’ resume from someone, with the same cover letter, does not go far. Actually take the time to write a cover letter and resume for each job you apply for, working to get the collateral in your head and on paper as to why you want this job, why you’d be a great candidate, and why they need to look at you. Sometimes you do this and you figure out yourself you aren’t a good candidate at all for this position, and move onto the next job.
3) Put a solid 40 hours into searching for a job. Searching for a job is in itself a job. You should expect to spend about 40 hours a week looking for a job, and spend at least 1 week for every $10k you want to make. Never gauge how well you’re doing by how many resumes you’ve sent out, but rather by the number ofquality, applicable jobs you’ve applied for and new contacts you’ve made. Again, take the time and put effort into it. Don’t ‘apply’ for a job by sending a resume, no cover letter, and then take the rest of the day off. Every job application should take about 20-30 minutes, at least, to complete.
4) Do not get upset, frustrated, or angry–be professional. Recruiters can smell when they have someone desperate on their hands. Always appear professional, never be negative or a ‘downer’, always be upbeat and excited for a new opportunity or adventure. Even if this is the 10th bad interview of the week, after you’ve been let go with no severance and unemployment means you have to raid the city food shelf–be upbeat and happy. At the same time, avoid being too happy or too personable–they want to hire someone who they think will be a good fit into the corporate culture, which means someone who can understand both over- and under-sharing your personal life.
Your final option: circus-man outfit and scrawled, desperate messages in blood.
Tags: career fair, careers, finding a job, job fair, job search, job search tips, jobs, searchin for jobs, Twin Cities careers, Twin Cities jobs
29 May 10 Sex and the City 2: Movie Review
For my birthday last night, my friends and I went to go see Sex and the City 2. First and foremost, let’s get something clear:
The most horrifying concept that I got out of this movie was that these women are considered to be liberated. These women are not liberated–they are enslaved. I thought that a massive #firstworldproblem hashtag should be added at the end of the movie, right before the credits. The problems these women face are problems involving excessive wealth, attention-seeking emotional issues, lack of parenting education, and complete disregard and lack of sensitivity to others., not to mention alcoholism. Power corrupts, and absolute powers corrupts absolutely–and somehow, we idolize these people who are at the top of the food chain, and jetset to restrictive theocracies like Abu Dhabi and call it a grand vacation. It’s disgusting!
In the movie, Carrie et aliae face the big questions that come after the entire marriage debacle from the last movie. Carrie is having trouble getting accustomed to married life: she wants more ’sparkle’, which equates to spending money frivolously and excessively (what else is new?). Here’s the thing–people age, people die, people grow weary. If fulfillment to her means throwing random $100 bills around, then someone needs to educate her on the rewards of community service or charitable donations of time and money. When she meets up with an old flame in Abu Dhabi, she of course makes the wrong decision, without having to pay any consequence whatsoever.
The other characters follow in suite, each with a vapid series of problems that only the rich can truly relate to: Charlotte, after having desired children for years, somehow can’t seem to actually figure out parenting. When her kid ruins a pair of vintage clothing, she nearly abuses her child–and then sobs and weeps for her own failure as a mother. Who wears stuff like that around the house? You’d think that after the first day with a baby she’d have learned not to be too dressy.
Miranda faces her ‘chauvinist pig’ boss at the law firm. When she up and quits, she faces the generic problems of not having a job–but it must be nice to still be able to afford a nanny, a trip to Abu Dhabi, cocktails and expensive breakfast. True poverty would defeat her. The one storyline from the series I liked was when Samantha got cancer and had to actually face a real problem that many women go to. Sadly, in the movie, Samantha is reduced to a culturally insensitive, menopausal masturbation sleeve.
A friend described this movie as ‘fluff’, and I would agree completely. The lack of any actual drama made this movie a major bummer for me–I’m hoping that eventually this show will either just fade away, or even improve to the point of real storytelling and drama. Otherwise, this essentially becomes snarky fashion porn for women and gays. The message, while silent, is consume consume consume–unsustainable, insidious, and an utterly depressing flag that women today rally around. They used to rally around bonfires of their burning bras.
Here’s the most hopeful question this movie poses: What will they make a movie on next? There aren’t many more topics. Although, it’d be fun to see each of the four women die some truly tragic (though fitting) ending:
Samantha: Implodes in a massive detonation of cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.
Charlotte: Eaten alive by wild boars in the middle of a fancy restaurant, with a live classical band playing.
Miranda: Lobotomized and left to sit in an institution, eventually passing away, drooling.
Carrie: Kills Mr. Big and herself in a fit of jealous rage over not being able to buy shoes or something frivolous.
Grade: F
Final note: Not only is this movie dangerous to women’s own conceptions of themselves as being beautiful if and only if they have the latest in fashion and shoes, it was particularly damaging to gay subculture as well. The gay wedding at the beginning of the movie, both orgiastic and stereotypical, had me cowering in my seat the entire time. Do people actually watch this and try to emulate it, in behavior and speech? If this is what the world would be like in reality, I’d have shot myself long ago.
Tags: carrie, charlotte, film, film review, gay, marriage, miranda, movie, movie review, samantha, SATC2, sex, sex and the city 2
26 May 10 No one writes a hateful review like Roger Ebert
The man’s a genius. Looking forward to seeing this movie on Friday…or maybe not.
Roger Ebert: Sex and the City Review
Some of these people make my skin crawl. The characters of “Sex and the City 2″ are flyweight bubbleheads living in a world which rarely requires three sentences in a row. Their defining quality is consuming things. They gobble food, fashion, houses, husbands, children, vitamins and freebies. They must plan their wardrobes on the phone, so often do they appear in different basic colors, like the plugs you pound into a Playskool workbench.
12 May 10 Repost: ‘The Best Thing I’ve Read All Year’
I recently read this as a repost on another blog–and had to share it. An excellent letter from a proud, loving mother.
By SHARON UNDERWOOD
For the Valley News (White River Junction, VT)
Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I’ve taken enough from you good people.
I’m tired of your foolish rhetoric about the “homosexual agenda” and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.
My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.
He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called “fag” incessantly, starting when he was 6.
In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn’t bear to continue living any longer, that he didn’t want to be gay and that he couldn’t face a life without dignity.
You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don’t know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn’t put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it’s about time you started doing that.
At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won’t get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don’t know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.
If you want to tout your own morality, you’d best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I’m puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that’s not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?
A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I’ll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for “true Vermonters.”
You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn’t give their lives so that the “homosexual agenda” could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.
He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn’t the measure of the man.
You religious folk just can’t bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.
How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.
You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.
The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about “those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing” asks: “What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?”
Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?
Sharon Underwood’s e-mail is: sundervt@hotmail.com. I had the chance to speak with her yesterday. Her son is doing fine now, the first in his family to graduate from college.
If you have friends who think Jesus would have been a Republican — on the side of billionaire Pat Robertson, et al, in opposing Hate Crimes Legislation, opposing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and, yes, opposing Vermont’s extension of economic benefits to same-sex couples — please feel free to forward this column to as many of them as you like. Can’t you just see it? Jesus arm-in-arm with the NRA trying to maintain the gun-show loophole? Stumping the Holy Land in favor of a massive tax cut for the rich, while opposing a hike in the minimum wage? Somehow, I think not.
Tomorrow: Back to Business. (Probably.)
Tags: gay, GLBT, GLBT rights, homosexuality
23 Apr 10 The Dream Cruise: A Story for Bobby Wheels
My Uncle Bobby Wheels was a big fan of the ‘Dream Cruise’, the annual parade of muscle cars down Woodward Avenue, the M-1 in Detroit. The Lareau family would get together and watch some of Detroit’s finest models and achievements come rolling down the street.
In honor of my very geeky uncle, who passed away this week, I’ve written a short science-fiction story that I think he would have liked. Dream Cruise in space?
Read the full short story here.
Tags: detroit, dream cruise, Family, science fiction, short story, wheels
