I finally got around to watching Cloverfield (aka, The Blair Godzilla Project). Damn, that was an awesome movie. On the one hand, I can see why so many film critics panned it. On the other hand, it had what almost every monster movie lacks, the human element. It has it in spades. And it also has a love story, not a sappy chick-flick love story, but a love story worthy of an ancient Greek tragedy. The last scene was to die for. The movie came close to losing me by dragging on the opening sequence at the party too long, but once past that, it kept me riveted to the screen.

In other news, as of 4:00pm today, I'm the acting manager of the help desk. My boss took off a bit early. Most of next week she'll be at a trade show. I'm the man in charge until she comes back.

I received relatively good news about my friend with the heart condition. After five hours of open heart surgery, they've discovered what they thought was a myxoma, and what I suspected was an alien parasite, was entirely an infection. Not that having a large infection growing on one's heart is a good thing, mind you, but it is better than many of the alternatives. As they also discovered that the infection has spread to his lungs, he'll need further treatment and care, but the prognosis at this point in time is relatively good.

A bit ago, a friend of mine who is about 5 years (give or take) younger than me brought over the early 80's apocalyptic made for TV movie The Day After. I'm not entirely certain why this movie was picked out. It's fairly well crafted for the time period in which it was made, but it's certainly not exceptional. I was amazed at how much of a difference being born 5 or so years closer to the end of the cold war made in taking in the events of the film. Being 17 when the Berlin Wall came down, I spent a fair amount of my adolescence living under the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation. My friend who picked out the movie, and who isn't that much younger than me, did not. Age differences aside, I don't recommend watching the film. Not only is it a downer, it also, unlike the Blair Godzilla Project, doesn't have any heroics. Where Cloverfield had heroes of the ancient Greek and Roman sort, The Day After was filled with the type of character that Nietzsche wrote off as mediocre.

I'm still waiting on news from CUA. Through trading emails with the dean of the school of philosophy, I've learned that all the stipends have been claimed but that I'm still positions well for a scholarship with regards to tuition. After carefully estimating my financial position, I decided fuck it, if I'm given a scholarship for tuition, I'm going. Sadly, there is no guarantee that being `positioned well' will translate into a scholarship for full tuition remission.

I've been busy lately. At work I've actually had to thing as a number of problems that require thought have come my way. I've bested most of them. Others remain. But between less time at work to dork around and needing to be more serious about studying, free time to post to the Internets has been scarce.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

That is all.

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Update [2008-5-17 10:57:32 by lm]: The Rods of God

Ever since I read /The Moon is Harsh Mistress/ in grade school, I've wondered why nukes haven't given way to dropping blunt objects from space as a strategic weapon of choice. Little did I know.