Pretty pictures!!! Hooray!

Since I'm graduating this May, I thought it would be nice to take some pictures of the UoI campus, for old times sake. Some of them turned out pretty well, so I thought I'd make some wallpapers (1280x960) and post them up. Enjoy!

Click the images for a full-res version

Mission Oceanpossible 11

I’ve been getting kind of excited about the new Mission Impossible coming out. It’s being helmed by J.J. Abrams, writer and director of the pilot episodes for ABC’s Lost, plus it has Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, and if any of you all have seen Punch Drunk Love, you know he can be a kick ass bad guy. I’ll unashamedly admit that I enjoy almost every Tom Cruise movie I’ve seen. At least 75%, and that’s not too shabby.

When I was a kid I remember seeing De Palma’s first Mission Impossible (not that I yet knew who Brian De Palma was), but I liked it at the time, but remember being confused by the convoluted plot. So now that I’m infinitely more mature I figured I’d give the original MI another go.

There’s definitely some residual coolness, I really liked the opening in Prague, and the ending action piece with the train and the helicopter are still very impressive. De Palma really makes a stylish spy flick, I must say, but the plot is still a little too complex and the characters a little too simple. One thing that really stood out however was the planning sequence of the NOC list heist... remember Tom Cruise hanging by a thread in black clothes over the white floor, catching the sweat dripping off his brow with a rubber glove. Anyway, it was really reminiscent of the planning sequence of knocking over the Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand in Ocean’s 11. The white room with the computer from MI actually reminds me a lot of the safe room in Ocean’s 11, George Clooney and Matt Damon’s outfits are even similar. In fact, even some of the lines were scarily similar. Remember Danny Ocean and Brad Pitt going over the impossible security systems? He says something like “The passwords, which we won’t have, and the retinal scans, which we can’t fake.” Tom Cruise says almost the exact same line, only some five or six years earlier. Plus, you may remember the gag of Ocean’s 11 running out of the hotel in SWAT gear, well, it’s the same in Mission Impossible, only firemen’s/firewomen’s uniforms.

Soderbergh you hack, you tasteful thief of the night. Today it was announced that Pacino is going to be in on Ocean’s 13. Now that I think about it, even the color (prominent neon blues and candle yellows) and style of Ocean’s 11 is similar to De Palma. Although, it could be argued that it purposefully references Mission Impossible in order to Scary Movie it. Well, it was Picasso that said that bad artist’s copy, great artist’s steal.

Stupid hippies.

What the hell happened? In the sixties the hippies were this generation of people wanting to escape society and exercise peace and love. They lived in hippie communes, made their own food, made their own clothes, and were more or less self sufficient man.

Today’s hippies drive Subaru’s, shop at health food stores, dress in designer hippie fashion, wear hemp necklaces, and above all, get high a lot. Oh yeah, and they dance like morons, not matter the music. They could be listening to Mozart, The Sex Pistols, Bob Marley, or Garth Brooks, to these pseudo hippies it makes no difference, they’ll dance the same.

The 10 rules of pseudo hippie dancing

01. Smoke pot, this perhaps is the most important rule

02. Put on hemp necklace or anything else you have that references marijuana, if you don’t look like a hippie, you may be ostracized by the pseudo hippie community

03. Close your eyes and pretend you’re in a forest or whatever… windy beach is fine

04. Disregard the beat of the music… actually, just disregard the music entirely

05. Take off your shoes, or wear hemp sandals

06. Bend neck back

07. Close eyes

08. Stand in front of the people who are actually paying attention to the band

09. Reach hands high in the air, or out in front of you, and move them in a swirling motion

10. Swirl your body around in a completely mindless fashion

Just in case you don’t understand how to pseudo hippie dance, click here, for a video example.

Ok… everyone got it? Now try it. C’mon, no ones looking. It’s just you, and the computer.

Now that you’ve done it, don’t you feel a little stupid? I know I sure did.

Listen up kiddies! This is what can happen when you're an alcoholist.

My roommate channels the Ghettobot 5000. I think the picture and the video more or less explain themselves, so I'm not going to go into them that much. This I will say however, sometimes all it takes is a little Jack Daniels to show the world who you really are.

Robot Video