A painting of me

Bein’ a dad can sure make you mad
Man it even can drive you crazy
It’s as hard as it looks
You gotta read them dumb books
And you end up despising Walt Disney
— “Bein’ a Dad” by Loudon Wainwright

  • Roger Ebert reviews Tree of Life. 

    Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life’s experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer “to” anyone or anything, but prayer “about” everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.

    I need to watch this movie.

     #
  • Twitter's Shit Sandwich. 

    Twitter is requiring all 3rd party clients authenticate using OAuth, which is a giant kludge of an authentication system. (Currently 3rd party applications use xAuth to authenticate, which from a users perspective is basically all invisible.) This quote from Justin Williams sums things up quite nicely: “Twitter’s fall from grace as the best API platform to the most developer hostile is an exciting trainwreck to watch.“ 

     #
  • Markdown is the new Word 5.1. 

    I’m not sure the title makes any sense, but this is still a nice ode to Word 5.1. It’s strange that this word processor has such cult status in the mac community.

     #

In Between Days

   16 May 2011, early morning

In Between Days is the first film by Korean/American director So Yong Kim. Shima and I saw her second film Treeless Mountain at the Toronto Film Festival in 2008. Treeless Mountain was slow going and bleak. Watching her first film, I can see that her follow up was par for the course. In Between Days looks at the life of a teenage Korean immigrant. She writes lonely letters to her father, who is presumably still in Korea. She occasionally talks to her mostly absent mother. Her only friend seems to be a boy she clearly has a crush on. It’s also clear he reciprocates her feelings, but being teenagers both of them seem incapable of letting the other one know what’s up. The film is full of passive-aggressive attempts at communicating ones feelings. It’s a good look at loneliness. It leaves you feeling a little bit cold.

The official In Between Days website.

Comment  

  • The Sikhs in Canada, 1911. 

    Address to the Canadian Club (Toronto), December 28th, 1911, by Dr. Sunder Singh, editor of “The Aryan” Magazine (Victoria, BC) and official leader of a colony of four thousand Sikhs in British Columbia.

    Kanakaweb has dug up some old and interesting speeches from Canada’s past.

     #

← ← ← → → →