Giant crocodiles terrorizing a group of tourists wouldn’t normally warrant a rental, but “Rogue”:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1173563-rogue/ got good reviews, and I’m in a B-movie sort of kick so I gave it a shot. Glad I did. Nothing groundbreaking, but things moved along nicely without too much over-the-top silliness to ruin it. Recommended.

David Foster Wallace has killed himself. He was 46 years old - my age, basically. There are very few writers whose work I seek out with a vengeance. Wallace was one of those writers. It started with Infinite Jest, that enormous and painful monster which took me a year to finish. Since then I’ve read everything he’s written that I know of. Hell, there are times I want to be DFW. He was brilliant, funny, diverse, hip to a fault and it’s a terrible, terrible thing that he’s gone.

Anyone for a game of Eschaton?

Twitter can be a noisy bastard. I follow maybe 250 people and there’s no good way to keep up unless that is the only thing I’m doing. Hardly a productive option. Recently I’ve started to use “Tweetdeck”:http://www.tweetdeck.com/ as my twitter client. TweetDeck is a desktop (Adobe Air) app with all sorts of features that help manage my Twitter stream.

My favorite of TweetDeck’s features is its “TwitScoop”:http://www.twitscoop.com/ integration.

One glance at the TwitScoop column running on my second monitor and I can easily spot breaking news or popular topics. Clicking any of the words in the TwitScoop cloud brings me to the TwitScoop search for that word. Very handy.

My first time watching The Big Lebowski was a terrible disappointment. I hated it. This came as a shock to me as I’d loved every other Coen film so much. Surely something was wrong. About a year later I gave it another shot and that was all it took. It’s now one of my favorites. Strange how that works.

As much as I enjoy watching it, I’ve never really dug too deeply for any sort of meaning in the film. David Haglund has. From “Walter Sobchak, Neocon”:http://www.slate.com/id/2199811/…

bq. Is this eerie foreshadowing of the second Iraq war coincidental? Not entirely. The Coen brothers created a character with traits that run deep in American culture: unflinching righteousness and a tendency to violence.”

The Dude abides.

The checkout line at my local grocery store depresses me. Not because I’m forced to wait in line, that’s fine. It’s the magazine covers that get me. Vapid, silly headlines on covers filled with half-dressed women who look unnaturally perfect proclaiming ridiculous ways to either look like them or get them into bed.

The Kindle and other book readers have demonstrated how cool e-ink technology is. And now, e-ink displays are showing up on magazine covers. Can you imagine what the checkout experience will be if (when) this catches on? I’m not looking forward to that.

The entire internet is boring me to tears today.

(Yes I know, I could’ve just Twittered this. Fuck Twitter.)

I love Jon Stewart. This video is everywhere, but on the slim chance you haven’t seen it…

So there’s this new Dell “Mini 9”:http://www.dell.com/mini thing, another tiny, net-centric laptop. Neat! Tell me more! Sorry I asked. Found the following video of one of guys on the product team introducing me to this exciting new product.

Well Mr. Pitstick, Senior Manager of Global whatever, when introducing a new product, using video no less, it might be a good idea to actually show it to me.

I swear he just holds in casually in his hand for like 5 minutes while droning on and on about Usage Cases, Value Propositions, Componentry and whatever. Bored to tears.

If you’ve not been reading “Roger Ebert’s blog”:http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/, you should. He writes well, writes passionately, and best of all, writes about things I’m interested in.

In his latest post, “What’s your favorite movie”:http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/09/whats_your_favorite_movie.html, he asks himself that very question. His answer? La Dolce Vita. Great, great choice, but his reason for choosing it is less about the film than it is about himself. That seems fair.

Mine? If I had to answer right now, I’d say Dr. Strangelove. Too bad Anita Ekberg isn’t in it though.

Zim would chase a tennis ball all day. He always outlasts me even though he’s doing the hard part. What a beautiful day it was today. Here are a couple of quick vids shot with the Flip. Great fun.