This B&W thing really bothers me. I screened George Clooney’s movie about the McCarthy era, Good Night, and good Luck earlier tonight, and of course it had to be in black and white. It looked pretty good, admittedly, but still… Wasn’t the world in colour then?

Black-and-white films are supposed to look artsy. Me, I think they look cheap. But maybe it’s the same thing.

Movie theatre patrons are a lot like children. They–

Never mind.

Moviemakers are a lot like children. They are constantly bothering projectionists with questions about the wrong things or just plain repeating themselves, put way too much value in their toys, and are only rarely self-reliant. There’s nothing like a film festival to make these traits obvious.

Kids have an excuse, though; they’re kids and there’s still time to learn.

The festival is rolling, again. The first film was an Icelandic epic, Beowulf and Grendel. Unfortunately, the print was somewhat damaged; reel 3 appeared to have been exposed to light while still being developed. Ugly as hell, and the soundtracks, SRD and optical, sounded just awful. Oh well.

…to the annual Göteborg Film Festival.

I won a free cruise to the Caribbean, again!

I mean, what are the odds? Now, I wasn’t at home, and my wife didn’t want to answer a f0reign, unknown number, 009724900000. I was more than willing to check the answering machine when I got home, however; I knew the number.

Sure enough, my old friends at Best US Promotions had left a message, offering another free cruise. We are to call 0014078300147 (a Florida number, I believe) with the code cruise.

Feel free to claim the price. I won’t.

I used to participate in a Usenet newsgroup called misc.writing, a group supposedly about writing in all of its forms but in reality about anything but. The people there were writers, though; most had never published, but quite a few had. These were the ones that kept themselves off topic the most; usually, the wannabes contributed actual writing-related posts.

There were also trolls. One I remember in particular called herself Chelsea and claimed to be a published writer; her merits consisted of about 800 Usenet posts. She also thought I was George Lucas. Really. I won’t tell that story now, but if you’re interested, do a Google groups search on “Ari+Chelsea+George+Lucas”.

The other night, after a three-year absence, I visited misc.writing again. The place hasn’t changed at all. Sure, there are some new names and many of the old ones are gone, but it’s scary how little the place has changed. The same trolls, the same endless political discussions, the same insults.

But the scariest thing of all is to realize that all of this time, I’ve thought of a Usenet newsgroup as a “place”. Virtual reality is here, folks.

…is a book by Karin Boye, an old Swedish TV series with Sven Wollter (based on the book, obviously), and now a blog by my old friend Henrik. Those of you interested in programming in Ruby, eXtreme Programming, or perhaps a quirky interest in software development methodologies in general, go have a look. But the blog’s not based on the book, not the way I remember it.

Henrik never does things half-heartedly, I can tell you that, but when I suggested him to write a blog, I never thought I’d help create a monster.

…is probably the most talented person in jazz right now.