Tag Archive for 'Lists'

Five Malleable Goals for 2008

Published by james on January 1, 2008 in Random. 0 Comments

Seems that this time of year most people have plenty in common with the UN and Congress what with all the non-binding resolutions being passed. Since I’m not one to be left out I’ve decided to make some tentative and malleable goals for myself this year.

Learn more about photography.
It has taken me about six months and some 8,000 pictures to finally get a decent idea about the relationship between aperture and shutter speed. Hopefully, in the next six I can greatly improve my technical skills with the camera and start producing pictures of at least average to middling quality.

Broaden my musical horizons.
Not that I have been one to stick to a narrow list of genres or a limited stable of artists but I have this nagging feeling that more music is out there which I really need to hear. In the last couple of months I have been making a concerted effort to widen the scope of my purchases, spending less time the comfortable habits of rock or electronic and instead trying to discover Modern Classical, deeper Jazz cuts, Folk, and the wealth of music that Africa offers. This year I would like to continue spreading my purchases every month across as many new artists and genres as possible.

Read more books.
Before the baby I managed to knock back some two books a month, not as fast as I know I am capable but quick enough that I don’t feel like I am only accomplishing a page a week. Now Reading is telling me I managed a book a month last year, decent but I have some 76 books still to go and at this rate Gabi will be in a nursing home by the time I finish. This year I would like to close the laptop and get in a good hour of reading before bed each and every night.

Spend more time just being.
Having a baby is much like a personal black hole whose gravity is so great that time bends and accelerates as it is pulled to the center. Add a job which I love so much that I find myself letting it wash over me to fill the spare moments of my day leaving nothing left over. This year I want to regiment my days better, which gets back to those top three goals, in that I leave time for myself to recharge so that I don’t feel like so much Vampire chow.

Manage our money more wisely.
We were foolish early in our marriage, running up unsecured debt, saving nothing, and spending everything. It took us several hard and lean years to dig ourselves out of that hole but we have and these days we live strictly on cash, the only debt we carry is the house, the car, and my student loans and each month we move to the next remaining in the black/ What of savings though? Retirement? College? Those are still gaps. This year I want to get even better with watching our spending habits, correcting them when necessary, and planning for 1-5-15-20 year goals. It certainly helps that I work for a company building the tools that I need but they can only carry me so far, the rest is up to me.

Four for Summer

Published by james on June 7, 2007 in Photography. 2 Comments

Bricked

Flip

7

Summer

Meme of Eight

Published by james on May 31, 2007 in Random. 9 Comments

Well, I’m finally tackling a meme and it has nothing to do with lolcats! Tagged by my friend Kirstin, this one is about posting eight little known facts about myself and then tagging eight people in return.

  1. I hate the taste and texture of coconut so much that I often tell people I’m allergic so I don’t have to sample their German Chocolate cakes.
  2. I didn’t go to my junior prom. Instead two of my friends and I got loaded on Mountain Dew and Little Debbie snack cakes, skipped school, and drove to Schenectady, NY because the name sounded funny and because it was the closest place to buy War Hammer figures without going to Boston or NYC.
  3. My house is littered with tiny scraps of paper with bullet points scribbled on them as I obsessively make lists be it songs, shopping, bills, or books but rarely use or act on them.
  4. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke but I’m definitely not the type to go grab a sharpie and paint a big X on the back of my hands.
  5. I played hockey for a good portion of my childhood but when I turned 12 it stopped being fun. It could have been the politics, both the parents and the kids, but I kept playing for a couple of more years because I thought my dad wanted me to and I wanted him to be proud of me. When I told him I didn’t want to play anymore the look on his face made me feel like I had betrayed him.
  6. With 14 concussions and counting I can’t be around strobe lights without getting dizzy or feeling like my head is going burst I almost never go to night clubs or indoor concerts.
  7. I haven’t eaten at a fast food chain in over 4 years now. No McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, KFC, etc. Management and I swore off of them one Saturday night for no reason in particular but this doesn’t mean we never nosh on burgers and fries, we just look for mom and pop joints to eat at.
  8. 10 years ago I started going by James rather than Jim because I thought it sounded more distinguished. Now it my life can be easily divided up between those who call me James and those who still know me as Jim.

Well, the best I can do is tag eight people sans four, so Mike, Scott, Bill, and Qwynwyn you’re up! ;-)

Old Timey Movie Round Up

Published by james on April 23, 2007 in Reviews. 2 Comments

The Killers
Simply awesome take on the hard boiled crime genre as it casts the insurance industry into a less dry light. Who knew members of the property and casualty coverage profession are as tough as nails with steel jaws and a hunger for justice whether by the bench or by the street. Seriously though, Edmond O’Brien and Burt Lancaster were fantastic as was Ava Gardner’s portrayal of a woman willing to double cross anyone just to rise above her past. Great film and highly recommended.

The Letter
Bette Davis’ character, Leslie Crosbie, was about as cold as a person could get. Sure, she said that she truly loved the man that she killed but I had a hard time believing her just for the fact that she came off as the DSM-IV definition of exhibiting sociopathic tendencies. Gripping look into how her husband and lawyer get sucked down the drain as she wriggles and worms her way to a not guilty conviction.

Brute Force
All this time I envisioned Hume Cronyn as the kindly old man from Cocoon and *batteries not included who was married to Jessica Tandy for some half a century. I was wrong. That man could beat the snot out of you with a piece of rubber tubing like nobody’s business. Anyway, great and depressing prison escape movie with Burt Lancaster doing anything he can to break out of Westgate as it falls into the hands of power mad Captain Munsey.

Seven Samurai
This was my first time watching the film and I fell in love immediately. Lushly shot, artfully paced, and beautifully acted I can understand why so many people refer to it as a masterpiece. As someone with little to no attention span for movies I was surprised that I was glued to the TV during the three and one half hours it took for the story to unfold and conclude. This is a film I would buy on DVD to have in my collection, it is just that good.

The Magnificent Seven
I wanted to really like this film, and I did on some levels, but there was one glaring issue for me and that was the character Chico. Drawing from Seven Samurai the writers made the character into a hybrid of Kikuchiyo and Katsushirō Okamoto which lent a very annoying schizophrenic feel to the film when he was on screen. He was either a clown or a hopeless, wet-behind-the-ears romantic and the film would have been better served following more closely to the source material and developing two characters for Chico.

Sleepless in Windsor, The Movie Roundup Edition

Published by james on April 6, 2007 in Reviews. 0 Comments

This week has been filled to the brim with fractured sleep schedules and near sleepless nights–last night, in particular was one long stretch of no more that 45 minutes of shut eye. Needless to say, since I cannot effectively work on the laptop at an awkward 90 degree angle with one arm, and I hesitate to open a book for fear that half-digested soy formula will spatter on the pages, movies are my friend and companion in the witching hour.

Ong-Bak (2003)
While light on plot and character development–the head of Buddha is stolen from a small village by big city thugs and the local nice/tough guy heads out to retrieve it–the movie excels in its stunts and fight choreography. The pace of the film is brisk and Tony Jaa demonstrates some incredible athletic and Muay Thai skills . If you like action and martial arts than this film is a must see. Add bonus, it spawned this conversation in the middle of the night:

Management: Why is the TV so loud?
Me: What?
Management: The TV, it’s L-O-U-D! (turns down the volume)
Me: Oh. I had trouble hearing the subtitles.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
There has been plenty said about this film and I have little to add except that I found it profoundly sad, moving, and enlightening all at once. See it.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Fantastic film. Beautifully shot; one of my favorite scenes is when the children are fleeing down the river the lighting and photography is lush and storybook like with shots peeking through the grass and over the back of a fat frog. The story is an old one of cruel step father after the hidden wealth of the young children yet Laughton and Agee took Grubb’s novel and blended together equal parts Mother Goose and Brothers Grimm while casting it in a dark Faulkner-esque Southern Gothic mold. Very highly recommended.

The Jacket (2005)
The synopsis on Dish did this movie no justice and I was left shaking my head as to why it only received two stars. It is a sad tale that folds Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind into Jacob’s Ladder and The Machinist. Adrien Brody plays an amnesiac Gulf War vet who is wrongfully accused of killing a Vermont state trooper and subsequently committed to a state run psychiatric hospital. Through the course of some incredibly cruel and inhumane “therapy” he finds he is able to step forward fifteen years in time allowing him to influence events in the present. Taut and well acted The Jacket is a must see.

Brazil (1985)
The last time I saw this film was some 20 years ago and my teenage self was amused by the Dadaist take on themes explored by Orwell, Kafka and Dostoevsky. This time around, in light of the last seven years, I felt profoundly sad and disheartened as Brazil is rapidly becoming a reality. Gilliam is at the top of his game, Pryce’s acting is top notch, and De Niro is inspired. See it and laugh through your tears.

Still on queue to watch is Brick along with a pile of movies from the Thirties, so long as my endurance holds up.

Wading Through My Best of 2006 List…

Published by james on December 27, 2006 in Music. 2 Comments

My review frequency over at Candied Pop has been spotty at best what with the baby on my mind and subsequent inability to focus on anything long enough to form coherent sentences. Though I still have a stack of new releases to listen to, with three really standing out as candidates for this list, here are my top twelve in no particular order…

…and there you have it.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States