Matthew Supert

Man the past month or so has been brutal. I am not sure if it is a case of the "winter blues" or what, but I jusdt have a constant tension in my mind. I feel agitated, burned out and just constantly tired. May be things at work a getting a bit mundane in this winter period or something, but I sort of feel like I just need to escape it all. 

It all came to a bit of a flare up this past weekend. I was trying to install something on my motorcycle. Saturday i thought was supposed to be nice weather, but instead was in the low thirties. I decided to push on anyways and after five hours of wrestling with the horn I was trying to install I was ready to just smash the thing on the concrete. 

God, I hope spring gets here soon so I can get out of the house a bit. 

For the past couple of weeks at work, we have had a discussion ongoing about the greatest films of all time. Now, one of the best courses I ever took at college was a film course my very last semester at U of I. It was am amazing course that opened up my eyes to a whole bunch of films I had never seen or even heard of. What's more is that the university had an actual theater to use so all of the films were viewed in their original film format. It was an amazing experience. 

So back to our discussion at work, a few of us have set out to list our top ten list of films. After getting into the discussion a bit we decided to make a top ten films list and also a top ten movies list. We felt the films list was for the films that made technical or thematic impacts in film making or the industry, while movies are the sort of thing that may be wonderfully fun, but may not technically be a defining element in culture or the industry. Of course when you really sit down to think about it, limiting your list to just ten films is insanely difficult. So I also have listed my notables that didn't make my top ten, but certainly could have.

Top 10 Films

1. Blade Runner
2. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
3. North By Northwest
4. Ghost in the Shell
5. The Lord of the Rings
6. The Godfather
7. Kagemusha
8. Once Upon A Time In The West
9. Metropolis (1927)
10. 12 Angry Men

Notable Films

• Unforgiven
• We Were Soldiers
• Rashomon
• Akira
• 2001 Space Odyssey
• Waltz With Bashir
• Bram Stoker's Dracula

Top 10 Movies

1. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
2. Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade
3. Enter The Dragon
4. Dr. Strangelove
5. Tampopo
6. Space Balls
7. The Princess Bride
8. The Fifth Element
9. Evil Dead II
10. The Nightmare Before Christmas 

Notable Movies

• Meet Me In St. Louis
• The Little Mermaid
• Dark City
• Ong Bak
• Metropolis (2002)
• Young Guns
• Terminator 2

So Guns………… So I was initially going to prepare a whole long discussion on the whole aftermath of the shooting, but instead of espousing a lot of text, I am just going to bullet point my thoughts.

• Children Died.
• It was horrible and I cried.
• Journalists interviewing the children are in poor taste.
• Journalists still have every right to do it.
• The parents need to say no.
• Let’s stop pretending journalists are some sort of bastion of integrity. Journalism has always been a slimy business in America.
• Your prayers aren’t doing shit to help anyone. Take real action.
• Don’t treat children like idiots. Talk to them and let them process this event. Don’t hide it from them.
• God and schools have nothing to do with anything.
• The gun was the mechanism, not the cause of this problem.
• Don’t erode civil liberties in the name of protection.  
• Mental Health is ONE OF the root problems.
• Assault rifles are not what the media is telling you they are, and they are not what you think they are.
• Stricter gun control does need to happen in this country.
• That said people should be able to own any gun they want for whatever reason they want.
• Self-defense for gun ownership is mostly bull shit in my opinion.No one I have ever known or talked to has known anyone who has ever been involved in an incident needing a gun for self-defense.
• Stop with the hyperbole.
• People are upset and want answers.
• Don’t let emotions rule your judgment.
• Sometimes there are no answers.
• Sometimes there is no solution.
• Sometimes there is nothing that could possibly have been done to prevent something.
• This is the real world and bad stuff happens all the time. Face it. Accept it. Learn from it. Grow from it.

So, despite my initial misgivings, my 30th birthday turned out to be pretty awesome.

Friday night was sushi with Megan and the Crystal Castles at the Congress theatre.

Saturday was dinner at Brauhaus for some kitsch and German food.

Sunday was the Hot Chocolate 5K.

Above is a picture of some gifts and other things from this weekend. Overall quite and good time.

August 10th, 2012

The war with the rabbits has been on going for almost three years now. Both countries to the north and to the west appear to have been invaded and completely conquered by these free loving savages. I am surprised that the north was conquered due the border protection they had from their Dramatic Ordinance Gunnery System (D.O.G.S.), but the enemy appears to have gone underground and is fighting with guerrilla warfare. Ultimately it appears to be stalemate with no side gaining an upper hand at this point. 

Initial encounters with the rabbits were mostly benign, but it is clear now the mistake we all made three years ago. What was once thought to be a mutual trade agreement of foraging in exchange for cat entertainment was clearly just a ruse for the rabbits to determine the weaknesses of our command infrastructure. 

This afternoon our uneasy stalemate was destroyed. While doing standard reconnaissance and mowing one of our scouts on patrol found an old chipmunk hole to apparently be inhabited by the rabbits. This clearly is a breach of the Beatrix P. treaty of 2010 and definitely and act of aggression towards our way of life. Without further intel we can only assume this location is being setup as a forward operating base for future invasion plans. 

Word was quickly passed to the Home Committee and to the Prime Minister and an emergency meeting was called. Recognizing the quick downfall of both the east and northern territories over the past years a decision was quickly made to immediately neutralize the situation. A vote was held and with no opposition a full nuclear strike was ordered to neutralize the threat and impart a decisive blow against the invader. It has been determined that a strong response is required, something that will get their attention. 

Therefore issued as of 15:00 hours all command line troops have been given a green light for a full artillery strike with an 80lb wet mix concrete bunker buster. Those issuing the order recognize the importance of the measure, but we all pray that any troops in that bunker get out before the final round.

God help them all.......

Wow,

I finally got all of my blogs from different sites imported into Posterous. I was having the worst trouble trying to get Posterous to import my Tumblr blog. I instead had to have it exported to a Wordpress xml file and then upload that xml file for the import. Everything seems to have worked though with only minor editing needed. 

I do have to say though that Posterous' help was pretty poor throughout this whole process. Let's hope that is not a hint of things to come for the future use of Posterous. I migrated away from Tumblr because of its downtime and issues I had with the site loading.