Tim Donlan

Into the Heart of Darkness

I saw a pair of films recently that might as well have been siblings: Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Both are by director Werner Herzog, both star Klaus Kinski, and both feature doomed cruises down the Amazon (ala Conrad’s classic). I heard about the first film in

Vigil of a Slacker

I am a connoisseur of the past. I am an amalgam of madness. I’m holding some sort of vigil, a lone flame flickering in the night.

Flick Roundup

I’m bored and haven’t done an update in a while. I figure since this blog has basically become a documentary of the media I consume, I might as well do some short write-ups on my newest time-waster: Netflix. Overview: I signed up for the service about a month

Link Roundup

10th Dimension [http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php] A slick flash animation explaining the intricacies of String theory [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory]. It’s almost as if each dimension is a recursion, stepping up the chain to describe all possible universes. Problem is, we’re stuck in

New Tunes

Thought I’d throw up some mini reviews to three recent albums I’ve been listening to Tool – 10000 Days Got this a few months ago. The record has heavy spiritual/philosophical connotations, which I suppose is nothing new to Tool. The title supposedly refers to Maynard’s mother, who

Southern Gothic

I was in Savannah a few weeks ago with friends. We walked down the tree lined avenues, lazily in the heat, snapping photos of monuments and foliage. We passed a large church, twin steeples rising high into the blue, architecture modeled on cathedrals of old Europe. A block from there,

Lonely Clones

Grinding away at my ever growing stack o’ tomes, I picked up Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Ishiguro is a Booker-prize winning Japanese-British author, an a fine writer. This was a quick read, enjoyable and moving. Warning: spoilers follow. Our narrator is Kathy H., a self-described “carer” who

A Quality Read

I’m not sure what path I took, but I stumbled across this website a few weeks ago. I recalled it was one of my friend’s favorite books, so I decided to read through a few chapters. Besides, it was dead-time at work and I was bored. Thankfully, I’

A loathsome drone

For so long I’ve felt burdened. It’s not a crushing weight, nothing deadly or torturous. It doesn’t leave me gasping for breath, the sweaty skin of my face ground into gravel or concrete. But it’s there, tinting everything a touch of gray. It’s subtle, the

Life Recently...

…has been entirely too much …not nearly enough …but I did spot

Myspace gems

Yep, it’s [http://myspace.com/fukcmyspace] still festering. Check out this diamond in the rough. Myspace is the new wild west, complete with Nigerian scams! Subject: Long-term relationship Body: Hello, My name is Markavellie and I live in the city of Lagos, situated in Nigeria. I’m 6.1ft

Elementary Particles...

It’s ironic that following one of the best books I’ve read in a while (Storm of Swords), I’d read one of the worst. The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq, tells the story of two half-brothers, Michel and Bruno. The former is quiet physics nerd, emotionally dead. His

On Fantasy Part III: World of Warcraft

I was going to wait till I hit my second 60, but its a long and tedious path and I’ve a good bit of grinding to go. Being the last of a three part series (here are one and two), perhaps I can come up with some conclusions. The

From Winter to Spring

Put up two new galleries. Winter and Spring. The first I took on a weekend hike in the North Carolina mountains, along the Appalachian trail. Most everyone we met was a thru-hiker, a little over 100 miles into their trek. It was frigid, temperatures were in the 20s during the

The Oceans of Story

I took a break from Song of Fire and Ice with a lighthearted children’s book by Salman Rushdie: Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Many may recall Rushdie as the writer with a price on his head for The Satanic Verses. Here the subject matter is a bit less

Skate or Die

I recently started skating again… at the old abandoned mental institution – Brook Run. DeKalb County has since seen the value in the property and converted the empty lots into dog trails and crowded playgrounds with colorful plastic monkey bars. But in the back, beyond the No Trespassing signs and ramshackle

Link Roundup

Why The Web Is Hitting A Wall [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_12/b3976103.htm?campaign_id=bier_tc] – The Luddites Strike Back or simply saturation point? I’ve actually been considering taking a break from all the tech stuff for a few weeks (aside from mandatory work

New Tunes

Ladytron – Witching Hour My brother found this band for me on low-and-behold…myspace. They also did a version of Like Eating Glass on the Bloc Party remix record. Their name is fitting – two girls in low, icy harmony, alluding to that blue-light sci-fi movie from the 80s. High Rise opens

On Fantasy Part II: Seyemi Spire

Since progress has pretty much come to a dead stop in the endeavor [http://www.daydalus.net/book2k5/], I might as well make the most of it and do some form of wrap-up. Perhaps it was a mistake to begin reading Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. The series

Link Roundup

Paul Saffo Interview [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/19/BUG86H9O6N1.DTL] : Stanford Professor and future-tech watcher. Lots of interesting stuff on media, technology and culture – a number of issues I’ve brought up before in this blog. Choice quote: *Take cyberspace as an

On Fantasy Part I: A Game of Thrones

I recently finished George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. It made me wonder why I stopped reading these types of books in the first place. Were they childish, simplistic, lacking in literary merit? While that could be said for Dragonlance or the newer Terry Brooks, I’d

Teh uploadz

Put up about 50 new pictures in the gallery

A Proper February

I’m following an old dinged-up Ford along GA. 183, winding past crumbing wood barns, cragged trees and brown open pastures. The trailer bed is filled to overflowing with buns, generic-brand rolls for hotdog and hamburgers. The wind nips at plastic wrap as we follow the gentle curves of the

Faith as cultural glue

Reading through this article [http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-01-08-faith-edit_x.htm], I was intrigued by the positive function of religion in society. Many of my peers dislike religion (Christianity in this case), thinking it controlling, archaic and biased. The alternatives are a secular, atheistic life through reason,

The MySpace Experiment

I loathe MySpace. It is a poorly coded, badly designed, ugly, bloated heap of garbage. It’s users (apologies to my RL friends), dwell near the far left of the bellcurve, the nadir of intelligence and originality. They fill their profiles with nightmarish stylesheets, embed angsty emo videos or horrid