aggienaut | Revenge of the Taco Tuesday

Political Update

   As regards last week's crisis in the ASUCD basement, it appears that Editor-in-Chief Peter Hamilton and Campus Editor Talia Kennedy will not be resigning but will become non-functional (administrative-leave) for the little remaining time of their terms, with Managing Editor Marion Everidge as acting Editor-in-Chief. Incidently, both of them have been drawing pay for two positions, (Hamilton as E-in-C and Online Editor, Kennedy as Campus and Features Editor). Their departure has been marked by much juvenile behaviour such as the staff being locked out of the webpage (for some time after the drama the webpage didn't update, making it look from down here like maybe the Aggie really had ground to a halt) and the Editor-in-Chiefs office, and moreover very extensive edit wars by Peter Hamilton operating under the sockpuppet TravisBrown simply trying to delete all information about the ongoing drama from the wiki. Disagree by deletion = quality journalism!!

   And the fired Editor-in-Chief-to-be has been reinstated. It had come to light that the plagiarism he had been accused of was merely from a press release which was his only source of the story. While its still disappointing, it is worlds different than plagiarizing ostensibly original journalism -- the latter is fraudulent and dishonest, while the present case is merely lazy. On top of this of course, 31 staff members attest that Lee was "set up to fail" by Hamilton by being given unmeetable deadlines. This further diminishes the gravity of his lapse, and it is of course completely overshadowed by the several different indictments of Hamilton & Talie themselves.

   In other news, regarding the Chief Justice of Pakistan: A registrar of the Supreme Court (of Pakistan of course) has been murdered in his home, he was a kew witness for Chief Justice Chaundhry; and the Supreme Court has ordered the Supreme Judicial Council (different body) to halt its proceedings pending challenges filed with the SC. As far as I can tell the SJC would be trying the Chief Justice, but the challenges are decided by the SC. It appears to me that the SJC at least has had its membership tampered with by President Musharraf.

28 Weaks Later & Revenge of the Taco Tuesday (yes I mean to write "weak")
   So I saw 28 Weeks Later with Miss Alex Hughes the other day. I had low expectations, which it failed to meet.
   I was hoping to see some variation to the zombie theme due to the fact that the government in this movie was thoroughly preparing for a second outbreak. So instead of the usual complete chaos there'd maybe be at least some semblance of intelligent resistence. Nope.
   The movie of course takes place 28 24 weeks after 28 Days Later, and NATO forces are rebuilding part of London. They make a big show of extensive security (with tanks -- why the crap do you need tanks to fight zombies? A 120mm gun is rather overkill or at least an inefficiant way to kill zombies). Then when the civilian population gets infected, their genius plan is to herd them all in a panic into an underground parking garage, where it turns out zombies can get in through a back door?!?!!? This is like, how NOT to prepare for the zombies. And then of course when it gets out of control the military starts just killing everyone, which actually makes a little bit of sense in a situation where they cannot be contained, and the civilians cannot be rescued ... but of course they take this to overkill and start even killing civilians that are not in the immediate vacinity of infected and clearly not infected themselves (for example the main characters get chased by an apache attack helicopter while driving a car ... zombies clearly don't drive cars). So that soon started pushing the willing-suspension-of-disbelief.
   I did kind of like parallels, possibly unintentional, to the game half-life. In particular, I think they paralleled an exact quote with "everyone on the ground, if you weren't a target already, you are noww."
   I wasn't too thrilled with the way the blood and violence was gratuitously ratcheted up from 28 Days Later levels. This time zombies were barfing blood left and right and several scenes were just gratuitous. I would have liked to have seen more of those badass soldiers with flame-throwers but they only appeared for about a minute and a half, roasted one of the main characters, and disappeared. (I wish I could find a screenshot of these guys. Screenshots are suprisingly scarce however).

   And finally, the storyline was terrible. It was like they wanted a sequel and hired Peter Hamilton to edit it together or something. After the beginning, any semblance of any plot beyond "run for your lives!!" completely disappeared. The movie consisted only of the main characters running for their lives and getting picked off one by one. In the end the two remaining main characters get picked up by a helicopter and flown to France .. and then we get an ominous preview image of zombies in front of the eiffel tower (and internet rumour strongly indicates they are in fact planning 28 Months Later. Oh dear). Personally, I think it would have been much better, given some closure yet brought an even more ironic twist, if they military successfully put down the London outbreak -- final scene could be the general surveying the smoking remains of the last London zombies and announcing it contained ... and then hearing over the radio reports of zombies in France! Much better.
   Short version -- It failed to meet the low expectations I had for it, AND they are already planning a third installment, 28 Months Later.

   Anyway, after that Alex and instituted a brilliant revenge plan against her ex-boyfriend (who is now dating one of her (former) good friends) -- Taco Revenge! We invited a bunch of people over (four of Alex's friends, and Eric Talevich) to be having a home-made taco tuesday dinner party when her ex showed up to bring her some of her stuff. It was a pleasant little adventure.

Cameras
   As you may have noticed, I haven't had a camera for awhile. Anyway, yesterday I took a break from the Eternal Jobhunt to try to wade through the mind-boggling amount of digital cameras out there and select the one I want. I think I've narrowed it down to:
(1) Kodak C875
(2) Canon Powershot A560
(3) Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W55
   If you have any thoughts on these or other cameras you recommend I look into, please share. Price ceiling is in the area of $200.

30 in 30 IV!!! (Starts June 1st!)
   Yes its that time of the year again! When the bold and intrepid embark on the epic blogathon of 30 in 30! This being my fourth year, and to address the concerns of those who think it'll distract me from the Eternal Jobsearch, I promise to kind of half-ass it. But I would like to once again put out the call to those who haven't yet participated in the primier event that seperates the blogtastic from the blogweak! So who's in?

   Coming in June, 30 in 30 has traditionally marked the change from my audience demographic from the UC Davis oriented to the greater blogosphere for summer. Currently, I don't think I really have a clear demographic.. hopefully I'll resolve that through the course of June. Some highlights may include: (1) many have speculated as to who the most ethically depraved ASUCD politician, in my opinion, has been, and I have thus far largely refused to name names. I am thinking, especially if you are all really good little boys and girls, of actually naming names, rocking the boat, and bashing heads, to create an epic list of the worst (and best) ASUCD politicians in my experience, going back at least to early 2001. (2) I have always avoided expressing opinions on the national political policy disputes in the United States, leading to widespread speculation and people seriously publicly accusing me of being a member of the Green, Republican, Communist, or Libertarian party at various times. During 30 in 30 I've traditionally made at least one "controversial political opinion" post, which notgonnalie is usually a big letdown once you get past the lj-cut. I'm going to try to actually commit to saying something controversial this time. PS: I still think the Estate Tax should be maintained at at least 50%.

   Okay now I have to find a way to print, since Yellowstone National Park only accepts job applications via postal mail, and I need to get ready to go up to UCLA where I'll be hanging out with Matt Wilkerson this evening and joining a Phi Alpha Delta UC Davis delegation on a tour of USC tomorrow morning.