Mood: Head clear but sneezy

Outlook: I need a vacation

At least it has battle scenes

I slotted the Suriyothai DVD into Kelvin's Malata last night. Not a good transfer and not anamorphic, but watchable. The movie itself felt like it was originally a mini-series. The first twenty minutes is like sitting through a history lesson for those already familiar with it. Only in the last two thirds (this is a long film) are the main characters really established.

This was the first Thai film I've seen so I wasn't really sure if the language itself is flat or the delivery flat. By the end of the film I decided that the actress playing the title character Princess Suriyothai was atrocious but without knowing the language I couldn't say for certain. In general, Suriyothai has a lot of scale with glittering sets, thousands of extras and some good battle scenes. However, the overall story, which is told in a fairytale style, is fairly unsophisticated when you can actually follow it. The long historical prologue in which so-and-so King is poisoned and so-and-so conspirator rises only to be deposed again goes by like just so many chapters in a textbook.

Pulling a muscle for Clipstream™ Live
Yesterday was a hectic day of running around with the camera. In the morning I conducted a neat test in which I plugged the Canon into a really heavy Panasonic laptop, slotted in a wireless network card courtesty of Fatport.com and walked around Hastings St. streaming Clipstream Live for a few minutes. Ah, the future. Then an hour later I was in Surrey hurriedly trying to hack together a Clipstream™ Live webcast for the Winter2010 bid. It was a presentation to various Chamber of Commerce representatives trying to show them how the Olympic bid could benefit their communities. The webcast was late getting set up because of various difficulties. The next time I will insist on much more time setting up in advance. Sometime during that running around day, however, I pulled a muscle, probably my latissimus dorsi. It still is pretty sore.

Last week my banner design for the Winter2010 video banner project was approved and made available to anyone interested in supporting Winter2010 on their websites. You can see it on the left side of tis page. I really like the promotional video they are using. Good song, good editing.

Camouflaged nudies
Really nice photos of nudes painted into the backgrounds of old buildings and industrial settings. Thanks Kev. Safe for work. See here >>

Showdown at the Persian Gulf

From this post: I do think that Bush has a bee in his bonnet that has put a sense of urgency into pushing this war on Iraq. And I believe it is this 'evidence' that the administration is having such a hard time revealing to the world. I can only guess that the evidence is that the Iraq government is in the process of gaining a counter to any conventional threat in the region which could be nuclear or biological.

The reason why other world leaders (who may or may not have been shown this evidence) are supporting or not supporting the U.S and Britain is that many of them simply do not have a geopolitical stake in the region or are willing to believe that Iraq, like Syria, will eventually rejoin the world community and have no problem with Iraq entering at a position of strength. With their nuclear power (or whatever it is) they will be on par with Israel, a country that has developed nuclear weapons and uses it as a counter against a repeat of any of the previous Arab-Israeli wars. And of course an Iraq with the ability to nuke Israel is something the U.S. cannot abide either. Iraq could become like a Pakistan, which has not avowed hostility toward the Jews; the difference being Pakistan is a client state of the U.S. and Iraq is not. A longview might predict that Saddam will eventually die and the regime will change and Coca Cola and blue jeans will win out. Or it may not happen. This uncertainty is something Bush and Blair cannot live with just like Kennedy couldn't foresee that Cuba would be no threat to the U.S. decades going on.

I don't actually hold with a legalistic argument against the war in Iraq. Legalistic excuses can be trumped up, so can evidence. The powerful will always find an excuse to go to war. However, a blatant disregard for legalistic frameworks would have political consequences for the U.S. which is why the U.S. is still bothering with the UN inspections process and continuing its dialogue in the Security Council. The major argument I have against the war is that it will undoubtedly upset the balance of power in the Gulf and will harden already hostile attitudes around the world and especially in the Muslim states toward the west in general (not just the U.S. and Britain). It will make the world a much more antagonistic place with greater dangers for decades to come. Do we really want a new Cold War but predicated on culture and religion? I do not.