Bush goes on TV and tells the nation (and the world) that he needs $87 billion more in order to rebuild Iraq.

The NEXT DAY the White House releases this fact sheet saying they’ll need between $55 and $75 billion OVER the $87 billion Bush asked for the previous night.

So who screwed up the first number? Is some economist or speechwriter getting fired over this? Or did Bush just pull a number out of his ass, knowing that the White House can raise the ante without causing sticker shock?

What a mofo.

Full and enjoyable day today.

I got a massage (yay) in barter for a hard drive, which I went down to RePC (geek heaven) and bought, and then attempted to install in their computer (something I enjoy doing), which didn’t work (sob), and then I read ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ aloud with a friend, and then we watched ’8 Mile,’ which was better than I thought it would be, but only because it’s fun to watch guys rhyme insults at each other.

Just another day at the Shui house. I miss living there, but I don’t miss being able to leave and be alone in my own place.

I really want to move back to Ballard, though. Up there, in between the computer stuff and the ‘Earnest’ stuff, I went to Scooter’s and got a burger. Scooter’s is truly a burger stand, with a little tiny kitchen and an even tinier ‘dining room,’ to use the term loosely.

It’s in the sort of outskirts of Greater Downtown Ballard, across the street from the library. The Ballard liberal types show up and look guilty for enjoying not only meat, but deep fried potatoes. Oh, scandal! They’re sitting next to the Ballard just-regular-folks, who dine guilt-free.

These are the worlds I walk between….

Anyway, Ballard has a certain middle/working class utility, and a certain bourgeois/hippie funk that blend together in good ways. I should move back.

And that reminds me… I went through Fremont for the first time in a few months. The place looks like an open-air shopping mall now! Sigh.

I took away my Xanga skin. The problem is that it’s so different from the normal Xanga way that it’s better to just let Xanga do the heavy lifting.

If I could customize the whole thing, main site, reply page, etc., then making a skin would be worth working towards.

Rented ‘Solaris‘ last night. Watched it then, and then watched it with the commentary tonight.

I haven’t read the novel, but I’ve seen the Tartovsky version once. Once isn’t enough, and I’ll probably rent it soon.

The point being, it’s really good. It takes a lot of cues from Tartovsky without being a ripoff, and with pacing for a modern audience. It has huge, looming ambiguities and in some sections is downright opaque, and this is just absolutely fine with me.

So here come the SPOILERS.

One of the things I like about really good movies is that they prompt me to do a remix in my head. So if it was my job to polish ‘Solaris,’ I would have done the following:

Mostly, I’d have made Solaris (the planet) more ambiguous, except in one important way: The audience would understand that each crew member faced not only some part of themselves, but that they had the opportunity to befriend and embrace it. The realist woman, for instance, didn’t need to fear and destroy her demons (whatever they were). She could have done the spiritual work necessary to find peace with it.

Because for me, that’s the central theme of the story: Spiritual work. Kelvin has to come to terms with the truth that what he wants most is something that it’s unhealthy for him to want. He has to find something else to want, even as the situation keeps handing him an easy solution.

What’s interesting about the story is that it’s a sort of rorchark test, not only for the viewer, but for the teller of the tale, as well. Soderberg chooses to latch on to the relationship aspect, whereas I’d latch on to the every-moment-can-bring-you-heaven aspect. Two radically different interpretations of the same basic story.

In this way, it’s a mythic tale.

I hope we get more thinky movies from Soderberg, rather than caper flicks.

Bumpersticker:

“Visualize Stopping Distance”

Oh, and also just wanted to mention: On Sept. 11, Showtime will air a serious (and seriously misleading) docu-drama about 9/11/01. Playing George W. Bush in this television event will be the same actor who played George W. Bush in the Comedy Central satire of the Bush administration, called ‘That’s My Bush!’, created by Matt Parker and Trey Stone, creators of ‘South Park.’

Via Tom Tomorrow.

Just wanted to point out that Josh Marshall has a great ‘blog today about recent neocon foreign policy blunders:

Realism, neo-realism, neo-conservatism, democratic internationalism, hegemonism, multilateralism. How about just this: ‘Don’t shoot your mouth off if you can’t back it up’ …

The various foreign policy schools each have points to recommend them. But a lot of effective statecraft comes down to grade school principles like these.

Paul Wolfowitz may be saying that he’s wanted the UN in Iraq from day one. But those of us who are still reporting from the planet Earth know this is the exact opposite of the truth.

Stiffing the UN and threatening retaliation against key Security Council members may have been impolitic and ill-judged. But stiffing and threatening when you were going to have to come back to them six months later with hat in hand asking to get bailed out is just stupid.

[...]

I accept a definition of intelligence I heard a while back: The ability to take in information, synthesize that information with other information into a new set of information, and communicate the new information out to the external world.

1) Input, 2) Processing, 3) Output.

I’ve been in processing and output for a while, but lately I’ve been shifting over to input.

So, teaching myself to be decent at chess by playing a few times every day, reading actual books instead of just the internet, and trying to get myself away from myself from time to time.

Reading through some of the online courses at MIT’s OpenCourseWare program (concentrating on linguistics and philosophy; I’ll move to rhetoric and political science soon). I figure that I could be reading the drudge report or class notes from a prof at MIT. Which do I choose?

I’m not up to real school. I wish I was.

Here’s a tip: If the building you are currently in is burning to the ground, go find the person with NADD (Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder) on your floor. Not only will they know where the fire escape is, they’ll probably have some helpful tips about how to avoid smoke inhalation as well likely probabilities regarding the likelihood you’ll survive. How is it this Jr. Software Engineer knows all this? Who knows, maybe he read it on a weblog two years ago. Perhaps a close virtual friend of his in New York is a fire fighter. Does it matter? He may save your life or, better yet, keep you well informed with useless facts before you are burnt to a crisp.

I’ve been playing chess more recently, against a computer program called Vektor3. It’s one tough mofo.

Losing to this program has taught me new things about chess, and about my approach to things like computerized chess games. There’s nothing trivial about the game it plays, so everything trivial about my attitude has to go away while I’m playing it.

Good mental exercise.