The Jack Noodle Journal

Your weather report for this morning calls for scattered showers and occasional wind gusts. It’s fairly chilly out right now. Oh yes and did I mention the grey? Oh the grey! It’s okay though because this winter insurgency is in it’s last throws. We will be basking in the glorious light of spring before you know it.

Hey Pennleys! Did you guys recommend that we watch the movie “Playtime” by director Jacques Tati? Wonderful suggestion if you did. Playtime came in the mail from Netflix and we can’t remember which one of us put in the queue or why we did. I was sure that K picked it from a Netflix recommendation but she says no. Were Seth and I talking about it last summer? Well however it made it to our house, it did and we were blown away when we watched it last night.

Playtime is one of those “What the Hell is going on” movies at first that turns into one of those “Oh I think I get it” movies and finishes up as one of those “Oh my gosh, I have to watch it again to see what I missed the first time” movies. It’s a look at modernity in 1967 Paris and it’s affect on modern man. It’s great for the modernist and the postmodernist in you. The cinematography in the film is amazing. There are several inspiring camera angles and shots. Many visual experiments. At times I felt like I was watching a moving cubist painting or something of the like.

I get the feeling that Jacques Tati is a director that we should have already known about. We will be loading our Netflix queue up with more of his films.

Busy work day today. Enough of the playtime for now.

My gods it’s fraking muddy out there right now!
The dogs were in the backyard for only 2 minutes and came back in totally filthy.

I have a sinking feeling that K is going to force us out on a dog walk in this mess. I got her to agree to push the walk to the afternoon, early evening hours already. I don’t think I will be convincing her of axing the idea altogether. Come on. It’s cold and wet out there. She does have the point though that without their exercise, our puppy children turn into monsters. They are going bananas now even as I type this. The sun is breaking through slightly at this moment. Maybe it will be nicer in a few hours.

If only Abby didn’t have that high pitched, eardrum bursting, annoying bark!

I just finished up my 4 hours of weekend overtime work. Woo hoo. These hour here, hour there, bits of extra work are translating nicely into bigger paychecks.
I’m going to go finish up the 12 remaining dishes that I have left to wash now. It feels like I have been washing dishes all weekend.

Last night the lovely lady K and I went out on a date. It was splendid. Dinner and a movie.

We had dinner at Nostrana. It’s a nice restaurant located not too far from the Noodle Compound. Somebody somewhere declared it the 2006 Portland restaurant of the year. Hold on. Oh, I see, the Oregonian declares this. It definitely had a crowded restaurant of the year feel to it. The place was packed. The food was pretty good. Pretty alright. I had the rib eye steak. It had a lot of fat on it. Is that the cut though? I don’t frequent steak that often. Nostrana was fun to check out but I think with our list of favorite haunts that are oddly more comfortable and affordable, we won’t be racing back to Nostrana. Oh we’ll go back, but we won’t be hurrying.

During dinner I let K know how happy I was that she never annoyed me. I’ve been thinking about it and I love you all to death, but everyone on the planet who isn’t K will eventually bore, annoy, disgust, anger, frustrate, disappoint and tire me. Is it just me? It’s not that anyone is really doing anything that egregious, people are are just getting on my nerves. People on the bus that I see every morning are driving me crazy. Work comrades are nice enough, but I am always keeping an eye on the clock for the hour when I can break free of them. K is the only person who I don’t get sick of. We have our moments sure, but I love spending every single waking hour with that girl.
She said she felt the same way about me and also was beginning to feel an increased distain for the human race. I have my suspicions that she was just being polite by returning my praise. I mean, I’m pretty annoying.

After dinner we went down to Powell’s and looked at books for an hour. We found a couple of selections and bought our books. It was crazy (at least I thought it was) outside of Powell’s there were flyers posted up on light poles and newspaper boxes from the Art Is Resistance website. Yep, the virus is spreading nicely.

After Powell’s we went to the Fox Tower and watched the movie “The Last King of Scotland“. It’s a really good film. Forrest Whitaker is phenomenal as Idi Amin. An amazing performance. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award for this role. I don’t remember who he’s competing against for the Oscar, but it doesn’t matter because he wins. Great job.

Speaking of, the Academy Awards are on tonight right? I won’t be watching. I don’t care much about the awards this year. I’ve seen some of the pictures nominated but don’t really feel one way or another about any of them. I think Forrest will take it though. I wouldn’t bawk if Pan’s Labyrinth won something also. Little Miss Sunshine was an awesome movie but I don’t know why it was nominated for anything.

Yes. Fun date night had by all.
Now to the chores and dishes.

I think the Castichells are coming over for fish and chips tonight. K promised that we would eat the fish and chips out of rolled up newspaper cones and not use any dishes.

I am also really excited about the Simpsons movie coming to theaters this July.

I have been a little nervous about this one. Seeing the new trailer that they dropped during last Sunday’s episode has begun the process of quieting my nervousness. It looks like it is going to be quite a ride. It looks really slick.

The Simpsons movie is a pretty big deal. I mean, think about it. How many life events, good and bad have you been through in the last several years with your friends from Springfield always just a remote click away?

I’m going to try to stay away from spoilers and not read too much about this movie before I see it. I want to hit it fresh.

I shouldn’t be nervous. They waited 18 years to get this right.
They have the best writers in the business. They can’t possibly screw this one up right? Right?

It’s starting to look like 2007 is going to be a good year entertainment wise for this Noodle. As you may or may not know, I am quite the consumer of media products, movies, music, books, TV, DVDs, websites. Some of my favorite producers are releasing new materials this year and I am starting to get excited.

I discovered sometime around the end of last year or maybe in January that my beloved band Nine Inch Nails was releasing a new album. I remember being quite excited anticipating the arrival of the last album and a quick look back at the past journal entries shows that I was. Aaah! That’s right. I didn’t write any journal entries during 2005 so I can’t relive my true excitement through the journal. Anyway the point is I was thinking that surely I wouldn’t be as excited with this new release as I was with the last.

I was wrong. My excitement meter is now at 8.5 and I am in eager anticipation mode.

I thought that I was checking the NIN site frequently but must have missed last week’s news by minutes. The friendly lad at the Couv Operator sent me a heads up email last week with links to the beginings of the storm.

Turns out there are a slew of conspiracy websites now linked to the release of the new Nine Inch Nails album, “Year Zero” said to be released on April 17th.

There’s this drug that the government is putting in our water called Parepin which is supposed to protect us from a biological attack. There’s revolutionaries fighting holy wars all over the globe. The end of the World is nigh!

Mr. Reznor has a pretty big concept album/media art project going.

I’m a little late on reporting on this so I won’t bother trying to put a lot of ink to the details.
The kids have taken this stuff and ran with it.
There’s pretty good blog posts like this one that lay out the happenings in an easy to digest fashion.
So far it looks like MTV News is the only major to report on it.

If you want the absolute fine toothed comb report of this you can head over to the Unofficial Nine Inch Nails Wiki. These kids are tracking this stuff down to the second and gathering the clues for those of us who are too lazy or have to work and can’t solve the mystery on our own.

I went to the official site this morning and discovered that they had added a video clip. See, I can play too!

I love this kind of viral marketing campaign.
I’m a little curious though, are we getting to the point where these sort of hoaxes aren’t possible anymore? It’s only been two weeks or so and most of the conspiracy theories have been debunked as a NIN marketing stunt. Maybe somebody now still will stumble onto one of these pages and think it’s real. I’d love to see something about the 105th Airborne Crusaders on our local news. Maybe these things would get more legs if knuckle heads like myself would stop writing blogs pondering it. Play along Noodle geeze!

They’re calling this kind of fun ” Alternate Reality Gaming”. Looks like the minds behind this Nine Inch Nails campaign are the folks at 42 Entertainment.

There is an interesting documentary we saw a couple of weeks ago called “The Yes Men“. In it these guys have a fake WTO website that people keep getting confused with the real one and invite them to speak at WTO conventions. It’s a good rental.

The Yes Men websites look more like official government pages than these NIN Year Zero pages. Wait though, maybe there are NIN pages that do look real that haven’t been uncovered yet! Oh! Creepy!

It was just a tad chilly this morning. It was pretty nice out though. Clear skies and the Sun was making his way up into the heavens.

I’m all messed up on what day it is after celebrating President’s Day on Monday. I came in to work yesterday and wished everybody a happy Monday. It’s not bad though because the work week goes by faster when you don’t know what day it is. It doesn’t feel like a Wednesday yet for sure.

Did you guys and gals have President’s Day off? Did you pray to your Presidents? We were work free at the Noodle Compound on Monday. It was great. I was supposed to have about 10 hours of overtime over the weekend, but turns out the photos I had were missing a component, the files were wrong and the overtime was axed. There should be more overtime in my near future. I wasn’t complaining about not having work to do on President’s Day.

K and I took the dogs for a walk downtown to honor our Presidents. It was a fun walk. We happened to be lucky enough to pick a time for our walk that was between rain bursts. There might have even been some Sun breaks. We walked the length of the city from PSU through the Park Blocks and on down to the Pearl. That’s the length right?

I’ve read a blog or two in the past that disses downtown, calling it a scummy, unsafe, den of villainy. I’m telling you though, I’m not seeing it. I love it downtown. Portland is a gorgeous city. I’ve been to a city or two during my travels and think Portland is about the best.

I’m a city boy through and through so maybe the country bumpkin, angry bloggers from Clackamas are catching something I’m missing. Perhaps the downtown detractors are only hanging out in China Town and under the Burnside Bridge?

We had a really nice President’s Day.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Today I am listening to the entire Coldplay catalog. Well, three albums. That’s not much of a feat. I’m gonna do it though, so stand back!

Merry Valentine’s Day lovers!
Give a kiss to your loved ones from me. Give yourself a kiss from me while you’re at it.

You kids have any plans? Cards, flowers, chocolates?
I think we are planning on watching some more Battlestar Galactica tonight.
MMMM romance.

Many shout outs and props to my lovely lady. Girl you are the best!
Happy 15th Valentine’s to you Buttons!
I do truly love you and you’re my best friend.

Gosh! My neck was killing me yesterday. I moved wrong, slept on it strange or something. It was sore on Sunday as well. It feels better this morning, but I can still tell that one false move could start it up again. I bet it occurred while I was doing my overtime work on Saturday. I was sitting on the floor at the coffee table computing. It’s not a comfortable location.
I need a new desk and a nice office chair for my home laboratory.
Man, have you seen the price on a nice comfortable office chair these days? Outrageous! I think my chair at the office is probably a thousand something. Hmmm. I should sneak it home with me.

Much thanks to the Castichells for a lovely dinner Sunday evening. Quite tasty. Did I say Sunday? I meant Saturday. Time is flying my friends.

While we’re speaking to the Castichells, I’d like to say that yes, I tried ye ole Bloc Party on for size. I’m not sure about those guys. I liked the second half of their first album and the first half of their second album. I won’t dismiss them entirely because I think that I might dig it after a few more listens. My current musical mood isn’t aligned with the Bloc Party fun at this moment. Next month I might be totally in love with them.

My current musical mood is in bed with Skinny Puppy this week. Skinny Puppy and Norah Jones is what I’m listening to today. Yep you read that right.

I would love to keep writing but I’ve got to run. It’s really busy here at the office this week.

Just like that my friends! We have reached another Friday.
It’s going to be a good Friday I believe.
There’s something in the air.
I felt quite refreshed when I woke up this morning.

I just started my first pint of coffee.
Yeah coffee. I’m starting to think that maybe I should cut back a bit on the coffee. Perhaps even cut it out all together?
That’s crazy talk I know.
Is three and a half pints of coffee a day too much?
I don’t feel sick or bad from the coffee. I’m just wondering if I could make it through the day without it. I don’t think I could and that makes me wonder if that is reason enough to stop.
What kind of crazy maniac would I be if I could figure out a way to be this on without the aid of caffeine?

So the weekend. Do you cats have any plans for the weekend? Any fun happening? I don’t have any plans for fun.
I’m going to load up my hard drive here with some files at the end of the day and take some work home with me. I’ll be busting some overtime hours over the weekend.
Making some extra money. That doesn’t hurt too bad.

I should probably find at least one fun activity to participate in though so I’m not working the entire weekend.
Maybe a movie.

Tonight is my German class after work. Yep I am still at it. I don’t think I have given an update since saying that I was going to be taking a how to speak German class here at this office.
It’s going alright. I feel much better after a class finishes than before one starts. I’ve been anxious every Thursday morning now for awhile.
I don’t think I am into it enough to be really learning anything. I haven’t been doing any homework and have only been practicing my German while in class.
Amazingly I am still picking up a tiny bit. Don’t ask me to say or write anything though.
For all my anxiousness and moaning about it, I have been actually enjoying it. I just enjoy it more after a class.

I’ll have to try and do my homework for this week during lunch today.

I have been able to pick up some of what our director, Werner Herzog has been saying in his movies now without reading the subtitles. Nothing big yet mind you, mostly just numbers.

I have been listening to my iPod on shuffle all day yesterday and coming in to work this morning. Shuffle is kind of fun. You get to hear songs that you wouldn’t normally hear through regular pick an album listening. It’s cool also because it keeps track of how many songs you have listened to during your shuffle play. I was keeping track yesterday. From the morning commute all the way through the work day until arriving home I listened to 83 out of 4933 songs. Hmm. I wonder what my average music listening time is for a whole week of work?

Well the bosses are putting work on my desk so I guess fun time is over.

I have been working on a new logo. I think I am pretty happy with it.
I have been staring at printouts of it at work and have it on my desktop wallpaper.
Soon I’ll have it available for you on tee-shirts, sweatshirts, stickers, coffee mugs and mouse pads.

A photo of it is available for viewing here.

It still stings a bit but I think it’s healing nicely.
What do you think?