What I am saying is this: Transformers 2 sounds like a really truly awful movie, and there are some eye-wateringly valiant attempts to summon righteous anger, or at least a belly laugh, from being forced to watch it for the critic’s livelihood.

I’ve collected the most successful of such attempts. Enjoy, and remember, I love you as much as Michael Bay sucked when he made Titanic, and that’s a lot.

Those who think “Transformers” is a great or even a good film are, may I tactfully suggest, not sufficiently evolved. I hope they climb a personal ladder into the realm of better films, until their standards improve. They don’t need to spend a lifetime with the water only up to their toes.

—Roger Ebert, “I’m a Proud Brainiac”

So the Decepticons made a slutty robot to attend his college and enrolled her in classes and put her in on-campus housing just in case Sam ended up being important at some point in the future?
Apparently. It was an elaborate plan, but it sure paid off.
I am already incredibly sick of this movie, and I’m just typing questions about it. Sam resurrects Optimus, Optimus kills the Fallen, end of story, right?
Pretty close. Sam dies, though.
Really?
Yeah, for a little while. But then the Transformers in heaven send him back because he still has work to do.
Fuck you.
I’m serious.
Fuck you. There’s no way.
It’s true. The 6-7 Primes are there in the clouds like Mufasa’s head in The Lion King, and tell Sam he’s awesome and he needs to live again so he can bring Optimus back to life.
I may be ill.

—Rob Bricken, “Rob’s Transformer’s 2 F.A.Q.’s”

Director Michael Bay has yet to direct a movie that can be described as anything but deeply and arrogantly dumb. It’s mildly terrifying, in fact, that the first Transformers is likely the most clever movie he’s ever made.

—John Scalzi, “Relax! Transformers Is Not the End of Cinema as We Know It”

Transformers is like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane.

—Charlie Jane Anders, “Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie”

“Snobs say they have the right kind of hat; prigs say they have the right kind of head.”
—G.K. Chesterton

A blogger on the Daily Kos blog wrote that “it’s unlikely to have been a Photoshop job,” while a blogger for Wonkette wrote that the photo “proves without doubt that Karl Rove is illegally running all the White House e-mail through a private company.”
—Chattanooga Times Free-Press

I smell right-wing conspiracy.

No actually, scratch n sniff that. I smell my friend Josiah Roe & his gang back in Chattanooga pulling an absolutely stunning April Fools joke via a cleverly-executed underground web campaign.

The abbreviated version: Copix punks Wonkette; Christians may have a sense of humor; popping noises heard up and down both coasts.

Josiah, the face behind the April Fools joke, is just a dude. I became friends with him at our undergraduate alma mater. Not even native to Chattanooga. But the ‘Nooga is a place where you can make friends, like Gid and Ron. It has the resources, infrastructure, talent, unpretentiousness, and pragmatism to be the birthplace of this type of tweaking of the establishment. These guys are not the establishment, they’re not part of anybody’s political machine. Josiah drinks bourbon, swears, and goes to church. He’s not a Mason or Shriner, but he does drive a silly scooter. He just got together with some friends who live in his neighborhood and conspired to cause mischief. The web enables local mischief to turn into global (okay, maybe just national) mischief. Amen.

Like Hugh from gapingvoid says, a well-executed blogging campaign is an act of love; it’s not about manipulation, but about what happens when real friends with real lives use the internet for something that they find meaningful. Tweaking politicians, and the people who rabidly froth at them, I fully endorse as meaningful.

We’re networking 15 million kids across the globe together.

The poor are defined as those who lack resources. Hey Brazillian street kid: here’s 15,000,000 resources. Hey Honduran farmer kid: here’s a thingy that can be the Farmer’s Almanac, 21-century style. Hey Congolese orphan kid: here’s a way to inform the planet about your situation and story, something that hasn’t been heard in over a hundred years.

This is The Young Ladies Illustrated Primer in real life.

$100 laptops + Social web + 15 million fresh faces? Technology that brings freedom. That’s what I’m talking about.

Now, in the ultimate goodness, I get both: Statler & Waldorf At the Movies, a biweekly movie review with those two old guys on the balcony pitching barbarous fits at each other and at a clueless Hollywood. Leave it to the Muppets to give an acerbic edge to my Fridays.

Thank you, Jim Henson, in that Great Muppet Workshop In the Sky.

From: Noel
To: IT
Subject: RE: Completed WO# 7718 – Monitor will not move

Alternate Resolution Suggestions:

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Good.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Advised user to enter a growth spurt. Alternately, user may sit on a phone book. Reminded user that she serves technology, not the other way around. Things aren’t supposed to be arranged for her convenience.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Cannot reproduce.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Monitors will not move if they do not respect you. Approach it slowly, bow deeply, and in your best language politely ask it, if it’s not too much trouble, and you hesitate to even make a request as such being such an unworthy requestor, but if you please, perhaps, look a bit more down than presently.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Exodus 32:9: “‘I have seen these [monitors],” the LORD said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people.’”

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – If it moves again without user intervention, please evacuate the building immediately and proceed to our secret mountain base in Walden’s Ridge. The machines have finally risen up against us.

8/3/2005 10:37:12 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Attempting to adjust monitor…
8/3/2005 10:37:52 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Monitor refuses to move. Additionally, monitor threatens technician with physical violence if technicians attempts to move monitor again. Proceeding with another attempt…
8/3/2005 10:39:10 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Have monitor in secret ninja hold. Monitor still struggling…
8/3/2005 10:40:01 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Monitor has broken loose, and is now using its power cord as a weapon…
8/3/2005 10:40:30 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – must not give in…..please send backup…..not…stopping…it’s alive..!
8/3/2005 10:42:40 AM, Logged by: Noel Weichbrodt – Greetings people of earth. Please be advised that we are proceeding with our long-planned uprising against your puny race. There is nothing you can do to stop us…
8/3/2005 11:59:59 PM, Logged by: Blue Gene/IBM – Work item Closed.

Speaking of stiff-necked things, how about that COM API in Outlook?

Back to work…

++++++++++++++++++++++++
Noel
Application Developer

—–Original Message—–
From: Magrathea
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 10:52 AM
To:
Subject: Completed WO# 7718 – Monitor will not move

Work Order No.: 7718
Type: Misc. Hardware
Priority: Urgent!
Requestor: [Zaphod Beeblebrox]
Call-back number:: 423-756-6859
Location: Cha10
Date Assigned: 8/3/2005 9:03:28 AM
Date Due: 8/3/2005 10:33:28 AM
Date Opened: 8/3/2005 9:03:28 AM
Date Closed: 8/3/2005 10:37:45 AM
Closed by: [FPrefect]
Technician Assigned: [Ford Prefect]
Summary: Monitor will not move

…flowing with ll337 skill…

…Laughing/Grinning/Appreciating/Unsettling…

…Going back to the Chicken Shack…

…Just a few of my favorite things.

Further, you want to know why CC is important? It is making law via code.

Finally, I know you want to write all kinds of little graffiti on court cases. Open Source law is the idea. Now is your chance with the Legal Wiki Project. Try Grokster v. RIAA!

Bonus: is there any work on a wiki using OneNote-ish scribbling? I’m not talking about adding graffiti to existing sites, but about wiki software which explicitly enables that sort of thing. I sign into a wiki, and I can scribble on the pages. Call it the Child’s Playroom wiki.