Categories
Miscellaneous

Jeff Milner Movie Review – Magdalene Sisters

What a movie! Magdalene Sisters takes place in the 1960’s in Ireland. It’s about the Catholic practice of taking unwedded women who were accused of being sexual active in some way or other and placing them in a kind of laundry slave labour camp. Based on a true story, the last of these asylums was finally shut down in 1996.

The IMDB description:

Ireland in the sixties: Four women are given into the custody of the magdalene sisterhoood asylum to correct their more or less sinful behavior: Crispina and Rose have given birth to a pre-marriage child, Margaret got raped by her cousin and the orphan Bernadette had been repeatedly caught flirting with the boys. All have to work in a laundry under the strict supervision of the nuns, who break their wills through sadistic punishments. Some of the inmates develop countermeasures, while others perish under the treatment.

This is one of those movies that you hate to watch because it’s such a miserble fate that has befallen these women. It was a huge relief to see (and while not wanting to ruin the show for you I think it’s worth saying) that in the end at least 3 out of the 4 main characters make it out of that place and return to living a somewhat normal life. Very intense show not one that I would recommend to most people, but it’s definitely a good independant / Irish production.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Jeff Milner Movie Review – Something’s Gotta Give

At first I thought that “Something’s Gotta Give” would only appeal to a much older audience than myself, but I was pleasantly surprised by this quirky and original comedy. Jack Nicholson plays Harry Langer, an aging, wealthy bachelor whom only dates younger women – much younger woman. He is dating the young and beautiful Marin, played by Amanda Peet, and together they go to her parents beach house for a romantic weekend. Her mother and aunt show up unannounced but after some awkward (and funny) moments they decide they can all spend the weekend at the house together. When Jack’s character suffers a heart attack he is sentenced to a few days alone at the nearby beach house with Marin’s mother Erica as his nurse. Things get interesting as Harry begins to fall in love with the accomplished lady more his age.

The IMDB description:

Harry Langer (Nicholson) is an aged music industry exec with a fondness for younger women like Marin (Peet), his latest trophy girlfriend. Things get a little awkward when Harry suffers a heart attack at the home of Marin’s mother Erica (Keaton). Left in the care of Erica and his doctor (Reeves), a love triangle starts to take shape.

It’s a cute love story that, while a bit on the chick-flick side, I really liked. It’s something that’s definitely worth renting.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Spring Forward

I missed class today because I didn’t remember to set my clocks an hour forward. That and I slept in. It was a combination of the two, really.

I guess I’m going to be doing homework all day today. Only about a million more projects to do and then I’ll be done for the semester. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel – unfortunately it’s probably just the metaphorical headlights of a train because I still have another year and a half of school to go. Cest la vie.

Categories
Music

I Heart the Ladies

BNL in CalgaryAs promised here is my review from the BNL concert on April 1st in Calgary. It was great! As we were getting seated Anna questioned me about the tickets I purchased, “Do people that sit in these seats really get more nosebleeds?” Very funny. :)

The concert itself was a blast. Jason Plumb and Ron Sexsmith were the two opening acts. They seem like unknowns to me but Anna recognized Ron Sexsmith’s name and apparently Jason Plumb played for the Waltons — which I vaguely recall.

Anyway it was a great concert in which almost every song they played seemed like my favorite. I know I’m a big geek for this Canadian band, but whatever – it was fun. They played:

  • Maybe Katie
  • Too Little Too Late
  • Enid
  • Some Adlibing
  • It’s All Been Done
  • Another Postcard
  • Celebrity
  • More Adlib
  • Never Is Enough
  • I Live With It Every Day
  • Roadrunner
  • For You
  • One Week
  • Upside Down
  • A Bass Solo
  • Alternative Girlfriend
  • Testing 1,2,3
  • Never Do Anything
  • Blame It On Me
  • Shopping
  • Concert Going
  • Pinch Me
  • War On Drugs
  • Beat The Crew
  • Shoe Box
  • Old Apartment
  • Brian Wilson
  • Rio
  • If I Had $1,000,000
  • What A Good Boy

They weren’t planning on playing Alternative Girlfriend but got talked into it when someone in the audience held up a big sign that said quote/unquote Please let my husband drum Alternative Girlfriend with you. So they did. Ed told the audience that if he was at least half decent we should really cheer him on, but that if he sucked then we should beat him to a pulp. He was actually pretty good and it was really fun to watch. It’s stuff like that that makes a concert so memorable.

They had a fun choreographed shopping cart ballet in which they ran around with shopping carts, passed around boxes of cereal and made snow angels on the stage. They did three encore songs, which was more than the last time they were in Calgary, and I must say it was just a perfect concert.

BNL in Calgary

Ed wrote about the concert tour and specifically about Calgary’s show. Ed and Steve are by far my favorite bloggers in BNL – not just because they do the majority of the singing.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Jeff Unedited

Anna points out that this picture is edited because it’s cropped. It’s true. So maybe it would be better to call this, Jeff Cropped. But it’s up to you. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, I just got my haircut. What do you think?

Jeff Milner Image

Categories
Miscellaneous

Canada’s RIAA Can’t Prove Infringement by P2P Uploaders, Says Court

Canada’s Federal Court has ruled that the Canadian Recording Industry Association was not able to prove copyright infringement by the uploaders it sued. The judge also said that under our country’s copyright law, downloading is not illegal.

Categories
backmasking

Stairway to Heaven Information

A couple of days ago I received the following email. Those interested in my backmasking page might find this interesting.

Your site really got me interested in looking up information about this and I took a lot of what I already knew and compared it to the things I learned to get a pretty good idea about these backward messages.

Here’s someone else’s lyrics for the whole song…
http://web.stargate.net/zeppelin/
features/sth-reversed/index.html
Interesting how if you read the part where it says
“And all the evil, it was there, they made our souls must have Satan” and you listen to it, I still sounds like this is correct, but if you read your version it does too, I heard ‘sad satan’ before I read your lyrics

I listened to your part of the clip before reading the lyrics and I could hear some key things in it (666,sad satan,oh satan )but the other parts were very tough to interpret. Once someone reads the lyrics and sees them as one thing, it is hard for your mind to view as anything else until you see it a different way.

Link from http://www.popex.com/ — if you go here it explains that it really doesn’t have to be satanic, and probably isn’t. The forward version says “yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there’s still time to change the road you’re on.” It basically says that this guy believes that he’s saying the path to satin will make you said, he also proposes the idea that satan may be a metaphor for all sadness and suffering.

If you go to http://www.reversespeech.com/Simple_Examples.htm it will give you many examples of things people said that say something else backwards. The guy on this site studies it.
I read partially from this site but mostly from some other site that the subconscious mind can interpret things backwards, and understands it as fact. However conscious decision making skills can override your subconscious mind. I learned before this that your instinct is based on facts you have gather. According to some, the more times you have heard those messages played backward, the more you get in your head to do these thing till it becomes a point where your instinct tells you to do something.

You should also check out Queen’s “another one bites the dust” backwards if you haven’t heard about it already. I won’t tell you what it says backwards, because I think your view may change on what it says but it was pretty clear to me, even before I heard what the lyrics were. However I read from some biased article (with no actual proof) that 80% of people who hear “another one bites the dust” backwards didn’t know what it was until given the lyrics where 100% said they thought that was correct.

Another freaky thing is the pokemon rap where it says “gotta catch em all” backwards says “oh satan, oh satan” sounds freaky, it can be found here, with many other clips of songs that appear to say something backward.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Crunch Time

I have really let my homework add up. I don’t want this to come off whiney because, number 1 there isn’t really THAT much that I have to do, and number 2 it’s my own fault for not doing these assignments sooner, but for the record this is what I have to do in the next couple days/week. I have 5 abstracts (short one page papers) for New Media Seminar to do, a 10 page Art History paper with a ton of specifications (like 5 sources and a million citations), 2 three page long concert reviews to write, and 2 concerts to attend (so that I have something to review). I wonder if my Music History Prof. would count the BareNaked Ladies concert? After all, the songs from “Gordon” are getting old enough to be classics.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Two New Elements

Time to replace your old Periodic Table. …a joint American-Russian team has found two new elements-numbers 113 and 115 on the periodic table-hinting at an impending breakthrough in creating novel forms of matter that will test our understanding of atomic behavior.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Bohemian Rhapsody for the Deaf

Penny Arcade forums presents Bohemian Rhapsody for the Deaf. But in the event that you are not deaf, I recommend playing it in the background while you translate it.

Update: It appears this link has been removed from Penny Arcade. I don’t know of any mirrors – sorry.