Religious War is Cool!

Face it religion is strange. It's about super powered ghosts and people with wings. When it's at it's best it's downright outrageous!

One of the coolest religions ever has to be Scientology. They not even afraid to hide the fact that their religion is a total scam. That why I have been loving the recent Scientology vs Anon war that has been going on the last few weeks. It gets better and better as time goes on.



You have to admit that this stuff is way cooler than anything on TV lately.

SlamDance Day One-Morning.

The search for WiFi.

For some reason the ideas of kindness and sharing lost on area residents when it comes to open WiFi connections. Although I was able to detect well over twenty networks in the area, none of them welcomed my little MacBook from the condo complex.

Early in the afternoon we loaded up our back packs full of t-shirts and pamphlets and headed back downtown to check in with festival coordinators. The area if far more beautiful in the day light than it was last night when we arrived. We could see a few skiers that looked like little black dots on the side of the mountains all around us as we drove by dozens of million dollar homes.

The activity level on the main street had increased three fold from the night before. The narrow little streets were clogged with delivery vehicles, crowd control barriers and police officers. Not many people yet but you can tell that they are coming.

We went back to the Treasure Mountain Inn to get our all access passes and swag bags. Now to hit the town and see what we can see. At this point WiFi withdrawal is starting to set in pretty bad.

On The Ground in Park City

Don, Amy and I arrived in Park City Utah last night for the Slamdance film festival. It was a 14 hours drive through some of the most beautiful areas of the mid-west.

Our first stop once we unloaded the rental car was the Treasure Mountain Inn on Main street. This building will act as the HQ for all of Slamdance.

Directly across the street we found a cool little place called the Wasatch Brew Pub. We sat down with a couple of the festival newspapers for a giant plate of nachos and a couple of their world famous Polygamy Porters. Great beer but we were so sleepy at this point.

Back on main street you could easily sense that something big was going to happen. there where at least half a dozen media trucks in and around the downtown area and lots of delivery trucks stocking up local stores and restaurants. Very exciting.

Back to bed in our super cool cowboy themed condo. Can't wait to see what the morning will bring. Oh and we haven't even watched any films yet.

Most Religious People Can Not Touch Tom Cruise!

I will now declare that Tom Cruise is the holiest man in North America!

Faith is measured by the improbability of the belief and also by the individual devotion to that improbability. Mike Huckabee for example can be said to have a high level of faith because he believes that dinosaurs are imaginary and that someone is going to fly down from space and save him from having to run for a second term. As good as that is Huckabee looses points because his beliefs actually pay his bills and get him votes.

Tom Cruise on the other hand believes that the frozen souls of poorly behaved space aliens infect the bodies of humans due to some strange intergalactic war (or something). He not only believes this stuff but he ends up paying millions of his own money for the privilege.

Check this video of him going on and on about "The Truth"

1 Million-Dollar Question: Are you a big enough douche to hand these out?

Here's a cute little joke bill that someone working at Calgary clothing store received during his shift on Monday night. It must be made clear that the customer wasn't trying to pass it as real currency. He just though that the openly gay employee might enjoy this little novelty item.

You might not be able to tell from this image but around the rim on the back of the bill is a bit of reading material. A cheeky little paragraph that gets right to the point.

This is good:

The Million-dollar question: Will you go to Heaven? Here's a quick test. Have you ever told a lie, stolen anything, or used God's name in vain? Jesus said, "Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Have you looked with lust? Will you be guilty on Judgment Day? If you have done those things, God sees you as a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterer-at-heart. The Bible warns that if you are guilty you will end up in Hell. That's not God's will. He sent His Son to suffer and die on the cross for you. Jesus took your punishment upon Himself. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." Then he rose from the dead and defeated death. Please repent (turn from sin) today and trust in Jesus, and God will grant you everlasting life. Then read your Bible daily and obey it. www.livingwaters.com

The first thing you see when following the link is the smiling face of one of the biggest hucksters in business today Ray Comfort.

Reznor Want's to Put a Tax on Freedom!

I almost shit when I read this.

Reznor goes on to say that he might favor an ISP tax as a means of ensuring that artists benefit when their songs are downloaded for free on file-sharing networks, after being leaked before their release on a physical CD.

"I think if there was an ISP tax of some sort, we can say to the consumer, 'All music is now available and able to be downloaded and put in your car and put in your iPod and put up you're a** if you want and it's $5 on your cable bill,'" Reznor told News.com.

Link (digitalmediawire)

All I can say is that I hope this is an out of context quote from a slimy reporter trying to put words in someone's mouth. This kind of thing really stings me.

This is like the time that I realized that Beck was a Scientologist. I loved his music so much it hurt me to find out he was such a freak. It might have removed a little bit of my ability to enjoy his music. As internal defense from the truth I now believe that Beck is into Scientology just as an avant-garde statement. "Look at me, I'm so cool I think there's the frozen souls of space aliens in my head"

Now I find out that Trent Reznor want to sit around collecting royalties from an ISP tax? Maybe he's just saying this so that some crazy libertarian will assassinate him there by boosting him to cultural god like status? I think it would be better for me to just stop reading news stories about people I respect.

Reefer to MMORPG Madness

Here's a video that I made using the new iMovie '08. It doesn't exactly capture what I was going for. I put it together as a opening for my documentary project "WoW: The Addiction" I want to use a little public domain footage from propaganda films to illustrate my point of view on the addiction issue. I'll need to re-cut this clip with better timing and footage to communicate my point better.

You can see more of my preliminary work on the WoW: the Addiction website. I have also set it up as a project on FilmRiot http://filmriot.com/wow

Reaper Jr. on FilmRiot.com

Cutting Loose

A horror / comedy short about Grimm Spencer (better know as "the soul collector") and his son Ben. When an icy mishap puts Grimm out of commision for a day, Ben steps in to take his place and quickly learns that running the family business is harder than he thought it would be. Things get complicated when he falls for Zoe, a troubled girl who just so happens to be on his hit list.

Sunny Day Jazz is a group of young filmmakers from London Ontario. Their previous projects include What Floor and The Payoff.

WoW: The Addiction

I have used the power of my MacBook to quickly put together a temporary site for my first documentary project. It's tentatively named WoW: The Addiction and I'm hoping to start doing some major work on it in the spring.

The video above is a little test footage I gathered with my brother almost a year ago. I'm really looking forward to the learning experience that I'm sure this project will provide.

Here are links to the external resources I created for the project so far:

http://wowtheaddiction.com

and the FilmRiot project

http://filmriot.com/wow

FilmRiot Ad

Here's a little ad that you might be seeing more of if you happen to live in Park City Utah.

Digging Deep on the Holiday Break

The internet practically shuts down during the holiday season every year. Most of the time I don't mind but it's been a little different this time around. Since we recently relocated to the West we didn't have to do any traveling this year. I ended up having to count on the web for a little more of my entertainment during my down time. With most of my social network contacts to busy to post anything I've had to look a little deeper to get my fill.

Here are a few of the things that I've looked into:

For the most part I have spent time keeping up to date on the Benazir Bhutto assassination. This included reading about her and her party on Wikipedia. I have to admit I'm no further along understanding what really happened. I can only be glad that I'm not forced to have an opinion on the issue like some of the citizens of Pakistan are.

I have started reading my copy of "The God Delusion" recently. Between chapters I have been doing a little independent research on the subject. I have a hard time seeing faults in Dawkin's arguments because I was already sold on the idea before I picked the book up. What I'm looking for is a convincing position from the other side of the issue. The problem with that has been that in order for the counter arguments to seem convincing you have to already believe in supernatural creates to an extent.

Steal This Film I and II. A couple of fantastic documentaries on the issue of copyright and what it means to society. Both freely available and well worth the trip to Pirate Bay.

Zeitgeist: The Movie. This is a documentary about how scary it could be to live in this world. It depicts Christianity as a mechanism for slavery, 911 as a government conspiracy and the American reserve as a dark overlord. I think there is at least a partial truth in everything presented in this piece at the very least.

I also spent a bit of time researching Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. He is attempting to become the first Mormon candidate. He delivered a speech which has been titled the "Faith in America Address" outlining his feelings about religions role in government. It's not exactly what I would call a great direction for the global super power.

That's about it. Not exactly what I would call a thrill ride but it keep me sharp during the time when mist people over stuff and drink themselves into hibernation.