chasing geese through budapest

"You know, when you go home and tell your friends about all of this," he said, trying to encompass the whole backpacking experience with a sweep of his arm, "it's not going to go well. Actually, no one's going to give a shit."

[...]

I've been surprised to learn in the last few weeks, however, that it's not just the non-travellers who are bored with backpackers. [snip] They're bored with staying in hostels and listening to teenagers talk about how drunk they got the night before, like they're the first ones to ever do it. They're bored with swapping the same old you-wouldn't-believe-what-I-did-today stories. They're bored with hearing over and over again about the latest "hot" destinations.

-- Ben Groundwater in Why Backpackers Are So Boring

This is known as "chasing goose through the casino" as in "oh, that reminds me of this time when I was chasing goose through a casino in budapest or whatever is a fashionably derelict place to visit.

The comments are interesting though.

Tolling VFX Shots

I've received a lot of feedback from vfx artists concurring with what is in the article. But that's not surprising, since I think I was only writing about problems the vfx community already knew well. Keep in mind, though, that Variety's print readers are executives, above-the-line pros and agents, people who wouldn't necessarily have any idea about any of this. For them the news isn't "You're putting vfx artists through hell," it's "You're running the risk of missing a release date on a tentpole or of turning a $250 million investment into a $300 million loss because you rushed a movie into release before it was really complete."

So while it would be nice to think that simple humanity would dictate some moderation of these practices, such relief is more likely to be driven by risk-management concerns than human decency. That's why Chrissie England, Tim Sarnoff and John Knoll were careful to talk about the pictures being at risk.

-- David S Cohen in the talkback to a podcast on crunching VFX schedules

kettle meet pot.

Within minutes of the Libby announcement [to commute his sentence], the same Republican commentators who fulminated when Paris Hilton got a few days knocked off her time in a county lockup were parroting Mr. Bush’s contention that a fine, probation and reputation damage were “harsh punishment” enough for Mr. Libby.

-- "Soft On Crime" editorial in the NY Times