This Month At Dontmindme.com - November 2001

No real theme this month, primarily because I'm tired and not feeling especially creative. Some of the items might be related to each other, but there's no overall theme. I've added a new item, Element of the Month, as a bit of a whim.

Song of the Month: Does everyone remember The Cars? Even vaguely? No? Time to go and download a few Cars tunes. Start with "Let the Good Times Roll." Not because it's a particular great song, but because it contains possibly the worst lyrics ever to appear in popular music. "Let them leave you up in the air, let them brush your rock and roll hair, let the good times roll." Go download it now if you don't believe me.

Album of the Month: I featured the title track back when I was still doing weekly stuff, but I decided to feature the whole album this time around. Zooropa is easily the most misunderstood U2 album, and not without reason. Listen to it after listening to Joshua Tree and you'd wonder if this was the same band. Only after repeated listens does the depth of this CD become apparent. There are a number of excellent and powerful tracks, as well as some catchy material. Most worthy of note is the enigmatic title track, which I review in more detail (although still not a lot of detail) here. If you have this CD in your collection, listen to it again, and pay attention. It has plenty to offer.

Chemical Element of the Month: Iridium is a not particularly common precious metal with the atomic number of 77. What makes it interesting is that is the most dense of all the elements at 22.5 grams per cubic centimeter. This brings us to the fun fact. . .

Fun Fact of the Month: Imagine a liter. Go to the kitchen and find a one liter container if you have to. A liter of water has a mass of 1 kilogram, or about 2.2 pounds for any Americans reading this. A liter of iridium has a mass of 22.5 kilograms. That's 49.5 pounds. Rather heavy for a liter, isn't it?

Fun Link of the Month: This might not be specifically a fun link, but I feel the need to plug a friend's page. Not unlike this site, it has gone through a few different incarnations, and can currently be found at industrialdisturbance.com.

Useful Link of the Month: Are you wondering how I found out that iridium was the most dense of the elements? No? Well, on the off chance you are, I researched iridium at the aptly named ChemicalElements.com which is the best online periodic table resource I've found.

Quote of the Month: "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." — The narrator of the DVD of the Month, which I'm not going to name right yet. You'll be there soon enough.

Prank of the Month: Everyone is familiar with caulk, right? Specifically the expanding stuff, such as Mono Foam. This is the stuff that expands to fill cracks and crevices. There are so many possibilities with this stuff. Mailboxes come to mind. Gun the stuff into your victim's mailbox at night, and by the morning there will be a big block of foam in there that won't come out easily. If you use enough foam and the mailbox isn't strong enough, the mailbox could slowly explode leaving a big block of foam in its place. That's only one possibility for this, fun, fun material. You could also use it on a small trashcan (I'm thinking one of those step-open ones) to great effect.

Joke of the Month: A newfie walks up to the counter and says "I'd like a plate of fish and chips."
The counter attendant says "You must be from Newfoundland."
The Newfie gets upset at this. "Why do you say that? If I walked in here and asked for lasagna, would you think I was Italian?"
"No," the counter guy says.
"Or if I asked for some sushi, would you assume I was Japanese?"
"Nope," is the reply.
"So what makes you think I'm a Newfie?"
"Well," says the man behind the counter, "this is a hardware store."

DVD of the Month: I'm not going to urge you to run out and buy this DVD, because if I've ever said that a DVD isn't for everyone I would have to say it about Fight Club. David Fincher is one of the most brilliant directors making movies today, but his visions tend to the dark and disturbing. If you've seen Se7en you will agree. So what is Fight Club? It's not a movie about counter culture street boxing. It's about something far more complex. It's about isolation. It's about complacency. It's about anarchy. It's about materialism. It's about aggression. It's one of the most complicated movies I've ever seen, and considering I watch all manner of films, from adrenaline-addled actioners to subtitled samurai pictures, that's saying something.

So do you want to watch this movie? Maybe. Not everyone will get it. And lots of people really, really hate it. Go look up the movie at IMDB.com and scan the user comments, I've never seen so much division over a single movie (not to mention there are over 1200 comments listed). It's not a movie for the easily offended.
As for the DVD, it's most impressive. Two discs. The first one has the movie and four different commentaries. The second has pretty much everything one could ask in added features, from deleted scenes to trailers to behind the scenes vignettes to location scout commentary to, well, you get the idea. And it comes in the coolest packaging I've seen.