Saw Lucía y el Sexo (sex and Lucia) yesterday. Franco-Spanish production. It was strangely attractive. The characters kept getting naked and engaging in pseudo-hard core pornographic situations for most of the first half of the movie. The story, however, is quite engaging.

I don't like giving away details of the plot of movies like this, so I'll only tell you that this one tells the story of Lucía (Paz Vega), a waitress that is in love with writer Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa), and how they affect and are affected by the lives of Elena (Najwa Nimri), her daughter, the girl who takes care of said daughter, her porn-star mother, her lover and the novel that Lorenzo is writing, which brings it all together.

It is a remarkable feat that the movie carries a story worthy of a soap opera in its unbelievable twists and turns and complex turns of events, and yet somehow manages to pull it off. You care for these people and actually believe in them and in this unlikely world they live in, where everyone is troubled by more problems than they can bear, and deserves a nice deal at the end. The emotional strip tease is much deeper than the physical, slapping you with raw, in-your-face emotions, specially at the end.

This one is definitely a your-mileage-may-vary kind of movie. There were people who left the theater early, and a lot more that couldn't decide if they hated it, loved it or wanted to get some sleep. If you feel intrigued by this writeup, there's a good chance you'll enjoy it. If you don't, at least be assured that all women in the movie are gorgeous and you get to see them naked a lot of times.

Valentine's day. Pffffftt! Right now, there are happy couples everywhere having nice dinners and eating flowers or whatever happy couples do this time of year. It's out there. You can't look around and not see a heart shaped chocolate box telling you what you should be doing to please that special someone and live happily ever after. Hell, if there was a sad, pathetic, maniacally-depressed-lonely-guys day, do you think we would go and rub it in your faces with ads and shotgun-shaped Vodka bottles??? No! the hell we would! we'd have the decency to stay home, hook on the computer and sulk in privacy... Which is mainly what we do today... Damn. Maybe this is our day. Got to celebrate. Where's the beer?

Shit, that felt good. Well, good luck to all you guys who do have someone to exchange oddly shaped chocolate boxes with today. I guess I'll pop a Smiths album in the stereo and get nicely drunk now. Bye.

Went to see s1m0ne (what the hell? is l33t sp34k now considered cool??). It's bad. Not your run-of-the-mill bad. It stinks with that oh, this movie could have been much better stench. You know it. You got it after Episode I, Episode II and will get it after Episode III.

Anyway, this movie tried to be a lot of things and got none of them right. It got off to a nice, stupid comedy start (which isn't wrong in my book), but then, out of the blue it decided to somehow incorporate a romantic interest for Pacino's character (that guy was so a schizophrenic) and no, it's not the cgi character, which would have made more sense than him trying to shag his ex. Then we're treated to a pseudo-serious treatment on how real is not so or whatever. Trust me, everyone has stopped caring by that point. That and the incredibly unlikely dialogue the supporting cast have to deliver make this piece of crap really unbearable for the last 40 minutes.

A friend of mine (Alan) has a category for this kind of movie: Redemption movies. In which hollywood people accept that they are a bunch of self-obsessed assholes on an ego-trip and think that self-awareness somehow makes everything right. Hey, we're stupid, but we know it! so that's cool, right?. God. Avoid this thing like the plague.
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Original post at Overcaffeinated

I ran into an ex-girlfriend last Sunday. It had been about three years since I last saw her. That made me remember a lot of stuff.

What attracted me the most about her, and ultimately the cause of our breakup, was that we had extreme differences in the way we see the world. She believes in spirits, energy forces, alternative healing methods and whatnot. This - I found - is quite an endearing quality to someone who, like me, is... let's say spiritually challenged.

When you have a job like mine, which is somewhat akin to the Dilbert situation, and every problem ultimately responds to a logical approach, you sometimes need a little magic in your life. I think my being with her was my attempt to vicariously live that life, to hear the voice of the Earth, to know the illumination that comes with the awakening of the Chakras. To catch a glimpse of all of those things I think it would be nice to believe in, but I don't.

This whole affair saddened me a bit, while at the same time it made me feel good. Funny how the mind does that to you sometimes.

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As usual, you can access the original post of this rant, along with the latest comic, at Overcaffeinated

I just got back from Peter's. We watched The Exorcist (incredibly, I had managed to go for all of 25 years without seeing it). Before I get into my rant about it let me just say that I'm not one of those Ohhh.. horror movies make me laugh-kind of guys. In fact, I find that a bit silly. What's the point of watching horror movies if you don't get scared??? Seems to me like those guys who brag about being able to drink two gallons of beer straight without getting drunk. It's not sex, you idiots! there's no prize for endurance!! and you'll just end up spending more at the bar.

Ok. Rant aside: don't get me wrong, of course Friday the 13th part 13 and a half or whatever will have you laughing your ass off all through the murder chain. Not this one, though. This one scares. I damn near shit my pants when freak-o-girl went down the stairs backwards. Thankfully, the dvd was all scratched to hell and it kept breaking down the image and ruining the mood or I would have had a stroke. This one gets a 10 in my Make-it-go-please-O-Meter. First of my Highly recommended movies, which is my made up category for movies that I like and you'd be a fool to miss. Out now.

I'm now keeping a kind of journal at my site, along with the comic, so instead of doing a wholly different thing for this, I'll copy and paste the inane drivel I post there. Hope no one minds. If you want to see the original rant (plus this week's comic) check it out at:

  Overcaffeinated

I got moved from testing to development at work a while ago and there's tons of acronyms to hate and cool stuff to learn, so I've been playing Padawan to Peter lately. He's cool. He's also the guy who suggested the Overcaffeinated name for this site. Dixon is kind of based on him, too. Unless he wants to sue me. In that case, I've never seen him in my whole life and Dixon and everyone else were inspired by these really neat sculptures I made with my mashed potatoes at breakfast the other day. Yes. That should work.

Peter's website is mafufo.com (that's a rather... charming picture of him and his wife on the background) btw, mafufo is spanish for kind of weird-ish or something. Be sure to also check out the incredibly neat (I made it) website of the guys at Red Naranja. They provide me with hosting and tons of bandwidth in exchange for web design and imported monkeys. I'm running out of monkeys, so I have to make up for it redirecting traffic their way.

I'm starting to feel more comfortable with the new style, and even tried some new things (thanks a lot to Ian from Machall for his excellent tutorials -- you rock, man). I hope it shows.

I've just uploaded the fourth installment of Overcaffeinated. It sports a new style and even includes a brand spankin' new blog, for all of those who were just dying to know all about my awesome adventures as a Low level programmer/comic artist (I know you're out there). So go check it out, give me feedback, suggestions, etc.

Well, there's a new Overcaffeinated comic up on the site. I was planning on introducing the machead character (Elroy, although it is not mentioned in the strip) a bit later on, but I just had to say it: The 17" tiBook looks ugly and doesn't seem that much a laptop to me (more like a desktop trying to pass itself as a laptop). I am still lusting for the 15" tiBook though (and the smaller new one looks really interesting too).

There have been some changes to the site, not many visible. It now sports a cookie to remember language preference (Please, don't flame me with paranoid rants, I'm not at all interested on anyone's personal information, unless they are cute geeky women who want to date me =) ). I hope that doesn't cause problems for people. The site should automatically remember if you like spanish and redirect you there (or, if it is your first visit, check the locale reported by your browser).

Now, for the Name the Sys Admin part: I intend to follow a somewhat geeky rule when naming the characters (except for Joe. He just looked like a "Joe"). Dixon was the codename for the Pentium II Mobile. Elroy (the machead) was the codename for the first iMac. There will be a web Designer, tentatively called Dominic (short -- Dom -- Document Object Model). Marv is called that way just because I felt like it (I would say it's after Marvin the Martian, but it would be an insult to Marvin, who is waaay cooler than Marv). Now, for the sysadmin I want, rather obviously, the codename of a linux distro or some such. So far, "Woody" or "Potato" just don't go with the character (real bastard), so I'd like suggestions. Reply, email me or just plain ignore me, it's all nice =). And I want to thank everyone who has been checking out the site. I haven't heard from that many people, but I see in the server logs you are visiting. Hope you like what you see.

For the past few weeks I have been working on putting together my site, Overcaffeinated.net. This is a place to show off my work, keep something like a blog maybe and, in general, troll for jobs.

A very important part of the project is a Web Comic I have started. It is aimed at developers/IT people. There are two entries already up, the first one here and the current one here. They are far apart due to a period of vacations, but I plan on posting a new strip every Sunday/Monday.

I would highly appreciate feedback, suggestions and criticism. I plan on promoting the web comic (haven't contacted keenspot yet) and trying to make the site the best it can be. It is not finished yet, and the "about" section doesn't point anywhere, but the rest of the stuff works. I also plan to use my journal and .sig to promote the comic, so if you like it, you could monitor this place for updates.

The sections to come:

• Short stories: I like writing. I'll post stuff there.
• About: I'll post info about myself, curriculum, random stuff and maybe start a pseudo journal in there.
• Faq: As soon as people start to actually ask me things, they'll go there.
• ???: Suggestions?

I have a day job, so I won't be able to update the site as much as I'd like to, but I'll try to stick religiously to the weekly comic update. Thanks for taking the time to read this and see the site. If you like it or hate it, I'd like to hear from you. =)

Well, submitted this as quickie material but it got rejected, so I guess Ill post it here in case anyone wants to see the posters. Man, those costumes look great! quite interesting textures.