Day: June 14, 2011

Netflix tries to come up with categories of movies based on my rental history and on my registered “taste preferences.” The more elaborate these are the more I like them:

Quirky Independent Comedies
Visually-striking Mind-bending Foreign Movies
Mind-bending Independent Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Cerebral foreign dramas
Emotional 20th Century Period Pieces based on a book
Dramas Featuring a Strong Female Lead
Violent Suspenseful Movies
Classic Dark Movies based on classic literature
Scary Foreign Thrillers
Cerebral Independent Gay and Lesbian
Gritty Movies based on contemporary literature
Exciting Cult Movies
Witty Biographical Movies

I don’t think “Priscilla” or “Hedwig” were all that “cerebral.” Maybe it’s keying off of “I Shot Andy Warhol” and “Happy Together.”

According to the Haunted Pittsburgh Ghost Tours, there’s a library donated by Carnegie that was built over a mass grave. The library is, of course, haunted, notably by the image of a young boy. The ghost has been identified with a boy who died many decades ago, whose headstone was on display.

BRAIN: you ever notice how all the paranormal investigations emulate a “scientific” approach rather than an “engineering” one?
KIRBY: how is that?
BRAIN: I mean usually there’s these guys running around with sensors and recording equipment… trying to quantify the ghost, or an effect or something. And it never works.
KIRBY: Definitely
BRAIN: But in engineering, you’re not so concerned with the “why” of it – you just take a known effect and employ it to get a desired outcome. So what if instead of trying to research the mechanism of ghosts, you just use what you know…
KIRBY: with the boy’s headstone?
BRAIN: yeah, like if one headstone on display makes the library kinda haunted… I bet fifty headstones would make it much MORE haunted. Two hundred even.
KIRBY: You could put the headstones in certain patterns, and make a “ghost gun.”
BRAIN: …what would a “ghost gun” even do?
KIRBY: I don’t know, but it would be awesome!

Well I hope you’re happy boys, this library is completely unusable now