Premonition: This movie's going to stink

It starred Sandra Bullock, OK? Give me a break. I mean, she usually does decent movies, right? (Miss Congeniality, anyone? Oops, forgot about that one, and two) Well this movie didn’t get the ravest of reviews to begin with, but it’s new and we have room to spare on our Netflix queue, so what the hell, we figured.

We figured wrong. There’s so many plot holes and inconsistencies that really, it’s not worth watching. It’s either trying to say that you can’t change the future, or that you can. But it – much like Déjá Vu before it – sort of decides to do both. Which, uh, is impossible seeing as how those ideas are mutually exclusive concepts.

Déjá Vu however, was entertaining and exciting at least. This thing, however, played more like a damn Made-for-TV pathetic-fest, but starting Sandra Bullock. And honestly, I feel taken. Screw the election, screw government corruption & cover-ups, this is what I plan to write my congressman about: a damn D- movie. Take that, Hollywood.

Chase & Hunter: Coming into Their Own

Yeah the pups are progressing nicely. They’re filling out well and learning really fast. In fact, they’re probably the fastest-learned dogs I’ve ever met, and definitely the most loyal Labrador PUPPIES I’ve ever encountered. I specify PUPPIES in large type because Labs are most definitely loyal family dogs, but they do have a tendency when they’re young to go and explore with little thought as to whether they can find their way back…

However these guys aren’t a concern in that regard. I can walk out anywhere with them and they’re all-eyes-on-me, just about all the time unless I tell them it’s OK; they do not want to be left behind, in the least. In fact on an outing last week, I ended up on the opposite side of a river from them, and started walking away from shore to find a lost tennis ball. This was too much for them, too scary: they both started yelping and crying so much that me & The Girl couldn’t help but laugh, and man, can they swim real fast when they have that sort of motivation! Don’t LEAVE ME, Daddy!

They’re each getting better, too. Chase was the less physically-adept of the two initially, but he’s filling out really well right now. Hunter’s still a might-bit better-looking, but Chase is rapidly catching up anymore. And he’s also become less timid as time has gone by, as well. And it still stands that Chase is faster in the water, while Hunter’s faster across the land. However, they both outclass poor Miles anymore. Yeah, poor Miles; he used to be the superstar, but anymore it’s rather apparent that the other two are younger, faster, stronger, and more agile. Already. Chase will now tackle waves that Miles is hesitant to face. And if you know Miles, or if you actually read the pertinent blogs, you know that that is quite a feat. Chase is fast and fearless, dammit.

Hunter’s a little less gung-ho still, but he’s getting better. Chase will launch himself out into the surf or the water or about anything to get himself out in front of everyone to get the ball. Hunter though, is content to let the crowd dissipate, or let them get it, whichever comes first; however if I throw a ball for the others to fight over, then toss one out into the surf another direction solely for him, he’s quite game to throwing himself out there, too. I guess he just doesn’t like the needless competition. And Hunter might be a tad bit quicker on the pickup of ideas: he’s got the concept of “get the ball” or “get (whatever),” whereby if I point and tell him to get it, he’ll go and bring it to me. Chase isn’t quite as fly in that regard, but indeed, if there’s something in the water… a little bit of goading later, and he’s off to get it for me.

Yeppers, two fine, intelligent new pups we have. Two fine, unaltered pups, too.



Still with their Manhoods
Yeah about that: since they were found and subsequently don’t have a chance of breeding, it’s not like I plan to keep them ball-equpped for eternity. However, especially considering their relatively thin appearance when I found them, I wanted them to have the best chance of fully filling-out, too. So I decided the balls would stay until they are fully matured. That way, they get as big and strong as they are going to get.

And hell, who knows: It’s not like they’re getting anyone pregnant around here. If they don’t act like loons and can manage to be good little boys… maybe they can keep their little boys.

They’re so damn cute! And you know what, I never thought I’d be the type of guy to say that about someone else’s testicles. My own, maybe, but not others’.

Times, they change I guess. Who knew?

Most Unnecessary Title Ever?

This is old news by now, but…

The title for this article from my Yahoo! Home page: “Big Bang Machine Doesn’t Destroy World”

… Really? Huh. Hadn’t noticed. :-|

Apple TV in near future, VoIP in Near Future, & Dry Loop

Apple Sells me, inadvertently, on Apple TV
Today Apple unveiled iTunes version 8, which supports HDTV downloads. Finally! Now I can watch Lost in HD, without having to wait for it on Blu-Ray. Which means, finally, I’ll be able to keep up with my favorite show, and be on the right season to boot.

I haven’t seen an episode of Lost since sometime last year. And that last season won’t even be available on disc until December – a short month or so before the new season begins.

I might have to opt for a faster internet connection, too!



Perhaps not so inadvertently?
This was probably their plan all along. Nice. Still though, not upset the least that I waited for it to culminate.



Vonage, VoIP, may be in my future
Since we’re talking about technology & internet, right? OK, so it seems like Vonage or some other VoIP service may be in our future.

Currently we’re spending about $40 a month on phone service. We don’t talk too much to anyone, though when we do it’s typically long distance (to family spread across the states). The way at&t has their tiers set up, it’s very possible (even potentially for us) to pay for the cheaper plan but end up paying more. Hold up: who the hell decided nights & weekends begins at 9pm? I live on the f*cking west coast, dammit. If I call Dad on the eastern seaboard, well that’s not quite talk time for him, now is it?

Well Vonage at least, has a plan that starts out at $15 a month. And the taxes ought to be less, so instead of ~$50 a month, we should spend about ~$20 a month. That’s $30 a month savings at least. Really considering it right now, except…



$10 more for a non-phone-line-equipped internet package?
At&t also sees fit to charge you an additional $10 for their “dry loop” DSL, which is basically DSL without a real phone line. Which means that realistically, the switch will end up saving us only $20 a month after adding on the additional DSL charge.

I have seen steps to take in order to get Dry Loop for the same price as regular (and shouldn’t they be offering it that way anyhow, regulators out there?), so I’m of course going to try that. But anyway, if I DO go VoIP, and I DO get a faster connection to support HDTV downloads… that’s a savings of roughly $10 a month, plus I have the hassle of everything going everywhere (phone bill to these guys, internet to these guys), though it’s all still very much intricately linked in nature.

We’re considering it. I leave it at that.

Tommy Lee Jones suing makers of NCFOM

Count me in! Sh!t, after having to suffer through that weird jumble of unrelated scenes they tried to call a movie, I feel that I, too, deserve $10 million.

I mean yeah, he acted in it and all, but my pain is partly his fault. I bought some of the hype surrounding that suck-fest of a movie because a decent name like his was in it. Hook line & sinker, in fact. I figured it was a shoe-in for a “add to my collection” kind of movie. How surprised was I when it turned out to be the discombobulated mess that it was?

Pretty surprised, I say! No Country for Old Men? I’d prefer No Country for Sucky Movies, really. Or more precisely, No Country for Old Men trying to make Sucky Movies.

Freddie & Fannie, Sittin' in a Tree. And then they F*CKING FELL

Yeah I know, I’m always late to the party, aren’t I? Whatever man, I have a real job – this is just a hobby that I do for myself (what with such few visitors!)

Anyway, by now we’ve all heard the news, right? The government is going to be bailing out Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae. How awesome is that? Well if you’re high up the corporate ladder, it’s all pretty cool, I suppose. You get millions, a cushy severance package, while all the poorer people get… well, all of their investment money wiped out, and probably lose their job as those companies cut jobs to cut losses (instead of cutting the salaries & bonuses & said severance packages of loser leadership persons).

See? This is what “free market,” unregulated business gets you, people: hell. Yeah that’s right, because the gov’t has to step in and save it from sinking, otherwise… the whole system falls apart, right? So… we don’t regulate the businesses, make sure they’re playing by rules – and following them! – and then when the greedy bastards at the top decide to f*ck it all up, we still have to step in and bail them out. On OUR dime.

All of the pain, none of the profits. This is what your Republican overlords have you voting for, people. It’s free play time for the rich. Get paid to sink other people’s hard-earned money. And when you do a sh!tty job, you get paid some more, and probably another high-paying job somewhere else ruining middle-America’s lives.

So, yeah. Government deregulation at work. Still want to play that game for four more years?

What? What do you mean yes? Who cares if gays get married? Give me a break! It’s not harming YOU, is it? But this is. Morals? You call those morals? Oh get over it, already. If nothing else, you ought to support their rights in order to protect yours. Look: if a couple of gay people get married, you’re not going to be a) without a job and a retirement, or b) suddenly turn gay yourself or know someone who does. BUT, if you let these guys continue to tear apart our economy and send our troops to fight illegitimate wars, you might very well be out of a job, and your family members – who are military – might just end up dead or wounded. For all eternity.

What?! No it really is an illegitimate war. Really. No it had nothing to do with terrorism, man!

Dammit, you guys… what’ll it take?

Republicans Lie? Naaah!

Hey seriously, if you’re not yet convinced that the republicans are just liars & thieves that would say anything at any given moment just be able to strip you of your money & rights… Watch this.

It’s scary how dumb they assume we all are. What’s scarier though, is that their assumptions keep proving true. Take a look here. If you hover over the blue states, the “strong democrat” states are voting around 55% each of the last four elections. If you hover over the “strong republican” states, they’re voting closer to 70% to their party of favor. WOW.

This really is scary times, folks. We need to collectively wake up and realize what the f*ck is going on. We’re not invincible and ignorance is not going to make us better. We can crumble like any world power that came before us; we’re not invincible.

Apparently, just dumb.

My Poor, Poor Couch. I wish you the best.

Hey I love my new puppies. They’re fun, smart, entertaining… and troublesome, did I mention that? Maybe once? Twice, maybe? Well it got a whole lot better recently. So good in fact, that we’ve taken to just locking them all outside whilst we’re gone for any decent amount of time (and sometimes for short outings).

I was at work a few nights ago when I got the phone call. “Manager you have a call parked on 101.” I figured it was a customer or an employee calling for something, so when I answered and recognized the voice as that of The Girl’s, I was a little worried. And it didn’t get any better when I asked what was wrong and she said “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

Of course by now we’ve all seen that picture, so it’s no mystery as to what they did: they chewed a hole in the armrest of my couch, and proceeded to pull out all of the stuffing. Yes, that’s a real picture of the actual damage. Click it for a larger view, if you desire. Go ahead; laugh at my expense. F*ckers.

How do you beat a dog with stuffing? If someone can figure that out, please let me know. Because for the life of me, I couldn’t find a way to make it work. And dammit, believe me I tried.

Anyway. We’re trying to put it back together. We’re moving kind of slow at it right now though. I expect that by the end of September, that we’ll have a fully-functional couch. It’s early in the month, however. We have time. We’ll see what happens.

House Of Flying Daggers Recommended

So… I think I’m going to have to swear off of movies that are heralded as “visual masterpieces.” I fell for it with that trifle of a movie Across the Universe. And again, last night, we ended up falling for it again with House of Flying Daggers. Oh. My. God.

I just don’t get it. It’s… crap? I will say this, though: Those Easterners, they have some imagination. It’s not good imagination mind you, but still it’s quite some imagination. Watch this movie, you’ll understand what I mean. Oh. My. God. And you know what? It’s got the beginnings of a good story. But they don’t make anything of it, instead trying to focus on palettes of color in place of substance of character. They tried to be artistic & symbolic, and instead just failed miserably at making a worthwhile movie.

It’s called House of Flying Daggers because it’s supposedly about an underground Chinese anit-government cult by that name. However, very little about the movie has anything to do with them. I mean hell, the could have called it “Flying Space Monkeys eat Spaghetti,” and it would have applied to the actual film content about as much as the title they did go with. It’s like calling your house The Blue House but it’s painted red or something. I mean, why?

There’s too much to really tear it all apart here; it’s just ridiculous from beginning to end. However, the end has two hilarious things that I DO have to mention. First up, ‘The Conundrum:’

There’s this love triangle: A woman who has an old flame that can’t let go, and a new guy she’s in love with. They’re all warriors of course, so it’s a fight to the death between the males, and the old flame by this point as mortally wounded the love of his life for betraying him by sticking a dagger into her heart. Now, after laying dead for a while, she gets up to stop them from fighting. As her old flame is preparing to throw a dagger and kill the new flame, she tells him that if he throws his dagger to kill the new guy, she’ll throw her dagger to hill him, and thus herself as well. This is supposedly a conundrum. It’s such a conundrum that the new guy drops his weapon and marches towards the old flame, saying that since he’s closer, her dagger would not reach the other guy in time, and she’d die for nothing.

Except that… the most logical way out of that situation is to just tell the other guy “dude, don’t throw your knife; we’ll all die man. You don’t throw yours, I don’t die, you don’t die, and she doesn’t die. Win-win-win, dude.”

This simple logic however, fails to reach their feeble brains.

OK now on to the 2nd idiotic thing, ‘The Winter Battle:’

In this same fight scene at the end, they’re fighting in a field on a sunny-but-cloudy day. Suddenly the scene turns to obviously-fake snow storm! AAAAHHH!!!! It’s actually so fake as to be ridiculous, and so superfluous that the only thing that I can think that made them make the scene that had no snow (in an open field) was this: They filmed an ending in the field, but they figured out in editing that it sucked (apparently, more than the ending they eventually went with, which is a scary thought). Anyway, they had to film the scene a different way, but now it was winter, so they just figured they’d go back and edit in a snow storm into the old footage.

And you know what? If it wasn’t for those darn kids, they would have gotten away with it, too. You know, those darn kids, and maybe 20/20 vision, and, like, anyone with half a brain. If it wasn’t for that stuff though, they totally would have convinced people. Totally.

:-|

However, I recommend you see it. I almost turned it off, but in all reality, I’m glad I saw it. The movie almost works on a comedic level it’s so bad, and honestly, you have to see it all from beginning to end to really get the full effect. No lie, I’m recommending a movie that I know full-well sucks ass. And I’m not kidding. It’s so bad, you have to see it.

If you have seen Magnolia with Tom Cruise? That movie sucked too, right? But if you had turned it off before the end, you would have missed out on the raining frogs, remember? And remember how you laughed your ass off at that? The movie was so bad, and that scene so obnoxiously absurd, that it was almost worth it. Well, that same thing applies here. It’ s so obnoxiously absurd, that it’s almost worth it.

So give it a rent. You can blame me later ;-)

Drive-by-Wire, & The Republican Insult comes unravelled

Drive-By-Wire takes getting used to

The new Tacoma – like a lot of new vehicles – uses a drive-by-wire throttle mechanism, whereby the gas pedal is not connected to the engine via a cable, but by electronic sensors. In the 4Runner, I can ‘feel’ the throttle, and it’s noticeably different when I’m approaching an incline: the 4Runner, I can sort of feel where I am and apply just enough additional pressure to get the tranny to downshift before it bogs down.

Not so in the Tacoma. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not actually connected to the motor via my foot, or if it’s just a matter of getting used-to, but even though I try to step in just enough to downshift before I bog down, it hasn’t seem to happen that way.

I’m not trashing my new ride; just pointing out that it’s different. Might have to change the way I behave a little to get the most out of it.

Firs thing I’m going to do is try wearing pants. See if that makes a difference.



Speaking of Pants
Questions have arisen regarding the haste in which McCain chose Palin as VP. Is there really any question here? Obama didn’t choose Hilary, so he quickly chose a Republican Woman to try and gain that upper-hand.

It was not about choosing Palin; it was about choosing a female to try and get that voter base from Obama. Sort of a “hey look at me! Obama didn’t choose a woman, but I did! Vote for me because obviously I’m more sympathetic to your needs!”

Turns out that this woman is sort of a monster, eh? I mean, she was a part of a party that wanted her state to secede from the Union (though vaguely). She’s involved in an investigation into allegations she fired top advisors because they wouldn’t fire her ex-brother-in-law. And this anti-abortion, abstinence-is-the-way conformist also has a teenage daughter who’s pregnant, and – oh yeah! – plans on marrying the father. Shotgun wedding, anyone?

Gotta love the Republicans. Unless of course you can form complete sentences & think critically for yourself. But yeah, if you can’t do those two things, I’m sure you’d love the Republican platform. :-|

So are the dumbasses catching on yet? That they’re just pawns here? That they’re being played? Like fiddles? Yeah, you’re right: probably not. Four more years, huh? Dammit.



What a fun example!
Wow. Talk about an example blowing right up in your face, huh? Take a stance that abstinence is best and works, by golly! And then your own daughter winds up prego, so you force her into getting married so that it’s not illegitimate.

And, you know, rather than critically assess your own platform, maybe look at the stats & the reasoning, and conclude – like many researchers – that sex is going to happen and the best way is probably education & access to the proper contraceptives & good care, you decide to just keep on preaching the same wrong song.

Gotta love those Republicans, eh? Yeah, me too.