Holy crap! Is it just me, or is this season of Saturday Night Live just painfully bad? The show last night with Jamie Pressly has to be the worst episode I can ever recall seeing, and horribly embarrassing for everybody involved. Losing Tina Fey as head writer (and Weekend Update anchor) has killed what little was left of a once great show. I never thought I'd be longing for the insanely stupid "Goat Boy" to come back to SNL, but ANYTHING would be better than this. Who in their right mind will want to host a show that can make even the usually-funny Dane Cook suck ass?
It's a lazy Sunday and so it must be time for bullet points...
• Tower: Sad news this weekend, Tower Records is closing its doors around the globe. Back in high school and college I would look forward to trips to Seattle with my friends because we would often stop at Tower and browse their collection of imports and 12-inch singles. Many times, we'd hit all three locations in Bellevue, Seattle Center, and the U-District to be sure nothing was missed. Of course now-a-days eBay and online specialty shops are a far more reliable and efficient way of finding music, but Tower is responsible for filling many holes in my collection in those early years. Since the store has fond memories for me, I've always stopped at other locations I find in my travels, including shops in London, Dublin, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur... plus some shops throughout Japan, and several here across the US.
• CBGB: As if that wasn't enough, CBGB is closing its doors as well. I've only been once, but still consider it to be an essential NYC experience and am sad to see it go. Rumor has it that a new CBGB is to be opened in Vegas, which seems wrong in so many ways. If this is actually true, I don't feel so bad that my CBGB T-shirt was ruined years ago.
• Quake: Washington's own Mt. Rainier, which I fly past frequently when inbound to SeaTac Airport, was hit by a minor earthquake last night which I could feel almost a hundred miles away. It is a bit worrisome to think that volcanic activity might be in its future. If such a beautiful landmark were to become another crater (like Mt. St. Helens), it would really put a dent in Seattle's southern view...
• The Departed: As somebody who thinks that Martin Scorsese hasn't made a great film since Goodfellas, I was most pleased with The Departed which may be his best work to date. This is kind of mixed praise though, because this film is essentially a remake of the brilliant trilogy of Infernal Affairs films out of Hong Kong. In many ways, I'd say the original works are superior (and well worth renting), but it's hard to deny that Scorsese did a remarkable job with his interpretation (cops with moles battle organized crime with moles in modern-day Boston). The violence, while harsh, is nowhere near the ridiculous levels of Gangs of New York (which I loathed) and the performances by Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio are fantastic. Jack Nicholson is also great, as expected, but it's difficult to see him as his character instead of "Jack Nicholson" on the screen. About the only negative is the wholly implausible love triangle that develops unnecessarily, but it's a minor quibble. If incidents of blood and violence don't bother you, The Departed well-worth checking out.
Streaming: How is it that YouTube can serve up millions of streaming videos every day, and yet just about everybody else fails miserably at it? Every site I try to watch video on from Sony to Fox to E Online all end up re-buffering every 5 seconds which is just stupid. Why even offer video if it's going to be completely unwatchable? Just put your shit up on YouTube and let somebody who actually knows what they're doing deal with it.
It would seem that bullet-points on Sunday is getting to be a tradition. Rather than fight it, I've chosen to embrace it. From now on, I'll save up all my bullet point crap during the week for Sunday. Easy.
• There's a nifty (but too short) interview with god Steve Jobs over at Newsweek. His assessment of Microsoft's incredibly fugly media player is priceless. When asked if he was concerned about the "wireless connectivity" functionality of Zune, Jobs replies: "I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable." — I think I laughed for ten solid minutes after reading that.
• My favorite comic book series of all time is Superboy and The Legion of Super-Heroes. I still remember the first time I discovered it, which was in a series of Whitman/Gold Key reprint 3-Packs at the local SafeWay. The issues that hooked me were the first I read, #255-257. I then spent years filling in my collection all the way back to Superboy #197 which was when "Legion" got added to the title (not a mean feat for a kid on a fixed allowance in middle-school!). Anyway, WB Kids has created a Legion cartoon, which is surprisingly good...
Superboy is called Superman for some kind of stupid legal reason, but is portrayed perfectly. My favorite character in the cartoon is Brainiac 5, which they have changed into a full-fledged robot. I should hate that (he's humanoid in the comic), but he's just so cool that I can't manage it! If you like cartoons, you should check it out Saturday mornings.
• I watched a great show on The Science Channel called "Building the Ultimate... A Giant Out of Water" which was about the construction of Hong Kong's New International Airport. One of my regrets in life was that I never got to fly into Hong Kong's old Kai-Tak Airport on the infamous "13 Approach" (which you can read about on Wikipedia). Once they moved to the new airport, that thrill-ride was closed forever. I think that this show is actually a series, but The Science Channel's website sucks so much ass that I couldn't find out for sure. I searched for several minutes, but the site kept popping up empty windows (via Flash, because I have pop-up blocking on) and giving me errors. Why bother to have a site at all if it's totally useless?
• I love standup comedy, and am totally addicted to Comedy Central Presents. I've discovered so many talented comics on this show, including Mike Birbiglia, Nick Swardson, Kyle Cease, Stephen Lynch, and many others. Great, great shows. So where the f#@% are the DVDs?? You can get a few of the shows at the iTunes Store, but where are the DVD sets? This is a completely missed opportunity, because if they were priced fairly, they'd sell huge.
• In other "I wish it were on DVD news" I just saw Richard Grieco's If Looks Could Kill for the hundredth time on television. How can such a funny movie which has memorable characters by Linda Hunt, Roger Rees, and Gabrielle Anwar not be released? I want a Special Edition Director's Cut double-DVD set loaded with extras and complete cast/director commentary... yesterday.
• Betty White made a welcome (if unexpected) cameo in last week's Boston Legal that was pretty cool. I wish I could find a screen cap to post, because she totally steals the show without even saying a word! I've said it many times, but Betty White kicks ass. UPDATE: Got em'!
• Even NBC must be realizing how much the current season of Saturday Night Live is sucking ass, because they didn't even show a new episode last night. Instead, they repeated a sweet episode with Kate Hudson and Radiohead that had Will Ferrell's flawless impersonation of James Lipton from Inside the Actor's Studio. And, as an apology for just how bad SNL is sucking, they are also starting to release complete seasons of the show on DVD (with musical guests!!). I am so going bankrupt buying all these sets.
• Lastly, if you want your mind blown, here's a cool presentation in Flash of "Imagining the Tenth Dimension."
Well that was relatively painless. Look for all new bullets next Sunday.
• Despite having way too much work, I made time to go see The Prestige, because it's a film by Christopher Nolan. I thought his Batman Begins was the best of all Batman fims. Insomnia was a little dull, but still a good movie. Memento was sheer genius, and I've lost count the number of times I've seen it. I had high hopes for The Prestige, and was not disappointed. The film, much like a magic trick, is a delicate balance. The trick is putting in enough clues to make the viewer have an idea of what's happening, but not so many that the viewer figures it out too early. Sadly (just like The Sixth Sense) I had everything figured out before the end, but managed to enjoy the film quite a lot anyway. I wish I could detach myself from movies like this enough to get fooled, but it doesn't ever seem to be...
The Prestige is a film about rival magicians (played by Hugh Jackman & Christian Bale) and their ever-escalating obsession to be the best. Along the way there are some surprising turns, shocking twists, and clever casting (David Bowie?). This is one of my favorite films this year (despite being inexplicably slow in parts). I was surprised to see that it was based on a book by Christopher Priest, who wrote the totally brilliant book The Affirmation which I read years ago. To say I'm dying to read the original novel after seeing the movie is an understatement.
• Speaking of totally brilliant books, I've been reading my new DC Absolute Edition of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. The volume is absolutely beautiful (looking much like Destiny's tome!) and has raised the bar for future Absolute releases. I've read that eventually all Sandman books will be given the Absolute treatment (four volumes in all) and hope that this includes the Death mini series... Chris Bachalo's stunning art would be amazing when blown up to a larger size! Highly recommended.
• In other movie news, I finally ended up renting Bride & Prejudice (the Indian remake of Pride & Prejudice) so I could see the brutally hot Aishwarya Rai in an English film because, well, damn...
I'm not much into musicals, but having the delicious Miss Rai around made up for a lot of cheesy song and dance numbers. One surprise... Naveen Andrews has a notable role that is very different than the brooding Sayid on Lost.
• As if Washington State's absurd "Say WA Campaign" wasn't embarrassing enough... Seattle has a new campaign of absurdity all its own... "Metronatural" for which they spent a hefty $200,000 and SIXTEEN MONTHS to come up with. And now they're going to blow $300,000 promoting it, which is odd, because I'd spend $600,000 to erase all traces of it ever existing (assuming I had $600,000 burning a hole in my pocket). What the heck does "Metronatural" say about Seattle? How is "Metronatural" going to inspire anybody to see Seattle? It's utterly bizarre, and sounds badly dated. The sad thing here is that Seattle is a remarkable city with a lot going for it, and I worry that "Metronatural" may actually have the opposite effect of scaring people away.
• My ENORMOUS PHONE is starting to go flaky, which means it's time to look for a new mobile. That's kind of a bummer, because I thought I'd have time to wait for Apple's iPhone to debut. But with no release date in sight, I've had to look elsewhere. At first I wanted the beautiful new Motorola KRZR, but that was before I found the ultra-sweet LG Migo...
How cool is that? It looks kind of like Shrek! So I get all excited and am determined to get one when I read on and find out that it is a phone for kids, and doesn't allow you to dial anything except four pre-programmed numbers and 911. How crappy is that? So now I am going to have to find something else. Bummer.
• After watching a few snippets of Kylie Minogue's Showgirl concert on BBC America and writing about it, I decided to take up the advice in my reader comments and rent the DVD. It was... uhhhhh... interesting. Mostly because Kylie is a very entertaining performer... but more so because the show has obviously been created for an audience of women and gay men. There is so much man-candy piled on her stage that I turned at least 10% more gay just from having watched it...
There's also quite a bit of Kylie's remarkable =ahem= assets shown as well, so all is not lost...
OMG! Aren't those red shoes just like totally the most fabulous thing ever? I'd kill or die to have the calves you need to pull off that look!
Uhhhhh... okay... maybe that would be 15%...
• Clerks 2 finally has a DVD ship date here in the States of November 28th. The release is packed with six hours of bonus features (including an extended version of the infamous "donkey scene") but the highlight is bound to be the cast commentary, just as it has been in all the previous Kevin Smith DVDs. Upon reflection, I'm thinking that Clerks 2 was one of my favorite films of the year (certainly the funniest so far), and I'm anxious to give it another viewing because the three times I saw it in the theater wasn't enough. Also being released on the 28th is "An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder" which is guaranteed fun.
• Speaking of Kevin, he has a new weekly video show at mtvU called Sucks Less With Kevin Smith. I was really looking forward to seeing it... until I found out that it requires Windows Digital Rights Management, and won't play on a Mac. Sucks less? I can't think of anything that sucks MORE. I find it shocking that Kevin Smith would be party to this stupid shit! Why not release the videos DRM-free on his blog so everybody can enjoy them? Stuff like this has me wondering what would happen if other vbloggers were as short-sighted. What would I do without The Show by Ze Frank, for example?
• Speaking of suckage, I'm still waiting for my Milwaukee Admirals' team jersey. They sent me one, but it wasn't personalized like I ordered it. I thought it would be replaced by now, but a month has passed and nothing. I'm a little bummed about that. I hope it arrives before my trip to Wisconsin so I can be totally awesome...
"For the last time, those aren't hockey pucks!"
• Speaking of totally awesome, the new Hellboy animated film, Sword of Storms has finally aired on Cartoon Network. It was really well done, beautifully animated, and featured most of the actors from the film reprising their roles (Selma Blair!). As a Helboy fan from day one, I couldn't be happier...
If you don't get Cartoon Network, you'll be happy to know that a DVD will be released next February. If you can't wait that long and are looking for some interesting reading, I highly recommend the Hellboy Animated Production Diary, which offers insight into the labor of love that goes into creating good animation. I was totally addicted to it, and couldn't stop until I had devoured every entry.
• Speaking of totally addicted, I am going nuts over Last.fm since re-installing it the other day. First of all, I've been buying music like crazy as I discover brilliant stuff I have somehow missed. Second, I've been rediscovering old favorites I haven't listened to in ages. And third, I am freaking out over Blogography Group Radio which compiles musical favorites from readers who have joined. It's a cool mash-up of stuff I know and like, stuff I never expected to like, and stuff I've never even heard of before. There's 17 members so far, and the resulting charts are interesting, to say the least! What an amazing, amazing service. If you like music and haven't tried Last.fm, you owe it to yourself to have a look. When I re-do the site once "Pink for October" is over in a few days, I'll be putting up a chart from my user profile right in the sidebar.
• Speaking of "Pink for October," it was my intention to raffle a big prize package this month, then sell out my entire inventory of T-shirts and donate every penny of the profits to the Susan G. Koman Foundation for Breast Cancer. Unfortunately, I never got around to doing this because of numerous doctor visits for my eyesight problems and catching up with the work I missed because of them. This is something I still very much want to do, and plan to have the raffle ready when I return from Seattle next week. I hope everybody who liked the idea is still interested (even though Pink for October will have ended) because this is an incredibly worthy organization...
Dave & Bad Monkey love healthy boobies! Schedule your mammogram today!
• Speaking of incredibly worthy, Jenny has truly outdone herself in her latest entry at Run Jen Run. I leave you with my nomination for Blog Entry of The Year...
"In sooth, I know not why I am so hungry. It wearies me, this aching. But feed I must. Look ho! More dots, I spy."
With all haste I beseech you to click over to "Death of a Pacman: A Play in Five Acts" for the finest assemblage of dramatic prose and images I have yet seen!
Alas, there are no more bullets to dodge here until next Sunday!
Given my dead power adapter this weekend, Bullet Sunday is a day late... and this time, it's gone gay! "Queer Sunday on Monday" I'll call it...
• Neil Patrick Harris! First George on Grey's Anatomy announces he's gay, and now Barney on How I Met Your Mother has done the same. The strange thing is that it hasn't been exactly a secret. I only visit online gossip sites rarely, yet I've read the stories for years. I've just never cared...
Yeah, there's that in-between period that kind of gave it away...
He's an actor, and he's great, so he can play any character he wants to play and I'm just glad he's out there (and OUT there). This doesn't change my enjoyment of Barney on HIMYM at all, just like it didn't change anything for George on Grey's. It's called ACTING.
• Pet Shop Boys! The first ever Pet Shop Boy concert in Seattle was... interesting. Their music consists of Neil Tennant's singing, Chris Lowe's keyboards, and not much else. Because of this, a simple recital concert would get boring pretty quickly. At the other end of the spectrum, an overly-extravagant production would overshadow their thoughtful, pondering songs. Wisely, the Pet Shop Boys decided to hit somewhere in the middle with a kind of art-show performance piece. The stage backdrop is a huge white cube that can be reconfigured in a variety of different ways (and to compelling effect). Other than that, they've got a few dancers, singers, and cube-movers thrown in for good measure...
Photo taken from the very excellent Rock 'n' Roll Star!
Going to the concert was kind of a last-minute decision, so decent tickets were expensive (but the front-row, first balcony view was awesome in Seattle's Paramount Theater). I didn't want to go alone so I asked a friend to come along... she's not a fan, but had a good time (it's entertainment everybody can love!). Overall, the show was brilliant, and I am totally psyched that I finally got to see Pet Shop live. Most every song was flawless, and their only mis-step was a sappy acoustic rendition of the otherwise excellent Home and Dry (which is a favorite). The INTERESTING thing about the concert was the audience... which was almost entirely gay men. It was much like what I'd imagine a pride rally in San Francisco would be like (but without the costumes, parade floats, and glitter), and raises the question: at what point did all the 80's synth-pop I love become totally gay? I could have sworn it was only partially gay back in the day. Anyway... for more terrific photos and a nice wrap-up, head over to Rock 'n' Roll Star, who did a much better job of talking about the concert than I did.
• Midnighter! The nastier half of the very cool gay-super-duo of "Midnighter and Apollo" (of The Authority fame) has his own book! As if the awesome Garth Ennis doing the writing wasn't enough, they got the brilliant Chris Sprouse for the artwork on the new Midnighter comic...
You've been a bad, bad monkey...
It is an amazing, ass-kicking read and will absolutely go on the top of my reading list each month. If Batman isn't tough enough for you, this is the book to get.
• Rev. Ted Haggard! I hope you get to burn in the hell that YOU YOURSELF HAVE CREATED for gay men and women everywhere you lying hypocrite. You've been condemning homosexuals and working overtime with President Bush to restrict the rights of gay Americans for something YOU do. I don't find the fact that you've been caught paying for gay sex ironic, "reverend," I find it pathetic you stupid asshole...
Hypocrisy, thy name is Ted...
The truly sick part of this is that now he'll go into seclusion and, with spiritual help, "cure" himself of his "sinful" homosexuality and probably make millions on a book deal where he can renew his gay-bashing on an entirely new level. Now THAT'S ironic!
Tomorrow Blogography returns to its regularly-scheduled bullet-free programming...
Time for your bullet-proof vest... SUNDAY IS HERE!!
• Cars! I never managed to catch Pixar's latest film Cars while it was in the theater. Now that I see how beautiful it is on DVD, I'm really regretting it. Because, while I had a hard time buying into a world populated entirely by automobiles, it was just so amazing to look at that I didn't care. Every detail was painstakingly represented and, if you've ever seen a NASCAR race, the track action was superb. The icing on the cake was the top-notch voice acting by Owen Wilson, who convincingly conveys a surprising emotional range as race car "Lightning McQueen"...
Awww... cute! It's an adorable talking race car!
I still don't think that the Pixar cars are as clever as the Aardmann cars for those Chevron commercials (is it just me, or do the Pixar cars all look cross-eyed?)... but this film does have the benefit of being the only funny thing I have ever seen "Larry The Cable Guy" associated with. It's no Toy Story or Monster's Inc. but still a lot of fun (unlike John Tucker Must Die, which was a boatload of crap and one of the worst movies I've seen in recent memory).
• Stats! Last month my "unique visitor counts had dropped for the first time in years. Now they've jumped by 36,000 for late October/early November... I guess people just love a monkey eating urinal cakes.
• The Office! For a while there I was getting really tired of Steve Carell's constant idiocy in the Americanized version of The Office but, after seeing his brilliant performance in Little Miss Sunshine, I decided to start watching again. Now I'm like a teenage girl, because I find myself saying things like "OMG! Isn't Jim and Pam going to be like the cutest couple ever?!" And who thought I would ever feel sorry for Roy? Oh well... I am so totally in love with Jenna Fischer now! She was great on Letterman, and looked brutally hot compared to her frumpy character on the show.
Awww... cute! It's an adorable talking girl!
• Lost! And on the other end of the television spectrum... I've been complaining for months about what a suck-fest Lost has become after that brilliant first season. Unlike excellent shows like Veronica Mars which wrap shit up and move on to something better... Lost just lingers on, never providing a payoff. Now I notice that more and more people are feeling the same way, including this article at New York Magazine. I don't know if it is the writers, producers, or network that are insisting on being so frakkin' stupid, but if things keep going like this the show will be cancelled before they ever bother to answer anything. What a waste of time. But that seems to be typical for television lately.
• Veteran's Day! It was my intention yesterday to write a Veteran's Day entry but, given the drama of my dying PowerBook, I didn't get around to it. Even so, there's never a wrong time to be grateful to those who have served...
Bad Monkey's new best friend: Buddy Poppy
• Sucks Less! Several people have brought to my attention that Sucks Less with Kevin Smith is now being streamed via Flash for Mac users. You can check it out right here. The Smith intros are pretty funny, though some of the actual clips in the show are kind of lame. Something that is NOT lame is Clerks 2 which is finally dropping on DVD in a mere 16 days. Time to start watching all of my Kevin Smith DVDs so I am ready to go.
And on that note, I'm off to work. Monday deadlines blow.
Gaaah! It's the revenge of the bullet points!
• ZOON DOOM! Uh yeah... saw Zune, played with Zune, pitched Zune to the curb. The iPod has nothing to worry about here. The only thing that I'm envious of is the larger screen, everything else... from the clunky looks to the crappy software... sucks ass. Once Apple finally gets off their ass and gives us an iPod with a decent size display for video, Zune will be nothing more than a bump in the road. Yet another failed catch-up effort that doesn't measure up. You'd think with billions of dollars in the bank, Microsoft could innovate rather than keep imitating. Badly.
• COUCH BANANA! Scene No. 4 has been animated. Bring on the dream sequence...
• MEEEEEEEEAT! Many of the vegetarians I know (and all of the vegans) are sickened by the smell of cooking meat. I don't have that problem... I'm totally indifferent to the smell, though I'd rather do without if given the choice. On the way home from work tonight, somebody was barbecuing steaks and the aroma filled the air. Much to my surprise, it smelled so good that I very nearly had a carnivore relapse. It was all I could do to keep from running off howling into the night, hunting down that grill so I could tear into yummy cow flesh. Instead I had a can of Coke with Lime and some Pop Tarts. Yeah, that hit the spot.
• GOLDEN GLOBES! Elizabeth Hurley was looking her usual perfectly hot self in Berlin this week...
• WII-DUNDANCY! How sad is it that people stand in line to buy Nintendo Wii consoles and Sony PlayStation 3 consoles so they can sell them on eBay instead of letting the people who actually want to play them buy them? Though it's hard to blame anybody for doing it... a PS3 can net you $1000 minimum profit, whereas a Wii gets you double your investment. I wish that manufacturers wouldn't launch until they have plenty of supply built up so this crap could be avoided. Now I'm going to have to wait until I hear some kid bragging about getting a Wii so I can break into his house and steal it.
• BROTHERS & SISTERS! Tonight is a fresh episode of a show I never thought I would watch called Brothers & Sisters. When I first heard of it, I was intrigued because of the amazing line-up of talent behind it. I'm a sucker for good acting, even if it's in a weepy family melodrama...
The show revolves around a woman (Sally Field), her dead husband (Tom Skerritt), her brother (Ron Rifkin from Alias), and her five children... Calista Flockhart (Ally McBeal), Balthazar Getty (also from Alias), Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under), and two guys I never heard of. When I first saw the cast, I thought "who are the two poor bastards who are going to try and hold their own against that kind of star power?" Turns out exactly the opposite is true. The two unknowns (Matthew Rhys and Dave Annable) actually have the best characters. But it's Annable's totally f#@%ed up "Justin Walker" that is the most challenging role on the entire show. Last episode he reached the breaking point, and I've been waiting all week to find out what's going to happen next. I hope it was worth the wait.
Now can somebody please tell me where I can buy a Mayor Adam West Cat Launcher? Seth McFarlane is genius.
It's another Bullet Sunday, but I'm shooting blanks.
• SNOW! Shortly after waking up, I was in bed checking my email and heard somebody outside stomping their feet. This could mean only one thing... the day I have been dreading has finally arrived. Our first snow. I am not a fan of the snow, and never have been. Even when I was a kid. It's cold, it's wet, and it's no fun if you don't ski or snowmobile. And did I mention that it's cold? A quick look out my back window verifies that six inches have fallen overnight and it's still coming down...
The horsies must not mind the snow, because they seem perfectly happy to be standing outside in it.
• DEPOT! Despite the crappy weather, I was needing some ink for my printer so I drove to Wenatchee over hazardously icy roads to get some. When I arrived, there were three employees but no customers which should mean that the service would be excellent. But the entire time I was in the store trying to find the correct ink cartridge, not ONE of the three asked if I needed any help. They were too busy talking about how slow business was. After five minutes at the ink counter followed by another five minutes in the paper section, I didn't find anything I was looking for and left. Customer service is dead.
• WARE! The incredible Chris Ware (whose Chicago exhibit I visited with Jenny and Gary) had created four amazing Thanksgiving covers for The New Yorker this past month. Fortunately, the magazine has graciously posted them online (with enlargements) so anybody can see them. It's well worth checking out...
• MADONNA! While working yesterday, I had Madonna's "The Confessions Tour" concert running in the background off my TiVo. I was not impressed. Madge seems to have forsaken the music in favor of being an over-indulgent, annoying, foul-mouthed bitch. She's come a long way since her "Who's That Girl" and "Blond Ambition" tours... and not in a good way. Kind of a pity, because I actually liked the album.
• CUPID! Today I decided to have something I know I would enjoy playing in the background while I worked... the best show ever to air on television: Jeremy Piven's Cupid. The complete series is being seeded on BitTorrent, and so I grabbed it. The quality is crap, but the show is absolute genius. This is probably my twentieth time watching all fourteen eps they made, and my love of the series has not diminished (I'm not an overly-emotional kind of guy, but when I get to the end of the "Heart of the Matter" episode I get a lump in my throat every time). I remain infuriated that it has not been given a DVD release, and am still fuming that ABC cancelled it seven years ago. Dumbasses. How hard would it have been to give it a decent time slot and let it find an audience? Of course, after they did the same thing to Sports Night, you have to wonder if that's something they are even capable of.
• SLEEP! Ah, I almost forgot... there's a new all-natural sleep aid on the market called "Midnite." I've heard it doesn't work for everybody, but it sure does a great job for me. I've been consistently falling asleep in about 15-20 minutes after chewing a tablet. The beauty of it is that it only stays in your system for three hours, so you can take it in the middle of the night if you wake up. Of course, if somebody likes to slam doors in your apartment complex and you don't have the three hours, there's unfortunately nothing Midnite can do for you.
And just like that, Sunday is over.
Live from Wisconsin — IT'S BULLET POINT SUNDAY!
• TIMELY! Much to my shock and awe... and despite the weather problems plaguing Seattle and Chicago recently... every one of the three flights I took today was on-time. It's probably one of the best travel days (connection-wise) I've ever had, even though it started at 3:45am.
• COLD! It is unbelievably ass-numbing testicle-shriveling cold here. As I drive down the road, the heater cannot keep up with the freezing temperature, so you roast where the heat comes out and are chilled to the bone everywhere else. I don't handle the cold well at all, so I am understandably miserable most of the time.
• CAMERA! My Canon S400 compact camera has been a piece of crap since day one, and today it finally stopped working altogether. Since every other Canon I've ever owned has been awesome, I'm chalking this up to bad luck and will probably be buying a new Powershot SD800 tomorrow to replace it (known as Ixus 850 outside the US). Traveling without a camera... even to places I've been dozens of times before... makes me feel naked. I simply must have a camera in my pocket to feel whole. The nice thing about this model is that it has true optical image stabilization, which will hopefully help diminish the number of blurry photos I take...
• DOLLS! Now that they've released a "Doctor" Laura talking doll to go with the Ann Coulter talking doll, the "Hypocritical Dumbass Whore Talking Doll Line" is nearly complete...
All we're missing is Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.
• GEOGRAPHY! A foreign reader of Blogography questioned my calling Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio "The Midwest" when, if you divide the USA in half, the "midwest" would be Montana, Idaho and such. This may be true geographically, but the various regions of the US are influenced by historical factors as well. I admit that not everybody divides up the nation the same way but, in general, the way I cut it up here is more-or-less considered correct...
• GOODNIGHT! A full day of travel after three hours sleep has left me exhausted. It's 9:30pm in my new time zone, so I'm using that as an excuse to call it a day.
Oooh! It's Bullet Point Sunday in the snow! Well, not really, because I don't see any snow falling outside... but that's what my weather widget is telling me. Darn you to heck you lying weather widget!
• WARNING! What is it with these stupid-ass warnings on DVDs now-a-days telling you not to steal movies? I JUST BOUGHT THE MOVIE... why in the heck do you waste my time telling me not to steal something I just bought... EVERY TIME I PLAY IT?
• ASSHOLES! I am getting so f#@%ing pissed off at all these f#@%ing idiots who drive down the f#@%ing road with two feet of f#@%ing snow heaped on top of their f#@%ing roof that comes flying off and f#@%ing smashes into my f#@%ing windshield...
One of these days I am going to follow one of these f#@%ing dipshits back to their f#@%ing house and get rid of that f#@%ing snow by setting their f#@%ing car on fire. Assholes.
• SHOP! Adobe released a public beta of Photoshop CS3 that runs super-sweet on my Intel Macs, and the speed increase alone is worth the massively huge download. The problem is that Photoshop CS2 never gave me any problems other than running slowly. What I need is a public beta of Adobe Illustrator CS3, because that CS2 sucker crashes constantly, and there are dozens of little quirks that drive me insane on a daily basis. I don't know if the icon change is temporary or not but, even though it lacks imagination, it sure beats the shit out of the horrendous old icons.
• FLAT! My local grocery got in some pricey pizza-type frozen entrees by "American Flatbread" which are simply amazing. I've only ever found the "three cheese" version, and am dying to try the other varieties but, alas, they are nowhere to be found in the valley. This is the first time I have ever eaten a frozen "pizza" which didn't taste like it came from a freezer, making it well worth the cost. I highly recommend giving one a try if your local grocery should happen to have them in stock...
• ZOOM! My Flickr Pro Account is running out and I am debating whether or not I want to renew it considering the good people at Zooomr will give bloggers a pro account for free. After all, if Zooomr is good enough for Thomas Hawk, a photographer I totally idolize, then surely it's good enough for me. My initial goofing around with the service has been good. There's only two negatives bothering me so far... 1) Logging in with OpenID is kind of clutzy because you aren't taken directly to your account, you instead get to muck about in the OpenID server and have to backtrack to get into Zooomr. 2) The interface is way cluttered compared to Flickr, and all that excess crap distracts from viewing the photos. That being said, the Zooomr community seems more closely-knit and active than Flickr. I uploaded just one photo and received five nice comments in barely any time at all. I suppose it doesn't hurt to nab my free account and figure it all out this weekend...
Foggy Day on The Great Wall of China
• MARS! Season Three of the amazing Veronica Mars is now available for sale at the iTunes Music Store. This will come in handy since TiVo WON'T GET OFF THEIR F#@%ING ASSES AND RELEASE A F#@%ING MEDIA PLAYER FOR MACINTOSH! What f#@%ing asswipes. Oh well, when I am away from home and can't get American television, the iTunes Store is probably more convenient than trying to mess around with BitTorrent. Holy shit I hope that Apple is working on a TiVo-like solution so I can kick my f#@%ing TiVo bullshit to the curb once and for all.
How can I be so exhausted yet not be able to sleep?
I went to bed at 9:30 and was relieved that I might actually catch up on some much-needed shuteye. But then I woke up at midnight, and haven't been able to get back to sleep all night. Insomnia sucks ass, but it did give me time to write the final Bullet Sunday of 2006... BLOGOGRAPHY'S BEST OF THE YEAR LIST!
• Best New Television Show... For nine glorious weeks, Project Catwalk featured Elizabeth Hurley being Elizabeth Hurley which makes it one of the greatest shows ever. At least it was, until this tragic event occurred.
• Best Returning Television Show... How does one choose between Veronica Mars and Battlestar Galactica? (if you are a guy, trust me... you want to follow those links!).
• Best Guest Appearance on a Television Show...
Betty White in "Peterotica" from The Family Guy.
• Best Movie... This is a tough call, but I was taken completely by surprise at how much I loved Little Miss Sunshine. A close second is The Prestige, which haunted me for weeks.
• Best Bad Movie Hype... I went to Brokeback Mountain because of all the hype and was so bored that I consider this to be one of the worst films ever. I prefer my remake, Bareback Monkey. "I wish I could quit you, Captain Crunch!"
• Best Video Game... Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy. I only wish I had time to play it.
• Best Funny... I never claimed that Blogography was a humor blog but, when I set my mind to it, this can be the funniest blog ever.
• Best Poetry... I hate to be tooting my own horn here, but my Seven Odes From My Day-Trip To Chicago kick ass! I should totally write a book of poetry!
• Best Charitable Cause... There is nothing more important right now than immortalizing my greatness. Give generously to the Dave Monument Fund.
• Best Explanation of Why I Am The Way I Am...
Yes, the world really does revolve around me.
• Best Reason to Have a Blog... Davecago was one of the year's biggest highlights for me.
• Best Shock... Randomly running into fellow blogger Timothy while in New York City just before he's off to Uganda. What are the odds? Considering he previously lived in American Samoa before moving to Africa, he would be voted the Blogger I'm Least Likely To Ever Meet, yet there he was in the middle of one of the biggest cities on earth.
• Best Non-Government Holiday... Yeah, it would be pretty hard to top Day of Slayer! (and getting to meet Mistress Eve and Dave3 a month later was icing on the cake).
• Best Garfield Strip in 25 Years... Well, it's not like Jim Davis was ever going to get around to doing it. You may think I'm joking here, but I'm totally not.
• Best Bad Influence... Bad Monkey really is bad... he's teaching kids to smoke cigarettes and then getting them into trouble at school.
• Best Blog Fan... Turns out that I'm not good-looking, not funny, and not nice, and somebody was kind enough to point it out to me.
• Best Identity Theft... And here I only thought I was joking about people wanting to be me...
Who could possibly want to be me with hair like this?
• Best Bad Robert Story... Well, of those stories I was actually able to share without getting sued, I guess it would have to be Bad Robert's Blue Balls.
• Best Advice... How to make your blog be like every other blog (though some people hated me for this one).
• Best Way To Hide a Fart... Who knew a pack of gum would make the best odor eliminator ever?
• Best Lie... Bob is a psychopath.
• Best Lesson Learned... One thing at a time.
• Best Blogography Entry... How can I choose when they're all so good? I've narrowed it down to these ten...
• Best Reader... It's totally you! How could it be anybody but you? Thanks for stopping by, and we'll see you next year.
Ack! It's Bullet Sunday, but I'm running low on ammo!
• Thank you... Many, many thanks to absolutely everybody who has voted for Cupid to be released on DVD! According to my stats, 624 of you have clicked-through to vote, and I couldn't be more grateful. The show is now up to #2, and will hopefully end up ranking high enough to get Sony Pictures to notice. Yet, as grateful as I am that Sony is thinking about releasing Cupid, I am kind of pissed at the way they have structured the voting. First of all, you MUST vote for three shows, even if you don't like any of the other shows. Second of all, you can't give all your votes to the one show you want. This inflates the votes of shows that nobody cares about, and Sony should really find a way to make the voting reflect what people are actually wanting to buy.
• Windy... The Wenatchee Valley has been hit with pretty horrendous wind storms for the past few days. This has resulted in numerous trees and power poles being blown over... wrecking houses and cutting power lines. Today while I was working, there were a half-dozen power brown-outs that kept killing my computer and taking my work with it. Wind sucks ass.
• Nintendon't... Speaking of suckage, there's still no Wii game consoles to be found anywhere. It's been weeks since Nintendo dumped a load of Wii for the holidays, and you'd think that they would have caught up to the demand by now. Yet the only place you can buy them is on eBay for 2 to 3 times the retail price. Kind of makes you wonder why Nintendo doesn't just jack the price up themselves if they know that the supply is going to be restricted. In any event, it's kind of funny that when you go to Nintendo's website that they're hitting you over the head with something you can't even buy. That's not very nice at all.
• Whore... Today I decided to add yet another volume to my series of Dumbass Books...
Because nothing is sadder than seeing a nasty whore sliding around a parking lot with holes in the ass of her stretch-pants. At least, I was assuming she was a whore, since I don't know many women who would explode in a flurry of obscenities after her child slipped, fell down, and got their new coat dirty. Never mind that the poor kid looked like he hurt himself and was already upset... screaming curse words at him while he's crying and struggling to get up makes makes me think you're nothing more than a big whore. You're certainly not much of a mother. And if you expect to make any money being a whore, you should at least try to be a little more classy. Like maybe wearing stretch pants that don't have holes in the ass and watching your filthy white-trash mouth in front of your kids. This book will explain it all using small words and pictures so even a stupid bitch like you can understand it.
Some people shouldn't be allowed to have kids.
Yeah, that's all I got. But next week is MacWorld, so I'm sure things will pick up...
It is 4:30am on a Sunday. Using my brilliant math skills, I calculate that this means I've had 4-1/2 hours of unrest. I want to go back to sleep, but figure I might as well write a few bullets for Bullet Sunday first.
• Pudding. The reason I woke up at 4:30am was so I could go to the bathroom. And grab a Snack-Pack pudding (because there's nothing better to do in bed that blog and eat Snack-Pack pudding*). But this is no ordinary Snack-Pack... it's NEW "SpooNibbles" Snack-Pack. Each little container of chocolate pudding comes with a vanilla cookie that you can use to eat with. When you are done eating the pudding, you eat the cookie "spoon." It's the single most brilliant invention since electricity. I once accidentally grabbed a plastic fork for my Snack-Pack, but didn't notice until I was ready to eat it. Thanks to "SpooNibbles" you can avoid horrific experiences like this. I think more foods should come with cookie stick spoons to eat with. I'd totally eat crap I didn't even like if I knew there was a cookie at the end. I might actually even eat a salad.
• Dated. You know how there are people with whom your entire relationship is based on a mutual hatred? And I'm not talking about politicians and Hewlett Packard... I'm talking about real people with whom you regularly interact. I don't have too many of these heinous individuals in my life, so imagine my surprise when one of them asked me out. Like on a date. It was really strange, because I had always just assumed she loathed me as much as I have come to despise her. Yet there she was. I guess that I am so totally lovable that even mutual hate can't keep people away from me. Using my brilliant math skills, I calculate that it has been 6 months since my last date. This gives me serious pause to consider actually accepting. Fortunately, rational thought manages to somehow overcome raging hormones, and I decline by telling her "oh, sorry... I'm leaving the country." In retrospect, this sounds like a lame blow-off excuse, and I feel kind of bad about it. Even though it happens to be true.
• Veronica. I am receiving mixed signals about the fate of the best show on television: Veronica Mars. I received a flurry of emails telling me that Veronica had been cancelled in favor of a Pussycat Dolls reality show (where they will apparently be searching for a new Pussy). It sounded just typical enough of network television to be true, so I did some digging and found a statement saying that Veronica was just moving away from Tuesdays, and wasn't cancelled at all. This made even more sense, because previous statements had said Veronica was given a nearly-full-season order. But now I read an actual news story which says Veronica is taking a "breather" in favor of Pussycat Dolls after February sweeps, and will then return after with the final five non-serialized episodes of the season. This is not a cancelation notice, but it might as well be. CW network f#@%ers. How in the hell are people supposed to get into a show when you keep moving it and pre-empting it for shit? I mean, it's not like I am against the hot bitches of Pussycat Dolls having a television show, but to pre-empt Veronica Mars for this crap? Seriously?
• Bedridden. It's 5:30am now. After three bullet-points and a half-hour of blog surfing I am going back to bed, where I fully expect that I will lay awake staring at the ceiling until it's time to go to work. My life sucks that way.
• Uh huh. It's now 7:30am. Just as I expected, I didn't get any additional sleep. Instead I thought about how happy I would be if the Pussycat Dolls were to die in a fiery plane crash and the idiots at CW Network had no choice but to order additional episodes of Veronica Mars to fill the sudden gap in their scheduling plans. I then thought of how I would be even happier if the Pussycat Dolls were to crash their plane into Hewlett Packard so they BOTH perish in a big ball of fiery death. The fact that I am wishing death upon my enemies usually has me sleeping like a baby, but not today. Hmmm... what if Jared the Subway Sandwich Whore was visiting Hewlett Packard when the Pussycat Dolls' plane crashed into it? Bitter tragedy or poetic justice?
• Madness. In addition to Barack Obama's book, I'll also be taking my Absolutely MAD: 50+ Years of Mad Magazine DVD-ROM. I already have some comics on DVD, and was pretty happy when I found out MAD was getting a similar treatment. The first issue I was exposed to was the "Star Wars Musical" issue from 1978. I then became an addict, buying all the MAD books and magazines I could afford until Don Martin left the publication in 1987. With Prohias already gone, it just felt like time. Re-living "my" MAD's glory years and being able to see most everything that happened before and after for only $40 is pretty cool...
• Hands. Yesterday while washing my hands in Quizno's bathroom, I saw one of those signs that said "EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK! - LOS EMLEADOS DEBEN LAVAR LAS MANOS ANTES DE VOLVER AL TRABAJO!" "No shit!" I said to myself. Then I laughed, because that's the whole point.
Bah! Time to go to work...
* Actually, there are plenty of things better to do in bed than eat Snack-Pack pudding and blog, it's just that it's been so long since I've done anything else there that I forget what they are.
Due to yesterday's breaking news from the floor of ISM, Bullet Point Sunday is on Monday today...
• Access... The internet is a wonderful thing because it lets you keep up with your life no matter where you go. The internet is also a terrible thing because it lets you keep up with your life no matter where you go. Just as I get done with stuff here, I then have to deal with stuff back home all night. It's as if the work-day never ends! This makes it very difficult to keep up with email (32 unanswered), blogs (343 entries unread), and news (108 stories to read). Remember the good old days when you could leave the country and forget about everything else? Hopefully tonight I will have a bit of time to get caught up.
• Fahrt... Two new photos for my fahrt collection!
It sounds funny because it's like "fart" with an "h"!
• Ambassador... The United States Ambassador to Germany was visiting companies in the USA Pavilion at ISM yesterday. Given all the things he must have on his plate, it was a very generous use of his time. In addition to saying hello, he was also accepting boxes of candies and other goodies to give to injured soldiers at Landstuhl Hospital here in Germany (it's the largest American hospital outside of the US, and many wounded end up there). While the Ambassador was talking with people far more important than me, I had the opportunity to speak with a woman from his office. She tells me that most injured soldiers are flown out of the war-zone with only the clothes on their backs, and arrive at the hospital with nothing. I got an address of the Chaplain's office where stuff can be sent...
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center
ATTN: MCEUL-CH/Chaplains Office
CMR 402 - APO AE 09180
They can only accept NEW items, and are in need of sweat-suits (all sizes), gym bags, and international calling cards. Of course, letters and get-well cards are always welcome. Looks like I have something new to do when I get back home.
• Clockless... Why is it that most of the hotels I visit in Europe don't have alarm clocks? I find myself freaking out each morning because I don't know what time it is.
• for Jenny... Jenny had asked if Peeps were at ISM, so I went to get some Peeps scoop. Turns out that the big news out of Peep-land is that Peeps are now available in GREEN! The new green is replacing white Peeps, which have been discontinued. I remarked that this was probably a good idea because green Peeps are more fun that boring-ass white Peeps, but was told that the white ones will probably still be missed because they are popular at weddings...
We be ready for St. Patrick's Day, bitches!
• Panties... My hotel room here in Cologne doesn't have the best of views. I'm not overlooking the cathedral or having a view of the Rhine River or anything. What I DO overlook is an apartment building. An apartment building that has a woman who very much likes walking around her home wearing nothing but a bra and a pair of panties. Ordinarily, this could be a good thing, but I think she must be like 90 years old or something, so it's actually kind of freaky.
• Screamer... Why is it that when English-speaking persons are talking to somebody whose English skills are not that great, THEY FEEL THAT YELLING AND TALKING LOUDLY MAKES THEM MORE EASILY UNDERSTOOD?!? It drives me nuts, and I don't understand the logic... yet I see it everywhere.
• Scary... As beautiful as Kölner Dom is, I can't help but note that it is positively terrifying at night. Kind of like a scary haunted castle or something...
Welcome to Count Dracula's Summer Home.
• Redux... Last night I was going to have dinner at a little pizza restaurant I like, but they had the doors locked for some reason (even though there were people inside). I was kind of craving some Twisted Mac & Cheese from the Hard Rock, so I decided to give them a second chance. Service was much better this time around. 4 minutes to get my Pepsi. 17 minutes to get my Mac & Cheese. 7 minutes to get my Pepsi refill. 5 minutes to get my bill settled. In other words, it was a typical Hard Rock experience for me with the good service and good food I've come to expect. I have no idea why it would be otherwise for my other visits, but am glad to know it does work from time to time.
• Sexy... Today I found out that Cologne is the only city in Germany that actively taxes prostitutes. No... no... no... no... i did NOT learn this from personal experience... I overheard it in the hotel lobby. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia has an entire page devoted to Prostitution in Germany, where I was able to verify this.
And now that I've spent my 15-minute lunch-break blogging, I guess it's time to get back to work.
It's Bullet Point Sunday at 30,000 feet as I fly cross-country for my layover in Seattle!
• Mouthy... Is there an over-abundance of loud-mouthed, obnoxious bitches in the world... or is it just my grave misfortune to be consistently seated in their vicinity during long plane flights? I had yet another one behind me for a lovely 9 hour flight out of Cologne. This woman talked CONTINUOUSLY, irritating the shit out of just about everybody. Fortunately, by the time she got to her rant about Mexico being a "dirty, disgusting, 3rd-world country that she won't visit," I was able to turn on my iPod. This saved her from my wrath, as I was just about to start screaming "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UUUUUUUP!! But, alas, I couldn't resist being a smart-ass when she was in the lavatory...
And you know what? I don't even f#@%ing apologize for saying it. Screw her and her big mouth, because NOBODY wanted to hear it. All we wanted to do was have a peaceful flight under cramped, horrible conditions, and I don't think that's too much to ask. Read a book. Watch the movie. Listen to music. Do whatever the f#@% gets you through those nine hours... AS LONG AS IT ISN'T BUGGING THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYBODY ELSE! Because blathering loudly about stupid shit while people are trying to relax or sleep or work or whatever is just making you an inconsiderate asshole.
• Vistahahaha... And while I'm on the subject of people saying stupid shit... has Bill Gates started smoking crack? I've been catching up with my news feeds, and have no other explanation for his recent bizarre comments. I guess when you are on the defensive, you'll come up with all kinds of crazy stuff to explain why a product that took TEN YEARS to release is so lame compared to the competition.
• Overhead... I love it when some dumbass comes rolling on the plane with his full suitcase, briefcase, lunch bag, AND carry-on, then starts demanding that people take their stuff out of the overhead bins so he can fit in all his crap... "IS THIS YOURS? YOU CAN FIT THIS UNDER YOUR SEAT!! COME ON! THAT CAN FIT UNDER YOUR SEAT!!" Yeah, well f#@% you buddy, I check my luggage and carry on my one measly little knapsack so I can have the much-needed legroom. Why don't you shove your massive roller-bag up your ass... or, perhaps, check it at the ticket desk so people don't have to listen to your bullshit.
• Stamp... Since my previous passport expired, I had to get a new one. Once again I have noticed how other countries have passport control personnel who carefully stamp your entrance and exit neatly into the square boxes and in sequential order. Why in the hell do USA passport control people decide to skip ahead 3 pages, then stamp your passport outside the boxes in the middle of the f#@%ing page? That page is then rendered useless, which is why frequent travelers like me end up having to purchase extra pages for our passports. I mean, you are stamping passports all f#@%ing day long, and you haven't figured out how to make it fit in the box? On the up-side, I have to say that my entry into the USA via Newark International was one of the quickest, nicest, most courteous immigrations and customs checks I have ever had. Bravo to the people at Newark who obviously have their shit together (except when it comes to getting the stamp to fit in the box).
• Security... I wonder what the penalty is for bitch-slapping a TSA agent? I don't want to end up in jail or anything, but I am getting sick and tired of their idiotic behavior. "DO YOU HAVE A LAPTOP IN YOUR BAG SIR? YOU NEED TO REMOVE YOUR LAPTOP FROM YOUR BAG, REMOVE YOUR SHOES, THEN REMOVE YOUR JACKET!!" Uhhh... okay... let me get to the table first... "YOU NEED TO REMOVE YOUR LAPTOP FROM THE BAG NOW SIR TO AVOID HOLDING UP THE LINE!!" Yeah, well, there are six people ahead of me before I can get to the table, and I'm not talented enough to juggle my laptop, jacket, and knapsack while trying to remove my shoes at the same time. If you want me to do all that crap sooner, get a longer f#@%ing table and stop riding my ass over something that takes me 20 seconds ONCE I GET TO THE TABLE.
And here I am in Seattle where I can post my entry and then sit around for four hours while I wait for my final flight home. Extended layovers suck ass.
A long Sunday trying to get caught up with work AND get my laundry washed. The bad news is that this wasn't a very relaxing weekend. The good news is that I have plenty enough clean underwear to last me a while.
• Grammy Stupidity... I tuned into the Grammys this year so I could see The Police reunion (which was amazing, as expected) and there's an American Idol-type contest going on. Why? Why do they do this stupid crap? If it takes gimmicky stuff like this to get people to watch the Grammys, then don't bother broadcasting them anymore. I mean, sheesh, isn't THE MUSIC enough without having to resort to "reality television" bullshit? I guess since The Police were the opening act, I can just skip the rest of this joke of an awards show and read who won in the morning.
• New Kitty... I've been beta-testing version 3 of the bestest computer solitaire card game ever... Kitty Spangles Solitaire! Now out of beta, Swoop Software has upped the game count from 18 to 32, which is pretty sweet. About the only thing I don't like is the new font they're using on the cards, which I find more difficult to read than the older version, but it's still a terrific time-killer app that everybody should have on their Mac. I wrote about Kitty here (and butchered her pet pig Ferdiham here). You can get your own copy for just $19.95 here.
• HP Insanity... For the past five months, I've been fighting with Hewlett Packard to return a box of frickin' paper their web site sold me that was mistakenly listed as working on my printer (which it didn't). Well, finally, after sending emails to everybody I could find at HP, a reply was sent from the company president telling me that they would pass my complaint on to the proper person. Having heard it all before, I was ready to give up... but lo and behold, somebody did contact me. They apologized for the problem, then sent me a box of the correct paper. And so, while I have no plans of ever buying anything from HP again after how I was treated, it is nice to know that EVENTUALLY they did the right thing (even if it wasted hours of my time to get it to happen).
• Lime Hoarding... Ever since learning that the dumbasses at Coca-Cola Bottling for the West Coast have decided to discontinue my beloved Coke with Lime, I've been stockpiling the stuff. I think I have enough to last me a few months now. Hopefully by the time I've run out, I'll have found a way to make my own. I've ordered seven different varieties of lime flavoring, and have my fingers crossed that one of them will do the trick.
• Back it up... Just a quick plea to everybody who thinks that data loss can't happen to them... you're wrong. In my 25 years of using personal computers, I've never experience catastrophic failure until the hard drive in my new MacBook Pro died a horrible death (taking all my files with it). Fortunately, I maintain weekly backups of all my data, and was able to recover pretty much everything. When I think of all the precious data I could have lost... all my music... all my travel photos... all my drawings... well, it's a real testicle-shriveling experience. If you don't back-up, start. If you do back-up, make sure it's kept current.
And, on that note, I'm off to fold my freshly-laundered wardrobe before I pass out. Or maybe I'll be passing out on top of my freshly-laundered wardrobe since it's all stacked on my bed. Either way, I'm too tired to brush my teeth. I wonder if I just suck on a Tic-Tac and scrape my teeth with a fingernail if that's the same thing?
• Lost is Lost... This morning I awoke to find a couple of emails from people pointing me to a story in The Washington Post about how Lost has plummeted in the television ratings and may be facing cancelation. I could try to act surprised, but what's the point? The show sucks ass. It was a brilliant concept that started out as a lot of fun, then disintegrated into boredom when the writers were either too stupid or too lazy to try and come up with cool new mysteries, choosing instead to drag out the same old shit... FOREVER. I mean, holy crap... I was pointing out this problem ALMOST TWO YEARS AGO, and I'm not even in television! Are the people running the show on crack? It's like a lesson in what NOT to do, where everybody sees the wreck coming except the people driving the bus. Next up... Heroes! Or will they learn from Lost's mistakes in time?
• Best Breakfast Ever... Snack-Pack Chocolate Pudding, five Golden Oreo cookies, and a glass of chocolate milk.
• Spirit of Vengeance... One of the cooler comic book creations, Ghost Rider, has finally been given the movie treatment starring long-time comic fan Nicholas Cage. And here's the thing... despite the shitty reviews, I enjoyed this film. Cage totally had a handle on the character, injecting humor where appropriate and not taking the role too seriously. The special effects were kick-ass. The story was entertaining. But, most importantly, there was enough action to keep things moving and the film was fairly faithful to the comics. What's not to love? It amazes me that reviewers are going to a movie about a flaming skeleton riding a motorcycle thinking it will be about something else, then are disappointed to find out it actually IS about a flaming skeleton riding a motorcycle. Well, duh. It's not supposed to be Shakespeare, it's just a cheesy popcorn flick. Taking it for what it is, I found it brilliant, and will be buying it on DVD.
• Not-So-Daily Show... Whilst clearing old shows off my TiVo, I ran across the October 26th, 2006 episode of The Daily Show which I've saved because it is one of my all-time favorites. Remembering that The Daily Show can be purchased at the iTunes Music Store, I thought I would just buy the episode so I could free up some space on my TiVo box. Well, it was a good plan, except that you can only purchase the last 8 episodes and nothing before that. WHY? I would think that one of the benefits of selling shows online is that you have a library of archived shows to offer for sale. Both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have segments and guests that demand future exploration... why not offer them? Once again I am put in a position where my only option is to acquire the show "unofficially" — not by choice, but by stupid circumstance.
• Un-Trekable... Speaking of the iTunes Music Store... I was thrilled that the new "re-mastered" episodes of the original (i.e. "real") Star Trek were being offered for sale. Now, for reasons unknown, Paramount has withdrawn them. Which means last week's brilliant update of The Doomsday Machine and this week's beautiful tweaks to the classic Amok Time are nowhere to be found. WTF?!? So here I am, again, perfectly willing to pay money to get something I want, yet my only option is to hope somebody has uploaded it to BitTorrent. Oh well, T'Pring is a total bitch hottie at $1.99 or $0.00, so it's all the same to me. The only loser here is Paramount. Dumbasses. They will, of course, blame internet piracy for lost profits when it's their own stupid asses who are refusing to take my money.
• Six Meme... After avoiding the "Six Weird Things About You Meme" like the plague, Kyle descended like the Black Death and infected me with it. So here goes... 1) I don't like coffee or coffee-flavored products, which I don't think is weird, but others sure do. 2) I am perfectly happy watching the same movies over and over again... I've seen such films as EuroTrip, The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Fifth Element, and Bedazzled dozens of times. 3) I have written exactly one fan letter in my entire life... it was to 80's Atari Computer game programmer Tom Hudson, and I still have his kind reply stuffed in a box somewhere. 4) My love of all things Betty White is not a joke... I really do think she kicks ass, and am a huge fan. 5) I am a total comic book geek, and own over 12,000 of them. 6) Weirdest of all? I write in my blog every day and this is the one-thousand-six-hundred-and-thirty-fifth time I've done so. FINI) I'm breaking the rules by not tagging six people now, but I don't tag.
Three weeks until TequilaCon...
It's Bullet Sunday on Oscar night!
And while I am not a big fan of the Oscars (they never seem to award the proper films), I am a huge fan of movies, so here we go with the big four...
• Best Picture... Who should win: Little Miss Sunshine. Who will probably win: The Departed. Martin Scorsese, who has done some amazing work, will probably be given the statue for The Departed as a gimmee for being passed-over all these years... even though I don't think it is the best picture this year. I honestly feel that every other film nominated is more deserving to win, with Little Miss Sunshine topping my list.
• Best Director... Who should win: Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima. Who will probably win: Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima. This astounding film had some incredible artistic choices in direction that nobody can deny... Clint totally deserves to win for his hauntingly beautiful picture, and undoubtedly will. No other direction on a film comes close.
• Best Actor... Who should win: Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson. Who will probably win: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland. I am sure that Forest Whitaker turned in a wonderful performance as Idi Amin (I haven't seen the movie yet), but I find it impossible to believe that anybody topped Ryan Gosling's mind-blowing performance in Half Nelson. I had mixed feelings on the film, but there's no denying Gosling's brilliance in it. As an aside here, if I could pick ANYBODY to win this award, and not just a nominee, it would be Ken Watanabe for his work in Letters From Iwo Jima. This actor puts more into every amazing performance than any other actor I know, and this role was no difference. It's pretty criminal that he wasn't nominated.
• Best Actress... Who should win: Helen Mirren, The Queen. Who will probably win: Helen Mirren, The Queen. Probably the best performance in a movie this year. She WAS The Queen in this film, and humanized a very real person in a way that few actors could have managed. I would be shocked if she doesn't win.
And now, I have about six hours of work to do yet tonight, so I'll be signing off. If you hear screaming, it's because Pan's Labyrinth didn't win Best Foreign Language Film...
Welcome to Bullet Sunday at Blogography, where everybody is bitchy and nobody is getting licked! Oooh... those insider-TequilaCon-jokes are going to be torture for the next week or so...
• Turbulence. I almost think that the constant problems with the flights back home (one cancellation and two delays) were devised by fate so a to spare me from that final hop to Wenatchee. The turbulence was so bad that people were being thrown about... with books, tickets, passports, iPods, and everything else not nailed down being tossed around around the cabin. I rarely get motion sickness, but things were so bad that I thought my stomach was going to leap out of my mouth. After landing, I decided the only thing that sounded good to eat was a Quizno' sub sandwich, but when I got to the restaurant at 6:00, they had just closed. WTF?!? How stupid do you have to be to close early around the dinner hour? Even if there was a reason... like a power failure... the least they could do would be to post a sign as to why they had closed two hours prematurely. Jerks. Oh well, I'm home in one piece, so it's hard to complain too much.
• Ladykiller. Yeah, this photo from Hilly pretty much sums up the "TequilaCon Experience" for me...
Yes, bitches! I am one sexy bastard! Just ask Jenny and Sass...
• Lanyards. To make sure that TequilaConners would be able to spot each other while wandering the halls of The Kennedy School, Jenny and I came up with the idea giving lanyard name badges to everybody. That way, in addition to feeling all superior while walking around in a hotel/bar/restaurant filled with non-believers, attendees would have an easy introduction to each other. A couple of people have written and asked how they can get an official TequilaCon lanyard, and I'm sorry to say the only way to get one is to have shown up. But don't be too sad if you missed your opportunity, you'll have a chance to get one all your own at TequilaCon 2008!
Photo courtesy of Hilly's mad camera skillz.
• Experience. Karl has posted his photos, which resulted in a more terrifying look at my TequilaCon experience...
Dave & Hilly get lanyardized. — Dave and Karl are TequilaCon studs.
Dave makes fun of Dustin's umbrella. — I'm a pretty pretty princess in Hilly's tiara!
Dave gives Hilly a tattoo. — Must moisten tatoo to adhere to skin!
• Powells. While Vahid, Dustin, and I were exploring the massive science fiction section of Powell's City of Books yesterday, the conversation came up about the first science fiction book we had read. I remembered mine was called "Jupiter's Song," or something like that, and Vahid and I set out to find it. After making numerous enquiries with a guy staffing the customer service desk, we came up empty. No "Jupiter's Song." No "Jupiter Effect." No "Jupiter Files." After giving up, we're walking around Powell's when we hear the loudspeaker make an announcement "Would the customer asking about the Jupiter book please see the customer service desk in the Orange Room... we've located the actual title for you." AND THEY DID! After we had left, the guy sat there plugging away trying to find a sci-fi book with "Jupiter" in the title, and had found "The Jupiter Theft" by Donald Moffitt. They didn't have it in stock, but they did have a couple other Moffitt books which I picked up. Amazing customer service, and all the more reason to patronize your local independent book store.
And I'm about ready to fall asleep, so it's off to bed for me. I'm sure more TequilaCon-related madness will be popping up for a few days yet. Sorry about that.
It's Bullet Sunday with the lights out! Problems with the electrical power have wrecked havoc with my work plans today, so here I am blogging on my laptop where it's safe.
As a side-note, I should mention that I am aware that Blogography has been having problems recently. My web hosting company, Media Temple, has been having serious issues with their new "Grid Server," and being able to access my site or comment on entries has been hit-or-miss as of late. Media Temple is supposedly working on the problem, but these issues have been going on for months now, so I'm not sure how much faith I can put in that. All I can say is "sorry" and please come back later if you're having problems.
• Disappointment! There's a dilemma I like to call "The Reese's Gambit." It hinges on the mysterious Russian-Roulette game you play every time you buy a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup candy bar. Will the peanut butter in the center be deliciously moist and tasty... or will it be all dried-up, powdery, and disgusting? There's no way of knowing, so you just have to buy one and find out what you get. When the center is good, there's very few candy bars I like better than a Reese's. When it's BAD, however, it usually pisses me off so much that I will go months without eating one again. Today, after a suitable three-month mourning period following a crappy Reese's experience, I tried again and got a good one. Yay me. Thinking I'd hit the jackpot, I went running back to the mini-mart to buy more... and was horrified to find that all of them had gross dried-out centers. So now I'm thinking it will be a while before I'm willing to play the Reese's Gambit again. I guess I'll just have to live off the memory of that yummy first Reese's for a while, and that sucks ass.
• Destroyer! I watched Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins on DVD for the hundredth time last night, and wondered for the thousandth time why somebody hasn't made any more movies based on the series of excellent Destroyer books. Sure the original film (starring Fred Ward and Joel Grey) wasn't much of a financial success, and Destroyer fans disliked it because the story didn't follow the books closely enough... but I loved the movie. I still love it. And now that Tor Books is reviving the book line again with a series of "New Destroyer" novels in May, isn't it about time somebody step up and revive the movie franchise as well? The series really has it all... action, drama, intrigue, humor, and some of the most brilliant characters ever written. With the right director and cast, a Destroyer film would kick ass.
• Deception! Back in 1994 there was a radio hit called Touch Me (All Night Long) by Cathy Dennis. The vocals were quite good, Cathy was suitably hot, and it had a sweet Europop electro-beat I liked. After a couple of listens I decided to run down to Hastings so I could buy the CD, which was titled Move to This (I was going on a road trip, and wanted something new to listen to). Imagine my surprise when I found out that the Touch Me song they were playing on the radio was not the same song on the CD. Instead of that kicky Europop beat driving the song, the CD track was all boring and shitty. I have a running joke with my friends about kicking the crap out of Cathy Dennis if I ever see her for betraying me this way. It may have been a dozen years past, but I just can't let it go. And then this morning I check my email to find that my friend Meagan had gifted the crappy song to me on iTunes... presumably as a joke. Well ha ha, the joke's on her because, as I was claiming the song, I noticed that iTunes had the REAL version of the song for sale off of a compilation called 100% Pure Dance. It's a mix that runs a little long, but it has the proper beat and I've been rocking out to it all morning. I think that I am finally... finally able to release my rabid hatred of Cathy Dennis now.
Photo swiped from Virgil LaFerney's EXCELLENT Hard Rock Dallas Page.
• Dallas! I've been meaning to write about the sad closing of the Hard Rock Cafe Dallas since it happened two weeks ago, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. The pet project of Hard Rock co-founder Isaac Tigrett, the Dallas cafe was a special property indeed. Originally a Baptist Church, 13 million dollars was spent renovating the building and creating the cafe, which finally opened on November, 1986 (the fourth Hard Rock in the US and ninth world-wide). There were many features that made this cafe unique in the chain, and the property quickly became one of my favorites when I first visited in July, 2001. Hearing about the closing was painful, and I feel terrible that I didn't manage to get back once I heard they were shutting their doors for good. It's things like this that really have me questioning why I care about the Hard Rock anymore. If the owners can't appreciate the chain's history, why should I? Oh well, at least I got to visit this one before they dumped it... nothing is more frustrating than having a cafe close before I have a chance to visit.
• Downey! How is it that Robert Downey Jr. can steal every movie he's in... even if it is a relatively minor role? Sure Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo were excellent as the driving force behind David Fincher's latest film, Zodiac, but it's Downey who makes the film truly interesting to me. Playing seriously flawed reporter Paul Avery, he just blows everybody else off the screen. Suddenly a film that seems more like a crime reenactment than a cohesive story comes alive because Robert Downey Jr. just sucks you into his character. My only real criticism of this beautifully-shot movie is that it didn't have enough Downey in it. Well, that and the really bad toupee that Anthony Edwards was forced to wear throughout the film. Holy crap did it ever look like a ferret died on his head. Why why why couldn't they have just left his character bald so as not to distract the audience and embarrass the actor?
Oooh... the power is back on again! Guess I'll save my remaining bullets for next Sunday, because it's back to work for me...
It's Bullet Sunday and I'm another year closer to death!
• Thanks! Well, shucks. Thanks to everybody who was nice enough to leave birthday comments. Thanks to everybody who sent birthday emails and eCards. Thanks to everybody who called and sent birthday text messages. Thanks to everybody who sent me birthday presents and cards. Thanks to everybody who wrote birthday wishes to me in their blog entries. I am so very grateful to everybody, and am most pleased that I seem to have fooled so many people into thinking that I am somehow deserving of such kindness and generosity.
• Behind. The bad thing about goofing off all weekend is that you get behind on email and blog reading. The bad thing about drinking all weekend is that you have no desire whatsoever to get caught up on your email and blog reading once you get back home...
• Panera. Living in a smaller city is kind of sad in that your dining choices are so limited. As an example, there is no place to get Indian food in the entire valley. We have fifty Mexican restaurants, but not one Indian restaurant. We are getting a bit lucky that some of the better chains are making their way to Wenatchee... there's an Applebees and a Red Robin here now (in addition to all the usual fast-food shops). But there are restaurants I really like which have not yet arrived. I'd kill for a Johnny Rockets. I'd love a Chili's. And then there's IHOP, Olive Garden, and TGI Friday's, all of which I would enjoy as dining options. But my latest obsession is Panera Bread. This weekend I was able to eat at their Alderwood location, and had one of the best sandwiches ever... the Panera Mediterranean Veggie which is described as "zesty piquant peppers, feta cheese, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and cilantro hummus on our Tomato Basil bread" (I hold the cucumbers). To say it was "delicious" is an understatement of massive proportions. Now I'm going to spend the next month craving another one. In some ways I dread the idea that Wenatchee will ever get these restaurants, because I'd probably weigh 500 pounds from eating at them all the time.
• Manning. Who could have guessed that Peyton Manning would be so good hosting Saturday Night Live? I just wish that they would give the President Bush impersonations back to Will Forte (instead of Jason Sedakis). It's not that Sedakis is bad, it's just that Forte offers a more sympathetic blundering to his parodies which I find funnier...
Photos swiped from WillForte.net
• Done. Argh. I was going to write more bullets about being gifted the latest iTunes episode of Lost, running across somebody whom I thought was dead, planning my first real vacation in 10 years, finding $40 I didn't know I had lost (in a very unlikely place), why aquamarine is a crappy birthstone to have, and a meme about magazines, but it's 11:55pm and five minutes isn't enough time to do any of that. So I guess it will all have to wait for another time. Though I have about 120 blogs to read and 211 emails to look at, so I have no idea when that might be. Probably never. I need to hire a blog ghostwriter or something.
Make a joyful noise for Bullet Sunday has risen!
• Easter... I gave up celebrating Easter around the same time I gave up being Catholic (almost 20 years ago now!) but still love the holiday for one very good reason: the candy. I absolutely love Easter candy. From having my teeth shiver as I bite into the sweetness that is a Cadbury Chocolate Cream Egg... to getting some of my favorite candies in egg shapes and pastel colors... Easter is a candy-lover's dream come true. In many ways, I'm thinking it even eclipses Halloween in terms of confectionary importance to me now...
Nothing wrong with getting a little tail on Easter.
Which is probably why I'm choosing to celebrate the holiday by lapsing into a chocolate coma.
• Voicemail... ABC Television has an amazing new video player on their site which, get this, IS MACINTOSH COMPATIBLE!! As if that weren't cool enough, you can watch full episodes of sweet ABC shows like Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy. But here's the best thing... they have an original online series called Voicemail that's priceless...
Mike is a character that just about any guy can relate to at some point in their lives.
For best effect, you'll want to go to ABC.com and choose their New Video Player. But you can also access the webisodes in the old Flash player format from the Voicemail web site (which is also funny). This is one of those rare online series that is actually worth your valuable time. I hope they sell the episodes at iTunes after the first "season" is over, because I would gladly pay money to have this show saved on iTunes for a rainy day when I need a laugh.
Of course, this being ABC, they will undoubtedly cancel it half-way through the current season and we'll never see it again. It's what they do.
• Three... There is no bullet point three. Move along.
• Flash!... Ever since seeing Blades of Glory, I've had Queen's brilliant Flash Gordon Theme playing in my head. Depiste the poor reviews, I always liked the 1980 Flash Gordon film... largely due to the funky visuals, excellent film score by Queen, and the sweet hotness of Melody Anderson. I bought the soundtrack album long ago on vinyl (long since lost) but lucky for me it's available at the iTunes Music store. Sweet! I also note that one of my favorite videos, Radio Ga Ga, is also available. The song has never been one of my favorites, but the epic dream-like quality of the video is a winner...
Freddie looking fierce, fabulous, and very gay wearing leather pants, feathers, and a sash.
• Extracurricular... Why is it that every time I turn around, there's another teacher being busted for sleeping with their under-aged students? And, even more importantly, why wasn't this part of the educational curriculum when I was in school? Granted, there were very few of my teachers I would have wanted to sleep with, but I can think of one or two that I'd have gladly let tutor me in some after-school sessions. Just think of the embarrassment that could have been avoided in fumbling to remove that first bra had a teacher been kind enough to show me how it's done! That being said, you would think that the penalty for violating the trust of parents who put their kids in a teacher's care like this would be death. Of course, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that somebody finds underage girls and boys to be sexually attractive, so maybe I'm just biased.
And, on that note, I must now have jellybeans. JELLYBEANS I SAY!!
I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm irritable. And it's time for Bullet Sunday!
• Driven. You're driving back from the Seattle over the mountain pass with your iPod set on shuffle and piped into the stereo. Suddenly the rain stops and the sun starts to come out. Everything is fresh and green and the air smells as if the world is brand new. Then Etta James' beautiful voice comes over the speakers singing At Last, and suddenly you realize that you're glad to be alive. For a few minutes anyway. Then some moron pulls in front of you going 10 mph under the speed limit and you're stuck behind them for 20 minutes wanting crash into their stupid ass... not even caring if you survive, just so long as they die in a ball of fire. Isn't it strange how life can turn on a dime like that?
• Panera. I took a photo of my most favorite sandwich at Panera Bread yesterday. Behold the glory that is The Mediterranean...
I wish I had another one right now, because the only thing I have to eat here at home is chocolate pudding.
• Leopard. Apple announced that the next version of OS X, code-name Leopard, has been delayed four months, moving to an October release date. This is a bit of a shame, but better late than Vista. At least I'll have my iPhone to keep me occupied come summertime...
• Repaired. Finally scraped the money together to have Saturn repair all the damage that Midas did to my car when they "fixed" it last. Sure I'm poor now, but at least I don't have to stare at that stupid "Service Engine Soon" light anymore. Not having my car backfire when I turn the engine off is pretty sweet too. If only Saturn would have installed rocket launchers and a flame-thrower, the ride home wouldn't have been quite so bad.
Now it's time for dinner. Looks like it's going to be chocolate pudding and a can of 7-Up tonight.
Hey, it's Bullet Sunday on Earth Day! A time when eco-minded individuals can feel guilty about the damage we are doing to our planet, then forget it about it again until next year!
• Veggie... As of today, I have been a vegetarian for 19 years. I had toyed with the idea off-and-on for a few years before committing, but it took dating a vegetarian for the diet to stick (which was on Earth Day 1988... a pity we broke up three months later). About the only thing I really miss is pepperoni, for which there is no good veggie substitute. They make fake "veggie meat" for everything else that tastes okay... but the pepperoni always tastes like a crime against nature, and never crisps up properly on a pizza.
• Married... Speaking of crimes against nature... first the most beautiful woman on earth gets married, now the second most beautiful woman on earth has gotten married too. Bollywood actress hottie Aishwarya Rai joins the massive list of "Women Dave Lusts Over That Got Married So They Have An Excuse Not To Date Him If They Ever Found Out He Even Exists." What can I say, my life is tragedy...
• Discovery... One of the most fascinating television series ever to air on television is Discovery Chanel's Planet Earth. Astoundingly beautiful and thought-provoking in every way, it is essential viewing for all of humanity so we can better understand what a truly remarkable planet we live on. I started watching the show when it began back in March, and today they are airing the final two episodes. I haven't been motivated to get an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player, but the hi-def release of this series has motivated me to finally start looking into buying one. The brilliant footage they got for the show deserves to be displayed with the best possible picture quality...
• DaveToon... Whenever I think of the earth, I remember a DaveToon I drew a year ago that explains quite a lot about why I am the way I am. Even on Earth Day, I'm an egotistical, self-centered bastard...
Yes, the world really does revolve around me.
• Saturday Night... "Sunday is Earth Day. Suck it, Neptune!" — Amy Pohler, SNL.
And that's a wrap. This is going to be an interesting week here at Blogography...
It's a very special Blogiversary IV edition of Bullet Sunday!
Come back and read this after you skip down to see if you've won anything... I'll be waiting.
Did you win? If you did, many congratulations! If you didn't, I'm sorry about that, and maybe you'll win one of the other events I've got planned for later in the year. And, just in case you're curious as to how the winners were chosen... I had nothing to do with it. I instead enlisted a friend who has no idea who the people were who entered (and doesn't even bother to read my blog in the first place). That way, the drawing is fair and impartial, and that's the only way to really run a contest. Here's how it went...
Here are the winners for this year...
• FIVE FREE SHIRTS... The five winners for voting on the shirts I'll be printing for this year's run are...
• TWENTY-FIVE FREE SHIRTS... The twenty-five winners for entering ShirtFest on Thursday are...
• BUTTON CONTEST... Here are the winners for the Buttons Contest from Wednesday...
Grand Prize Winner: Cynical Dad
Runner-Up Prize Winner: ~jtm
Runner-Up Prize Winner: Kyle Ice
• PRINTS CONTEST... Here are the winners for the Prints Contest from Thursday...
Grand Prize Winner: Cavan T.
Runner-Up Prize Winner: Avitable
Runner-Up Prize Winner: Sven P.
And that concludes Blogography's Blogiversary IV Celebration! Congratulations again to all the winners, and my most heart-felt thanks to all of you who keep reading Blogography... I wouldn't be doing this without you!
Dave2
Hey, it's Bullet Sunday from sunny and beautiful Greece today!
• Cotters... Dustin over at Cotters in my Tummy has put down his tater tots long enough to finally add me to his blogroll. I guess I can stop regretting that I didn't kick him out onto the street during TequilaCon now.
• Review... Last week, Avitable selected me as one of the blogs appearing in his first ever Week In Review. Even more exciting than this honor was that he drew up his very own rendition of a DaveToon for the occasion...
The real reason that I traveled to Greece this week was that I was trying to make some kind of grand gesture that would assure me of another appearance in his "Week In Review II" today. Apparently traveling half-way around the world just isn't good enough, so now I'm open to suggestions as to what I should do this week that would guarantee me an appearance in "Week in Review III" next Sunday.
• Acropolis... Hoping to beat both the crowds and the heat, I decided to wake early and visit The Acropolis right as it opened up. Along with The Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Egypt, this is one of those places that I've dreamed of visiting for as far back as I remember. It did not disappoint, even though it was partially obstructed in scaffolding...
So much of the finer details have been destroyed or taken, but the maiden statues on the Porch of the Caryatids are still there...
One of the nice things about showing up early was being treated to a procession of guardsmen marching through the Acropolis, their uniforms beautifully appointed. These are the same guards who stand watch at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 24-7 at the Parliament Building that I saw yesterday...
• Architectural... One of the treasures of Athens is their Architectural Museum, which is a bit out of the way but well worth the trip. Most of the statues have significant damage to them (I lost count of the number of poor statue dudes missing their penis), but on occasion there's a piece that's miraculously intact... no missing noses or anything, which is quite remarkable to see...
• Poseidon... The weather was simply too beautiful to stick around the city all day, so I paid a taxi driver to run down the coast to the south-most point of the Athenian peninsula, which is where the Temple of Poseidon resides...
After an hour-and-a-half of beautiful scenery, you arrive at an outcropping overlooking the Mediterranean where the temple was built for the god of the seas. It's survived a little better than most, but is still only a shadow of what it once was...
If only there was a way to travel back in time and see these magnificent structures when they were new.
And so ends my last day in Athens and another installment of Bullet Sunday.
It's time for my first Bullet Sunday at sea!
• PLAGUE SHIP! Ack. This is the second time I've been on a cruise, and this is the second time there's been an epidemic going around. Last time it was some kind of cold/flu hybrid. This time they aren't saying what's going on, but you are no longer allowed to serve yourself at the food buffets. Not even for water, which actually makes me happy. A few days ago I was waiting in line for a glass of water when the stupid bitch ahead of me filled up her water bottle, putting the mouth of the bottle directly in contact with the spout. This grossed me out because, for all I know, she is the ship's whore and there's no telling where that mouth of hers has been. She could have been sucking on something funky before sucking on her water bottle, and now the stupid whore's cooties are all over the water spout, contaminating everything that comes out of it.
• ICE CREAM DREAMS! But there is a bad side to all of this. You're not allowed to make your own ice cream cones now either. So now I have to trust some total amateur's cone-making skills at the soft-serve machine. Instead of getting the perfectly shaped ice cream cones I'm used to making myself, I now get these lumpy, malformed monstrosities that look like they were crapped out of a donkey's ass. It's probably my imagination, but they just don't seem to taste as good now. =sob!= I'll probably start dreaming that I'm ruler of Egypt, and my thousands of loyal subjects will bring me perfect chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream cones all day long. Egypt seems to have had quite an effect on me...
BEING BORING! Today is an at-sea day. Usually these bore me, but I'm actually looking forward to being a little bored for a while. Besides, there's a lot of stuff coming up in the final week of vacation, and tomorrow I have to be up at 6:00am again.
• TOUR DE ASSHOLE! I've never hidden my loathing for organized tours, but yesterday's Giza tour was a new low point. Two fucking assholes were 50 minutes late getting back to the bus at the first stop, which meant that all the remaining stops had to be compressed, and certain things I would have loved to have spent more time with were whipped through at a furious pace. Never mind that everybody else on that bus managed to get back on time. The two inconsiderate fucks didn't even apologize for screwing everybody (they probably weren't sorry anyway). It used to be that I would wish for a million dollars to fall from the sky. Now I just wish these two fuckers dead in the most painful way possible. I mean, come on... FIFTY FUCKING MINUTES?!? If I were the tour guide, I would have left their fucking idiot asses in the desert after 10 minutes so everybody else doesn't have suffer for their being complete and total fucking pricks. I despise assholes who have absolutely no consideration for other people, and tours are usually full of them.
Alas, it's time for me to retire to Deck 12 for some sunshine. There seems to be an abundance of it today...
It's a Bullet Sunday Holiday! Well, not really... I'm still catching up on piles and piles of work over Memorial Day weekend. But at least it's quiet.
• DaveToons. While I was on vacation, I worked on one of the many animated sequences for my video. I'm guessing that I'm about 25%-30% finished now. The cool thing about the project is that I am trying really hard to put Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in places and situations I've never drawn before. It helps to keep things interesting to me so I don't get bored. Outer-space seemed to be a natural, but since I had already done Star Wars and Star Trek stuff before, I decided to take a more "reality-based" approach this time, choosing instead to make them astronaut heroes...
• Robin. One of my favorite Disney toons when I was a kid was Robin Hood. Growing up, I continued to enjoy the character, and was glad that there were plenty of books and movies to explore. Unfortunately, the movies were dated and crappy, but in the mid-80's there was a British television series called Robin of Sherwood which is probably the best interpretation of the character I've ever seen (even when Jason Connery took over for the amazing Michael Praed after series two). The show was tough and gritty, filled with brilliant acting and an almost spiritual reverence for the characters.I've re-watched the episodes many times, and purchased the DVD set a while back. Then in 1991 disaster struck. The Kevin Costner movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was unleashed. This steaming pile of shit was beyond bad, and killed Robin to me for years. Flash forward a decade-and-a-half, and the BBC has taken another stab at Robin Hood with a 13-episode series which has also been airing on BBC America. This time they've attempted to modernize the story a bit, with mixed results...
On one hand, they did try to do away with Robin as some kind of poser prancing through the forest in tights and blow-dry hair. This Robin is a mangy scavenger which seems more realistic to me. In addition, they've done a fairly good job of casting the roles, and have filmed the show beautifully, with lush photography and some nice cinematography. Where the show falls flat is that it's a bit boring and drawn-out. Robin starts out as a kind of wimpy pacifist, and there's not a lot of action to be had. In the end I'd have to say I liked it okay, but it still pales in comparison to Robin of Sherwood, which is a real shame. It's my understanding that they have started filming a second series, so I can only hope that the show will improve as it moves forward... the world needs Robin Hood now more than ever.
• Fuzz. Finally got to see Hot Fuzz this weekend and absolutely loved it. Coming from the creators of the fantastic comedy-horror film Shaun of the Dead, this is a tongue-in-cheek look at all those quaint English countryside tele-dramas... but nicely blended with comedy, action, violence, and occasional gory situations. As if that wasn't enough, there's actually a really good mystery story to build upon, and all the acting is top-notch. Much of the humor and situations will be lost on American audiences, but I think that's why it's so amazing... they dumbed it down for nobody. Brilliant writer/star Simon Pegg was not afraid to start the film out slow, gradually building to a violent and action-packed finale that will have Shaun of the Dead fans cheering.
In the movie, London police officer Nicholas Angel is so good at his job that he's making everybody else on the force look bad. The solution? Ship him off to the boring English countryside where he won't have the opportunity to show up anybody. But things are never quite what they seem, even in the sleepy village of Sandford, where everybody has secrets and a shocking mystery is waiting to be uncovered. Five stars from me.
• Fascism. When I made my Blogography Political Sanity Chart last Wednesday, a couple of people asked why I didn't have Ann Coulter on it representing the Nut-Job Right. The reason is that such a hateful, fascist, moronic, lying bitch would throw off the entire balance, causing the chart to be completely messed up like this...
Ann Coulter goes beyond "dangerous" and skates right up to "total fucking destruction." Her never-ending parade of hate and lies is so horrendously bad for this country that the damage she's done is incalculable. She professes to love America, but preaches against everything this country stands for. She's nothing but a skanky whore that will say anything, anything... regardless of consequences... to sell her piece of shit books. The fact that people even listen to what she has to say is surely a sign of the Apocalypse. Ann Coulter is representative of everything that is wrong with the USA, and indicative of all we must triumph over before we can come together and start rebuilding the America we once were.
"I take the Biblical idea. God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees... God says, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'" — Ann Coulter (obviously living up to her really fucked-up interpretation of The Bible).
Ugh. Time to get back to work. And I had better think of washing clothes too, because my pile of dirty vacation clothes is starting to smell funny...
This is a pre-recorded episode of Blogography from Thursday, May 31.
I'm pretending it's Sunday so I can whip out some bullets that will post when the most magical day of the week appears!
• Health Food... Why is it every time I find a new food I like that I have to go looking at the Nutrition Facts, only to find out that eating it will kill me? The Schwan's Man had a brand new item called "Grilled Cheese Toastwiches," which have all the deliciousness of a grilled cheese sandwich, but without the back-breaking labor of having to put cheese between slices of bread and heating it up. Nope, with Grilled Cheese Toastwiches, you just pop them in the toaster! Sweet! At least they were, until I found out each piece has 25% of the daily amount of saturated fat you should eat in a day. This sucks ass! Especially since I've already had three pieces today. I guess that means I am 75% closer to death.
• Kaleidoscope Toons... Posting yet another couple of frames showing progress with my DaveToon video. This is another scene I worked on while I was on vacation. Much of the video has lots of animated elements, so I was trying to come up with some simpler scenes to break things up a bit. Believe it or not, these always end up taking far more time to animate than the ones with far more going on. I have no idea why...
In the final video, I had planned for the kaleidoscope background to have some kind of filter applied to it... possibly one that makes it look more "dreamy." But the more I look at the scene in motion, the more I question a need for a filter, because the bright colors are a nice contrast to the black suits. =Sigh= I can see that completing the animation for this project is going to be just the beginning...
• World Round... As I was updating my travel map to reflect my recent vacation, I noticed that my trip to Egypt means I can check another continent off my list. Granted, it's not a lot of Africa to have seen, but it still counts! That leaves just three continents left to see: South America, Australia, and... ANTARCTICA?!? South America and Australia will almost certainly happen one day, but Antarctica? Doing a little research, I find that it's not as difficult as I had first thought to visit, because there are tour ships that go there. All it takes is money. Lots of money. The good news is that it would be an automatic two-for-one trip, because all the tours leave from South America. The bad news is that the cost is also two-for-one... first you've got to spend the money to get to Cape Horn, then you've got the cost of the ship tour on top of it. Does anybody have around $15,000 burning a hole in their pocket to finance my Antarctic adventure?
• Members Project... American Express has unveiled "The Members Project," which is a program whereas cardholders can submit ideas for a prize up to five million dollars so they can make a positive impact on the world. It's actually a pretty cool idea, and they lined up some all-star talent to advertise it in a commercial. You get Martin Scorsese directing, who also appear in the spot along with Andre Agassi, Sheryl Crow, Ellen DeGeneres, Alicia Keys, and skateboarder Shaun White. The odd part is that the commercial is interrupted by a guy from "the office next door" who is named "Tim." This is the same guy that does the video introduction at the Members Project website...
"People fought wars just so we could eat pizza on the wrong night!" —Norris Michelsky
But here's the thing... "Tim" isn't just some random guy. I'm pretty sure it's actor David Alan Basche, who has been in a number of television and movie projects, including one of my favorite shows ever, Oh Grow Up! In many ways, this makes him a bigger star to me than any of the "big-name" stars in the commercial, which is why it cracked me up when I saw it. I also get mad that Oh Grow Up! hasn't been released on DVD, but that's beside the point.
• Cattlecar Galaxica... I was very disappointed to learn that, in addition to Veronica Mars being canceled, Battlestar Galactica is ending after the upcoming fourth season. If there's one piece of good news about it, the decision to end the show came directly from the producers. They saw that the story was heading to an ending, and decided to take it there rather than draw things out until nobody cared anymore. I sure hope that some decent shows arrive for the new Fall TV season... because if this keeps up, there won't be anything on for me to watch.
Well that wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be... I should pretend it's Sunday every day!
I'm blogging Bullet Sunday and don't even have an internet connection to post it!
• Driven... I really don't like driving over to Seattle when it's raining, because people tend to drive like morons when it's wet out. Yesterday proved to be no exception, as my two-hour trip stretched into three full hours of non-stop torture. I need to become a billionaire so I can afford to hire a car and driver to handle this stuff for me. Then I could just sit back and play Nintendo or watch movies, which sounds a lot better than screaming my head off all afternoon at stupid people who don't know how to drive.
• Olympic... The London 2012 Olympic Games logo has been revealed, and I just don't get it. Every designer I talk to is absolutely horrified that this thing is in any way indicative of the direction graphic design is heading. I can only guess that the team working on the logo decided to continue the shocking trend of abandoning good design principles that's been going around lately, and extrapolate how bad things will get five years from now when the logo will actually be in use. If this end result is indicative of what I'm going to be expected to design in 2012, I might as well quit my job and start a new career. I wonder if I would get Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes for free if I took a job at Taco Bell?
• Hi-Def... Now that my piece-of-shit Panasonic DVD Player/Recorder, which has never been able to record a single DVD, has decided that it doesn't want to play any DVDs either, I'm in the market for a new machine. I'm thinking that I would like to go for an HD player now that the prices are starting to come down, but am really confused by the whole "HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray" format war that's going on. I like Sony equipment okay so I was thinking of going with Blu-Ray, but since I don't think that Sony hasn ever had a successful media format (Beta Tape, MiniDisc, and ATRAC come to mind), I wonder if that would be wise. I guess when I have some free time in about three months, I'll have to sit down and do some research. With any luck, one format will win out by then, but I'm not holding my breath.
&bull iPhonery... As TV commercials are released for Apple's iPhone, I find myself wanting one more and more. Whether I actually end up getting one is going to depend on how expensive AT&T Mobile makes it to own one. Because if I buy an iPhone, I am absolutely going to want to use all the cool features it has, and to do that will almost certainly require an unlimited data access plan. If this is going to cost more than $30 a month, I don't know that it would be worth the cost... no matter how cool it is. Oh well, there's a mere 19 days until we find out, so I guess all will be revealed soon enough...
I hope the local McDonalds has internet so I can post this when I stop for breakfast tomorrow morning. Nothing quite like surfing the web while eating an Egg & Cheese Biscuit and a carton of milk on a Monday morning.
It's a busy Bullet Sunday as I prepare once again to head over the mountains...
• Sometimes you act like a flake... Modern technology is a wonderful thing. Except I am starting to seriously question our application of it to the world we live in. What good is being able to put a man on the moon if my breakfast cereal still goes all soggy in milk? I stepped away from my bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats for like TWO MINUTES so I could see how the meth I was cooking up in the bathroom was doing, and when I got back all I had was a bowl of soggy mush. Isn't there some kind of anti-milk teflon coating that can be put on cereal or something? Soggy flakes suck ass.
• Nope, still pissed off... Usually after writing a ballistic rant in my blog, I feel kind of bad about it the next day. But not this time. Turns out I still think Quiznos can take their crappy "Italian Caprese" and shove it up their stupid asses. BRING BACK THE VEGGIE SANDWICH!!
• Scare the shit INTO me... Speaking of fast food, why is it that the fast food industry always seems to choose freaky-ass mascots to represent their companies? What are they trying to do... scare you into eating their shit?
• I see your Schwartz is as big as mine... Believe it or not, this month is the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite parody films ever... SPACEBALLS! For the longest time I've been hoping for a sequel... but I've just learned something even more special: Mel Brooks is making a Spaceballs animated series!! From what I can find out, the cartoon is due to air on G4 Network this Fall. I have no idea if Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman, and Daphne Zuniga will be lending their voices to the show (and, unfortunately, John Candy is no longer with us to participate), but can't wait to see it.
• Understanding avoidable avoidance... Why is it when people hear something third-party that upsets them, they don't bother to verify it with the person who supposedly said it in the first place? I just got a call from somebody who hasn't spoken to a mutual acquaintance for two years because they were told something totally outrageous that was supposedly said about them. But here's the problem. I was actually there when the event took place, and know for an absolute fact that it was never said. It was a gross exaggeration of something totally unrelated. That's two years of hard feelings, uncomfortable silence, and deceptive avoidance... all of which could have been eliminated if they would have just verified the information. Is there anything sadder? I can't help but wonder how many times people have written me off over something I've never said.
And, on that note, it's time to pack my suitcase...
Hey Hay Hey! It's Bullet Sunday today!
• Photograph. I've been going through all my old photos recently, trying to find a specific shot that I've lost track of. Along the way, I've been running into pictures of me that are pretty disturbing. It would seem that I'm either acting like a dork or drunk (or both) in every single picture in which I appear...
1) Wearing my 3-D glasses while waiting in line for a 3-D movie.
2) Trying to flash an "okay" sign while getting drunk in the rain.
3) Drunkenly dealing cards while losing in a game of strip poker.
4) Caught like a drunken deer in the proverbial headlights here.
Seeing all these images has brought me to the disturbing conclusion that I've been a drunken dork most of my life. I admit that this doesn't come as much of a surprise, but I'm going to act shocked anyway.
• Stemmed. So much for the separation of Church and State. So much for representing the people. President Bush has now vetoed for a second time legislation that would authorize federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Despite the fact that the majority of Americans support it. Despite the fact that no science or rational thought can apply the status of "human life" to an embryo. Despite the fact that actual human lives hang in the balance. Despite the fact that the embryos in question will be discarded anyway. It's all typical political pandering bullshit insanity. I'd have thought that the President's forcible application of his personal religious and ethical convictions on me or anybody else would be a direct violation of the foundation upon which this country was built, but whatever. Using this logic (or lack thereof) a vegetarian president could make eating meat illegal because it violates his personal ethical beliefs. WTF?!? Just 575 days of dumbassery left.
• Paris! OMG! Like, Paris is getting out of jail early and will be released on Tuesday! JUSTICE PREVAILS! Which means I guess it's time for me to come clean about something... since the tabloids are sure to break the news soon anyway.
I am totally dating Paris Hilton.
I wrote her letters of encouragement while she was doing time, and she understandably fell head-over-heels in love with me. I will be moving to L.A. at the end of next week so Paris and I can be together. 2GETHER 4EVA!
Lil' Dave is totally not wearing panties in this shot...
We ask that the media respect our privacy as we plan our new life.
And by "respect our privacy" we mean "follow us around and take our picture everywhere we go, because we are so totally hot and interesting and deserving of your love."
• Postcard. Five steps to embarrassment nirvana...
Insomnia blows! It's 7:00am on a Sunday and I am wide awake. On the bright side, I did get an entire five hours sleep last night, which must be some kind of record for me or something.
It's B•U•L•L•E•T S•U•N•D•A•Y once again! Excuse me while I pull out my 44 Magnum...
• Spiceable... Is it just me, or is the Spice Girls one of the greatest musical groups of all time?
• Photoshopable... As I was working my way through filling orders from the Artificial Duck Co. store yesterday, I got a desperate phone call from a fellow designer. He was calling every Photoshop professional he knew, asking if they would help work on some photos he "inherited" for a project that was due on Monday. The previous designer (who was fired) had the photos taken without using a food stylist, and the results were really terrible. I felt bad for the guy, so I volunteered to work on a few images for him. I can tell you right now, you'll never have so much fun as Photoshopping sweat off of a brick of cheese on a Saturday afternoon.
• McDonaldable... Right now I would pay serious cash for a McVeggie Deluxe burger. But seeing as how it's only available at the New York Times Square McDonalds, I guess I'm out of luck. Why, why, WHY doesn't McDonalds roll this shit out nation-wide?
I'll trade you my iPhone for a McVeggie Deluxe!
• New Yorkable... Of course, thinking about food in New York only makes me want to have a REAL bagel. I need to work a trip to NYC in my travel plans just so I can eat for a few days.
• Potterable... In many ways, I'm grateful for the iPhone not just because it's yet another super-sweet Apple product, but because it has distracted the world from talking about the final "Harry Potter" book which is being released next week. Since I'm not impressed with Harry Potter (and love Apple), this works out pretty well for me...
I read the first couple of Harry Potter books and found them to be pretty lame and unimaginative. It seems that any actual creativity is sacrificed for some kind of deus ex machina crap to tell the story ("and Gryffindor gets 170 points pulled out of their ass at the last minute for stupid crap so they can win the House Cup!"). Anybody who thinks Harry Potter is The Shit should seriously check out the The Books of Magic graphic novels by Neil Gaiman (which started long before Harry Potter ever saw print).
• iPhoneable... Yes. I still want a friggin' iPhone pretty bad.
I'm just over 60 orders in on the Artificial Duck Co. orders. More stuff will be coming in on Monday, and I'm hoping to have all the orders shipped by the end of the week! Thanks again to everybody for your patience... just 262 orders left to go!
Wheee! It's Bullet Sunday as I try to figure out what I'm going to have for dinner tonight.
• We're On Fire! In what's becoming an annual event, the valley is on fire. Again. It was no big shock to find out that fireworks were responsible. Again. About the only surprise here is how dumbasses can't seem to remember from year-to-year that lighting fireworks in the dry brush that surrounds us will start a major fire, potentially burning down a city or two. I mean, WTF? It's EVERY YEAR!!
Most excellent photo by Mike Bonnicksen of The Wenatchee World.
• Seven Wonders! After a measure of controversy from Egypt, home of the Great Pyramids of Giza (the only surviving Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), the all-new "Seven Wonders of the World" have been revealed... The Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan, Brazil's statue of Christ the Redeemer, Peru's Machu Picchu, Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid, The Colosseum in Rome, and India's Taj Mahal. The only one I really question would be Christ the Redeemer which, while both remarkable and beautiful, doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of these marvels. I would have probably dropped it in favor of either Stonehenge, Neuschwanstein Castle, or Angkor Wat. And, naturally, I believe that no list is complete without the Great Pyramids of Giza, TRULY a wonder of the world...
• It's Zwinky! I keep seeing these completely obnoxious television commercials for some kind of internet site called "Zwinky." Every time it comes on, I'm scrambling for the remote control so I can stop the horrible screaching... "IT'S ZWINKY! IT'S ZWINKY! IT'S ZWINKY!" Then I sit there dazed and confused trying to figure out what the frak a "Zwinky" is. I tried visiting the web site to find out, but the piece of crap isn't Macintosh compatible. Wikipedia says it's some kind of avatar site tied to a web search toolbar, which sounds lame. I've never been happier that some websites are not Mac compatible.
• Hey Whitey! I am getting tired of watching movies and television shows where all the actors have blindingly white teeth. It's very distracting, and I'm seeing it more and more often. Transformers had actors with embarrassingly white glowing teeth... like über-hottie Megan Fox... which very nearly overshadowed the awesome special effects with their unnaturally radiant smiles. Frightening.
• Meet Chicago! Getting some super-sweet RSVPs from cool bloggers planning on making it to the Chicago Meet-Up on August 25th! If any of y'all are planning to come, please email me at dave@blogography.com so we can be sure we reserve enough space. This will also put you on a mailing list so you'll get the most up-to-date info as it happens.
And now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for ice cream! ICE CREAM FOR DINNER! Sweet!
Sunday, Bullet Sunday... here I come!
Unfortunately, I have to go to work today, so it's a short one...
• Guest Appearance! I'm filling in for Hilly over at Snackie's World on today's Snackie Sunday...
Of course, since everybody who is anybody already reads Hilly, I guess you already knew that. But just in case you are one of those people who read their blogroll in alphabetical order, I thought I'd let you know so you can skip from the "B's" to the "S's" and answer my super-snoopy questions right away.
• Super TV! Man, is there ever some good television happening in the off-season...
Rescue Me is as amazing and shocking in its fourth season as it ever was. Burn Notice features Bruce Campbell and Gabrielle Anwar in a supporting roles, which is reason enough to watch, but it is an incredibly well-written and acted show as well. The Closer is probably one of the best dramas to hit television in years. Top Chef is drastically more watchable than last season's really bad run. Traveler just keeps getting better and better with each episode (but is on ABC, and so it will probably be canceled). Psych is back, and hasn't lost any of the magic that made it so much fun last year. And let's not forget that Sci-Fi has a new Flash Gordon series dropping on August 10th! I am such a TV whore.
• Gay TV! And speaking of good television shows for summer, I was gifted an episode of Rick & Steve, World's Happiest Gay Couple from the iTunes Music Store and laughed my ass off. The show is not even close to politically correct, and SO wrong in many ways that I actually felt bad about laughing in parts. But it's a cute cartoon, so it's not like you can feel too bad...
Think of it like milking a cow. Men are just smellier, stupider cows.
What's amusing here is that if the show had been created by straights, it would undoubtedly be considered homophobic, offensive, and be accused of propagating gay stereotypes. GLAAD would be calling for a boycott, and people would die. But, since the show-runners are gay and it's airing on a gay television network, it suddenly becomes okay. I'm not exactly sure how to feel about that, but you can watch a funny trailer for the show here and, for the braver of you, the first five minutes of episode 1 is here.
• Emergency! Friday I got to make a midnight run to the emergency room as a chauffeur. Again. As it was a Friday night in the middle of summer, there was a wild assortment of party-related emergencies, including underage alcohol poisoning, and a girl in the room next door that tried to O.D. (who didn't want to provide her last name, because she didn't want her parents called). After they were forced to take a urine sample so they could treat her, the conversation went something like this...
NURSE: Okay... what are you on? What did you take?
MOANING GIRL: Nothing.
NURSE: What. Drugs. Did. You. Take?
MOANING GIRL: No drugs.
NURSE: NO drugs?!?
MOANING GIRL: NO DRUGS!! I'M NOT TAKING DRUGS!!
And fifteen minutes later the nurse finds the doctor in the hall...
NURSE: Here's the test results.
DOCTOR: Well there's a big surprise...
Yes, big surprise, IT WAS DRUGS!! Who lies about doing drugs after they've had urine sample taken? Oh, I don't know... A DRUG ADDICT MAYBE? For big stupid fun entertainment, nothing beats an E.R. on the weekend.
But I'm in no hurry to go back any time soon.
Oh snap! It's Bullet Sunday in the dark, as I try to desperately crank out the bullets on a laptop battery with just 15 minutes of power left! Better not waste any more time...
• Everybody loves hate-mail! Is there anything more special than waking up to an in-box that has eight email notifications from people who hate your guts that are leaving comments on your blog? And this time it's not even the Dooce Posse! Oh no... this time it's a group of people complaining about a rant I made against public fingernail clipping almost two years ago. Apparently, a customer printed this out and took it to a restaurant where they experienced the same thing, and the employees did not find it funny when the boss got all pissed at them. This is MY fault? Sometimes I envy the life of little rocks.
• Everybody dies, bitches! Turns out the Harry Potter Deathly Hallows spoilers I was emailed the other day were actually legitimate. This makes me really sad. It also makes me angry. But mostly sad. If I had been a Harry Potter fan, the end of the series would have been spoiled before I would have realized it. I wonder if it's a good time to be a Harry Potter smart-ass at the local bookshops again?
• So close and yet so far... How friggin' cruel is THIS...
My iPhone has traveled across the earth, and is now just 3 hours away at a FedEx warehouse over in Spokane...
It might as well be a million miles away, because I'm leaving tomorrow. sob!
• I'm givin' her everything I got Captain... OMG! In the name of all that's holy, I am now running on reserve power's shutdown notice! I knew I shouldn't have gone to Google Maps!!
• Travel Gymnastics... Usually, in order to make a connection out of Seattle for an east-bound flight that arrives at a decent hour, you have to take an insanely early 5:20am flight out of our tiny local airport. Since I knew that I would be working tonight until the wee hours, this was not a very good plan. So instead, I am flying out on a later flight and arriving tomorrow night. Ordinarily, this would not be too terrible, but I then have to get up early the following morning so I can fly to Atlanta in time for work. I am not much of a morning person when it comes to flying, but I just can't seem to avoid it. Oh how I envy people that live in Chicago who can get direct flights to just about anywhere in the country in 4 hours or less!
GAAAAHHH!! If there are spelling or grammatical errors in this entry, I don't have time to think about it! Please don't run out of juice before this entry posts. Please don't run out of juice before this entry posts. Please don't...
It's Bullet Sunday from mid-air as I cruise home on Northwest #807! And, since you're not allowed to be shooting bullets on planes anymore, I'm sure an Air Marshall will be along directly to escort me off the flight.
• Security! I continue to be amazed (but not surprised) when people show up late to the airport and decide that they should get to cut in line at the security checkpoint because their flight is taking off in ten minutes. Tough shit! Maybe if you miss your flight, you'll remember to haul your lazy ass out of bed and get to the airport early like everybody else standing in line. I would have loved to sleep-in for an extra hour this morning, show up late, and then cut in front of the line... but I'm not a complete douche.
• Erasure! Having never seen them in concert before, I leapt at the chance when I found out that Erasure would be playing in Milwaukee, and met up with blogging buddies Diane and Heather for the concert, which was held at the Pabst Theater...
Erasure was formed when Vince Clark quit my favorite band ever, Depeche Mode, and split from his follow-up band, Yaz. The story goes that he had intended on doing some new music projects with a rotating roster of singers but, once he started working with Andy Bell, the partnership stuck and they've been making music for over two decades now.
The show, as you would expect from a group with an ecstatic gay fan-base, was FAAAAABULOUS! All the music was beautifully keyed by Vince from his MacBook and a small sequencer, the three ladies backing up the group on vocals were suitably talented, and Andy... well, Andy was Andy... pouring his flamboyant little heart into a remarkable performance that elevated this concert to one of the best I've seen. Given the intimate nature of the rather small Pabst Theater, the glitzy stage for the show had to be condensed a bit, but was still nice. Our first balcony seats offered up a terrific view (thanks Diane!), and the sound was great. The set list had a large amount of new material, but it was the old favorites (like Chains of Love and A Little Respect) that brought the crowd to their feet. All-in-all, it was a great show and I would gladly see them again.
Except next time I'll dress appropriately...
• Young Love! Surprisingly, the opening act for Erasure was really pretty good. This came as a pleasant surprise, because usually concert openers suck ass. The band was called "Young Love" and had an eclectic rock-pop style that made them a good fit for the tour. I'm hoping that their stuff is available on iTunes so I can buy some of it.
UPDATE: Yep, turns out they're on iTunes! Sweet!
• iPhoneable! There are so many things I love about my new iPhone that it's tough to narrow down what's best about it. But right now it would have to be the fact that it has an unlimited data plan. Because nothing makes me happier than being able to tell overpriced airport internet providers to kiss my ass. Having to pay $9.95 for an entire day of access always pissed me off, because a layover doesn't usually go over 3 hours (and $10 for 3 hours is a big rip-off). AT&T's EDGE network may be slow, but iPhone allows me to use it for everything I need... checking email, approving comments, reading my feeds (thanks to NetNewsWire's brilliant new iPhone-optimized site), and kill time surfing the internet. One of my best purchases ever.
• iDead! At least it was one of my best purchases ever until it died just now. With plenty of battery power, I was listening to music on the flight when iPhone just went black and would not turn back on. Taking a wild guess, I held down all the buttons at the same time and eventually iPhone rebooted and everything was fine again. Odd. Hope this doesn't become a regular thing.
And that's it for Bullet Sunday because we'll be landing in 20 minutes. All I have to do now is change planes in Seattle, make one final hop over the mountains, and I'm home!
It's Bullet Sunday, and I'm running low on ammo!
• Bourne! The latest (and final?) installment in the Jason Bourne film franchise... The Bourne Ultimatum... is finally here. And it totally kicks ass. I love that these movies are so brutally unforgiving with the action, and not afraid to fight dirty. The ending kind of meanders a bit, but there's enough going on earlier that it doesn't sink the picture. I really do hope that they find a way to continue with a fourth film but, if not, at least we've got a rejuvenated James Bond series to entertain us.
• Talk! While seeing The Bourne Ultimatum in a packed theater, I found myself thinking of a new Dumbasses Book for my series...
There are entirely too many people in the world who simply cannot understand this simple concept, and about twenty of them decided to go to the movies at the same time I did.
• Choke! Given my near-death choking experience yesterday, I find myself much more sympathetic to the choking of others. Ironically, the one piece of junkmail which managed to evade my spam-filter this morning had a subject line of "My boyfriend's phallus is too big for my mouth." I wrote back and wished her good luck with that... then included a link to the self-heimlich maneuver just in case she ever needs it. Poor girl.
• Condiment!
• Vinyl! I finally broke down and purchased a USB turntable so I can get my extensive collection of 12-inch maxi-singles converted into digital format. It's been a long time coming, and I can't wait to have some great music from my past on my iPod. I would have preferred to spend the $100 re-purchasing the music at the iTunes music store, but the record labels stupidly refuse to make the entire back-catalog of an artist available for sale. And it makes absolutely no sense. There is no reason that an obscure B-side released by the Thompson Twins in 1986 should be out-of-print. DIGITIZE THE SHIT AND SELL IT! ALL OF IT! Since you don't have to produce a crap-load of CDs to sell music anymore, no music should ever... EVER... be out-of-print.
Sigh. It's only 10:30, yet it seems much, much later. Oh well... nothing a handful of sleeping pills won't fix.
Home again, just in time for Bullet Sunday!
Today, on a very special episode of Blogography, Bullet Sunday is overtaken by a new meme started by Lewis over at Spirit of St. Lewis called Highlights That Shaped Your Life. Lewis is curious to know about those once-in-a-lifetime moments where you just know that "this is one hell of a special time." Here are ten of mine that come to mind...
1977 • Seeing Star Wars for the first time... Seriously, what geek saw Star Wars back when it was first released and didn't feel as if their life had changed?
1978 • Reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars... Science fiction was a random encounter until I read the first book of ERB's John Carter of Mars novels. After that, I was obsessed. I devoured science fiction in every form I could find it. My obsession would solidify after I read Frank Herbert's Dune, one of the most mind-blowing science fiction epics ever written. Sci-fi is now such a huge part of me, that I cannot imagine my life without it.
1979 • Buying Green Lantern #121 and The Flash #277... While out of my mind with boredom one day, I wandered downtown with $1 and no plans. I ended up buying my very first comic books so I'd have something to read. Thus began my lifelong infatuation with collecting comics, a hobby that has brought much entertainment to my life.
1983 • Visiting New Orleans for the first time... I won a high school DECA competition and got to go to New Orleans... completely unsupervised... for a week before my senior year started. This resulted in many "first" experiences, which very much shaped (mis-shaped?) my life.
1987 • Visiting my first Hard Rock Cafe... While vacationing in Maui with some friends in the late 80's, I happened upon my first Hard Rock Cafe. Needless to say, this had a profound affect on my life, as I've spent a great many of the years which followed visiting Hard Rocks around the world (current count: 106 properties). Though drastically outdated, I keep a journal of my Hard Rock obsession at DaveCafe.
1996 • Visiting Japan for the first time... My first "real" trip outside the country was all by myself to Tokyo, which is about as foreign a culture as you can get from the US. I had already fallen in love with Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime), but it was embracing Japanese culture... even for such a short time... which sparked my love of travel that continues to this day.
1998 • Visiting Thailand for the first time... Of all the places I've been and seen, no one place has had a more profound affect on my life than Thailand. This was the trip that introduced me to Buddhism, a way of thinking which changed
2003 • Starting up Blogography... This is one of those rare events where you don't understand the significance of it until much later. I had been a blogger off-and-on for three years before I finally made a serious attempt at it back in April of 2003 (after a Blogography false-start in March 2002). Who knew?
2005 • Standing on the Great Wall of China... A life-long dream was realized when I, at long last, walked along The Great Wall two years ago. This began a trifecta of visits to ancient engineering wonders, when I visited The Acropolis in Greece and The Great Pyramids in Egypt earlier this year. Pretty special indeed.
2006 • DaveCago... I had met with fellow bloggers before, but the blogger meet-up in Chicago last summer was my first opportunity to hang out with a group of them. I had such a great time that I started meeting up with bloggers every chance I got, culminating with the amazing TequilaCon 2007 event in Portland, Oregon. If you haven't yet experienced the joy of hanging out with your fellow bloggers, there's a new meet-up in Chicago in a mere thirteen days, and TequilaCon 2008 comes to Philadelphia next Spring!
And another Sunday bites the dust...
Since I'm flying to Chicago today, then driving north into Wisconsin, I've decided to bullet my entire day. Thanks to iPhone, it's a piece of cake.
Delicious chocolate cake with sour cream frosting and a side of chocolate pudding with a glass of milk.
• Crack of Night. Not "crack of dawn," because it's 4:10am, and dawn is hours away yet as I head to the airport. I've barely had three hours of "rest" (not sleep), so I can pretty much guarantee that this day is going to suck.
• Pulled Over. The final stretch of road to the airport is well-known to be notoriously patrolled by the police. I know this, and yet I'm so tired that I wasn't even bothering to watch my speedometer... I just followed the car ahead of me. Unfortunately, this was not too bright, because just as I can see the runway, flashing lights come roaring up behind me and I notice that I'm going 47 in a 40 zone. SHIIIIIIIIIIIIT! Rolling down my window, the officer says "And how's your day?" Trying to keep my disbelief from showing, I say "Well, it was going okay up until now." He finds this funny and replies "Eh, it will still be okay," and proceeds to let me off with a warning after calling up my flawless driving record. Pleasantly surprised, I find myself thinking that perhaps the day won't suck after all.
• Check-In. Lovely. The first words out of the agent's mouth as I approach the counter are to tell me that there is a weather advisory for Seattle, and the plane may have to return to Wenatchee if they can't land. I guess the day is going to suck after all. An interesting aside... my big-ass suitcase was 1.4 pounds above the 50-lb. limit. I took out a pair of jeans and hit a weight of 49.9 pounds... sweet! No additional baggage fee for me! Of course, now I'm having to carry that excess weight in my backpack, so I guess it all balances out in the end.
• Bitch-slap. Wenatchee's Pangborn Field is a tiny little airport served by one airline with minimal flights each day. Because Homeland Security fears that lax security at smaller airports poses a threat, the security team here is quite a bit more thorough than larger airports. This means passing through the check-point takes considerably longer because they only allow one person in the screening area at a time. This makes the line move agonizingly slow but, since the planes are so small, the wait isn't terrible. So when the dumbass behind me decides to advise me that I should unlace my shoes so I can be ready, I very nearly bitch-slap the fucker so hard his ponytail would snap off. "MY SHOES ARE ALWAYS UNLACED," I snap. "Uh... what?" he replies. "I DON'T LACE MY SHOES UP!!" I say even louder. "Oh!" He mumbles. The guy probably thought that I was blowing him off, but I was actually telling the truth. I haven't laced my shoes up all the way in nearly 20 years. But still, even if I did lace my shoes, what fucking business is it of his? If you're not with the TSA, kindly fuck off and don't tell me what to do.
• Take a Seat. The flight-load out of Wenatchee is fairly light, so the post-security lobby is almost empty. Yet, despite an entire room filled with empty seats, a clueless couple decides to sit right next to me AND take my arm-rest. I try to be flattered, thinking perhaps they like the way I smell or something but, truth to tell, I just want them dead.
• Strawberries & Ass. Across from me a woman is snacking on some kind of shredded-wheat-type cereal that has an obnoxious pink frosting on it. Even worse, the crap smells like strawberries and ass. I skipped breakfast this morning so I could eat in Seattle so, as hungry as I am now, even strawberry-ass cereal is making my stomach growl.
• In-Flight. We are told, twice, that there will be air turbulence on the way over to Seattle, so no beverage service will be offered. Problem is that this was one of the smoothest flights I've ever had out of Pangborn Field, so I can only assume that the cabin steward lady was too tired and/or lazy to pour apple juice at 6:00am.
• Unsurprising Delay. My flight into O'Hare has been delayed 30 minutes. Typical.
• Breakfast Burrito. Sea-Tac International was remodeled a few years back, giving weary travelers a very nice open-air food court with plenty of eateries to choose from. The egg-and-potato breakfast burrito at Qdoba is especially delicious. I order a large one with extra cheese and a carton of milk.
• BOSE Sucks! I really like my SURE headphones, but they don't fit into my iPhone, so I have to use this ridiculous adaptor. Problem is that the it sticks out pretty far and I keep smacking it with the stiff cords coming out of my earbuds. Terrified that I'm going to bust my glorious iPhone, I leave my SURE set at home because I know there's a BOSE booth at Sea-Tac. A sign on the booth says they open at 7:00am, but there's nobody there at 7:05am. With nothing better to do I decide to wait. Finally, at 7:22am, the booth bitch comes walking up with her cup of Starbucks. Apparently, her morning coffee is more important than getting to work on time. As I walk up to the kiosk, she immediately tells me "You'll just have to wait 5 minutes while I get set up." I'm pretty pissed, and tell her that "I've already been waiting 22 minutes and I'm not waiting any more." With service like that, BOSE can kiss my ass.
• iPhone Buds. There's an InMotion store at Sea-Tac, so I wander in and see that they have some V-Moda "Vibe Duo" earbuds made specifically for iPhone. They tell me that the microphone isn't great but the sound is good, and offer to let me try a pair. I don't care about the microphone (as I rarely use a headset when talking on my iPhone) so I give a listen. The sound quality isn't as good as my SURE buds, but they have very nice bass and crisp hi-lights that make The Cure and Nine Inch Nails sound glorious, so I go ahead at dish out the $100 and buy them. I've been listening with the Vibe Duos for an hour now, and they aren't too bad... some songs suffer from the hi-lights being too crisp, but overall it's good so I'm happy with my purchase. You could certainly do worse where earbuds are concerned.
• Storms of Chicago. Thunderstorms in Chicago have now delayed my flight even further. Two hours late and counting. Thank heavens I took that ass-early flight out of Wenatchee to make sure I had plenty of time for a connection! Word is that I may not even get out today. Waaahhh!
• Muckie? Mookie? Woo hoo! I'm on the plane! My in-flight snack is an oatmeal cookie with blueberries. It doesn't taste like a cookie though... it kind of tastes like a muffin. I guess that would make it a muckie? Or a mookie? Maybe a coofin? Whatever it is, it tastes pretty good. But, then again, I'm really hungry.
• Arrival O'Hare. I get to Chicago three-and-a-half hours late but, keeping in mind that there were other flights that got cancelled, I'm not going to complain. Except about the landing. The plane slammed onto the runway so hard that I think my brain got smooshed inside my skull. Seriously... I fly a lot, and this was pretty bad. I was expecting the landing gear to collapse we landed so hard.
• P.T. Cruisered. My rental car ends up being a little P.T. Cruiser, which I have never driven before. Unfortunately, the high center of gravity PLUS the small size PLUS the torrential rains PLUS the crappy stock tires make this a terrifying car to be driving in bad weather. It wants to spin and slide on wet roads anytime you try to stop at speeds over 40mph. This has given me some terrifying moments as the roads gets worse and the visibility starts dropping. I'll bet it's fun to drive when the roads are good though.
• Frozen Custard. I finally arrive at my destination in Wisconsin at 8:45pm. Because I haven't eaten anything except my muckie since 6:30am, I head directly to Culver's for some delicious crinkle-cut French fries and a caramel-cashew sundae. I embarrass myself by making yummy noises and having two orgasms while I eat my frozen custard.
And I guess that's all she wrote!
It is now 9:15, and I'm finally in my hotel room. I just found out that my work has been pushed back until late Tuesday (bleh!) so I now have an entire day-and-a-half to goof around. Who knows what trouble I'll get into tomorrow?
Still sick and miserable this Bullet Sunday. The only difference is that my nose and eyes have stopped running, which I hope means that I'm getting better. All the aches and pains are still there though, and since even slight movement can lead to agony, I spend most of my day lying in bed. That doesn't lead to very much excitement to blog about, but I'll give it a try anyway...
• Trekaversary... Back in 1987 I was vacationing in Maui with some friends when we found out that the premiere episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation would be airing. Naturally, we canceled all our plans and stayed at the condo so we could watch. That first episode was pretty terrible, but I was a huge Trek geek from the original series, and eventually became a fan of the new show (especially after a couple seasons had passed and the series mythology started to come together). I find it impossible to believe that this was nearly twenty years ago, and Next Generation will be celebrating its anniversary on the 28th of this month (Gah! I'm old!). My favorite Trek is still the original, but I hold a geeky place in my heart for Next Gen, and will have to start re-watching all my old videotape copies to celebrate their anniversary (Seesh, VIDEOTAPE?!? I really am old!).
• Sesame... You know how when you are sick, you start craving certain foods? For the past two days I've been wondering why America hasn't embraced sesame seeds for snack-foods as Europe has. While I was in Greece, I became addicted to these amazing thin pretzel sticks that had sesame seeds on them. In Germany, I had goldfish pretzel crackers with sesame seeds on them. Sesame is everywhere over there. Yet, back in the USA, about the only thing I can find are Pepperidge Farm "Snack Sticks" and some crappy sesame crackers. But they're not the same, and I wants me my sesame-pretzel sticks! I guess I'm going to have to enslave a Keebler elf or something.
• Stolen... A couple days ago when I was talking about people stealing my stuff, I forgot to mention the incident which got me started on my rant. It was when a guy stole, in its entirety, my Blogography Gangsta rap: Bitch Got Three Spaces. The only thing he changed was the "Lyrics and Music by" and "Sung by" credits, where he just slapped in his own name on my work. The problem is that he didn't replace the final line of the lyrics...
Laughin' my ass off as I pass,
Thankin' digital photography.
Makin' yo inconsiderate ass famous,
Postin' dis shit on Blogography.
I guess the guy couldn't be bothered to come up with their own rhyme for "photography." Naturally, this made his theft easy to find, and I fired off a comment asking "Why would you post dis shit on Blogography when that's not even your blog?... oh, that's right, it's because you STOLE IT FROM BLOGOGRAPHY!" He never responded, but he did delete his stolen entry and put his blog on hiatus. No big loss, apparently he didn't have anything to say anyway.
• Captcha... These things are getting insane. Half the time I can't even guess anymore...
• NBC Redux... In response to Apple's recent press release, NBC prez Cory Shields fired back with a bunch of stupid crap that makes me loathe this network with a passion. My favorite line? "The typical iPod contains a significant amount of illegally downloaded material." Which means he's basically calling anybody with an iPod a thief. Well Mr. Shields, do you know how much illegally downloaded material is on my iPod and iPhone? Zero. Nothing. Everything there is 100% legally purchased. So go fuck yourself. Sideways. You have to be one of the stupidest people on the planet. Calling your potential customers thieves is such a great way to encourage them to want to do business with your company. If the NBC board doesn't fire your stupid ass, then they're even bigger morons than you are.
And now it's time for me to take my third nap of the day. Every time I get some sleep, I wake up feeling better, so maybe that's the key? Too bad I can't just lapse into a coma until this is all over with.
It's Bullet Sunday under medication as I try to rid myself of the last vestiges of the plague I've been fighting off all week!
• Horrendously Awful... As a certified Apple Whore, the Microsoft Zune media player was always off my radar. It isn't Mac compatible, so I just didn't care. I said my peace on the matter and moved on. Apparently, so did the rest of the world, because Zune never made much of an impact against the iPod. But then today I actually got to play with a Zune. And the entire time I kept thinking to myself over and over again... "holy crap this is lame!" I could detail the entire horrifying experience of both Zune and the Zune Marketplace, but there's nothing to be said. It's just bad, and that's the end of it.
• But Not Really... Okay just one more thing about Zune. THIS WAS WHAT MICROSOFT THOUGHT WOULD BE AN iPOD KILLER?!? It's so craptastically bad that I can only guess it was crapped out of somebody's ass in an explosive case of diarrhea. It certainly looks as if that's the case...
Microsoft has BILLIONS of dollars! But what good is it if they only spend $2.50 on research and development when they decide to enter a new market? NOTE TO MICROSOFT: SPEND THE FUCKING MONEY TO MAKE OBSCENELY AMAZING PRODUCTS!! Put in a billion-dollars and come up with a media player that has anti-gravity controls, a 400dpi 3-D screen, wireless power recharging, and folds to the size of a pack of gum! Otherwise, why bother? Why continue to release complete and total shit that isn't a leap ahead of what's already out there? For crying out loud, who is in charge over there at Redmond? If this is your answer to iPod, I can't wait to see your iPhone competition. Seriously, I could use a good laugh.
• MTV VMA... Am I the only one who thinks that it is ironic MTV would still hold a Video Music Award show when they so rarely play music videos anymore? I tuned in to see Britney perform, but she looked completely zoned out... as if she didn't know who she was or what she was doing there. Girl has bills to pay... she'd better get it together quick, or she won't have a music career left.
• Sam & Max... One of my most favorite comic books is Sam & Max: Freelance Police. One of my favorite video games is Sam & Max Hit The Road. One of my favorite cartoons is The Adventures of Sam & Max. My favorite web comic is the Eisner Award nominee Sam & Max. I'm pretty sure that one of my favorite online games would be Sam & Max too if it worked with Macintosh. It certainly looks like it would be totally awesome...
Anyways, the good news here is that Shout Factory has announced that the animated Sam & Max are getting a new 3-Disc Set on DVD! It's a few months out yet, and no release-date has been given, but the news has me totally psyched. All I need is a Mac or Wii version of the new Sam & Max games, and my life will be complete.
• Dietary Suckage... What do you eat when you have to eliminate hydrogenated oil, gluten, and high fructose corn syrup... plus limit dairy products to three servings a day? Apparently its a lot of fruit juices, frozen vegetables, and rice cakes. So far it hasn't solved any problems for me, but not eating after 7:00 each night has certainly been making me sleep better. Last night, for the first time in a very long time, I managed to sleep six hours uninterrupted. I guess you do what you gotta do in order to stay healthy, but I can't imagine living in a world where I can't have a slice of freshly baked bread smothered in butter along with chocolate pudding and a can of Coke. Oh well. One week left to go.
And now it's back to work. And not eating.
I'm BS-ing my way to Chicago! Hmmm... it seems like just four Bullet Sundays ago, I was also on my way to Chicago. Oh, wait a second... it was four Bullet Sundays ago! I wonder what will go wrong this time...
• Safe... Well, I didn't get pulled over for speeding. That was a pleasant change from last time.
• Praise... Some guy behind me was told that his bag needed to be searched at airport security, and his response was to preach holy scripture at the TSA agent. This was kind of bad-ass, in a Samuel L. Jackson Pulp Fiction kind of way, but I didn't see how the passage was applicable. A Google Bible search on the parts of the quote I remember resulted in Colossians 2:8... "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." Does this mean Jesus is the only one allowed to search his luggage? Sadly, I don't think Christ has a day-job working for the TSA, so I guess this guy is out of luck.
• Prayer... And, of course, the same guy has to say a prayer as we're taking off ("Lord protect us on this journey...") which is no big deal... until some drunken woman starts laughing hysterically in the middle of it ("...we ask that you give our pilot the skill and knowledge to deliver us safely..."). I sit in my seat waiting for God to smite our plane in a ball of fire so as to destroy this drunken bitch for her blasphemous mirth, but it would seem as though He has a sense of humor about it all and we land in Seattle without incident ("...amen").
• Breakfast... For the first time in two weeks, I eat gluten by having a flour tortilla on my egg & potato wrap at Qdoba. I fully expect to explode any minute now.
• Borders... I filled iPhone with plenty of videos, so I don't really need a book, but decide to stop in at Borders anyway (out of habit?). There I notice that there is a new version of "1000 Places to See Before You Die" called "1000 Places to See Before You Die In the US and Canada." I suppose that this edition is for people who want to travel, but don't want to be inconvenienced by leaving North America, which I find to be opposite of what the original book was all about. But the most curious thing I saw in the book store was that Bad Monkey has inspired a novel!
I demand royalties!!
• Puppies! Seattle must be hosting a convention for the blind or something. As I sit here waiting for my flight, the inbound aircraft is exiting. Among the passengers are numerous seeing-eye dogs (with their owners) and people finding their way with white canes. It's a pretty cool sight (no pun intended). I love dogs, and wish that I was home often enough to have one. These dogs are especially nifty, and it's pretty heart-warming to see such dedicated animals making a better life for people.
• Retreat... Ah. One of the puppies (who I learn is named "Denver" from his owner) is sitting next to me. I find out that everybody was on a retreat to Victoria and Vancouver in Canada testing out GPS units for the blind. How cool is that? Denver was given some kibble to tide him over, and I volunteered my water so he could wash it down. He was given surprisingly little of it to drink, however. Though this probably because there's no place for a dog to pee on a plane. Hmmm... and why don't airplanes have lavatories for dogs?
It's Denver! And he's hiding! Photo courtesy of the crappy camera on my iPhone
(heavily Photoshopped so as not to look like a smudgy blur).
• Access... Tell me... if humans are not allowed in the "Starter Override Access Hole," then who do they send in when the starter override needs overriding? Trained monkeys? This does not bode well, as monkeys make terrible mechanics.
Hey! Find another hole, buddy!
• Arrival... Both flights were on-time for departure and arrival? Stroke of luck or sign of the Apocalypse? Though my bag did take a half-hour to arrive at baggage claim, so I guess it all balances out in the end.
• Taxi... Get this. I'm waiting in line for a taxi because the line for the Airport Express shuttle is way too long. After about seven minutes, I finally get to the front of the line, only to have some woman jump ahead of me and try to take my cab! I yell "HEY! THERE'S A LINE HERE!!" to which the woman responds "yes, but I'm in a hurry!" Lovely. "WE'RE ALL IN A HURRY!!" I reply. She keeps trying to open the door on the taxi, but the driver has seen her cut in line and refuses to unlock it. Then the taxi queue guy comes walking up and asks the woman what she thinks she's doing. "I'm very late and there are people waiting for me!" she says. "Yes, but this gentleman is ahead of you!" the guy replies, pointing to me. "HE TOLD ME I COULD GO FIRST BECAUSE I'M IN A HURRY!!" she screeches. "NO I DID NOT!! YOU NEVER ASKED!" I scream back. What a fucking bitch. Had she ACTUALLY asked, I might have said okay... but to lie like that while I'm standing there just pisses me off. There's no way in hell she's getting my taxi now, so I walk up to the door, the driver unlocks it, and away I go while the bitch is left screaming on the curb. I congratulate myself on not slapping the shit out of her for being such an asshole.
• Navigation... Ooh! My taxi is one of those new-fangled cabs with a GPS map in it! Sweet! Now I can see where I am as we sit in traffic!
That will be $38.00 please!
• Hotel... And here I am in my hotel (which will remain undisclosed, because I have learned my lesson last time). It's not The Hard Rock Hotel where I usually stay, but is quite nice. The only problem is that they don't have wireless internet, and the ethernet cable won't reach from the desk to the bed. Bleh!
And now I will climb out of bed, go to the desk, hook up to the internet, and post this so I can take my leave of you. I am meeting friends for dinner, and don't want to have to jump in front of people at the taxi queue in order to arrive on time. I'm courteous like that.
It's Bullet Sunday at the end of a cold and dreary afternoon. What happened? Where did summer go?
• Invincible! Even though it's a couple months old, I didn't get around to reading the latest Invincible hardcover until now. Much like Volumes 1 & 2, Invincible: The Ultimate Collection Volume 3 is amazing. Just when you think that Robert Kirkman can't possibly come up with cool new ideas for his book, he somehow devises these amazing storylines that catapult the series to an entirely new level. Highest possible recommendation.
• Birbiglia! This week one of my favorite comedians, Mike Birbiglia, dropped his new album called My Secret Public Journal and it is (as expected) TOTALLY AWESOME. A very worthy follow-up to Two Drink Mike and his Comedy Central Special. Everybody should go buy it immediately.
• Vista! Microsoft announced that they're going to continue selling Windows XP into 2008 because they now realize that their new Windows Vista OS totally sucks ass and nobody wants to use it. Or something like that. I can relate, because after re-installing and re-activating Vista three times and still having problems, I finally threw Vista in garbage and went back to XP. It's as if every single time I am forced to use Windows, Microsoft makes the experience so horrible that I will hate it even more that the last time I was forced to use Windows. The not-so-subtle irony here is that Microsoft is taking a massive step backwards just as Apple is preparing to unleash the next version of their VASTLY SUPERIOR AND ALL-AROUND KICK-ASS OS, MacOS X Leopard, in October. I LOVE YOU STEVE JOBS!!
• Caruso! The latest advertisements for CSI: Miami are hinting that Horatio Cane (played by the tragically-awful "actor" David Caruso) is going to DIE! Yes... DIE! DIE! DIIIEEEEE! In which case I might actually start watching the show. But bastard TV executives are always lying about stuff, and so I'm going to wait and be totally sure he's dead before I tune in. How do I make a Google Alert for something like that? Because the alternative is just too big a nightmare to imagine...
• Order! I spent the morning filling orders, and thought I'd make a PSA: Just so everybody knows... all orders from the Artificial Duck Store over one week old have been shipped. Prints, which were delayed while I found something to send them in, were shipped out weeks ago. I am saying this because I recently found out that somebody did not get what they ordered. If you have ordered something and have not received it, PLEASE let me know! Thanks!
I'm feeling unbelievable lazy, so that's all she wrote for Bullet Sunday.
I'm going fully automatic for Bullet Sunday on Blogography today!
• Science! Yesterday while I was running errands, I dropped by the crafts store for some spray glue. As I was standing in line to pay for my stuff, I saw a kid holding a cardboard "presentation board" which he was using for his Science Fair project. This made me a little bit angry. CARDBOARD? Back when I made my science fair project, I had to use REAL WOOD BOARDS and METAL HINGES and SCREWS. My science fair board weighed a ton, but had the benefit of being indestructible. I pity the fool who uses wimpy CARDBOARD on their science fair project! So this is what people mean when they talk about the "pussification of America!"
• Cake! I ran into Wenatchee to pick up my grandma's cake this morning... it wasn't exactly what we had wanted, but it was a heck of a lot better than what we had the first time (i.e. it was actually cake-shaped). Most important of all, it tasted delicious and everybody liked it. Overall the party went really well, though I did have a weird moment when I walked up and found my grandmother discussing Britney Spears with her sisters. Apparently they're as sick of hearing about her as the rest of us.
• Reamed! Last night I got a nasty piece of hatemail claiming that Blogography glorifies drug use and should be held responsible for encouraging kids to do drugs (among other things). To which I replied "huh?" Turns out this had to do with a story I drew where Bad Monkey got caught trying to smuggle heroin. To which I replied "huh?" I still don't get it. At no point in the cartoon does Bad Monkey (or anybody else) actually use drugs. It's not like I have my monkey shooting-up and throwing a party or anything. Maybe THIS is what people mean then they talk about the "pussification of America?"
• Chocolate! GAH! I AM SICK OF DARK CHOCOLATE!! They're starting to put that bitter crap on everything! I'm a milk chocolate kind of guy, and it is really frustrating to have to dig through all this dark chocolate junk to find something I want. This morning I bought a package of M&M's that I opened while I was driving home, only to learn that they were M&M's DARK. I didn't notice that I had grabbed a purple bag instead of the brown bag. I only ate that one handful, but I've still got that bitter taste stuck in my mouth nine hours later. Oh how the memory of it haunts me still.
• Bullet! Hey, if this is Bullet Sunday #51, and there are 52 weeks in a year, does that mean next week I'll have been doing Bullet Sunday for a year? Who knew?
Hmmm... I guess that's all she wrote, because the crazy old couple that lives in the mobile home park next door are screaming at each other again, and there's nothing good on television...
w00t! This wraps up one year of Bullet Sunday here at Blogography! I started it as a way to post about all the little things that happen during my week that aren't big enough to merit an entry of their own. It was a good plan, but rather than keeping track of little things throughout the week, I always end up waiting until the last minute where I have to struggle to think up something. Oh well. I've grown to like Bullet Sunday, so I guess it will be sticking around.
• Sauce! While I was shopping for ingredients to make burritos last night, I was in the Mexican food aisle listening to a woman yell at her kid for picking up a bottle of hot sauce. "Put that back! We can get that for free at Taco Bell!" she says. I can't help but wonder if she gets her ketchup from McDonalds.
• Aquaman! A TV show I've always wanted to see but never got around to was the Aquaman pilot (made by the same people responsible for Smallville.) Last night I couldn't sleep and finally got around to seeing it. Much to my surprise, it was actually pretty good! Now I'm sad that the show was never picked up for a series... it may not have been entirely faithful to the comic book, but was pretty entertaining and had real potential.
The cool thing about the show is that Aquaman doesn't take things too seriously. He's your average slacker beach-bum that just happens to be able to breath underwater, swim fast, and talk to fish. But when when the shit hits the fan, he's kind of a bad-ass too... like stabbing evil harpy bitches in the head! Sweet! I also like that there are subtle nods to the source material... like Aquaman wearing Orange and Green like in the comic book. If you want to check it out, you can buy it at iTunes for $1.99 or watch it on Joost for free.
• Alpha Flight! Speaking of comics... when I was in Spokane last week, I picked up the two trade paperbacks collecting the "all new, all different" Alpha Flight series that Marvel released in 2004. Despite the fact that it was widely criticized and cancelled after only 12 issues, I really liked the series, and am glad to have the trades to read again. Compared to some of the crappy books that are being released today, the imagination and clever dialogue shown in Alpha Flight is a breath of fresh air... even though it's three years old...
• Spam of the Day! "Start a new life with beautiful large and firm breasts!" — Hmmm... while that most certainly would be the start of a new life for me, I think I'll pass. And while it might be funny when a guy gets sent an email for breast enlargement, I can't help but wonder if these spamming assholes even give a shit when their unsolicited, unwanted crap lands in the inbox of a woman who has had to undergo a mastectomy or other breast-related trauma? I long for the day that spammers are held accountable for their abhorrent actions, and finally have to face the consequences for the evil that they do.
• Quiz! Yesterday's "How well do you know Dave?" quiz is still open. I hope to dish out the answers tomorrow, but may have to wait until Tuesday if my Monday gets too crazy.
And just like that, one year of Bullet Sunday comes to a close.
So this would be the start of Bullet Sunday: Year Two. And this week I'm posting the bullets from my iPhone! Still don't know how to do images for iPhone entries though. I'll have to look into that one of these days.
• Seattle... In addition to the Seahawks win today, I was pleasantly surprised to find that more people than expected are interested in an early dinner blogger-meet in Seattle next Sunday. I will send out an email with more details soon, and look forward to seeing everybody!
• Blogography... When I first thought of using "Blogography" as the name of my "new" blog back in March of 2002, a Google search returned no results for the word. So I bought the domain and, after a few false starts, the rest is history. Now a Google search shows that there are dozens (if not hundreds) of sites on the web named "Blogography." This doesn't bother me at all, because it only makes my internet identity stronger as more and more people become familiar with the term (it's like free advertising!). This is all fine and good until one of these other "Blogography" sites starts ranting about how my blog is stealing their traffic. This had me starting to feel all sympathetic... until I noticed that their blog was only three months old. Jeez, buddy. Come up with something unique, and maybe you wouldn't have this problem.
• Stalked... I'm having fun updating my Twitter and Flickr feeds throughout the day. It isn't nearly as time consuming as I had expected, because I am usually sending stuff at times where I have nothing better to do anyway... like sitting at a stoplight or talking on the phone or whatever. Anybody who wants to follow along with my daily insanity can do so on my DaveStalker™ Page. Later in the week I've got some traveling going on, so it should prove interesting to see how the updates go then.
• iPhone... Still totally in love with my iPhone after all these weeks. I use it constantly, and am amazed that I am still finding things I didn't know (Image Capture, which comes with MacOS X, will offload iPhone images!) and things I didn't think I could do (you can use iPhone functions, like notepad, while talking to somebody over speakerphone!). It's just ridiculously cool. And yet... I still have two things that bother me: the crappy camera (unless lighting is absolutely perfect, your images will look awful because there's no way to adjust exposure that I can find) and lack of GPS (how much sweeter would Google Maps be if it knew where you were?). Hopefully Apple will be addressing these points in future-models.
• Buttons... Tim informed me Friday that the replacement part for our button machine arrived, so anybody with buttons on back-order with the Artficial Duck Store should have them by the end of the week! At last!
Hmmm... Sunday Bullets are kind of boring without pictures.
Las week I had to skip Bullet Sunday so I could attend Avitable's Halloween Bash, but I'm back and fully-loaded this week.
• Sewn! For those who asked, YES I made my own Halloween costume for Avitable's party, and I have pictures to prove it! When I was 13, my grandmother taught me how to use her sewing machine, and so I borrowed it from her to make my "Holo-Virus Rimmer" garb. Despite not having touched a sewing machine in over 20 years, I was able to pick it up again fairly quickly. I started with a McCall's pattern for a Wizard of Oz Dorothy dress, then modified it so it would fit by using an old shirt I had laying around as a sizing guide...
The main part of the dress was pretty easy to make, since it was just a big tube sewn to a kind of "vest"...
The tough part was making the sleeves, because they had to be big and puffy. The pattern's instructions were all crappy and vague about how to do this, so I used hundreds of straight pins to tack it all together. After that, I just ran the sewing machine around them and hoped for the best. This worked surprisingly well...
But the hardest part of the costume by far was the bonnet. Again, I used hundreds of pins to create the gathers and hold the elastic in place so I could just sew over the whole thing. To create the pigtails, I butchered a "Rapunzel" wig and braided it over some wire when I got to my hotel room in Orlando (can you imagine trying to get that through airport security?)...
All that was left was to put on some combat boots I bought when I was in Seattle and wear Mr. Flibble on my hand (if you want a Mr. Flibble of your own, you can get them on sale at WHO North America)...
• Wonder! Question of the day... If the WonderWorks attraction ever goes out of business in Orlando, what do they do with the building?
As I was walking past WonderWorks on my way to lunch at Johnny Rockets last Saturday, it occurred to me that it's not like they could take a giant up-side-down building and turn it into an Applebees or something. Might make a good giant upside-down McDonalds though. I've driven past WonderWorks many times, but have never gone inside... preferring to spend my time at DisneyWorld and Universal Studios instead.
• Strike! Uhhhh.... yeah, I totally support the writers on this one. If Hollywood big media is making money off of material being distributed on the internet, then writers of that material deserve to get a cut. The argument that no money is being made with digital distribution is absurd but, even if it were true, a percentage of nothing is nothing, so what's the problem? I remain hopeful that an agreement will be reached quickly on this (and other issues), because I needs me my TV. If the strike drags on and we end up with nothing but crappy reality shows, I'll go homicidal.
• Birthday! Hey! Today is Hilly's birthday! Drop by her blog and wish her a good one!
• Cut! My sliced finger is feeling much better, so thanks to everybody who was asking about it. I cleaned the wounds pretty good with hydrogen peroxide, so no infection! Anybody who has to put together metal shelving should know that the turned-over edges are still totally sharp and should be avoided.
My final bullet point is stuck in an extended entry because it's a rebuttal to a comment I got on my Macintosh Leopard ramblings from yesterday. And now that this entry is done, I'm off to work... yay!
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Freezing my ass off in Central Washington on this cold and dreary Bullet Sunday. I guess it's time to pull the blankets out of storage.
• Mean. For anybody who cares, yesterday's entry about mean people sucking was not because somebody was mean to me... it was because I saw some total douchebag be mean to somebody else. I didn't even know the person, but watching them visibly deflate because of such unwarranted cruelty was too much to take.
• Mac. Speaking of mean... Apple's new-found success is causing them to be a little mean and more than a little cocky. First of all, Leopard's icon for any PC's on your network is a piece-of-junk CRT monitor showing the "Windows Blue Screen of Death". It's built right into the operating system...
And now, the latest batch of Get-A-Mac ads are borderline-cruel in making fun of all the people (like me) who have dumped Windows Vista and downgraded back to Windows XP because it sucks less...
Ordinarily I would find these things funny (because the truth always is), but I can't help but think that this new attitude is going to come back and bite Apple in the ass. When they were an underdog, it was semi-forgivable. But now that Leopard is a run-away hit, Mac sales are growing more every day, the iPod has taken the world by storm, and the iPhone is kicking ass... well, the only thing people like more than an underdog coming out on top is watching them fall. Somebody should remind Apple about this before things go too far.
• Blu-Ray. I have finally chosen sides in the Hi-Def DVD war and, for me, it's Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. It all came down to one thing: Ratatouille is only available on Blu-Ray. This animated masterpiece by über-director Brad Bird (of The Iron Giant and The Incredibles fame) simply begs to be seen in hi-def. I can't imagine buying such a sublimely beautiful film in "regular" DVD, so it was finally time to bite the bullet...
• South Park. Once again, South Park is riding on the edge of pop culture by spoofing on Guitar Hero. Just when I think that the show can't possibly continue to be relevant after 11 years, they find some way to prove me wrong. Frickin' hilarious...
• Cinema. Is it just me, or are there no really good movies in the pipeline? Now that I think about it, the only really good movie I saw in recent memory was Ratatouille back in June. Transformers (the last movie I saw) wasn't too bad, but that was back in July. And now what have we got? Love in the Time of Cholera? Really? Give me a break. I liked The Golden Compass as a series of books, so maybe it won't suck too bad when it's released on December 7th. And then the 21st of December sees the release of a National Treasure sequel and Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd... both of which might be worth a look, but I hardly think my socks will be blown off. Here's hoping the mysterious "Cloverfield" project will live up to the hype come January 18th, because Batman: The Dark Knight won't hit until next summer.
Anyway... adding my thanks to those who have served or are currently serving in our armed forces this Veteran's Day.
It's Bullet Sunday after a dreary week of work, work, and more work.
• Ironic... My new Blu-Ray player was delayed, so I'm sitting here with a stack of Blu-Ray movies and nothing to watch them on. I'm jonesing for a Ratatouille and 300 fix! In other HD news, I was very happy to find out that you can have Netflix automatically send Hi-Def versions of your selections (in either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD format) simply by updating your profile. Sweet!
• Electronic... FOX is releasing posters for the new Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and they're delicious...
Hmmm... that second poster looks a little Borg-Queen-esque from Star Trek: First Contact. The series debuts on January 13th, though I have no idea if the writer's strike will change that. More info can be found on the FOX website.
• Idiotic... I have the movie Idiocracy playing while I'm blogging. It's a Mike Judge comedy starring Luke Wilson about how in the future everybody is stupid and the country is run by idiots. We're half-way there already.
• Moronic... If people want to criticize me or my blog, I honestly have no problem with that. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, and I invited this kind of scrutiny the minute I put myself on the internet. But why is it that 99% of these people sound so stupid? They don't know how to construct a proper sentence, and can't spell to save their life (despite the fact that they undoubtedly have spell-check). It's getting increasingly difficult to respond to these dumbasses because I can't even figure out what the hell they're trying to say. I'm told that this is a generational thing, and kids who grow up in the age of TXT messaging and IM have a language all their own. This may be true, but it's not that I can't decipher their TXT-speak, it's that their message is so obtuse. How can I have respect for these people when they can't express themselves in any meaningful way? Besides, I don't buy it. I know plenty of kids who are able to get their point across... even in TXT-speak. Perhaps the blogosphere just attracts idiots, I dunno. Maybe the future really is now.
• Harmonic... The Superficial has posted some shots of the sublime Elizabeth Hurley as she attended Elton John's AIDS foundation benefit...
Stunning as always. More delicious photos of Liz can be found here.
• Iconic... I installed the first update for MacOS X Leopard and was dismayed that the icon preview bug hasn't been fixed. This is a major, major problem for me, as I use the icons to visually identify Adobe Illustrator files (I go to the trouble of saving PDF previews with all my files specifically for this purpose). Problem is, this is all I see in Leopard...
Yet, if I do a Spotlight search on the same files, the icon previews mysteriously appears...
APPLE, PLEASE FIX THIS!! I need my icon previews back.
• Demonic... How hard does Ray Wise rock playing The Devil on Reaper? I like the show and all, but he's the reason I find myself tuning in each week...
• Ultrasonic... Crossing my fingers for Tron 2, baby!
And that wraps up the last installment of Bullet Sunday before we become hopelessly mired in the horrors of the holiday season. I so wish I could fast-forward to January.
Where did this day go? Seriously, it's coming up on dinner-time and it feels like I just woke up a couple of hours ago. I know I went to work, but I didn't get nearly enough done. Must be a Bullet Sunday.
• Pole! What is it with the latest fitness trends that keep popping up, disappearing, then popping up again? I'm seeing ads (once again) for POLE DANCING as exercise. I could make a number of smart-ass comments here, but instead I decided to buy a pole and get into shape! Off I went to Amazon to get an instructional video... and imagine my surprise when I found out there's a whole world of slutty exercise programs to choose from!
And now I can't decide if I want to learn exotic dancing, pole dancing, lap dancing, or bump n' grind strip-dancing. My gut instinct is to stick with pole dancing, but I'm thinking there's more money to be made in lap dancing. At least that's always been the case when I'm paying for it. Because, hey, there's nothing to say a guy can't earn a little cash while getting into shape.
• South Park! Last night I finally had a chance to pull out my South Park: The Complete 10th Season DVD set and watch my second favorite episode of the series ever: Make Love, Not Warcraft (my all-time favorite being Christian Rock Hard). In addition to being hysterically funny, the episode is just so incredibly well made. I'd go so far as to say that it's practically flawless. Anybody who hasn't seen it should definitely take a look...
• WOW! Included with my new South Park DVD set, there was a free 14-day trial for World of Warcraft. This is a really brilliant idea, because after having watched that South Park episode, I was in the mood to give it a try. I had played the original WarCraft games but, since I am not so much into the whole "online massive multi-player" thing, I never tried WOW. And now that I have, I know what all the fuss is about. It's pretty sweet!
This is me! I'm a Tauren Shamen, which I picked because he looks badass cool.
I use my mace to unleash my righteous fury on giant turkeys.
Then I figure out that I can shoot lightning, which I use to fry green pigs.
Oh shit! I'm dead!! I got my ass handed to me by a giant super-pig!
Oooh! The moon is all pretty and stuff.
For a while there, I was having me some fun... being all kick-ass by running around and killing giant turkeys and pigs and stuff. But then people started asking me to join their group every 15 minutes, and I didn't want to play anymore. I don't want to join a group. I'm busy all the time, and can't commit to playing with a group... I just want people to leave me alone. But I couldn't find a way to hang a big "DON'T ASK ME TO BE IN YOUR GROUP" sign around my neck, so I gave up and stopped playing. Oh well. Hopefully Blizzard will release Warcraft IV soon, so I can play alone. Of course, right now I'm more interested in Starcraft II, which is the sequel to my favorite Blizzard game of all time.
&bull Starbucks! I have written about the song I Love N.Y.E. by Badly Drawn Boy (from the amazing About A Boy movie soundtrack) a couple of times now (here and here). It's beautiful, magical, and I've always been puzzled as to why it was never nabbed for a television commercial. Well, somebody really smart in Starbucks' marketing department finally found it, and it's playing on a really cool animated ad for their calorie-laden holiday drinks (it's got penguins in it!). Beutifully done, Starbucks! If you're curious about this wonderful piece of music, you can take a listen at iTunes here.
• Ghost Rider! After goofing off with WOW, I capped off my evening by watching my Blu-Ray copy of Nicholas Cage in Ghost Rider. It's not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a fun movie to watch and has nifty special effects. The critics, of course, savaged the movie in their reviews (it mustered only 28% on Rotten Tomatoes), which is probably justified, but kind of lame since this was such an easy target. I mean, come on, it's got a flaming skeleton riding a motorcycle and Nicholas Cage in a hairpiece for crying out loud! At some point you have to just let go...
Besides, any movie that's got Sam Elliott and Peter Fonda in it can't be too bad!
And thus ends Bullet Sunday (though I've got a iTunes meme in an extended entry which was tagged me by James). Tomorrow I'm traveling cross-country, so my entry for Monday will be posted pretty late. For anybody interested, I'll be updating my journey throughout the day via DaveStalker™, so feel free to travel along with me if you've got nothing better to do.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
I don't know how many bullets I have in my this Sunday. I'm still traumatized from the drive back home.
In the past two decades of driving in the ice and snow, this was probably the worst it has ever been. And I most certainly knew better... iPhone told me the road was going to be shit, I just chose not to listen. I think that after my life is over, I shall make a list of the stupidest crap I've ever done, and this day will be in the top ten.
• Beginnings. Things started out good enough. Just a bit of light snow that wasn't even sticking to the road...
• Slush. But then things went terribly wrong once I made it through Monroe. The snow turned to rain which made the snow already fallen turn to slush. Scum-sucking slush from hell that pulls your car from the road and makes you lose control. Several cars were pulled into the ditch, and many of the people one the road with me turned around and went back. People far smarter than I.
• Calm. Then, as if by magic, the rain stopped. Heading up the pass, there was only light snow and cleared roads. I breathed a sigh of relief that my drive home wasn't going to be as difficult as I had first thought...
• Storm. It was too good to last, of course. Once I topped the pass, the roads turned to shit, the snow was much heavier and wetter, and freezing winds blasted the highway. And this wasn't even the worst part. The wind made the wet snow freeze to my windshield wipers. I had to constantly reach out my window, grab the wiper, then slap it down against the glass to break the ice off... otherwise, they couldn't clean the window. I tried to stop several times because I couldn't see, but there was no place to do so. I had to just use The Force and keep going... taking advantage of little clear spots that would pop up from time to time. It was horrible. I expected that the roads would be plowed better once I made it to Leavenworth, but I was wrong. My car was all over the road as I struggled to get home on roads completely covered with snow.
• Wrecked. Once I finally got home safe and sound, I was so mentally and physically exhausted that I could barely function. I was totally wrecked, and just wanted to climb into bed and forget that the day had ever happened. Of course, this was simply hoping for too much. I had a massive pile of emails and work to get to. Life is harsh that way.
And that's a wrap! Fortunately, weather conditions are predicted to improve later in the week before I have to fly out again. Not that I put much stock in weather predictions, but it never hurts to be hopeful.
Waaaaahhh... I should not be blogging! I have to get up and go to the airport in 4 hours. But I just can't stop myself because it's Bullet Sunday!
• TiVolutionary. The one thing I positively loathe about TiVo is its constant need to "phone home" for updates and crap. Since my TiVo Series One is nowhere near a phone jack, I have to stretch a cord across the room in order for it to do its business. Given what a pain this is, I only do it once a month or so. This makes TiVo very cross indeed, and he sends me error messages every day until he gets his phone call. I'm so adept at ignoring his messages that I only today noticed that it has been six months since TiVo made a call. Oops. I wonder if TiVo ever refuses to work if you haven't dialed in for an extreme amount of time?
• New Frontier. One of my favorite "Absolute" volumes from DC Comics is "The New Frontier" by Darwyn Cooke. It's a very cool retro-style take on super-heroes that's done far better than I would have thought. Now they've gone and made a movie from the material, and I want it pretty bad. Unfortunately, this photo is as close as I'm going to get until it's released on February 26th...
• Powered. Why can't everybody use the same plugs on their power adapters? I've got at least twenty different power adapters, and I am getting tired of trying to figure out which one goes with which peripheral. I thought I was making headway on the problem by choosing a single manufacturer for my external hard drives... the LaCie drives designed by F.A. Porsche. They're beautiful, reliable, and all use the exact same power adapter. Except today I find out that the two new drives I just bought are using a DIFFERENT power adapter than my older drives. WTF?? Bad enough to have different power adapters from different manufacturers... but the SAME manufacturer with the SAME product? What dumbass thought this was a good idea? Surely not F.A. Porsche himself?
• Davelando. Ooh! After my work in Wisconsin, I'm heading down to Orlando for work and fun at Disney World! If anybody is in the area and wants to goof off, just email me and I'll see if we can find a time to meet. There's probably going to be a blogger dinner one of the nights I'm there, but no time has been decided yet.
• Time Machine. And, lastly, can I just give a big "thank you" to whatever Apple Genius came up with their new Time Machine backup software? I've lost count of the number of times my ass has been saved by this remarkable program. I never realized just how many times I need to recover old files until Time Machine arrived.
Ugh... no more bullets. I'd say "good night" but it doesn't make much sense to go to bed when I'm just going to have to get right back up again in a few hours. Oh well. My first class upgrades came in for all my flights, so I guess I'll have plenty of room to get some sleep on the plane.
This Bullet Sunday was a fairly laid-back day. Since it was raining in the morning, I stayed in bed until 10:00 before venturing out for my morning beignet fix. From there it was just another walk in the park (or two).
• Davelando. Due to both the holidays and a plague descending upon Orlando (seriously, it seems everybody here is sick or getting sick or recovering from being sick), it was just Avitable, Jess, and myself for dinner last night when we met up at the money-making factory known as Downtown Disney...
It was a great time to hang out, chat, and stare at the fish. At least it was until Avitable decided that everybody at the Rainforest Cafe needed to see his testicles, at which time we were asked to leave. Fortunately, they still let us keep our souvenir light-up action glasses...
• Banded. Disney has a perk for their resort hotel guests called "Magic Hours." You just show your room key at a designated Magic Hours Station, and they slap a wrist-band on you so that you can keep going on rides for a couple hours after the park has closed to everybody else. When Dale and I were at Epcot a couple nights ago, we passed one of these stations where a little boy was getting his wrist-band. At first he thought it was cool and was waving it all around. But then he tried to remove it... "AAAAAAAAHHH! IT WON'T COME OFF! IT WON'T COME OFF!" The kid was freaking out, and nothing his parents said would console him. Finally, they removed the band and the poor kid just stood there crying... "I can't eat breakfast tomorrow with that on my arm!" he explained. Sometimes kids are the most logical people I've met.
• Gingerbread. For lunch today, my friend Dale and his wife met me at The Grand Floridian hotel here at Disney. We decided not to eat there but, before we left, we went to see a giant gingerbread house they had built in the lobby. It was so big that ladies were inside of it selling stuff out the back. It was weird, but kind of cool...
• Guides. After Dale and his wife headed off, I went back to The Magic Kingdom to use my Space Mountain FastPass that I had been given when the ride broke down a couple days ago. After I had goofed around for a bit, I walked through the shops and spotted this really cool book called "An Imagineering Guide To The Magic Kingdom." It has all kinds of interesting trivia and information about the park, and I couldn't live without it. As I was paying for my book, the cashier asks "do you already have the other two?" at which time I realize there must be books for Epcot and Animal Kingdom/MGM Studios too. Sure enough, I do a Google search and there they are. Now I have to go track down the other two. Very, very cool companion reference when visiting Walt Disney World. I wish I had them with me earlier...
• SPACE. While waiting for my "FastPass" time to come up for the Soarin' attraction tonight, I headed over to ride Mission: SPACE again, since there was no wait. As I was approaching, I noticed how beautiful the building was at night and went to take a picture. But, for some reason, my camera refused to focus on it. I could snap pictures of everything else in the area no problem, but Mission: SPACE refused to be photographed properly. Bizarre, but still pretty to look at...
ATTRACTIONS OF THE DAY...
• Stitch's Great Escape. This is not a very good attraction, having been retrofitted from the "ExTERRORestrial Alien Encounter" scare ride from years ago (which was far better, made more sense, and featured the voice of Tim Curry!)... but it has my favorite animated Disney character of all time in it... Stitch! The audioanimatronic robot they've built for him is incredible, and he moves around like he's real. It's well worth seeing for Stitch, but everything else is kind of lame. Wikipedia Link.
• Space Mountain. One of the most brilliant ideas for a roller coaster ever, I love Space Mountain. The only problem is that the seats in the Orlando ride are really uncomfortable if you're tall and have limited flexibility like I do. My shins got all banged up, and my legs ache after I manage to climb out of the thing. But I love the attraction too much to care, and ride it even though I know I'll suffer for doing so. An endorsement doesn't get much better than that! Wikipedia Link.
• Haunted Mansion. I have been wanting to see the Nightmare Before Christmas theming of this ride for a very long time (missed it by ONE DAY when I was in Disneyland earlier this year!). Unfortunately, the Disney World version doesn't get themed for Nightmare Before Christmas, so this is yet another year I'm missing out. I was told that this Haunted Mansion got an upgrade... and I did notice a few changes, but it's still pretty much the same ride it's always been. This is probably not a bad thing. Wikipedia Link.
• Soarin'. The best ride at Disney's fairly lame "California Adventure" park, it proved so successful that they decided to duplicate it at Epcot. Using IMAX technology, you fly over scenic California on massive "hang gliders" that move in sync to the film giving the illusion of flight. Very, very cool, but crowded... the only ride during my entire visit where I was forced to take a FastPass ticket because the line was over an hour long. Wikipedia Link.
It's Stitch! One of the coolest attractions at any Disney theme park was a "video conference booth" that links you up with Stitch in Hawaii so you can talk and interact with him. I got to experience it in Disneyland, but have no idea if it's there anymore. I can't really explain it except to point to some brilliant videos on YouTube (there are bunches of them, and they're all amazing). Here at Disney World, they have the same thing with Crash the turtle from Finding Nemo. If you have kids (or are a kid at heart) this is a can't-miss attraction. I love Stitch...
And thus ends my fourth day in Walt Disney World. One day left to go...
It's Bullet Sunday from the City by The Bay. Originally, I wanted to fly back home today, but there were no flights available, so I had to wait until tomorrow. Oh well. It's hard to complain about getting to spend a free day in San Francisco.
• Lost Luggage. My missing suitcase was found and everything worked out okay after all. This makes me happy, because the last time I flew into San Francisco and my luggage was lost, I never saw it again.
• Kentucky Girl. Once I had clean clothes at last, I took BART into the city so I could have lunch with Kentucky Girl today. It went something like this...
Well, not really... but we did have sandwiches made by San Francisco's slowest deli where she tried to kill me with a potato chip. And then I took KG to Chinatown so I could introduce her to the crack cocaine substitute known as Golden Gate Fortune Cookies. After that, we shopped for crappy gifts and wandered around laughing our asses off until we ended up back at the BART station where we went our separate ways. Until we meet again my partner in cookie crime.
• Vending Hell. I was going to grab a couple of slices of pizza for dinner, but didn't end up in a pizza kind of mood. I then decided to enjoy a hotel vending machine dinner and have a big breakfast instead. Armed with a stack of dollar bills, I headed to the vending vestibule and found... nothing good at all. Not even a Snickers. It was all weird brands of chips and cookies and crap. After trying a few bags of "snacks" and finding them repugnant, I suddenly find myself in a "pizza kind of mood" after all. But it's too late now, so I guess I'm having fortune cookies and a Coke for dinner. Good thing I bought four bags of them.
• Death Scene. Bad Robert called to ask me if I had bought the Blu-Ray 5-disc set of Bladerunner (I had) and whether or not I had checked the fifth disc because there were manufacturing errors (I hadn't). After he told me that he was watching yet another version of the movie, he mentioned that Rutger Hauer's death scene was one of the best ever filmed. I agreed, at which point I had to mention that the most shocking and disturbing death scene I've ever seen in film was in Galaxy Quest when Quellek (Patrick Breen) dies while Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman) tries to comfort him after he's been shot. I was not expecting such a sad and touching moment in a comedy film, and it's haunted me ever since. Yet another reason I think Galaxy Quest is one of the most perfect (and underrated) movies of all time...
"By Grabthar's hammer, you shall be avenged!" Photo taken from The Questorian Site.
• Beauty Beholder. And so I'm sitting here enjoying my fortune cookies and Coke when suddenly a commercial for Dell's XPS "all-in-one" iMac killer shows up on my television. They keep talking about how beautiful it is and I nearly choke to death laughing my ass off at the absurdity of it all. I mean... I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and aesthetics are all subjective and stuff... but this janky piece of plastic is supposed to be beautiful?? It's got all these freaky angles with ugly chunks hanging off of it, and looks like ass...
IT'S STUNNING BECAUSE WE SAY SO, DAMMIT!!
When you look at the stunning curves and elegant simplicity of the iMac, the Dell just looks like a cheap piece of 1980's junk in comparison...
I know I'm a Total Mac-Whore and everything, but this is just hilarious. Why is it that nobody can design a good-looking computer except Apple? Surely Dell can afford to hire designers who are capable of making an attractive computer for PC users? Or do they think they can just say something is "beautiful" and it makes it true? I'm stunned alright.
And now I need to pack my suitcase so I can fly home in the morning for one night only. The jet-set lifestyle I lead is so glamorous.
It's the last Bullet Sunday of 2007! I am so ready for this year to be over.
Guitar Hero. After a bit of practice, I finally got 100% on Pat Benetar's Hit Me With Your Best Shot on Guitar Hero 3. Thinking this meant I was ready to move up from "easy" level, I hopped up to "medium" difficulty and sucked horribly. I think I'm done with this game now, and get a bit depressed when I see videos on YouTube of kids hitting 100% with "expert" level on impossibly difficult songs. I shudder to think how much practice it takes to rock this hard.
Presidential. Is it bad that I haven't decided on a presidential candidate yet? It seems everybody has made their choice except me. I really like Barack Obama after reading his book The Audacity of Hope, but am not 100% with him yet. On issues alone, I'm leaning toward McCain, but can never forgive him for abandoning our POWs (ironic since he was one), and would never vote for him. Rudy Giuliani got endorsed by televangelist whack-job hater Pat Robertson, which means I won't even consider him as a candidate. About the only thing I'm sure of is that I don't want to see Mike Huckabee in office... he seems to have little interest in representing ALL Americans as president. As if his blatant homophobia and tendency to speak out of ignorance about AIDS and other important issues wasn't bad enough, he just seems like a total jerk. I can't imagine how much worse our international relations would become with Huckabee in power, which is saying a lot after the complete and total devastation suffered under President Bush. Sigh. I loathe our two-party system, and feel we will never get the best person for the job in office so long as candidates have to cater to their political affiliations to get elected.
Juno. Hands-down best movie of the year is Juno. What an amazing film, and what an astounding triumph for director Jason Reitman, who's previous film Thank You For Smoking was also genius. He seems to be taking a very different path than his father (Ivan Reitman, who hasn't had a decent film since Dave in 1993), and I can't wait to see what he does next.
Watching. In other movie news... Zack Snyder, please please please don't screw this up...
Eh... not a lot of bullets today, but there's not a lot going on right now. How totally cool is that?
Buuuuuuuuuullet Sunday! Buuuuuuuuuullet Sunday! Bullet Sunday! Bullet Sunday! Bullet Sunnnnnnnnnnnnnndaaaaaaaayy! Amen.
Driver. Remember the good old days when driving was a relatively effortless endeavor? When you could be assured that most of the people out on the road were semi-competant behind the wheel? Now-a-days I get the feeling that nobody else out there knows how the hell to drive. I spend every waking minute on the road having to watch out for all the crazy crap that other people do so I don't get in an accident. Just driving to the grocery store is now a massively stressful ordeal. It would be easy to put the blame on mobile phones... but I honestly think people are just getting stupider and stupider. Today I saw a pedestrian get nailed by a dumbass bitch who didn't bother to look right before making her turn. This is not complicated stuff... how hard is it to remember that you look left-right-left before pulling out into traffic? The guy bounced up and walked away... but what if he hadn't? When are people going to realize that a car can be a deadly weapon if you don't pay attention?
Flavorful. Mew left a comment in my Jellybean entry asking what my favorite jellybean flavors are. After much deliberation and taste-testing, I've finally come up with my top ten...
Yummy. Now I'm sad that I've eaten all my jellybeans. Except the coffee and licorice ones. Blech.
Worst. I've already laid the honor of BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR on Juno. Now I have the extreme displeasure of awarding WORST MOVIE OF THE YEAR on Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Sure there are probably movies that sucked more, but this horrible confusing mess of the film is by far the most disappointing. Talk about taking a can't-miss franchise and flushing it down the toilet. I'm happy that I never bothered to see it in theaters, but am really pissed that I just bought it on DVD. Stunning special effects do not a good movie make. I can't believe that Johnny Depp signed off on the script.
Winner. Well, if it's possible for a format to actually win the Hi-Def format war, I guess it's going to be Blu-Ray. Not that I'm surprised or anything. I've been reading articles like this saying so since almost the beginning. I still think that it doesn't much matter... whichever one comes out on top, digital delivery is the future. Blu-Ray (or whatever) is just a stop-gap. Still, I'm happy to have come out on top for once... I've still got the bitter taste of failure in my mouth from hopping on the mini-disc fiasco.
Terminated. Watched the sneak-preview of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and was not very impressed. As desperate as I am for new television during the writer's strike, I don't think this is it. About the only high point was getting to see Summer Glau again... but that just made me miss Firefly all the more. I'll undoubtedly watch it for a while to see how things go, but I don't have my hopes up. Fortunately, Series 2 of the excellent British show Torchwood is due to air here in the US on January 26th... now there's sci-fi television to get excited about.
It's Bullet Sunday in Biloxi as I wait for my first of four flights today! Nothing quite so fun as flying from one small city to another small city.
• Feature. I had five hours to catch some sleep before I had to meet the 4:20am shuttle to the airport. Naturally, this means that some stupid bitch has to dial a wrong number and wake me up shortly after midnight. And, of course, I hang on to my phone because I just know the dumbass won't bother to check the number, but will instead dial it again... and she does ("YOU. HAVE. THE. WRONG. NUMBER!!!"). Why doesn't iPhone have a "FAVORITES ONLY" feature?? A way of setting it so anybody NOT on your "favorites" list will automatically be dumped to voicemail with NO notification played? And, since I'm fantasizing here, why can't you put it on a schedule? Make it so anybody calling after 10:00pm or before 8:00am (or whatever) who isn't on your favorites list will be told to go fuck themselves? That would be an astoundingly useful feature, and I don't know why some mobile phone manufacturer hasn't implemented it.
• Etiquette. Speaking of mobile phones...why don't people realize is extremely rude to use your phone on public transportation? My shuttle may have left at 4:20am, but some bad-mannered fucker in a pink shirt managed to find somebody to talk to for the entire 30-minute trip to the airport. People are trying to catch some rest here, asshole.
• Handicap. And speaking of assholes... why is it that people using the handicap parking never know how to park a fucking car? When I was at my Milwaukee hotel, some idiot parked angled across three spaces (only one of them handicapped)... WITH A SUBARU! OVERNIGHT!! And, of course, since parking lots are personal property, there's no way to ticket the offense. This just encourages the morons to get worse and worse. And don't give me the bullshit "there wasn't room to get out" excuse. If that's the case, then pull up and drop off your passenger before parking so you're not blocking a walkway. Being handicapped doesn't give you an excuse to be a dick...
So what if I block the walkway! I'm handicapped, so fuck you!
• Prize. I've been trying to devise unique prizes and events for my fifth blogiversary coming up in April. One of my ideas was to have a prize drawing for a Dave Event in the city of your choice... anywhere in the world with an airport served by a major airline carrier. I figured it would be not only exciting for anybody who entered, but VERY exciting for myself. Who knows where I'd end up? I mean, if somebody in Seattle won, that wouldn't be much of a trip... but what if it was somebody in Bucharest? Or São Paulo? Or Jakarta? How cool would that be? I mean, Davekarta may only be a party for two, but that would still be pretty sweet. And then I got to thinking about it. Who knows where I'd REALLY end up? Pyongyang? Baghdad? Darfur? SACRAMENTO?!?*** Hmmm... actually, I wouldn't mind visiting North Korea... but there are some places that I just don't know how I'd do it. I dunno. Maybe there could be some kind of pre-approval process when you enter, but that kind of spoils the fun, doesn't it?
• Approach. Hmmm... I was just looking through my photos and noticed how cool the approach is into the Gulfport/Biloxi Airport...
If you look really closely, you can see the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino!
On top of that, the airport here has FREE Wi-Fi internet and plays this totally awesome 80's soundtrack at full volume. Sitting here I've heard Thompson Twins, Devo, R.E.M., The Police, Talking Heads, The Fixx, Wang Chung, Billy Idol, Eurythmics, and Def Leppard! Sweet! It's almost worth coming to Biloxi just to use their kick-ass airport.
• MacWorld. Oh crap. MacWorld starts tomorrow. Since I didn't win a million dollars at the Hard Rock Casino Biloxi, I'm terrified at what Steve Jobs is going to unleash in his keynote. Undoubtedly something very expensive that I just can't live without (like a new $7000 Mac that fits up your ass and is controlled directly by your brain using radio waves). Sometimes being a Certified Mac Whore is not easy. Especially if you end up bankrupt. To tell the truth, I'd just be happy if Apple would fix iCal and Mail so that they were useable again. Between the HORRENDOUS FUCKING INTERFACE DESIGN CHANGES of iCal, and the CONSTANT CRASHING AND SLOW-SLOW-SLOW-SLOW START-UP TIMES for Mail that occurred with the OS X 10.5 Leopard release, I'm really starting to get pissed off. Apple is messing up bad, which is tragic when you consider they set the benchmark for this stuff in the first place.
And that's it for Bullet Sunday. I'll be traveling all day long and will probably head to bed the minute I get home, so I figured I might as well post it now.
*** Just kidding, Hilly. Juuuuust kidding.
It's Bullet Sunday as I sit here watching the genius that is Invader Zim on DVD. I love GIR.
• Band. A while back Karl found a rather cool meme about making a band and album via random blog searches. I answered it over on his entry, but enough people have asked me about it that I'm reprinting it here. You get your band name from the first article title at a random Wikipedia search. The title of your album is the last four words of the last quote on the random quotations page. Your album cover comes from the third image on a random Flicker page. You then moosh everything together, and here's what I got...
Photo taken from Juan Farrell's Flickr
• Fuckabee. If this ass-wipe wins the presidency, we're all doomed. Of course, we're pretty much doomed right now. I guess I'm just really tired of doom.
• Traction. It started snowing pretty good this morning as I left for work. The snow was all powdery, so when it landed on our icy roads, traction became a problem. Having driven in these kind of conditions for decades, I just reduced my speed by half and anticipated my stops well in advance. Tricky, but not really a big deal. Until I turned the corner and saw one car being pulled out of a ditch, then went another block to see a police office lighting road flares because another car had run off a bridge. WTF? If you are not capable of driving in adverse conditions... STAY THE F#@% HOME!! Or buy my upcoming new book...
• Traveled. By some accounts, I've traveled quite a lot. My travel map shows visits from Asia to Europe and back again. This is especially true for US citizens, where over 80% of us don't have a passport. Which is why it's cool that today I got to meet somebody who's extensive travels make mine look positively tame. It was then that I realize that I've only been south of the equator once, have never visited South America or Australia, and have no "that's when the police confiscated my motorcycle and took my jar of peanut butter" stories. I really do need to get out more, because making the leap from "traveler" to "adventurer" sounds like a lot more fun than eating ice cream and watching cartoons. Well, maybe not a lot more fun... but at least a little more fun.
• Inked. Is there anything worse than printing something out, only to look over and see the error light blinking on your printer? Yes. Yes there is. That would be seeing that you've run out of ink, and have every color cartridge available except the one you just emptied. VENGEANCE WILL BE MINE INFERNAL PRINTING MACHINE!!! Hmmm... maybe I've been watching too much Invader Zim?
And now it's time to see if I can get some sleep so I can get up extra early for work. Heaven only knows how many dumbasses I'll have to navigate around if it snows again.
Bee-boo-bee-bloop-blarp!
This entry probably won't make much sense. I spent the day at the world's largest candy show, and consumed so much sugar that my brain hurts. And I think I'm going blind. My hands are kind of shaking too. Perhaps I'm on my way to a sugar-induced coma or something?
What a way to spend a Bullet Sunday!
• Candy! Oh, alright... I kind of promised myself that I wouldn't blog about the candy show because I've done that before (here's 2005 and here's 2007), but just two things...
It's Hannah Montana, bitches!! I so totally want one of those mini star purse tins!
"Billy, do you want a lolly? Okay then, pull one out of the FREAKISHLY FRIGHTENING VAMPIRE HEAD!!"
• Milk! Well, maybe three things... Coolest product at the show this year? BAM! It's Quick Milk! This product is a straw with flavor beads in it. When you suck milk through it, your beverage magically changes flavor and color! TOTALLY AWESOME!! Though... is it just me, or does the product description sound vaguely sexual? "Stick into milk and feel the taste?" Wha-??
In any event, science prooves Quick Milk is good for you too!
• PEZ! Okay, four things... I have a small collection of PEZ candy dispensers that I've collected from around the world. When I mentioned this to the very nice lady working the PEZ booth, she very graciously gave me a bag filled with new PEZ dispensers, even though I'm not a corporate candy buyer! I didn't think it was possible for me to love PEZ more than I already do, but this was so awesome that now I am compelled to! The coolest I got were a Mozart PEZ head sold only in Austria(!), characters from an upcoming movie called "Kung-Fu Panda", and a Johnny Depp head from Pirates of the Caribbean 3! I also got to see prototypes they had on display for upcoming movie tie-in dispensers for Batman: The Dark Knight, Madagascar: Crate Escape, and Disney/Pixar's WALL-E.
I LOVE YOU PEZ!! You're my favorite dispensable candy!
My cool PEZ tote bag that I carry everywhere now!
• SEASONED! Tonight as I was buying yet another slice of street-vendor pizza for dinner, a guy behind me (about 45 years old and obviously American) asked me if I was an American. When I told him "yes" he kindly offered me some advice from a "seasoned traveler" (which is what he called himself)... "You need to get yourself a money belt, because if you keep your cash in your pocket like that, somebody might steal it and that would end your vacation real quick!" Now, having just watched EuroTrip where there's a gag involving a money belt, it took all my composure not to bust out laughing. He was trying to be nice, so I was doing my best to play along (even though, technically, I consider this to be bad advice, as it marks you as a tourist carrying a lot of cash)... "Oh, thanks for the tip! You've traveled a lot then?" I query. "Yep, this is my third time to Europe and I've been to Canada and Mexico, of course" he said with pride. "Ah. Have you been to Asia then?" I asked. "Ummm... no... just to Europe the three times now," he answered, putting extra emphasis on the "three times" part. I just stood there staring at him with this blank look on my face, wondering how somebody who has been out of the country only three times considers themselves to be a "seasoned traveler." Probably because he watches Rick Steves (rolling my eyes here) on television or something. Not really knowing what to say, I stupidly blurt out "Oh... well, good luck with that then!" and scurried off. I've lost track of the number of times I've been out of the country (over 40 probably?) and could likely call myself a "seasoned traveler," but I can't imagine handing out unsolicited advice on the street to people I don't know. He was trying to be helpful, so it's hard to fault him for a kindness, but I can't shake just how bizarre an incident this was.
• ADVICE! AAAAAAAAHH! Except I feel compelled to say that, given the abundance of cash machines everywhere, it's far better to carry small amounts of cash in your pocket or wallet than to use a money belt. This way, even if you are robbed, you don't lose everything. Even if you are in a country without cash machines and where they don't take traveler's checks, I'd still say it's smarter to divide your cash on your person... keeping a small amount in your pocket for minor purchases on the street, and the rest with your passport in your money belt (or whatever), so people don't see your stash.
• FAHRT! Picked up yet another photo for my "fahrt collection" (tee hee!)...
Though, I must say, this true fart from Sweden is still my favorite.
And that's my Bullet Sunday. Since it's almost midnight in Germany as I type this, and I'm not a bit tired because I've been eating sugar all day, I anticipate tomorrow to be slow-going.
Unless, of course, I start eating more sugar first thing to get myself going...
Gee... what to do with a four hour layover in New Jersey? Guess it must be time for Bullet Sunday!
• Recovery. I will admit to not feeling my best this morning after my drunken exploits yesterday. My head is fine, but my stomach feels as if it could take revenge at any moment... leaping out my throat and strangling me with my esophagus. I'm blaming the corn pizza. Or maybe the guy sitting across from me this morning at the Köln-Bonn Airport picking his nose. And not just a quick flick to remove a stray booger either... this classy bastard was really digging in there. I was increasingly concerned that he would hit brain and lobotomize himself. And when I say "concerned" I actually mean "hopeful." Talk about a stomach-turning sight.
• Approval. Disapproving Man turned out to be more popular than I am on my own blog, so I thought I'd tell the whole story. My hotel is just off a roundabout (or "rotary" to those of you reading in the US Northeast), which means the crosswalk I use several times a day is recessed. So when I cross it, I'm not crossing to a corner, but directly into a hair salon's advertising board with Disapproving Man on it...
This means I pass that evil bitch with his condescending smirk both coming (where he watches me the entire way I'm crossing the street) and going...
I wonder if the poor bastard realized he'd be abused like this when he was asked to model for professionally disheveled hair? I'm guessing no...
• MottoSchal. I am so totally wearing my scarf from the Kölner Karneval right now, and am quite the sexy bitch! Everybody is totally noticing my hotness as they walk by, and I owe it all to Emma.
• Revision. Well, they're either admiring my hotness or wondering why a grown man is wearing a clown scarf... it's hard to tell. I'm banking on the former, because the raw sexiness of my scarf-wearing self is too much for even me to take. This morning I had to finally had remove it while brushing my teeth (YES! I SLEPT IN IT!!) because I was getting myself all excited just looking at me. I think between my Kölner Karneval scarf and my Batman Chuck Taylor sneakers, I'm pretty much going to be an unstoppable man-whore with the ladies from here on out.
• Revision Revision. See, I told you I wasn't feeling well.
• Россия. As I added Warsaw to my Travel Map, I longingly looked over at Moscow and started wondering how difficult it is to get a tourist visa. Russian history absolutely fascinates me, and visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg would be a dream come true. From talking to people who have been there, the word that keeps popping up is "expensive." Apparently the hotels are among the most pricey in the world, and even a simple 5-day Russian tour can cost thousands of dollars. Still, when I go to Flickr and do a search for "Moscow" and see the stunning images that pop up (like the magnificent shot of St. Basil's Cathedral by Ferenc Koltai below), I really, really want to go. Guess I better start saving my pennies rubles...
• Beastly. Just for fun, I sometimes go to my blog stats and click on a few of the sites linking to me so I can see what's happening there. The first one I clicked to was a blog called "Bête de Jour" which caught my attention because I knew that "bête" is French for "beast." Once I got there I saw that the author links to me in their blogroll, titled "People who blog better than me." My first reaction was to think "that's probably true"... not because my ego is so huge (though evidence dictates otherwise)... but because so many of the random blogs I come across are total crap.
Then I started reading it. And could not stop.
By the time I got to the entry entitled "Air Rage," I realized that the very idea of me blogging better than this guy is positively laughable. I'm simply not this clever or smart. La Bête just started writing in December, so click here to read from the beginning and then click on the "Newer Post" links hidden at the bottom of each entry to keep going. You're welcome!
And that's a wrap! I'd add more bullets, but some lovely ladies across the airport are admiring my scarf, so I think it's only fair that I go share a taste of Dave with them.
Or find out that they're making fun of me so I can go to the bathroom and cry. One of those two things.
Can you believe it was only a week ago that I was Bullet Sunday-ing with a hangover I got the previous night in Germany? I can't. Time seems to be getting away from me. Or my brain has been destroyed by alcohol.
• Licorice. I haven't eaten much licorice since Jenny unintentionally destroyed my taste for it by exposing me to the atrocity known as "Dutch Double Salt Licorice" while we were watching Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I had commented at the time that the Dutch are ingenious for managing to come up with something that tastes saltier than actual salt. Sometimes in the middle of the night I still wake up screaming because I have flashbacks to the agonizing burning of licorice gone terribly wrong. A year later, and I now learn that a friend of mine has a business importing Australian licorice to Europe. Once I get to his booth at the Germany candy show, he fills a bag full of samples and hands me a lifetime supply of licorice treats.
Which I have almost entirely devoured in just a week's time. This stuff is so fantastically delicious that the only word which comes to mind in describing it is "orgasmic"...
The licorice is yummy soft, but magically doesn't moosh together into a big sticky clump in the bag. The taste is bold, but tempered with just enough sweetness to keep it from being bitter. I am so addicted to the stuff that I may have to start smoking crack in order to wean myself off of it. While it's made in Australia, Black Opal is actually an American company, so I'm hoping I can buy it locally. If not, I see that Licorice International is importing it, so my dream of banishing the memory of Dutch Double Salt Licorice may finally become a reality.
• Microhoo. My opinion? Microsoft + Yahoo! ≠ Google. Save your money.
• Struck. Unless something totally unexpected happens, the Hollywood writer's strike should be over on Tuesday. Good deal? Yes. Great deal? Not really. I maintain that the writers deserve much more than they got, but that's negotiations for you. Of course, I'd be a lot happier for the writers if they hadn't made side-deals which allowed some writers to return to work while everybody else was on the picket line. Oh well... hopefully new television will be coming back soon, and that's what's really important.
• Paula. Yesterday as I was looking for a paperclip that had skittered under the refrigerator, my iPhone rings...
DAVE: "Hello?"
ROBERT: "DUDE! DID YOU RECORD THE SUPERBOWL?!?"
DAVE: "Errr... no."
ROBERT: "Aw, man! Super Deluxe Girlfriend erased mine."
DAVE: "Well, if it helps any, I hear that the Giants won."
ROBERT: "I don't care about the game, I wanted the half-time show."
DAVE: "Ah. Who was it this year?"
ROBERT: "Paula Abdul."
DAVE: "Uhhh... seriously?"
ROBERT: "Yeah, I like that song she did there."
DAVE: "Well, it would be pretty stupid to put a song out for the Superbowl and not release it. Have you checked with iTunes?"
ROBERT: "No."
At which point he hung up on me. But he called back five minutes later...
DAVE: "Hey, did they have it?"
ROBERT: "Yeah," he says dejectedly, followed by dead silence.
DAVE: "Is something wrong?"
ROBERT: "Without the crowd screaming and all the dancing to distract you, the song's not that good. Paula sounds like a robot singing into a bucket."
DAVE: "Oh. Sorry about that."
ROBERT: "That's okay. It's not your fault you ruined my life.
It would be nice to have a normal conversation with Bad Robert just once.
• Aid. One of the sheer joys left in flying (once you ignore the cramped seats, late departures, lost luggage, and your idiotic fellow passengers) is the SkyMall catalog you get on every flight. I have never purchased anything from it, but boy do I love to look. Half of the stuff is genius, half of it is crap, but all of it is interesting. My favorite item this time around is the "Stealth Secret Sound Amplifier"...
"If a conventional hearing aid sounds like an embarrassment to you, try the Stealth Secret Sound Amplifier. It looks just like a cell phone ear adapter and works as a sound enhancer so you can join conversations and even hear soft voices from 50 feet away. Now you can enjoy the best of both worlds: a more youthful appearance and better hearing."
Hey! It's working! You totally look more youthful...
No. No, I lie. You so totally look like a dick...
Bah! It's 7:00 and I really should take a minute to eat something. A Black Bean Chipotle Burger is calling me...
Yeah, yeah, yeah... I know it's actually Monday... but it's a holiday Monday, which means it's almost like a Sunday. Kind of.
• Hoff... Managed to watch the new Knight Rider made-for-TV-movie last night. As one of my favorite shows from the 80's, I was both nervous and excited to see how they were going to handle the material. What they got right was not starting over from scratch, but instead making this show a continuation of the original series. I also enjoyed the cast, the cameo by David Hasselhoff, the new and improved abilities of K.I.T.T., and the overall storyline. What they got wrong... very, very, very wrong... was the voice of the car. The original K.I.T.T. (masterfully voiced by William Daniels) was a sarcastic bastard, who let his self-perceived superiority complex drip off of every word. Val Kilmer as the new K.I.T.T. just sounded bored. In all fairness, this might not be his fault... the guy is a talented actor who is probably just reading his lines as directed... but it really killed the show for me. Why the fuck didn't they just bring back Daniels? Oh well. The entire show was just a giant Ford commercial with Ford commercials inside the Ford commercials... so maybe product placement and ad revenue was what the showrunners really cared about...
• XP... I've run across more than a couple grassroots movements attempting to save Windows XP from being dropped by Microsoft. Given how badly XP's successor, Windows Vista, COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY SUCKS ASS... I am 100% behind this effort. XP may not be pretty, but at least it actually works for those times I need a Windows machine. Here's hoping that Microsoft bothers to listen.
• Heaven... While my friend Perry and I were mucking about in Poland a couple weeks ago, we took a taxi driven by an 80-year-old driver who didn't speak much English. As he was barreling down the streets of Warsaw, a song came blasting on the radio that sounded familiar, but neither Perry or I could place it. Thinking I could look it up later, I jotted down some of the lyrics in my iPhone and promptly forgot about it. Eventually I happened upon my notes and Googled to discover that the song was "(Feels Like) Heaven" by Fiction Factory. Not finding anything on the iTunes Music Store (FOR SHAME!) I downloaded some tracks off BitTorrent and liked what I heard. This led me to order their CD, Throw The Warped Wheel Out, which finally arrived today. Oh how I love rediscovering great 80's music from my past! Just when I think there's no more to be found, something like this happens...
• Terminated. Despite myself, I am completely addicted to "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." The quality of the show on almost every level has been surpassing my expectations more and more with each new episode. The abject despair of the future-humans under domination of SkyNet is almost painful to watch... just as it should be. The clever dance the writers are weaving around the continuity of the first two films is really impressive, and I can't wait to see where they take the story next...
• Chicken... Today on the drive back home over the mountains, I stopped off for tacos and did my usual bit of requesting that the beef be replaced with rice. This caused the guy taking my order to ask if this was because I was concerned about the massive meat recall out of California. When I told him no, that I make the substitution because I am a vegetarian, he said that he was thinking of becoming a vegetarian too. The only problem was that he thought he'd get tired of eating chicken all the time. I was going to ask him exactly what kind of vegetable a chicken was, but ultimately decided against it. Maybe he'll get it all figured out when we get an outbreak of Mad Chicken Disease.
And there's my Bullet Sunday on Monday. I hope my brain can shut down tonight so I can get some real sleep. I'm entirely too tired of being tired to keep going without it.
It's Oscar Sunday! Which would probably be a lot more exciting for me if I actually gave a crap about the Oscars. Oh well. I got my taxes done, AND it's Steve Jobs' birthday today, so that's pretty exciting.
• Portlandia... I am working in Portland, Oregon later this week, and am staying an extra day to goof around the city. If anybody in the area wants to meet for dinner on Saturday, just let me know!
• Oscars... Of the movies I've seen in 2007, my favorites (in order) are... Juno, 300, Waitress, Hot Fuzz, Curse of the Golden Flower, Paprika, The Man From Earth, Ratatouille, The Bourne Ultimatum, Once, Music & Lyrics, and Blades of Glory. I have not yet seen Michael Clayton, Lives of Others, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Persepolis, and Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds, but expect they will make the list as well...
• Boyfriend... The latest meme crawling through the blogosphere is "Who Is My TV Boyfriend?" Since I love television, I was compelled to try it...
What the bloody heck? I can't STAND that whiny bitch Chuck Bartowski! I am very close to erasing Chuck off my TiVo's Season Pass list, because I am so sick of his bumbling idiocy. Why oh why couldn't I have gotten kick-ass Jack Bauer from 24 or Eli from Eli Stone? Jonny Lee Miller is ever so dreamy! Click here to find out who is YOUR ideal TV boyfriend. I couldn't find a "who is your ideal TV girlfriend, but I already know it would be the sweet hotness of Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell (who is now on Gossip Girl and Heroes, but will always be Veronica to me).
• Gelatinous... I was dismayed and disgusted to find out that the Hello Kitty Gummies I was raving about two days ago have yucky GELATIN in them. Gross! Shame on Kellogg's for putting that vile crap in their product when there are far better alternatives available (like citrus pectin). And shame on Sanrio for allowing Hello Kitty's reputation to suffer by licensing her to a company that would put dead animal cartilage in her gummies! This sucks ass.
• Ilusional... Found this sweet tutorial for an optical illusion which makes a black & white photo turn into a color photo (may not work in a feed-reader, you'll have to click through to see it). Just stare at the dot for 30 seconds, then mouse over the image without taking your eyes off that dot (it may help to put the mouse pointer next to the image so you can do the mouseover without having to look!). After you've seen the color photo, look away for ten seconds, then come back and look again...
Hah! It's black & white! Sweet! That's a photo I took of Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.
• Iron... I'm mainly a "DC Comics guy" because I'm into Batman and such, but there's one super-hero at Marvel of which I'm a major fan: Iron Man. I've been following the Iron Man movie updates over at Geeks of Doom with growing interest (Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark is genius casting!), and now see that somebody has new poster art and a description of the movie trailer from WonderCon. It sounds as through director Jon Favreau has totally nailed it, and I am really looking forward to the debut on May 2nd. Given my huge disappointment in the X-Men film franchise, it will be nice to have a good comic-to-movie flick from Marvel this time...
And there's another Bullet Sunday down the tubes. Time to wash clothes so I have something to wear to work in the morning.
Where did my weekend go?
It's Bullet Sunday and I'm shooting blanks! My brain is so tired that I can only think of three points this week...
• Salmoni! When I got home from Portland, Animal Planet TV was running a 2003 special I hadn't seen before called Living with Tigers. Tigers have always been one of my favorite animals, and this documentary about the efforts to save them from extinction was fascinating. It follows two cubs, Ron & Julie, as they are raised in captivity and eventually trained to be released into the wild. The hope is that the dwindling tiger population can be bolstered in this manner before wild tigers disappear altogether.
But almost as interesting as the tigers, is one of the trainers who was working with them: Dave Salmoni. The bastard is just insane. He keeps saying things like "let's hope she doesn't realize that she's much bigger and stronger than I am so I don't get killed" as he walks up to a growling tiger to take her food away. And every time you see him, his clothes have holes all over from when he's been wrestling with the big cats. After Living With Tigers was over, they showed another program which had Salmoni working with Grizzly Bears (Predator vs. Prey)... and then aired previews of another where he was with lions (Into The Lion's Den). You can tell he has a passion for his work, but I have to wonder how long it will be before I'm reading that he's been killed by stampeding elephants (or whatever). Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's tragic death is still very fresh in my mind, and something tells me it's only a matter of time. There's only so long you can keep exposing yourself to high-risk scenarios with dangerous animals like this before your number is up...
• Mappable! As a long-time lover of maps, I was delighted to stumble upon Transit Maps of The World while browsing at Powell's City of Books yesterday. This wondrous tome has maps of every rapid-transit system on earth... which is kind of like cartographic porn for people like me. The graphics are really too small to be functional, with the diagrams being treated more like works of art than actual maps (and they are!)...
This is very cool book for anybody interested in maps or rapid transit, and you can read more about it at Amazon. If you'd rather not spend the money, you can always take a look at the free transit maps online courtesy of Urban Rail.
• Majesty! No matter how many times I fly over The Cascades, I'm always amazed at how beautiful they are. The day I stop being awed by sights like this, it's time for me to stop traveling...
And now I'm off to bed, where I hope to lapse into a coma for seven hours or so...
UPDATE: Aaaaaaannnnnnd my blog seems to be refusing to accept my entry. Guess I'll give it a try in the morning and hope that the problem solves itself rather than requiring me to do any actual work.
Bullet Sunday already? Where did that weekend go?
• Radio. Today at 4:00pm Pacific (7:00pm Eastern) I will be a guest host on BlogTalk Radio for the incomparable Mr. Fab's Pointless Drivel LIVE show! Heaven only knows what we'll talk about, but it's sure to be a lot of fun! To listen in, just point your web browser here and you're good to go! Once the show begins you'll be able to view a live chat with other listeners but, to join-in the chat yourself, you'll need to pre-register for an account (it's free!). Please note that the show is usually NSFW and probably not appropriate for children, small animals, The Radical Christian Right, or those not possessing a sense of humor...
• Talk. While I'm talking up the big fun that's BlogTalk Radio, I would be remiss to mention that half the blogosphere has radio shows there on Sunday. It starts off with Karl from Secondhand Triptophan at 2:00pm (that's Pacific Time), followed by Hilly-Sue from Snackie's World at 3:00pm, Fab at 4:00pm, Turnbaby from And The World Turns at 5:00pm, and Kyra from The Kyra Sutra at 6:00pm! Quite a line-up! Usually Sundays are travel days for me and I miss the shows, then have to listen to the archives. But today I'm excited because I'll be able to listen to everybody LIVE! Though I have to say that I'm feeling a bit left out that I don't have a radio show of my own. Maybe I'll just beg everybody to guest-star on their show and it will be almost the same? Probably not, but I guess I'll find out.
• Misrepresented. While State Legislator Sally Kern (Oklahoma House of Representatives) was making disgusting homophobic remarks to a small group of people, somebody recorded her dumbass ramblings and posted them on the internets. Now the dumbass bigot is having to deal with the fallout of being a "representative" who is very selective about which of her constituates she "represents" (gays need not apply!). After listening to her bullshit, I came away with a sense that she doth protest too much. What is she compensating for I wondered? And then it hit me... she's not afraid of the "gay agenda" she's afraid of being exposed! A classic case of denial...
• Lesbionic. I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on Representative Kern... but I'm lashing out from fear. Fear that she and her homophobic nut-job comrades might actually be able to make good on their Nazi-esque fantasies of cleansing the nation of homosexuals. A nightmare! WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO LESBIAN PORN?!? Because right now I'm trying to decide which video I need most, and that's a struggle I'm not wanting to give up...
I'm leaning towards "The Trouble with Girls" because it sounds naughty! But then I see "Girls Do It Best: Volume 2" and think perhaps that's the way to go... obviously these babes are really good at making lesbian porn if they've got a SEQUEL going on! Except further down the shelf there's "Girls on Girls: VOLUME FOUR" yes, VOLUME FOUR, which sounds great, yet I can't help but wonder if they're just running the series into the ground like the Star Wars prequels did? But then... THEN... I spot "Bitch Banging Bitch" and think this video must be the one to beat... it's got bitches in it! And they appear to be experienced bitches, unlike the amateurs to be found in "Bitches in Training." And there's always "100% Strap-On," which could be interesting and educational... or just very, very scary. What's a boy to do? Well, if people like Sally Kern get their way, there won't be anything TO do. The lesbian porn industry will be shut down. THIS is AMERICA?!? Nay, I say! Hmmm... I wonder where Obama stands on lesbian porn?
• Trek I have been really enjoying the new remastered versions of Star Trek lately. It's amazing how a fresh batch of special effects can totally refresh the show. It's just as relevant today as it ever was, and looks absolutely beautiful. ..
More gorgeous images can be found here, and where you can watch the remastered episodes can be found here. If all else fails, and you're wanting to know what the fuss is about, you can always buy episodes from the iTunes Music Store.
And that's a wrap for Bullet Sunday! Be sure to tune in to Pointless Drivel LIVE on BlogTalk Radio today at 4:00pm Pacific Time (or 3:00pm if you haven't set your clock ahead yet). Your life might just depend on it!
Well, maybe not yours, but definitely mine. I hear Fabby sends out assassins to kill you if his ratings drop when you guest-host.
Another Bullet Sunday is upon us, but I'm not ready for the weekend to be over!
• Organizational... This past week Suzy asked me if I still had a souvenir I bought from when we were goofing around in L.A. back in September. I knew I hadn't thrown it away, but couldn't find it. Probably because whenever I get back from a trip, I toss all my souvenirs and crap into one of ten big cardboard boxes I've got piled on top of my shelving units. Disgusted with my lack of organization, I decided to sit down with one box a week until I've organized all my travel stuff. It's hard work, but every once in a while I see something from my past that makes me smile, and that makes it all worthwhile...
I wonder how many people know you could once smoke on a plane?
• Time Capsule... Cannot express in mere words how happy I am with my new Apple Time Capsule. Using the built-in wireless connection, it took 22 hours to back up the 142 GB on my laptop. That was a bit harsh, but the incremental updates every hour are very fast. It's constant, unobtrusive, transparent backup that works beautifully. I've lost count of the times that Time Machine has saved my ass both at work and at home. Just one of the hundreds of reasons I'm such an Apple whore.
• Album... 2008 promises to be a very good year for the 80's music that I love. It has been rumored since January that Depeche Mode would start work on their new album this month for release in November (with a tour hopefully following in early 2009). Morten Harket (of a-ha fame) is releasing an English-language album this month in Norway, which will hopefully be available when I'm there next week. The Pet Shop Boys are meeting with producers this month for their upcoming album. Bananarama is gathering material for their next album. Erasure is also rumored to be working on a new pop album very soon now. I have high hopes that New Order will get together this year. Still no word on a Thompson Twins reunion, but I remain optimistic that one day it will happen.
• WWZ... Many thanks to Vahid and Dustin for a brilliant recommendation... World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Totally awesome book! Now I want the audiobook, because Dustin says the recording has Henry Rollins in it and totally kicks ass! They have it at iTunes, but it costs $18.95! I think I'll see if the library has it to borrow first...
Because me loves the zombies...
And popcorn. Can't have zombies without popcorn!
Speaking of zombies... it's time for me to get back to work.
You want a bullet? Here's a bullet for you...
• VACATION, BITCHES!!!
Away I go...
And if you celebrate the whole Easter thing (or just like chocolate bunnies), I hope your holiday is a happy one.
Where did my vacation go? A week is much too short.
I need another vacation.
• Radio. Assuming I make it back home over the mountain passes in one piece, I will be a guest host on Hilly's Snackie Radio tonight at 3:00pm (Pacific), 6:00pm (Eastern). I guess that would be midnight Oslo time, which is where my head is still at, so hopefully I won't fall asleep on the air...
• Poverty. I took a quick look at my credit card statement online. As hideously expensive as I thought the trip was, it actually ended up being much worse. Bring on the peanut butter sandwiches for a month! Eh, but it was a treat for my birthday and I had fun, so what can you do?
• Flight. Have I mentioned how much sweet it is to have a media entertainment center for those long-ass flights? Well it is. The time just flies (heh heh) by when you've got something to do. I watched Elizabeth: The Golden Age (excellent, with an amazing performance by Cate Blanchett), Michael Clayton (okay, but a little Erin Brockovich to me), Eastern Promises (good, though a little inappropriate to be watching in mixed company with the nudity and violence), Enter The Dragon (awesome! haven't seen it in a decade), Bee Movie (suck-ass BORING, I fast-forwarded through it), and and episode of The Office (always good).
• Customs. When you come back from an international trip, you have to claim your luggage for possible inspection whether you are continuing on a connecting flight or not. This doesn't really bother me, but the third degree you get from the customs officers while you wait for your luggage does. I was interviewed twice. The second time was no big deal, but the first time was ridiculous. Not only did he want to know stuff that was none of his fucking business (what does my work matter when I just told you I was traveling on vacation?), but I didn't get the impression he was even listening to my answers. Some questions were duplicates, and others were asked as I was still speaking. I fail to see the point. Do they expect that random questioning is going to cause somebody to slip up and admit they're hauling contraband?
How long were you out of the country? Six days.
Why were you in Norway? On vacation to visit a friend.
Why did you go Sweden then? To visit another fr--
What do you do for work? I'm a graphic desi--
How long were you out of the country? Since Sunday... isn't that six da--
Are you bringing back any food items? Just some candies.
And why were you in Norway? Vaca--
Bringing back any agricultural products? Just some marijuana I picked up in Amsterdam.
AH HAAAAAHHH! D'oh!
• Parking. Usually, I just park at the airport because it's really convenient to have your car waiting for you when you get back. But I found a coupon for "MasterPark" so I gave it a try. It's cheaper than the airport, they valet park your car, their shuttles run constantly, and if you call ahead they'll have your car waiting for you when the shuttle arrives. Sweet! Except I went over my one week coupon rate by 5 hours and had to pay an entire extra day for the overage. That kind of sucks, but I don't know that I can give up this kind of pampering now that I've experienced it.
Well, it's 8:00am... I suppose I should get out of bed and try to get my life back to normal. It's always rough trying to adjust to reality after vacation... even if it was only a week.
Good news, everybody! Those toxic Bac-Os I ate yesterday didn't kill me! To celebrate my new-found lease on life, I present another Bullet Sunday...
• Blogiversary. Blargh. It's one week until I have to get things ready for my Fifth Annual Blogiversary Celebration, and I am nowhere near ready. Six months ago I started two very cool projects specifically for the occasion... but one is not ready and the other fell through and has to be re-worked. This is great news for Blogiversary Six, but a real inconvenience for Blogiversary Five. Oh well. There's plenty of big fun in store, as usual. Mark your calenders...
• Nads. How big of balls do you have to possess in order to write an email to a complete stranger asking if they have any shirtless photos they'd be willing to share? My guess is that these balls would have to be at least two pounds each. So when I received just such an email this morning, all I could think about was how does somebody finds pants to fit over such enormous testicles? In any event, anything I'm willing to share is already on my blog or posted to my Flickr account. There ain't no more. But thanks so much for being crass enough to ask.
• Imported. I purchased a nifty audio/video importer for my Mac so I can transfer all my favorite old television shows from videotape to my iPhone. The XLR8 XtraView unit works pretty well considering the source material is of really poor quality. Oh how happy I will be to finally eliminated the last vestiges of analog media in my life.
• Cliffhanger. But there is a down-side to digitizing all these fantastic old shows... so many of them end with a cliffhanger that was never resolved. I get to that last episode, then get angry all over again that television networks screw over their viewers by not wrapping up all the loose ends of the story. Then, just when I'm over being pissed off because the shows were cancelled, I get enraged all over again because they haven't been released on DVD and I'm having to digitize them off of crappy videotape in the first place. Even if studios don't want to go to the expense of manufacturing the DVDs, they could at least put them up for sale on iTunes or something. This would cost them practically nothing AND be a nice source of revenue for them. Here are the top five shows I want released...
• Taxed. I finished most of my taxes months ago, but needed a few final bits of information before I could send them in. On Monday, I'll hopefully get the last piece of the puzzle so I can squeak in under the April 15th deadline. Oh how I hate the US tax system. It's a bloated bitch of a complicated mess, and I remain in a constant state of shock that our citizens don't revolt against the government for not coming up with something that's not fucking stupid. While I don't think that the Flat Tax Initiative or the Fair Tax Initiative are anywhere near perfect, at least they are something that normal people can understand, so I say go for it. Nothing could be worse than what we have now. It's at time like this that I think government officials need to be taken into the street and beaten severely for their complete and total failure to serve us with any competency.
And on that happy note, I suppose I should get back to work.
Wow! It's Bullet Sunday again! I was talking to a friend this afternoon when she remarked that she's going to give up on reading blogs because so many of them have nothing but stupid crap on them. At first I was offended, because my blog is nothing but stupid crap, but she then told me that of all the stupid crap she reads, mine is her favorite. I still don't know if that was a compliment or not.
On to the stupid crap...
• Repeat. I've started re-watching the first season of Veronica Mars for the hundredth time and think that I appreciate it now more than ever. The first episode is positively mind-blowing in the way that they set up so many seemingly-random events that won't pay-off until the very end of the season. There are lots of shows I've liked over the years which have been canceled, but none of them left such massive future potential laying in the dirt than Veronica Mars. If only there was a way to erase my memories of the show form my head so I can watch it all over again for the first time. It's things like this that make amnesia not sound like such a bad thing, and perhaps I should investigate running my car into a tree. Hey, it always works in the movies.
• Repeat. Every time I read a new piece of news about Zac Snyder's adaptation of one of the greatest comic book series of all time, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbon's Watchmen, it makes me want to read it all over again. So, over the course of the last twelve nights, I did. Like Veronica Mars, I'm astounded at how carefully the foreshadowing of future events was crafted on almost every single page of the story. Unlike so many comics today where you could rip out a dozen pages and not really affect anything, losing even a single page of Watchmen would be catastrophic to the structure of the story. Oh how I wish Alan Moore would tackle another project like this again. Comics needs it so badly.
• Repeat. While working at night, I like to toss in a movie for background noise so I won't be distracted by other noises going on around my home. This usually works quite well, because I always choose a movie that I've already seen a dozen times so I won't be tempted to stop work and watch it. But there are some movies that you are compelled to watch no matter how many times you've seen it... Sneakers is just such a film. I'm amazed that it holds up as well today as it did when it was released. At first I thought it was because the technology they used was so cutting edge at the time they filmed it, but now I'm thinking it's because the brilliant performances are so timeless. Needless to say, I'm pretty pissed at everybody involved with Sneakers because I lost 2 hours and 6 minutes of time I should have been working.
• Repeat. Just when I think winter is finally over, I get hit with stupid-ass snow first thing this morning. Followed by rain. Followed by hail. Now it's just ball-shriveling cold. Where in the hell is my Spring? It's almost MAY. I'm dying here.
• Repeat. Heaven help me, my Fifth Annual Kick-Ass Blogiversary Celebration starts tomorrow. As always, it will start out with a Blogography wrap-up followed by four contests over the following four days until everything ends on Saturday and winners are drawn on Sunday. Two things I had wanted to do for the event didn't get done, one thing I am still unsure about, and one thing I think is totally insane... even for me... so it should be an interesting week.
Until tomorrow...
Happy Mother's Day!
I don't feel much like typing right now, so I've decided to drop a video for today's 80th edition of Bullet Sunday here at Blogography!
For my valued readers who would rather see a transcript of the video, I've added that in an extended entry.
Have a super awesome week everybody!
On to the transcript...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
w00t! Today it's Bullet Sunday from one of my favorite cities: CHICAGO!!
• Johhny. After struggling to catch up with work all morning, I decided to take the train into the city... even though the CTA has both the Blue-Line and the Red-Line under construction. A Johnny Rockets veggie burger was calling me. And since Chicago has one of my favorite restaurants in the chain, it would be worth the effort. Imagine my surprise when I get there to find that my beloved Johnny Rockets on Rush Street had CLOSED!! I was equally sad and enraged, and I don't think I'm ever going to recover. Goodbye Johnny, you will be missed...
• Beautiful. I looked out the window and was happy to see that the weather had cleared up from the overcast skies and rain we had last night. It was beautiful out! Unfortunately, looks can be a bit deceiving, because it was actually chilly and windy. Fortunately, I had a jacket with me out of habit, because how would you expect to be cold on a day like this?
• Bean. After getting a surprise call from a former co-worker and meeting for coffee (her) and hot cocoa (me)... I met up with friends who were in the city from suburbia to do some shopping and go see Speed Racer (my review of the film along with reviews for two other movies I saw on the plane follows below). From there I decided to meet up with a current co-worker for dinner at the ever-excellent Pizano's Pizza and a walk through Millennium Park. I can't get enough of The Cloud Gate "Coffee Bean" sculpture, which was looking especially cool today...
• Movie #1: Jumper. One sentence review: A great concept diminished to a bucket of shit that not even Samuel L. Jackson can save. Didn't we suffer enough when Hayden Christensen played Anakin Skywalker in the shitty Star Wars sequels? NOTE TO FILMMAKERS: THIS GUY CANNOT ACT! STOP CASTING HIM IN MOVIES! But even putting the horribleness of Mannequin Skywalker aside, this is a mess of a film. Our story begins when young David Rice discovers he has the ability to teleport anywhere in the world he can visualize. This is handy, because his mother abandoned him to live with his abusive father, and "jumping" provides him with the escape he's been longing for. Using his new-found power to rob banks and live a life of excess that spans the globe, things go terribly wrong when jumper-hating "paladins" (led by Samuel L. Jackson) start hunting David... AND THE AUDIENCE DOESN'T FUCKING CARE! The story then turns into sheer idiocy, and I was salivating over the thought that Samuel L. Jackson will actually kill the stupid bastard. By the time the lame-ass "twist ending" was revealed, I was cursing the moment I decided to watch this joke of a film. FAIL!
• Movie #2: The Bucket List. Once sentence review: Brilliant performances rises above a pandering and fluff-laden script. Two of my all-time favorite actors? Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. I will watch anything they appear in. To have them both in the same film is absolute magic. The story is about a curmudgeon millionaire (Nicholson) and a genius garage mechanic (Freeman) who discover they have fatal illnesses which compel them to live their final days doing all those things they never got around to doing in life. The resulting ride is a fun one, mostly because the banter between the two leads is so fantastic and the acting note-perfect. If only the script could have been tightened to eliminate some of the more overtly manipulative sentimentality, it could have been elevated to greatness. As it is, it's a good film that tries too hard to find the "fun" side of death. WIN!
• Movie #3: Speed Racer. One sentence review: Complete and total failure of filmmaking on an epic scale that utterly devastates a beloved classic cartoon. What the hell happened? I have been looking forward to this film ever since I first glimpsed the previews that hit the internets. I was expecting a full-throttle, hyperactive film that pushes visual effects to new levels while redefining a childhood cartoon I loved. What I got was crap. A boring snore-fest of a movie that has shit-loads of stupid exposition and unnecessary drama that undermines any excitement you might get from the actual racing scenes (which are, admittedly, cool in a repetitive video-game kind of way). Just as the Wachowski Brothers managed to fuck-up an unfuck-upable franchise with the awful Matrix sequels, they have turned Speed Racer into a meandering, directionless film that sucks so badly that all the acting talent in the world (including Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, and Christina Ricci) can't keep it on track. Between the never-ending cut-wipe transitions that make you want to scream... and way, WAY too much time devoted to a mindless plot about evil businessmen secretly controlling all the world's racing events... it was all I could do to keep myself from walking out of the theater. EPIC FAIL!
And that brings to an end another Bullet Sunday.
I totally should have watched Iron Man again.
• P.S. Every time I stay at a Sheraton hotel, the internet connection screen always has a photo of a guy smelling a melon. Can anybody tell me what the hell this has to do with anything?
It's a Three-Day Weekend Edition of Bullet Sunday here at Blogography!
• Meerkats. I am blogging early today, because there's a new Meerkat Manor Movie on Animal Planet Network tonight! A friend got me hooked on the show, which is like a really raunchy soap opera... but with cute furry animals instead of Joan Collins or J.R. Ewing. Sex, violence, betrayal, revenge, humor, life, death... Meerkat Manor has it all. This movie is supposed to go back to the beginning of the series to show how the meerkat Flower became leader of her tribe...
• Trainer. As I was pulling out the instruction booklet for my Epi-Pens, a plastic tube fell out. Wondering what it could be, I studied the label and found out it was a "Auto-Injector Training Device." Apparently, you are supposed to use it to practice stabbing yourself so you'll be ready if you should ever have to stab yourself with adrenaline for reals. To which I can only say "Oh hell no!" But then I stabbed a pillow with it and found out there's no needle inside, so now I'm having fun "stabbing" myself with it. I am so easily entertained.
• Karled. Thanks to Karl for having me on his Secondhand Radio show earlier today! The hour went by way too quickly, but you can catch it from the BlogTalk Radio archives here. Since time was tight, I didn't have time to pop up links to all the things we talked about, so here we go...
• Ordered. Pre-orders at the Artificial Duck Co. store will be ending Wednesday, May 28th of this coming week. I will order some extra hats and shirts to have on hand, but if you want to be sure of getting something you want, please order or email me with what you want so I can be sure I'll have it. I'm ordering plenty of extra playing cards, so those should be in stock for quite a while.
And that's all she wrote for now... because it's meerkat time...
It's the crap-tastic edition of Bullet Sunday!
• Sickness. I am starting to worry about getting my cards printed. The first company I was going to print with didn't come clean about not being able to use a casino-quality black-core paper stock. The next company I found took forever to respond to even simple queries. I then found a third company that I really liked, but now I am having a hard time confirming anything. They have amazing credentials, and dozens of excellent references... so I'm confident everything will turn out fine... I'm just going crazy over when things are going to start happening. I worked so very hard on these cards (three months to get them all drawn), and I want so badly to make sure they print as perfectly as possible... but right now I'd settle for just getting them printed at all. I'm probably making a big deal out of nothing, but I'm just sick over a possible delay when all my other suppliers are lined up to deliver by the end of the month. Argh.
• Health. Not able to get in to see an allergist... not able to figure out what random foods or things in my environment are causing my allergic reactions... I finally gave in and started eating all the foods I had been cutting out of my diet because I thought they might be a problem. And nothing happened. Nothing. For two days now I've taken one Benadryl at night and one Claritin in the morning and that's it. No hives and no random welts. Is it too much to hope for that this was a temporary thing, and I'm all better now?
• Richer. I just made my final payment on my motorcycle, which I then turned around and sold because I can't ride it anymore. Isn't it cool how life can be both sweet and crappy at the same time?
• Poorer. Shouldn't there be some kind of statute of limitations for how long they can keep billing you for medical shit? I mean, seriously, every time I think that I've got these bastards paid off, another bill shows up in the mail. Even better, I got a collection letter for one of the bills less than a month after I had received the actual bill. I guess they want to make sure you don't fall behind with all the bills they send, so they turn you in for collection if you don't remit immediate payment. I find it positively absurd that THIS is the state of health care in this country... I had the misfortune of surviving my kidney stone, so now I'm going to be billed to death? I should have put my fear of blood and needles behind me and become a doctor when I had the chance... it's the ultimate fountain of revenue wealth.
• Better. Code Monkeys debuted their second season today and it was a fricken' hilarious! — "My new game is called Cock Goblin! - That is bad-ass dude! Why not Goblin Cock? - That's a little hard for me to swallow!" — Where do they come up with this stuff?
• Worse. Also debuting today was the highly-anticipated (by me, anyway) Mary McCormack vehicle, In Plain Sight. Holy crap what a disaster. McCormack's lead character is trying so hard to be bad-ass, that she just ends up being plain bad. I kept hoping somebody would shoot her arrogant ass and the show would end. I'll watch a couple of more episodes just to make sure, but this does not bode well.
And that's all she wrote. Probably a good thing considering Sunday ends in 5 minutes.
I desperately want to celebrate Bullet Sunday with a Chalupa Supreme (no beef, add rice) and a side of Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes, but am entirely too lazy to drive the 20 minutes to Taco Bell. Waaah!
• Pizza! I'm officially done. I've tried every frozen cheese pizza on the market and hate them all. It doesn't matter whether it's from a famous chef like Wolfgang Puck, a famous restaurant like California Pizza Kitchen, a hot new brand like Freschetta, a critical favorite like DiGiorno, or a pizza staple like Red Baron. They're all terrible. So I've finally decided that I'm not going to pay
• Christmas! The funny thing about being in the graphic design business is that you are always ahead of the season. Right now, for example, I'm working on Christmas projects. When Christmas rolls around I'll be working on Easter projects, and so on. Because I don't really celebrate any of these holidays, it's no big deal to me, but it's a challenging mindset to be thinking of snowy holidays in the middle of summer. But that's nothing compared to the challenge of finding a live Christmas Tree for a photo shoot next week.
• Jobs! Tomorrow is the opening keynote for Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference. At that time my personal hero and god among men, Steve Jobs, is expected to release the iPhone 2.0 software update which will allow 3rd party applications to run on my iPhone. This is, to put it mildly, super-exciting. Jobs is also expected to announce the new and improved iPhone hardware which is rumored to have a real GPS (thank you!) and faster 3G internet access. The latter bit means that we can all surf for porn several times faster, which is probably a more important function for a phone than making actual phone calls.
• Legion! One of my all-time favorite comic books is The Legion of Super-Heroes. It's a comic about super-powered teens in the far future of the DC Comics Universe. Back in the 1960's the book was looking for a new writer and ended up hiring 14-year-old Jim Shooter for the job. He submitted stories, the editor liked them, and a legend was born. His Legion books were highly successful and memorable, and ended up being a stepping stone to greater things... like when he was editor in chief at Marvel Comics for nearly a decade. Now, 30 years after he left The Legion of Super-Heroes, Shooter is back writing the book. He's five issues into the title now, and I have to say I'm enjoying the heck out of his stories. But I'm nostalgic that way.
Annnnnnnd... I'm spent.
I'm trying to be optimistic, but something tells me this is not going to be a good week.
Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there... especially mine... on this fine Bullet Sunday!
• Snackiepoo! This afternoon at 3:00pm (Pacific Time) I will be a VERY SPECIAL GUEST STAR on Snackie Radio. Today's topic? How much is too much? Hilly and I have radically different blogging styles... I avoid anything personal and draw monkey cartoons in lieu of actual substance... Hilly wears her heart on her blog and bares her soul for all to see... what are the consequences to these very different approaches to blogging? How much information on your blog is too much? Is there such a thing as too little information when it comes to the internet? Will Dave ever get his tiara back? Tune in today and find out! (show contains language and situations which may be unsuitable for childre or small animals).
• Radio! And for other BlogTalk Radio goodness, I'd be remiss not to mention the entire BTR's Rocking Sunday Schedule... first up, Karl from Secondhand Radio will have his daughter and the Alive Campaign as his guest at 2:00pm Pacific, 5:00pm Eastern. Next up is the afore-mentioned Snackie Radio show with VERY SPECIAL GUEST STAR me! at 3:00pm Pacific, 6:00pm Eastern. And, lastly, Turnbaby is back on Turnbaby Talks with her special guest Mr. Shiny at 5:00pm Pacific, 8:00pm Eastern. It should be a very interesting night.
• iPhone! As expected, Apple released their new iPhone at the World Wide Developer's Conference this past Monday. It has the faster 3G internet access everybody has been clamoring for, but all I cared about is that it FINALLY has a frickin' GPS unit. I still feel it was profoundly stupid that the original model didn't have a hardware GPS, but better late than never, I suppose. Of course I simply must own one... even though the data plan is a total ripoff that now costs $10 more per month with NO TXT messages and still has NO MMS capabilities. The more things change...
• Shopper! What happens when you find out that a business you really like is owned by a complete and total asshole? How do you shop there anymore knowing what you now know? Does it matter that you've patronized the place for decades and love their stuff? Or is it just over once you discover it's run by a horribly wretched excuse of a human being? I've been wrestling with this dilemma for a week, and have come to the realization that my ethical beliefs simply won't allow me to step foot in this establishment ever again... much as I would like to shop there. Wouldn't the world be a much better place if we could just stay ignorant to the nastiness that plagues it?
• Televised! I had this idea of picking my favorite 100 television shows of all time and then listing ten of them each day with an explanation of why I liked them so much. For a television whore like me, it seemed a perfect fit for Blogography. Then common sense settled in, and I realized how much work it would be to actually do it. But I already had the list made up, so I decided to go ahead and post it in an extended entry.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
It's a very sad Bullet Sunday, as I just learned George Carlin has died.
• Broked. Sorry about the missing images from Friday's entry. I don't quite know what happened, but I'll look into it when I get off work on Monday.
• Daveattle. You might have noticed that I've added some new people to the "Bloggers I've Met" in my sidebar. That's because last night was Daveattle 2! I was ever so grateful that a terrific group of bloggers showed up to eat, drink, and chat... a good time was had by all...
• Evidence. It's always a good idea to bring a camera to these things, because you just never know when blackmail-worthy material is going to pop up. Not pictured is Bryan, who managed to avoid the cameras (which is pretty much what you have to do when you're wanted for murders in three states)...
The reason they all look so happy is because they're drunk.
Or maybe because Kristin brought fun prizes!
Dustin and Sizzle being sneaky.
Vahid and Sizzle strike a pose while The Fella serenades them.
Matt and Dustin agonize over trying to operate their tiny cameras.
Tracy gives Chris a prison tattoo, apparently making him her bitch.
A scary buffalo head at Linda's Tavern.
Kristin sharpening a knife so she can remove The Fella's spleen.
• Sleepytime. And that about wraps it up! Thanks to everybody who took time our of their valuable weekend to hang out, and I hope to see everybody again soon!
It's an early edition of Bullet Sunday, because I'll be working my ass off all day trying to get caught up on the work I missed from my allergy attack on Friday.
• Pride Weekend. This weekend is host to Pride Weekend parades in many cities (including Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and more). It's a totally fabulous annual celebration of lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender life and history. Taking a cue from a wonderful entry over at Sizzle Says, I thought I'd blog my support for the GLBT community since I am unable to show up and offer my support in person. I have too many friends being treated like second class citizens because of who they are and I'm sick of it. When people are being persecuted and discriminated against unjustly, something needs to be said. I'm happy to add my voice to the party. Bad Monkey, however, just wants an excuse to get drunk and run around naked...
• Aptly Named. The reason my real name is on my blog is because when I started I didn't know any better. Also, it was originally written specifically for my friends and family so they could keep up with where I was and what I was up to. I never dreamed that other people would want to read it. Things kind of escalated from there, and it's too late to do anything about it now. So when I read crazy speculation to the contrary by people who don't even know me... part of me finds it mildly amusing. The other part doesn't.
• Shel Puppet. When noted social media author and consultant Shel Israel was given a video channel at Robert Scoble's FastCompany.tv, it ended up being a train wreck of near-biblical proportions. The interviews he posted there gave entirely new definition to the word "disaster" and the "blogging pros" were merciless in their criticism. Instead of chalking it up as a learning experience, Shel Israel came unhinged when parody videos started popping up by Loren Feldman of 1938 Media, starring Shel Israel... THE PUPPET! The videos were everything that the "real" Shel Israel videos were not... smart, insightful, and entertaining. But yesterday it was announced that Loren would stop posting the videos, having made his point. I'm a little sad about that, because I've grown to love Shel Puppet and his kick-ass videos! Here's one of my favorites, where he interviews Digg's Kevin Rose...
• Mostly Frozen. With the weather as hot as it has been, I find myself eating a lot of frozen foods. And I don't mean frozen foods that are cooked. I mean ice cream for breakfast, frozen candy bars for lunch, and popsicles for dinner. I'd try to justify this unhealthy and very odd behavior, but my Chips Ahoy cookies should be frozen by now, and I need a bedtime snack.
• DC Sucks. Somebody had to say it... DC Comics officially sucks ass. I am just sick over how frakin' stupid things have gotten with my once-favorite comic book company. Continuity is a convoluted mess that's been screwed over with so many revisions and ret-cons that it's incomprehensible. I pity the new reader wanting to start into comics who is unfortunate enough to try and pick up a current issue of most any DC book. They finally streamlined their "universe" with the groundbreaking Crisis on Infinite Earths, only to completely destroy everything in the years that followed (don't even get me started on 52, Infinite Crisis, and Countdown, which were tragically bad). The last straw for me is yet another incomprehensible "DC Event" called Final Crisis. Not only is it another confusing suck-fest of a mess, but I've just learned that YET AGAIN the art chores are changing mid-story. WHAT THE HELL? IS NOBODY STEERING THE SHIP AT DC?!? Rumor has it that Editor in Chief Dan DiDio is going to be replaced, and it's about fucking time. It's going to take some major, major changes to salvage what's left of DC Comics. Hopefully they find somebody with the balls (or ovaries!) to do the job. If DC can ditch the floodgates of quantity that have replaced the superior goal ofquality, things can be good again.
And now I suppose I should get some sleep so I can wake up early and get shit done.
Hopefully my allergies will cooperate.
It's Bullet Sunday, and I'm not even supposed to be here!
&bull Pear Mint. Whenever I travel to foreign lands, I stock up on awesome chips and candies that I can't get back home. Most of the time it's stuff I know... other times, it's bizarre crap I dare myself to try... and still other times it's stuff that sounds too good to pass up. Like these pear mint drops I got while I was visiting Göran in Sweden that I just now found in a secret pocket of my backpack. I like pear. I like mint. So they must be super awesome together, right?
WRONG! OMG! It's like the great tastes cancel out each other out and make death! The taste is horrible... HORRIBLE!! It's been an entire day since I sucked on one of those craptastic bastards, but the nasty taste still lingers! Pears have been ruined for me. RUINED I SAY!!
• Wanted Much? This week I went to see the movie Wanted. Based on the Mark Millar comic of the same name, I didn't know quite what to expect. I was not a huge fan of the comic (a nicely illustrated book by J.G. Jones that consisted of a mediocre plot overwhelmed by juvenile shock-value), but was curious to know how they were going to adapt it. Turns out they didn't adapt the comic. The entire premise has changed (no more super-vilains!) and most all the characters have been radically altered. The result? I actually enjoyed the movie more than the book. Much more. The story of a secret society of assassins with super-human skills was almost too good to be true... kind of like a kick-ass, high-octane blending of Fight Club and The Matrix. In addition to some awesome special effects, it also features Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman...
Angelina kills people with hotness!
A pretty badass role for Mr. Freeman!
Rumor has it that they are already working on a Wanted sequel, which is sweet. But please, please, please don't flush such excellent potential down the toilet like they did with the shitty Matrix sequels.
• Guest Poster. In the past month I've received eight requests to do guest-posts on other people's blog. This is kind of cool, because it's always a lot of fun to break away and do something "same-but-different" somewhere else. Unfortunately, I am already worried about finding time to post in my own blog over the next several months, so guest-posting for somebody else is impossible. I wonder if anybody would notice if I came up with ONE guest post that I could use over and over again? Usually I work hard to come up with something unique that fits the blog I'm writing for... that's what makes it fun... but re-posting is looking to be more and more appealing as more and more bloggers decide they want to take a break from their blog.
• Gee Eight. Tomorrow begins this year's G8 summit, which is being held in Japan. Just like every other time our Beloved Leader leaves the country, Americans will be holding their breath in anticipation over what he might say to embarrass us this time. Will he invent a new word? Will he say something utterly insane? Will he accidentally declare war on Canada? Or will he just ramble on incomprehensibly? I'm not speculating... I'm just going to sit back and be surprised. I suppose it's too late to sneak a copy of my latest Dumbasses book into his bedside table...
• Interface. Many moons ago, I took some contract jobs for application interface design. It's a very challenging field to work in because, in addition to being a designer, you have to have a very good understanding as to how people use their computers. Most graphic designers make horrible interface designers because they're more interested in making things pretty than functional. I ended up doing some nice work and enjoyed the jobs, but found interface design to be too time consuming to make a career out of it... I spent way too much time agonizing over the details. But I'm always fascinated with the work and still take jobs from time to time, so I try to keep up with what's happening. A couple months ago I noticed that the C4[1] Indie Mac Developer Conference had videos of the event online, and made a note to watch them when I had a chance. This morning I finally finished the last one, which was a great talk given by Cabel Sasser of Panic. This company makes two of the best applications for the Mac, Transmit (an FTP tool) and Coda (a website development tool), both of which I love and use often. Sasser spoke mostly about designing Coda's interface, and it was a fascinating insight as to the thought process that goes into software development. It was also very frustrating, because at least one of the decisions they ended up making is downright tragic.
Here is how Apple's web browser, Safari, handles multiple pages in the same document window by using tabs. It's not a perfect implementation (the tabs point DOWN and aren't connected to the page?!?) but it is very obvious which tab has been activated. Here, there is simply no mistaking that the "Blogography" page is what you're looking at, because that's the tab in the foreground...
And here's how Coda handles tabs...
Pretty much the same thing, right? The "Opener.html" page is obviously what you're looking at, because it's the tab in the foreground.
EXCEPT IT'S NOT!!! In this case, it's the "Closer.html" tab that's activated. Coda goes entirely opposite from how people are used to seeing tabs, and makes the activated tab RECESSED! I have been using Coda regularly for almost a year and still get confused as to which document I'm in because of this hideous choice of interface design. It's inexplicably bad. It's SO bad that I actually wrote to Panic and begged them to fix it. They wrote back a nice note, but haven't done anything about it yet.
So when I'm watching Sasser's C4[1] video, and listening to him pour his heart out about how much he agonizes over the details to make the best user interface possible... I can relate, but my mind boggles. At one point, a programmer in the audience brings up the tabbed windows and my heart skipped a beat, but it was only to discuss how Apple hasn't standardized tabs, so everybody's tabs are going to look different. And that's the root of the problem... Apple needs to standardize things so we don't end up with confusing interfaces in the software we use. In the meanwhile, I continue to hope that Panic will revisit their solution soon so I can stop making costly mistakes when using their product. Nothing sucks worse than editing code for 20 minutes and then realizing you've been editing the wrong document.
And thus ends another edition of Bullet Sunday. Time for lunch!
It's a mini edition of Bullet Sunday after a very long week.
• Sick & Tired. I am so exhausted from work this week that I'm becoming physically ill. So many things need to be done before I leave again... yet there simply isn't enough time to do them, and too many little details are slipping through the cracks. I haven't picked up my mail in so long that the post office probably thinks I'm dead. I have dry cleaning that has been sitting at the cleaners for months. My friends never see me, and I'm sure many of them are starting to question whether I even exist. If it weren't for this blog, even I would question whether or not I exist. And yet there's three more months of this left to go. It's times like this I question whether I'll be able to survive it.
• Re-Scheduled. I've lost track of the number of times my various travel itineraries have been changed over the past three months, but it just keeps getting uglier. Rumor has it that things will get much worse after labor day, as airlines scramble to cancel as many flights as possible to slash operating costs. I'm already having to fly out a day early for an overnight layover on three trips... now I've found out that I'm going to have to have an overnight layover on two more coming back. Just how much worse can it get? I'm afraid to even speculate. From what I can tell, the days of being able to schedule back-to-back trips on airlines are quickly disappearing. This is going to cause serious problems for me, and I can't even begin to think about how I'm going to deal with it. Maybe if I don't think about it, the problem will just go away? I can dream.
• Laughably Unfunny. I overheard somebody being told that not only was it possible for them to complete their work assignment on time... it was "impossibly possible." The guy on the receiving end didn't bat an eye and replied "In that case, I'll get it to you as quickly as impossible," which made his supervisor very happy... probably because he was just stupid enough not to over-think it: "See what happens when you put your mind on something?" ON?!? I can only guess his mind was on drugs.
• Mobile Maybe. Apple's $100-per-year ".Mac" service sounds like a dream come true. It's an online place to synchronize your address book, web browser bookmarks, email, calendar, and there's even room left over for file storage. No matter which of your computers you are using, you can rest easy that all your information is up-to-date, because everything is coordinated online by the ".Mac" server. At least that's how it's suppose to be. Unfortunately, reality is very different from the fantasy they sell you. The file storage is unbearably slow and freezes your computer (rendering it useless)... the syncing has NEVER worked properly... email is faulty and unreliable... basically, ".Mac" is a steaming pile of shit. Apple knows it's a steaming pile of shit, so they've introduced a replacement now called "MobileMe" which is a better, bigger, faster version of ".Mac"...
Yeah, still a steaming pile of shit! In fact, I'd go so far as to say that "MobileMe" is the biggest disaster I've ever seen from Apple. Not only does it not work... AT ALL... because Apple's servers are overloaded most of the time, but in those rare instances that it can connect to the server, IT STILL DOESN'T WORK! The entire service, from top to bottom, is plagued with troubles. I could go on for pages about the problems (which would only make me more angry than I already am), so let me give you just one example of how bad it is: When you enter your "MobileMe" identity into your iPhone, the last character is truncated. It took me HOURS to realize that my connection problems were because the last character of my login was being removed. I finally worked around this by adding an extra character to my identity (which was then truncated), but WHAT THE FUCK?!?? Did anybody bother to beta test this crap? Anybody?
• Mobile Misery. Okay, I just can't let this go... did I mention that I am PAYING for the MobileMe service? Perhaps these problems would be excusable if it were provided free, BUT I AM PAYING FOR THIS SHIT!! I am certain that Google Mail (a free service) has a shitload more people using it than are using "MobileMe," and yet how often does it go down? Now that I think of it... Google Mail has never crapped out on me. This is absolutely pathetic on Apple's part, and I hope that they have a plan for compensating their users for this bullshit. Assuming I ever get it to work in the first place, of course. Man, I never thought I'd find myself longing for the "horrible old .Mac days."
And on that perky note, I'd better get back to work...
I survived my trip back from Atlanta. And, though I am happy to be home, a part of me kind of wishes I hadn't left. Anyway... welcome to a special FAIL! edition of Bullet Sunday!
• Sleep FAIL! No matter how hard I try or how many pills I take, sleep still seems to elude me. This wouldn't be a big deal, except it makes getting through the day on 3-4 hours sleep incredibly difficult. My change from Eastern to Pacific time isn't helping matters.
• iPhone FAIL! Just before Davelanta was due to begin, Beth and Kevin took me to the Atlanta institution known as "The Varsity," (the largest drive-in restaurant in the world) so I could have a yummy frosty orange beverage. It was then I noticed that the camera on my iPhone no longer worked. In fact, NO photo related app on my iPhone worked (including both installed and 2nd party apps). After several restarts and reinstalls, it still doesn't work. I didn't have plans to upgrade to the iPhone 3G, but it looks like I might not have a choice.
• Spam FAIL! The latest trend in comment spam? Copying somebody else's previously approved comment and working your website links into the text. This way, your comment looks legitimate, because it actually pertains to the blog entry. Of course, since I read every one of my comments and manually approve them, I know immediately if it's a spam-infused duplicate. BANNED! DELETE! All of the IP addresses of the commenters are coming from India, but link to US websites, which means this kind of lame behavior is somebody's job?! Lovely.
• Survey FAIL! How interesting. The smokey first hotel that I was staying at in Georgia sent me an email asking me to take a survey on my visit. As there was no "EPIC FAIL" option, I decided to take a pass. Since the place was totally packed whenever I drove by, the problem obviously isn't with the hotel, but with me.
• Twitter FAIL! I've drastically cut my usage of Twitter over the past couple weeks, because I'm tired of disappointment. The API which my Twitter apps use to read/update (both on my iPhone and at home) has been broken a lot (what else is new?) making it more frustrating than fun. About the only thing that seems to be getting through on a regular basis are the tired old "I UPDATED MY BLOG" messages, which are often posted two and three times a day. Hopefully Twitter gets this all sorted out before I drop the service completely.
Alrighty then... time to futilely attempt to get some sleep in my 100-degree bedroom. Maybe I'll get lucky and pass out from the heat?
I am totally exhausted this Bullet Sunday. Let's see how far I get...
• Ordered. I have finally... FINALLY... managed to get most all of the Artificial Duck Co. Store orders filled. The exception is orders that have "Ladies T Monkey Button" shirts in them, which were misplaced at the printer and are arriving on Tuesday or Wednesday. Of course, now I have to process a couple hundred orders for postage and make six or seven trips to the Post Office, but I will work hard over the next couple of days to get everything shipped out before I leave. Nobody will be happier than me to finally see everybody get their stuff! Given the long and difficult road I've been down, I am so very, very grateful for everybody's patience and understanding.
• Pounded. Just when you think that the US Dollar couldn't possibly be worth any less than it already is... you start planning a trip to London. The city has always been expensive... but now, thanks to the heinous exchange rate, even going on the cheap is unrealistic. I was planning on a six day, five-night trip to Blighty so I could meet with an artist there and hang out with friends (Davedon!), but once I got up to an estimated $3600 for all the expenses, I shat myself and decided to see if getting a new president will improve the dollar for a trip next year. I certainly hope so.
• Cents. Since traveling to Europe right now is insanely expensive, I thought I'd look into filling in those missing six states I've got going on...
Fly into Bismarck, North Dakota... drive down through Mount Rushmore... swing through Nebraska, Kansas, and the Oklahoma panhandle... then whip into Albuquerque, New Mexico... simple, right? The one-way rental would run me about $1100 (amazing how you don't get unlimited miles on a one-way rental!). Assuming that I get about 32 miles per gallon, fuel will run me about 42 gallons of gas @ $4.20 a gallon means an additional $180-$200 in gas. Adding in hotels and one-way airfare... and we're up to $2800?? Yikes. For that kind of money, I'd save up an additional $800 and take my London trip.
• MobileMaybe. Ever since resetting my iPhone so I could get the camera working again, syncing through Apple's pile-of-shit "MobileMe" service has failed. After trying absolutely everything, I reset my iPhone AGAIN and finally got it working. Of course, I ended up losing all the information that I had added to my iPhone, since there's no way of transferring notes, and syncing contacts was broken. Don't get me wrong... I love my iPhone and can't imagine life without it... but this is bullshit. To make matters worse, now we've got Windows users freaking out because iPhone syncing through MobileMe can erase all your Outlook Calendar data. Apple has already given everybody an extra month of MobileMe to compensate for how utterly shitty the service is... what happens now that it's still total crap? Another free month? Disaster. And I'm still not convinced it's working as it's supposed to, which is fine if the service was free... but $100 a year for this?
• Darker. I went to see The Dark Knight for the third time because I just can't help myself... and froze my ass off. Why do theaters feel the need to set the temperature to sub-zero? Cool would be fine... I like to keep cool when it's hot outside... but cold? It's miserable to try watching a movie while shivering the whole time. If it were that cold during winter time, they'd have the heaters on!.
And that's all for Bullet Sunday, because it's nearing midnight and I'm falling asleep...
AND OMG, I NEARLY FELL ASLEEP IN THESE EYE-RAPING CONTACT LENSES AGAIN!! Wouldn't that make for a great Monday. I will be so glad when my "real" lenses come in so I can be rid of these elements of torture.
Live from Chicago, it's another edition of Bullet Sunday!
• iPhone. When I got back from Davecago 3 last night and went to charge my iPhone, I found out that my power adaptor was dead. This was frustrating, but not a big problem, because I was going into the city and could just stop by the Apple Store and get a new one. But when I got there, something strange was happening. The line to get a new iPhone 3G had only one person in it. Not knowing quite what to do with myself, I made the snap decision to just get a new iPhone so I could finally have the GPS I need so badly in my travels (and go completely broke from having to shell out $299). I'll undoubtedly blather on about it later, but my initial reaction? Feels better in the hand, but design is not as nice as my first iPhone. Face feels more like plastic than glass (oh shit!). GPS is slow to acquire. 3G network is faster only sometimes and not widely available. None of my old complaints were addressed (clipboard, subscribed calendars, etc.). Conclusion? If Apple had put a fucking GPS in the original iPhone like they should have in the first place, I would never have "upgraded." Still a nice product, however.
• Doggity. Since earliest childhood, the only way I ever ate hotdogs was plain with ketchup. Now that I've started eating Chicago Style Hotdogs, I can't imagine eating them any other way (well, maybe one other way). Damn they're addicting. Fortunately, there's a vegetarian version here in Chicago at America's Dog, which is where I had lunch (again) today...
• Chef. Isaac Hayes, who I will forever associate with the phrase "Hello there, children!" from his character "Chef" on South Park has just died. I know that Hayes had a major falling out with Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of the show) a while back, which resulted in the death of "Chef"... but I sure hope that they do something on South Park to remember him and the years he worked on the show. It hasn't been the same since he left...
• Davecago 3. I hate to admit it, but RW over at 1 Step Beyond gave up a much better recap of the festivities than I could ever hope to write. Suffice to say that I had a great time, and was so very happy to meet some terrific new people...
UPDATE: Tori has relented and published the recipe for her amazing, highly addictive brownies! Click and rejoice!
And also to reunite with some old friends from Davecagos past...
I swear that every time I meet up with other bloggers I feel so amazingly lucky to have people like this in my life. It's not easy spending so much time traveling far away from home, but knowing I have a blogging family no matter where I go is a blessing in life that I just can't put into words. I have received criticism from those who think that I'm an egotistical bastard for "renaming cities in my image" and "inviting people to come worship me"... but the truth is exactly the opposite. I don't do this so people can meet me... I do it so that I can meet them...
The fact that I am lucky enough that people even care enough about me to show up and say "hello" is just a bonus. If I am very lucky, I'll get to keep meeting up with fellow bloggers and blog readers for years to come.
Past and upcoming meet-ups can always be found on Blogography's Dave Events Page.
Oog... I really need to update my "Bloggers I've Met" list in my sidebar, but it's time for bed. I have a very long day ahead of me tomorrow...
Welcome to the Dave Louis edition of Bullet Sunday!
• Home Again. Yeah, I made it home safely. Though the frickin' 106° heat has me wondering why I didn't escape to Alaska while I had the chance. Isn't it about time for a Davebanks or Daveorage or Davelaska even? Of course, I don't know how many readers I have in Alaska... but even if it ended up being just me, that would be okay because the weather might be cooler. If not, there's always Davearctica.
• Dave Louis. Thanks to Ajooja's luck in the Blogiversary V Grand Prize drawing, there was a blogger meet in St. Louis last night...
In attendance was a terrific group of people that made me feel welcome in the city "Where There's More Than Meets The Arch."
• Blueberry Hill. The restaurant we met at, Blueberry Hill, is a St. Louis institution, famous for it's Blue Bar and eclectic interior design. What it should be famous for is its Red Beans & Rice, which I liked quite a lot. My only problem was that they didn't have any meatless toasted ravioli, which is one of my favorite things about St. Louis.
• Ted Drewes. After dinner, the consensus for dessert was to drive to Ted Drewes for frozen custard. I love frozen custard, so I thought it was a great idea. Though I wasn't quite prepared for what awaited me there. Apparently, this is a popular place...
Surprisingly, the crowds were not a problem at all. They had security in their lot to assist with parking, plenty of staff to keep the lines moving, and fill orders impossibly fast. As the popularity suggests, Ted Drewes frozen custard is pretty bad-ass amazing. I had a caramel sundae that was delicious...
Gina was kind enough to take a photo of me as I had just finished my third orgasm...
• Thank You. My most heart-felt thanks to everybody who made the trip to Dave Louis! The happiness at meeting my fellow bloggers and readers has become one of the major reasons I still write at Blogography every day.
And that's a wrap for another Bullet Sunday! Join me again next Sunday when I'll be back from another trip and celebrating the fact that I will get to stay home for a mind-boggling two-and-a-half weeks before traveling again! w00t!
I'm so tired that I'm falling asleep this Bullet Sunday. Here's hoping I can stay awake long enough to write something.
• Organizing Is Just This Easy. Every once in a while, something comes along that' so amazing that I don't know how I existed without it. The latest thing to rock my world? TripIt. This web-based service makes keeping track of your travel easy. You forward your email confirmations from airlines, hotels, car rentals, travel sites, and such, and TripIt miraculously organizes everything for you automatically. As if that wasn't enough, TripIt adds maps, driving directions, weather forecasts, and other cool stuff to help you plan your trip. But that's not all... TripIt also makes it easy to share and collaborate your travel plans with others, and creates an iCal subscription calendar plus a webfeed. I've been using the service for almost a year now, and find it invaluable. Even if you don't travel lots, all the extras make TripIt worth a look. Mostly because it's FREE! And right now they're running a promotion where you can sign up and be entered to win a new iPhone (prize available only if you live inside the US, but the service works everywhere). Highest recommendation...
• If It's Loaded, We'll Shoot Ourselves With It. Proving once again that Microsoft just can't seem to make a good decision, they're paying Jerry Seinfeld TEN MILLION DOLLARS to appear in Windows commercials with Bill Gates. Apparently, copying Apple's MacOS isn't going far enough, and so now Microsoft wants to copy their "Mac vs. PC" ads as well. How this is going to convince people that Windows Vista doesn't suck ass is beyond me. I'd much rather they take the 300 million they're planning to spend on this "Windows Not Walls" disinformation campaign and actually make Windows a decent product. Seinfeld went off the air ten years ago... apparently Microsoft's advertising firm is still stuck there. I anticipate that the music will be performed by The Backstreet Boys.
• Take Them Out Of The Oven, They're Done. Why are they still making new stupid-ass "caveman" commercials for GEICO insurance? I never liked the ads, but at least they were fresh... at first. Now they've been run into the ground and are just fucking annoying. Wasn't the cancellation of the crappy "Cavemen" TV show spin-off enough of a clue? Helpful hint to GEICO: IT'S OVER!!
• Ultimate Cleansing Power. If John McCain truly does "approve the message" in his latest campaign ads, he's a fucking douchebag. And an idiot. Using Hillary Clinton's words against Obama now that Biden is on the ticket is inviting the exact same treatment when he picks his VP. The difference being that the ads could be so much worse against McCain because the footage available is so much juicier. I remember back to the viscous McCain/Romney debates and imagine that Obama's attack dogs are just salivating over the prospect of retaliation ads (assuming Romney gets the spot). Issues? What Issues? Politics at their finest.
The end. Kind of. There are some additional bullets with bitching about my recent Salt Lake City trip in an extended entry. If stuff like that interests you, by all means click through...
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It's time for another edition of bullet-points gone amok!
• Gustav. Please please please let this storm abate before doing any damage. Not because New Orleans is one of my favorite American cities... but because I just can't take asshole frauds like Pat Robertson once again saying that God hates New Orleans and is punishing the city for its sins. If God were petty enough to be dishing out punishment this way, there's no doubt in my mind that a hurricane would descend on Virginia Beach and wipe nut-job Robertson and his "church of hate" 700 Club off the face of the earth forever. As it looks now, Gustav is due to hit at 7:00 Monday night...
• Biorhythmic. I'm not much of a believer in biorhythms, horoscopes, numerology, and other such stuff. It just doesn't make sense to me, and has rarely proven accurate in any way. And yet, despite being a pseudoscience with absolutely no hard evidence to back it up, biorhythms is a passion for a friend of mine who convinced me to get a "Dashboard Widget" to chart myself and see what I make of it. So far (when I remember to even look at it) the results have been unremarkable. But I did note this morning that my upcoming vacation occurs during the exact period that my cerebral functions are at their highest and my physical functions are lowest. Pretty much exactly what you'd want for a relaxing vacation, I guess...
• Allergen. I had long since ruled out peanuts as a possibility for the source of my recent food allergy problems. It wouldn't make any sense, because I eat peanut butter constantly (practically daily) and would have reactions far more often than I do now. Except... now that I'm on a restrictive diet to help figure out a medicine interaction problem, I'm keeping closer track of what I eat. And it would appear that peanuts do seem to be a factor. On days I experience swelling (like today!), peanut butter was consumed in higher quantities than usual. This is kind of a bummer... if it ends up being true... (love me the peanut butter), but at least a mystery would be solved.
• Deathrace. WARNING! THIS REVIEW FEATURES AN ABUNDANCE OF CURSE-WORDS! Tonight I made time to see the remake of cult-classic Death Race 2000, simply titled "Death Race." Not because I had any confidence in crap-for-hire "director" Paul W.S. Anderson (who managed to fuck up a practically un-fuckupable film property: Alien vs. Predator), but because it starred kick-ass Jason Statham. I enjoy Statham's ability to transcend cheese in cheesy movies, and was hoping the same would apply here.
Not by a long shot. Nobody, including Statham, could transcend this pile of shit...
This movie is so incredibly bad, I don't even know where to start. I think I can sum it up by saying the most exciting part of the film was when actress Joan Allen has to deliver the line "okay, cocksucker... fuck with me and we'll see who shits on the sidewalk!" And this is from a film which features cars with machine guns blowing shit up! How do you fuck up a film which features cars with machine guns blowing shit up?!? Big surprise, hack "writer-director" Paul W.S. Anderson managed to not only fuck it up... but actually make it boring!
Gone is the shocking, dark humor from the original Death Race. Gone also is the socio-political commentary that mad the first film so fascinating. Gone too is any sense of excitement, suspense, or logic. This is a by-the-numbers exercise in predictability that has no guts... and certainly no glory. As I sat in the theater thinking of what a missed opportunity this was, I was positively furious. Shame on Paul W.S. Anderson for delivering shit... AGAIN. Shame on Jason Statham and Joan Allen for signing on to such a mindlessly boring script. Shaome on Roger Corman for betraying his original film and producing this crapfest. Shame on anybody who had a hand in destroying a killer concept and tarnishing a classic film by daring to use the same name. If you're looking for a watered-down version of Death Race 2000, go rent Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Running Man, which was a far, far better film in this genre.
And on that note of profound disappointment, I'm calling it a night!
• Shopping. Just a quick note... I am on vacation for two weeks starting Wednesday. Any orders placed at the Artificial Duck Co. Store after tomorrow (Monday) will ship when I get back on September 26th.
• Vacation. In other news, OMFG! MY VACATION STARTS IN THREE DAYS!!
• Palinmony. Umm... is Sarah Palin ever going to agree to be interviewed... BY ANYBODY?!? What the hell is she hiding that she won't even appear on FOX News where they're positively wet over her? Are people seriously going to vote for Palin based on a couple of speeches alone? If she somehow makes it to the White House, she'll be closer to the presidency than any Vice President ever, shouldn't we know her answers to the big questions? Or are the Republicans so confident in their zombie minions to not give a shit, that she's going to be off-limits until election day?
• Britcom. A couple people asked me about a reference to Gavin & Stacey in my entry yesterday, which is a British television series that has just started showing here in the US on BBC America. I'm a huge fan of British comedy, and love it. It's so rare to find a show now-a-days where the lead characters are actually... nice... sweet even... and it's a refreshing change (especially with the Pushing Daisies premiere so far away). If you don't get BBC America, you can buy episodes at the iTunes Music Store. But check it out quickly before they start showing the sure-to-be-crappy American remake that they're working on...
• Rebate. When sending in for a mail order rebate, I wonder what the national average is in actually getting your money. Because I'm running at about 50%, which sucks ass. There's always some lame-ass excuse... "we never received it" or "that rebate expired" or "you didn't include all the required materials" or some other bullshit that's either an obscure technicality or an outright lie. Companies come up with rebates that they never intend to pay out, and I don't understand how this is legal. I just sent in an $80 rebate for SanDisk memory cards and a $75 rebate for AcuVue Contact Lenses... will either of them pay their promised rebate? Here's hoping.
My next Bullet Sunday will happen while I'm far away from here. Time to start packing a suitcase, I suppose.
Aloha!
It's a Bullet Sunday from Maui... which is probably the best place for Bullet Sunday to be! Today I'm posting early (internet access willing) because it's going to be a chill-at-the-beach kind of day. Since I don't want to think, I thought I'd just answer some of the comments I got from recent entries. I guess this makes me a lazy bastard, but isn't that what vacation is for?
• "Ohhhh, nice! Which island?" — Kapgar.
Four islands, actually... Maui, Oahu, Hawaii, and Kauai.
• "The monkey, how's it travelling? In a bag, or you paying for an extra seat?" — stephentrepreneur.
Bad Monkey flew First Class, as always. I couldn't get an upgrade, so I flew Coach. But I was able to get an exit row and an empty seat next to me, which was actually better, since I didn't have to watch my monkey get drunk and hit on flight attendants.
• "Speaking of Hard Rock... have you checked the HRC website's Coming Soon section lately? Seattle, Washington. Summer 2009. — Marc.
Yep, and this time it actually looks like it might actually be happening... though I've heard that a couple of times before as they tried to put a Hard Rock Cafe in Seattle over the past 20 years. As a bonus, I hear that a cafe is being planned for Portland, Oregon as well.
"Gorgeous pics! Are these with your new camera? What IS your new camera??? — SJ.
"Great photos... I need to now ask... is this with your new camera? At some point, you will get tired of me asking about it and just blog about it." — ChillyWilly.
Thanks! And, yes, my camera arrived the day before I left, and I've been shooting with it since I got here. It's the brand new Nikon D90 model, which I wrote about here. Since I've barely used it, I'm not quite ready to write a review, but I'm pretty sure it will go something like this... "OMG! I SO TOTALLY LOVE THIS CAMERA! IT'S AMAZING, AND IT LETS ME GET SOME OF THE BEST PHOTOS I'VE EVER TAKEN WITH VERY LITTLE EFFORT!"
"Do you experience any hostility from native Hawaiians?" — Avitable.
Never. Not once in the dozen times I've been here over a 22-year span have I ever experienced any hostility. Unless you count being honked at by Hana natives because I wasn't driving at reckless enough speeds on the Hana Highway.
"Do you eat fish?" — Rattling The Kettle.
"Don't know if you eat fish..." — Patty.
Nope. I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian (meaning that the closest I get to eating animals is eggs and dairy products).
"As for Big Beach/Little Beach, it was the one spot I wanted to go to and didn't get there. Next time, for sure. My exhibitionist side needed out!!" — Lewis.
"If I recall, there was a sign on that road that read 'Your rental car insurance expires after this point'." — TheQueen.
When I fist started coming to Maui in the 80's, the road to Big Beach did indeed violate you car rental contract because it was very rough and unimproved. As such, very few people went there. I have photos of me and my friends where we're the only ones on the entire beach. And the one time I went to "Little Beach" (the "nude beach") nobody was there. Now there's a paved two-lane road right up to Big Beach (and beyond)... complete with a parking lot! Sadly, this means the beach is usually fairly crowded. My how things have changed.
• "QUESTION, and stop me if you've heard this one: If you need a vacation so badly why are you blogging in realish time about it?" — Poppy.
Realish time? Not really. I blog once a day, usually at night before I go to bed. Once the sun goes down, there's not much to do on Maui except eat and get drunk. It's not a big deal to post a few photos and say what I did that day before I eat and get drunk.
"Those sunrise photos are breathtaking. I can only imagine how much more spectacular it must have been to be there in person." — Iron Fist.
"My goodness, thank you for sharing these magnificent photos of the sun rising!! Worth waking up for huh???" — Michelle Jacobs
Truly. Sunrise at Haleakala is truly an event that must be witnessed in person... I got some great shots, but looking at a tiny little photo is nothing compared to the massive event it is in real-life.
• "If you find yourself on Lanai, i have family there that own a restaurant." — hello haha narf.
Having never been to Lanai before (except to dive off the coast), I actually decided to do this! On Friday I made a reservation on the ferry for today with a 9:15am departure and a 6:30pm return. But last night I learned that the road to Lahaina would be overrun with The Maui Marathon from 5:00am onward, making it difficult to even get to the city for a 9:15am launch. This meant, sadly, I had to cancel my plans. Maybe next time.
"When in Maui - Eat at Peggy Sue's (Kihei)!! Tell them Aynde sent you! Visited Maui a couple of years ago to visit the in laws (they own peggy sues). Fun vacation." — Aynde.
Wow... seems everybody's family owns a restaurant in Hawaii! Actually, I am very familiar with "Peggy Sue's"... it was an inspiration for a restaurant back in Washington that some friends own!
"BTW, how's the WiFi at your hotel?" — ChillyWilly.
Uhhh... it pretty much sucks. Couldn't even use it the first day, and last night was so slow that I couldn't post my entry for the day until this morning. Still, it's better than nothing!
And that's the end of that. Time to get out of bed and drag my lazy ass to the ocean.
Aloha!
It's another edition of Bullet Sunday on Monday! Since this is my last day in the Hawaiian Islands and all I'm going to do is sit on the beach and relax, I figured it was a better day to shoot bullets.
• Happily Mauied. This morning I flew back to Maui where my vacation all began. This is my most favorite of all the islands, and I wanted my last memory to be from here. With the US economy getting worse by the hour, who knows if I'll ever be able to afford to come back again?
• Macadamia Kisses. When you're in Hawaii, you can't turn around without bumping into chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. They are sold absolutely everywhere... from gift shops and grocery stores to restaurants and fruit stands. I think they must be the unofficial-official souvenir of Hawaii, and tourists pack them home by the cases. Sometimes the chocolate-covered macs have clever names like "Donkey Balls," and there are endless varieties where the macs are mixed with everything from crispy rice to coconut. But my favorite way of eating them would be "Hershey's Milk Chocolate Kisses with Mauna Loa Macadamia Nuts," sold only in Hawaii...
Sublime! I love them and eat them by the bag-full because they're more addictive than crack (or so I would imagine). Of course, admitting this is going to get me hate-mail from people telling me (again) that Hershey is a horrible company that's buying out candy companies left and right in an effort to eliminate all competition (including Mauna Loa, Scharffen Berger, Joseph Schmidt, and others) and they're shipping American jobs off to Mexico... but I just can't help myself. I don't like "gourmet" chocolate or dark chocolate or the crap chocolate used in the souvenir boxes that tastes like wax. I like plain old boring Hershey's chocolate. And if I'm going to eat chocolate-covered macs, I want them with a chocolate I'm going to actually like. If it makes Hershey-haters feel any better, I'll switch to M&M Mars Dove bars to get my chocolate fix back home.
• Spore Origins. Games for the iPhone seem to lose their luster quickly on me. They're exciting at first, but eventually I grow bored with their repetitive nature and stop playing. I thought Electronic Arts' latest "Spore: Origins" would be different because the creature you play can evolve to meet new challenges. But it's grown repetitive to me just like the others (move around, avoid baddies, eat food). Oh well. It sure is a pretty game, so I'll probably play it again eventually...
• Chevy Cobalt. I never thought I would run across a car that had a worse turning radius than my Saturn SC-2, but the Chevy Cobalt that Hertz Rent-A-Car stuck me with on Kauaʻi really takes the cake. I swear that there were frickin' TOUR BUSSES that could take a corner tighter than I could in the Cobalt. How embarrassing for Chevy that they built a car which requires a six-point turn to flip a 180 on a two-lane road (well, not really, but it sure seems that way as I was trying to maneuver in parking lots). I have no clue as to why auto-makers think a shitty turning radius is acceptable when designing a car but, if you value being able to make a U-Turn, test-drive before you buy... I'm just sayin'.
• Accentuate The Positive. Soon after I began my vacation, I got a few emails asking if I was aware that somebody was trashing me personally in a popular forum because of a Blogography entry I wrote years ago. The answer was "yes"... I did know because I saw the referral links showing up in my stats bar... but I just didn't care. First of all, the dumbass who was doing the trashing didn't read the full entry and had no idea what the fuck they were talking about. Second of all, it was obvious to anybody reading the trash-talk that this person was a total moron, so there was no reason for me to get involved. And, lastly, the douchebag was making a personal attack ANONYMOUSLY with a pathetic alias that pointed to a profile that was BLANK. If somebody is going to attack me personally, how can I take them seriously if they're being an anonymous coward about it? Either sign your name to the shit you say and be accountable for it or don't even bother, you flaming ass troll.
And thus ends my thirteenth day in paradise. Tomorrow I fly home and resume real life. In many ways I'm glad, because it's time. If I were to stay any longer I would never want to go home again.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got one last perfect sunset to watch...
UPDATE: CONTEST CLOSED! Thanks for your entries! Winners will be drawn this weekend.
Welcome to the ONE-HUNDREDTH edition of Bullet Sunday!
It seems like just yesterday that I wrote my first Bullet Sunday as a way of collecting all the little things that weren't enough for an entry of their own throughout the week... but it's been nearly two years! In celebration of the event, I've decided to post a dozen random bullets from the past 99 entries AND have a contest for amazing prizes from The Artificial Duck Co. Store at the end! w00t!
On with the bullets...
• DOLLS! (from Bullet Sunday 9, Dec. 3, 2006) Now that they've released a "Doctor" Laura talking doll to go with the Ann Coulter talking doll, the "Hypocritical Dumbass Whore Talking Doll Line" is nearly complete...
All we're missing is Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.
• Best Explanation of Why I Am The Way I Am... (from Bullet Sunday 11, Dec. 31, 2006)
Yes, the world really does revolve around me.
• Mouthy... (from Bullet Sunday 16, Feb. 4, 2007) Is there an over-abundance of loud-mouthed, obnoxious bitches in the world... or is it just my grave misfortune to be consistently seated in their vicinity during long plane flights? I had yet another one behind me for a lovely 9 hour flight out of Cologne. This woman talked CONTINUOUSLY, irritating the shit out of just about everybody. Fortunately, by the time she got to her rant about Mexico being a "dirty, disgusting, 3rd-world country that she won't visit," I was able to turn on my iPod. This saved her from my wrath, as I was just about to start screaming "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UUUUUUUP!! But, alas, I couldn't resist being a smart-ass when she was in the lavatory...
And you know what? I don't even f#@%ing apologize for saying it. Screw her and her big mouth, because NOBODY wanted to hear it. All we wanted to do was have a peaceful flight under cramped, horrible conditions, and I don't think that's too much to ask. Read a book. Watch the movie. Listen to music. Do whatever the f#@% gets you through those nine hours... AS LONG AS IT ISN'T BUGGING THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYBODY ELSE! Because blathering loudly about stupid shit while people are trying to relax or sleep or work or whatever is just making you an inconsiderate asshole.
• Ladykiller. (from Bullet Sunday 21, March 11, 2007) Yeah, this photo from Hilly pretty much sums up the "TequilaCon Experience" for me...
Yes, bitches! I am one sexy bastard! Just ask Jenny and Sass...
• Scare the shit INTO me... (from Bullet Sunday 35, June 17, 2007) Speaking of fast food, why is it that the fast food industry always seems to choose freaky-ass mascots to represent their companies? What are they trying to do... scare you into eating their shit?
• Paris! (from Bullet Sunday 36, June 24, 2007) OMG! Like, Paris is getting out of jail early and will be released on Tuesday! JUSTICE PREVAILS! Which means I guess it's time for me to come clean about something... since the tabloids are sure to break the news soon anyway.
I am totally dating Paris Hilton.
I wrote her letters of encouragement while she was doing time, and she understandably fell head-over-heels in love with me. I will be moving to L.A. at the end of next week so Paris and I can be together. 2GETHER 4EVA!
Lil' Dave is totally not wearing panties in this shot...
We ask that the media respect our privacy as we plan our new life.
And by "respect our privacy" we mean "follow us around and take our picture everywhere we go, because we are so totally hot and interesting and deserving of your love."
• Talk! (from Bullet Sunday 42, Aug. 5, 2007) While seeing The Bourne Ultimatum in a packed theater, I found myself thinking of a new Dumbasses Book for my series...
There are entirely too many people in the world who simply cannot understand this simple concept, and about twenty of them decided to go to the movies at the same time I did.
• But Not Really... (from Bullet Sunday 47, Sept. 9, 2007) Okay just one more thing about Zune. THIS WAS WHAT MICROSOFT THOUGHT WOULD BE AN iPOD KILLER?!? It's so craptastically bad that I can only guess it was crapped out of somebody's ass in an explosive case of diarrhea. It certainly looks as if that's the case...
Microsoft has BILLIONS of dollars! But what good is it if they only spend $2.50 on research and development when they decide to enter a new market? NOTE TO MICROSOFT: SPEND THE FUCKING MONEY TO MAKE OBSCENELY AMAZING PRODUCTS!! Put in a billion-dollars and come up with a media player that has anti-gravity controls, a 400dpi 3-D screen, wireless power recharging, and folds to the size of a pack of gum! Otherwise, why bother? Why continue to release complete and total shit that isn't a leap ahead of what's already out there? For crying out loud, who is in charge over there at Redmond? If this is your answer to iPod, I can't wait to see your iPhone competition. Seriously, I could use a good laugh.
• Science! (from Bullet Sunday 51, Oct. 7, 2007) Yesterday while I was running errands, I dropped by the crafts store for some spray glue. As I was standing in line to pay for my stuff, I saw a kid holding a cardboard "presentation board" which he was using for his Science Fair project. This made me a little bit angry. CARDBOARD? Back when I made my science fair project, I had to use REAL WOOD BOARDS and METAL HINGES and SCREWS. My science fair board weighed a ton, but had the benefit of being indestructible. I pity the fool who uses wimpy CARDBOARD on their science fair project! So this is what people mean when they talk about the "pussification of America!"
• Pole! (from Bullet Sunday 57, Nov. 25, 2007) What is it with the latest fitness trends that keep popping up, disappearing, then popping up again? I'm seeing ads (once again) for POLE DANCING as exercise. I could make a number of smart-ass comments here, but instead I decided to buy a pole and get into shape! Off I went to Amazon to get an instructional video... and imagine my surprise when I found out there's a whole world of slutty exercise programs to choose from!
And now I can't decide if I want to learn exotic dancing, pole dancing, lap dancing, or bump n' grind strip-dancing. My gut instinct is to stick with pole dancing, but I'm thinking there's more money to be made in lap dancing. At least that's always been the case when I'm paying for it. Because, hey, there's nothing to say a guy can't earn a little cash while getting into shape.
• Lesbionic. (from Bullet Sunday 72, March 9, 2008) I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on Representative Kern... but I'm lashing out from fear. Fear that she and her homophobic nut-job comrades might actually be able to make good on their Nazi-esque fantasies of cleansing the nation of homosexuals. A nightmare! WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO LESBIAN PORN?!? Because right now I'm trying to decide which video I need most, and that's a struggle I'm not wanting to give up...
I'm leaning towards "The Trouble with Girls" because it sounds naughty! But then I see "Girls Do It Best: Volume 2" and think perhaps that's the way to go... obviously these babes are really good at making lesbian porn if they've got a SEQUEL going on! Except further down the shelf there's "Girls on Girls: VOLUME FOUR" yes, VOLUME FOUR, which sounds great, yet I can't help but wonder if they're just running the series into the ground like the Star Wars prequels did? But then... THEN... I spot "Bitch Banging Bitch" and think this video must be the one to beat... it's got bitches in it! And they appear to be experienced bitches, unlike the amateurs to be found in "Bitches in Training." And there's always "100% Strap-On," which could be interesting and educational... or just very, very scary. What's a boy to do? Well, if people like Sally Kern get their way, there won't be anything TO do. The lesbian porn industry will be shut down. THIS is AMERICA?!? Nay, I say! Hmmm... I wonder where Obama stands on lesbian porn?
• Happy Mother's Day! (from Bullet Sunday 80, May 11, 2008) I don't feel much like typing right now, so I've decided to drop a video for today's 80th edition of Bullet Sunday here at Blogography!
For my valued readers who are deaf, have hearing difficulties, don't have sound, or can't play video, a transcript of the video has been added in an extended entry.
Have a super awesome week everybody!
CONTEST!!
Leave a comment with a valid email address (which will not be shared) telling me something you'd like to have a hundred of. A hundred dollars? A hundred kisses from Elizabeth Hurley? A hundred cups of Snack-Pack Chocolate Pudding? A hundred of anything you want! — I'll then randomly pick three commenters who answered the question and they'll win a certificate good for one T-shirt, one hat, and one deck of cards from The Artificial Duck Co. Store! How sweet is that?
UPDATE: CONTEST CLOSED! Thanks for your entries! Winners will be drawn this weekend.
As for me? I'd like a hundred more Bullet Sundays!
Home from Austin. For a little while, anyway. I must be brief, because I am not feeling very well.
• It's Peanuts! Thanks to the bag of peanuts I had on the plane AND the Drumstick ice cream sundae with peanuts I had when I got home... I now have a huge allergic welt above my ass crack. I also think that my intestines might have swollen up again because I've got some major cramping going on. Methinks I might have to start taking this allergy thing seriously after all. Oh well... at least now I'm more sure of what the cause is. So much for my Uncrustables peanut butter sandwiches.
• It's Prizes! A big "thank you" to everybody who commented or emailed to enter my Bullet Sunday 100 Contest! I've taken all 116 of you who entered, listed you in a spreadsheet. Randomly re-arranged a list of numbers from 1 to 116 three times, then generated a random number once the list had been randomly sorted to pick the winners. It's double the random for double the fun! The winners (who will be notified by email tomorrow on how to collect their prizes) are as follows (congratulations!!)...
• It's Over! Seriously, I'm dying here. Taking pills and going to bed...
I'm writing a Bullet Sunday that I know I won't get to post! How awesome is that?!?
• Sorry! Okay then... first, thanks to all the nice people who emailed me to make sure I was okay because I didn't post entries for the past two (now going to be three) days. On Friday I wrote an entry, but didn't want to pay a $12 internet fee to my hotel to post it, so I thought I'd do it Saturday morning at my new hotel. But then I found out my new hotel has flaky internet that didn't allow me to post at all. So I dutifully wrote entries each day anyway, and will posted them when I get home tomorrow. Likewise, I'll try to get caught up with all the email which has been piling up. For future reference, if I should ever drop off the face of the earth again and new entries aren't showing up, you can always take a look at my Twitter updates, which are posted in the sidebar and at DaveStalker™ (it's easier to update Twitter from my iPhone than my blog when I'm on the go).
• TQ2009! For those who have been emailing and Twittering to ask about TequilaCon 2009 plans, I'm not your man. TequilaCon is Jenny and Brandon... I'm just a lackey who flies to planning meetings when I'm summoned and makes the lanyards. For breaking TQ2009 news, be sure to keep checking TequilaCon.com (which currently points to a Flicker album from TQ2008, but will eventually point to Jenny's post on next year's event). About the only thing I can tell you is that the host city for next year has been narrowed down to three choices, and they all took us by surprise. I guess these planning meetings aren't just an excuse to drink copious amounts of alcohol after all!
• Economical! I've heard of people losing their shirts as the stock market tank, but apparently they're losing their pants now as well. Spotted this morning on Wacker and Dearborn here in Chicago...
• Chicago2! After viewing beautiful works at The Art Institute of Chicago, Jenny, Vahid, and I met up with Brandon at Pizanos Pizza for lunch and then headed to Millennium Park. Brandon then just had to see Obama's Three Million Dollar Overhead Projector at the Adler Planetarium, so off we went. Except the Chicago Marathon was in town, so we ended up having to walk twenty miles in the scorching heat to get there. But it was all in the name of science, so it's all good in the end.
• Betty! Usually, I don't like putting stuff on Blogography that I didn't create... but I will always make an exception for Betty White, who I love more than chocolate pudding (which is saying a lot). She recently made a brilliant appearance on Craig Ferguson, and has been catching some flack for calling Sarah Palin a "crazy bitch" while play-acting as John McCain's speechwriter...
First of all, Betty was playing a character. Second of all, Sarah Palin is a crazy bitch. That's what being a maverick is all about! Because abstinence-only sex education really works, people!
• OutFOXed! I was wholly disgusted to see that FOX Home Entertainment has gone and revised the DVD boxes for The Simpsons yet again. They've taken a kind of "hybrid" approach between the original (and very cool) boxes and the outrageously fucked-up and stupid "giant head" boxes that started appearing on the Sixth Season set. Now, there's still a giant head (it's Krusty!) except you can peel it off so it fits on the shelf next to the rest of your collection. The problem is that peeling off the giant head strips ink from the "real" box leaving it looking shitty. But if you leave the damn thing on, it looks like shit anyways, and takes up twice the space on your shelf unnecessarily...
But that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that INSIDE the box they no longer have snap-in spaces for the DVDs... they now just slide them all into a giant accordion-style cardboard sleeve. This not only makes it difficult to get your DVDs in and out, but it also makes it easy to damage both the DVDs and the packaging. So fuck you FOX Home Entertainment. Fuck you up your stupid fucking asses, you greedy fucking assholes. I was already pissed that my Simpsons DVD collection doesn't have a consistent look between seasons when sitting on the shelf, but now I'm pissed that I ever started buying your fucking DVDs in the first place. You cut corners where it counts by using cheap-ass packaging, and don't give a flying fuck about your loyal customers, so why should I give a shit about you? I guess this teaches me a lesson... don't send money to studios who treat you like crap and stick you with poor-quality product, just download the stuff you want off BitTorrent so you don't have to deal with their bullshit. It's really amazing how movie and television studios bitch and whine about piracy, yet they do everything in their power to force consumers down that path. Big fucking surprise. Well, congratulations FOX Home Entertainment, unless you make this right with your customers, I've just bought my last fucking Simpsons DVD set from you. Shame on The Simpsons creator Matt Groening for allowing FOX to treat people like shit on his behalf. I hope the millions of dollars he's making off of his creation compensates for the ill-will of his fans who has supported him all these years.
Hopefully I will get home and the internet there will be working. Otherwise, I guess I'll be posting this sometime next week.
I'm writing today's Bullet Sunday at Seattle-Tacoma International airport during my 3-1/2 hour layover. I forgot to charge my MacBook battery, so here's hoping that I can type really fast today...
• Event! Finally got around to updating my Events Page with Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco, and I'll try to update my blogroll and sidebar tonight. Amazing that I've met over 100 people now! By far my favorite part of blogging is continuing to meet my readers and fellow bloggers, so hopefully this will continue into next year and beyond.
• Trick! This morning I got a notification email that a critical part of my Halloween costume I ordered for Avitable's party is out of stock and not expected before I leave. Since this was the ONLY place I could find it after an exhaustive two-day search, I'm screwed. Now I'm going to have to work on an entirely different costume with less than two weeks to go. So nice they waited almost THREE WEEKS to tell me that I won't be getting the item I needed. Now that's customer service!
• Vote! I brought my Voter's Information Pamphlet with me so I'd have something to read on the plane. Most of the issues are fairly straightforward for me this time (when they're not, I usually defer to whatever side The League of Women's Voters takes... they've got a pretty good track record). As an unaffiliated voter, I tend to vote for both Democrat and Republican candidates. This largely stems from the idea that Republicans tend to be from Eastern Washington and don't forget about us when it's time to make the budget. Democratic candidates tend to focus on Seattle's problems first (it's the voter base that got them elected, after all), and I never really feel the area where I live is well-represented. Of course, when it's time to vote for president, there's no way I'm voting for piece-of-shit POW/MIA betrayer McCain. I may not agree 100% with everything Obama says, but in this race there's no contest. I would never give my vote to an angry unstable bastard with total disregard for the men and women serving in our military like McCain. The fact that he's in bad shape health-wise, leaving the joke that is Sarah Palin as our president if he dies, is just the icing on the cake. Thankfully McCain's fellow MIA/POW betrayer asshole, John Kerry, didn't win the Democratic ticket or else I'd end up voting for Ralph Nader!
• Boredom! This past week I took my grandmother to East Wenatchee so she could get her flu shot. Along the way she mentioned something about how the snow kept coming later and later and the amount of snow was less and less each year. She worried that if this trend continued, we might not have a white Christmas this year. She then remembered one year when she was a kid in the 1920's how there was no snow for Christmas, so her and her sisters went outside to wait for it. This kind of boggles my mind, because I can't fathom being so completely bored that I'd go outside and wait for it to snow. I'd probably not even be bored enough to bother looking outside a window, preferring to consult the weather widget on my MacBook instead. It's things like this that make it difficult for me to know if we're better off... or worse off... in today's hectic, modernized world. There are days I'd sure like to be bored enough to go outside and wait for it to snow.
• Creative! My copy of Adobe Creative Suite CS4 arrived, and I'm kind of hesitant to start using it. On my very first launch of the new Photoshop, I found a massive bug (if you use Apple's "Spaces" virtual desktops and launch an app in a space different than where you have it defaulting to, then open an Photoshop file by double-clicking it in The Finder, you end up in a limbo between Spaces and have to click back and forth in order to access the image... wheeeee!). This just makes me wonder what other horrendous crap I'm going to have to deal with because ONCE AGAIN Adobe doesn't test their software very well. I mean, seriously, Spaces is a standard feature of the Mac OS... did nobody bother to turn it on when testing the programs? What's next... is The Dock going to stop working in CS4 apps? And here I was hoping I wouldn't have to rip Adobe a new one like I did last time.
And now, since I'm down to 5% battery life left, I guess that's all for Bullet Sunday.
UPDATE! Oops. Since I forgot that I didn't get to post Saturday until Sunday, then completely forgot about Sunday until Monday. Hopefully Monday's entry will actually be on Monday so I can break this chain of not knowing what day it is.
Ummm... it is Monday, is it not?
This has been a very challenging week for me on all fronts, and I am glad it's over. Hopefully I can manage to get caught up on all the emails, orders, blogs, and work I missed while dealing with the drama so things can get back to normal. It would be nice to have a little "normalcy" in my life right now.
• Thanks! A heartfelt thanks to everybody for the kind comments and emails this past week. I read absolutely everything I get, but haven't had much time to reply or comment myself. I'd like to send out a special thanks to the many, many wonderful people who were supportive of my posting of Henry's story a while back. Entries like this are not easy for me, and the nice feedback I got was much appreciated.
• High? I love these ads encouraging people to find out the facts about High Fructose Corn Syrup by pointing to a web site created by the people who make High Fructose Corn Syrup. I'd encourage people to do their own research on the evils of this horrendous shit and see where they net out. I only wish that there was away to easily avoid eating the crap, but it is in absolutely everything. I eat as little High Fructose Corn Syrup as possible, and hope that food manufacturers will start phasing it out like they have trans fats. In the meanwhile, these misleading ads will continue to tell people that High Fructose Corn Syrup is "okay in moderation" when there's no way to moderate it because most foods you buy have it in the ingredients...
Yo, bitch... you trying to kill me with that shit?
Bonus points if you watch the above-mentioned ad and notice that neither one of the actors in the commercial dare stick that High Fructose Corn Syrup laden popsicle in their mouths.
• Wrong! One of my most favorite features of my iPhone is having Google Maps in my pocket. When I need to find something, it's an invaluable resource. But not always. I am having a really tough time getting accurate information lately. I'll zero-in to where I'm at, search for something, and up will pop the location... except not really. I'll drive there only to find out that the information provided is outdated, inaccurate, or just plain wrong. Example... As I was driving home I wanted to see if a halloween store was around, so I Google Mapped it and came up with "Planet Halloween Superstore" in Monroe. Perfect. But having been burned by Google Maps before, I clicked through to the website and saw the information was indeed correct. So off I went... only to find it doesn't exist. So I call the number on the website and find out that it's been disconnected. Great. You'd think people would be nice enough to erase the website for a business that doesn't exist anymore so they don't waste people's time, but I guess not. Lame. What's even more frustrating is that Google Maps doesn't do anything about it, even when you put in a request... like I did for the now-dead Johnny Rockets in Chicago. It shows as "removal requested" in my web browser, but hasn't actually been removed...
And now let's look at the location on my iPhone...
Yes, that's right... this mobile version of Google Maps doesn't bother to show the removal request, which is pretty messed up. I guess I just have to remember to distrust Google Maps every single time I use it until I've verified the information directly. Kind of defeats the purpose, but that's progress for you.
• Watching! Finally got my copy of Dave Gibbons' Watching The Watchmen while I was working in Seattle... and was really disappointed. I was drooling at the prospect of insider information about my favorite graphic novel of all time but, despite weighing in with a whopping 256 over-sized pages, there just wasn't a lot there. Mostly just page after page after page after page of thumbnail layout sketches showing sketchy compositions with an occasional comparison to the actual printed page. As if that wasn't bad enough, the book's design sucked ass. Who the fuck puts small blue text over a black background on glossy paper and expects that anybody will be able to read it? I was constantly shifting the book as I was attempting to read it in order to see the text without having it blown out in reflective glare. Monumentally fucking stupid and an EPIC FAIL. My recommendation is to skip the book. If you're a die-hard Watchmen fan, it's worth a check-out at your local library, but hardly worth owning...
• Voted? Still encouraging people to vote in the upcoming election. Many states allow early voting so you don't have to wait in lines come November 4th.
And now I think I shall retire so that I can get up at some obscene hour and go to work early.
w00t! Glad to be alive on this Bullet Sunday!
• Death. Ummm... yeah... I nearly died last night. Usually when I have a mysterious allergic reaction to some unknown substance, I start swelling up somewhere... mostly my tongue, hands, or feet. When it's my tongue, I overdoes on Benadryl or Cetirizine to get the swelling to go down faster (sometimes having to crush the pills and shove them into my mouth when the swelling is nasty). Last night when I was woken up, the swelling not only caused my tongue to swell, but the opening to my throat as well. This is particularly bad, because the option of breathing through your nose doesn't work when your throat is constricted. My first reaction was to stab myself with my Epi-Pen but, once I calmed down, I realized that I was getting air. My throat wasn't fully swollen as I had first thought. After taking an overdose of Cetirizine, I went back to bed and meditated in an effort to calm myself down and reduce the amount of oxygen I needed. This worked pretty well, because I fell back asleep. When I woke up four hours later, my throat was back to normal and my tongue was only half-swollen. Since I cannot figure out what is causing this to happen, I guess it's time for another appointment with an allergist. Yay.
• Gay. I've sat down a couple times to write about my extreme disgust over the gross discrimination voted into the Constitution of California by the passing of Prop 8, but always end up screaming obscenities. If "traditional marriage" is so fucking precious to people, why is the divorce rate so high? Why is divorce even allowed? It makes me wonder what's going to be next. How long will it be before gays are segregated on public transportation and forced to use separate bathrooms? How long before we're hearing such absurd crap as "I believe public peeing is the relationship formed by a straight man's penis and a urinal!" I honestly don't know where this country is headed when we can allow such overtly discriminatory legislation to dictate how people are treated in the eyes of the law based solely on an attribute they were born with. And here's where I start screaming obscenities. Again.
• Palin. Let me just say up-front that I thought Sarah Palin was a total joke of a choice by the McCain administration for Vice President. She's almost George Bushian in her total inability to speak in coherent sentences or say anything except sound-bites without sounding like a complete moron. She should have never, ever been selected for that position. But McCain's people wanted to "shake things up" and pander to disenfranchised Hillary Clinton supporters in the worst possible way, so there she was. That being said, I am absolutely appalled at the way that Sarah Palin is being treated in the press. Even the most ardent Right-wing supporters are suddenly keen to blame Palin for absolutely everything that went wrong with the campaign, up-to-and-including losing the election. That's a load of shit. That's like blaming a television repairman you hired for their inability to fix your toilet. Sarah Palin worked her ass off for the campaign, going wherever they sent her and saying whatever they asked her to say. She did the very best job she could, and blaming her for losing the election or hurting McCain is just stupid. Blame the dumbasses in the campaign who put her up for the position in the first place, because anything else is totally unfair. But that's just the beginning... it's not enough that she's "lost the election," now they're coming out and slamming her for stuff like "not knowing Africa was a continent, not a country." Give me a break. Somebody a lot stupider than Sarah Palin is to be blamed for putting Sarah Palin on the ticket... she's just an easier target, and all this crap is nothing but distraction.
And, on that happy note, it's time for me to take a handful of sleeping pills and go back to bed! Goodnight!
Another Bullet Sunday has come, and I'm running short of time, so let's get to it...
• Chappelle. I've always enjoyed the program Inside the Actor's Studio and am amazed at the big names they manage to get for the show. On the occasion of the 200th episode, the tables were turned and interviewer James Lipton became the interviewee... by Dave Chappelle. He was, of course, genius. The guy could have a talk show and would be amazing at it.
• Hellboy. I was genuinely upset that Hellboy 2: The Golden Army left theaters before I could see it on the big screen. Now that I've seen this amazing film on DVD, I'm even more upset. Brillaint flick. I am hoping far a sequel to get a complete trilogy of films, but don't know how likely that is. Fingers crossed...
• Righteous. The latest round of injustices piled on the gay community in this past election were apparently the final straw. No longer willing to remain passive as their rights continue to erode, the gay community is fighting back. The demonstrations, boycotts, and educational campaigns are just the beginning. This was made very clear to me when one of my favorite comedians, Wanda Sykes, came out and rallied the troops...
And so it begins...
"We shouldn't have to be standing out here demanding something we automatically should have as citizens of this country. But I got pissed off. They pissed me off. And I said 'you know what? now I got to get in your face.' And that's what we all have to do now! They pissed off the wrong group of people. They have galvanized a community. We are so together now and we all want the same thing and we are not going to settle for less. Instead of having gay marriage in California, no, we're gonna get it across the country. Because when I leave... when my wife and I leave California, I want to have my marriage also recognized in Nevada, in Arizona, all the way to New York.
How can you stop people from loving each other? How can you get upset about loving? I'm sick of this stuff about 'oh... well, you made that choice... that's your choice.' Gay is not a choice! Being gay is not... that's like telling me I chose to be a woman... I chose to be black. Are we saying that if being gay is a choice that people are straight because they chose not to be gay? I am very proud. I'm proud to be a woman, I'm proud to be a black woman and I'm proud to be gay. I love you all. Now let's go get our damn equal rights!"
If that doesn't sum it all up in a nutshell, I don't know what does. You go girl. For everybody.
• Inferno. My thoughts go out to everybody in California affected by the fires. I've been there... twice... and hope that everybody stays safe.
Back to work.
It's Bullet Sunday on Monday from chilly Wisconsin!
Yesterday I had intended on posting this as a second entry, my "real" entry for the day. But internet at my hotel is spotty, so I never got the chance because it went down before I could finish. That's the bad news. The good news is that I'm one of only three guests staying at the entire hotel, so it's been very quiet. I like me the quiet hotel.
• Cheese and Crackers. Whenever I travel, I always take along packages of Cheese and Crackers. Not just because they taste great (they've got cheese in 'em!) but because the packaging is useful as an iPhone stand for watching movies more comfortably. Just turn it upside-down after eating the contents, and there you go...
I mention this because the guy across the aisle from me on the plane thought this was the coolest thing since sliced bread.
• Flying The Friendly Skies. As a "Platinum Elite" flyer, I'm pretty much guaranteed a First Class upgrade any time I fly domestic with Northwest Airlines (for now... once they merge with Delta, who knows?). This doesn't make me special, it just means I fly a lot. And, while I do enjoy the extra legroom and being able to sit more comfortably, I'm not devastated if the upgrade doesn't happen. This is contrary to most other frequent fliers I've seen, who freak out if they don't get it. Eventually they called pre-boarding for First Class, so I got up and walked to the gate. As I was standing there behind other passengers, some guy comes out of nowhere with a Burger King bag and a boat-load of other shit he was carrying. He made a ruckus as he worked his way through the crowd informing anybody who would listen that he was "first class." When he finally got up to me, he said "Are you in line?" To which I replied "Yes." He then said "Sorry, you didn't look like you were first class." To which I replied "Fuck you." It wasn't loud enough for anybody else to hear, but I was pissed off and didn't care. He wiped the shock off his face, did a nervous laugh, then fell in line behind me. Fortunately, I didn't have to sit next to the dumbass on the plane, because that might have been awkward. For him. I didn't give a shit. I was wearing jeans and a Simmer Style hoodie. How this disqualifies me from looking like I fly a lot, I have no idea. But people who make judgements from appearances don't make much sense to me anyways.
• Warlords DS. WHERE IS IT?!? WASN'T THIS SUPPOSED TO BE RELEASED IN 2007?!? Probably my favorite strategy game of all time, Warlords II, is supposed to be coming to the Nintendo DS. I've been anxiously waiting for years now to get my hands on it, yet I've never found it for sale. From what I can tell, the company originally releasing it went under, now Glyphic Entertainment(the developer) has new distributor. A visit to their web site shows "Coming Soon" but that's what I've been hearing forever. How soon is soon?
Even better than Warlords II for Nintendo DS would be Warlords II for iPhone! I wonder if that project is in the works? Apparently the spin-off Puzzle Quest: Challenge of The Warlords will be available for iPhone next month, so my fingers are crossed.
• Secretary of State. So Hillary Clinton has accepted President Elect Obama's offer to become Secretary of State. This does not make me very happy. Not because she's a woman, but because she's Hillary Clinton. Barrack Obama's lack of experience never much bothered me because he could surround himself with brilliant and heavily experienced people in all fields and use their advice from which to govern. THAT'S what a president does. But now he's put somebody's in charge of foreign affairs whose "foreign experience" comes from the globetrotting she did as First Lady? Seriously? If I didn't hate John Kerry so much, I'd question why his 20 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wasn't tapped for that position. Or, if Obama was dead-set on having a woman in that position, why not pick Susan Rice? I mean, holy shit... she was Obama's foreign policy advisor during the campaign and has boat-loads of experience! If he wanted to prove that he is bi-partisan, why not pick Republican Senator Dick Lugar? He may be on the opposite party, but he has foreign experience for miles and similar foreign policy ideals to Obama (they worked together on the "Lugar-Obama Proliferation and Threat Reduction Initiative," and Luger endorsed Obama for foreign policy experience over McCain in the election). Hey, having a Republican Secretary of State in a Democratic White House worked on one of my favorite episodes of The West Wing! This is a highly questionable decision, and I hope it doesn't come back to bite us in the ass. If we've learned anything in the past eight years, it's that having shitty foreign relations doesn't help us any.
&bull The West Wing. Speaking of The West Wing, here's a list of my five most memorable episodes of the show...
And now it's time for me to brave the cold so I can get some dinner. It's supposed to snow tomorrow, and I think we all know just how much I'm looking forward to that.
GAH! I FLY OUT IN TWO DAYS!! What am I doing writing Bullet Sunday when I should be washing clothes, packing my suitcase, and getting my work finished up?
• NaBloPoMoBlahBlahBlah. This is the last day of National Blog Posting Month, better known as NaBloPoMo. If you join up, you're supposed to post every single day in November. Congratulations to everybody who made it, and a special thanks to those who decided to make their daily post be about how tough it is to be doing a daily posts for NaBloPoMo. As somebody who posts every single day of the year, I feel your pain.
• Revenge! On occasion I write bits and pieces for the awesome news site GEEKS OF DOOM! under the name "Bad Monkey." Today I joined in on a Geek Round Table discussion on "best payback moments in film." You can check out our answers (and suggest your own) by clicking on this link.
• Dibs! My latest food addiction is DIBS brand ice cream snacks. They're horrendously bad for you, but oh so delicious. My most favorite would be the Nestle Crunch Dibs. Vanilla ice cream drenched in chocolate and rice crispies...
Looking at the Nutrition Facts is a bit scary. NINETY-FIVE PERCENT OF YOUR DAILY SATURATED FAT VALUE?
So basically, these things will kill you... but what a tasty way to go.
• Steamer. Knowing that my site is well-indexed by Google, I thought that I would spare people the agony I've gone through after buying a Hewlett-Packard Photosmart B9180 Printer when people go searching for reviews. This is unquestionably the worst electronics purchase I have ever made. Ever. And that's saying a lot, because I've invested in a lot of technology over the years...
When I say that the Hp Photosmart B9180 printer sucks ass, I mean that it sucks ass on an epic scale. In fact, it goes beyond sucking ass. It has reached EPIC FAIL. I've had problems with this piece of shit printer from DAY ONE. Carriage stalls... print-heads dragging across the paper... mysterious color shifts... suddenly printing black as gray... print jobs canceling half-way through for no reason... and loads of other stupid crap.
Multiple calls to Hewlett-Packard "support" resulted in nothing being solved. For ANY of the many problems I've had.
After a year of suffering, the pile of crap finally died completely. I would rather eat a gallon of lard than to EVER buy anything from HP again, but then I discovered something strange.
This printer, which you can get for $560 if you look around, comes with a full set of inks, valued at $260, bringing the actual cost of the printer itself down to $300. When I hold that up to the $600 in spare ink cartridges I have sitting in my filing cabinet, I didn't have much choice but to buy a replacement. It was my cheapest option.
And guess what?
STILL a pile of shit.
I'm still having random and inexplicable problems that I can find no way of solving. I'd call HP "support," but I already know that would be futile. Their "support" blows donkey. Thankfully I was smart enough to buy "lemon insurance," so we'll see if I can get it exchanged for yet another B9180. Third time's a charm? Unlikely, but whatever.
So now I know... better to kiss off $600 in ink than to ever trust your money to a Hewlett-Packard piece of shit printer.
And to anybody who comes here via Google looking for buying advice? FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, DON'T PURCHASE THIS PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A PRINTER!!
And, on that happy note, I'm off to bed.
I have no idea where this week went.
Snow. I'm pretty anal-retentive about making sure my car has all the snow scraped off of it. Not only is it safer for me, but also safer for other drivers out there. Unfortunately, a lot of other dumbasses on the road aren't so courteous. On the way into work this morning I was pummeled with chunks of snow from an idiot ahead of me who hadn't bothered to clean off his car. Fortunately, karma came calling when the dipshit pulled up to a stop and the entire shelf of snow and ice on his roof came spilling down on his windshield. He had to pull over, get out, then clean off his windshield as I drove around him, laughing my ass off. Sometimes justice is a dish best served cold.
Storm. Finally got to play with the "iPhone killer" known as the "Blackberry Storm." I'm not impressed. It gets rid of the things that I actually liked about other Blackberry models, but has nothing from the iPhone that would make it any kind of competition to me. Once you've had multi-touch, you never go back. I can't fathom owning a mobile device without it. Apparently, Microsoft can't either. They're Live Labs has just released "Seadragon" for the iPhone, yet it's currently nowhere else to be found... not on Windows Mobile devices and not on Blackberry.
Auto. The saga of the American auto industry drags on. Personally, I don't know what to think about it all. I would certainly feel terrible for all the workers losing their job because management has run the companies into the ground... but, then again, that's the peril of a free market. Does the government really have a responsibility to save a business if it's going under? If they rescue the auto industry, what about all the other businesses in trouble? Do they get help too? The one thing I don't understand is how everybody keeps saying that the US auto-makers are "making cars nobody wants." Because when I research sales by brands, over half of the top twenty cars are made by American companies...
Of course, just because a company is American of foreign means nothing. The Toyota Camry, for example, is assembled in the right here in the US and is made from over half American parts. Ford, on the other hand, is shipping manufacturing to Mexico and Canada and does use foreign parts in their autos. So the issue here isn't quite so cut and dry, and one has to wonder if the "Big Three" US auto makers go under, is that a bad thing? Won't that mean that sales of the remaining American-made cars will increase so the jobs will just be shifted to companies who know how to make a profit? Sure they're foreign companies, but if the jobs are here, isn't that what's important? And who knows? Maybe letting the companies who can't make money fail will clear the way for new American companies with fresh ideas to be born? I honestly don't know. Hopefully people making the decisions do.
Car. All that being said, my dream car is the new BMW Z4 Roadster...
Sex. On. Wheels.
And now I really need to get back to work. And some Snack-Pack chocolate pudding.
It's Bullet Sunday from the insanity of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport!
• Success. When it comes to travel, things going right is what's SUPPOSED to happen and doesn't really tell you much about a company. It's when things go wrong that you find out what they're made of. How they handle problems and the way they treat their customers is everything you really need to know. For the most part, Alaska/Horizon Air has been pretty good in dealing with an unprecedented weather situation that you can never really be prepared for. They have a genuinely caring, hard-working bunch of employees that are working their asses off against a never-ending tide of very upset people. This cannot be easy, and is truly a testament to the company philosophy that has made Alaska/Horizon Air such a huge part of my travel plans for decades. I consider myself extremely fortunate that they are "my local airline," and happy to keep flying with them.
• Failure. Where Alaska/Horizon fails... and fails badly... is in organization and communication. There have been several incidents that boggle my mind, and has me wondering just how people in charge thought they were Doing The Right Thing. As I said in my previous entry, there's no point screaming and getting upset at the airport... but I have no problem doing that in my blog!
• Redial. Speaking of auto-redial, it is pathetic... PATHETIC that the iPhone doesn't seem to have this most basic of calling functions. Hopefully it will be added soon via an update or third-party application.
• Outsourced. Last year, a movie came out with the very timely topic of outsourcing. In the film, a Seattle call center manager, Todd Anderson, has his entire department outsourced to India, and ends up having to travel there so he can train his replacement. The trailer looked funny, so I put it on a list of movies I wanted to see...
But then I was reading a review of Outsourced in the Seattle P.I. where it was just savaged. The reviewer Bill White hated the film. He made it sound highly offensive to Indian culture for the sake of laughs, which I hate, so I ended up skipping it altogether. Turns out this was a mistake. I ended up renting Outsourced for my iPhone on this trip and liked it quite a lot. All of the criticism from the Seattle P.I. review was entirely unjustified. White called the lead actor Josh Hamilton "aggravatingly nondescript," but that was the entire point of his everyman character! White said the film "vulgarized the sacred sex manual, the Kama Sutra," but it absolutely did not! I thought the film was great in communicating the cultural differences between our countries in an entertaining way and, if anything, made more fun of us here in the USA than India. Sure there's some stereotypical humor in there, but it's on BOTH sides! As Todd becomes more and more adjusted to Indian life and starts to embrace his new surroundings, you get a wonderful taste of the culture, and can appreciate the country through his eyes. It doesn't hurt that his love-interest (played by Ayesha Dharker) is freakin' adorable...
And I love the relationship between Todd and his "replacement" Puro (played by Asif Basra), which was pretty funny...
All-in-all, a wonderful film that I regret having missed on the big screen. The cinematography of India (including the wonderful Holi Festival of Color) begs to be seen big. I guess that will teach me to trust a crappy review over my gut instinct when it comes to picking what movies I see in the theater.
And now, since I've given up getting home until after the 25th, it's time for Wii Bowling!
Home for Bullet Sunday... isn't that nice?
• Eartha Kitt. I was very sad to learn that Earth Kitt had died. I may not have seen her in much, but she sure left a big impression where I did see her. To me, Julie Newmar is the Catwoman from the campy 1960's Batman series, because she was the first I saw in the role, and played it far more often than Lee Meriwether or Earth Kitt ever did. That being said, there's no denying that Eartha Kitt was the most perfect for the role. She was a cat-woman in real life, and was able to slink herself into the character perfectly... errr... purrrrfectly...
I am (surprisingly) too young to remember Eartha in her earlier work as a sultry songstress, but caught her from time to time in movies like Boomerang with Eddie Murphy. She may have only had a small role, but was easily the most memorable part of a forgettable movie (I can still hear her calling "Maaaaarrrrrrcuuuuussss!")...
But my favorite Eartha Kitt character would have to be Yzma from Disney's The Emperor's New Groove, which was a match made in heaven. She could have easily just sleep-walked through this role but, as anybody who's seen the film can attest, she put in 110% into the character and totally killed...
When Disney made a cartoon series spin-off The Emperor's New School Eartha continued playing her character, which was really cool of her (considering lead David Spade was not so accommodating). And don't think that the story-writers and animators of the series didn't know how to take advantage of Eartha's talents. They knew exactly who the star of the show really is. In the episode "Yzmopolis" from the iTunes Store, you can see Eartha Kitt making Yzma totally her own (the title song might also be on YouTube for a while)...
I believe the cartoon was still in production when she died, so I have no idea what Disney is going to do. If they're smart, they'll just count themselves lucky that they got two seasons from Eartha Kitt, and shut down the show. Or, if they're intent on continuing the show without her, they should find a new villain. Nobody can replace Eartha as Yzma.
• The Wilderness. Last night I got my third email and second comment asking where I stayed when I was in Walt Disney World. Well, I stayed where I usually stay... Disney's Wilderness Lodge...
I have stayed in many of the Disney properties, and The Wilderness Lodge is my most favorite from my top five...
Despite it's popularity, I am not a fan of the upscale Grand Floridian Resort (it's nice, but the decor and eateries just aren't for me). For the budget-conscious, I like the two Port Orleans hotels quite a lot. For the really budget-conscious, the new Pop Century hotel is pretty cool. But, then again, any of the "Disney All-Star" value hotels are a good bet (you can choose from Sports, Movies, Music). They're fairly inexpensive and frills-free, but you get all the perks you'd get at even the most expensive Disney hotel... including free transportation between the parks, purchases shipped to your room, and Disney's "Extra Magic Hours" which allow you to get in early or stay late at one of the parks each day. Sure you can stay outside of Disney World and save money, but the added expense of staying on-site is well worth the cost when you consider all you get in return. In all honesty, I consider the resort-stay to be just as important to the Walt Disney World experience as visiting the actual parks! If you're planning a trip, postponing a visit so you can save enough money to stay at a Disney World property is about the best advice I can give.
• No Talking. I have pretty much given up on going to movies because the audience is always filled with COMPLETE AND TOTAL DUMBASSES who ruin the experience by talking. And, thanks to mobile phones, it's gotten far worse. Every time I've gone to a movie lately, I've been distracted by a sea of glowing phones from idiots TXTing the entire time. Or fucktards who don't silence their mobile, and then it goes off during the film. And, of course, they ANSWER it. Why would I want to pay $8.00 plus another $10.00 for overpriced snacks to be tortured like that? Well, it was only a matter of time, but somebody in Philadelphia finally got himself shot because he wouldn't shut the fuck up during a movie. Naturally, I'm horrified at such a display of violence... but secretly I'm wondering why it took this long to happen. I'm also relieved that it wasn't me doing the shooting, because heaven only knows I've felt like it enough times. Guess it's a good thing I don't own a gun?
Now I suppose I should be getting ready for work in the morning. Bleh.
My blog is up and running again... just in time for Bullet Sunday!
• Interviewed. I've been interviewed by the new travel blog Sharing Experiences, run by travel writer Andy Hayes. There's kind of an important announcement I make there (especially if you're in the U.K.) so be sure to take a look!
• Better. I don't like 95% of the commercials that show up on television because they are annoying rather than entertaining in the way they sell their wares. A rare exception would be the absolutely brilliant and inspirational ads run by the Foundation for a Better Life. They're magic. This one is a particular favorite, despite the fact that it has bad parents in it who don't know how to watch their kid...
UPDATE! In what I can only describe as one of the stupidest fucking things I've ever seen on the internets, The Foundation for a Better Life no longer allows sharing of their videos. That's right... an organization dedicated to "PASSING IT ON" when it comes to inspirational messages DOESN'T ALLOW YOU TO ACTUALLY PASS IT ON! They develop commercials and pay millions to buy ad space on television, but bypass totally free distribution on the internet? Insane. Truly crazy. Oh well... since the video below won't work any more, you have to go to their website to watch it.
How much better would our world be if this is the way it worked all the time?
• Changed. Why is it that every time somebody changes their product, it turns out to be for the worse? Miracle Whip used to be a favorite sandwich condiment... until the dumbasses at Kraft switched from an oil base to a water base to save money. Now it soaks into bread too fast and falls apart in macaroni salad, which just blows. And don't get me started on the way that Kraft destroyed Boca Burgers when they bought out the company. Boca Burgers used to be my favorite food, now I can barely eat them because they are gag-inducing soggy, waggy, snotty, and shitty. Another tragedy was when General Mills "new and improved" my favorite childhood cereal, Cocoa Puffs. They used to be these deliciously puffy and lightly chocolatey crispy balls... but now they're dense, hard, and so chocolatey that they taste artificial, plastic and crappy. Recently I saw that they had a new cereal called "Cocoa Puffs Combos" and thought I'd give them a try. Imagine my shock when I found out that the Combos HAVE THE ORIGINAL COCOA PUFFS IN THEM! Finally, I can be Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs again!
• Remade. I've written repeatedly about my love for the best show every to air on television, Cupid starring Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshal. This morning I learned that the remake, which I'm assuming will be total shit, is going to begin airing on March 24th. What kind of fucked-up birthday present is that? Couldn't they at least released the real Cupid on DVD so I have something good to watch while Rob Thomas destroys his own show? Oh well, guess it's time to re-watch my Veronica Mars DVDs for the millionth time.
• Cupidity. One last rant before I go... even if Sony/Tri-Star doesn't want to go to the expense of producing the original Cupid episodes on DVD... why in the hell don't they put the episodes on the iTunes Store? The only expense is digitizing the show, which can't be much of a road block, after that it's all money in the bank. GAH! Stupid.
Now I'm cold and hungry and don't feel like blogging anymore.
Wah. I have a headache. And on Bullet Sunday too.
• Arbitrary. There is right and there is wrong and there is that murky gray area in-between. And yet, it is all a matter of perspective. Where lines are drawn and on which side things are placed is entirely dependent upon the person in question. And that's okay. I understand that, I accept that. But when people define their lines in one breath... then move them to suit their situation in the next... I call bullshit. Moral high ground affords a terrific view, but it's lonely up there when nobody will stand by your hypocritical ass.
• Clarification. No, that wasn't about you.
• Foggy. There's a lot of fog out tonight. I do not like fog...
• Sullified. Thanks to Dan, I now have Sully both at home and at work. My new Sully is very cool because he comes with his own Mike Wazowski...
• Experienced. Memes, once the backbones of most every blog on the internet, have been dying a slow death. I did a grand total of six last year, and half of those were in the first quarter. But every once in a while they pop up, so I thought I'd jump on the "Have You Experienced..." meme which I first saw at Badger Meets World, then again at Anyhoo... As always, to spare the meme-haters out there, I've dropped it in an extended entry.
Now back to a very busy week, already in progress...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
It's back to foggy, freezy, Central Washington for another edition of Bullet Sunday!
• Flying. No, I am not more nervous about flying after the emergency landing by US Airways into the Hudson River. Statistically speaking, flying is still one of the safest ways to travel, and one of the safest activities you can do, period. I am more nervous walking across the street while dumbasses are out there driving while being distracted by their mobile phones. And this is not idle speculation. I've lost count over the number of times somebody has nearly nailed me, my car, or my motorcycle because they were driving without paying attention. I'll take flying any day. Every day.
I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the obvious... everybody on that flight is still alive.
• Player. I don't have a lot of free time. What little free time I do have is spent in Animal Crossing...
Apparently I have nothing better to do with my personal life than this...
I don't know whether this is something to celebrate or apologize for. I owe myself a lot of apologies lately.
• Polaroid. Even in this age of digital photography... I still shoot film from time to time. There are things that digital cameras simply cannot capture in a way that the chemical reaction of film is able to. And one of the most fun ways of playing with film is the immediate satisfaction of a Polaroid instant film picture. Except Polaroid discontinued making instant film in June of last year. I find it kind of sad that future generations won't know the joy of it all. But, fortunately for everybody, The Impossible Project has come to save us. A group of Polaroid fans have purchased the manufacturing equipment from Polaroid, and signed a lease on an old Polaroid factory in the Netherlands. They anticipate producing new instant film for legacy Polaroid camera equipment starting 2010. I will be first in line to purchase some. If you'd like to show your support for the project, you can sign up for updates at their site.
• Trust. There is no substitute for an impartial, trusted review. None. When I am wanting to buy something, the first thing I do is research it on the internet... and completely disregard any glowing 100% positive reviews left by an untrusted source. This story about Belkin paying for positive reviews is why. It's far better to learn what problems people are having than what they are loving, because that's about the only thing guaranteed to be real. At some point, companies are going to have to fucking learn that you can't manipulate the internet and live to tell about it. In the age of blogs, the truth will prevail. Eventually. And, on that note, let me reiterate for anybody doing a Google search... The Hewlett-Packard B9180 printer is the biggest pile of shit I have ever owned... twice.
• Star Walk. For anybody with an iPod Touch or iPhone who has even a passing interest in stargazing or exploring the universe, you are in for a treat. Vito Technology has created a stunning piece of star map software called Star Walk.
I don't know whether to be more amazed that such a beautiful piece of software runs so amazingly well on my iPhone... or that they're only charging $4.99 to buy it! The zoomable interface is very elegant, and looks like this...
And, of course, you can switch to night-mode, which looks like this...
When you zoom in using the iPhone's multi-touch screen, details from the built-in celestial database begin to appear over stars, planets, galaxies, and deep space objects of interest (note the cool lens flare from the sun!)...
Tapping an object selects it. If you then tap the "info" button, it brings up relevant information in a very cool Star Trek "PADD" kind of interface, complete with nifty beeps and boops! The iPhone mute settings are respected, so sounds can be muted if you wish to explore in silence...
It's apps like this that make owning an iPhone so compelling. You can buy it from the iTunes Store here.
If only it wasn't completely overcast out so I could even look at the stars.
Except on my iPhone.
And in Animal Crossing, which is where I'm off to now...
'Tis once again time to unleash the bullets on this fine Sunday evening!
• Export. It's kind of an annual tradition for me to leave the country for my birthday. It started as a way to escape people wanting to throw me a party, but eventually just became habit (last year I went to Oslo). I had made a decision to skip this year and save the money, but eventually changed my mind. The crappy economy means airfare and hotels can be found cheaper, negating the horrendously shitty value of the US dollar abroad. It's still very expensive, but at least it doesn't require me to sell a kidney. The problem is that I only have a week, which really isn't enough time to explore any of my dream destinations like India or Australia, so where? Perhaps someplace I've been to before so there's no pressure to play tourist and I can just goof around for a few days...
• Dave Britain. And so Davedon and Davenburgh are on for March...
LONDON: I will be in London March 19-23rd & 25th. Since weekends seem to be easier for a blogger-meet, I'm thinking an early dinner on Saturday the 21st would be nice. If you'd rather meet up for lunch or dinner some other time, just let me know!
EDINBURGH: I will be in Edinburgh March 24-25 (UPDATE: This has been changed from the original Sunday date so as not to conflict with "Mothering Sunday" in the UK). I'm thinking we could have a blogger-meet after working hours on Tuesday the 24th.
If meeting up with some bloggers in either city sounds good to you, just drop me an email... my address is in the sidebar on every page!
• Twenty-Five. This weekend is the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh personal computer. I find it sweetly ironic that a fucktard like Michael Dell was trashing Apple publicly only a few years ago, saying that the company should close up shop and give their money back to the stockholders. You can hardly blame him though... with Apple out of the picture, his ugly-ass Dell computer crap wouldn't look so tragic by comparison. But thanks to continuing innovations with Mac OS X and their massive hits with iPods and iPhones, Apple is doing just fine. And trading about $80 higher per share than Dell. Many congratulations to my favorite fruit-themed computer company!
• OBAMA! I had been passing along a link to some hilarious products shots for the Obama Action Figure, and was dismayed to find that they've since been removed. Fortunately, I still have a few of them archived on my MacBook. I'm going to post them here so I won't lose them, because they're pretty bad-ass...
Seriously, wouldn't you feel better about having a president with ninja skills?
Obama getting ready to pop a cap in some Congressman's ass for not voting properly.
The Force is strong with Obama-Wan Kenobi!
A president who isn't afraid of taking care of bidness!
I wants me the Obama doll... but the DID Corporation site doesn't offer much help.
And thus concludes another Bullet Sunday. Next week my bullets will be fired from Germany, where hopefully I'll have donuts to blog about...
I'm pretty exhausted, so this Bullet Sunday may or may not make sense.
In other words, it's the same as every other day here at Blogography.
• Approval. If you were reading my blog last year around this time, you might remember Disapproving Man. He lived in a window I passed every time I walk to or from my hotel here in Cologne. On my way to work... he's there. Back from work... he's there. Out to dinner... he's there. He's always there. Always looking at me with that disapproving smirk, mocking me...
Well now Disapproving Man has been replaced by Disapproving WOMAN! Just look at her! She has that exact same smirk on her face...
What a bastard she is! I don't know how I'm going to survive her glare of judgement first thing every morning!
• Psychotic. You may also remember that last year I got an official Kölner Karneval scarf. I wore it even though there was a clown on the thing because it made me look totally hot...
This year the scarf is even more terrifying. The clown isn't just scary, he's psychotic-scary. And not psychotic-scary in a good way either... it's more of a "I eat baby kittens and light things on fire" kind of pedophile psychotic-scary...
• Parenthood. Last Wednesday while I was at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport waiting for my suitcase to arrive, I saw a baby trailing along behind her mother with a bottle in one hand, struggling to keep up. The mother wasn't paying attention because she was busy talking on her mobile phone. The baby wasn't too steady on her feet, and as she tried to move faster and faster to catch up with her mom, she lost her balance and face-planted on the floor. The mother turned around when she heard her baby crying, walked back to where she was, reached down and jerked her up by her arm, snatched the bottle off the floor, then proceeded to scream at the poor thing with "I'M ON THE PHONE!!"
Throughout the entire ordeal the only time she stopped talking on her mobile was to yell at her kid.
I was about as angry as I've ever been, and felt like shouting "SHE'S JUST A BABY AND DOESN'T UNDERSTAND YOUR SCREAMING YOU STUPID BITCH! TRY PAYING ATTENTION TO YOUR KID SO SHE DOESN'T KILL HERSELF TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH YOUR IGNORANT ASS!!!" And then I would have bitch-slapped the fucking idiot so hard her lips would have flown off. Why have a child if you're so self-absorbed that you aren't going to pay attention to it, then punish it for something that's your fault? Seriously. Mother of the year.
Anyway, after work today I wanted pizza, so I walked down Hohe Straße to get a slice from a shop I like there. It's Sunday, so most everything is closed, but I thought I'd walk around a bit anyways just to see what's new.
Once I got to the Lego Store, I turned around to head back, and noticed a man with a small child heading towards me. The little guy was trudging along like a champ as the father pointed out things in the shop windows for him to look at along the way. The man was very patient, taking small steps so the child could walk at a comfortable pace, and holding his hand the entire time.
It was hard not to compare this to my experience at the airport earlier this week, and it brought a smile to my face knowing that there are still parents out there who give a shit...
It reminds me of a line that Keanu Reaves has in the movie Parenthood which goes something like this... "You need a license to buy a dog or drive a car. Hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But any asshole can be a parent." How true it is.
• Shitty. I'd just like to state for the record that the SwissCom wireless I'm paying ridiculous money for is sucking copious amounts of ass. The signal completely drops out every 5 to 10 minutes, which is really inconvenient while you're trying to coordinate work with your computer back home. If it were free, I wouldn't have much cause to complain, but it's something like 17 Euros a night, which is over $20 in US money. That's pretty heinous, even when the service is flawless, but the fact that it's complete shit is almost too much to bear.
And, on that note, I'm going to re-connect to the internet (AGAIN) so I can upload this nonsense and get to bed.
Tomorrow, there may be candy...
This probably won't get posted until Monday given that I'm traveling all day, but oh well.
• Clueless. One of the comments I got when I had blogged about being in Mallorca and mentioned it had rained for a few hours that afternoon went something like this: "HA HA HA HA HOPE YOUR ENJOYING GETTIN DRUNCHED WITH RAIN IN SPAIN HA HA HA HA!" When stuff like this happens, I never know exactly how to interpret it, so I just delete the comment and that's the end of it. Except this time the person kept coming back again and again to leave the same comment, which I kept deleting. Finally I got an email from him saying "I think your comments are broken because mine aren't showing up." Uh huh. How do you email a clue?
• Comforted. For domestic flights, I usually get upgraded to First Class because I fly a lot and am special like that. But they don't upgrade you on international flights, which is where you'd most want to be upgraded because they're so darn long. Ten hours in a tiny seat squished next to another tiny seat is just not fun. Which brings me to my question of the day... exactly how small and unbearable can they make coach seats before they just end up strapping you to a milk crate? After an hour, you're hurting. After ten, you're praying for death. The seats are unbelievable uncomfortable, and should be banned under the Geneva Convention as a device of torture. I would gladly pay $100 extra to have even a small amount of personal space and a decent place to sit. Where is the airline that services the "PLEASE GOD LET THE HORROR OF AIRPLANE TRAVE END!" market?
• Robbed. On the plane-ride back to The States, one of the many movies playing in the entertainment system was The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. This is one of those polarizing films that you either love because it's so beautifully crafted and touching... or hate because it could be considered exploitative and simplistic. I love the film, and watched it again even though I had already seen it twice. Once it was over, I wondered for the thousandth time why the two lead actors, Asa Butterfield as Bruno and Jack Scanlon as Shmuel, were overlooked at the Oscars. Was it because they were kids? I dunno. Because, in all honesty, they easily had the two most powerful performances I've seen in a film all year. The movie was also one of the most beautifully shot, but it wasn't nominated for Best Cinematography either. Typical...
• Analog. Sorry, but Obama is getting off to a pretty shitty start with me. After our government has already delayed the transition from analog to digital television broadcasting for YEARS, we finally got a four-year deadline of February 17th, 2009 so all the feet-dragging citizens would have an incentive to join the 20th century. But then, thanks to Obama begging Congress to extend the deadline, it's been extended. I am so sick of this stupid shit. Like what... now they're going to set a NEW deadline saying "this time we really mean it" and expect people to take it seriously? Procrastinators are just going to keep ignoring the transition until they're televisions stop working. And that's what it's going to take... whether it's in one week or one year. SO MAKE THEIR FUCKING TELEVISIONS STOP WORKING! These delays are costing us millions and won't make any difference. If this "delay until it goes away" bullshit is indicative of how Obama is going to handle the infinitely more serious problems the USA is facing, we're all fucked. Politics as usual, I see.
And now I wait for my final connecting flight home.
At long last... Bullet Sunday at home. Imagine that!
&bull Dolly. Okay, I just have to get this out of the way... if the first issue of Joss Whedon's new series is any indication as to what we're in for... Dollhouse is going to suck total ass. This pains me greatly, because I have been looking forward to a new Whedon series forever. After Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and the amazing Firefly, he teased us with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which was sheer genius. It was as if he could not fail. But then along comes Dollhouse, which has to be one of the most boring hours of television I've ever suffered through. Eliza Dushku stars as lead "doll" Echo who had her mind wiped so she could be programmed with different personalities and training, which she then uses to undertake missions for a mysterious company. Now the premise... a hot girl who can become anybody to do a job... had definite possibilities. The reality? Boring. Boring. Boring. The most exciting action in the entire episode was when Dushku's character had an asthma attack. What the hell? I was wishing I had a Dollhouse mind-wipe half-way through the show. Things had better improve a lot in the next installment. Eliza is hot, but not hot enough to keep me watching a shitty, boring TV show...
• Snowy. It's been snowing all day. I am really, really tired of snow.
• Poopy. While I was in Mallorca, I saw this confusing sign...
I can't decide if he's waiting for something to come OUT of the dog so he can clean it up... or if he's going to put something UP the dog. Like a bottle of Goldschläger...
Poor doggie. That's just wrong.
• Snowy. It's been snowing all day. Have I mentioned that I am really, really tired of snow?
Now, for some inexplicable reason, I'm really tired (that almost never happens!) so I think I'll turn in early for bed.
Ever since I got over being sick, I've spent every waking minute getting caught up on work. Because of that, I don't have much for Bullet Sunday except some stuff I saw while I was confined to bed this past week...
• Guy. Just when you think that The Family Guy isn't very funny anymore, they have Peter's obscenely wealthy father-in-law invite Bill Gates to a party...
"Hey Bill, would you help me program my Zune? Oh... wait... I have an iPod, LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD!"
BWAH HA HA HAAAA! It's so funny because it's true!
• Mode. In preparation for the imminent release of Depeche Mode's new album Sounds of the Universe on April 21st, I've been watching all the production videos posted at their website. In one of them, I was pleasantly surprised to see a NO ON PROP 8 sign in the background...
I guess when Depeche Mode sings "People Are People" it's more than just words in a song to them...
So we're different colours and were different creeds,
And different people have different needs.
It's obvious you hate me though I've done nothing wrong,
I've never even met you so what could I have done?
I can't understand what makes a man hate another man,
Help me understand.
People are people so why should it be,
You and I should get along so awfully?
• Mode2. In other DM news, the disturbing video for the first single, Wrong, has been released. Since MTV doesn't play music videos anymore, here it is...
• Shop. As if it wasn't enough that Depeche Mode has a new album coming out, The Pet Shop Boys are also releasing a new album, Yes, on March 23rd. A very cool video for their first single, Love, Etc., has also been released...
And, in case you missed their awesome appearance at The Brit Awards with a guest appearance by Brandon Flowers from The Killers, here's that as well...
I have no idea what Chris was thinking with that stupid pink wig, but the performance was brilliant.
• Dollies. Three episodes in, and I am still not much of a fan of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. It's surprisingly boring. About the only thing that will have me tuning in again next week is the final 15 seconds of the show, which was kind of a WTF? moment. Everything else? Boring. Or infuriating. Mostly because there's one character on the show who drives me bat-shit insane... the tech guy "Topher"...
I think what Joss was going for was a character like "Xander" from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. He was kind of geeky-nerdy, but in an entertaining and lovable way that complimented the rest of the cast. Overall a great addition to the show...
But instead what we got was a retread of "Marshall" from Alias. A "genius" who somehow manages to be a complete fucking dumbass at the same time. He acts stupid. He talks stupid. He's a whiny annoyance whose only benefit on the show is to give you somebody to want dead...
As if that tired cliche wasn't bad enough, Whedon recycled Agent Fox Mulder from the X-Files to create Agent Paul Ballard. In order to make the character sympathetic to the audience, Ballard is a brilliant lone wolf whose obsession with the Dollhouse makes him an object of ridicule by other FBI agents. But here's the problem... the audience already knows Ballard is right and the Dollhouse exists, so the humiliation of the character is pointless. It doesn't make the character any more sympathetic, it makes the FBI out to be an agency of total morons. Ballard is obviously very good at his job, so where are the agents saying "Hey, Paul, any luck tracking down this Dollhouse thing? Anything I can do to help?" Too logical, I guess. In interviews, Tahmoh Penikett says it takes 5 or 6 episodes for the show to find its footing... I hope the show isn't cancelled before then. Because with Alan Tudyk (Wash!) set to play the rogue Dollhouse killer "Alpha," better days seem to be just around the corner. At least I hope so, because Dollhouse is sucking ass so far.
And now... I'm off to finish up re-reading Watchmen for the hundredth time. Because, weather permitting, I'll be seeing the movie this Friday and I want to make sure I have the source material fresh in my head.
Another Bullet Sunday. Another desperate scramble to get a blog entry written so I can attack another item on my to-do list...
• ACTA. To say that I am disappointed in the Obama Administration for their draconian secrecy surrounding the "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" is an understatement. I am thoroughly disgusted. So much for "transparency in government." The potential for misuse of ACTA is truly frightening, and yet nobody seems to care. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Not that I'd expect anything better from a McCain Administration, but Obama is the one who made all those transparency promises.
• United Kingdom. Tomorrow I'll be making lanyards for the meet-ups in London and Edinburgh... so time is running out to get on the list! If you're going to be in London on Saturday, March 21st or Edinburgh on Tuesday, March 24th, please email Dave Spice ASAP! (my email address is in the sidebar)...
• Blogiversary. The economy woes are really wrecking havoc with the plans I've got going for my kick-ass Blogiversary VI Celebration coming this April. One company raised their prices substantially mid-way through development. Another company who was working on what would have been my most favorite prize item ever disappeared off the face of the earth this past week. I was concerned when emails and phone calls stopped being returned. I was worried when the phone was disconnected. But I was freaking out when I finally made contact with a neighboring business and was told that the offices had been abandoned. The deposit I made to start the project was relatively small, so losing my money isn't my major concern. No, coming up with something new to replace it is the thing that troubles me. It's crushing to have your dreams dashed by factors outside your control.
• Postcard. Ooh! My postcard from Lynne arrived! And it's got a cool Orang Utan on it...
• Bailed. Am I the only one who thinks that somebody needs to be shot in the balls every time I hear the word "bailout" and "executive bonuses" in the same sentence? Seriously... shotgun to the fucking testicles (or ovaries, for the XY-challenged).
And now it's time to get back to work for a few hours. My time until takeoff to the United Kingdom is rushing by...
Let's see how this goes when I'm doped up on Percocet, the miracle drug...
• Drugs. I am totally fascinated how I can be in agony one minute, take a pill, then feel nothing a half-hour later. How does it do that? Well, thanks to the internet, I now know that the ingredients in Percocet both prevent the brain from getting the message that there is pain, AND prevents the pain impulses from forming in the first place. Weird. All this miraculous science, and yet they still don't have a pill to cure stupid.
• McFlurry. As I returned from Edinburgh, I saw that McDonalds had a sign up advertising their new "Cadbury Cream Egg McFlurry." Naturally, I had to try it. The end result wasn't that impressive...
From the looks of things, they drop in some chocolate flake (which was mostly all stuck together in mine) then squirt in some random dots of yellow goop to make the "yolk" of the egg. At times, you actually get the cream egg taste... but, for the most part, it's just vanilla ice cream with an occasional chocolate bit. A great idea that pretty much fails on execution.
• No. The release date for the Pet Shop Boys' new album, Yes, was March 23rd in the UK... nearly a full month earlier than the USA release date of April 21st. In this day and age of online music sharing, this is profoundly idiotic. Whenever I see stupid crap like this, it makes me wonder if record labels are actively trying to lose money. HELPFUL HINT TO THE RECORDING INDUSTRY: If your customers don't have a way of purchasing what they want, they do have other options... most of which don't involve you getting any money.
• Yes. Since I was in the UK on release day, I was able to buy a copy of the Deluxe 2-CD Edition of Yes from the HMV at Victoria Station...
Yes is a fantastic album that is my favorite Pet Shop Boys releases since 1993's Very. The penultimate track, "The Way It Used To Be", is one of the best songs they've ever released (having that "melancholy yet hopeful" feel to it that the Pet Shop Boys excel at). The only misstep is the final track "Legacy" which is so awful that one has to wonder if they put it on the album as a joke. The second CD of the Deluxe version has mostly remixes, but there's also a new track called "This Used to be The Future" which features additional vocals by Phil Oakey (from the Human League), and is well worth the extra money. If you're a Pet Shop fan, this album is a must-buy. If you're not, you may still want to give it a listen, because it's a pretty amazing pop album.
• Thanks! And lastly, a big thank you to everybody who so generously gave up their valuable time to hang out with me while I was in the UK. It was fantastic to see all of you... Perry, Andre, Penelope, Dutchy, Dave, Bec, Anthony, Paul, and Andy... and hopefully we can meet up again one day soon!
Blargh. Another hour of work, then I need a nap.
To those who celebrate (or just like bunnies and chocolate) Happy Easter on this fine Bullet Sunday!
• Eggo. For Boiled Egg Day this year, I'm guest-blogging over at Hilly-Sue's place. I'd go there immediately, because it's far more interesting than anything you'll find here (though I've now archived the post in an extended entry).
• Apples. Knowing that Apple can be so good at so many things, it always shocks me at the regularity of their massive failures. Today I wanted to buy a couple of iPhone apps at their iTunes Music Store. But no matter which of my FOUR credit cards I tried, it always tells me that the "Security Code is Incorrect." And, of course, I can't find a phone number to call and get it straightened out. Instead I have to root around their website for twenty minutes until I find an email form. Epic Fail...
• Dolls. After waiting through a half-dozen shitastically horrible and altogether boring episodes of Dollhouse I prepared myself for "good" episodes that everybody said would follow. Well, here we are at episode #9 and it's still a boring pile of crap. And that's being generous, because it's also one of the most annoying shows on television... all because of tech-nerd dumbass "Topher" who has to be one of the worst characters ever unleashed on television...
Seriously... I never thought anything could top David Caruso's gag-inducing "Horatio Cane" on CSI: Miami, but here we are. "Topher" has convinced me that genius show-runner Joss Whedon has either A) Completely lost his mind, or B) Is actually a total genius who is intentionally making Topher a whiny, annoying, bumbling tool so he can add a major twist to the show by ultimately revealing that Topher's character is a complete sham, and "Topher" is actually the man behind the entire Dollhouse organization (or something equally shocking). In any case, I spend every minute Topher is on screen wishing that he would die and take this awful excuse for a television show with him. Joss Whedon's speciality is writing deep, fully-realized and complex characters that interact in utterly fascinating group dynamics. Dollhouse features none of these strengths, giving us erasable, shallow, interchangeable characters that don't interact in any way that's even remotely interesting. Perhaps he's planning on eventually getting this show to a place where it's worth watching, but he's taking way to long to get there and I don't feel like being tortured anymore. BRING BACK SERENITY!!!
• Cupid. It is well documented here that my favorite show ever to air on television was Cupid, starring Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall. Thanks to gross mishandling by ABC, the show was never given a chance to find an audience, and it was brutally and unfairly canceled. Sad, yes, but show creator Rob Thomas went on to create Veronica Mars, the second greatest show ever to air on television, so I eventually managed to grieve and move on. Except when it was announced that Rob Thomas was being given a second shot at launching Cupid, but this time without Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall. Going in, I knew it wouldn't approach the greatness of the original, but I held faith it would at least be good television. It's Rob Thomas, after all. Unfortunately, after suffering through two episodes, I find that the re-imagined copy falls flat. The two leads never even come close to the energetic interplay and chemistry that Paula and Jeremy had. Furthermore, Jeremy Piven infused Trevor with a sense of wonder that made it seem as if he might really BE Roman god of love, Cupid, newly stranded on earth... whereas Bobby Cannavale just seems like a slightly creepy scammer who is pretending to be imagining to be Cupid for some unknown purpose. Sarah Paulson (who was great on Studio 60) seems to be playing Claire completely passionless and emotionally void, which defeats the purpose of her character. Please, please, please, PLEASE won't somebody release the brilliant original series on DVD?!? Or, even if you don't want to go to that kind of expense, could you at LEAST release in on iTunes so people can buy it digitally? The show is entirely too important to be left sitting on a shelf somewhere...
• Cougar. And since I'm on a television kick here... JUST when I think that television can't get any more stupid, here comes a new piece of reality show shit called The Cougar where an older woman gets to weed through a bunch of younger guys "Bachelor-style" until she finds her "true love." I wonder how much these people get paid to whore their lovelife out for television entertainment? And I definitely use the word "entertainment" loosely...
And now I should really do something about my taxes. I think they're due soon.
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It's a beautiful day this Bullet Sunday... which I spent indoors working my ass off and re-watching Veronica Mars on DVD. Man how I miss that show.
• Follow Me. What am I missing with the whole "FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER" deal? It seems everyone and their dog is whoring themselves out to get more followers in the social media game and I don't understand why. Ashton Kutcher has been all over the place with his march to a million followers, but but seeing an ad for him on a local billboard while I was driving into Wenatchee the other day shocked the hell out of me...
For a Hollywood star with movies to promote and stuff to sell, I get it. You want to be relevant in a whole new realm of influence with the populace. But everyday average people? What do they get out of it? Who cares how many followers you have? Will my life suddenly become more fabulous if I get a thousand followers? Oh well, 95% of the stuff on Twitter is crap or spam anyway. The more the merrier.
&bull Dumbass Quotient. Speaking of Twitter spam... are people so fucking stupid that they are still clicking on links for generic viagra and penis enlargers and other moronic crap? I'd imagine they are, because why else would spammers waste their time of something that doesn't work? It's getting to the point where I can't even blame spammers anymore... they're just trying to make a buck. It's the total dumb-fucks that actually buy stuff from spammers that are the real problem. If people weren't so astronomically brain-dead as to make spamming profitable, we wouldn't have a problem. I just loathe these stupid-ass people who fuck up the internet for the rest of us... they shouldn't even BE on the internet in the first place.
&bull Undead Poultry. LeSombre nominated me for a Zombie Chicken award, which comes with all kinds of rules you have to follow. Since I'm not much of an award guy and didn't follow any of them, I am expecting to be attacked by zombified poultry any minute now...
• On Film. With all the flying I've been doing lately, I've been watching quite a few movies. I even made it to the theater on Friday, which was the second time this year! Monsters vs. Aliens - So good it's good. Crank 2: High Voltage - So bad it's good. The Spirit - So bad it's bad. Twilight - So very bad it's horrendous. The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008) - So far beyond bad that we need to come up with new words to describe just how fucking awful this piece of shit "remake" is. There are some great-looking flicks coming up but, given my luck lately, I'm a little bit afraid to go see them.
• Flame War. In general, I find "humor" sites to be pretty much hit-or-miss. But every once in a while I come across something so incredibly genius that I can't help but link to it. College Humor has a brilliant parody of the Billy Joel song We Didn't Start The Fire called We Didn't Start The Flame War (language makes this one not quite safe for work). Once I got past the hilariousness of the video, I kept watching again and again because of how frickin' beautiful the animation is. All the words come alive as they hit the screen, and somebody put in a lot of time to make that happen. Not bad for a humor video...
But it's the inclusion of the ROFL COPTER that seals the deal...
And now it's back to work. I should be able to go for another hour before dropping into a coma.
It's a full-blown epidemic edition of Bullet Sunday!
• Mapping. Ooh! I almost forgot that I've got another state checked off my Travel Map! Now there's only North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma left to go. One of these years I'm going to have to just bite the bullet, fly into Fargo, get a one-way car rental, drive down to Tulsa, then fly home. Allowing for a one-day detour to Mount Rushmore, I could do it in three or four days. One more thing to add to my list.
• Jacked. The annual Apple Blossom Festival came to town this weekend. And, while I gave up on celebrating the event a long time ago, there's still one Apple Blossom tradition I feel compelled to embrace... CRACKER JACKS!!!
But something has gone terribly wrong. Right on the front of the bag, it asks you to guess what the surprise might be inside. When I was younger and Cracker Jack had awesome prizes, I might have had a shot at this. Maybe it would be a little plastic truck. Or a magnifying glass. Or even a book of sweet ink tattoos. But TODAY? All the prizes they give out are shit...
Now, please tell me how the fuck could I have ever guessed a "pencil topper" that's nothing but a piece of slotted paper with a crappy drawing of cartoon bees on it? NOTE TO CRACKER JACK COMPANY: A PENCIL TOPPER WOULD GO ON TOP OF THE PENCIL. THIS IS A FUCKING PENCIL SLIDER. Or whatever...
• Chuks. My post from Thursday was half-way understood by half the people commenting on it. While it's probably a mistake to try and explain what goes on in my head, I'll give it a shot...
In the cinematic masterpiece, Dune (directed by über-genius David Lynch), there's a big battle at the end where the oppressed Fremen warriors rise up against the Galactic Emperor by riding giant worms into a sneak attack...
In addition to mowing down soldiers with their giant worms, the Fremen also have a sound-activated guns called a "weirding modules." When they scream certain sounds, the guns shoot out a pretty blast of light that blows shit up...
When I saw the film in the theater waaaayyy back in 1984, it was at our shitty local cinema which has horrible sound. Every time the Fremen screamed into their weirding module, I could have sworn that they were saying "INYUK CHUK!" Starting with Rachel, the replicant from Bladerunner...
And Captain Jean Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation...
And, of course, the Cosmic Messiah of the Dune Universe Himself, Muad Dib...
Now, as everybody knows, "INYUK CHUK" is the phrase that Apache Chief on the Super Friends uses to grown into a big man and battle crime. Since Muad Dib has super powers, I kept expecting him to grow into a giant and start kicking some ass...
Super-sweet Apache Chief custom action figure by Iron Cow.
How frackin' awesome would THAT have been?
• Yikes. Speaking of Dune, isn't Alia the freakiest character ever to appear in in a movie?
• Humor. There's a lot of reason to love Star Wars (well, the originals, not the shitty prequels). And one of my favorites is how LucasFilm has no problem poking fun at the franchise. Not only by allowing others to take a shot at Star Wars parody (like the recent brilliance by Family Guy and Robot Chicken)... but the wonderful way they make fun of themselves. If you're a fan, StarWars.com has some beautiful posters for Disney's "Star Wars Weekends" on display. Here's two, but there are many more that are well worth checking out...
And now it's time for dinner. I'll be having rice tacos tonight. RICE TACOS WITH CHEESE!
It's a heatstroke edition of Bullet Sunday!
• Weather. I wish I handled the heat better. As it is, Summer is a season of misery for me. My only consolation is that I handle the cold of Winter even worse. I'm still searching for a magical place where it's Springtime year 'round.
• EMS. It's National Emergency Medical Services Week this week! Many thanks to those who devote their lives to helping others...
• Hawkes. I'm freakish in that when I hear a song I immediately associate it with any movie or television it might have appeared in. While watching the latest episode of Graham Norton, Chesney Hawkes made a surprise appearance to sing his biggest hit The One and Only (which, so far as I know, was his one and only hit). This immediately made me want to grab my Doc Hollywood DVD off the shelf and watch it for the hundredth time (Chesney plays over the opening credits). I love cinema "comfort food"... those films you've seen so often that you can just melt away in them...
One of the (many) amazing things about this movie (other than seeing Julie Warner naked) is that Michael J. Fox was given his Parkinson's Disease diagnosis shortly before filming. He made the entire film after receiving about the worst news you could get health-wise, and yet you'd never know it. On top of being a good actor, he's a total professional. I wonder how many other Hollywood actors could have done the same?
• Courtesy. A couple months ago my credit card number was stolen and I had to cancel my card. My mobile service at AT&T didn't bother to contact me when they couldn't bill the old card... but they were absolutely kind enough to send me an email notifying me that I'm being turned over to collection when they failed two times in a row. I don't get it. Obviously they have me email address... why not notify me of the problem when they first ran into trouble? Why wait until it's a big mess before they do anything? This is stupid on a level of stupid that transcends stupid. It's almost as if they want their customers to fail to pay their bills. Maybe they like charging late payment fees? I dunno. Sure makes for incredibly shitty customer service though.
And now I'm going to go back to sitting on my air conditioner.
Sometimes, one is all it takes...
Yargh. I have to get ready for my flight back to Seattle, so I suppose this will have to be a quickie Bullet Sunday!
• My Happiest Moments at ConFab... That would be all the people showing me they had the Ask Dave! app installed on their iPhone. Somebody (sorry, I don't remember who!) suggested that I do one of my "Behind the Scenes" entries about the app, which is a great idea. I'll try to find time for that later this week.
• My Scariest Moment at ConFab... That would be when Becky whipped a knife out to cut apart the tattoos. Note to self: Becky is totally prepared to cut a bitch for reals, so it is probably best not to piss her off...
• My Ego-Crushing Moment at ConFab... That would be when Hilly-Sue went around dubbing people cool enough to hang out with her. ..
I was never dubbed cool enough. =sob!= I choose to believe it's because I am so totally awesome that such a thing would be redundant.
• My Best Conversation at ConFab... Somebody had remarked that they wanted to use Karl's picture of his ass as their iPhone desktop background because it says "kiss it!," and they could flash it as needed to people who piss them off. Oddly enough, since Karl took the photo with his iPhone, it's perfectly sized...
Later that evening...
(POLICE CAR SIREN GOES BY)
DAVE: Quick, hide the drugs!
GUY ACROSS THE DECK: We have drugs?
DAVE: I think somebody brought heroin, but they forgot the surgical tubing so nobody got to shoot up.
HILLY-SUE: We could just snort it.
DAVE: But this table has holes in it! (it was wire patio furniture).
HILLY-SUE: Use your iPhone!
DAVE: But then I'd be snorting heroin off of Karl's ass!
The Twitter stream is even better...
My Coolest Moment at ConFab... That would be watching Mr. Shiny belt out Meredith Brook's "Bitch" during karaoke and totally owning it...
• My Most Uncomfortable Moment at ConFab... That would be the massive bathtub in my hotel room at the DoubleTree Suites. I suppose it's cool if you were going to start up the whirlpool bath, but taking a shower in it is a very lonely experience...
Hmmm... that doesn't really show how huge this thing is. Here's a baby elephant in that same tub...
And here's the Statue of Liberty...
• My Greatest Thing To Happen That Wasn't at ConFab... That would be this past week when Betty White appeared on Jimmy Fallon and ended up playing beer pong with him. It only confirms that Betty White is one of the coolest people on earth...
And now I supposed I should iron a shirt and take a shower or something. Goodbye Kentucky!
It's yet another Bullet Sunday on Monday extravaganza! A happy belated Father's Day to everybody.
• Bedridden. Yesterday I finally got around to doing what I should have done when I wrecked my back last week... I stayed in bed all day in an attempt to let it heal up a bit. This was a last resort, because I'm so buried in work that I can't see daylight, but I think it was worth it. I managed to get some sleep, and this morning was the first time I haven't woken up in agony. If only I could get paid for staying in bed all day.
• Finger. While my ankle and head are back to normal, my finger will be messed up for at least two months. According to Google, the only treatment is to keep it in a splint at all times so that it can heal straight. Luckily, the human brain can adapt to new situations fairly quickly. I'm typing at almost full-speed because my middle and pinky fingers have taken over the keys my mangled finger used to type. About the only time I feel handicapped is when I write or draw because the splint gets in the way. I've ordered a "new & improved" splint which is smaller and more hi-tech, so hopefully that will help. I'm tired of people thinking I'm "special" when I try to sign my name.
• Alice. The first images from Tim Burton's live-action adaptation of Alice in Wonderland are burning up the internet, and with good reason... they look amazing. Rich and vibrant with a kind of dark and twisted slant, I can only hope that this is indicative of how Burton is approaching the material, because it's genius...
• Typographical. Knowing my interest in Scotland, my dad let me borrow his copy of Scotland by Magnus Magnusson. The book itself is a pretty good read, but every time I pick it up I want to toss it in a wood-chipper. Can you guess why?
It's the idiotic lettering in the book title! This is Magnusson's master work on "SCOTLAND," but the title reads more like "SC O TL A ND" because whomever is responsible for the design of the cover doesn't know how to kern type...
What a shame. Just ten seconds of futzing to even out the spacing gives a much easier read with Scotland AS ONE WORD...
Tragic disrespect for type is all around us, and it drives me bat-shit insane. The latest travesty is the re-branding of Microsoft's "Live Search" to the even more stupidly-named "bing." Ultimately, I don't give a crap what Microsoft wants to call it... but there's nothing so compelling about their search engine that's going to have me switch from saying "Google That Shit!" to "Bing That Shit!" (or whatever). No... what pisses me off is that whomever designed the logo decided to stretch it out to ridiculous lengths...
The grotesque distortion of the letterforms looks absurd. A good take on the horror of it all can be found over at Brand New.
• Lastly, because everybody needs a boost (but mostly because Brian Papa told me to), I'm passing along a new site to check out called CheerUpNation...
And now I suppose I'd better get up so I can get ready for work. Fun and excitement await...
Another week. Another Bullet Sunday. And this one seems to be inspired by how the vast information available on the internet seems to cause a chain of events from one thing to another.
• LEGO Chain. This started with me getting the latest LEGO catalog in the mail and seeing that they've come up with a third series of Space Police sets. I've been a fan of LEGO since I was very young, but it was when they released the original Space Police that I became insane over those little plastic bricks. What's so amazing is how LEGO keeps innovating and improving on the concept. This time around they've put a real effort into making the minifigs drive the series. The little alien criminals have to be the cutest LEGOs ever...
Clockwise: Frenzy, Kranxx, Skull Twin, and Squidman.
Photos taken from the awesome shots at No Onion's Flickr Set
Space Police then led to video games when I saw that the catalog also featured an advertisement for their latest effort, LEGO Battles. It seems to be a Real-Time Strategy game that's geared for a younger gamer. Or a gamer like me who loves LEGO video games so much that they'll buy anything that comes out...
I don't know anything about the game play, but the trailer makes me want to buy it immediately...
LEGO Battles led to me remember that I had bought LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Batman games for my Wii months ago, but had never even opened the boxes! The last game I had played was LEGO Star Wars, which was ten shades of awesome, so I decided to rip them open and give them a try. As expected, they were absolutely amazing and a lot of fun. Sadly, I don't have time for games, or I could have spent all day playing...
As a major Batman fan, LEGO Batman is a huge favorite. The puzzles are really good, and some of them quite challenging as you attempt to find all the game's secrets. But they don't stop there... not only do you get to play as all the Bat Heroes (including Batgirl!) you can then replay the levels from the villain's perspective! Sweet! A pity the iPhone version isn't nearly as good.
This then led me to wonder which LEGO property would be getting a video game next. Spider-Man? Superman? Nope. Turns out it's LEGO Harry Potter, Years 1-4 coming in 2010. I don't even like Harry Potter, but the trailer has me wanting it...
This led me to wish that they would expand the games outside of licensed properties and explore some of the LEGO favorites like LEGO Pirates and LEGO Space Police... how awesome would that be? Guess I'll have to settle for LEGO Rock Band...
• Hollywood Chain. This all started with a tweet by Kevin Smith...
Since Kevin Smith interviews and Kevin Smith talks are about as entertaining as it gets, this immediately grabbed my attention. I didn't even know Kevin Pollak had an internet chat show.
Which led to Kevin Pollak's site. Where I noticed his previous guest was ILLEANA DOUGLAS!! I love Illeana Douglas! She always manages to pop up just when I least expect it, and usually ends up stealing the show. My favorite character of hers would have to be child star turned prostitute turned Hollywood movie executive Wendy Ward in Action! but she's great in everything...
Her interview wsa very interesting (and very long!) but led me to her latest project which, believe it or not, is a series of shorts for IKEA called Easy to Assemble starring Illeana as "herself"... trying to leave Hollywood behind and lead a "normal life" by working at IKEA...
This led me to visiting the IKEA site so I could see if they started making those DVD shelves I like again, but they aren't on the site. This is a major bummer, because I can't even remember the IKEA name of the unit so I can call and ask if the store in Seattle has it. Best. DVD. Shelf. Ever. And I need more.
This led me to wondering when Watchmen was coming out on DVD. Turns out the Blu-Ray Director's Cut will hit on July 25th...
This led me to remember that the Blog-Her conference is on July 25th in Chicago. This led me to wonder if Chicago television show My Boys had been renewed for a fourth season (according to The Futon Critic it hasn't yet). Which led me to wonder if they had at least released the second season of My Boys on DVD (they haven't). Which led me to wanting my IKEA shelves all over again.
• Bloggign Chain. This morning I learned that OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD TV PITCH-MAN BILLY MAYS HAD DIED. This led me to look back at my blog entry about him from back in 2007...
This led me to remember that it was Bullet Sunday, and I should probably write my entry for the day. So here I am. REST IN PEACE BILLY MAYS!!!
Ooh! I almost forgot about Bullet Sunday!
• Click!
• Click!
• Click!
Meh. It's a holiday weekend. I'm empty and can't find any bullets to shoot. I'll try to reload before next Sunday.
In news that surprises even me, my head hasn't totally exploded. That makes Bullet Sunday a bit easier...
• Eventful. In catching up with my mail, I discovered that I was invited to a kind of important event. It's one of those things where I have no idea how my name ever got on the guest list, and am certain that if I showed up that they would realize they made a terrible mistake and kick me out immediately. Fortunately, I won't have to risk having my ego crushed... I can't attend because I'm already scheduled for something else that weekend. Probably just as well. I couldn't really blog about it, so what's the point?
• Phooey. Speaking of pointless... Hong Kong Phooey as a live-action movie? Seriously?!? Nobody could come up with anything better to film than this? I'd say that Hollywood is now officially out of ideas.
• Characters. Speaking of Hollywood, it's kind of odd how small it really is. After a while you notice how the same actors keep popping up over and over again in shows and movies. Two of my favorites are Tim Guinee (from Strange World) and Margaret Colin (from Now and Again). They're everywhere...
Tim Guinee photo from Facebook. Margaret Colin photo from LIFE.
It's shocking that these two have never managed to do a project together. They appear in so many things that I suppose it's inevitable... probably as a Lifetime Television movie or something. Even so, I'd watch that.
• Shock. Speaking of shocking... how is it that I am still discovering 80's music? Groups like Blancmange and China Crisis completely escaped my notice back in the day, and I have no idea how. Oh well. It's kind of cool to be finding them now, because it's music that's all new to me...
• Battles. Speaking of new... I know that all the LEGO video games are made for kids, but I still like them. LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Batman, and LEGO Indiana Jones are all basically the same game with different scenery, but they're still a lot of fun to play. Now LEGO has entered the Real Time Strategy game genre with LEGO Battles for Nintendo DS. It's a drastically simplified version of RTS games like Warcraft and Starcraft, but still has enough going on to be entertaining...
The characters change depending on whether you're playing Castle, Pirates, or Space scenarios, but it's basically the same game over and over. Using builders to stock supplies so you can build soldiers to defeat enemies. It gets repetitive but still manages to keep me wanting to move forward to see what's going to happen next. About the only thing that I'd change would be to smarten up the AI that drives the characters. All too often they take wrong turns and get stuck, which means a big chunk of your time is spent herding LEGO mini-figures around. This gets to be really frustrating after a while, and it's so prevalent a problem that it's shocking nobody in development fixed it. Oh well. Until the totally awesome Warlords II FINALLY comes out for DS, I guess this is about as good as it gets.
And now I suppose I should go to bed... seeing as how it's midnight and I have to be up in five hours.
I am not fond of Mondays.
I didn't get any sleep last night, so this will undoubtably be a barely coherent edition of Bullet Sunday...
• Discriminated. Everybody is discriminated against at some point. And some people definitely get it worse than others. And while I'm sure progress is being made every day, every once in a while I hear something so outrageous that it makes me question if we've not reached a point where that progress is running backwards. Today was one of those days, because I received an email from a friend who filled me in on his recent bout with discrimination. It's all at once disgusting and disappointing, made even more so because he has no recourse. I have faith that eventually the human race can live together without prejudice. We have to, or we perish. But that day keeps getting further and further away to me, and I can't help but feel overwhelming sadness because of it.
• Bear TV. I want this...
Awww... It's a television that you can snuggle with after you're done watching him!
• Disc. In the continuing effort to convert my analogue life into digital 1's and 0's, I've been having all my old photo negatives and paper pictures scanned. I'm probably 80% there. The problem is that it's going to be a long road to reaching 100%. Some media, in particular 110 Black & White negatives and Kodak's infamously crappy Disc Film, are really expensive to have done right...
I don't know why I ever bought into the technology. Probably because the camera was so small and easy to load. Unfortunately, those conveniences necessitated tiny negatives which produced crappy photos. I only used the stupid thing for less than two years, but they were two very important years... Thus my junior year of high school: Disc. My first trip to New Orleans: Disc. My senior year of high school: Disc. Fortunately my parents bought me a 35mm Canon A-1 for graduation so I was set after that. But right now... my past belongs to Disc. Will digital be forever?
• Pushed. When I read about a movie that features super-powered psychics battling it out in Hong Kong... well... it's not like I can pass that up. I didn't even bother to look at the reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes, I just add it to my NetFlix queue and watched it when the DVD arrived. Only to discover that it's one of the stupidest, most needlessly incoherent and incomprehensible messes I've ever seen. The entire film was nothing more than a set up for a sequel, but it sucked so horrendously bad that there probably isn't going to be a sequel. That leaves us with a half-finished disaster that's sometimes pretty to look at, but has paper-thin characters and a patchwork story that ends up being a pale imitation of Scanners. When the hell are filmmakers going to understand that you make the best movie you can... THEN worry about a sequel? The sad thing here is that the concept is so cool. But this piece of EPIC FAIL! will undoubtedly kill any hope of a great film of this kind being made for quite a while.
And that will have to be it for this edition of Bullet Sunday... I don't think I can make it through two nights in a row without sleep.
I keep hearing loud explosions... like fireworks... except when I look out my hotel room window I don't see anything. It's very disconcerting. It would be just my luck that Spokane is experiencing a terrorist attack or something.
That would be a Bullet Sunday first.
• Past. For those who didn't believe me during Blogathon, yes, I did have long hair at one time (and this wasn't even the longest it ever got, because it was well past my shoulders at one point)...
• Present. With your help, we Blogathoners over at Therapy in the Making raised $585 for Doctors Without Borders! Thanks so much to all of you who supported us and cheered us on! We even got a shout-out on the front page of the Blogathon site because Colin and I were wearing ridiculous things on our head to get people to donate! Who's the pretty pretty princess blogger now...
• Future. And here are the next three months of my life...
And though I have a lot of other bullets I could add, I have to finish up some work before getting up very, very early in the morning. Hopefully I can get a couple hours sleep in-between.
UPDATE: It was fireworks after all. After Googling That Shit, I found out it was the "Royal Fireworks Concert" at the Lilac Bowl. I had a pretty good view from my hotel balcony...
It's Bullet Sunday from a rain-soaked location somewhere in Central Georgia!
• Heat. I'd rather be too hot than too cold. So you'd think that Georgia in the middle of summer would be like a dream come true for me. But it's not. I am getting really tired of sweating my ass off every time I have to go outside. In that respect, Central Georgia is no different than Central Washington, because we've been breaking 100° on a regular basis there. It's just that when I work here I have to go outside a lot more often than I do back home. Back home I sit in an air-conditioned office all day long and my ass stays intact. Which begs the question... why has nobody invented air-conditioned underwear? I find it sad that we can put a man on the moon, but can't solve the sweaty ass dilemma. Apparently, science is dead.
• Davelanta 3. As I had mentioned last night, the latest installment of the annual Davelanta blogger meet was a lot of fun, and everybody seemed to have a good time. Still can't believe that I get to meet such amazing people everywhere I go...
Just like I promised, here's a roll call of the fine people who were kind enough to spend their valuable time hanging out with me (taken from my DaveEvents Page)...
I've marked all Davelanta 2008 Alumni with an asterisk. If Mentally Rehearsed hadn't already made plans for the weekend, we would have been at a 100% repeat from last year, which speaks volumes as to how much fun a blogger meet can be. If you ever have the opportunity to go to one, I encourage you to drop everything and do so!
• Magic. Tonight while I was eating dinner, my waiter cleared the table next to mine and was taking a pile of dirty dishes back to the kitchen. As he was walking, a napkin blew off the top of the stack and slowly started to float to the floor behind his back. When the waiter noticed this, he stopped and lifted his left leg up behind him... caught the napkin on his foot... rotated his foot around front with the napkin still sitting on it... reached down and grabbed the napkin... then put his foot back down on the ground and continued walking to the kitchen as if nothing had happened. It was like a magic trick of some kind, and I felt like breaking out in applause after witnessing such beautiful visual poetry in motion. After paying my check and exiting the restaurant, I tripped over my own feet and very nearly came crashing down in the parking lot. Irony... it's what's for dinner.
• Classy. Language evolves. As an example, "awful" used to mean "full of awe" and was used much like how we use the word "awesome" in modern times. But the word evolved until it now means "something bad or unpleasant." In other words, "awful" currently has the exact opposite meaning that it used to have. This is a rather drastic example, but you get the point. ANYWAY... the word "classy" used to mean "wealthy and educated." Over time it came to mean "stylish in looks." Then it evolved further until it could also meant "stylish in behavior." In other words, you no longer need to be wealthy or educated in order to be considered "classy." And while I am sure that being wealthy makes it easier to be classy, it's certainly no guarantee. From my experience, it's just the opposite. My favorite example is flying First Class, which is filled with self-important, self-entitled, embarrassingly abusive assholes who have zero class... vs. flying Coach, which is less comfortable, but filled with a better class of people (probably because you're all bonding over mutual suffering?). I don't really have a point here, it's just something I felt like blathering on about as I confirmed my First Class upgrade for my flight home on Tuesday.
And, on that happy note, I think I will try to take a power-nap so I will have the strength to go back to work in an hour. Staying up for 20 hours straight after four hours sleep has done nothing for my mental health.
After two weeks of non-stop travel torture, I'd like nothing better than to take a handful of pills and sleep all day. But we can't have that... it's Bullet Sunday!
• Violence. I was deeply saddened to hear of the bomb attacks on the wonderful island of Mallorca. Having fallen in love with the place earlier this year, it's a nasty reality check... much like the Bali bombings of 2002. I gave up a long time ago trying to understand what motivates somebody to harm innocent people, but that doesn't help quell the frustration I feel every time something like this happens. I'm wondering exactly what kind of global disaster is going to have to occur before mankind can put this kind of self-destruction behind them and move forward together. Hopefully it will be a disaster that's survivable, because there's too many beautiful things here worth being appreciated...
• Dreaming. Unlike most people, my dreams are no fun. That's because, unlike most people, I can never get lost in a dream like it's some kind of fantasy world I'm inhabiting. Oh no. When I dream, I know I'm dreaming. It's hard to explain, but it's like I'm looking AT a movie of myself rather than actually being IN the movie. So, for me anyway, dreams are not an escape... but instead badly-written entertainment. But lately my dreams have become something... different. I still know I'm dreaming, but I'm inside the dream rather than merely an observer. While not as much fun as most people's dreams, it's definitely a step in the right direction. And what am I dreaming of lately? Alpamayo Mountain. And I have no idea why. I've never been there. I barely know it exists. And yet, there it is, night after night...
Astounding photograph by Brad Mering.
Maybe I'm supposed to go there? Or maybe I just enjoy the scenery? I dunno, but it is a lovely mountain.
• Noble House. My favorite novel of all time is Noble House by James Clavell. I have read it several times, and enjoy it more with each reading. I own four editions of the book, and see that there's a new over-sized paperback edition that's been released, so I'll be owning a fifth soon. There's just something about the numerous sub-plots that combine to create an epic, lengthy, brilliant masterpiece that I can't get enough of...
MEANWHILE... somebody read my Hundred Things where I mention that Noble House is my favorite book, and decided to write and tell me that if this was my favorite then I was "stupid." I was then given a list of other books which, in his not-so-humble opinion, were vastly superior. Including such classics as Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, and anything by Hemingway. Usually, I just delete stupid-ass emails like this without a second thought, but instead decided to write back and ask what it was about Noble House that he didn't like. Was it too long? Did he think it was too complex? Did he not like the Asian setting? What? He wrote back the next day and said that he hadn't read Noble House and that he didn't need to read it to know that it was not deserving to be anybody's favorite book when there were such obvious better choices out there.
Yes. I'm the stupid one in this scenario.
• Kitty. Tim Burton movies are pretty much hit-or-miss with me. The quirkiness that he infuses into his projects make them unique, but sometimes he goes too far and I can't get into the film. His latest movie Alice in Wonderland, however, seems to be a perfect outlet for his talents. There's plenty of crazy stuff in the original Lewis Carroll tale for him to build upon in his "sequelesque" story. And just seeing his treatment of the Cheshire Cat is enough to make me want to see it...
If nothing else, it's going to provide a whole new level of stupid LOLCat jokes.
And that's all she wrote this Sunday, because now it's time for The Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers! It's not that I think the roasting itself is going to be that much of a challenge... Joan Rivers is an easy target... but hearing Joan fire back at her roasters at the end should be great fun.
After a great night of drinking, games, and some truly inexplicable crap going on in the Twitterverse, I managed to postpone a hangover long enough for another edition of Bullet Sunday!
• Denver! A venue hasn't been chosen yet, but the Denver blogger meet is THIS SATURDAY, August 22nd, 2009, in the Mile High City! If you haven't emailed me yet and want to come, please get back to me by Thursday so I can add you to the list and let you know where we're going to eat! My email address is in the sidebar of every page...
• Salt Lake City! And if you want to meet up with myself, Marty and his lovely wife Reba, we'll be getting together for dinner on the following Monday night, August 24th, 2009! Please email me by Thursday if you'd like to come so I can add you to the list and send you the details...
• Shake It The "new and improved" iPhone camera is still kind of crappy so far as cameras go... but I love having it handy wherever I go, and use it quite often. Fortunately, there are some great photo tool apps being released to help get the most out of the images, because some of the ones I get out of the iPhone are almost unusable without adjustment. And now we're starting to get some sweet photo toy apps as well, my favorite being "ShakeItPhoto," which allows you to take photos as if your iPhone was a Polaroid... or transform old photos to make them look as if they were. The results are just fantastic, creating small pieces of funky photo art in seconds...
You even get to shake the iPhone in order to make it "develop" faster, which is kind of fun. Well worth the 99¢ price tag, and if you've got an iPhone you can pick it up at the iTunes Music Store here.
And that's all she wrote for Bullet Sunday. Time to kick back and relax for a little bit before facing the week ahead.
Ooh! I'm actually home for this edition of Bullet Sunday!
• Garbage. Having a blog with nearly six years of material makes me an easy target for haters, since I'm bound to have written about something they disagree with. Most of the time I don't care. Either the person trashing me is so incredibly stupid that their garbage is impossible to take seriously, or they are criticizing me for something I never even said in the first place. I have no problem with healthy debate and welcome other people's respectful opinions... but that almost never happens. They're called "haters" for a reason, and are best just forgotten. Except sometimes they just won't go away. The anonymity of the internet makes them impervious to civilized behavior. I wonder if they realize that nobody is ever truly anonymous online? Something to think about, anyway.
• Hurt Locker. I have little to no interest in the whole "war movie" genre. That's because they usually fall into one of three categories: 1) Political statement against war. 2) Political statement for war. 3) Glorification of war and/or war propaganda. The last category is the worst. All those old movies where war is depicted as an entirely one-sided affair, with the horrors nicely sanitized (e.g. the ridiculous "Oh you got me, you dirty Nazi! while the guy grabs his chest and slumps over). But every once in a while there's a film with no obvious political agenda which tries to tell a very human story that just happens to take place during a war (Clint Eastwood's amazing Letters from Iwo Jima comes immediately to mind).
And now we get The Hurt Locker by the always amazing director Kathryn Bigelow...
Any attempt for me to explain the film would be a grave disservice to it. In simplest terms, it's about a three-man team of bomb disposal experts called "Bravo Company" in Iraq circa 2004, and their efforts to dispose of a never-ending supply of explosive weaponry that shows up in a variety of scenarios. After the death of their team leader, a new guy, Staff Sergeant William James, assumes command of the team and things get very interesting. You never really know if James is a reckless maverick who risks lives unnecessarily... or an absolute genius who is so great at his job that it only appears that way. All you do know is that Bravo company has just 38 days left in their tour, and the odds of them surviving long enough to return home grows dimmer with each new encounter. This is a film about guys in a very dangerous job, and there's no political bullshit or anti-war bias to get in the way of telling their story. Miracles do happen.
One of the very best movies of 2009 (I'd place it at #4, after Inglourious Basterds, District 9, and Star Trek), The Hurt Locker is where I'd put all my Oscar votes. Jeremy Renner as Sgt. James is one of the strongest performances I've seen in a film all year, and is backed up by an army of talent and some spectacular cameo role appearances (which it would be a shame to spoil here). Suspenseful, gritty, and very human, The Hurt Locker is actually worth your valuable time to see.
• Iconic. Every since installing Mac OS X Snow Leopard, I've been transfixed with the ability to view application icons at 512-pixel resolution. It's an entirely new ballgame at such a large size, and reveals surprising details that you would never even know existed at their original size... sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Let's take these three icons as an example...
Transmit, which has always been a nifty little icon, is revealed to be a stunning piece of artwork when you get to see it at full size. The attention to detail is nothing short of amazing, and now people can actually see it...
Twitterific, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite. It looks cute and friendly when seen small, but blow it up to full size and it transforms into something vaguely scary. I don't know if the bird is molting... sweating... or has some kind of disease... or what. His beak doesn't even appear to be part of him, but instead bursting through his head, like there's a bird trapped in a bird suit and he's just now breaking out. Granted, this isn't really the designer's fault. This is what happens when you are forced to exaggerate details so they will show up when reduced to a tiny size. Otherwise, it would just look like a little blue blob...
But those issues pale in comparison to the scariness of Apple's own "Mail" icon. It makes absolutely no sense now. The drop shadow makes it appear that the stamp is floating above the surface... but the cancellation mark looks flat, like it's a projection of some kind. Furthermore, the cancellation mark doesn't even look like it's been printed. The gray ink looks like it's actual ink on the white parts of the icon... but mystically transforms into blue ink when it is on the blue parts of the icon. At giant-size, it all looks like some kind of bad Photoshop overlay trick, because it doesn't act like any cancellation mark I've ever seen...
Icons, which have historically had to communicate information at very small sizes, are now having to stand on their own as artwork when presented at larger sizes. This is an incredible challenge for icon designers, because it's not easy trying to create one piece of art which works perfectly for two entirely different uses. I suppose the big worry is that designers won't even try, and we'll get icons that suck at any size.
And now I get to go back to work so I can (hopefully) get caught up before I leave again. Life, she is a bitch.
Tonight it's a very special Las Vegas edition of Bullet Sunday!
It's special since there's only one bullet. And that's because it's such an incredibly awesome bullet that you would totally forget any other bullets that might appear afterwards.
• ELVIS! The Official Planning Meeting for TequilaCon 2010 ended with a bang when the entire committee decided to attend the Legends show at Harrah's. The acts performing tonight were Britney Spears, James Brown, David Bowie, The Temptations, and (of course) ELVIS!
Here's photos of Jenny collecting an autograph (and some sweat off of Elvis's chest!)...
Such shameless flirting! I think she's totally found herself a new boyfriend.
And here's a crummy picture I took of our photo with my pocket camera...
IMPORTANT NOTE: Just to be clear, that is the cuff of Brandon's shirt... NOT Elvis's penis popping out of his pants. Such genius that you'd almost swear that Brandon planned it that way. Which he probably did.
Elivis signed it "To TequilaCon Forever"...
And thus ends what is probably the most perfect Bullet Sunday in the history of Bullet Sunday.
Last week I skipped Bullet Sunday because I was traveling but, lucky for me, Hilly-Sue was kind enough to pick up my slack! This week the bullets are back in Seattle, and so am I...
• Finale! Now that it's all over, I have to say that the cruise to Alaska was pretty darn special. Despite some dreary weather in spots, things couldn't have gone better, and the shore excursions were all beyond amazing experiences. If you're looking for a little adventure in your life, you could do a lot worse than exploring the Inside Passage. I booked through Jester's new company, Cruise Avenue, and am grateful for all his advice in getting me the perfect vacation. Might want to see those glaciers now while you still can...
• Pandemonium! Just got back from the Pet Shop Boys' "Pandemonium" tour stop in Seattle. It seems like it was just yesterday I went to their first-ever concert here in the city, and now they're back for round two! As expected, the show was amazing. I really like their new album, Yes, and they did a good job of mixing the new material with their classic hits...
For my fellow Pet Shop fans, the set-list went something like this... Heart, Did You See Me Coming?, Pandemonium/Can You Forgive Her?, Love Etc., Integral/Building a Wall, Go West, Two Divided By Zero/Why Don't We Live Together?, Always On My Mind, New York City Boy, Closer to heaven/Left to my Own Devices, Do I Have To?, King's Cross, The Way It Used To Be, Jealousy, Suburbia, All Over The World, Se A Vida É (That's The Way Life Is), Discoteca/Domino Dancing/Viva La Vida (COLDPLAY?!?), It's A Sin, Being Boring (encore), West End Girls (encore). A pretty sweet set... despite the sound at The Moore Theater being really uneven, and the sound-mix for the show being pretty bad in parts (Neil's vocals during King's Cross were obliterated). Still... well worth attending!
• Pet Shop Pics! I was too busy enjoying the show to be much of a photographer, but still managed to grab a few shots when I thought of it. From the looks of things, Neil and Chris have taken the "Cubism" theme of their previous tour and amped it up to the n-th degree, appearing as cube-heads with cube-head dancers and backup singers. As always, it was a pretty impressive production... even when restrained to the small stage of The Moore...
• Dee-Jay? I have been to clubs where very talented individuals have crafted amazing mixes of a wide variety of music in clever and interesting ways. These DJ's deserve their title, and work hard to craft an exciting experience for their audience. On the OTHER end of the spectrum, you have people who just take a string of dance remixes with the EXACT SAME throbbing disco beat... smash them together one after another... and call themselves a DJ. Now, it's probably me... I'm just somebody who doesn't "get" it... but who the fuck cares? Apparently, the Pet Shop Boys do, because THAT'S who they had as their opening act... a disco DJ with one throbbing beat after another. I honestly couldn't tell where one song starts and the other begins. It's just a blur of bass and synthesizers (but mostly bass). Yeah, I'm sure this "music" is just awesome to somebody who can appreciate it (or is high on crystal meth)... but I thought it sucked copious amounts of ass. After 45 minutes of this redundant shit, I was ready to jump off the balcony. The only thing I can think of to explain it is that the Pet Shop Boys wanted to bore the shit out of people before they take the stage so they appear that much better. Which is crazy. They don't need it. Things don't get much better than the Pet Shop Boys live.
• Progress? They keep plugging away at Seattle's Hard Rock Cafe. Now they've got actual signs up to let people know what's coming (but who knows when?)...
• Blue! Man, what a beautiful day in Seattle I came back to from rainy Alaska!
And thus ends my week of vacation big happy fun time. Back to the daily grind...
Sweet! It's the 150th edition of Bullet Sunday!
• AT&T FAIL! I am quickly becoming disenamoured with the AT&T mobile service for my iPhone. At first, everything was swell and I found the service to be on-par with Verizon, my previous mobile provider. But as more and more people jump on the iPhone bandwagon, AT&T's service keeps getting progressively worse. When I was in Las Vegas, I tried to place a call to Jenny across town (who also has an iPhone). We could not get a call to connect for more than a few seconds no matter how many times we tried. Then when I was in Alaska, I was barely able to make phone calls or use data over Edge in any port. I can only guess that the service is overwhelmed whenever cruise ships pull into port (which must really suck if you're a local). You'd think AT&T would build more capacity for these obviously high-use areas, but no. They don't even have 3G. It's as if AT&T is totally shocked over the massive success of the iPhone, and never bothered to prepare otherwise. Dumbasses. If Apple is smart, they'll choose NOT to renew their exclusive contract with AT&T and spread the congestion around on other networks. Which is where I'll be if AT&T doesn't get their shit together.
• Ghosts! I like Halloween for a lot of reasons, bit the biggest? THE CANDY! In addition to Candy Corn, which is one of my favorite sweets, I like all the "fun-sized" versions of my old favorites. Even better is the "special edition" items that are released just for the holiday. Like GHOST DOTS! It's one of the best candies ever...
Awwww... cute! And delicious! Even though the pieces all look the same, they are actually flavored just like the original DOTS candies. The package says "Which Flavor? Which Ghost? IT'S A MYSTERY!" which just makes a fun candy even better!
• Bears! After going through the 317 photos that were worth keeping from my trip to Alaska, I've come to the conclusion that I love bears. Of all the images I took, the pictures with bears are far-and-away my favorites...
One day I've got to plan a vacation that revolves around bear-watching. That would have to be one of the best trips for a photographer ever.
• Search Me! Today is Google's 11th birthday! Amazing how in all these years that no other search engine has come along which can touch it. I had hopes that Microsoft's "Bing!" would at least pose a challenge and up the search game, but so far I've been unimpressed. Here's wishing Google more innovation (and a little luck!) for another 11 years.
And now I suppose I really should finish unpacking so I can start re-packing for next week. Life. She is a viscious circle, no?
It's Bullet Sunday from my last day in the Netherlands! And what a beautiful one it is... with blue skies everywhere you look. A nice change from the past three days. The weather came just in time, because tomorrow I'm back to Schiphol for my flight home.
• Beach. The Lady Penelope didn't have to fly out until late afternoon, so The DutchBitch was kind enough to take us to Noordwijk aan Zee so we could see the beach (and eat more potatoes with mayo). It was a nice day out, though the wind was blowing pretty fierce. This was great for the chute-surfers out on the water...
• Blue. After saying goodbye to Lady P. at the airport, we headed back into Amsterdam because I had forgotten my sunglasses at dinner last night. Thats when I saw something pretty amazing... blue sky behind the Hard Rock Cafe! In the half-dozen photos I have from previous visits, none of them have blue sky. But there it was...
• Big. In the USA, the restaurant portions are always massive, which means I can't ever eat it all and food goes to waste. Outside the USA, restaurant portions are usually of a more reasonable size, which is nice because I can actually finish everything on my plate without bursting. But when it comes to drinks, it's just the opposite. Order a Coke and they bring you a tiny bottle that costs at least double the price you'd pay in the States. Tonight Dutchy and I decided on Italian for dinner, and I was thrilled to see that they had both "regular" (i.e. tiny) glasses... AND "big" (i.e. "American regular") glasses on the menu. The down-side? I had to pay $7.88 (5,40€) for the privilege of ordering one...
• Parade. Just because I can't get enough of the painted elephants public arts project in Amsterdam...
• Funny. Last night, Dutchy treated us to some comedy DVDs featuring Irish comedian Dara Ó Briain. The guy is hysterically funny, and positively brilliant in his ability to interact with the audience. I had heard of the guy before because he hosts Mock of the Week from British television, but his stand-up was something entirely new to me. I pulled up Amazon so I could order his DVDs for myself... only to find out they aren't available for sale in Region 1. Nor could I buy them on iTunes. This is a load of bollocks. In the age of digital distribution, it's absolutely stupid that I can't buy a copy anywhere in the world. With DVDs I get it... they cost money to make. But a digital file on iTunes? It doesn't cost anything but a short time to convert the video (which has probably already been done for the UK store!). Like music, the concept of global digital distribution is completely lost on the video distributors. Oh well... until I can actually purchase a copy in my country, I guess there's always BitTorrent. How incredibly stupid that, for all our modern technology, idiotic stuff like this continues to happen.
YouTube has some funny bits and pieces from Dara's stand-up, and a good one is here.
And that's all she wrote for a fantastic visit to DutchyLand.
I've misplaced some photo negatives and have spent days trying to find them. All to no avail. They're gone, and I have no clue what happened to them. Needless to say, I'm not in the happiest of moods this Bullet Sunday.
• Translate! For a long, long time I've wanted to provide some kind of translation service on my blog for my non-English reading visitors. But all the options I've found have been kind of cheesy, and didn't work very well. Until now. The lovely people at Google have come up with a brilliant "overlay gadget" that can translate a page into dozens of languages easily. I've added it to my sidebar and it's pretty sweet. If you're interested in adding it to your own site, you can grab the code here.
• Obama! I am sharing a WTF?!? moment with people around the globe now that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I think it's laughable considering that Obama hasn't really done anything to deserve it and, like many people, feel that it was awarded based not on deed but on intent. Or maybe it was awarded solely for entertainment value. The Nobel Council could have felt that giving Obama the prize would completely freak out Right-Wing America (it's just so easy now-a-days), and wanted a good laugh at their expense. Naturally, total dumbass douchebags like Rush Limbaugh are so fucking stupid that they took the bait hook, line, and sinker... but, much to my shock, one of the more radical Conservatives was smarter about it...
Now, I hate Bill O'Reilly with the fiery passion of a thousand suns... he is an opportunist douchebag who exaggerates, lies, and gleefully divides this nation (all while professing to love it) on a daily basis. He's inflammatory and destructive for no other reason but to keep people angry so he can make a lot of money. I find O'Reilly reprehensible in a way I find ALL political extremists reprehensible... on both the Right and the Left. But, for reasons I cannot fathom, O'Reilly took the high road this time and is basically saying "I don't agree that President Obama deserves this award, but having a US President honored with a peace prize is good for America."
Seriously, I couldn't have said it better myself.
Because I am tired of the Extreme Right's constant need for Obama to fail. They would rather see this country go down in flames than for Obama to gain even the smallest amount of political ground. Case in point: The Olympics. When Chicago lost it's bid to host the games, the Extreme Right was nearly orgasmic with joy because Obama had been promoting his home city. They saw it as a "major loss" for Obama, and were celebrating his "failure." Which is about the most astoundingly fucking stupid thing I've ever heard. Obama didn't lose anything... he's still the president. It's not like he got his salary cut because Brazil won the prize. It was Chicago that lost. Illinois lost. America lost. Jobs were lost. We all lost. But the Neocons don't care about any of that, they'd rather Chicago explode than for anything even remotely associated with President Obama to win anything.
To say I don't understand this kind of self-defeating schadenfreude thinking is putting it mildly. Even though I despised President Bush's policies, I never once wished for him to fail (well, except for his second-term election). When he invaded Iraq, it's not like I was thinking "I hope he fails in Iraq!" On the contrary, even though I vehemently disagreed with the war and felt it would be a total failure, I wished Bush nothing but success for the sake of our troops and our country. I felt the same way about Hurricane Katrina. It's not like I was happy Bush's administration was so pathetically incompetent in dealing with the situation... I was mortified. I would have been much, much happier had Bush's people handled the situation so well that the entire country was rallying to congratulate the President on a job well done. Regardless of who is in office, I want these United States of America to do well because I am an American and this is my country.
But, alas, this kind of rational thought here in the USA seems to be over. For eight long years I had hard-core Conservatives telling me that I should "love it or leave it" when I disagreed with President Bush. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, these same people can't take their own advice. Now they consider it "patriotic" not only to disagree with President Obama, but to hope and pray that he fails in everything he does (then laugh their asses off when they perceive even a hint failure on his part). "United we stand, divided we fall" is no longer a rallying cry to seek commonality amongst diversity... it's become a sad harbinger of the future of this nation. We are indeed falling, and I can only hope that we come to our senses before we hit bottom. Watching Bill O'Reilly have a moment of sanity gives me hope.
• Kitty! My adventures with Kitty Spangles Solitaire are well-documented. It's the best solitaire game for the Mac, which is why I was intrigued when Swoop Software announced Kitty Spangles Sudoku. I'm not much of a Sudoku fan, but have to admit they've done a pretty good job of making it work...
If you've got a Mac and like Sudoku, you can download a demo directly from Swoop!
Blargh. I should probably try and get some sleep tonight since I have a very long day tomorrow...
It's Bullet Sunday from sunny Orlando, Florida!
• Jinkies! Hilly's new cat, Jinkies, is really amazing. She's friendly, personable, independent, fun, and a little bit crazy... all the qualities you want in a kitteh. Except when you are trying to blog, in which case you want the exact opposite qualities. No matter what I did or where I moved my laptop, Jinkies made a point of going there to join me...
And ten minutes later...
And fifteen minutes after that...
Even trying to dump her off the keyboard fifteen minutes after that resulted in Jinks hanging on for dear life...
Longest. Time. To. Write. A. Blog. Post. Ever.
• Whore! You know when you're on an airplane? And you know that space against the wall next to the windows? That gap above your arm rest like this...
As I was sitting in my seat after takeoff yesterday, I felt something nudge my arm. Looking down, I saw that the woman behind me HAD PUT HER FEET THROUGH THE GAP AND SET THEM ON MY ARMREST!! What the hell? How big a bitch do you have to be to put your stinky feet on SOMEBODY ELSE'S ARMREST? Seriously? I was scared to even look at what freaky shit the whore might be doing back there, so I decided to take immediate action. My first instinct was to grab my metal brick of a MacBook Pro and smash her fucking feet so hard that I broke every bone inside. But I really don't need any incidents on my TSA Permanent Record, so I decided to use a magazine and gently nudge her feet off my seat instead. And it worked. For about an hour. Then they were back. So I ended up rolling up my jacket and stuffing it in the gap. That worked for about another hour until she weasled her feet under my jacket. Finally I jammed my elbow back there and left it so she couldn't invade my space again. She ended up sticking her feet in her window well above my head instead. Yes, I know... I have terrible luck with travel. But WTF?!?
• Sunset! I also have pretty good luck when I travel. The view out my window at sunset was pretty amazing. And pink...
• Nuts! In what seems to be a growing trend amongst airlines, I was served warmed nuts after takeoff. First with Northwest, then with Delta, and now with Alaska Airlines...
At first I thought it was just a novelty, but now I'm kind of used to it. Even worse, the airlines have spoiled me, and now I'm going to have to go buy me a nut-warmer appliance of some kind. Once you've had your nuts warmed, you really don't want to serve them any other way.
• Dive! In other airplane-type news... I was going through my last batch of negative scans when I ran across photos from my very first skydiving adventure. In the first shot, I'm in the plane on the way up and looking like I'm regretting the idea of it all (but am actually just making sure my contact lenses are lubed up). The second is a shot of me on the way down that my friend took. I haven't jumped out of a plane in over a decade now, and am kind of missing it...
Yep, jumping out of a plane sounds pretty good! ESPECIALLY WHEN SOME BITCH IS STICKING HER SKANKY FEET ON MY ARMREST!!
• Twittered! I'm really liking Tweetie 2.0 for iPhone, and one of my favorite features is the "Near Me" view where you can see Twitterers in your area on a map...
Pretty slick! At the airport it's particularly cool because you can listen to OTHER people bitch about THEIR travel problems!
And now it's time to kick back and watch some television. Tomorrow is a big day...
Or, probably more like "Bullet Monday" since I refuse to pay the outrageous fees that some airports charge for internet access so I can post this on time.
• Why I love Avitaween: Reason #87. It may sound insane to fly across the country for a Halloween Party, but if you've ever experienced Halloween with The Avitables, you'd know it's actually one of the easiest decisions I can make. It's more of an event than a party, and the work that goes into making it so special is positively mind-boggling. My camera battery died, so I don't have any photos myself, but there are plenty showing up on the Avitaween Flickr Group. Thanks so much to Adam & Amy for yet another fantastic evening, and I'm already looking forward to next year!
• Why I love pussy: Reason #1240 This past week staying at Casa de Hilly, I had grown accustomed to her cat being anywhere and everywhere I go. Brushing my teeth? Pussy in the sink. Going to bed? Pussy on the pillow. Writing in my blog? Pussy on my laptop. Any time we were home, Jinkies was a constant presence...
Pussy in the Bed...
Pussy on the Computer...
Pussy in the Sink...
Pussy Attacking Under the Door...
Now that I'm home and pussy-free, I admit that it's a little bit depressing to not have that kind of constant attention. One of these days I guess I need to get a pussy of my own.
• Why I loathe John McCain: Reason #2368. It is no secret that I despise John McCain on every possible level. Most of it has to do with his betrayal of POW/MIAs (as I documented in a previous entry), but there is a laundry list of other reasons I wish he would disappear off the face of the earth... not one of them having to do with his political affiliation (as I've said before, I did vote for some Republicans in the last election, mostly on local races). Every single day I'm eternally grateful such a raging asshole never became President of The United States of America. Any disappointments I've had over President Obama's broken promises and meandering around on the issues that got him elected are immediately offset when I think of how fucked this country would be if McCain got elected. And now there's yet another reason... he is so busy suckling from the teat of the Telecom Lobby that even National Security falls by the wayside. I will be the first to admit this conclusion is a bit of a stretch, but it does make a valid point of showing how McCain is more than happy to speak out on issues he knows absolutely nothing about... so long as the money is right. Just politics as usual in the USA, I guess.
• Why I am nearing a breakdown: Reason #642346 After three flights and a car-drive home, I'll have just over eight hours to work, sleep, eat, and re-pack before heading back to the airport for a flight returning me to the East Coast. It sounds bad, but I've had much worse. The problem is that the weather is starting to change, which makes flying a hit-and-miss game of "will they or won't they cancel my flight?" The weather forecast is calling for SNOW back home starting next week, which is an added level of travel horror I'm not really ready to deal with just yet. It seems like only yesterday that a quick 3-day trip turned into an 8-day adventure when snow caused the airports to shut down (but it was actually last December). Fun. Fun. Fun.
And thus ends another travel edition of Bullet Sunday, this time written from somewhere over North Dakota (I think).
I'M SICK! Well, sick as usual. I've been feeling poorly since I got back from Amsterdam. I'm sure it's just fatigue from non-stop-travel and working all hours of the night and day... but it's getting old. I'm tired of feeling crappy. I have a feeling that this will be a shorter than usual Bullet Sunday.
• Vote! Just a reminder to my fellow Washingtonians, there's precious little time left to get your votes in to APPROVE Referendum 71. All ballots are due by November 3rd, so if you haven't mailed your ballot and believe that everybody should have equal rights under the law, be sure to take care of it ASAP! I know I've posted this video before, and I realize it was made for the state of Maine, but it really applies everywhere, and is worth your valuable time to watch...
• Buttah! The latest commercial for "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" is pretty cool...
Except it looks strangely familiar...
Who do I talk to about getting paid for them using my idea?
• Saints! Guess what's opening this week?
That's right! After nearly a decade of waiting, the sequel to Boondock Saints is nigh!
The original Boondock Saints is one of those odd "guilty pleasure" movies that there's no reason on earth I should like... but I do. I've seen it a dozen times, and scare myself with how much of the dialogue I can quote from the film. I can only hope that the long wait for more Boondocks won't be met with disappointment. The crappy Star Wars prequels are still fresh in my mind.
Annnnd... I'm spent.
It's Bullet Sunday once again... this time with two scoops of raisins for superior raisin bran taste! And a list of stuff to buy.
• XBox 360 Arcade. Yesterday I took Amazon up on their "Gold Box Lightning Deal" to get an XBox 360 Arcade for $198 WITH a $100 Amazon Credit... which, basically, means I'm getting an XBox 360 for $98. It's not that I really want an XBox 360 again (I gave my old one away)... heck, I can't even find time to play with my Nintendo Wii. But what I DO want is a (relatively) inexpensive way of streaming NetFlix "Watch It Now" stuff to my television. To do this, I could buy a $100 Netflix DV Player, or I could buy this $100 XBox 360. Since the cost is the same, I might as well get something that's capable of doing extra stuff.
Like playing Final Fantasy XIII when it's released next Spring...
Amazing, isn't it? Games are just like playing movies now-a-days.
• Mr. Squiggles. This morning I found out that a mishap involving a really angry woman at Toys-R-Us a while back inadvertently ended up with me owning this year's hottest toy... Zhu Zhu Hamster Mr. Squiggles...
I just bought him because a foul-mouthed bitch who couldn't read signs threw him on the floor. And he was only $10. And he looked cool. And who wouldn't want a battery-operated hamster? I showed him off and let him run around for a while until his batteries ran out, then stuck him somewhere I can't remember. Then this morning I found out from Beth's Twitter feed that everybody wants Zhu Zhu Hamsters, and they're going for a small fortune on eBay. I wish I could find mine. I wish I had kept his box. I wish somebody would find Mr. Squiggles and his box then pay me $100 for him. Because, yeah... while he was great for five minutes, I can't fathom him being worth more than the $10 I paid. Apparently a lot of people disagree, and now the asshole toy scalpers are making a fortune. What a sick way to make extra cash.
• Give Me Liberty. In the world of comic books, the two hottest titles of all time are The Dark Knight Returns, a grim imagining of Batman's future by Frank Miller... and Watchmen, the groundbreaking reality super-heroes book by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Both of these amazing comic series debuted in 1986, and were a revelation to me (and most everybody else) at the time. After the Dark Knight & Watchmen furor blew over, the question on everybody's mind was "what's the next big thing?" For Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons, the answer was a vastly under-appreciated gem in 1990 called Give Me Liberty: An American Dream, the story of a woman named Martha Washington. Born in the slums of Chicago in 1995, she escaped her terrible life by joining PAX (the Military Peace Corps) and went on to numerous (and often very violent) adventures. I loved the book, and was desperate for more after the four brief issues in the series flew by. Fortunately, another series and a number of one-shot books followed... furthering Martha's adventures right up until her death. Now, at long last, this remarkable story has been collected in one massive volume: The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century...
And it is glorious. It's a massive tome totaling 600 pages and weighing in at over 10 pounds. Dark Horse Comics used the oversize "Absolute" format that DC Comics has been using for their releases, and it's a fantastic format to appreciate Dave Gibbons' incredible artwork...
As if that wasn't enough, the book also features new introductions to each story by Gibbons and 40 pages of development sketches and promotional material.
The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century retails for $99, but I shopped around and found it on special for $65 including tax and shipping. It's worth every penny and is highly recommended.
• The High Cost of Living. And, while I'm waxing poetic about brilliant comic book compilations, I would be remiss in not mentioning DC Comic's stunning Absolute Death book. Featuring one of my favorite comic characters of all time, Death, by Neil Gaiman and Chris Bachalo...
She's cute, smart, funny, and just happens to be there when you die... and, for reasons that are not entirely clear... when you're born. Absolute Death collects a few of her appearances from The Sandman along with her two solo mini-series Death: The High Cost of Living and Death: The Time of Your Life plus a wealth of supplemental material including a Death illustration gallery and a sketchbook by Bachalo. It retails for $99.99 and would be a bargain at twice the price... but can be purchased at discount for around $65 plus shipping.
• The Best Things. Now that I don't have any money left because I bought a bunch of stuff I didn't need and can't afford, I thought I'd mention that there was a beautiful view outside my window this evening and I got to look at it for free.
Now I'm tired from working all weekend, so I think I'll take my broke ass to bed and read a book.
Oh boy! It's Bullet Sunday once again! This will have to be a quick one, because I have got a lot to do before I fly out again on Friday.
• iTunez! I have a laundry list of things I hate about Apple's "iTunes Music Store" (particularly after the last shitty upgrade they forced on us)... but dealing with App Store update insanity is currently the thing pissing me off most. It's just so damn irritating the way that the process never... NEVER... makes things easy on you. You're constantly being interrupted with bullshit alert messages that are so astoundingly stupid that you have to wonder if Apple is being staffed by morons. Take, for example, the "You Are Downloading Age-Restricted Materials" alert...
Yes, I know. And the reason I know is that I get this dumbass alert EVERY TIME I UPDATE MY APPS! Can't iTunes REMEMBER that I'm an adult so I don't have to go through this shit each time? And what's truly asinine is that the apps themselves are not adult-oriented... it's just that they access the internet where adult-oriented stuff might pop up. And it's not like underage kids are going to see this and go "Oh, I'm only 16, so I guess I'd better stop the update" either. I feel safer already!
And what about mystical crap like the "You Have Already Purchased This Item" alert...
Yes, you stupid pile of FAIL!, I want to download the shit I've purchased! Why WOULDN'T I want to download it. ESPECIALLY IF IT'S AN UPDATE TO SOMETHING I ALREADY PURCHASED?!?! I mean, SERIOUSLY?
And then there's my FAVORITE message. It's the "The Item You Tried to Download is No Longer Available" alert...
If it's no longer available, then why try to download it? But the biggest problem? THEY DON'T TELL YOU WHICH FUCKING APP IS THE CULPRIT! The error appears again and again and again until you manually download each app until you figure out which one is no longer available so you can manually delete it from the session. It's about the stupidest damn thing I've ever seen out of Apple. IF IT'S NOT AVAILABLE, THEN STOP TRYING TO DOWNLOAD IT YOU WORTHLESS PILE OF CRAP!! Can't you just eliminate it from the update session AND STOP BOTHERING ME?!? Completely stupid. BEYOND completely stupid. This is a bug of epic Microsoft proportions, and a total embarrassment to Apple.
The iTunes Music Store is so hopelessly idiotic now that it begs the question... DOES APPLE EVEN BOTHER BETA-TESTING SHIT ANYMORE? EVER?!? This is amateur hour stuff, and it's starting to really piss me off.
• Gleek! After listening to the non-stop raves from practically everybody, I finally broke down and watched the latest episode of Glee on Hulu entitled Wheels. Before I get into the horrors I was subjected to, I should preface this review(?) by saying that I can't stand musicals. It freaks me out when people suddenly break into song and dance for no particular reason, and the ... unreality... of it all drives me bat-shit insane. From what I understood, Glee was different because it was about kids in glee club, so there's context for all the singing and dancing crap. Except... the first thing I see? Some guy in a wheelchair starts mangling Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself then, you guessed it, starts wheeling around his school where nobody seems to notice that he's singing his guts out the whole time. Nobody says a damn thing...
It's not at all freaky that nobody notices I'm singing!
Guy in the wheelchair kind of set the tone for the "Breakfast Club" theory of random casting, except they took it to the next level. Handicapped Kid, CHECK... Jock Kid, CHECK... Gay Kid, CHECK... Bad Boy Outsider Kid, CHECK... Black Kid, CHECK... Asian Kid, CHECK... Spoiled Jewish Princess Kid, CHECK... Stupid Blonde Kid, CHECK... Pregnant Kid, CHECK... Down Syndrome Kid, CHECK... it goes on and on and on. It's as if they told the casting director "Give me one of everything!" so it would make the writing as easy as possible. Which makes sense when you start noticing that everybody gets double-duty BONUS FEATURES!! Pregnant Kid, for example, is also Slutty Bitch Popular Christian Kid, who is terrorizing her current boyfriend to pay her for pregnancy support when she knows that the real father is actually (drumroll of un-shock) Bad Boy Outsider Kid! And don't forget the teachers! Lawful-Good Glee Club Teacher simply must have his stereotypical nemesis with Chaotic-Evil P.E. Teacher...
We're the stereotypical bitches of Glee!
The only part of the show that was remotely interesting to me was Down Syndrome Girl, which may seem a little too "Corky" from Life Goes On, but actually kind of works. Too bad they had to go and spoil it by building a hokey mystery as to why Chaotic-Evil P.E. Teacher could possibly want to put her on the cheerleading squad (especially when the predictable answer is a retread plot device that has been used in a billion other television shows for faux-drama heartstring pulling)...
ZOMFG! Why is the Chaotic-Evil P.E. Teacher being so nice? Yep! Exactly why you'd think she is.
And, of course, what would the show be without the big musical number finale? We'll never know, because the writers are just that predictable. But to be EXTRA tacky and manipulative, lets take the Featured-Kid-Of-The-Week cliche (Wheelchair Boy) and build a musical number of love and acceptance... by making everybody sing Proud Mary in... you guessed it... WHEELCHAIRS! Wheee...
Uhhh... yeah. Really, really, didn't like Glee. Didn't "get" it at all. Though, to be fair, I am not a part of its target audience of musical-lovers. Except... even without the musical numbers... the stereotypes, cliches, predictability, and gag-inducingly obvious emotional manipulation would kill it for me. Oh well. It's perfectly okay that everybody doesn't like the same things. On the contrary, in this case it's critical for maintaining my sanity.
And that will have to do it until next week...
It's Bullet Sunday from a surprisingly cold and unexpectedly rainy section of rural Georgia!
• Bring on The Hate. Just like Friday night, Saturday evening was a non-stop party on the 11th floor of the Hilton Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. No less than six people were laughing it up in the room to the right of me. People were having sex in the room above me (at least I hope that's what it was). The hallway was filled with drunken douchebags until 2:00am. And doors kept slamming into the early morning down the corridor. Sleep was next to impossible, so I begged the front desk to give me a late check-out of 2:30 so I could (maybe) take a nap and not spend my first day of work as a zombie. I then spent my evening listening to my iPod at full volume. It's at times like this I really hate people.
• As God Intended. I had read about Google's wonderful gift of Free WiFi at major airports across the USA, and was happy to discover that Seattle was among them when I flew out this past Friday. What I was not prepared for was that this was going to be a gift that keeps on giving...
That's right... apparently Google is going to continue the free internet at Seattle-Tacoma International INDEFINITELY! This is fantastic news, because I stopped paying for internet access at airports once I got my iPhone, but miss being able to use my laptop. Thanks, Google!
• TripIt Social. I think I've mentioned a couple of times how my frequent travels are made much, much easier now that I use TripIt to manage all my travel plans. I simply forward all my confirmation emails to TripIt, and the free service automatically builds my itinerary and keep all my information together in one place. It's brilliant, and has quickly become an indispensable tool. Things got even better when they launched a free iPhone companion app. And I was in heaven when they launched a "TripIt Pro" version which adds flight monitoring and other goodies for a nominal annual fee. Genius!
As I have become hopelessly reliant on TripIt, you can imagine my horror when I found the latest update to their iPhone app crashed every time I launched it. I wouldn't have minded so much if I was using the free version, but I am a paid TripIt Pro member, and expect better. I then Tweeted my frustration thusly...
Not ten minutes later, somebody at TripIt had seen my Tweet, tracked down my email address, and emailed me a solution to the problem (delete it off my iPhone and reinstall it). Things worked perfectly after that, and then I noticed that there was another update at the iTunes Store to solve the problem. Odds are that TripIt fixed the problem immediately, but Apple's hideously slow draconian "approval" process meant there was a long delay before iPhone users could actually get their hands on it. In any event, way to go, TripIt! it's nice to know that companies are starting to make use of social media for GOOD instead of the EVIL bullshit I've become accustomed to (oh how I hate Twitter spam!).
• Dungeon Master Revisited. One of my all-time favorite games is Dungeon Master, which I played constantly on my old Atari ST computer. It was fantasy role playing at its best, and did an incredible job (for the time) of immersing you in another world for hours of adventure. I spent years trying to find a worthy successor, but none came. As computers got faster and graphics got better, flashy animation and complex battle mechanics seemed to take precedence over gameplay. This wasn't nearly as much fun for me, as I preferred the elegant simplicity of the original. So while I can appreciate terrific games like Dragon Age, nothing that has come out since has been able to recapture those heady days and nights I spent engrossed in Dungeon Master back in the late 1980's.
Until now. Enter Undercroft for the iPhone...
It's so similar to Dungeon Master as to be spooky, but definitely manages to strike out in a direction all its own. I am having more fun with Undercroft than I've had with a video game for ages, and the fact it fits in my pocket is just icing on the cake. About the only thing I don't like about it is the idea that it's eventually going to end. I can only hope that the developer, Rake In Grass, is game for a sequel. If you've got an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can get a taste of the fun for FREE with the Undercroft Lite Demo.
And now it's time to get my caffeine on so that I can stay awake all night long for work. Hopefully my brain will not turn to moosh before the job is done tomorrow morning.
I've been working since 4:00am. I will undoubtedly be up working until midnight. This is becoming a daily thing during this time of year, and I haven't had a chance to even think about bullets on this Bullet Sunday.
Except that's not quite true. I have been thinking of practically nothing but bullets today... it's just that they're not bullet points. Instead I've been agonizing over the senseless killing of four Lakewood police officers in the outskirts of Seattle this morning. They were gunned down while at a cafe in what appears to be a robbery gone violently wrong.
Tonight their names were released, which is difficult because names give them families and friends and people who care about them and everything else that people with names have. But they're names you don't know, so you can still be saddened yet mercifully detached. Even when you read that they all have children.
And then their photos were released, which is even more difficult because now you can put a face to the name and they become real to you... even though they're strangers. Strangers who put their lives on the line to protect and serve people who were mostly strangers to them.
I look at these photos and I am profoundly sad. Who can say how many lives they've touched? Who can say how many additional lives they might have touched if given the opportunity? Not just as police officers, but as human beings? These are the questions that will keep me awake at night. These are the faces that will haunt me with the sorrow of so many possibilities left unanswered...
I'd cry in the hope that it would take away my sadness, but once I started how could I stop?
The horrors of this world seem never-ending.
It's terrible when anybody's life ends in violence. But when it's somebody whose life was dedicated to protecting people they don't even know... well, I look at these photos and I am profoundly sad.
Home for Bullet Sunday! Home for an entire month! Of course, now that I've said that, I'm sure I'll end up flying out somewhere tomorrow.
• Holidays. I got an email from Laurel reminding me that the deadline for sending holiday cards to the troops via the Red Cross's "Holiday Mail for Heroes" program is MONDAY. That's TOMORROW if you're reading this on Sunday... TODAY if you're reading on Monday. If you'd like to make a serviceman or servicewoman's day when they're far from home, here's your opportunity...
Also... just a quick reminder that one of my favorite organizations, AnySoldier.com is a great way to show your appreciation for the troops any time of year. If you'd like to know what kind of stuff to send, I've written about that here.
• Woodie. Many congratulations to one of my favorite bands, Matt & Kim, on winning a Best Video Woodie for their awesome Lessons Learned video. I've written about my love for all things Matt & Kim here, and you can watch their video below...
• Killer. The question "what's your favorite app for the iPhone" is something I get quite often. Right now the honest truth would be Undercroft. But apps come and go and, once I've finished playing Undercroft, I'm sure some other toy will take its place. But once you remove the distractions, a few apps remain which I find indispensable. For travel, I wouldn't want to live without Flight Update Pro. For photos, I can't imagine not having ShakeItPhoto. And, of course, there's always the most important app ever created, Ask Dave!
But if I were forced to choose just one killer app I can't live without, it would be Jaadu VNC that gets my vote. For those unfamiliar, Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a remote access system that allows you to control a computer over the internet. It's always somewhat problematic because of the screen update lag, but it works. And, thanks to Jaadu VNC, it works beautifully on my iPhone...
This is full-screen view, but you can also zoom in with auto-panning.
In fact, it works better than the VNC clients for my MacBook, and I often-times end up using Jaadu to do things that go sideways with other clients. Being able to access my work computer from practically anywhere is a game-changer. There's nothing quite like being able to handle a work emergency while standing in line at Splash Mountain. Jaadu makes this kind of thing easy. But the app has some other tricks up its sleeve as well... such as being able to switch to a numeric keypad or even a media remote...
It costs something like $25, but the value it provides is priceless if you're away from your computer but need access to it.
• Copter. I am reeeeeally looking forward to seeing James Cameron's new film, Avatar. The preview images and video footage look amazing. And since it's James Cameron (Terminator, Aliens, Titanic) you just know it's going to be something special. What I find curious is the dual-fan helicopters featured in the material...
They instantly reminded me of the dual-fan helicopters from Disney/Pixar's brilliant animated film The Incredibles...
Very cool! And further proof that The Incredibles was operating at a level far above your typical cartoon feature. The design on it was...well... incredible. And it only makes me want to watch the movie all over again.
And that's a wrap. I really should get back to work now...
It's time for yet another Bullet Sunday from the freezing cold Pacific Northwest!
• Come One Come All... If there's one thing I've learned over the past six years and eight months I've been writing in this iteration of Blogography, it's that you can never underestimate just how big the assholes are on the internet. And putting yourself out there with a blog is like setting out a giant welcome mat for them to drop by and stink up the place. Thank heavens for the delete key.
• I Wasn't Nervous Until Now... Downloadable content for Xbox 360 just keeps getting weirder and weirder. The latest genius from the Live Marketplace? "Don't B Nervous Talking 2 Girls"...
Yikes. Now I really AM nervous talking to girls!
The good news is that I was able to buy a pet monkey for Pooferflargen, my Xbox Avatar!
He's not a very smart monkey, but he does know how to dance.
• A Cafe By Any Other Name... This weekend I started poking around the code for DaveCafe, my Hard Rock Cafe fan site. I had redesigned the thing ages ago, but never had time to actually do anything with it. Yesterday while I was waiting for my work computer to run a backup, I decided to take a look. The data is mostly missing, and some of the templates are incomplete, but it's sorta kinda working in non-stupid web browsers. Surprisingly, there's only a couple of gap spacing errors in Internet Explorer 6, which is shocking as hell. Usually that pile of shit browser has a lot bigger problems...
Internet Explorer 7 and 8 are pretty shitty too, but they at least seem to be able to render my sites okay. Usually, I would spend the next two hours trying to find out what in the hell IE6 doesn't like, but I don't have time. A big part of me doesn't want to give a crap, but 8% of my visitors are inexplicably still using IE6. Probably because their workplace forces them to or they don't understand they have a problem. So what to do? My solution is to totally ignore the issue. If somebody using a 9-year-old browser expects modern websites to render properly, there's nothing I really can do. Except perhaps this.
I've been warned that a severe winter storm warning has been issued for tomorrow afternoon, which is sure to make my Monday even more buckets of fun than usual. I wonder if I can just forget all about it when I go to bed tonight and be pleasantly surprised?
I need better drugs.
It's Bullet Sunday on the second-shortest day of the year!
• Weekly. I know it's not a special number or anything... but I've done A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO of these things? Holy crap, WHY? Surely I have better things to do on a Sunday? Okay, I probably don't... but I really should.
• Sadly. Brittany Murphy died today. I know that she was made fun of quite a lot... they even had a parody of her on SNL... but I liked Brittany. She had a character type she was good at playing, and she played it very well. I loved her as "Tai" in Clueless. I really loved her as "Luanne" in King of the Hill.
I find it sad that she wasn't appreciated a little more as an actress while she was alive. She had some great roles. And yet the only press she could get recently was rumor-mongering about her getting fired from a movie. And few people seem to remember that she was also a singer who had a hit single with Paul Oakenfold...
Of course, much of the stuff I've heard from Oakenfold sounds exactly the same, but I think she did okay with her part.
I wish she would have stuck around and done more. Rest in peace.
• Slowly. Why won't this douchebag just die already? Slowly. In an agony equal to that which he has inflicted on an unwilling populace. I know I'm only furthering his cause here, but holy shit! Exactly how much of this joke can we be expected to take? When Chelsea Lately christened the wanker and his equally ridiculous wife "Herpes Simplex One" and "Herpes Simplex Two" I thought it was a funny gag. But Chelsea totally nailed it. They never go away. They just keep hanging around and infecting people with their stupid antics. And now he's got an album coming out?
It's incomprehensible how anybody could still be giving a shit about morons like this.
Myself included.
• Barely. It didn't snow today like it was supposed to. In fact, I think it drizzled rained more than it snowed, and there was barely any precipitation at all. I think that New England took it all instead. While I'm sorry for everybody who's having to shovel their way out this afternoon, I am grateful it's not me this time.
Annnnnnnd... I'm spent.
w00t! It's the last Bullet Sunday of 2009!
• TQ 2010. The moment we've all been waiting for has come. Jenny has announced the venue for TequilaCon 2010...
I am sooooo looking forward to another awesome TequilaCon event!
You can read my wrap-ups for TequilaCon 2009 here... TequilaCon 2008 here... and TequilaCon 2007 here.
• Kindle 2. I bought my mother a "Kindle 2" electronic book from Amazon. I was waiting on Barnes & Noble's "Nook" because it looked a little niftier in pictures, but the reviews were less than stellar so I went back to the Kindle. The device itself is pretty sweet, and a lot easier read from than I had expected. Sure it would be nice if the "e-ink" display had whiter whites for better contrast with the "type" but if you have decent light, it's not bad at all. Bumping up the type size seems to help. In any event, my mother likes it quite a lot, which is all that really matters...
You can buy new books directly from Kindle easy enough (assuming you have a 3G signal... shopping over EDGE is painfully slow). The good news is that new e-books are released at the same time as the hardcover, but cheaper. As an example, the latest James Patterson release "I, Alex Cross" retails for $27.99, can be bought on Amazon for $18.33 (including tax & shipping), or delivered to your Kindle instantly for $10.79 (including tax). But the best news is that you can get free sample chapters of most books to decide if you want to buy them or not, which makes shopping for Kindle more like shopping at a book store. Overall, I'm impressed. Like most electronic devices, I wish Apple would overhaul the user interface to something more intuitive, but it's all good.
• Totino's. I left work at 3:00 because I was tired and hungry and couldn't stand the thought of sitting at my desk one more minute. Despite a rumbling tummy, nothing really sounded good... EXCEPT A CHEAP-ASS 99¢ PIZZA FROM TOTINO'S!
So few foods can give you 46% of your daily fat content, 36% of your saturated fat, 6% of your cholesterol, 24% of you carbs, and a whopping 56% of your daily cholesterol requirements... all in one convenient box! Genius!
Annnd... I'm spent. Assuming I don't die from my poor nutritional choices in food, I suppose I'll be back tomorrow.
It's the first Bullet Sunday of the year... and I don't have any bullets! Probably because I've done nothing but work for the past five days. Oh sure I have ideas for bullets, but I've decided to post a monkey juggling giant OREO cookies instead...
And, since it's Bullet Sunday, I guess I better take care of that too. Here's to another week...
Oh joy! I have to get up at 3:30am so I can make my flight! This will probably be a short Bullet Sunday.
• Roxxxy! Holy crap! The latest technology in sex dolls coming out of the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas is pretty mind-boggling. A company called TrueCompanion has developed "Roxxxy" a sex ROBOT who can listen, talk, respond to touch, sleep, and even have an orgasm. As if that wasn't enough, she can be customized to order and be programmed with a variety of personalities... Frigid Farrah is reserved and shy, Wild Wendy is outgoing and adventurous, Mature Martha has a matriarchal kind of caring, S&M Susan for more adventurous types, and Barely 18 who has a naïve personality. I hope Roxxxy isn't too smart... it would be pretty depressing if your sex robot didn't like you enough to have sex with you. TrueCompanion is also working on a male sex robot named "Rocky," so the ladies can have their own fun. Or, I suppose, you could just let Rocky and Roxxxy have perfect robot sex with each other. Since their sexual organs are probably made of steel, they're probably the only ones who can satisfy each other anyway. All I know is that I don't want a sexual companion who could theoretically turn into The Terminator and kill me. Though, come to think of it, that's no different than most of the women I've dated, so I guess it's all good...
Original photo by AFP.
• Corn! I finally got around to watching two movies about the food we eat: King Corn and Food, Inc. Both films are pretty intense and scary... showing where the food comes from, how it is made, and how it is controlled. And while neither tells the full story, the information they show does give you a lot to think about (assuming you aren't so traumatized and freaked out of your mind that you can't mentally function). Both are highly recommended, and can be watched instantly if you have a streaming account at Netflix...
Gee. Sex robots and corn. I don't know what I could possibly add to that. Told you it would be a short Bullet Sunday.
It's just another Bullet Sunday (whoa o whoaoooo). Wish it was Saturday (whoa o whoaoooo). 'Cause that's my fun day (whoa o whoaoooo). My I-don't-have-to-run day (whoa o whoaoooo). It's just another Bullet Sunday...
• One-Up. The latest round of one-upmanship going on is truly stellar. AT&T and Verizon are battling it out over who has the best 3G service when Sprint jumps into the fray with commercials saying "We got 4G, bitches!!" Never mind that their 4G coverage map is anemic at best, it still makes AT&T and Verizon's argument look petty and antiquated. And then there's the mobile phone battle... Nokia sues Apple for patent infringement, and so now Apple fires back with a lawsuit of its own saying "we want Nokia phone imports BANNED, bitch!" I guess where millions and millions of dollars are involved, this kind of thing is inevitable, but it all seems so stupid. Everybody shut the fuck up, put the legal fees into making your products and services better, and may the best mobile phone and network win.
• Golden Globes. I really, really, don't care about the Golden Globes. Though hearing that the brilliant Christoph Waltz rightly won Best Supporting actor makes me want to watch Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds all over again.
• Team Conan. I'm sure Jay Leno is a nice guy and I'm sure some people think he's very funny. I don't think he's funny at all, which is why I am firmly on Team Conan in the whole late-night talk show battle that's raging. But, putting funny aside, I'd still be on Team Conan after watching this clip over at Funny or Die...
So, basically, Jay let Conan hang on for five years with the promise of getting the show... then took it back when his new show tanked. One could argue that this has nothing to do with Jay, and it's all the network's fault, but the simple fact is that Conan would not be getting the boot if Jay turned down the network's offer to take the show back like he pretty much premised he would in this clip. Lame.
• Blogography. Today I got an email from somebody telling me that they have a photography blog they've named "Blogography" and I should hand over my domain because they are using it for business purposes. This is not the first time. A while back I got an email from somebody who was "concerned" that my blog was confusing to people because they were using "Blogography" for their blog, and I should sell my domain to them. For $50. To which I politely respond "no." As I've blogged before, I Googled "Blogography" before I bought the domain, and the word did not exist. And even though I scrapped the first year of my blog when I rebooted it in 2003, I've been using "blogography.com" continuously since I purchased it in March of 2002. With that in mind, I remain mystified as to how anybody thinks they deserve my domain more than I do.
• Haiti Help. I've written many times about my love, admiration, and respect for Doctors Without Borders and the incredible work they do. Often going where angels fear to tread, DWB is an international medical humanitarian organization working in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. They are in Haiti right now, doing everything they can to tend to the victims of the earthquake. If you can help them to help others, please visit their website and make a donation...
And now I should probably get some work done. Heaven only knows there's enough of it laying around.
It's Bullet Sunday! And I'm not feeling very well. Waah!
• Betty! It is no secret that I love Betty White. She's a monster talent, and I've said many times that Betty White should guest-star on every television show because everything is better with Betty. I will literally watch anything that has Betty White in it, even crappy soap operas. I am a huge, huge, fan...
Given all that, I couldn't be happier that she won a well-deserved lifetime achievement award at the SAG Awards. As usual, she was 100% classy and funny as hell...
Not only should Betty White be in every television show, she should also win all the awards. Knowing that she has no plans to stop working at 88 years old is the cherry on the top of my day. Now if only she'd be cast as a vampire on the next Twilight movie, I may actually end up watching it.
• Flash! For those viewing my site on their iPhone, they'll be dismayed that the above video won't work because it uses Adobe Flash to play the movie. Yes, it's a bummer... but, like most every other major website on the planet, Funny or Die is working on an iPhone app to display their media content. So, while this is a temporary stumbling block, eventually there will be a solution for iPhone/iPod/iPad users that doesn't rely on the resource-sucking pile of buggy crap that's Flash. I can live with that. Next up, Hulu.
• Who?!? Before the Grammys, I had never heard of "Lady Antebellum" before. This isn't too surprising considering that I can't stand country music, but it is still disturbing to me, because it means I am completely out of touch with popular music...
Yes, I'm the guy watching the Grammys wishing that Taylor Swift would shut up so I can hear Stevie Nicks sing. It has nothing to do with Taylor Swift... I don't even know who she is other than she hosted SNL once. Stevie, on the other hand, is a long-time favorite whom I've followed both in Fleetwood Mac and her solo career. Meh. This is just great. I suppose it's only a matter of time before I'm yelling at kids to stay off my lawn and bitching about the price of a candy bar. When did this happen?
• Obama? I've made no secret of my growing disappointment with President Obama. As a politician, I knew he would end up being full of shit... but I had no idea he'd be so blatant about it. The whole lack of transparency and classified status his administration put on the ACTA bullshit has me furious. Staffing his administration with FUCKING LOBBYISTS after he made a massive display about how heinously evil it is while he was campaigning REALLY pisses me off. But my biggest problem has nothing to do with broken promises... Obama's a politician first and I expect that... no, what bothers me is the complete lack of balls from his administration. I may have hated the misguided legislation that President Bush rammed through, but I had to respect him for sticking to his agenda. But Obama is too busy trying to avoid hurting feelings than to push through anything. As if that weren't bad enough, the Democrats in office are a bunch of pussies who are too busy playing politics to do their fucking jobs. It's all so embarrassing. And while Republicans are busy playing politics of their own by publicly attacking Obama at every turn, I can't help but imagine that they are secretly ecstatic that he's proven to be so ineffectual a president.
So imagine my surprise when President Obama did one of the ballsiest things since President Clinton decided to get a Lewinsky in the Oval Office. On Friday he appeared at the House Republican retreat in Baltimore to speak... and take questions from hostile Republicans who seem to despise him and everything he does. It doesn't matter if you love Obama or hate him, it's worth a look (if you'd rather read it, there's a transcript over at Huffington Post)...
Wow. It's as if the president we elected finally realized he's actually the President of the United States of America. Next thing you know, he's going to come out and say: "For a year I've been trying to be all bipartisan and shit, but you Conservatives hate me no matter how hard I try to include you, so FUCK THAT. Starting tomorrow, health care reform is DONE. And if any of you Democrats try and fuck with me and my plan, I'll pop a cap in your ass. I'm using my majority and it's just DONE. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get to work on a list of promises I have to keep... we'll be doing this again next week."
It used to be that I was happy to have a president who could actually form coherent sentences. Turns out that now all I want is a president I can respect. If the Q&A session with the Republicans on Friday is any indication, Obama might just start getting it.
And now I suppose I should get some sleep. I only worked a half-day today, so I've got a lot of ground to make up in the morning.
It' Bullet SUPER BOWL Sunday! Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints... the football team of one of my favorite cities on earth!
• Rock! While I was goofing around in Seattle with The Bombshell, The Ninja, and The Bombja, we wandered by The Hard Rock Cafe Seattle where the Rock Shop is now open (the cafe Grand Opening is on Wednesday). The property is expectedly, but disappointingly, decorated in the new "hipster lounge" style that all the new Hard Rocks get. From what I can see, the memorabilia is somewhat sparse and lacking focus... I didn't even see anything above the bar. So while everything is "official" it sure doesn't feel like a "real" Hard Rock Cafe. Though it does have a Guitar out front, so I guess that's something...
I'm going to try and visit in a couple weeks. After waiting for decades, it's strange to finally have a "local" Hard Rock Cafe (if you can call a 2-1/2 hour drive "local"). This will be my 125th Hard Rock property visit. Every time I add a new one to my list, I can't help but wonder how many more I have in me.
• Gum! Seattle's Famous Gum Wall is a scary work of disease-ridden art that shouldn't be missed. My favorite part this time around was a cool Hawaiian flag...
If I could somehow convince myself that sticking my fingers into chewed gum is a good idea, I'd be tempted to add something of my own.
• Snicker! The Mars Company had a flash of sheer genius when they decided to use the amazing Betty White in their new Snickers commercial...
Now I want a Snickers bar. I hope Betty doesn't start doing ads for National Cattlemen's Beef Association... I'm really happy being a vegetarian.
And now I suppose I should probably cut this short and try to get some sleep.
It's a banner Bullet Sunday with Valentine's Day, Chinese New Year, The Olympic Games, and Hilly's annual Self-Love Day all happening at the same time!
• Commentary! It' getting to the point that I simply cannot watch televised sports anymore because of the annoying non-stop "professional commentary" that rains down like a storm of shit over everything. Right now I am watching the Nordic Combined competition at the Olympics, and these two dumbasses simply WILL NOT SHUT UP! They talk and talk and talk and talk about total BULLSHIT that does nothing... NOTHING to enhance my enjoyment of the event. And I just don't get it. I'm not frackin' stupid. I don't need to be told it's snowing or somebody missed a target... I can see that. I don't need to be told that somebody needs to "pick up the pace" if they're behind... that's obvious. I don't need to be told that "the US has never medaled in this event" FIFTY FUCKING TIMES... if I gave a shit about how many medals the US has won, I'd Google it. The constant stream of senseless crap is a needless distraction, so just shut the fuck up already! Save your idiotic blathering for the wrap-up... or the interviews... or your blog... or whatever... just let me watch in peace. At the very least, networks should simulcast a non-commentator version to give us a choice.
• Be Mine! It's time for my annual Valentine's Day card! (for previous year's cards, click here)...
Thanks to everybody out there who makes me feel loved.
• Siri App! Every once in a while, something comes along that gives you a taste of what the future is going to be like. Usually, it's the latest product from Apple. But the future is more an ideal than a place, so it can be really tricky to see that fine line between "gimmick" and "game-changer" when it comes to tech. But then there's Siri Personal Assistant...
The basic idea is that you fire up Siri on your iPhone or Blackberry or whatever... then tell it what you want. Siri then uses voice recognition technology to parse what you said and return an answer. You say "Where is there nearest Starbucks?" and Siri comes back with an address and directions. You say "What time is 'Avatar' playing?" and Siri picks the nearest theater and gives you showtimes. You say "What time is it in Sydney, Australia?" and Siri looks it up for you. There's a pretty impressive list of things that Siri understands and, even when it doesn't, it's happy to perform a web search on what you asked to see if it can help. As a tech demo, it's very cool, and a nice peek at how artificial intelligence is going to eventually escalate into The Way Things Are.
The problem is that Siri doesn't feel "magical" yet. There's a long delay while Siri sends a recording of what you said back to the mothership for parsing (a REALLY long delay if you don't have 3G). The parsing A.I. is rudementary, so you have to confirm your request by manually reading back what you just said and pressing "okay." It doesn't talk back to you, so you're still futzing around with the screen a lot. As a game-changer, it's just not "there" yet. I'm sure as the technology behind Siri continues to improve, we'll eventually cross that threshold where the tech disappears and it becomes magic. Like HAL in the movie 2001. But until then, it's just a nifty toy that provides a glimpse of what our future might be like. I, for one, cannot wait until I'm able have an argument with my refrigerator.
• Google Buzzkill! I have three very separate lives: My personal life, my work life, and my online life. It's rare that they intersect in any meaningful way, but it does happen (online friends that become personal friends, for example). But, for the most part, it's my choice as to how various aspects of my life intersect and mingle. Or at least it has been my choice. Things are changing. A good example is when companies that want to work with me Google my name and read my blog so they can get background info to influence how they interact with me. It bothered me a bit at first, but I've just learned to accept that anything you put out on the internet for public consumption is going to be found eventually... even by people you'd rather not see it.
But the stuff I put privately on the internet is another matter entirely. Enter Google Buzz...
My Gmail (Google Mail) account is the only place where all my worlds collide. Email from all aspects of my life collect here so that I can more easily manage my various accounts from a central location. This means I am ultimately trusting Google with my most personal data on a regular basis. But now that they've forced their new "social networking" fiasco "Google Buzz" onto my unwilling Gmail account... I can't help but wonder if trusting them was a very big mistake.
Mostly because I can't figure out what is happening.
I read an article that says all my Gmail contacts can use Buzz to see all my other contacts. I read a blog that tells me my personal data is exposed because Buzz lets people see private information publicly. One source says turning Buzz off will solve everything... another says turning Buzz off doesn't do anything. Google itself says that private information stays private, and people are misunderstanding what Buzz does. So I have no idea what to think. I have no clue exactly what people can or cannot get access to. Best-case-scenario: The Buzz drama has been blown completely out of proportion and I have nothing to worry about. Worst-case-scenario: My most dreaded nightmare has come true.
In the end, I think it's pretty shitty that Google would do something so horrendous as to force users to use a new service that they don't understand... regardless of whether or not any breach of privacy has occurred! When I logged into Gmail, I got a Buzz splash screen that I blew through with no concept as to what it meant for me or my privacy. I had no clue that it would be bound to my email account in such a way that my personal information was at risk. As of right now, I still don't know, and I've read every article and blog entry I can find to try and figure it out. I've gone through every tutorial I can find on eliminating Buzz from my Gmail account, but I still have no clue as to whether or not it's solved anything. Hell, I don't know if there was anything to "solve" to begin with!
And I still don't understand why Google felt that Buzz had to be a part of my Gmail account instead of a separate service. I'm guessing that it was a way to leverage the insane number of Gmail users to become instant competition to Facebook and Twitter... but at what cost? Most people who want this social media bullshit already have a Facebook and Twitter account! If Google Buzz sucks so bad that it can't stand on its own and has to be grafted onto Gmail to be accepted, why in the hell would anybody want to use it in the first place? None of this makes any sense to me. It's as if Google had no other goal than to piss-off and hopelessly confuse their users. What are they hoping to accomplish by adding a public "feature" to email, given that email is one of the most private parts of our lives? At what point did somebody think mixing public and private data in the same space was such a great idea? How crazy do you have to be to not realize that something like this couldn't possibly be a good idea?
I'm so dumbfounded by the whole Google Buzz concept and the resulting drama that I can't imagine I'd ever want to use it now. Heck, I don't even know if I want to trust Google with ANY of my data now. Their effort to contaminate something as private as email with something as public as social networking just shows they have no concept as to people wanting to keep parts of their lives separate. To Google, everything is meant to be shared, and they want to make it as easy as possible for you to do so... whether you like it or not. As more and more of our personal data is in the hands of others, what does this say about our privacy in the year 2010? What will it mean for our privacy in 2020? Or is there even such thing as "privacy" anymore? The possible answers scare me bad enough to regret ever having asked the question.
Annnnnnnnnd... on that happy note, I'm off to bed. Xin Nian Kuai Le and Gong Xi Fa Cai everybody!
It's Bullet Sunday from one of the most beautiful days I've ever seen in Seattle!
• Pet Shop. The hotel I'm staying in tonight is really, really nice (especially considering the bitchin' rate I got off PriceLine), but does have one minor draw-back. It's "pet friendly." Now, don't get me wrong... I love animals. I think it's great that there's hotels which accept our furry friends when they travel with us. I do not, however, think it's great to be woken up at 5:30am by a yappy little dog barking it's head off in the room next door on a Sunday morning. Though I suppose I should count myself lucky that it was just a dog and not a hyena or something.
• Zombie Walk. As far as iPhone games go, Plants Vs. Zombies may be the best game ever released. More addictive than crack (or so I'd guess), it's one of those games that you never want to stop playing. It looks great, plays amazing, and keeps gameplay fresh with new features for a good long time...
The game, in a nutshell, has wave after wave of zombies attacking your home, and you have to plant an ever-growing variety of vegetation to fend then off. Highest possible recommendation (unless you have a life, in which case it will will destroy you).
• Spell Check. If you're going to use the word "w00t!" then it's spelled in all lower-case letters with two ZEROS in the middle, like this...
If you don't believe me, you can look it up in the dictionary!
• Saturday Break. After working non-stop for the past several weeks, I decided to take a break and attend a blogger meet in Seattle... thanks to Ms. Sizzle and Chris for putting it together and giving me a much-needed distraction! The beautiful drive alone was worth the effort...
• ONE Ring? Great news! The Lord of the Rings trilogy is finally coming to Blu-Ray! How awesome is that? Oh... wait a second... not so awesome... BECAUSE THE GREEDY FUCKERS AT NEW LINE STUDIOS ARE RELEASING THE BUTCHERED THEATRICAL RELEASE INSTEAD OF THE FULL DIRECTOR'S CUT! They're waiting for everybody to buy the incomplete trilogy THEN they'll release the complete films on Blu-Ray so everybody will have to buy them AGAIN!
I mean, seriously, we already had to buy them twice on DVD, so why not give everybody what they want the first time around? Oh... that's right... NEW LINE IS RUN BY GREEDY FUCKERS! Blu-Ray easily allows the option of viewing both the theatrical release OR the director's cut on the SAME disc thanks to their "branching" technology, but why would we want to do that when we can sucker fans into buying the movies FOUR TIMES!
Well, as much as I'd like to see these beautiful films in HD, I'll take a pass until the COMPLETE films are released. Holy crap I hate it when studio executives try to pull this bullshit. And everybody wonders why otherwise law-abiding citizens turn to piracy! THE MOVIE STUDIOS FORCE THEM TO!
And another week bites the dust...
As the Olympic Winter Games come to a close, Bullet Sunday comes to the rescue!
• Gold. Congratulations Canada! The final hockey game was well-played on both sides, and I'm happy the local boys (and girls!) were able to keep the Olympic gold at home. Of course, since Canada is a part of North America, I guess that means the gold actually belongs to all of us here in America. America is awesome!
I suppose it's too much to hope that all the excitement from the fantastic hockey matches during the Olympics will make the sport more popular here in the USA. As a long-time hockey fan, it would be nice to get more enthusiasm for the sport outside The Great White North.
• Cubed. The design for the new USA Embassy in Britain was unveiled this week and I have just one question...
...when did Steve Jobs start designing our embassies?
Except I dare say that the Apple Store on New York City's Fifth Avenue is a heck of a lot better-looking than the "fuzzy" glass cube that they came up with for the new embassy. Blech.
• Lisa. It seems impossible that Lisa has been gone an entire year. It feels like only yesterday she was reminding us about what's important in life. You are very much missed.
• Coverage. I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating... NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games sucked ass. It was downright embarrassing to sit back and watch how they managed to screw up at every opportunity (The Olympics are about the SPORTS COMPETITION, dumbasses!). I simply don't understand why you would sign up to cover the Olympic Games and then NOT ACTUALLY COVER THE OLYMPIC GAMES! And don't get me started on the astoundingly fucking stupid idea of running coverage on tape-delay FOR THOSE OF US IN THE SAME TIME ZONE AS THE ACTUAL EVENTS! It would be nice if whomever wins the broadcast rights bid for the next Olympics is actually held to some semblance of competency and quality standards. Like telling your commentators to SHUT THE FUCK UP while the names at the awards ceremonies are read (Chris Drury fans didn't even get to hear his name because of the inane dumbfuck commentary). Or how about telling the commentators to SHUT THE FUCK UP period. 98% of the time, the banal chatter was more distracting then helpful, and made watching the Olympics almost unbearable. Here's a brilliant idea... why not put somebody in charge of broadcasting the Olympics who actually likes sports instead of letting suits in a boardroom dictate this reprehensible bullshit as coverage policy?
• Support. If you're looking for a way to support relief efforts in Chile, or the continuing efforts in Haiti, or help out wherever disaster may strike... my favorite charity, Doctors Without Borders, is doing remarkable work to provide aid "where angels fear to tread," and could use donations. If you've got some spare cash, why not check out their website and then toss a few bucks their way?
And that brings us to the end of another Bullet Sunday!
Hooray! It's Pi Day! I love Pi! Of course I love all irrational and transcendental numbers, so that shouldn't surprise anybody. I will click the "publish" button on this entry at exactly 3.14.1:59 and see if a magic portal opens up to Flatland or something.
• Irritation Pi. As anybody who follows me on Twitter can attest, I am an irritable traveler. In my defense, it's hardly my fault. I honestly think that people are at their worst behavior when they're on a trip, so I have a valid excuse here. It's probably because travel has become so miserable now-a-days that people feel the need to do their part and become rude maniacs who are intent on making everybody else miserable too. It's a vicious circle. I travel a lot, so I've kind of broken the circle and just try to get through it all with as little drama as possible. With that in mind, I am freaking out over the idea that airplanes may soon be offering MOBILE PHONE SERVICE ON THEIR FLIGHTS. Holy crap. The idea of having to sit next to some loud asshole screaming away on their phone during a flight fills me with dread and homicidal rage...
I mean, seriously? Aren't airplanes horrible enough? Can you imagine how horrendously shitty flights will be if people can make phone calls? This is bullshit! I am willing to bet some serious cash that the murder rate on airplanes increases 2700% if some airline is actually fucking stupid enough to do this. What's next? Are the flight attendants just going to punch you in the face and smear you with horse shit as you board?
• Stupid Pi. I've written about how much I hate Daylight Saving Time so many times on my blog that I sometimes wonder if I should just write about it exclusively. But oh well... I HATE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!! Messing with the clocks is so damn antiquated and absurd that I just can't help myself. Just split the difference by a half hour then LEAVE OUR CLOCKS THE FUCK ALONE!
• Denial Pi. Last night I saw an article on yet another disaster in our military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy, where a woman was discharged for being a lesbian... even though she adhered to the rules she was given. Now, I've never been in the military, so those who are in the military (or are a military veteran) can feel free to dismiss my opinion... but who in this day and age really cares if anybody is gay? What's the point? It's as if people who support DADT think that if nobody says they're gay, then the entire military is suddenly straight and homosexuality doesn't exist there. It's like DADT is some kind of magical "denial cloak" idea that somebody took from a Harry Potter novel.
The truth is that you're either a good soldier or a bad soldier, and where consenting adults like to stick their penis and what they choose to do with their vagina isn't going to change that. Fortunately, this is an attitude that's finally starting to stick, as I see when I run across inspirational people, positive stories, and videos like this bouncing around the blogosphere...
The thing that always amuses me is the idea that a gay guy would join the military not to serve his country or earn an education, but so he could look at naked guys in the shower and hook up. It's absurd, but apparently that's what geriatric politicians like John McCain seem to think will happen if gays are allowed to serve openly (despite opinions of military leaders like Colin Powell who thinks DADT should be repealed). If anything, you'd think that homophobes in the military would welcome repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, because then they'd know to say "no thanks, please leave me to die" if they were shot on the battlefield and some "homo pervert" comes to their aid.
People can deny it all they want but the Gay Menace is out there. They're standing next to you at the urinal in the bathroom. They're showering with you at the gym. And they're serving with honor in our military. They're everywhere. Pretending that gays don't exist isn't going to magically make it come true. Why people are so insecure in their sexuality that they think being exposed to "teh ghey" will somehow turn them gay is beyond me. Why they think that gays are any less capable of leaving their sex life in the bedroom is even more of a mystery.
Personally, I'm more afraid of people who watch The Hills than I am of any homosexual. Where's an ineffectual and asinine government policy to protect me from that?
• Apple Pi. I'm ordering an Apple iPad because of a project I'm working on, even though I probably won't use it for much else since I've always got an iPhone and MacBook with me. Don't hate me because I am now 196% cooler and Steve Jobs loves me. At least he should love me now. Heaven only knows I love me more now...
• Humble Pi. I just thought I'd throw this out there for those people who think I'm being a narcissistic ass in my previous bullet...
And thus ends another amazing installment of Bullet Sunday.
This morning I had all kinds of ambition to get up early and wander around Prague for a few hours before I had to head to the airport. This didn't happen. Instead I stayed in bed and decided to actually be on vacation for a few hours. Which meant doing absolutely nothing. And so here I am now back in the Netherlands so I can blog Bullet Sunday and pack my suitcase. Vacation, it would seem, is officially coming to an end.
• Mucha Mucha. Prague is home to the Alphonse Mucha museum, where you can see original works of Art Nouveau by the master himself. Of all the amazing sights I've seen in the city, I'd have to say visiting this museum was the highlight. Being able to walk into a building and see art so beautiful that you have to struggle not to crap your pants should be what life is all about...
• No Dumbassery. Yesterday was "No Tech Day" which is about as stupid as it gets... right up there with the bullshit idiocy of "Shutdown Day" from three years ago. My iPhone has completely revolutionized most all aspects of how I travel, and I cannot fathom going back to the dark ages where I didn't have instant access to maps and important information wherever I'm at... especially when I'm in a foreign country on my own. Supposedly giving up tech gadgets is going to "improve the quality of your life," but that's such a load of crap. So long as the tech gadgets don't become your life, and act only to supplement it, wouldn't that be a good thing? I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before these people invent something even more asinine... like "No Toilet Paper Day."
• International Disaster. I see that the heinous Jersey Shore reality show is now being distributed here in Europe. The thought of other countries judging the USA by what they see on this show fills me with horror and no small amount of shame. I can only guess that this will set back international relations by decades...
• Tenth Photo. I was tagged by Josh is Trashy to participate in a photo meme. Here are the rules...
My first photo file is called "0000 Dave Misc" which is basically a catch-all folder for stupid images of me that don't really go with any other photos. This is the worst possible folder to be looking through, And the tenth photo is not really the one I would choose if forced to display one on my blog...
This would be a scanned photo of my first trip to Maui with my friends. I have no idea what's going on here, but I'm pretty sure it's just me being very, very happy to be in Maui. Probably while drunk. I have no excuse for the short-shorts except that it was the 80's. Yes, I know it's a sexy look for me.
Unlike photo number eleven, where I have an unfortunate hair-cut and even more unfortunate round sunglasses. There's no "sexy" to come out of this mess...
Oh well. I'm afraid that I am rubbish at tagging people with these things, but if you are so inclined to embarrass yourself, please do.
And, on that note, I suppose I should sign off and try to get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day.
It's Bullet Sunday on Easter Sunday! Bullets and Eggs... could there be a better combination?
• HAPPY EASTER! To all my friends who celebrate this day for whatever reason, I wish you the happiest of holidays and a wonderful Spring. My day was nice enough... dinner at grandma's house... but my car ended up covered with bird crap. And I mean covered. There is so much bird crap on my car that I'm fairly certain I could fertilize half the apple orchards in the valley. I didn't have enough quarters for a car wash, so now I'm driving the PoopMobile. Kind of an ominous start to my Spring, but it is what it is.