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?
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