So, Does It Go Like This?

George W. Bush is overheard on the phone with father George Bush exclaiming, "Dad, the faggots are trying to gain equal rights just like those damn niggers did all those years ago! What can I do? I'm scared! Can't I just attack them or command the army to blow them up or something? How about a massive faggot exterminating space operated laser gun, sorta like X2 but without the mutants, just homosexual freaks who are trying to destroy the sanctity of our ever-so Christian nation!?"

Nonfiction:

He spots the sign floating above the freeway; Oso Parkway, one and one fourth miles away. He uses it as a marker to count out time until he's back to the place he currently calls home. Forty minutes now until he's off of these flooded lunatic raceways and under some covers. He glances at his watch, a worried movement, four forty two.

The tires slip and rise above the payment, riding on a thin layer of water for one moment too long. He lets off the gas and straightens out the wheel, but the rear of the car is already trying to push the front out of its way. As he slides into the lane to the right, he looks out of the passenger side window, a few sets of lights are coming toward him, trailing fluorescent red spray.

The downpour quickly soaks the hair on his head, water dripping down his forehead into his eyes and on his glasses. He's staring up at a blurry green shape squarish but he's not sure why. He pulls his glasses over his ears as a car whips by him in the lane to his left. The sign becomes clear; Oso Parkway, one and one fourth miles away. He panics and looks at his watch, four fourty three. He quickly turns on his heel and puts his arms up in front of his face to shield his eyes from the lights.

He catches the sign out of the corner of his eye; Oso Parkway, one and one forth miles away. He lets off on the accelerator and moves a lane over to the right. Forty minutes now until he's off these flooded lunatic raceways and under some covers, secure in the fact that he'll wake up tomorrow whether he'd like to or not.

The Passion of the Christ:

I drove up to Whittier last night so I could take Lessette and Greg to see The Matrix Revolutions on the IMAX, trying to make a habit of seeing things at the last possible moment. (I did the same with Shattered Glass, waited until the last night it was playing in all of California). When we finally got through the two hours of traffic, which is normally a 30 minute drive, we were told that IMAX was broken. I translated that to mean, "It's pouring rain and we're all tired so we're not running IMAX just so you three people can watch an ancient movie," which seemed much more likely.

So, instead, we saw The Passion of the Christ. I've been wanting to see it even back before Gibson got a studio to agree to release it, and it was rumored that it would never see the light of day, and that it wouldn't have subtitles. I've never read the bible and never cared to. I was raised a Quaker and went to Sunday school up until I was twelve or so I believe, but if you'd ask me to remember any of it I'd draw consecutive blanks until you gave up. I don't buy into Christianity and I'm not even sure that I believe Jesus existed at all. If he did, I'm sure if he was around today he'd be really pissed off at what man has done to his teachings.

Regardless of all that, I was excited to see it from the start, just because anyone as obviously crazy and fanatical as Mel Gibson could probably make one hell of a movie. Oh, yeah, and I suppose the promise of lots of gore, but not too much according to some interviews with Jim Caviezel, kinda made me want to see it as well.

So was it worth the wait? Have I been converted? Was it gorier than expected?

It was definitely worth the wait. The movie is beautifully shot and does feel a little bit holy all over, definitely in the beginning. Everything looks great and sounds great and I think the movie would have worked even better without subtitles. I'll agree with one reviewer who says that it seems like the subtitles just get in the way and the performances could communicate everything you would need to know. Many times you can catch yourself (if you have half a brain) understanding what they say even without looking at the subtitles. You can't understand a word they're saying but you know what they mean better than any English text could communicate to you.

It would take a lot more then what this movie presents to convert me. I think the movie focuses way too much on his torture, which is how it's talked about so that's to be expected, and not enough on his life. One reviewer complains that we don't get to see Jesus just being a man, human, like any of us, and that isn't the truth. In the opening scenes, which are the weakest of the movie due to bad supporting actors, we see Jesus tormented and praying, scared of his life, well aware of what is to come and definitely not ready for it in any way. That was all I needed to see that Jesus was indeed human, although with an incredibly high threshold for pain.

Which brings up the only possible problem with the movie... the gore. I read an interview with Jim Caviezel where he says they're very tasteful with the gore and they could have gone a lot further than they did. He said they whipped Jesus with a whip that has spikes in it, and toward the end he has flesh hanging loosely off his body, and they decided that would be too much to show in the movie... Well... They show it. Spike whips and all.

In a scene that goes on for what literally feels like forever we watch Jesus, chained to a post, get brutally whipped with rods by the Roman grunts as they laugh and mock him. Once the rods stop, they decide that wasn't nearly harsh enough, they bring out the whips with hooks. We, once again literally, see the chunks of flesh torn out of him. The final straw for just about everyone in the audience was when one soldier sinks a bat with nails into into Jesus' back and yank it out, with flesh tearing sound effect and spurt of blood and horrified grunt of pain.

This scene never ends. Or, at least, not when you want it to. I wont even get into the guards taunting Jesus and pounding the crown of thorns into his head. Or the hour (or so it seems) of Jesus carrying the cross and being whipped and knocked down until you're begging for them to just leave the poor guy alone. When Jesus is finally up in the air on the cross you almost want to breathe a sign of relief because you know it can't get any worse. (And then it does get worse for about ten horrifying seconds of blood spray).

After all of this, all three of us nonbelievers walked out of the theater unable to say anything. I didn't even feel it would be appropriate to make any sort of joke that came to mind. It was just too much. You can only watch such torture go on for so long until you become so shocked and horrified you can't help but wonder if the feeling you're experiencing is because you're scarred for life for having to watch that or if you had a religious experience of some kind. For all three of us, I think it was the scarring.

Also, I have to add, I don't think the movie is anti-Semitic as much as it is anti-Humanity. Sure, the Jews look to be the most obviously evil people in the entire world, but then one lone Jew helps Jesus carry his cross and is obviously remorseful, so that just make the villains the Roman soldiers who torture Jesus, (but not Pontius Pilate who is a good guy, hmm), and the Jewish Priests who are literally foaming at the mouth for Jesus to be crucified.

I think the movie is primarily anti-Humanity, since I came out of the movie not horrified at the actions of any particular group, but everyone over all. While the Jews are thirsting for the blood of Jesus, and the Romans are having a good time just ripping the flesh off of some poor vagrant, Jesus' own followers are standing by, idly watching and not doing a thing. Jesus had to have had enough followers at that point to make a difference, but I honestly don't know anything about it to judge. No one in this movie is safe, it's Jesus Vs. The World and that's all there is to it.

I wont say I came out of the movie hating the evil scourge spreading across the world called humanity more than I did before, but The Passion definitely reassures me that there is something very very wrong with our species.

Oh, and a warning for you all: Some stupid bitch cried out "THANK YOU JESUS!" at the exact moment that he dies and I think the entire theater wanted to kill her. I'm still violently angry that some moronic twat actually did that and destroyed the emotional peak of the film by causing the entire theater to collectively "SHHHHH!" If you speak once during this movie (loud enough for people around you to hear) and I find out about it, I will hunt you down and kill you myself. I'm not religious and I don't think you're shaming Christ when you're doing it, but you're being a moronic fucktard who deserves to die for ruining an excellent movie for the people around you.

Hey! How was your day?

Oh yeah? That's good. Mine was pretty cool, maybe I'll tell you about it if you have time. Whatcha doin right now? Yeah, same here, just kinda chillin after work. OK fine fine, I'll tell you. I dunno why work was so cool today, but I woke up pretty early like usual and after showering I didn't just feel like sitting down, so I looked up the location of Oceanside Photo & Telescope because I was going to head there on one of my days off to buy a tripod adapter for my new Bushnell binoculars which are cool but nearly impossible to look at anything in the sky with due to instability.

So, I debated with myself for a moment on whether I had enough time to make the drive out there and then to work and, throwing caution to the wind, I decided to go! I had a hard time finding the place when I got to Oceanside since I suspected that with a big long name like that and supposedly being really bad ass, they'd have a big place. I was wrong and after going in the wrong direction looking for a big sign, I just happened to see their Radioshack-sized camp-out in a strip mall. Yeah.

I was originally going for the bigger and niftier adapter that's on their website for $2 more than the $20 "bent piece of metal with screw" adapter, but when I got there it was marked for $10 more so I went for the bent piece of metal.

While driving down there I listened to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway by Genesis for the first time and I have to say that is the best album I have ever heard. Ever. Just brilliant stuff. The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging kicks all sorts of ass to me and I don't know why. I'm going to burn a copy for Bill Murray at work since he's never heard it and used to listen to Genesis (post-Gabriel) when he was in Highschool.

Then I hauled ass down the coast to Rancho Sante Fe where I realized my previously absent hunger had reappeared, so I went to a Burger King down there where all the employees were obviously working at Burger King because their were no strawberries to pick in the fields. Not to be racist but these were the rudest most nasty Mexicans I've ever encountered in a fast food place. They were all men needless to say and they were all assholes to every customer. I wanted to jump the counter and... train them in customer service.

Then I went to work. I brought a bucket of Red Vines for everyone and people were happy. I can't remember how the day began and how it ended was pretty inconsequential but a lot of Doctors were grabbing me to assist them and such so that makes me feel important. I'm beginning to think Dr. Richter (who no one likes) is beginning to grab me on purpose because we have the same cynical and bitter sense of humor. I was called the "Freezer King" by Naomi today when one of the interns needed to get a dog out of the cooler so she could do a Necropsy on it.

Later, coming back to the cooler to put another dead dog in there, the Necropsy was in progress, and it was on a dog I had worked with. I didn't get the name when we were taking it out. They were removing it's head and had already opened it up. I didn't want to see but after me and the other girl put the dog in the cooler we went over to take a looksie. They had the head off and the other doctor was using a scalpel to (I assume) severe the nerves/membranes/whatever that hold the skin to the skull. She was literally de-gloving the dogs head, so the skin was rolled forward and you could see the dog's skull but with the flap of skin and it's muzzle right under. It was pretty ghastly.

They had the other half of the dog all opened up and the other doctor was showing the kidney's to the girl I was with, apparently there was a lot of stuff wrong with this dog that they didn't know anything about so it was really good that they euthanized it or it would have just gotten worse. She opened up the chest a bit more to look at the lungs and there was a big mass of crap in there was well that they didn't know anything about, much less what it was at the time.

Then, I took my lunch. An hour later, I clocked out and left. I drove around the block to a school field that girls soccer teams play on sometimes and set up my tripod with my binoculars. The adapter works great and it's wonderful to be able to see something. The moon had already gone down so I focused on Pleadies for the first time and that was really great to look at. I looked at some other stuff too until I realized that my hands were frozen and I should leave.

So, uhm... sorry I talked your ear off. What'd you do today?

Bored? Need Something To Do?

Here's a big list of hidden directories full of old stuff on this domain. There's always the super old archives and very old about page. Oh, and ancient hate mail as well. Or, you could just look at nude renders of The Matrix and Final Fantasy characters.

Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time.

This game kicked serious ass. I don't know why so many people complained about it, Loonyboi couldn't even get through all of it because it was so boring, but I absolutely loved it. Nothing I say will be different from other reviews so I'll keep it short.

The game is absolutely gorgeous on the Xbox, lighting blooms and everything is just so lush your jaw will drop continually from start to finish. The control is silky smooth, and much like Halo, feels completely right and not one did I get frustrated. Battles are, yes, repetitive, but they stay new and fresh because the amount of enemies you fight grows gradually. The voice acting and motion capture is flawless, just about everything is like this.

Exploring each gorgeous area isn't so much as exploring as it is applying a specific formula to several different challenges. The story is excellent (even if the story is just the beginning and the end) and the relationship between your character and your companion develops realistically. There is a great laugh at the end and, most of all...

The ending keeps up the constant feeling of being supremely bad ass that progresses through the game. At the beginning of each area and through to the end of it, and the beginning of each battle and through the end of it, I just felt incredibly bad ass. This was my favorite part of the whole game, I felt like I was doing something amazing all the time, not once did I just feel like I was controlling some stupid game, I felt like I was doing something that required massive amounts of skill even though it didn't.

That's the weird thing about the game: I could imagine a retarded person being able to play this game effectively, not a single part of the game is really challenging and none of the puzzles are overly complicated in any way. It really is just paint by numbers, but it's an excellent and highly polished one at that.

Go rent this game to see if you like it, and I'd be suprised if you didn't. You should buy it, but you could beat it in a rental persion since it only took me a little over eight hours to beat it. It's a great game and I might even replay it since I missed one hub. Oh well!

Ugh...

Sorry I haven't posted. Believe me, I have my reasons. Regardless... I'm finally getting into the getting-wounded-at-work phase of my job, after a month. Yesterday a cat clawed me, and another cat that I spent a crap load of time with decided to dig it's claws into my hand and bite me on my unclawed hand.

Today was the good one though, as I was trying to pull a needle off this stupid friggin' syringe, I pulled the cap off the needle and jammed it right through my finger. Surprisingly I think the only words that came out of my mouth at that moment were, "Why in the hell did I do that?" and not "HOLY FUCKING SHIT JESUS I AM SO FUCKING STUPID!"

One other cool job that I elected to do since no one else wants to is the role of cooler cleaner. The poor sod with this job (read: me) who gets to go into the cooler and tally up the list of animals who are in there when the cooler gets to the point of overflowing with bodies. This happens mostly because owners are forgetful idiots when their animals die. This is called the "my animal is dead and, as such, has ceased to exist not only in life but in my memory as well" thought process.

So, when the animal dies and the owner says, "well, I don't know what I want to do with the body yet," we put "Hold for owner decision" on the bag and toss the animal on a shelf in the cooler. Then, the owner forgets about the animal and, as one animal was, they sit in there slowly decomposing in a bag for a month... or three.

Or, we're holding the animal for the cremation service, the company that does it is affectionately called "Circle of Life" I shit you not. The problem with the cremation service is that the owner tells us they want to go with COL, we put the body in the cooler with COL marked on it, and then the owner, not us, has to call COL and tell them that we're holding their animal. You can see how this one works out.

So, I have to go into the cooler and tally up the dead, and then take the list back and go through the deceased list to find out when they've died since up til now no one has ever put dates on any of these bags. If an animal is just marked "Hold for Owner" and it's been in there for more then two months (read: yuck) then I get to throw the animal in the Routine barrel (you don't want to know what Routine is) and the owner gets charged for routine disposal.

It's not really so bad and I don't know why no one else likes to do it, sure it's cold and it smells like, well, lots of dead animals, and your feet stick to the floor due to blood running off of horses and out of punctured bags, and condensation drips off the ceiling and you just know that has to have something bad in it, and occasionally the bags move in ways they shouldn't and you just have to convince yourself that you're not in a bad Stephen King novel, oh, and it's cold... But aside from all that, it isn't so bad.

Prince of Persia:

I spent a few hours now addictively playing Prince of Persia and I can say, with utmost confidence, that people who get bored with the mind numbingly repetitive nature of this game are stupid! Sure, the battles are the same over and over again, but that's kind of good since the battles are enjoyably easy and require minimal strategy.

And, sure, after the first level you've already done all the different aerobatic moves so when you have to do them for the rest of the entire game and there is no real challenge involved... I guess that could get stale, too. But I'm enjoying it.

And dear God is it pretty. Pretty and smooth and polished. It's just a great game that suffers from one flaw, which is being far too easy, but I like that. I like it easy. I am enjoying the graphics and the level design and just how pretty it is... Mmm... pretty...

Last Night:

After dropping Cynthia off at her house, I headed over to Greg's house. I picked him up and we went over to the high school. I showed him my new binoculars and we both smoked a cig. We went toward In N Out and I got some Starbucks and we sat inside until they closed. We walked over to In N Out and sat inside. He had a burger, wrapped in lettuce, with whole grilled onion. I stared at people in the resturant with my binoculars.

He had to wake up early so I dropped him off at home. I drove around a while until I stopped a group of people who were walking down the street. I hung out with them for a while until we went back to their place near uptown. They busted out a couple bags of weed and meth and PCP.

I think the blood on my hands that I noticed in San Clamente when I got pulled over was from the homless person I beat to death in a PCP induced delerious rage for no reason. The cop noticed it too and cuffed me and threw me in the back of his car but not until I broke his jaw with my forehead. I kicked out the back window managed to yank the cuffs off over my hands, only taking a large portion of skin off with them as well.

Somehow I got the cop down and threatened to kill him with his own gun if he tried t chase me. I got back in my car and drove further down the 5 until I thought it wouldnt be safe for me to keep going. I got off somewhere and took a three hour nap to wake up at 7:30 in the morning and drive the rest of the way home.

That was my night. Or maybe it wasn't. At least that seems a whole lot more interesting then what really didn't happen. I'm not going to spell check this either.

Ugh... stomach.

Two days off for Lamaze classes. My stomach hurts. I had one of those sausage McGriddles and I think it's screwing with me, but I've had weird stomach the last two days. Not much else to talk about.

Trying So Hard...

not to laugh at this. I don't want to wake up Cynthia sleeping behind me, but that is just too damn funny. It's funny because it's true. ;( Oh, poor Star Wars.

Mystic River:

Cynthia and I went and saw Mystic River mostly because there is absolutely nothing to see in theaters this week. I really knew nothing about it and she knew even less. It was good. I would only dock it because it is a downer. There is a thinly veiled message that becomes apparent in the end, and I will spoil it for you now.

The doubting psychotic bitch of a wife will end up destroying her life due to her own inherant complete lack of any understanding or intelligence. (If she said "what?" or "huh?" one more time during the scene in which Dave is revealing information about certain aspects of when he was younger, I would have literally willed myself INTO the movie to choke the life out of her for being such a dumb twat). The supportive-no-matter-what wife will be happy and secure in her life. The man unable to realize his own mistakes can make everything alright again if only he'd apologize, but sometimes it takes a lot of tragedy to have that happen. Oh, and, number one message in the movie? Everybody hurts. Sometimes.

Hmm.

Seems like the cookie is having issues holding a charge. I will look into it. Update: for some odd reason, the site wont hold the cookie between restarts of IE, so it keeps giving me a random theme after I pick one. If you're having this problem as well, leave a comment, so I know I should bother trying to fix it or not. Grumble, grumble.

New Design:

Here it is everyone. As you can see, there is a new layout. Over to your right you'll find a little configuration menu with a list of possible colors. Right now, on your first visit, it will have loaded a random color theme, and you can leave it at that setting if you want. Otherwise, you can change it at your leisure. I may add text scaling in the future but it caused problems in Firebird for me, and the design is a little wonky in Firebird (Firefox is such a stupid name) but it looks pretty good anyway. Enjoy!

Design Woes:

Why does selectively scalable text have to be such a pain in the ass? I wish I could just have the Font Plus/Minus buttons just control the post text, but can it do that? Noo! At least not that I can fucking figure out. New design will NOT have scalable text, I'm sorry, unless I suddenly get super patience. It will have ten different color themes with the possibility of multiple designs, though, so be happy.

Mr. Clean AutoDry Car Wash:

After finding zlich for information online about whether or not this Mr. Clean product was a gimmick, I went ahead and bought one since I loathe washing my car for primarily the same reason I'm sure every does: no matter how hard I try to get my car spotless, it just wont do it, so I just feel like washing my car is pointless.

The Mr. Clean AutoDry Car Wash fixes this problem via a "two step" washing process. You can read most of this on the site but I'll go into it anyway. First you set the thing to Rinse, which just uses your regular water, and wet down your car. Same as usual. Then you set it to "Suds" or "Soap" or whatever, and using this special special green soap and your own sponge or whatever, you spray down sections of your car and scrub away. The soap works excellently and I wouldn't recommending trying out anything else or it may break the device. Then you rinse again using "Rinse".

The second step is setting the device to "Filtered" in which it uses a special made PUR water filter and you use it to rinse your car a second time, this time trying to rinse away all of the unfiltered rinse water. This takes a second to warm up in which it emits a bit of a hissing sound but then it gets right to your, spraying out a thin fan of water over your entire car.

So, does it work? Does it really allow your car to dry on its own without needing towels or more hard labor? Yes, it does. I'm a natural skeptic so I just expected it to be some cheap ass gimmick to grab your money, but no, it really works. Even your windows will be completely streak free. It's amazing.

The only bad thing I can say about the product is that now all the spots on the INSIDE of my windows are glaring reminders of my oily smudgy hands.

Also, the starter kit comes with the device (or "gun") and a starter filter and starter soap, which are both said to be good for three washes. I'd believe this since I used exactly 1/3 of the soap to fill the device for the first time. Replacement filters and soaps are, I think, $6 each at target and both are good for ten washes.

You can get two $5 off coupons for the starter kit, which at $19.99 is a steal anyway, at the website I linked to above. They send them in the mail so I bought mine without benefit of the coupon but it feels like a solid purchase.

It cut my car washing time down from an hour or more to about twenty minutes. No hand drying is the way of the future, I tell you! THE FUTURE!

More Work.

Today I had to do the saddest thing I ever thought I could do at work. I was about to do this one dog's 8 o'clock treatments which are usually walks and feeding and other things, and Emily stopped me and told me to make sure when I feed it, to feed it lots of treats and good stuff like AD (which is practically cat food) or even cat food and baby food meat sticks and everything.

I said OK without asking why, but she told me anyway... the dog is going to be euthanized tomorrow. My little heart broke into a million pieces. I took him out for a walk, a very nice black and white dog, and let him mosey around for a long time in which he peed on just about everything.

When I took him back inside I went and made a big feast for him. Three (catfood sized) cans of AD, an entire jar of chicken sticks, some other baked treat things, a can of beef chunk Friskies, and I topped it all off with these gormet liver treats from a dog bakery. (The liver treats looked like chocolate shavings!)

He didn't eat any of it. ;( Not even interested. I was very sad. But, just about ten minutes before I was off, he took a bite and looked up at me. I almost cried. ;(

Hmm... Mondays.

A dog died last night while I was restraining it's head a little bit to make sure it didn't go nuts and try to bite Helene. I helped bring it in on a stretcher because there was a chance it's back was broken. He wasn't in very good shape, kind of seizing while he got some valium. Probably about two minutes later we noticed his strained breathing, which had became gentle breathing, turned into no breathing. After CPR for about ten minutes, the dog was gone.

I'm working on a fluid/dynamic layout for the site (ala Glish), in order to hopefully increase readability, which has turned into my eternal quest. With any luck, stuff will scale to your browser window, regardless of what browser you use. Unless you use Opera, in which case I'll just try to find a neat javascript hack that will crash it.

LMAO!

This quote from Bush, referring to his decision to put off the new report done by the intelligence commission about Iraq, is just pure comedy gold.

"Look we're in a political season."

Oooh! Now it all becomes clear! You obviously just want to give the American people ample time to assess whether or not you made good calls on invading another innocent country. It's not at all that all the falsified intelligence that you waved around was completely full of shit and that you knew it, it can't be that.

Course, according to you, you never told the American people that you were positive Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons or weapons of mass destruction of any kind, you apparently told all of us that Saddam has "the ability to make weapons"! Not that he had weapons. Of course.

But, wait, what was this that you said? "Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." (September 12, 2002)

Or how about this? "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have." (February 8, 2003)

Or this? "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." (March 18, 2003)

And this? "We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them." (April 24th, 2003)

Hmm? "We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so." (May 3, 2003)

Course, now it's different, it is "Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations."

Whatever the fuck that means. Whats the equipment that Iraq concealed from the UN? Chairs? Tables? Spent bullet casings that could possibly house toxic nerve agents? Mmhmm.

It mostly just makes me sad that so many stupid Americans believe that, regardless of all the fucking lies, what Bush did was OK. As if they were over in Iraq living there for years, as if everything they're told by the "President" and the media is true.

It's as if Condoleeza Rice's continuous droning of "dangerous man" and "world's most dangerous region" has wormed it's way into everyones brains and made them think that we are the only country that knows right from wrong. Oh, and that rate, made them all forget completely about Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden. We got our Osama facsimile, I guess.

If You Fail Twice, Try Again!

So, it looks like the two guys who The Perfect Storm was based around are trying to sue Warner Bros. Apparently although the book was fully true, the movie wasn't, and they've decided to try to sue Warner Bros for using their likenesses without their consent. Hmm... It's already been rejected at trial and in appeals... So, what do they do? Take it to the Florida Supreme Court! Of course!

They say that they just want Warner Bros to recognize the fact that they sensationalized their lives for the film and that's wrong. It's not really about the $150 million dollars the movie grossed, oh no, it's just because they hate the fact that the movie made them out to be absolute heroes made of pure unadulterated bravery. Yeah, I know if someone did that to me, I'd be totally pissed and suing like crazy.

Anyway, I think the movie plunged far past the line between "commercial crap" and "arty storytelling film" far into the later category, so trying to declare it a purely commercial endeavor is doing a disservice to the film and the people it was "loosely based on for profit".

Why Christians Are Insane #1482303:

An American Airlines pilot flying passengers to New York asked Christians on board to identify themselves and suggested the non-Christians discuss the faith with them, a spokesman for the Fort Worth-based airline said today.

Uh... huh... There's a fine line between being completely nuts and having good judgement about what may or not be appropriate. I think singling yourself out as a religious nut when you're flying a plane full of passengers might not be one of the smartest things you could do. What's next? Recieving a message from God that all the Christians on board are going to have the die so you can destroy the non-Christians on board by crashing the plane into the ocean?

You gotta think about these things.

Gladius (Xbox):

I've spent about five hours with Gladius now, and have barely scratched the surface. Usually I consider this a good thing, since some games can be beat in that amount of time. (Max Payne/2, anyone?) I'm enjoying the glut of the game, which is the battles. I've never really given SRPGs much of a chance because they all seem too boring to me, but Gladius is enjoyable so far.

Turn based strategic combat is the basis of the game, along with, so far, a pretty decent story that I'm sure will get a lot more interesting. I don't really feel much like delving too much into the game, since you can read a pretty well written review right over here at GameFAQs that adequately explains everything.

The most interesting thing about the basis of the game is that it turns arena fighting (Gladiating?) into a vehicle for rich and powerful people to show economic and political power... sort of like how jousting was used in medieval times. Sure, in this it's a complete work of fiction, but it is an interesting concept to play around with. Now if only we could have put George W. Bush and Saddam Hussien in an area battle... Perhaps they could do doubles, Bush and Cheney against Hussein and one of his sons... Course the Hussiens would win, so maybe that's not such a good idea.

My run down: Graphics are top notch. (IMHO, of course. Some reviews say the graphics suck and I wonder what those people are on, but then again they probably didn't grow up playing Mario or Quake so their standards are much higher for some weird reason). One of the two main playable characters is voiced by Linda Cardellini who I absolutely adore, so that's a definite benefit. Controls are good and battles are interesting to watch so you wont get too horribly bored.

I predict in a future my run down will turn into this: Graphics haven't changed much, so arenas are beginning to all look the same. I've been playing the game for a total of fifty hours now, so any time I turn on my Xbox and see the title screen, my eyes start bleeding uncontrollably. Individual battles can take me around hours to complete so my fingers have been replaced by bloody stumps. I've long since gouged out my ear drums with Q-Tips so I don't have to hear the same damn music anymore over and over again during battle.

But, I like it now, so that's all that matters.

Gaming Tidbits:

I finally got around to playing two Xbox games I got for Christmas that I have yet to really explode. Buffy: Chaos Bleeds is more of the same, but prettier, and with a worse camera. I only played the first level but it feels pretty solid as far as a prettier, but perhaps less polished, version of the first game goes. Excellent.

Gladius is graphically splendid, despite some oddities, one of which is the fact that in one of the first cutscenes, all of the trees in the background are split in half, meaning only one side of the tree has branches stretching outward, the other side bare like a telephone pole. Haven't played enough to really judge it just yet but I will spend much time with it tonight I assume.

Hurray for Massachusetts!

They've legalized gay marriage. Not some stupid equal rights malarkey but actual gay marriage. Good for them. Course, all the bible thumping morons, ("God created us as a man and a woman!"), are up in arms and pissing on themselves out of fear that this may be the first actual demonstration of the court upholding the separation of church and state since... well... ever? Who knows, maybe eventually we'll get that bullshit "In God We Trust" off our money, but I don't want to wish for too much.

Oh, and of course, our pal Georgie Boy (just to give him a gay sounding name!) has taken his statements from the State of the Union one step further and actually said this in a letter: ""Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. If activist judges insist on redefining marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."

Uh huh. I'd like to see you try to get that one through. Oh, by the way, good job pissing all over the gay voters in the nation. Oh, wait, I'm sure you probably think all gays are just drug using, lethargic, disease bags who don't bother voting. In that case, you have no worries, but since it's not true...

Google Loves Me:

Apparently I'm the fifth result when you search Google for Nipple Medallion, so I'm getting a lot of hits for that. Hello visiting nipple lovers! I hope you find what you might be looking for.

Lost in Translation

makes me want to kill myself. I'm pretty disappointed even though I started it with no expectations besides a great Bill Murray performance, and I guess I was expecting too much. I should know by now that the only time an actor or film is wildly appreciated and possibly nominated for anything, is when it is the most lackluster film anyone involved has ever done.

It's simple enough to say The Virgin Suicides was a better movie. That's easy.

What sucks is, and I'm sure this isn't Bill's fault, Bob Harris, and Charlotte, are not a very well fleshed out characters. Both are just playing their characters empty eyed and soullessly searching for nothing in a strange and bizarre place.

It's like watching two empty pits that might have been people at one time (though we have no proof) fumble through a week of talking to each other and spending time together, while obviously both avoiding what would be totally like one of those stupid romance movies they've seen recycled throughout their lives.

As far as that goes, Lost in Translation succeeds to impressive levels. It's very real in the way their "relationship" (for lack of a lesser term) develops, or undevelopes as it may be. But the rest is kind of... empty, cold, and heartless.

We've already seen Bill do a much better "empty life" impersonation in The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore. The diving board scene in Rushmore is Bill's character more full of emotion than all scenes in this movie combined. It's sad that he's being recognized for this and not any prior movie, since he's done better at what he does in this in other movies.

Mostly my bitterness is because you're yearning for these two people to emit fireworks and they never do. By the end of the movie you're going, "Don't leave! Don't leave! But, wait, if you don't leave then Bill Murray will turn into Billy Crystal and I'll have to kill myself, so I guess I will sit here and yearn and know that life sucks forever and ever. Hmm, where's that razor?"

Very Late Friday Five:

I just realized that last Friday's Friday Five was actually worth answering. What's the question? "You have just won one million dollars."

1. Who do you call first?

Cynthia wouldn't count, so the first person I'd call would probably be Greg/Alfred Turner, and try to arrange some sort of meeting which he'd have to take a raincheck on because of his stupid fucking band, thus negating a possible answer to number 3 could be funding his band.

2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself?

Build the best computer I possibly could with a huge Trinitron monitor. Maybe a 2004 Prius all decked out. No, I'd wait for a 2005. Never buy first model year!

3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else?

What? Why would I do that? I don't know, I guess someone would have to ask for something. Lemme ask Greg. He says he'd probably ask to go half on a decent house. Not that I think he could afford half of a decent house. Lemme ask Cynthia. She's says she'd want a car, more specifically, a Lexus SUV thing or something, I think it was a model year 2003 that she saw so I dunno what it was.

4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom?

No. I owe a few people things I've promised to get them when I'm "rich and famous" so I'd have to track them down... probably pay to have one of them killed instead, etc. A million dollars is not a lot of money, so I can't go giving it away.

5. Do you invest any? If so, how?

This is the best idea. I'd probably spend a fair sum of it on stuff and then invest the rest of the money in... well I dunno. Stocks, obviously, but I don't know if I'd want to manage it myself or get a broker... I have no idea how ANY of that shit works. I suppose if I won it and then invested and lost it all it wouldn't really matter to me. If I lose something I wouldn't have had anyway, it hurts, but not for very long.

My Final Wishes:

I decided today on the drive home about how I want my body treated after my death, and how my funeral should be. Cynthia commented that she wanted a glass coffin and my idea spun from there. This is it.

I want all my bones to be removed from my body, and all the tissue and organs and every else to be put into a very large blender and pureed until it's just one big soupy mixture, maybe chunky. Then, I want the bones to be crunched up, but enough for the last bit to be possible.

Then I want the bone chunks to be mixed in with the rest of the fluid from my body, and pumped into a glass coffin just big enough to hold everything without any air bubbles (maybe a little bit). I would like there to be air jets of some kind, or maybe little fans, that would swirl the bone chunks around in the coffin so that during the funeral you just see chunks of bone swirling around in the (probably) very dark red mass of fluid.

Yeah. I'm going nuts.

Stealing Quotes:

Had to swipe this Mark Twain quote from this great article about the Media Vs. Bush (which is a joke unto itself). Good stuff, Twain.

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

- Mark Twain

So, How 'bout That Nipple?

I was at work, so I missed the live unveiling of She-Michael Jackson's Glorious Solar Nipple Medallion. Part of me is thankful that I missed it, since Janet is so ugly at this point she could probably kill small animals just by looking at them straight on. From what I've heard, after viewing the nipple in person, Justin Timberlake turned to pillar of salt and blew away in the wind.

Google's Getting Sued! By Stupid People...

Of course. So American Blind and Wallpaper Factory is suing Google because of keyword advertising. Apparently when someone searches for the words "American" or "Blind" or "Window blinds" or any combination therein, it's diverting traffic from them (who apparently can't be bothered to pay for the advertising) to other (obviously paying) competitors.

Why they aren't suing the number one advertiser on the search for "American Blinds" which is American Blinds, Wallpapers and More is beyond me, since that seems like trademark infringement to me, but I guess I'm not a big money hemorrhaging factory/company out to self-advertise by making up outlandish lawsuits to file against major internet companies.

In the article on PCWorld that I linked to, the author makes reference to the case involving Netscape and Playboy butting heads because, Playboy alledged, Netscape was selling the keywords "Playboy" and "Playmate" to other adult competitors, which they were, and that this was trademark infringment and that they possible sustained damages from this.

Sure, the cases are similar, obviously, but what's entirely different is that "Playboy" and "Playmate" are words that were (in one case) created by Playboy magazine. The words "American" or "Blinds" are not words that are owned or were created by "American Blinds" and I don't think the phrase should even be qualified as being owned or trademarked by "American Blinds" because any blinds made at all in America are "American Blinds" ... Two entirely different things people.