Archive of entries posted on February 2010

humorous spam in comments

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I get many, many spam comments since converting to wordpress. I have it set so that I have to approve them so that I don’t cover all my pages with small dick ads though. I read this one today and it made me chuckle:

I enjoyed the article and thanks in greetings to posting such valuable poop advantage of all of us to be familiar with, I caste it both auspicious and enlightening and I mesa to examine it as commonly as I can.

That came from user “Ray Ban Store”, which is odd ’cause I would think English would be the first language of anyone devoted to sunglasses. Surely that wasteful accessory is purely American?

Look at that hunk of man meat!

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So our house has become a general disaster area over the years. During the first 5 years that we lived here I was a daily drinker and keeping tidy didn’t really matter a heck of a lot to me. The wife, of course, liked to keep things in order, but there were certain areas that were “mine” that simply got various detritus piled on them for years. Then when I quit drinking and started my new job I started working so many hours (and with that hour each way commute) that I never found the time to clean up those areas -at least that is what I tell myself so that I don’t feel like quite so much of a filthy pig.

We have made tremendous progress in the making the house look slightly less like it is currently being occupied by transients over the last couple of years: The bathroom was completely remodeled in 2006 when I was out of work. At the same time I replaced the kitchen sink, put in a garbage disposal, we got all new kitchen appliances, etc. The carpets have been ripped out of the living room, bedroom and computer room. It was subsequently replaced by a new carpet in the living room, and faux hardwood in the other two rooms (we have dogs. carpet and dogs don’t mix. the dogs don’t go into the living room often.) Our large Arizona room even got some new peel and stick tile. We also threw away tons of stuff from those rooms when they were cleaned out for the new flooring/remodeling (here I think that tons is not actually an exaggeration; there was much furniture that went to the curb, the carpet itself weighed a couple hundred pounds, all the pipes from the new plumbing, the old appliances. It was probably quite literally tons). We have been just very generally trying to purge the old, dilapidated shit from the house and replace it with less shitty and worn out more current stuff (where it is being replaced at all. Trying to get rid of stuff mostly and keep the rooms as minimal as possible).

The only thing that keeps me from just shoveling shit into the back of a truck with abandon and taking it to the landfill is the knowledge that somewhere in this mess we still have some stuff bearing sentimental value. I lost my father when I was very young, and the only things I have that were his are a picture and his old watch -which I haven’t seen in a decade. The wife’s mother also died several years ago, and I know that somewhere in the house we still have some of her artwork, and some pictures of her (sadly most of her jewelery was likely pawned by her husband ((the wife’s step-father)) when she died). And while we haven’t seen these things in years, I really don’t want to accidentally throw any of it away. So the digging out has been slow.

Yesterday I made great progress on the finding the finding the sentimental items when I happened across my father’s watch. In addition to that, I also found two working copies of our wedding cd (this was something that I actually tried to launch as a business years ago; All the photos from the wedding were cropped and thumbnailed, I laid them out in two html formats, one with frames, one without frames, put in a snazzy menu, embedded a font, burned them to disc and put an autorun feature on them so that even the least computer literate person in the world would be able to use them. I think I was going to charge something like a hundred bucks to do all the coding, cropping, etc., then a buck a disc or something like that. It never got off the ground floor. Although I did manage to spend several hundred dollars on cd jewel cases, discs, labels, and everything else I would need to make it fly before I flopped). I also found yet another cache of photos (about the third such find in the various rooms during various cleanings). I have only quickly thumbed through them so far, but there was one (three actually, but you only get to see one) that made me decide to write about.

Now if I were to find a photo of someone else I knew, and say they happened to be naked -or mostly so-, my strict code of ethics would keep me from sharing said photo with anyone as far as you know. That said, if I were to find a picture of me, and I was posing like a cheap man-whore, OMG yes! Post that shit! Alright, I get it. I played the guitar. But why was I naked? Further, who was taking pictures of me while I was playing the guitar naked?

I remember being in fairly horrible shape at the time this photo was taken, but as I look at it now, I really don’t see it. Barely a hint of a love handle there, my man boobs won’t hold up a pencil yet, the hair on my chest/stomach hair is still in the “kind of cute” phase (which would later be replaced by the more grotesque “why is this the only place on my body an inordinate amount of hair grows” phase), my legs look like they could have been superimposed from a third grade art student’s stick figure. Damn I wish I looked that good right now! Ahh memories.

And just for fun I took that photo and added some fun text to it. Enjoy:

Behind the Mask

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Since recently canceling my account with Blockbuster and signing up for Netflix I have been quite pleased the service. Being able to download so many movies instantly, and for no additional charge, has allowed me to watch a lot of movies that I likely wouldn’t watch if I had to go pick them out, or if I was going to be keeping the wife from watching something she wanted to see while she waited for me to return the dreck I had rented. Netflix probably thinks I have some pretty odd -and likely demented- tastes in movies, but really I don’t. I just like a movie that I can immerse myself in and enjoy, which I really can’t seem to do with most of what is coming out of hollywood these days.

I find that for the most part I can really only enjoy comedies that are current. I watch a comedy for the express purpose of laughing at what is happening onscreen, and for that it doesn’t matter who is in the film, or what the circumstances are. That seems to be the problem I have when trying to watch a drama or thriller that is current: I usually can’t enjoy it because of who is in it. For me it is extremely difficult to watch a movie with Nicolas Cage in it and see anything other than Nicolas Cage pretending to be someone acting out events. I have seen him (and all the other actors that seem to be in every damn movie that comes out) play so many roles that I simply can’t watch the movie as a story; I can’t suspend my disbelief, and that takes all the fun out of watching. When I go to Netflix to pick out something to watch, I intentionally try to find movies with people I have never heard of, and stories that I have never heard of, and I find that it makes it much easier for me to enjoy the show.

I find a lot of duds.

Even when I do find duds, I am usually able to watch them, and I don’t think I take any more or less away from them than if I had watched the latest Hollywood blockbuster. But sometimes I do find genuinely good movies… Though not nearly as often as I would like.

Netflix has been keeping track of the movies I have been watching though, and is offering up suggestions. The movie suggestion it had for me this morning was dead on: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

I really enjoyed this one. Thanks in part to knowing absolutely nothing about it going in, partly because I was able to believe the characters -since you haven’t heard of anyone in this film, and the roles were played well- (Robert Englund is in it, but in a role that his Elm Street work actually strengthens the character if you have seen those movies), but mostly because it was quite clever and unique. The basic premise is simple: A documentary crew follows around a young man who has aspirations to become a killer. Not a serial killer, but a killer of legend or folklore: a la Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers. A killer much bigger than life (death?), with a story and reputation that will live on long after he is gone. That seems hard to believe, and as I sit here typing this I remember that I was thinking at the start that there was no way I would be able to believe the premise. Though as the story flowed I found myself not only believing it, but not finding it odd that the documentary crew was with him, and actually rooting for the guy.

That is about as far as you should read before this is going to get spoilery. Be warned.

As the story unfolds Leslie (the would be killer) is showing the crew all of the detail, training, and preparation that goes into making a successful appearance as a legendary killer. He picks a town where there was a tragedy some time before. That tragedy has already spawned some local folklore about the young boy who was pushed off a cliff to his (probably very real) death. Leslie was planning to make his appearance as this dead boy coming back for revenge. But to make sure that everyone knows that he is the resurrected boy, he fabricates news clippings to leave lying around conspicuously. These clippings also have a bogus photo to make the story seem like it personally affects one local girl. It really is genius in its own twisted way.

If you have any experience with these types of horror films parts of this are actually pretty humorous; for instance it shows him cutting through the handles of all the farm tools that could be used against him. Now you know why that damn axe always breaks with the first damn swing! He nails windows shut, has a remote control for the breaker box in the basement, pre-cuts the limbs of the trees near windows so that they will break if used as a means of escape, later he removes the spark plugs from all the cars. All the things that normally leave you wondering “when did he have time to do that” in the horror movies, he shows you.

The first hour of the movie really is just him showing the crew what goes into it. They follow him through the entire setup of the final showdown, filming it all as he starts to terrorize one poor girl. And as expected the crew grows more and more apprehensive with every passing moment. The question that you will be asking yourself the whole time (at least the one I was asking myself) is “are they really going to tape him killing all those kids or is the movie going to end just as he goes into the house?” And the answer does not disappoint.

I’ll not go into much more detail. I liked the movie when I finished watching it, and the more I think about it, the better it gets. The only complaint I have is that the movie would have benefited from being possibly fifteen minutes longer. There are two characters that are left absolutely hanging at the end. If you watch it you will know the two I mean. There is no resolution as far as they are concerned and for the protagonist to have closure we really need to see what becomes of them; it simply is not possible for them and the protagonist to coexist.

My words don’t do this movie justice, and I am terrible at trying to review movies. But take my word for it, watch this one.