Holidays and birds

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So, just a quick recap of my last couple of posts. I/we own birds, Diamond Darrel died. Yup that pretty much sums it all up.

That all led me to remember about the little headstone that I made for the first bird, Elvis. Which you can see here. It doesn’t look quite the same in digital form as it does in person, however, that really bad writing on it looks just the same either way. I never realized how difficult it would be to use a small brush to write on concrete before I made this little headstone. Now that I do know, I will likely never try to do it again. As the little pine needles in the front make it a bit difficult to read, I will mention that the date on the stone is 5-20-02. Which was, obviously, the day he died.

Never in my life did I ever imagine that I would feel such an emotional attachment to a pet that I would actually place a headstone above the grave, yet, in this case I did. I didn’t even feel that close to the little bird Elvis, but I did have to bury him. While it would be nice to not feel any emotion while performing such a task, I was overcome with emotion when it got to the point of putting the little bird into his grave. My eyes teared more for my wife than for myself, but they did tear. That is why I made that little crappy headstone for Elvis; It is extremely difficult to deal with the death of a pet, especially if you have to play the role of the one who lays the pet to rest.

Much on a side note, I buried Elvis outside of the block fence, since we had just acquired our first dog at about the same time. It turns out that my paranoia was reasonable, as our second dog is prone to digging holes all over the yard. The last thing that you want/need to see is one of your pets carrying the mummified or rotten corpse of a different pet towards you.

I really haven’t liked the birds since we first got them, and I don’t think my sentiment has changed much in all these years, however, I did create the only headstone I have ever created for the sake of one of those birds. In thinking about it, I realize that I created that much more for my wife than for myself.

Hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it?

• Being damn near Christmas already, I went ahead and took care of the festive house light situation. Since I didn’t take the lights down last year, you would think it was easy. Unfortunately, time had knocked off a major strand in the back, screwed up the arrangement on the ones on the side and made the string in the front take a bit more coaxing to get going. If you are going to be lazy, make sure that you buy strands of strings that can handle your laziness. They should absolutely be waterproof, windproof, sunproof, hell everything proof. If you can’t find lights that meet those criteria, maybe you should just leave them up for the christmas season and store them away after.

• There are ways to avoid the Christmas decoration Snafu. Most of them involve the death of at least on relative, and are not recommened. However, if you can kill only one person and make a perfect Christmas, I would really like to shake your hand (LOL or email). That would take some doing.

One must remember that the majority of people who celebrate Christmas are parasites. No one ever offers their home or services for the purpose of the meal right until it is on the table. Of course they only offer to butter bread after that. Which sucks, since they aren’t gonna stay around to wash the butter off of the dishes either.

Holidays Suck

Dimebag

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As is usually the case with me, I am the last in the world to chime in with my two cents on the death of Darrel Abbott. His murder, mind you, kicked me right square in the nuts.

Growing up in Oregon, I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to listen to all this ‘heavy shit’, except for the copy, of a copy, of a copy that someone from California brought with them when they moved up.

My introduction to truly “heavy” Metal (bands like ‘Motley crue’ and ‘Dokken’ don’t really qualify for that distinction) was an old tape, which I found on the road, that had no label at all. That tape happened to be a copy, of a copy, and so forth, of Metallica’s first album, “No life Til Leather”. At exactly that moment in time, my eyes opened, my ears opened, and I realized that there was way more to music than the whining, country guys that dad always listened to. Which left me wanting more.

As luck would have it, Metallica’s first ‘studio release’, Kill ‘Em All, hit a few select stores very shortly after my new found love for this type of music. Of course, there was not one of those stores anywhere near me. Which led to more listening to copies, of copies, of copies, which didn’t lend itself to making it sound all that great in the first place. Thus was my experience with really ‘Heavy’ Metal, at least for the first half of the eighties (here I simply must note that I was only 11 in 1985, and one of the biggest fans of the genre).

About that time Metallica fired Dave Mustaine, who went on to found Megadeth, and still remains the only person that I have ever really idolized…Yet, the really heavy music still flowed through my speakers. Usually in the form of copied tapes from someone who copied them from the original, which someone had illegally recorded at the show (makes me wonder what they worry so much about piracy for. It was a copy, of a copy, of a really bad recording, I bought the studio release the second I had the opportunity).

Anyhow, to try to get to Pantera at some point during this history lesson, I must mention my first experience with the band.

I know that the studio release of Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell” didn’t happen until 1990, and that does fit with my scenario pretty well. One of the songs that was on that ‘studio release’ was Heresy. That happened to be a song that was on one of the copies of copies, of the previously stated bands. Part of it was taped over, of course, it always was. But that song told me to just sit down and take it. After a few minutes, it was over. Then I had to add Pantera to my ‘must own list’.

By the time I finished listening to (what I heard of) that first song, I was hooked. Pantera had turned into one of the four. The ‘four’, to the layman, are Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer and Pantera. Were it not for those bands, Marilyn Manson might not be able to shock and amaze as he does today. It took the testimony of some of the biggest rockers in the world to get the P.M.R.C. to back down and just require labels on the albums, as opppsed to banning it all.

Elderly folks just don’t seem to understand that battling for the freedom to use drug references in their music (in the late ’60’s or early ’70’s), is exactly the same as the battle to use profanity for the sake of song. Mind you, I don’t approve of the method. If you are trying to be a rapper (‘dark poet’, as I have heard them callled), you really should have a few words in your vocabulary that don’t end in a hard ‘k’ sound. I.E., if you are able to make a controversial video without saying the word ‘fuck’, you might be onto something.

The rest of us are left to live by rules. Rules that we might not like, and might rise against. But one man can only do so much.

Pearl Harbor and pets

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Being that it is the seventh of December, and me being American, I must mention that this is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This happened well over thirty years before I was born, mind you, and I know of it only from the shows that I see on television, along with the history that I saw in text books. The most famous quote of all being from F.D.R.(?) saying that “this will be a day that will live in infamy.”

Much like any other historical event, I didn’t really have any perspective on the Pearl Harbor attack. History just seems to be all in black and white, and we don’t think about it until it happens again. While the attacks on 9/11 were not the same type of attacks, that is the closest thing that I have seen to relate to Pearl Harbor. For some reason, the attacks of 9/11 made the attack at Pearl Harbor seem more real to me.

I know that this is all pretty faulty logic. Japan did what they did as a nation declaring war on another nation. The 9/11 attacks were done by a few random guys, from a small terrorist cell, and can not possibly be compared to an all out strategic war against my/our homeland. This is, of course, just me trying to find a frame of reference, of course there are none.

Not to mention that I am going nowhere with that train of thought. I just wanted to mention the date, since I remembered long before I saw anything in the news. That is something that did not happen prior to 9/11.

• Now on to trains of thought that actually lead somewhere (I hope).

I have often shown myself to be a very proud dog owner, and voiced my dislike for cats. Here at the house, though, we are certainly not a ‘one pet’ monopoly. In addition to the two dogs, we also have quite the collection of cockatiels. One of which you can see to the right.

When I say that we have a collection of cockatiels, that does not even start to scrape the surface of our cockatiel ownership over the last few years… It started out rather innocolously, you see. My mother-in-law bought my wife a pair of cockatiels for christmas a few years ago. They were brother and sister, and subsequently named ‘Elvis’ and ‘Belle’. Unfortunately, Elvis died only a few months after we had gotten him (I made him a little headstone when I buried him, perhaps I will take a picture of the headstone at a later date). Anyhow, that left the wife with one living bird. The wife was unhappy with just a single living bird, so we had to get another bird. And, as luck would have it, we got one that was extremely fertile.

Over the next six months, the new male bird and the original bird, Belle, managed to pump out an amazing number of offspring. That number is exactly 12 (I just fact-checked that with the wife).

Of those twelve birds, we were able to sell seven of them, well eight really, but one of the buyers returned the bird later saying that she just couldn’t stand his ‘ornory behavior’. Here I must note that birds are not tame creatures by nature. You see, they are usually living in the wild. If you want to have a tame bird, it will require constant handling of the bird. If you lock them in the cage (as we have done for, well, since they were born) and don’t make the effort to play with/entertain them, you are going to end up with birds that are not tame. We did try to tame the babies at the start, but then the parents started screeching, neither of us was home often enough to take them out, etc.

While our birds may not be the most tame, I bet that they are the most beautiful. The two images that I posted were of some of the offspring of the original birds (well, not Elvis). The fact that both of those birds are also male makes them a unique investment for breeders. Most cockatiels (of the male persuasian) are just solid grey, no coloring in the face at all. Combining that with the fact that our breeding pair made not only a lot of colors on the little boys, but also produced a few Lutinos, makes the little guys a virtual gold mine.

If you happen to have a pair of birds that can produce both many-colored males, as well as the coveted ‘Lutino female’, you have yourself a damn nice (and financially gaining) set of birds. Of course, after all this time, we just want the birds to quit reproducing. We put them into separate cages to try to expedite the ‘non-reproducing’ agenda. When they mate it does yield very pretty, pretty birds, but it is also a lot of work. Work that we no longer want to deal with. That is why I showed the pictures that I did today, they are birds that have been sold to a breeder. The line will continue, thankfully, I won’t have to be actively involved in it.


Saw

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Do you remember how, last week, I was commenting that I wanted to see the movie Saw? Well, as luck would have it, it is still in theatres three months after release, making that possible. So I saw it today yesterday.

I am not capable of doing an objective review of anything, and I am certainly not going to try to learn how to be objective, or to review, for the purposes of bitching about this movie. I am also going to spoil every damn ‘twist’ in the movie that was supposed to make it more shocking and amazing. Bear that in mind if you read beyond this paragraph.

I was extremely underwhelmed by the movie. The teasers and previews made it out to be some sort of psychological thriller along the lines of Silence of the Lambs and Seven. While Silence of the Lambs is a pretty high bar to set for a movie, Seven seems a bit more realistic of a goal. Judging a movie is always a bit of a joke anyway, since it depends on the person who reviews it understanding the material, reading the clues (in this case) etc. It is a very subjective thing. The reason that I linked to the other movies through Rotten Tomatoes was to illustrate the point that hundreds of people can watch the same movie and give it glowing praise, albeit for different reasons. Silence of the Lambs stands at 97% positive on their scale, while Seven is only at 85%. Yet, comparing that to the dismal 47% that Saw is sitting at, you can see that the majority opinion really does work (if you have seen the movie I am sure you will agree).

For some reason, though, when people who are not professional critics review the movie they give it pretty high marks. I am going to attribute this to the fact that if you like it you want to rave about it, while if you hate it you just want to forget about it. Thus, people who liked it are far more likely to voice their opinions about it (in the form of a review/recommendation) than people who didn’t like it. It is either that or every major critic is just plain wrong. I have watched a lot of movies that got bashed by the critics, this particular one is a case where I pretty much agree with them. Which, I suppose, puts me into the middle of the critic camp. But, this movie is so deserving of being there…

Spoilers galore start here.

The movie starts with a guy in a bathtub, and drowning. He has no idea where he is, of course, else it would make for a pretty lame thriller. There are two other people in the room, one on the opposite side of the room, the other dead, in a pool of his own blood, with a revolver in one hand and a tape recorder in the other. This is where the movie grabs you and promises greatness. Greatness that is never achieved.

I think that this may be the reason why I really didn’t like the movie very much. The material is great, the killer has a very unique style that leaves open thousands of possibilites for where it can take the viewer. Unfortunately, the movie takes you straight down the freeway, as opposed to taking a side road with lots of twists and turns. Had this screenplay been turned over to someone like Wes Craven or Stephen King, I really think that it could have gone from pretty mundane to outright brilliant.

In any thriller there must be scenes that shock and surprise you. Saw has a couple of moments that shock you (for all the wrong reasons) and a couple of moments of surprise, but they generally just fell flat. There were not a lot of people in the theatre where I watched the film, but still, no one screamed even once, there didn’t seem to be any gasps of horror; I looked to my wife during a couple of the ‘shocking’ parts to find her with her mouth agape…unfortunately, she was yawning (no joke).

In one particular scene there is a flashback of one of the major characters, showing how he was abducted in the first place. He is walking through a tiny apartment, it is totally dark (the power has been cut off) so he is using his camera flash (he is a photographer) as a make-shift flashlight. Of course, he can only use the flash once every few seconds, leaving many, many opportunities for surprise. Instead, he eventually reaches a room where he hears a noise in the closet. He lets his flash charge, then reaches for the knob, opens the door and flashes. The guy was there…Not very startling…Honestly now, with only a camera flash as a light source, being able to use it only once every few seconds, you really should be able to make a little bit more shocking scene than that. In the dark of the house, his vision would be momentarily stunned by the light as well, leaving hundreds of opportunities to actually surprise him/us.

The entire movie is much the same. The times when you should have your heart racing, wondering what is going to happen, where the killer might be, etc. The killer is always in the most obvious place, the only place you would expect him to be. It is very anticlimatic in that respect. Never is there a scene where you are just watching and all of a sudden something makes you gasp or scream. If this is supposed to be a ‘thriller’ or ‘horror’ film, wouldn’t you expect that to happen multiple times? I sure did, but that is why I am ranting about it.

One major plus for the movie is that I did not know who did it until they told me. Most movies of this type (and I can think of only Urban Legend as I sit here) end with me knowing who did it for a good half of the film. I strongly doubt that there is anyone, anywhere, that was actually able to finger the culprit in this one before the final frame of the movie. I am not saying that just because I am mad at myself for not guessing it either, I am saying that because it is/was literally impossible for the perpetrator to be who it ended up being.

A very short time into the movie, they introduce a character who you just know is the guy who did it. He is an intern at a hospital where one of the victims (a doctor) work. The fact that it all points so obviously to him simply excludes him. Later in the movie it actually shows that character (if the movie held my interest, I might remember the names) holding the doctor’s family hostage. This all happens by halfway through it, thus we know that he can not possibly be the guy behind it all.

Then the movie tries to make you think that it was one of the police investigating the crimes that is behind it…It does this even after it has shown that investigator getting knifed by the villain. While that would have been an interesting way for it to go, it is impossible for any person to have two bodies at the same time (well, maybe in porn). One can not be kneeling on the floor in front of one’s self, then turn around and slash one’s (the other one) neck and run away.

So, you must wonder, who really did it. Well the answer is pretty obvious, isn’t it? It was, of course, the dead body that has been laying on the floor in the room with the two victims for the last eight hours. I must admit that this was foreshadowed a bit by showing one of his crimes using a powerful tranquilizer to make someone appear dead, but then I would also have to mention that he somehow actively ‘electrocuted’ both of the guys while he was in that state.

The way that you know that the intern from the hospital had nothing to do with it is because of the electrical shocks (or common sense). If he had the power to kill them from the little room he was sitting in, he would never have gone down to actually shoot them when the time ran out. Not to mention that one of the shocks happened while he was on his way to the area where the victims were confined. Of course, that is where the story all turns into Swiss Cheese with holes, and likely the reason that it ended pretty abruptly right there.

You see, the killer was an older guy in the hospital with some cancer in the frontal lobe of his brain. He seemed to be comatose, yet, his first crime happened at that time, which is why the doctor was a suspect. I am pretty sure that you can fake being asleep, but can you fake having cancer in your brain, being in a coma, having doctors diagnose it, then go ahead and run out to build a huge cage of razor wire while you are at it? If you can then you are a better man than me. Possibly so much a better man that you managed to steal the doctors little flashlight, so that you could leave it at the scene of the crime. All that seems pretty tough to do while you are in a hospital bed. Of course I may just be thinking a tad too realistically.

The real question is: If the mastermind of the plot was really the ‘dead body’ where the main plot happens, and if he was using a tranquilizer to make him appear dead, how did he manage to 1)suppress bodily functions for that amount of time? 2)Shock both of the victims at random, while both of his hands were clearly visible? 3)Get both of the guys into that room before taking the tranquilizer (as one mentioned that he had tried screaming, to no effect. And the other woke up drowning in a bathtub. Making me think that the first guy had been there for a while before the second guy got there). 4)All of this is not even touching on how the guy that was in a coma, in the hospital, was able to get out to conduct the first couple of crimes, let alone set up a little media center in an abondoned building. Which leads nicely into 5)How can you possibly get the electric company to supply power to an abandoned building in the first place? -I had to show two forms of ID and have a home inspection before they turned on the power at my house-.

Now just a couple of technical fubars. The cell phone that the doctor finds appears to be exactly the same phone that he had when he was abducted. He is a doctor, lots of people are likely trying to call him, what if someone other than the killer calls? Towards the end of the movie, the doctor is not able to reach his cell phone, it is just out of his reach. He tries using a small box to retrieve it, can’t reach. Then he grabs a hacksaw (average length about 16″), which has a handy loop at the end of it, and proceeds to chop off his own foot, hmm, perhaps the hacksaw could have reached the phone?

I really thought that I was going to like this movie. I likely would have liked this movie if it had lived up to its potential. My wife told me that the story was written by some ‘no-name’ and was later picked up by an actual production company, that is great and all, but someone along the line should have said; “you know, it is decent as is. We could get a real producer in here and make it great.” Which, obviously, never happened. My guess is that this one will get remade in a decade or so, and it will be absolutely brilliant.

This movie is absolute proof that a good idea/story does not necessarily lead to a good movie.

Wow, I didn’t realize just how badly I hated this movie. Die, Saw, Die!

Kodak and Zelda

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Following on the dog theme over the last couple of posts, I was happily snapping away with my little digital camera. While it is a refurbished, bottom of the barrel Kokak CX4200, I am pretty happy with the results. I do suppose that your average ‘professional photographer’ would have all kinds of issues with the thing, but then, your average ‘professional photographer’ wouldn’t have been doing bottom-of-the-barrel shopping in the first place…would he? I am sure that this is not the camera for you if you plan to make museum quality prints, but when your venue is the internet and you just want it to look pretty good (as opposed to looking jaw-droppingly beautiful), 59 bucks for a used one of these will kick the shit out of a thousand for whatever the next ‘change the world’ digital recorder happens to be. Mark my words, “I will never pay more than 100 dollars for a camera” (might need to include a clause relating to inflation in that statement), last year’s model works wonderfully, thank you. Yes, additional optical zoom would be great, since just seeing the flower didn’t give me the ‘true essence’ of its beauty, while looking at it through a microscope would, and etc.

But, it is my intention to talk, once again, about our little puppies. So I shall.

Previously, I posted a little picture of the puppy Zelda doing her best to look like the sphinx. While that didn’t generate any feedback (hell, nothing I write ever does), I wanted to do a bit more to illustrate the condition that she has. That is where the camera comes in.

Usually, it is pretty hard to get a photo of Zelda doing anything. She moves pretty quickly. As in the photo that you see to your right. She moved a bit too quickly for the camera to catch the weird angles that her hind legs were in only a fraction of a second ago. Still it is an unusual pose; How can any dog manage to work its Stifle joint in that way? Let alone the hock? It is just the way that Zelda lays.

This second photo is of Zelda’s rear end, when I caught her by surprise. In this photo (which can be viewed at a much larger scale if you click on it, as well as the previous photo), you can see just how far away from the norm her laying position is. I know that it looks ‘Photo shopped’, but I swear that it is not. This is how Zelda lays much of the time. I even just loaded the much larger version, and it still looks like a fake to me, but I took the picture, and it isn’t fake. Perhaps, in the future, I will be able to get a shot of Zelda when she is ‘not quite’ looking freakish, but for now all I have is normal or freakish. It is not my fault that I wasn’t able to get her in better light before I started to snap away. It is not her fault that she always jumps up and licks me when I am in the room, yet, it is unfortunate that I wasn’t able to get a good shot of that leg that didn’t look like I faked it.

Now I must thank the little puppy Zelda for giving me a few days of bitching fodder, as well as some nice photos. Zelda is a very happy, affectionate little pup, but when the time comes to decide between hip surgery or death, unfortunately, I fear, Zelda might receive the latter.

Now that I have stated publicly that money is more important than a pet, I leave you with only this thought. Do you actually ever cry when you lose money? What about a pet?

Christmas trees and puppies

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Holy Fuck! When did it turn into December? Damn it, last I knew it was still July and I was dealing with issues that didn’t relate to last minute Christmas shopping. I suppose I should have seen December coming, what with the whole passing of Labor day, Halloween, Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving. Yet, somehow, I am still caught a bit off guard. Christmas is only supposed to happen near the end of December, and while it concerns me (in the gifting portion), it is not to be thought about or spoken of for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, that time is now upon us, that means that my usual cop-outs don’t really apply. Damn this modern society.

Thankfully, my wife is far more into the spirit of Christmas than I am. She is a crafty little devil, and makes some sort of trinket for most of the friends and family every year. Usually, she just hand paints some of the ceramic ornaments (which are really cheap at every craft store), but this year she decided to do something a bit different. That something different involved this particular item on the right.

It is not, as I had assumed, some sort of a weird, French, sexual device, no, no, way more mundane than that. Just her mock-up of a christmas tree. Note that it is complete with a little pot to stand in, and it is painted the traditional color for the said tree. Note also that the top is adorned with a star, as opposed to an Angel (while I did not ask the wife if there was any significant reason why, I am pretty sure that there are exactly two reasons. The first is that she, also, is not religious. The second is that I bet it would be damn hard to find an angel that small to top a tree.). The whole thing stands about, roughly, 10 or 12 inches tall, and never makes it past being about three inches wide. Well, never until she starts to decorate it. That little sucker looks better and better as the ornaments go on, and not just visually…

Here we see the finished product (placed on the left side of the screen for the purpose of variety). For some reason it looks like everything was photoshopped onto the initial picture, I assure you that that is not the case (likely the reduction of color depth makes it look a bit cartoonish, but what am I to do? The image would have been 1.4 megs if I hadn’t tried to reduce it…). Her little Christmas tree is ornamented by a whole bunch of little candies, which she attached to it with straight pins. I am really not sure where she got the idea to try it, but it really does look nice -much better in person-. Between the little pots, the foam cones, the stars and all of the candy, not to mention the paint, and the time that it took her to build them, she is probably, monetarily, about five dollars into each one of these little guys (not counting for time spent, of course). Of course, as with anyone with an ability for crafting, the end result seems to be the payoff.

What are the odds that you are going to be opening up presents this year, come to one from Uncle Jed, and find something so unique? It certainly beats socks, as a gift.


• It seems that I can not talk enough about my dogs puppies. Today I will present the other side of the lovable little guys.

Here we see one of their faux death matches. While it appears that Zelda (the nearer one in the photo) has all four feet on the ground, the reality is that Warlock has one paw on her neck and one paw on the ground, while Zelda is swiping at Warlock’s front leg. She did hit that front leg at the conclusion of this little sparring session, that left Warlock on his back and pretty much defenseless. Then they both got up, drank some water, went outside and started barking at the world in general.

I think that I, more than most, understand that the dogs are just playing. However, when you see this nice little shot of Warlock, you might think that his intentions are not to be playful. Zelda was going for his throat, of course, but man that is a really menacing smile (with pearly white teeth, I might add, we do take care of our little dogs puppies). Of course, Warlock was on the bottom of that battle, as he always is. Warlock always submits to Zelda, regardless of the fact that he weighs almost twice as much as she does. My wife tells me that it is ‘normal behavior’ for pack animals. The Wolves are always led by a dominant female, that sort of thing. I got nothing against that, but, dear God, Warlock is damn near 80 pounds. Zelda, on the other hand, is like 40 pounds, soaking wet. Gain some machismo, Warlock.

Yet, I suppose, at the end of the day, if you are going to be getting your ass kicked this badly, you may as well concede victory. If I am ever in a battle, then take on the fetal position, I will likely begin to beg for my life. I am only as proud as my circumstances dictate. The most thankfull part of that whole scenario is that I have the knowledge and ability to use a doorknob. If dogs ever decide to stop licking their asses, hell, cats even, for an extended period of time, they may figure out that doorknobs are just not that big of an obstacle.

I certainly fear the day when our pets rise up and overthrow us, mostly because there will be cats involved. I don’t really have anything against cats, per se, but my wife is allergic to their fur, and I have never felt the need to have one around me. Not that I dislike cats, just that it is nice to point to something and have your pet stare at something other than your finger.


I suppose my two cents isn’t worth much.


Thanksgiving thoughts and National Treasure

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To begin by finishing where I left off on Thursday, the remainder of the Thanksgiving went rather well. It was unfortunate that my Mother-in-law was not able to sit at the table for the meal (due to extreme pain in her hip, something I certainly can’t/won’t fault her for), but the food and the company were both good. I might add that this is the first time that one of the guest actually did the dishes before leaving, which was nice (especially for the wife, who had been busting her ass for the last couple of days to get everything ready for the feast). Of course when I think about it, no one except my wife ever seems to have to put so much time into the preparation of the meal, which includes washing most of the pans a couple of times along the way to use them to make additional dishes. Perhaps in the future we should require additional help in the final clean up. Now that is something that we could truly be thankfull for.

• Having nothing of any substance planned for this Sunday, I decided that it would be nice to go and see a movie. There were three movies playing that I had an interest in seeing, those being “Saw”, “National Treasure” and “The Incredibles”. Our theatre of choice (which is only our theatre of choice because it is always slow, especially on Sundays.) was not showing “Saw” at all, and the nearest other theatres were only showing it much later in the day. Left with the choice between “The Incredibles” and “National Treasure”, I went to check the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. “The Incredibles” has an amazing 96% positive rating over there, while “National Treasure” is being beaten to death. I was thinking that we would go see the former, however, when I presented the options to the wife, she chose the latter. You guess which one we went to see.

How was the movie? It was pretty good.

A lot of the critics are ripping at National Treasure for being basically Indiana Jones meets The Davinci Code. That might all be true, since I have yet to read the Davinci code there is no way for me to know. Of course critics have only opinions, and opinions are not to be taken as fact. When almost every major critic is saying the same thing, however, it seems to push it from an opinion to a more-than-likely that the plot is ripped off from the aforementioned book. The fact that I didn’t read the Davinci Code might have made it possible for me to enjoy the movie, as such, I just hung on for the ride.

I am not sure whether the fact that I don’t watch a lot of movies made me enjoy it more than a seasoned movie-goer, but I must say that it kept me entertained from start to finish. There were a couple of pretty dull moments in it, as well as a couple of times where completely abstract clues were solved just a smidge to fast (putting it mildly). But in my rating system I judge only by how many times I check my watch. I checked my watch about a half a dozen times during this one, however the watch checks were not based on boredom, but on curiosity as to how much time had passed since I last checked. The first time I looked down was over an hour into it (counting the previews), so I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t having some weird episode with ‘missing time’ or something. The rest of the times that I was checking the watch were much later in the film, and then just because I really, really, wanted to see exactly what the treasure was, and wondered how much longer they could hold out on letting me see it.

Being a veteran of a lot of video games, I was not surprised to see references to the Knights Templar in the film. There have been rumors of the wealth of the Templars forever, tons of books have used that as a premise, as well as a lot of point-and-click adventure games. It is good solid mythology to base them on. Not quite as popular in the U.S. as it is abroad, I think the movie will do extremely well overseas, where they really eat these stories up.

The tie-in of the Masons was certainly meant to draw in the conspiracy theorists here in the U.S. The Masons are a society that is pretty well known, yet not many people over here know exactly what they stand for. While it is certainly true that some of the forefathers, George Washington for instance, were Masons, it is pretty likely that a lot of people who opposed the U.S. having independence were Masons as well.

Trying to combine the Legend of the Templars from centuries long ago with the Masons of today (or 200 years ago) just doesn’t fit. The Masons have set up a helpfull little page on their website for those who watched the movie and thought that every minute of it was true.

Just to venture a guess, I am gonna say that anyone who knows anything about early American history is going to have a lot of problems with this film. I don’t know much about it at all, but I still know enough to doubt the Templar/Mason aspect of it. There is also the fact that some of the clues are on printed money. While the bills have remained (virtually) the same for quite some time, there were not paper bills going back as far as necessary to make that premise work for this film (this was, I think, a way for them to avoid having to find the actual paintings that the bills were based on, which would have made the movie go a lot longer.).

Further, anyone who knows anything about modern science will point out that the shadow that is cast from the tower at independence hall will vary not only by the time of day, but also by the day of the year. My wife pointed out (and I noticed) that the place the shadow was pointing to was pretty clearly marked when viewed close up anyway, the problem with that is that the film made you believe that it could only be seen at exactly 2:22p.m. (and why p.m.? The moon will make things cast shadows on clear nights). That is not even bringing to light the fact that if 200 years had really passed since the original clue was left the shadow wouldn’t fall the same anyway. A couple of hundred years can make shadows fall a bit different, if you know what I mean.

Finally, at least as far as ripping the movie apart, the opening sequence is all too easy. Why would an old, wooden ship be anywhere near the Arctic Circle in the first place (I understand it is a bit chilly up there). Even if it was, why would it be common knowledge to everyone who signed the declaration of independence? How did the Hero in this story find information to lead him to the ship when all his ancestors had failed? (that part is not touched on at all. No mention of why he was looking there as opposed to looking at the South Pole.) Yes, ocean currents could dictate the direction of the ship, but when the ship is lost it is usually because of catastrophic disaster, not sailing into a little nook that then freezes over trapping you. Even if that did happen, why did the people die in the ship? It is then solid ground (well ice, but ice that huge motor vehicles can traverse), why not try to find a way out? Ohh, right, had they done that, they might have lived. Had that happened, I would not have had a movie to watch in the first place.

Wow, that sounds pretty brutal, and I actually liked the movie.

The movie flows pretty well. There are some times when there are far too many cut-scenes, which I suppose add to the drama, but kind of fall flat in the greater scheme. The movie is pretty long (which was a good thing in this case), which kept me wondering how much the good guys would be able to find before the bad guys got the upper hand again. The ‘riddles’ are all a bit too unbelievable, especially in the solving portion of them. Yet, it was entertaining from beginning to end. That seems to be a difficult thing for a film to achieve.

I really enjoyed the film, even when it tried to tie the Templars to the Masons. It kept my curiosity high enough that I wanted to see the final frame, just to see how it would all turn out. There was never a doubt as to whether the good guys would win, yet, the bad guys were close enough to get the upper hand quite a few times. There are a couple of unexpected twists (unless you have read the Davinci Code, evidently), that don’t really throw you off, but at least make yoy question your theory about how it will all work out.

Long story shorter, I watched this film for more than two hours and I think I got my money’s worth. You might want to make sure that you get it at matinee pricing though. Not great, but a good ride for sure.

Ebert actively hated it. A quote from the final paragraph in his review:

Cage, one of my favorite actors, is ideal for this caper because he has the ability to seem uncontrollably enthusiastic about almost anything. Harvey Keitel, who plays FBI agent Sadusky, falls back on his ability to seem grim about almost anything. Jon Voight calls on his skill at seeming sincere at the drop of a pin. Diane Kruger has a foreign accent even though she is the National Archivist, so that our eyes can mist at the thought that in the land of opportunity, even a person with a foreign accent can become the National Archivist. “National Treasure” is so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line.

What, did this film kill his mom?

Turkey day and Rollercoaster Tycoom

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Turkey Day!


Technically, I think it is only turkey day in the U.S., but since I am relatively sure that my readership has yet to venture beyond the state that I live in, let alone to other continents, I am pretty sure that all eyes upon this page celebrate thanksgiving (or at the very least acknowledge it).

This year, the wife spent hours and hours over the last couple of days trying to get everything ready, and did a marvelous job of it. Unfortunately, being that it is a holiday, things must go awry. Nothing terrible this year; the turkey is done, as are the rolls and other such fare, we are simply waiting on the potatoes. The unfortunate part of this is that the potatoes are my responsibility, at least in theory.

We were up at about 8 this morning to start with the turkey, you know stuffing it and getting it into the oven. That task was completed by about 8:40, and with about five hours until it would be cooked. That was a pretty ideal time, I thought. Have the turkey ready by about 2 so that you can start to use the oven to make the sides (sweet potatoes and the such), and such it was. Even as I type this I can smell the pleasant aroma of the turkey that shall soon be on the plate in front of me. The rolls are golden, fluffy and beautiful. We are waiting on my mashed potatoes to begin the meal. Unfortunately the potatoes have not yet arrived at the house. Makes it a bit tough to cook them.

The potatoes appeared just after I finished the last sentence and have since been peeled and set to boil. The Thanksgiving feast should be here within about thirty minutes. That makes us just about an hour and a half from our goal of eating by 4, but what are you gonna do?

• On to discussing horribly outdated video games!

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that it seemed that roller coasters was not really the meat of how to win the scenarios in roller coaster tycoon. Today I tested that theory, albeit on only the second scenario. I was able to meet the goal (barely) with only roller coasters (and some bathrooms, food, etc. No other rides though). Unfortunately, I still have not found a way to build one of my own that people actually want to go on. If I use their pre-fabricated designs, there are people lining up to ride them. If I build them myself, even when I am trying to make them tame, I get intensity and nausea ratings that are ‘very extreme’, while the excitement of the ride remains unusually low. I am still working to remedy that problem.

There is yet another annoying aspect of the game (which would have been solved had it come with the instruction booklet) regarding the trash in the park. I did not know that you could build trash cans. Who would think that you would list trash cans under the ‘Scenery’ option? As a result of that little oversight I was forced to have at least double the amount of mainenance guys that I needed. Once again, it was a lesson learned, and a lesson that anyone who plays the game probably learned a half a decade ago. At any rate, I did discover that a bunch of trash cans can easily replace a bunch of idiots that just walk around looking for trash to pick up. It turns out that some of the people will put trash into a bin if it is available. Of course there are others that will throw it on the ground three steps from the can, but this is America…What do you expect?

I mentioned, in a previous post, that I bought this game based on my enjoyment of the game ‘SimCity’. One of the things that always annoyed me about SimCity was that you could not control whether the buildings that you built would turn into condos’ or the projects. Well, you could, but that would require moving power stations, adding parks, putting police and fire services closer, etc., etc. That is not one of the issues in the roller coaster game. All you have to do here is build big rides, put in the shops, sweep the vomit off of the sidewalks, and build a few trash cans to be successful. That is my kind of game. More of the building of enormous rides, less of the worrying about where the local fire department is. Of course I did have 16 deaths in an accident that I could have avoided (changed the configuration on the cars on a self-built coaster), but that was just a drop in the pan…Knocked the price down on the ride for a week or two and it was back to normal.

Simulations are nice when they don’t simulate real life, only the way that life should be.

• It seems that my potatoes are almost ready for smashing….almost…At any rate, enough for today.

Games and Religion (come to think of it, just games)

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Yesterday’s missed post can be blamed directly on Roller Coaster Tycoon. I took the liberty of breaking the EULA so that I could install it on both of the pc’s here in the house, since I recently gifted my wife the Age of Mythology game (since she seemed to love the Age of Empires game so much). After that point, I was playing the roller coaster game and not typing much at all. It seems I have grown accustomed to the split keyboard, while I can still type on a normal keyboard, the typos would be horrendous. Well, that and I really wanted to keep playing the game anyway. Pick any of those excuses and take it to heart, ’cause that was the real reason… Now, on to bigger and better things.

• Interesting article in the news, or not. I do suppose that it would depend a lot on your personal religious beliefs. No need to link to it here, since the story itself only seeded a thought in my mind and has nothing to do with the story that I happened to see the quote in. While I don’t remember the quote verbatim, it went something like this:

“I don’t know what the truth is. The only way we will find the truth is to put all of the parties on the stand, under oath, then we will know the truth.”

That is a very good argument. Unless you happen to be talking to someone who is not religious. You see, I am not religious, and as such, I would lie with my hand on a copy of the ‘Holy Bible’ without a second thought. Is there really someone, anyone, out there that is so naive that they think that a person who would openly break ‘God’s Commandments’, would admit to it if they had their hand on a bible? Like you kill 39 women, then deny all of the crimes, but the second you put your hand on the bible you start saying you killed them all? Yes, interrogate him under oath…No one lies, ever…

Lest you all start thinking that I don’t believe in god, I offer you this tidbit. I don’t believe in god, it is a sham that organized religion created to get you to give them money. Yet, when I do commit the mortal sins, I ask for forgiveness to cover my tracks. That is religion in action! Instant gratification for hell-bound practices…Damn, I may be Republican after all…

• Thanksgiving is tomorrow, in the U.S., and everyone is celebrating it. My number one question is why the ‘native americans’ are celebrating it. Was this the last holiday they had before the white man started killing their warriors, raping their women, and forcing them into the reservations that they eventually made it into? Is the ‘white man’ remembered fondly for his ability to trade vodka for gold?

• My mind is in a bit of a flurry right now, please excuse me for ending this shorter than expected.

Warlock and Zelda

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Unfortunately, I did not get any email about the movie discussion yesterday. That really leaves me without a lot of bitching fodder. Of course that is the main reason why my posts have become less frequent in the first place. Not that I am actively looking for publicity or anything, just that it would be nice to think that someone other than myself, or my wife, was/is reading what I write. That, too, is a bit of a catch-22; more people would likely read if I were to update more often, while I would update more often if more people were reading…

That is the beauty of having my own website. There is certainly no one wanting to advertise here, nor are there any sponsors. That allows me to say what I want, when I want. How this differs from starting a site at Blogspot is that I can use profanity to make a point. Which, when I think about it, doesn’t really seem to be worth the price I pay to host the site. Noting that, I will call this site a hobby, something I do to keep me from doing something worse… You know, like, becoming a priest.

• Now that it is pretty well established that I do not have a point to talk about (not that you would expect one, had you read the site previously), I will move on to a subject that is sure to please the masses. I am sure that you are asking yourself what subject that could be, well, puppies, of course.

Here we see the puppy ‘Zelda’ (who is a vicious pit bull, and thus a confirmed killer), doing her best to look exactly like the Sphinx. This is how she lays down all the time, not a pose. Well, when she is sleeping she doesn’t lay this way, but the rest of the time she does. Usually her head is resting on her paws, but when she sees someone looking at her she gets all Egyptian. Most dogs are not able to lay just like that, her hind legs are not actually under her body, they are sticking out behind. That is why it looks like her back end is as wide as her shoulders. This is something that she has always done, however, we are forced to feed her gluosamine for that malady (which I think may be Canine Hip Dysplasia, but certainly hope is not). She lays like that with or without the glucosomine, but she seems to be in much less pain when she gets her daily pill.

Yes, I know there will be arthritis problem much later in her life. I know that she will be in a lot of pain until she dies, but when you see how happy she is now, you kind of have to disregard the future. Take yourself, for instance, if someone was able to tell you what you would die from (be it kidney failure, car accident, etc.), would you want to die just then? Chances are that you would want to live as long as possible. Which is the goal with the puppy ‘Zelda’. She will be alive right until the time that she no longer seems to be happy. If she is in constant pain, it would be better to ease the pain for the pet than to prolong the pain for both her and us. Now I am getting misty-eyed thinking about that decision, which is many years away. Glucosamine is working for her now, she is happy and healthy, we will destroy bridges once they are reached (and hopefully after we cross them).

Fear not! We have multiple puppies!

Some might argue that dogs are no longer ‘puppies’ once they reach a certain size or weight. I am not ‘some’. Can you look at those cute little puppies lying there and try to call them dogs? Here we see both Warlock and Zelda viciously killing what they kill most of the time, that being the better part of a day. Perhaps they were off mauling children earlier in the day, being vicious dogs, I dunno, I doubt it. Unfortunately, both of the dogs looked up when I stood up with the camera, else you would have seen them laying with their backs/bodies/heads right together (it was cute, trust me).

Okay, that was the puppy story for the next random amount of time.

Vicious, vicious killers. Stay away from them, they might lick you right to death.

An interesting side note, both of the dogs really hate mexicans. I am not saying that to be stereotypical, I am saying that because of you are hispanic, and you knock on our door, the dogs will be extremely vicious. If you are anything other than hispanic, the dogs will jump up and lick you. I don’t have any explanation for this behavior, but I do find it both unfortunate and humorous.