Hmmm......

Mostly I haven't been updating because my rants tend to center on political missgivings I have, and they are definitly growing on an almost daily basis. Honestly though I've just been tired of ranting about them and maybe I'm taking a little time to recharge.

So I'll just recap a little of what's been going on in my personal life.

Christmas has been very good. My money situation because of it is a bit alarming, but I guess that is the season. cadoln and I hosted a Christmas dinner at our place for her family instead of the usual trip to her mothers place. All in all it was a lot of fun, and Courtney did a fantastic job of making a big dinner for everyone. I was a bit nervous at the whole affair because my experience has been that her family needs to subvert her for some reason and I thought her mother would want it to go wrong just because it wasn't at her own place. There was a little of that from her as well as a teeny bit of "your life must be screwed up so mine seems better" subversion from her brother, but overall it was pretty good. For my part it was just fun to watch her be so happy when things went off right. I honestly can't think of many things that make me feel better than to see her happy and excited.

Anyway, a good time was had by all.

Nothing major going on for me right now. I'm plodding along with Paragon City Hall but that is starting to feel a bit too much like work. I promised myself I'd stay with the site through the end of February and ... (Read More)

DESPAIR!!!!!!

do it.... you know you want to..... now do it..... despair.

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Ok STOP.... no more for you... go be bouncy happy.

Well I'm pretty tired this morning. Saw the Two Towers last night and of course loved it, but I actually didn't think it was a better movie than the first as some are saying. Afterall though, how could it be? It's a 2nd act, and the 2nd act is always a strange place in a story arch. Dont' get me wrong, I really loved it but it was almost entirely dirven by action where as the first had such good character development it was like spending time with all friends.

Unfortunatly they needed to do so much in the movie there just wasn't time to get into what could have been some stunning characters like Faramir and Treebeard. The one character that was COMPLETELY amazing though was Golumn. He is by far the star of this movie (can a cgi character get a best supporting actor nod?) I felt so terrible sorry for him, and knowing what is coming I felt even worse.

I don't want to give anything away but I'll just toss out a few things..

Wargs -- EEEEPP!!!
Ents -- OMFG
Nazgul -- Shit in your pants perfect
Scenes with Arwen -- If you don't give a romantic sign you're a heartless bastard.
Aragorn -- Lays the smack down on some candy asses.
Gimli -- "Ok, toss me..... just don't tell the elf" Hilarious.
Legolas -- Looks stunning while stomping a mud hole in your arse.
Gandalf -- So not enough screen time.

See it, see it again, then read the book... see it again... and bitch about what they changed (there were some significant changes in this one).

Anyway... loved it.

I've had quiet a lot going on the last week, a sudden marriage announcement, some movie food for though, a VERY small bachelor party, and an actual wedding, and a terrible end to a generation.


Last week was pretty hectic for me. The week previously my friend announced he was getting married that week, and with the wedding this past Friday he called me up the previous Monday and asked if I would be his best man. I'm always flushed and honored to be asked such a thing, but the last minute nature of it was hectic. I've been the best man at 2 pervious weddings in my life and enjoyed that role, and even got to give a bride away once which brought almost to tears at being asked by my friend to do it. So Tuesday I went out with my groom friend and just tried to relax with him a bit at dinner. Much geek fun was had.

Wednesday evening I went to see the powerful and satirical film "Bowling for Columbine" and I have to say it is one of my favorites for the year. So much was said in that movie that I couldn't even attempt to sum up all my thoughts about it here but I'll try to toss out a few none the less. You may find some interesting comments on the movie in the often insightful and entertaining journal of fwod who I saw the movie with amongst others.

The crux of the movie is something dear to my heart, that America is spinning out of control socially, economically, and politically, and it spent a lot of it's time trying to figure out why. My personal take on it seems to distill down to the fact ... (Read More)

Well Hooty Hoo!!!!!!!!!

I'lllllllll be nuked.... for chrisssssstmassssssss

And how do I feel about this?

I choose to express my feelings on this in mp3 expressionist piece. (~380kb, but it's not for gentle ears so fair warning)

You tell em Jay.

Amazon.com runs a service to try and help people browsing for books to find other books that may be of interest to them. What they do is keep track of who buys what book and then finds out what other books are most often bought or searched for by people who bought that book. So when you browse a particular book it will list those 'other' books. Now as one of the most outstanding reality checks given to us by the gods check out the following book and what books are most often bought by people buying this book. The Gods definitely have a sense of humor.

This is a screen shot of what I'm talking about

Amazon pretty much changed their code so this wouldn't happen anymore but for a moment at least, those of us luck enough to catch it were served a bit of sweet irony.

Here is a Zdnet new item on this event

I will be giggling all day over this. Thank you karma for this gift of humor! lol

Caught a show last night on Comedy Central called "Tough Crowd" which premiered right after the Daily show. It's pretty much a direct rip off of Politically Incorrect hosted by Colin Quinn and featuring the same 4 guest, attempt at frank talk that was the mainstay of Politically Incorrect. "Touch Crowd" falls way short of the great show it's trying to copy though because it's made up of nothing but comedian's trying to get one liners off about this or that topic. Now that isn't inherently bad because there can sometimes be a lot of truth in comedy. I'd so so far as to say there can be more truth in comedy than in news sometimes, but that is definitely not the case with this show. Colin Quinn delivers his reaching lines with the speed of an A train and with all the grace of a Jerry Lewis prat fall. It's so bad I've already come to call the show "Politically Incoherent" and I can't really imagine myself trying to make a go of it again.

On a brighter note, the original host of Politically Incorrect has scored a new show on HBO that will debut after the new year. It seems to have a format similar to Politically Incorrect and that has me excited. Being able to do that with no commercial interruptions AND no bleeping...... It's not TV... It's HBO.

I was watching Al Gore on the Daily Show last night and had a few thoughts between his awkwardly delivered lines and dry, brittle cracking sound he makes when he moves. Politicians just aren't mean enough about the right things, and will spend millions of dollars being mean about things that mean absolutely nothing. Political campaigns are rife with TV ads that will claim someone's opponent is capable of anything up to and including cannibalistic necrophilia. The kinds of personal attacks made in political ads are completely ridiculous and wholly uncalled for. That alone annoys me enough to want to give some people a nice old fashion Tai caning, but what REALLY drives me crazy is they wont take that mud slinging to the right arena. Nobody will come right out and say that Bush is a corporate panderer and war monger, that he is directly to blame for the worsening of our economic situation and that he may be headed for the death of millions as the new Caesar.

Republican Trent Lott was at a dinner for the old Segregationist Strom Thurmon and directly said he wish Strom had been elected president when he ran, and if he had we wouldn't have the problems we have today!! Holy Fucking Shit... Strom ran on a platform of bigoted segregation and even called himself a "Dix-ocrat" to emphasis he desire to return to the good old days of pre the civil war south. THIS is what Trent Lott thinks would have fixed all our problems?!?!?! And nobody is calling him on this bullshit

GAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!! Wake up you placid, head in the sand, lemming!!!!! (I mix my metaphors with lots of love) This "you can't change anything" attitude is the best marketing scheme in the history of the ... (Read More)

Can't believe I forgot to mention this but if anyone gets the chance to watch the Discovery Channel special "James Cameron's: Bismark" you should definitly catch it. This is really where special effects can get you into history, help recreate events in a very tangible way and get a more full account of what happened across. I've always been in awe of the sea and big ships in particular and I thought this was just a great special, even if it did cater to Cameron's ego a bit too much.

.....just ARGH!!!

A quiet weekend, good for the Hermit in me. As the silly season goes on and on and I break out movies like "Home for the Holidays", and "Mixed Nuts" the hermit in my grows more and more.

Watched Firefly Friday night, it was a LOT of fun as usual. The writing is really witty to me and that is something I wholly appreciated. They seem to use common cliché's from television and sci-fi but turn completely the other way when resolving them which I find refreshing. Among some of the more memorable lines this week.... "I'll be in my bunk", "I guess we have to for the sake of the sexual tension", and "He needs to do this for himself.......(small voice) No I don't". 2 hour Firefly this Friday so woot for me.

Picked up the core rulebook for the Hero system rpg. Back in "the day", yes the infamous 'day', I used to run Champions games and got a kick out of it. I haven't picked the rules up in like 17 years though so there is a lot to learn again. Adam is going to be trying out a Shadowrun game so we'll only do this during breaks or if that one folds.

Sunday night was a lame season finale for the Sopranos. I'm really disappointed in this season because it has almost zero substance or anything even remotely interesting in the way of storyline. I think the writers have just lost their basic understanding of how a story arch works. They have all kinds of crisis but absolutely no resolution. Also I think they've almost completely lost the audience's connection to the characters. Sure Meadow gets mad at Tony and calls him a 'gangster', but so what ... (Read More)

I felt like I wasn't (and still aren't) representing my interests good enough in my profile so I went through and updated it pretty heavily today. Sometimes it's very hard to enumerate things like that but it's always interesting exercise.

SAVE THE BEST SHOW ON TV... FIREFLY!!!

Go and sign THIS petition... then have your roomate sign it, then your significant other, call your parents and have them sign it, get in touch with old high school friends and have them sign it. Contact members of the Al-Quada network and have them sign it.

SAVE THIS SHOW!

Just stray thoughts and random observations from today.

• Probably my favorite news website is www.reuters.com but something there disturbs me. It has a number of news topics like World New, or Technology, and so forth. Clicking them brings you to top stories in that topic. That is all but the 'Entertainment' topic which, upon clicking, opens up a submenu of 8 subtopics. It just annoys me that of ALL the topics in the world that this one justifies that much covers. News IS entertainment.
  
• Bush appointed Kissinger to head up the committee to investigate the Sept 11th government reactions. He's wanted in France and many other nations for questioning on war crimes and is probably singularly responsible for the worst atrocities committed by our nation in the last 30 years. I don't understand how we go from Clinton era complaining about the most trivial activity and having it being 24 hour news, to Bush era and slipping toward the 4th Reich and nobody caring.
  
• Star Wars Galaxies announced 1 character per server with 8 character max across all servers today. This is really a blatant ploy to pump money out of gamers and annoys me beyond believe.
  
• City of Heroes is in the throws of it's fans having serious doubt yet again as they announce another major feature cut from the game and a push back of the release date. We were promised the game wasn't being pillaged. I don't necessarily think it is, but there is no evidence to the contrary. Mostly I feel sorry for the NCsoft community coordinator who seemed totally in the dark about it. It's only a guess but I thinks he was pretty pissed that she found out by accident.
  
• Courtney is bringing me a hot ...

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Proof that just knowing feygirl is alive can add something good into your life.... got this from her LJ.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/12/01/scotus.police.questioning.ap/index.html

Any they used to say not offering a reach around was inpolite, now they aren't even offering to use lube!

I ask again, when did everything just spin out of control and why doesn't anyone care?

Yet another day where my stress level has risen to the point where I'm sure I'm losing days or weeks off my life. Why can't I stop myself from this? I know when the day comes that I finally clutch my chest and fall down dead, as the blackness begins to take me I'll stress about why I allowed myself to become so stressed over this STUPID SHIT.

I find my mind turning toward things I can do about it and I'm coming up woefully short. The only thing that occurs to me is that maybe I should buy some vodka or something and have a few drinks. I'm not much of a drinker in general but this is a new and reoccurring thought to me lately….. that I can't seem to get this stress under control and maybe a few drinks would ease back on the throttle. Does this make me an alcoholic? One in the making? Just understandable stress reaction?

I don't feel a NEED to drink but I increasingly find myself thinking that maybe I should. Is that the path to feeling a NEED to have a drink? Fuck if I know and I'm getting so tired of it all I'm starting not to care.

On that whole topic though, how is it people can't understand drug use in America (or anywhere for that matter). For a lot of people life can be nothing but a boiling caldron of shit. Daily lives distilled down to the grind of economic fiefdom, you know… the new slavery. This is really not as much of a dramatic exaggeration as some people reading this may think. Lots of people are under so much debt they will never get out of ... (Read More)

Yes yes we are... all of us... silly silly bitches.... It's the 21st century... we're suppose to have dehydrated means in a single pill, flying cars, and silver suits......... Instead the best progress we've made is to have actual laws that make homosexuality illegal. The fact that this question even needs to be asked is an embarrassment.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/12/02/scotus.sodomy.ap/index.html


Maybe it's just that I don't feel insecure about my sexuality, but there is so much hate in the world that I don't understand how it is we can afford to question how people are able to find love.

This is definitly OMFG kind of funny

http://entertainment.yahoo.com/entnews/wwn/20021121/103789080005.html

I'm sure it's true too, and if so, I could be dead any day now.

Spent most of yesterday doped up on Nyquil which was good since I needed the sleep. I'm feeling a little better today but only just a little. Still have that wrapped in plastic feeling. Unfortunatly too much going on in work to stay home, but today is a fun day since some of the work I've been doing over the last several months to a year is finnally getting into the hands of users and since everything looks to be fine, that is aways a fun thing to watch people react to what you've been doing. (I say that because the reaction is usually pretty good).

First weekend off in 2 weeks and I'm sick. So many things I needed to catch up on too. Blah blah blah