My 200th Post

It’s my 200th post. Back when I hit the 100-post mark back in July I had planned on doing a one-year/200 post/Happy New Year post. However October 24 seems a little early to do a Happy New Years post, It looks like I posted faster than I thought I would, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to say thanks to all the people who fanned me over the last almost 11 months.

First to my frequent commenters:

Stephanie B aka: Rocket Scientist - I can always count on her to make a point I hadn’t thought of. Thanks for that.

Askcherlock - Thanks for leaving nice thoughtful comments.

Tricia - A sweetheart who is under the mind control of Tigger the leader of the Catspiracy. She is the one who first alerted me to the Catspiracy.

My friends from Thisisby.us

TIBU2.com - This is where it all started, I was a member of the writing site Thisisby.us and wrote over 50 articles over there as well as making some good friends. Dr Larry Mitchell was going to start the site up again, but his real life got in the way. (Damn you Real Life) He started a few blogger pages for everyone to keep in touch. I decided to start my own blog while I was waiting and that’s how this site was born.

Dr Larry Mitchell - A friend from Thisisby.us.

Grant Lawrence - A friend from Thisisby.us who took the opportunity of Thisisby.us shutting down to make a non-commercial blog that highlights the blogs articles of political events that don’t make it to the mainstream media.

Blankface http://faceless-days.blogspot.com/ Another friend from Thisisby.us that started his own blog.

Ricky A. Pursley - A gifted writer I met at Thisisby.us.

Lioness - A talented poet and all around sweet person that I met at Thisisby.us

Reilly - Another Thisisby.us friend.

Honkmofo


Unknowns – These are people who fanned me but I have no clue how they found me.


Eric

Omnipotent Poobah - I’ve no clue how he found me but I’m glad he did, he has an interesting blog.

Ellie Great

Mmetharon

Brotherhood

Reduce Footprints - Saving the world one Wednesday at a time.

Steiner Arason

Vet

Rogue

B’Jue Corner - This site takes forever to load, so I don’t know how they found me. (couldn’t view the site)

Jamie Jeffords - One very confused individual, A conservative who was a Star Trek fan until he slowly realized the overwhelming theme of The Economics of Abundance is counter to the Grab a Bigger Slice of a Smaller Pie that Conservatives believe.
He’s a bigot that refuses to understand that not being a Christian isn’t the same as hating Christians.
Hopefully one of these days he’ll sort out all his conflicting personalities.

Katherine Johnson

Hugo Nahuelpan - unfortunately a brain injury prevents me from learning other languages, so I have no idea what this site is about.

Jules

Ladytruth - Don’t know how she found me but I’m glad she did, I get a kick out of her blog.

Nickie Goomba

TCW - Click to enter a universe unlike our own.

Deepika

Scott - A political blog

Carmlo… Another Spanish (I think) blog.

Boatman - Nice blog about getting away from it all comfortably.

Mybloglog friends

Qishi87-

Creative Blogger - I wrote a few guest articles for some of her old sites.

Ll-nl.blogspot

Becky C. A girl in shorts with a fun and interesting outlook on life, unfortunately her site was taken down by Blogger.

Insider-Insights

Entrecarders:

LunaticG - More than I ever wanted to know about coin collecting.

SaderMaxx - Follow the adventures of his pets.

David - Showing the Darker side of Technology.

Carl Vine - an interesting look at whatever catches his attention.

Roschelle - I go here for my dose of silliness (meant in a good way)

Lot 2 learn - Fun you can have outside.

Adnoxious - As a former Marketing Manager I totally love his sense of humor.

Man Overboard - A look at Guy stuff.

Others with no blog:

Ryamatchu – Yet another friend from Thisisby.us.

IheartStuff – A Thisisby.us friend.

Sajjad Ali

Shykulasa

Stiv Popetski

Traveling Cat

Greg J

Andre Heath

Brian B.

If I left anyone out it wasn’t on purpose, its just tough tracking down all the people that have come to my blog in the last year.

I want to say thanks to all of you and hope you enjoy my next 100 posts, and of course I’ll keep you all up to date about the details of the Catspiracy.

Beavis and Butt-Head, the Model for Bush’s DHS.

Last night I watched Beavis and Butt-Head do America. Back in 1996 when it was made the Portrayal of the total incompetence of the ATF was laughable. The idea of the ATF and FBI doing an all out manhunt for Beavis and Butt-Head with the result being little more than giving all of Beavis and Butt-Head’s neighbors “full cavity searches” was so unrealistic it was funny.

Now, 13 years later the actions of the AFT in the film seem like a plausible scenario for the Department of Homeland Security.

Having Robert Stack being the lead agent who thought the only way to get information from people: suspects, witnesses, associates, etc. was to use full cavity searches doesn’t seem so out of place now that we have Cheney making the rounds on the news saying how having CIA agents have sex with teenage boys was the only way to keep the country safe.

Labeling two teenage boys as the most dangerous men in America seems a little less absurd after Homeland Security spent millions to round up a home grown terrorist cell, were during an interview the leader of the cell pointed to head and said, “We aren’t just acting Physically…”. Or how the CIA uncovered a plot to fly an airplane into the Sands Resort in Las Vegas only to find out it was a clip from “Con Air”.

When the Department of Homeland Security is restructured, and it needs to be I hope it uses Tommy Lee Jones’s portrayal of the US Marshals in Fugitive, who used all the powers within the law to find their man as a model rather than Robert Stack’s portrayal of the ATF.

3 TV and Movie Characters that really aren’t suited for their jobs.

Scriptwriters love to give their characters strange quirks and powers that make them do their jobs better than other people, the only problem is they then have to rearrange the job so it fits that characters power or quirk. In the real job the power would actually get in their way. Here are three examples:

Deanna Troi:

Power: Empathic (Ability to sense others emotions)

Job: Counselor

Why this power would make her bad at her job.

Deanna works on the starship Enterprise counseling the crew and their family members. This is a pretty cushy job as the crewmembers are supposed to be the best and the brightest in the federation. They all have had extensive psych evaluations and are pretty emotionally stable.

This stable crew leaves her time to help out by reading the emotions of stray aliens and tell Picard “I am sensing great joy and gratitude, great joy and gratitude.”

She can do her job because she is on the flagship of the federation, but what if she didn’t get that post? What if she had to start out as an intern in a federation rehab clinic, and was surrounded by individuals whose brains were undergoing withdrawal pains?

“I am sensing great joy, no deep depression, no extreme horniness, no great anger, no uncontrollable hilarity, just pick a damn emotion already!”

She would have to deal with people who have totally lost control over their emotions. The randomness of it day in and day out would overwhelm her and she would have to find a new job.

Wonder Woman

Power: Goddess

Day Job: Lt Dianna Prince of the military intelligence.

Why this power would make her bad at her job.

Two words: Security Clearances.

Although in the comic and later TV series they totally ignored the fact the Babes of Paradise Island never came in contact with the outside world since the time of the ancient Greeks they all spoke perfect English. At the very least they would have some sort of accent which might raise some intelligence officer’s eyebrow during one of the most xenophobic times in America.

Even without the accent the War Department wasn’t exactly the sort that let just anyone wander through their offices. The background checks were pretty thorough and even with divine forging skills Wonder Woman would have a tough time coming up with high school classmates for them to interview. This would launch an investigation and she would have intelligence officers watching her every move intensely. Probably quite a few would do it on a volunteer basis.

Her every move would be watched and it would be impossible for her to slip away and take off in her invisible jet.

King Kong



Power: Giant Ape

Job: Feel up Fay Ray or Jessica Lang and countless others.

Why this power made him bad at his job.

He is a big Ape. Although he did manage to get the Black South Pacific Islanders to supply him with babes, I think his being a huge ape slowed down the amount of feeling up he could do.

File this under “Shut Up” Stewart vs CNBC round 4

In the “Art of War” Sun Tzu says the most important thing is to know when to fight and when not to fight. I guess CNBC doesn’t follow the Art of War any more than they follow the rules to good journalism.

For those of you who haven’t been following the latest media war, about a month ago CNBC commentator Rick Santelli had an on-air rant where he asked why the stock traders who made huge amounts of money under the deregulation of the markets should pay for the “Loser’s” mortgages.

That same week he was scheduled to appear on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”. Someone must have warned him that Stewart would use that rant against him so he canceled.

The Daily Show went ahead and ran that clip as well as some great clips from CNBC where their commentators made wildly bad stock picks, like Jim Cramer recommending people hold on to Bear Stearns stock three days before it went from over $60 a share to $2.

If CNBC had left it at that they would have had to eat some humble pie, and the whole thing would have been forgotten about. But Jim Cramer decided to make it personal. He went every NBC show he could, including Martha Stewart, saying how Jon Stewart was being unfair to him. (Just a tip if you are being accused of playing dirty tricks with stocks, hanging out publicly with someone who went to jail for Insider Trading is not a smart play.)

Naturally The Daily Show had to hit back and did an entire segment on bad advice given by Cramer. For some reason Jim Cramer decided to answer those allegations and agreed to appear on The Daily Show.

To be kind to Jim Cramer I will just say that he got his ass handed to him, after Jon put it through a meat grinder, handed off to Emeril Lagasse who fried it up Creole style with special seasoning and onions and “Bam, just like that” Cramer was humiliated. Other commentators haven’t been as nice to Cramer in their description of that interview.

Stewart was hitting him with things that no one could justify like: "Listen, you knew what the banks were doing, yet were touting it for months and months," Stewart said during his March 12 show. "The entire network was. Now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst."

The beat down was so bad that Cramer canceled all his post Daily Show interviews.

If CNBC had left it at that they would be able to slowly shift the blame of their bad journalism to the entire news industry. CNBC turned into cheerleaders for the financial industry just like the rest of the news had been cheerleaders for Bush when we rushed to war with Iraq.

Instead of quietly trying to smother the flames, NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker has decided to grab the nearest Gasoline tanker and pour its contents on the embers. At the McGraw-Hill Media Summit in New York, he said that Stewart was being “Unfair” and “…to suggest that the business media or CNBC was responsible for what is going on now is absurd."

To say that reporters should ask follow up questions and not just serve as PR flackys for companies when they are lying is absurd? I can’t wait until Monday to see Jon Stewart’s response.

Although CNBC is being incredibly stupid in their handling of this, they may be doing the nation a great service by inviting Stewart to look over the network news practices with a magnifying glass. If this war keeps on long enough maybe the entire news industry will see why people no longer find them credible and that is why the whole journalism industry has gone into the tank financially and some mainstream outlet might just start reporting the truth instead of just repeating whatever their sponsors tell them.

Original Story Here.

Movies I’d like to See 1

Brutal Cop II: The Revenge.

Brutal Cop II starts were Brutal Cop 1: The Beginning left off, with brutal cop pummeling several guys. As the fight progresses he pulls one of the thugs arms off (In a splendid digital recreation of the famous scene from Cat People) and proceeds to beat the remaining thugs to a bloody pulp with it.

After the fight is over we are treated to a flashback of the scene in Brutal Cop 1 where BC’s wife was killed when the Evil Rapper and his thugs broke into Brutal Cop’s bedroom while he was having sex with his wife.

The enraged Brutal Cop quickly dispatches the Evil Rapper’s men, one by reaching into the guys gut, pulling out his gall stone and throwing it into his eye, blinding him and causing him to fall out the window. Unfortunately while Brutal Cop is busy with the henchmen the Evil Rapper pulls out a giant dildo and impales Brutal Cop’s wife.

The Evil Rapper escapes and Brutal Cop vows to hunt him down.

After the flashback the movie proceeds with the Evil Rapper devising schemes to defeat Brutal Cop’s relentless attacks.

In one fight Brutal Cop is fighting the henchmen in a drained swimming pool, naturally as Brutal Cop pummels the henchmen the pool fills up with their blood. Not able to swim Brutal Cop outsmarts the Evil Rapper by pulling apart one of his opponent’s ribcage and using the thug’s lungs as floaties.

In another fight Brutal Cop is trapped in a pit with some of the Evil Rapper’s men, so he reaches in and grabs their intestines, uses the man’s head as a counter weight, wraps it around a beam and climbs to safety.

Then for the final fight things really get gore filled.

If you are looking for a movie with blood, guts, and flying body parts, this is the movie to see.

The Stainless Steel Rat

I was looking through my collection of paperbacks the other day and came across a gem from my misspent youth: The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison.

Harry Harrison is best known for the novel “Make Room, Make Room” that was turned into the movie: “Soylent Green (1973)” Starring Charlton Heston, about a world where the runaway greenhouse effect left the only the coasts inhabitable.

In his Stainless Steel Rat series Harrison strikes a much lighter tone as the title character is a thief in the 30th or so Century. He is recruited as an Intergalactic Spy, whose biggest weakness is his own arrogance.

He gets in to trouble by doing things like masterminding a cunning and daring escape, ducking into a vacant hotel room and then risks it all to make himself a sandwich, with side items of course.

Throughout the entire series of books he jumps from one outrageous adventure to another and always has a sense of humor about it.

I highly recommend any of The Stainless Steel Rat series when you are looking for something to brighten up your day.

Dear Hollywood Executive.

Dear Executive in charge of Greenlighting Projects.

Whoa, How fucking stupid do you think we are? Do you really think we won’t have go and watch something that doesn’t have a number at the end of it?

Rehashing movies from old TV shows doesn’t count.

And just because you can do CGI doesn’t mean you should.

If you keep Greenlighting these truly stupid projects just based on the three factors that you seem to go by. 1. People recognize the Title. 2. People recognize the star and 3. It’s got lot’s of special effects, Then soon you’ll be subjecting your audiences to “The Facts of Life: After the Apocalypse” Starring Ray Liotta as Mrs Garrett.

Also, I think it’s great when you take a comic book and turn it into a full movie, but why do you have its sequels follow the same fucking pattern.

Superhero Movie 1: Guy gets superpowers and takes on his greatest foe.

Superhero Movie 2: Guy loses superpowers while his two greatest remaining foes team up against him.

Superhero Movie 3: Four villains (The best of what’s left) turn the superhero evil.

Superhero Movie 4: The 16 greatest remaining villains gang up on him, so he gets an ally. (Why do you make these? Not only do they suck the sweat off a dead donkey’s balls, but they tank at the box office.)

Superhero Movie 5 (I mean 1): After 10 years of looking at projects where the Superhero takes on 32 villains and hiring Gus Van Vant to direct only to find out he doesn’t do projects that don’t have nudity in them. You settle on a script. You ask the audience to forget about the last 4 movies and watch a movie where a Guy gets superpowers and takes on his greatest foe.

Did you ever once consider the reason you guys get blindsided by cheap art projects is because by the time you get done sanitizing some new guys work you end up with a piece of crap that looks the same as the last 100 pieces of crap you put out?

I’m off to buy a good porno because if I have to watch something where someone gets fucked, at least in the porno I’ll not the one being screwed.

Who will save us from “The Re-Boot”?

I am a huge horror film fan; I am also a huge Comic Book fan. One thing both these films have in common is the need for sequels. In the horror film realm these follow a predictable pattern.

The first film: This is a the low budget nightmare brought to film that some writer worked years on and lost friends and family to make, it has little pieces of insanity that only the writer knows the meaning of. The raw emotions of the actors are on display not because it was originally written that way, but because the set department had $14.63 to build the set where the characters motivation is discussed. It has a dark edgy feel because budget limitations force it to be shot in the dark after the actors have been up for 18 hours.

The first film either is a smash hit or total dud, if it’s a hit the sequel is made.

The Second Film: This one goes one of two ways, the remake or new storyline.

The remake: bigger budget, flasher scenes, less interesting plot. They look at a the ideas that the writer started to include but didn’t have a budget for and strip them out of the movie. The horror scenes are flashier but less imaginative.
These normally end up as a dud watched only by the fans of the series later.

The New Storyline: This is when magic is sometimes made. They grab an idea that was born in the first movie and run with it. When it works like in Friday the 13th Part 2 which introduced Jason coming back to life to seek revenge on the Camp Counselors who killed his mother while she was trying to kill them for letting him die. This odd little loop of illogic made the fact that he was unkillable easier to follow.

This New Storyline idea also brought us Amanda, the greatest female slasher ever, from the Sleepaway Camp Series.

The Third Film: The final (blank).

In the third film the original crew is back and they are going to kill off the maniac for good, once and for all. They find something previously unknown about the maniac that is his greatest weakness. They kill him off in a way that is final and he is never coming back.

The Fourth Film: After being killed in a way that prevents him from ever being resurrected, he comes back to life. There is no plot to this one just going from one scene of teenager hacking to the next.

The Series: Odd little trivia is thrown in to explain the maniac but it’s mostly just more teenager hacking.

The WTF: About the 7th or 8th outing a director trying to make a name for himself will take the series and twist it around so bad that you wonder if the series personally harmed his family in some way and this is his form of revenge.

With the Halloween series we got Michael Myers vs the Ninjas, starring Donald Pleasance long after he had been dead. I don’t mean flashbacks, they actually tried to take scenes and out takes from the other movies and act like he was part of the action.

With the Howling series we got Line-Dancing. I’m serious there was a Howling movie that was 90% line-dancing.

With Nightmare on Elm St, we got Freddy’s Dead. Where it’s revealed that Freddy wasn’t getting revenge on the people who killed him by killing their kids. He was seeking revenge on any kid who grew up on Elm St anywhere.

After the WTF installment the original writers and producers take a sudden cut in revenue from royalties as their older films aren’t in demand anymore.

To remedy this they bring back the original cast and make homage to what they thought was great about the series.

Halloween got Halloween H2O.
Nightmare on Elm St got New Nightmare
The Living Dead got Return of the Living Dead.

The idea of the is not to make a blockbuster film, but one that will bring back some respect to the good films of the series because this is where the series should end.

Unfortunately, Hollywood can’t let a great idea die with some dignity. They steal a page from the comic book films and do a reboot with the idea of starting the series over.

But it just never works.

Dawn of the Dead was quaint, Rob Zombie’s Halloween wasn’t as good as the poorly produced original, Texas Chainsaw Massacre was worse than the bad rip offs of the original.

So now Hollywood is releasing a reboot of the one series that didn’t need to be rebooted. Friday the 13th. In the series it was shown that Jason is unkillable, the only thing you can do to him immobilize him in some way, then run like hell.

All he is now is a killing machine with a mask and a machete, he can fit in anywhere. In Space like in Jason X, on Times Square in Jason takes Manhattan (I was disappointed that he didn’t go on Broadway in that one, I would have loved to see him in a chorus line).

All they need for a Friday the 13th film is to put him in an original setting (I’d like to see Jason in King Arthur’s Court) and have him be who he is: The Unstoppable force of Evil that can’t be conquered by a greater force. He can only be slowed down through great courage and trickery.

Mama Mia (A straight guy’s review.)

Years ago I ran a movie review web site, but for some unknown reason everyone who hosted it got complaints leading them to shut it down. Who knew some people would get offended by a picture of Jesus on the cross with the caption “Hamme(red)” on my review of “The Passion of the Christ”?
I recently felt the urge to write another review. “Dark Knight” was still to crowded, so I thought I’d watch “Mama Mia” and review it.
As my wife and I left my house to head to the Movie Theater a blindingly bright light appeared on my lawn and an older version of myself materialized naked in front of us. He was obviously weakened by his travels and used all his energy to give me this speech.
“I don’t have much time, I was able to use all the energy on Earth in order to bend the timeline back on itself so that I could give you this warning.
“Don’t go see ‘Mama Mai.’
“I’ll be dragged back to my own time now, which has nearly destroyed by my using this machine to get you this message. And I will probably be executed for causing its destruction… but it is worth it as long as you don’t see that movie.”
The older version of me popped out of existence before I could ask him pressing questions about the future like, “Does Ewe Boll ever win an Oscar?”
I thought about the advise that my older self gave me, and decided to ignore it. It was probably just a practical joke, I’ve been known to do things like that. Also I didn’t like how my wife stared at his naked package.
So we continued on to our car.
As I drove to the theater, several mid-sized cars surrounded us then cut us off bringing so to halt. I rolled down the window to yell at them but a redheaded guy jumped out of the lead car and ran over to us.
“We are the Molly Maguires, We’ve come oot of our 200 year hiding to warn ye aboot seeing that movie: ‘Mama Mia’”
Before I could think of a suitable reply, several black sedans pulled up and started shooting at them.
“Aye Shite, It’s the Illuminati! Our cover’s blown.” The man screamed. “But if it keeps ye from seeing that Movie, it’s worth it.”
Luckily having the forces of evil shooting at them made them clear the road so we could proceed to the theater.
As we pulled into the parking lot of the theater, Jack Bauer from the series “24” approached us and said. “I’ve no time to explain, but it is critical that you don’t watch ‘Mamma Mia’. The fate of the free world depends on it!”
“Ah, aren’t you a fictional character?” I asked.
Jack looked sheepishly at the ground, then disappeared.
“Maybe we should take his advise.” My wife said.
“Yeah, there could be bomb in the theater.” I said. “We should go to the one across town.”
So we got in the car and left.
Driving across town, hundreds of flying cows landed in front of the car and refused to leave no matter how much I honked the horn.
The lead cow came up to my window and said. “The beings that you know as cows are actually aliens sent by the Galactic Council to keep the Reptile Race in check. We needed to break our cover in order to warn you not to see ‘Mamma Mia’”
As I took her words in, the by-standers transformed from people into Reptiles and started attacking the alien cows. An incredible battle broke out between the Reptiles and the Alien Cows leaving scores dead and demolishing a good portion of the city.
A few blocks from the theater we were stopped once again. This time by a gang of penguins. We were approached by the lead penguin.
“I like pilot fish.” He said. “And as leader of the penguin mob, I shall do everything in my power to make sure you do not see ‘Mamma Mia’”
He then turned to face the rest of the penguins and yelled. “Hit it.”
The penguin mob did a lovely chorus line production of “Putting on the Ritz”.
Halfway through their production a mob of horny seals showed up and the penguins broke formation and started running away. The lead penguin turned to us and said. “Everything but be raped by a seal.” And he waddled off at full speed.
This cleared the road and we were able to make it to the theater.
As we went from our car to theater we passed an alley where two adorable kittens were playing. They were so cute we had to go over and get a closer look. Not far from the kittens were two pieces of string so we grabbed them and used them to play with the kittens.
Eventually the kittens mother showed up and they pranced off. We noticed that it was now to late to see the movie.
So unfortunately I will not be able to give you a review of “Mamma Mia”. Next week, If I don’t get distracted by more kittens, I will bring you a review of “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2”.

Wereroach (A movie Review)

A garbage collector played by Dirk Squarejaw, is bitten by a wereroach while working the graveyard shift, under the full moon.

One month later he is having sex with his girl friend (Ima E.Z. Fucgue) and starts to change.

Even the monotone pleadings from Ima of, “Oh, stop.” And “Don’t, I’m serious, if you turn into a roach I’m leaving you.” Can’t stop the transformation.

For the next week he continues to change into a roach at night and live as a human during the day. Until Orkin Van Hellsing appears and kills him with a silver roach hotel.
Ima falls into Orkin’s arms and declares, “I loved him with all my heart, but ick, I mean really, ick” then adds, “I’m sure you know how to use your power nozzle.”

The movie fades out with images of Orkin’s power nozzle sliding into crack in the wall moving in and out until it blows it’s bug goo. (At least that’s what I think that was.)

Opinion:
Oddly enough the Roaches out acted the humans in this fine piece of cinema. The production number of the roaches tap dancing in front of the full moon was fantastic.