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In our bedroom we have a bedroom suite that as a corner piece that stands about 3 feet tall with some drawers in it and a large flat top that overhangs the drawers (so that the top will fit with the other pieces of the suite). On top of that corner piece is a TV. Behind the corner piece is a window, but the corner piece does not completely but up against it so there is a small amount of room between the back of the corner piece and the window. What we found out is that the small space is kitty sized. As I was trying to get Loki close enough to pull him out from behind the furniture, I noticed that he had almost been completely devoured by dust bunnies. He had dust and cobwebs all over him! After we extracted him safely, Candy brushed off most of the dust and cobwebs with her hand, then asked me to hold him. “Where are you going?” I asked, holding a squirming cat. “To get a lint roller” she told me. I was afraid that the lint roller would wind up pulling most if not all the hair from the poor kitty. but I kept my mouth shut. Candy came in with held lint roller and began running it briskly over the cat. Loki was not happy about this, but I don’t think it actually pulled any hair out. After short but vigorous session with the lint roller we let Loki go. Loki is fine, but we think (and maybe hope) that he is too traumatized to get back there again.
Jul
25
2007
She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain. -Louisa May AlcottPosted by Monkeymanx in Weird shitIt appears that some of the new Harry Potter books were misprinted. As in they are missing some pages. Some were missing as many as 30 pages. From the article: She said that as of Tuesday, the company had only heard of “a few hundred” instances of books with missing pages. Sinek said Scholastic is happy to replace any book with a defect and advised customers to take defective books back to the place where they were purchased. Leanne Greer, 36… said she finished reading page 306, then discovered the next 33 pages of the book were missing. “I just kind of freaked out,” said Greer, a Purdue University graduate with degrees in elementary education and English. “My husband said, ‘Why are you screaming?’ He said ‘I thought one of the kids was hurt.’” Luckily for Greer, she had a backup for her store-bought copy; she had ordered another copy online. “I’m just that psychotic about it,” she said. I think this line sums it up “I’m just that psychotic about it”. I’ll admit I read the first book and I watched the second movie. Oddly enough I can’t make it through the first movie, or the second book. The only reason I read the book/saw the movie was because the woman I was dating at the time was really into Harry Potter. So I was being supportive, and no, I was not doing research for some sort of sexual roleplaying! The lady mentioned in the article bought a “back-up” copy of a book. It’s not like she couldn’t go to her nearest Evil Wal-Mart(™) and pick up another copy, or just take the damaged one back to where she bought it, if she wasn’t keeping it as a collectors item. My theory that people are fucking nuts is being confirmed more and more each day! Last week Candy and I went to the Evil Wal-Mart™. We try to go later in the evening when less people are there, because I hate crowds, and I hate people. As we are looking for a parking space, we note that there are a lot of people in the parking lot, going in and coming out of the store. Not an “OMG riot at Evil Wal-Mart™!” amount of people, but more than usual. Candy wonders “Why are there so many people at (Evil)Wal-Mart(™)?” “Because it’s hot.” I reply “You don’t go to (Evil)Wal-Mart(™), when its hot.” she retorts. And I mumble “When I was a kid and it was hot” and I mumble something. “What did you say?” she asks. I’ve since come up with a way of trying to tell if she is mad at me because she heard me utter things that I should not be saying to her. It’s actually easier than I thought it would be, I just ask “What did you hear?” She looks me straight in the face and says “When I was a kid and it was ho Trying not to laugh I repeat what I had originally said, but much clearer “When I was a kid and it was hot, we’d go to (Evil)Wal-Mart(™) and buy water guns”. “What the Hell is a Mortamus Martigan’s?” I ask A little frustrated Candy replies “Hell, I don’t know, I thought it might be one of those places…” Those places. Ah, yes I know those places all too well… “What kinda place?” I ask. “You know! A place you play stuff, games, they have names like that.” And I know exactly what she meant, really I did. But for the life of me, I could not think of the word “arcade”. I could only think of an arcade I used to frequent in my younger days “Odyssey”. We reached a silent agreement, neither of us could bring out the right word, but we knew what was meant.
Jul
19
2007
Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil. – Henry FieldingPosted by Monkeymanx in Weird shitA few days ago I was going through Google Reader (which I have built into gmail via a Greasemonkey script for firefox but I digress…) and I came across a Digg.com article that sounded somewhat interesting. The title was “RIAA Spends Thousands To Obtain $300 Judgment“ Due to the way the RSS feed works (I guess), whenever I click a link in Google reader, it sends me to the comments page for an article. On the top and sides of the comments page are Google ads. I guess I should be less lazy and get some sort of inline ad blocker… again I digress. One of the ads on the side read “God can help your credit” and had a link to http://www.christiancreditconsultants.com/. I honestly can’t say why this stuck me as funny. In both a ha-ha funny and that’s odd funny way. I have nothing against Christianity, or religion. But there are just some things that I don’t associate with God. One of those is my credit score. Somehow I don’t think that God would be into fixing people’s credit. I think that if someone were to ask God for help on their credit (I know, know that there have been some prayers like that) that God would turn it into a lesson a la ”you dug your own hole, now climb out of it.” I doubt he would just snap his fingers and fix the credit problems. Which in turn makes me wonder how a Christian credit counselor works… Do they call the creditor and ask them to do the “Christian thing” and lower the interest rate? What if the creditor is a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Jew, or anything other than Christian? My bet is that it’s a regular credit counseling service offering its services under a religious name.
Jul
11
2007
Badger Badger Badger Badger…..Snake?Posted by Monkeymanx in Current? events, Weird shitFrom the What the Fuck?! department. Some of the interesting parts of the article: British forces operating around the southern Iraqi city of Basra are being blamed for the arrival of a plague of vicious badgers that stalk the streets at night, attacking livestock and even humans. Local farmers have caught and killed several of the beasts, but this has done nothing to dispel rumours of a bear-like monster that eats humans and was, according to the local rumour mill, released into the area by UK forces to spread panic. “They are native to the region but rare in Iraq. They’re nocturnal carnivores with a fearsome reputation, but they don’t stalk humans and carry them back to their lair,” Major Gell said. So far neither the scientists nor the soldiers have been able to calm the populace’s fears. “I was sleeping at night when this strange animal hit me on my head. I have not seen such an animal before. My husband hurried to shoot it but it was as swift as a deer,” said Suad Hassan, a 30-year-old housewife. “It is the size of a dog but his head is like a monkey. It runs so quickly.” Sattar Jabbar, a 50-year-old farmer from Abu Sakhar north of Basra, believes the badger can tackle even large prey. “I saw it three days ago at night attacking animals. It even ate a cow. It tore the cow up piece by piece. I tried to shoot it with my gun but it ran away into the orchards. I missed it,” he said. Major Gell said: “We have not released giant badgers in Basra, and nor have we been collecting eggs and releasing serpents into the Shatt al-Arab river.” What the Hell? I can possibly see someone describing a badger as “the size of a dog with a head of a monkey” if they have never seen one. I can even believe that a badger would attack animals, but a cow?! Unless it was a small cow, I just can’t imagine a badger tearing across a field and taking down a cow. Well, I couldn’t imagine it until now. Of course when I first read this, I thought that the badgers would be eight feet tall, and eating humans exclusively. That sounds like a really cheesy sci-fi movie “Attack of the Giant Badgers!” But I digress… Honestly I sort of figure that soon someone will come out and say that this is a hoax. What the hell did that British Major meant about releasing serpents into the river? If somewhere in the story it mentioned mushrooms, I’d say for sure it was a hoax that was tipping its hat to that flash animation badger, badger, mushroom, snake. This weekend, Candy and I went to see Transformers. Of course we went to the Alamo Drafthouse to see it. The Alamo Drafthouse is such a good theater that it got mentioned on Heroes! When you go to the Drafthouse, you really need to get to the theater early, not just to get good seats either. Instead of showing some boring ads for Coke, or dumbass trivia type of “game” the Drafthouse shows things that are somewhat relevant to the movie you are going to see. Also you need to look over the menu and put in your order. But I digress… When we got to the theater, they were showing clips from the Transformers cartoon. Also they showed clips form the animated Transformers movie. Some of the other things they showed were Japanese transformers clips, and for some reason parts from Turkish Star Wars. What was cool was that the clip they showed from the animated movie was the fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Jul
04
2007
You can’t own a cat. The best you can do is be partners. – Sir Harry SwansonPosted by Monkeymanx in PersonalThis morning we woke up somewhat early. With the rain we decided to stay home and do nothing. Loki decided to change that for us, involuntarily. Loki’s nictitating membrane (third eyelid) was partially covering his left eye, and it looked like it was stuck (Similar to the picture, which is not Loki.)
Jul
02
2007
As a Research subject, Lector has proven most disappointing.Posted by Monkeymanx in Movie ReviewA few months back I read Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. I decided to give it a shot because I saw a few minutes of Manhunter on TV. If you are not familiar with the movie history of Hannibal Lec(k)tor, it goes something like this Manhunter, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Red Dragon, Hannibal Rising. Candy and I decided to watch Manhunter and Red Dragon this past weekend and compare the two.
Manhunter was made in the middle of the 1980′s a time when men wore hot pink, neon was the light of choice and studio musicians filled up soundtracks. Manhunter has all of that, horrid fashion, cheesy music, weird sets that don’t really make sense and really bad music. The only song that is not bad is In-a-gadda-da-vida, the rest of the music is crap, and seems WAY out of place. If you pulled the music from the movie (except In-a-gadda-da-vida, it actually serves a purpose) the movie would be tons better. The acting is not bad, for the cast of B listers. I liked Peterson (now more well know for being on CSI) as Graham, I thought Brian Cox did some scenes as Lecktor better than Anthony Hopkins did then as Lector in Red Dragon. And Tom Noonan was a very creepy Dollarhyde (aka the bad guy). The problem is that the movie drags out and is not well paced. At the end, it deviates from the book, and has a Hollywood ending, that feels like it was just put on there to put the movie goer out of their misery and let them go home. The movie deviates from the book in several places, yet in others it stays true to form. Red Dragon, made in 2002 does a much better job of sticking to the book. Sure there are some deviations, but not nearly as many as Manhunter. This updated version has more subtle music that doesn’t jump out at you and say “Hey! You remember that crappy music you danced to at the Junior High “prom”, you know the stuff you tried to slow dance with Jane Whatshername, while you not so slyly ran you and over the back of her dress seeing if you could feel a bra, and if so where the clasp was in the very slim chance you might get to try to unclasp it later. That’s me, I’m that music!” Also the caliber of actor’s has gone up. Anthony Hopkins returns to play Hannibal Lector, even though this movie is set before Silence of the Lambs. Edward Norton plays Graham this time around. Even though I generally like Edward Norton, I found Peterson as a more believable Graham. Ralph Fiennes is a less creepy but more psychotic Dollarhyde. And Harvey Kietel replaces Dennis Farina as Crawford, the FBI man who draws Graham back in. One thing that deviates from the novel is the beginning of the movie, where the audience is shown how Graham catches Lector. The rest of the movie follows the book very well. The acting, is good, if a little stiff in a few places. Unlike Manhunter, Red Dragon is very well paced, and an all-round better movie. There were some parts of the story (in both movies) that do not seem plausible (e.g. Candy pointed out that getting a finger print from a human eye was very unlikely. Since she used to work in a crime lab, I defer to her.) I’d recommend Red Dragon over Manhunter if you want to see a good movie based on Thomas Harris’ book. But if you are looking for something that will remind you of the glory days of Miami Vice, check out Manhunter. So, the iphone comes out today. To quote Adam Sandler from The Wedding Singer “Whoopee-dee-doo!” A few reasons I will not be getting an iphone anytime soon:
I’m not an Apple fanboy, nor am I an Apple hater. It’s just that there is no way I could justify getting an iphone. It has less memory than the ipod I already have. Speaking of the ipod I already have; even though I’ve started using it more recently, I don’t use it but maybe an hour a day, so I don’t see a reason to have it with me at all times. Now, if they made a 80GB touch display ipod that wasn’t a phone I think I’d be interested. Maybe that is on the way. I’d like to see a music only version, but I doubt they will do that since they have the video already built in. I just can’t see watching a movie or TV show on a screen that small. The one thing I hope comes from this is that we’ll see less of those annoying iphone commercials. On a side note, there is a guy waiting in line in New York City that is first in line and has been for most of this week. But he’s doing it just to be first in line, not for an iphone. He has been dubbed “the iloser”. Honestly I think that everyone in any line waiting for an iphone should be considered an iloser. |



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