Dracula from Oak Park

Staring in disbelief out at the gloom
I was forced with remorse to learn the.. harmonica.

Ordered a proper 10 hole one today instead of those freaky 16 hole ones. It also should be in a better key for playing my blues. I gotta let that pain out.

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
- Lynda Barry

If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.
- Jimmy Buffett

To buy at home

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/16974

Future gift ideas for people(to give me)

Original Xbox games:
Panzer Dragoon Orta
MechAssault
MechAssault 2

XBox 360
Points cards
Gears of War

On predictive typing

Snoring and pooping have the same keystroke pattern via predictive typing. The same predictive typing that somehow has 'freakhog' as a word in the place of 'freaking'.

On the auto industry

"For every 1 job on an auto assembly line, there are 7.5 jobs in auto-related industries." - Center for Automotive Research, Denver Post 11/17/08

Advanced and evil methods of Christmas counter-espionage

Method #64 - Never buy anybody a single thing they ask for. You will become a man of mystery and advanced espionage techniques largely fail due to added magnitude of disinformation.

Advanced and evil methods of Christmas espionage.

Method #17 - Keep threatening to buy different things. You will likely touch a nerve if you guess well, causing your mark to give up their information.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
- Kurt Vonnegut

This morning I had the privilege of having my car frozen in place. I parked it on Saturday and there must have been some give to the snow and ice, then. So it all froze around my tires and I couldn't move a single inch. I felt like one of the monkeys from the start of 2001, pacing around the car, swinging my shovel at things, screaming at things I don't understand but that are rewriting my DNA. It doesn't help that it was -3F, -20 or worse windchill. I give up, looking at the car, debating calling in to work or not. I pull my scarf up over my face and make my way to CVS. All of their salt is only rated down to zero degrees. NO HELP THERE! Luckily they had some expensive stuff that creates an exothermic reaction and works down to -32F. I trudge back, use my shovel to apply liberally around the tires, and a few minutes later I can move. Too bad there's still a million ridges of ice as high as my car in the spot and alley. So I had to rock the hell out of the car to get out anyway.. But I'm here at work and all my morning printing is queued up. Sigh.

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I believe there is a tingling in my loins for everything after the car bit.

Gridlock Affective Disorder - GAD

Lack of willingness to deal with the world after two or more hours of dealing with stop and go traffic. Recommended action? Private helicopter in future.

Now introducing the ennui cheerleading squad.

There is a special kind of despair and depression that sets in after travelling for 5 miles an hour for any extended period of time. It's happened before and thankfully I can at least identify that. But it takes me days to get out of this commute hell funk.

Justice League - Grant Morrison

I have finally succumbed to the siren song of Grant Morrison. Read the first arc of his JLA run and I remember why I never read it before. This art is really ass. Everybody looks like they're puppets carved out of wood. The story, however, is lightning fast and gets shit done. I'm interested to see where he goes with this after stretching his legs.

Really this is just a proxy until Batman R.I.P. is out in hardcover and I can read it in one go.

I feel marvelous today. No more food poisoning!

--
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This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

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Christmas party in a suite!

Christmas party in a suite!

Fwd: Business Proposal

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Mr.Tan Wong <mrtanwong@ttv.com.tw>
Date: Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 7:10 AM
Subject: Business Proposal
To: undisclosed-recipients



I am Mr.Tan Wong director of operations, Hang Seng Bank, Hong Kong.I have urgent and
very confidential business proposition involving transfer of $24,500,000.00 that will
be of great benefit for both of us. I will give you more details as regards this
transaction as soon as you notify me of your interest. Awaiting your urgent reply via
my email address (mrtan.wong31@gmail.com)which is my confidential email address

Regards,

Tan Wong.

--
In case you doubted it, I do manage to plug myself in my sig - http://negman.blogspot.com

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Charlie

Charlie

Magnets at my desk

Magnets at my desk

Car wars at gencon 08

Car wars at gencon 08

I think she looks good in hats

I think she looks good in hats

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My head exploded seconds after this.

My head exploded seconds after this.

Lauren's new neighbors.

Lauren's new neighbors.

My commute this morning.

My commute this morning.

I just wonder who would get yelled at on this one.

It would have been much more interesting happening catastrophically on the highway, though.

Pointless venting or a day to run screaming for the hills?

Looks like a horrid day at work today. I need to be getting on the phone, but the question of the day is largely about an auto bailout. Is it a good thing? No. Is it good if nothing is done and they fail? No. Which steaming pile would we like today? I am not equipped to speak about which direction is better, because both outcomes are horrible for the economy. One right now, the other a bit later - but maybe we'll be a bit more equipped for a Big 3 failure later when we get some of this other crap weighing the world down off the table.

Now I think Lauren will let me buy a Roomba

It's all free! Guess I can throw out those stupid "DVDs" now.

Left4Dead - Fallout killer(for now)!

Played about 90 minutes of Left4Dead last night on the second to hardest difficulty level. Definitely a fun game, definitely gets intense. I started off with just me and 3 bots, but I managed to pull Stuie in to take Francis' spot. On the hospital escape campaign, everything was going pretty swimmingly until we hit the top of the hospital for the helicopter rescue. That horde holdoff is a bitch and a half with 2 AIs that wander into your molotovs and pipe bombs. There's no way the hardest difficulty level is doable with anything but 4 human players.

Hopefully a group can be gotten together early next week when I'll have some unfortunate downtime.. Five known players available - me, orin, sean, stuie, eric.

Another thought - random pubbing online really really sucks. You need to play this with people you know, or at least a majority being known players.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
- Benjamin Disraeli

Preliminary Christmas List 2008 in no particular order

The Dark Knight DVD

Maybe some painting stuff for miniatures. I'll have to check the guides in the Battletech books again.

The Office Season 4

Practicing Financial Planning for Professionals

Battletech Map Set 7

Advanced gift location:

New X-Men HARDCOVER Vol. 2 - sometimes referred to as New X-Men Omnibus Volume 2

Still not sure if I want the following:

X-Box 360

Dead Rising

X-Box points

X-Box live card

Can anybody have predicted that Fannie and Freddie would come out with a plan to refinance ridiculous numbers of mortgages that are 90 days behind on payments? Not so much. It sounds great, but I really wonder how that feeds down the pipeline to all the crap that sliced and diced it for CDOs and other mortgage backed securities. Then how does that interact with the TARP when that kicks into effect? Questions for after work research!

Market madness

Oh, hooray. Another day with the market futures looking like crud. I can at least take solace in the fact that half the time the futures mean nothing. I still feel silly about how panicked I was when the futures had maxed out on the downside that one Friday and *NOTHING HAPPENED*. The VIX is still insanely high at 59. That's supposed to mean that the expected swing of the S&P 500 12 months from now has a standard deviation of 59%. So upside it could be 1,461.21. Downside it could be 376.87. I really hope it's up.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
- Mark Twain

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.
- Jules Renard

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
- George F. Will

As I was walking up the stair / I met a man who wasn't there. / He wasn't there again today. / I wish, I wish he'd stay away.
- Hughes Mearns

Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
- E. B. White

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
- Samuel Butler

God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
- Sir William Bragg

Hilarity ensues.

So, today involved Volkswagen becoming worth more than freaking Exxon Mobil because shorters of it's stock have experienced the most ultimate short squeeze EVER. In two days the VW stock went from ~250 USD to ~1000 USD/share.

From the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122514645135973595.html

What's the German word for coincidence?

After plunging for days, Volkswagen shares closed Friday at €210.85 ($264.46).

Then, over the weekend, Porsche Automobil Holding, which has a large exposure to VW stock, put out a statement prompting a 150% rise in VW shares Monday.

Porsche said it had increased its effective holding of ordinary VW shares to 74.1% of the total. That is up from mid-September, when Porsche said its stake was 35.14%. VW is a heavily shorted stock, so when Porsche's announcement came out, implying that an already-small public float had shrunk further, the short bet immediately became riskier. That likely persuaded short-sellers to snap up VW shares to reduce or close their bets, leading to the rip-roaring rally.

As it turns out, the rally may have helped Porsche get out of a tough spot. Porsche had built up its VW position since the middle of September partly through put and call options. But VW's stock had started falling in mid-October. So Porsche may have been vulnerable to losses, especially if VW shares continued falling below Friday's closing price.

A Porsche spokesman said there were no losses as of Friday on its VW call options. The weekend news release wasn't "motivated by a desire to push up Volkswagen's share price."

Volume.

You'd think I was posting in this blog just to keep the post number here higher than the number of posts in my weekly comic buy list blog..

On liquid.

Lesson learned over the weekend?

When asked by the bartender if you want the half-liter or liter of the Maibock, think for a moment about how much a liter is and how early 1pm is. Long thought process short, don't drink the liter of beer, no matter how good it is.

Markets and TV and games.

There's nothing that a record upswing day in the markets and a streak of nailing client calls won't fix. It's just so good to be able to talk to people, explain some things they aren't understanding, and not have them go apeshit because they think that psychics exist.

Our experiment with cable has officially ended today. It was kind of nice having all those Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, and Daily Show/Colbert Reports on tap, but it really wasn't worth what we were paying. Our dollars are much better spent on Netflix and, some time soon, maybe an XBox to funnel it to our tv.

I'm totally a sucker for the hype again and have purchased Fallout 3 at full retail price. I did this last year for Bioshock and I still haven't beaten that. I think the key is to not be a perfectionist by trying to do the optimal choice in every damn situation. Sadly I'm only getting 330KB/s down, so I've got 4 hours to wait.

I suppose I can spend that waiting time playing World of Goo. So hard, yet so good on the later levels.

I enjoy watching CNBC for the leadup to market open not only because I enjoy watching Erin Burnett, but because he partner apparently drinks heavily before he goes on the air. I wonder what demographic they're going for with the crusty boozer..

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
- G. H. Hardy

Every investor in America needs to read this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17buffett.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Invest in America. I am. - Warren Buffett

THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.

So ... I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds. (This description leaves aside my Berkshire Hathaway holdings, which are all committed to philanthropy.) If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.

Why?

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had already advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.

Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.

Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky’s advice: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”

I don’t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market will do in the short term. Nevertheless, I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.” Today my money and my mouth both say equities.

Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.

I think I need to go to the doctor. There's something wrong with me.

When I sit down at the computer after work, I check some news sites. After that I inexplicably have no idea what to do with my computer after that. Maybe it's a brain tumor..

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

I hearby swear that I will never ever ever watch Frank TV, even if my life depended on it.

Just watching the Cubs game has already given me more time with this guy than my stomach can stand.. Then there was the game...

Go, Cubs, Go!

Super psyched about the post-season.

I've got my favorite Cubs hat, a six pack of Old Style, my favorite stolen beer glass, HD cable just for the post season, my 1950s AM only radio for Pat and Ron, and nothing else to do tonight!

I've even bribed the cats into not bugging me by giving them a whole can of food. Sleep, my pretties!

Eamus Catuli!

As heard on CNBC

"The Mother of all armtwistings" being applied to a few select congresspeople.

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.
- Philip K. Dick

Prediction to check

Several heads on CNBC are recommending that the FDIC can help fix consumer sentiment by bumping up individual consumer coverage per bank. They thought going from $100,000 to $1,000,000 covered would stop the run that's happening from banks to Treasury Bonds. This is the calmest I've ever heard Jim Cramer speak.

Check back to this later to see if it happens as they supposed.

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
- Abraham Lincoln

I didn't think it was possible, but I'm just not that impressed with the new DragonForce album.. I think there's just too much synthesizer involved now. I can accept 80s metal and a lot of new wave, but not in the same cake.

Baseball inanity

I've just got to say that it's a relief the Cubs broke their losing streak. It's kinda scary that they still have the best record in baseball even after a 6? game losing streak.

WGN did reassure me pretty well with a breakdown of the World Series winners this century. ALL of them had a bitch of a time in September. Maybe managers just aren't working their teams as hard so they save some gas for October? I can only hope that's what it is.

I'm really not happy with how the post-season ticket sales are being handled this year. Yeah, doing a lottery for tickets makes it more fair to everybody. But I was a pro at the old system! All it means is less money in my pocket. Sadface..

Hopefully they stick to the old method for regular season tickets next year. Although, win or lose the World Series, this may be the time to hop off the Cubs train. If they win, this is the best season they are ever likely to have. If they lose, it's never meant to be, because this is the best regular season they're ever likely to have.

You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty.
- Sacha Guitry

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
- Thomas Szasz

In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

It's preliminary..

It's preliminary, but Google's Chrome browser has some neat ideas. Sadly I just think of them as things I'd like to see Firefox pick up.

Tearing tabs off into new windows? I've been waiting for that.

Smart new tabs that suggest based on your browsing habits? A nice extension of the Super Bar or whatever idea that Firefox has.

Maximizing vertical space? They could take it farther(further?) but it's more important to provide for this in today's freaking widescreen environment that cuts your vertical space down.

Harry Turtledove - WORLDWAR

After a grumpy morning at work, I found myself driving to Borders during lunch. I hate spending money at Borders, but I just wanted to look and browse and flip, and maybe buy a comic or two. I was sadly disappointed after browsing through but found myself turned about and there was a huge display for some new Harry Turtledove book. If the copy was to be believed, this man was THE KING OF ALTERNATE HISTORY! I poked around, read the backs of some of them and I was willing to drop my eight bucks(EIGHT DOLLARS???).

In The Balance – book one of Turtledove’s four book World War series seems written for me. It is written in a manner reminiscent of one of my preferred reading materials – 50s pulp sci-fi. It’s updated, though, with a decent assessment of physics, social interaction, and bits of believability.

The concept is World War II interrupted prior to Pearl Harbor and nuclear power by an alien invasion. The aliens are hampered by their assessments of Earth technology and capabilities being 800 years out of date. They bring a show of power that would have crushed medieval humanity, but run into tanks, tactics, and much larger populations.

The narrative is done in a hopscotch manner that keeps things moving along quickly. Characters from America, Japan, Russia, Germany, England, and other bits of Europe, as well as alien POVs lay things out well.

The one drawback, which I am easily overlooking, is the contrived nature of the story. The aliens arriving as they are any earlier or any later would have either completely overpowered humanity or been completely nuked to hell. In addition, the psychology of the aliens is exactly as is needed to be undermatched against humanity in all ways but technological. Their adaptability and creativity are almost non-existent. If they were able to roll with punches or come up with new tactics on the fly, the story wouldn’t be interesting or last 4 books. Ah well. It is what it is, and stuff blows up.

I greatly recommend it, but if you’re short on time, maybe cutting straight to Guns of the South would be better, though I haven’t read that one yet.

Williams Pinball Wii

I love me some pinball. I was exposed to arcades from a young age and I was always mesmerized by a good pinball player. It took me years to get a good feel for playing, but I stand a pretty good chance these days of scoring enough for some free credits. When I was going to school at UIC and UIUC one of the things I loved the most was the bowling alleys at each and the complement of pinball games they kept around. If I could have gotten course credit for playing pinball, I would have had a much more padded transcript than I already do.

Long story short – I’ve played a lot of pinball.

I’ve tried a lot of video pinball. Pinball for the Genesis, Saturn, Playstation, PC, etc. It has all sucked. ALL of it.

Williams Pinball Hall of Fame for the Wii does not suck. It is very much lacking in suck. It ventures very deeply into the realms of awesome.

The games? Ten boards dating from the 70s to the early 90s. I tend to pass up some of the older machines when I’ve got a chance to drop my coins into a newer machine, but all of these are great. They are extremely faithfully reproduced and the physics engine is quite great. There have only been 2 or 3 times when the ball has done something that doesn’t look quite right, but that’s probably less often than I’ve had that feeling in real life. The flippers are extremely responsive and the cameras are very smart and easy to switch.

This game is so good that I am convinced I would buy multiple other collections on the same engine if I could have home versions of some newer games I sadly do not have nearby. Simpsons Pinball Party on the Wii? Sold. Addams Family? Sign me up. Monopoly? Gimme.

I think that literally the only thing I would fault on this game is that there is no free roam examination of the different boards possible. I am used to being able to eyeball an idle machine from every angle to be able to see the nuances or read the smaller text that may be relevant to the game. That’s it. That’s my problem with it.

If you have twenty dollars, buy this game.

Gencon Indy 2008

Long overdue, but here’s my thinking on Gencon.

Sure, back when I was in high school I heard about Gencon. I even went a few times in the late 90s, but I never knew what was going on there. We’d truck up there to Milwaukee for the day and wander around the vendor area for the day. That was entirely satisfying – there were insane numbers of vendors and it was fun just to look.

When I heard that Gencon had moved to Indianapolis I was dubious. First of all, why would anybody want to go to Indiana? Second of all, what could justify a three hour drive down for just wandering around vendors? Well, I decided that now with the wedding paid off and the vacation days piling up, I could try out a Con again. Gencon it is.

To start off, I completely understand my previous self’s inability to grasp what was going on at Gencon. There were giant books of page after page of what amounted to Excel spreadsheets to pick events from. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do up there. Now, the events literally are enormous Excel spreadsheets. This is a blessing. Sean, Lauren, and I all sat down, marked the events we were interested in that were still open, and pasted them all into one document. Use that to build a weekend schedule and we were golden.

Luckily we showed up Thursday to get used to the area, figure out where to park, get our passes, and find the areas. We would have been screwed driving down Friday morning, trying to figure that all out on the fly AND get to our first event..

Getting to that first event was a huge plus – BREWERY TOUR. The Indianapolis Convention Center is blessed with three breweries within walking distance. Beer can be good, but local brew on tap is heavenly. So we get into our 10am event Friday and commence drinking. I’ll run down the beers in another post. The experience was wonderful – we got to try seven beers The Ram brewed right there. Two of the brews they had put on specifically for Gencon. Now that’s an area embracing an event. After an amazing amount of good beer for only 9 dollars,we got to do the actual tour. This sounds a lot more impressive than it actually was, because the brew area was probably about as big as our apartment, but two stories high in half of it. There were a number of large vats crammed in, not much walking space, and a single story cooling area that directly feeds the taps out front. The guy giving the talk was not the most eloquent, and he apparently had only worked at The Ram a month, but he was able to clue us into some good finds at the other breweries. Another plus – we got to taste the hops and barley that go into the beers. It definitely added to appreciation of it all.

In no particular order now – the other things we did at the Con.

The games library is an excellent resource. They have dozens and dozens of games available to borrow for a few hours at just the cost of a few event tickets. It let us figure out that Humans! was not a game to waste $35 on.

There are many small game events where you’re paired up with a group and, in the case of My Word, the winner got to take the game home. My Word is actually a very simple group game that can be taught in a few sentences. It benefits from Lauren and I being good enough at it that we got to take it home – I look forward to trying it out with others.

Unspeakable Words – not nearly as fun as My Word. Kind of contrived – possible for everybody to lose. Fits the Cthulhu mythos, but just not that fun.

Illuminati – now I remember why I haven’t played the game in years. There’s absolutely nothing to do gamewise when it’s somebody else’s turn and these people liked to think through every single possibility before acting. Even after acting! It was a fine event, and it saved me the dollars I had earmarked for picking up a copy.

Lauren is a somewhat finicky gamer. She balks if faced with knowledgable gamers who do not allow her the chance to learn. The guys running the Battletech introductory area and Grinder were exactly what Lauren needed to be comfortable and even get excited about a somewhat complex game. I hadn’t played Battletech since high school and, I realize now, I didn’t really know how to play then – I just had a good mediator. The guys running the Battletech area were excellent at giving Lauren aid and not leaving me to drown in the rules while trying to help her along. The end result was us getting in several hours in a huge melee, approval on purchasing Battletech materials, and a game we’ve played a few more times even after we got home. I really look forward to putting together some environments and diving into the source materials. If you’re reading this because you know me – let’s play!

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.
- Michel de Montaigne

One of the neatest things I've run across lately

I'd love to give some of these a shot...

Recaps to make:

Harry Turtledove
GenCon
Williams Pinball

The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.

- Calvin Coolidge

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Dollars and air and facial hair

Damned if it isn't easy to change the air filter in my car.

11 dollar filter, 7 screws to undo, a panel to lift off, and you just make sure you don't dump anything in the clean half of the compartment. Hardest part of it was that I was using my swiss army knife instead of a real screwdriver.

Also, I know that I don't really need to get my oil changed every 3,000 miles, but the engine purrs so nicely after getting that fresh lube.

On a side note, I'm not sure if I feel like a dick or just an unhappy consumer when I refused to bow to the cashier at the auto shop saying it was 'government regulations' that said I needed to show my ID before I could use my credit card. She folded like a house of cards when the words 'merchant agreement' came out of my mouth. I think people respect what I say more with the beard action, too. Who would have thought it could be so useful in arguments and as a conversation starter?

How's this for pretentious?

vi veri universum vivus vici

Fox Business News - Boobs that matter

How are they not just doing the news in lingerie and bikinis?

I *know* there's a producer somewhere that goes to sleep every night cursing the close minded idividuals that are keeping him from showing the business news as it should be shown. THEY DIDN'T SUFFOCATE HIM WITH THIS SHIT IN RUSSIA!

HOLLYWOOD JUSTICE!

7/25/08 The Soup - possibly the best episode of The Soup I've seen.

How much for a cup of ice?

If you worked in my office and answered anything under 50 cents, you would be wrong.

I feel like I just got robbed.

U-Verse

Preliminary assessment of AT&T's U-Verse.

The internet is not better - our DSL could have been this good if somebody had just come out to fix our wiring like the installation guys spent hours doing on Saturday morning.

Yeah, it's a lot of channels, but they're all standard definition. Standard definition looks like ass. We could pay an extra $10 a month for maybe 20 channels of HD. I get almost that much HD with my rabbit ears..

Premium television services have a long way to go before they hit what I was imagining them to be. HD paradise my ass.

On the positive side, the included DVR is pretty sweet. Hopefully 120 hours of SD is sufficient..

Bottom line, though is that we're probably ditching the cable after baseball season again anyway. There is so little on that we even want to watch.

Comic questions from the weekend.

Are the Avengers and Fantastic Four racist(species-ist)? The X-Men and mutants in general get screwed routinely and non-mutant super teams always seem to be otherwise occupied... I bet they're just sitting around in pointy white hats, shooting the shit about how mutants are going to all die.

Why didn't Kal-El's dad Jor-El send his whole family to earth when Krypton was dying? Were they on a tight budget or something?

Priorities askew!

24 horu news spends hours covering a non-event earthquake in California when they should be descending on this story like flies.

There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters.
- Alice Thomas Ellis

Jamaican Madman up 17%

Listening to a talking head recommending stocks on the investment channels is like listening to a heroin addict discussing the advantages of buying different kinds of heroin. Neither stands a significant chance at giving appropriate advice, but both get off on dopamine rushes at the prospect of being right or scoring some heroin.

postulation

The internet is the largest stupidity magnifier ever imagined.

On what is sci-fi and why romance with a touch of sci-fi is filed in the sci-fi section.

Sci-fi fans can handle some romance in their sci-fi.

Romance fans cannot handle some sci-fi in their romance.

on lunch

I'm convinced that these salads I get for lunch from the place in the basement are horrible for me. There's just too much dressing involved.. At least I'm getting the veggies?

Need to figure out some kind of lunch plan that involves bringing food from home. Right now if I get food downstairs every day it runs $33 a week($1,700 a year!). It's more if I go out and use gas to get food, etc. A salad at Panera runs me $7+ now - same for a sandwich at Arby's. A gas station sandwich runs about $5, but I still need to get there and I probably buy a soda instead of getting water or use the bulk soda brought from home. Driving to any of those places probably involves me driving 3 or 4 miles. With my average mileage at 30 mpg we're looking at an extra 50 cents or so in gas. Also, I don't get nearly so much reading time..

Blah!

Time to officially reinstate the group lunch makings we did a few years ago. I bet we can cut costs to half for lunch.

http://www.threadless.com/product/1354/Mister_Mittens_Big_Adventure

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared.
- PJ Plauger

Twitter?

OK, I'm really trying to figure out the draw on Twitter. The closest I can get to is that it's a good way to blog from your phone. Think of it as a replacement for texting one person. If you text Twitter, it will update, and anybody who has Twitter confirgured to send your updates to their phone will have it bounced to them. Beyond that, it's navel gazing, but focuses more on the bits of lint.. Not like this blog *isn't* navel gazing, but if life is really about experiencing culture, this is my attempt to jog my own memory..

Tin Man

Ah, subscription services.. How I missed thee.

Just received Tin Man, the Sci-Fi reimagining of Wizard of Oz, from Netflix this week. I really didn't expect it to be such a disappointment. I love me some Zooey Deschanel(she was one of the only redeeming points of the HHGTG movie), but this was a stinker for her. The casting on this mini-series may have been good, but the directing sure wasn't. There's something I can't quite put my finger on whenever Sci-Fi does these miniseries.. There's some quality to the effects and the shots that Lauren correctly calls as 'like you're watching a video game'. The actors seem to all have been subject to the lobotomy that Glitch was..

If only Psych had shown up in the mail yesterday..

Civilization Revolution:DS

Just couldn't get the feel for this game.. It felt like I was looking at it through a cardboard tube. I was always struggling to figure out how to run the controls. Yeah, I could move guys around and attack and everything.. I just couldn't get a sense for what was going on with my cities or what I *wanted* to have going on. I could get the hang of it with a lot more play, but I'm going to just let it go for now. I have every Civ game and expansion for my computer anyway.. Maybe if that wasn't the case I'd give this more of a chance.

BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER

RIFFTRAX VS CINEMATIC TITANIC

I really think that Cinematic Titanic is a bit lame. I liked the shadows in MST3K, but they really seem lost trying to come up with physical motions for all the stuff they say. The Josh Elvis Weinstein guy in the upper left has the worst delivery. The lines just aren't that funny. I know I'm basing this off of just 'Doomsday Machine', but I'm pretty familiar with this group's M.O.

Rifftrax, on the other hand, really benefits from that parasitic relationship with big budget movies. Just watched Star Trek 5 last night for the first time and I don't think I could have watched the whole thing without those guys helping me along. (let alone Lauren making it through that crap) There were a lot of beans and pants filling jokes, though..

On Rifftrax I can safely say I've tried a variety of their work. From the original Willy Wonka, to Jurassic Park, to the Indiana Jones movies, and Star Trek.

Just got back from Batman.

First, the Watchmen trailer made every hair on my body stand on edge.

Second, I believe Lauren has come down with post-movie stress disorder. Dark Knight was just too stressful for her to watch.

Third, while the movie was quite excellent I hope that there is minimal emulation of this in future movies. High quality, complex ethics, but zero fun. I'm not sure if I could watch it again even for IMAX. I was more exhausted after this than I was with Children of Men..

I know how much a 10 foot wave hurts. This looks like at least 100.

Proof that Cubs fans and Sox fans can work together.

http://www.bustedcoverage.com/?p=5504

I wish more people would acknowledge this..

The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.
- Henry S. Haskins

This would be tempting if I didn't try to alienate telemarketers as fast as possible..

Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.
- Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004)

On etiquette.

I am admittedly not up to speed on the finer points of etiquette and, most likely, I come across as a jerk a lot of the time.

But at what point are you allowed to hurl obscenities at the homeless guy who just sprayed vinegar and hobo juice on the car that the day before you spent an hour washing by hand? Seriously, I thought they stopped trying that act in 80s movies. Thank god it rained that night to help wash some of it off. I just worry I was too hostile to him - OR NOT HOSTILE ENOUGH.

Query.

Should I be nervous for my resume when I can't describe what I do in less than two sentences?

Kudos to the Wall Street Journal

If you're debating getting a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, and I know I wasn't really, it seems to maybe be worth the 10 bucks a month for full online access. I've been leaning on Yahoo Finance for a long time and it was mostly feeling like regurgitated news - which it was - they pretty much leaned on AP wire reprints. WSJ on the other hand gives me tons of in depth articles across a crazy span of topics and all kinds of market metrics and futures data in real time. Who would have thought I'd get such an in depth article on Combine Destruction Derbies?

Hawaii, etc.

Memo to myself:

Do the dumb things I gotta do. Touch the puppet head.

Recap Hawaii trip.

Precap Indianapolis trip.

Motivate self for insurance licensing.

Write pointless assessment of Blu-Ray not quite rocking my socks off.

Write pointless assessment of how great upconverted DVDs are - except for Apocalypse Now Redux's artifacting around written letters.

http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2008/3/22/318183/one-of-the-better-moments

For posterity

I'm shipping my Wii in for repairs and, in case anything goes wrong, this is the list of games I've got on it.

Super Mario 64
Super R-Type
Galaga '88
Gate of Thunder
Blazing Lazers
Air Zonk
Ninja Spirit
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario World

i got tingles watching this

but i think i can survive without cable... MAYBE.

Spring is here! Kinda!

My new favorite shirt.

Eamus Catuli!

It's a beautiful day for the Cubs season opener.

Quandry

Is salsa contributing to my daily vegetable intake?

i <3 jackie chan so much.

In my heart he's at the level of Douglas Adams, but with almost dying. That doesn't have to make sense to anybody else but me.

Top 10 Jackie Chan Stunts

How oddly... Hypnotizing.. I can't stop watching.

I heartily applaud this man. If there were some way for me to donate funds to continue his engagement in this activity, I would donate. I think it might fall under the 'political donation' heading and be kind of restricted, though..

Top 10s may not work too well any more for Letterman, but I found this amusing.

Poor Jim..

Moreso, poor Bear Stearns employees. To go from $60/share to $3/share in your company stock? That's becoming a poster child for diversification..

Aw, man.. Does this mean I need to vote for Hillary?

VOTE MADS

And yea, the space program had funding.

Seriously, this story has me convinced that we will have *significant* funds put towards our space program in the next ten years. I wonder how high the price of oil has to get to for this to get serious attention.. It's already making previously ludicrous oil pumping methods suddenly viable like all the oil sands in northern Canada..

I'm buying stock in pants.

I'm buying stock in pants, because it sure as hell is going to go up in value from people buying replacements. Replacements for the pants they urinated in violently. That they soiled because of this trailer..

Iron Man Exclusive Trailer

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Sometimes I weird myself out.

I e-mail myself and sometimes I don't know why.

I found this while automating a lot of tagging in my gmail account.

The e-mail is verbatim without a subject.

_________________________________________

be careful reading books.
_________________________________________

100 - Ben-Hurrrrrrrr

Our progress on the AFI top 100 list feels like it's going well. We were puzzled when, on our two disc plan, with one movie already out, we received two more discs in the mail last week. It turns out that biblical epic and number 100 on the AFI list, Ben-Hur is epically long. The first disc covers the first two and a half hours, up through the intermission. Yep, it's got an intermission. Disc 2 is the next hour and a half.

I'm 95% sure that I've seen this movie before, but it was definitely Lauren's first go with it. I think she did a little better with staying conscious through it. Not that the first disc is that rough! It's a beautiful movie, with stellar production values. From reading up on it, it was apparently MGM's hail mary. They were going down the tubes and had enough money for one big movie, so they pegged it all on Charlton Heston's big gay adventure.

OK, yeah, the movie doesn't HAVE to be about a gay relationship between a Roman and a Jew in biblical times, but it sure as hell seems like it. Once you get that idea in your head, it's impossible to get out. I guess I just went and ruined the movie for you..

Basic plot - Roman guy returns to Judea after having rocketed through the ranks in the Roman empire, faces pacifying an angry Jewish population. He tries to lever his old 'relationship' with Judah Ben-Hur into a few names that he can crack down on in the resistance and sends any good will down the tubes. After an incident involving a loose tile falling on the incoming Roman governor is pinned on Ben-Hur, Roman Marsalla makes an example of him by imprisoning his mother and sister while banishing Judah to the galley of a Roman warship. Begin revenge story!

Advice on the movie - definitely see it, but not when sleepy or short on time. Make sure to fast forward through the intro music - it's 6.5 minutes of orchestral interlude on a static background. The same applies to the intermission music. Be ready for a lot of movie after the seeming climax - there's still the whole Jesus aspect of the movie to deal with.

I don't think it's a movie that could be made the same way today. The chariot race at the circus is impressive and should blow away any but the most jaded viewer. Put in the hands of any of the likely directors these days would result in a mishmash of rapid cuts, too much CGI, and a hollow experience. The real deal uses real crowds, a real set, and supposedly one real death - see if you can spot it!

One sentence assessment? Classic, epic, never to be redone the same way, story of revenge in the time of Jesus.