The crazy world we live in

Ruben Navarrette Jr. says our prejudices can mislead us on the causes of teen violence.


Ruben Navarrette Jr., you crazy bastard! I read your column this morning on CNN and I now I just can't stop being mad!
(article is here - CNN COLUMN (this blog post makes much more sense if you read the article)
---------------------------------
Your column "Commentary: Teen murders aren't about race" really got me. The opening line of your article is probably what enticed me to read it-

"Those of us in the U.S. can be so smug about what we think we know about why some teenagers turn into bloodthirsty predators -- even when it turns out that we don't know much."

What the fuck? Smug? Smug about knowing why some teens turn into "bloodthirsty predators"? EVEN WHEN IT TURNS OUT THAT WE DON'T KNOW MUCH.

Ruben what the fuck are you talking about?

Ok ok, let's go further into the article. He mentions the death of a black 16 yearold honors student (he was walking to the bus after school when he was beaten to death over nothing) and apparently some conservative radio show blamed rap music for a degradation in black culture. Ruben then immediately begins to discuss a recent murder involving four white teenagers that broke into a house to senselessly murder a woman and severely wound her 11 year old daughter.

Now remember, this column is about race right? It's about how race doesn't necessarily factor into teen murders. So what does Ruben do at this point?

He uses the next two paragraphs to describe the murder, then says that all 4 teens should be given life sentences because "Our society has no use for these creeps".

Then he mentions that one of the white kids was living in "an upscale area" of town, while another of them was studying to become a mormon missionary. He then says "Who raised these savages, and how do we strip them of their license to parent?"

That's pretty cute Ruben. You're really tackling hard issues like race and how it does or doesn't influence senseless teenage killings.

So then he cites an NBC interview with the father of one of the white killers-
"He assured a reporter that his son didn't intend to commit murder. "I know my son," he said. "I don't think he went there to kill.""

This is when Ruben completely reveals himself as a fraud. Rhetorically, he responds to the father with-

"Great. Not to kill. Just to rob? To assault? To wound? That father should be very proud."

Ugh, Ruben. You tricked me. I thought I was gonna be reading an article about racism and teenage murderers. Instead I get half baked attacks on the general public about how smug we are and then I get to hear some columnist bark at the father of a killer using sarcasm and moral high ground.

But in the next paragraph Ruben proves his vapidity even further by quoting Meredith Vieira and being a real bitch about it too.

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What made the story even more frightening, Vieira said, is that "in a small town like this, these things aren't supposed to happen."

You're half right, Meredith. This kind of barbarism isn't supposed to happen anywhere -- not in small towns, or big cities, not in the suburbs or the inner city, not anywhere."
---------------

Oh shit Ruben, you really tell it like it is. You call out Meredith fucking Vieira on her misguided reactionary statement and then explain to her the other places that brutal killings shouldn't take place, which include "small towns", "big cities", "the suburbs", "the inner city", or (GASP) "anywhere". YOU EVEN USED THE WORD BARBARISM.

He finished up the article with this nugget of thought for his readers-

"We think we know so much about what causes young people to turn into monsters. But our conclusions go out the window when we discover that evil lives next door."

Ruben Navarrette Jr., the writer of reactionary fluff for the thoughtless majority.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
BONUS ROUND BONUS ROUND
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BONUS ROUND- list of bullshit phrases used by Ruben Navarrette Jr. in this article-

x5 BONUS *FULL SENTENCE, FIRST BLOOD* - "Those of us in the U.S. can be so smug about what we think we know about why some teenagers turn into bloodthirsty predators -- even when it turns out that we don't know much."

x1 BONUS *SINGLE WORD* - "Frankly,"

x3 BONUS *SASSY, SUCCINCT* - "You get the gist."

x10 BONUS *MORAL OUTRAGE, LOSING SIGHT OF JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY, 3 SENTENCE COMBO* - "They should do so. They also should seek life sentences for Spader and Gribble, and show them as much mercy as they showed their victims. Our society has no use for these creeps."

x15 BONUS *MORAL OUTRAGE, JUDGEMENT, LAYIN' IT ON THICK* - Great. Not to kill. Just to rob? To assault? To wound? That father should be very proud.

x50 BONUS *MORAL OUTRAGE, CREATING ARGUMENT OUT OF THIN AIR, 4 SENTENCE COMBO, 2 PARAGRAPH COMBO* - The rest of us should be questioning our assumptions. Meredith Vieira, co-anchor of NBC's "Today Show," discussed the tragedy with some local townspeople. What made the story even more frightening, Vieira said, is that "in a small town like this, these things aren't supposed to happen."
You're half right, Meredith. This kind of barbarism isn't supposed to happen anywhere -- not in small towns, or big cities, not in the suburbs or the inner city, not anywhere.

x15 BONUS *"CENTIPEDES IN MY?", PERFECT EXECUTION* - And yet it seems to be happening more often than we think -- and in more places than we realize.

x10 BONUS *CONCLUSION, 2 SENTENCE COMBO* - We think we know so much about what causes young people to turn into monsters. But our conclusions go out the window when we discover that evil lives next door.

TOTAL BONUS MULTIPLIER x109 OVERALL RANK - BONEHEAD

(I am also ranked a bonehead, only a lame person would get so worked up over a stupid column on CNN)

Movie Making Quotes

I just spent some time looking up quotes from movie directors. I was looking for quotes that I agreed with strongly and these are the ones that called out to me at this point in my life.
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A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
- Stanley Kubrick

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.
- Stanley Kubrick

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.
- Quentin Tarantino

The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.
- Francis Ford Coppola

You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.
- Francis Ford Coppola

I like films to have something inside, I don't mean a message, I mean something from the soul.
- Dario Argento

Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls.
- Lars von Trier

Films are always pretentious. There's nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker.
- John Milius

In that, Blade 2 is very much like a rock concert... if it's too loud, you're too old.
- Guillermo del Toro

Let's be realistic here

I stumbled upon this yesterday. I bought an Oats N Honey Gronola Bar and a package of vending salami.



I ate them together, as one.



And it's PERFECT because both packages come with TWO units. Two granola bars, two salami sticks. The taste when combined is great, and you're getting the filling power of granola mixed with the delicious processed salami (NOT TO MENTION THE WHOLE SWEET N SALTY THING GOIN ON RIGHT??).

It's really stupid of me to post this because it's a great idea and some guy from the food industry is gonna find my blog, steal the idea, and present it to his boss who will present it to his boss and on and on until they are selling OAT AND HONEY GRANOLA BAR WITH SALAMI CENTER.

15 Movies That Either Touched You, Stuck With You, or That You Remembered For Some Strange Reason or Others

A friend had this up on facebook.

1. Planet of the Dinosaurs - First movie I can clearly remember watching over and over. It is very bad. The music in the movie still unsettles me.

2. Batman (Tim Burton) - The first movie to cause psychosis in me as a child. I don't remember, but I am told that I would wear makeshift capes, speak as little as possible, and never smile. I have no memories of this, though I do have pictures from a birthday party where I'm wearing a cape and grimmacing, even while blowing out the candles.

3. Aliens/Predator - This is a double whammy. First seen at the age of 5 or 6, the cause of my first nightmare. In the nightmare I wake up and see a dead face hugger next to my bed. Predator was much easier for me to handle.

4. Conan the Barbarian - The second movie to cause psychosis in me as a child. This is definitely the movie that has "touched me, stuck with me, or that I remembered for some strange reason or others". I remember pretending to push the "wheel of pain" around the living room for the amusement of guests. I began to realize my sense of worth.

5. Robocop/Total Recall - Both are Verhoven movies, and I was shown both of them very close to each other. Filled a similar territory in my head, but both movies I was obsessed with. Also, both movies feature incredible soundtracks!

6. Army of Darkness - Watched this over and over on STARZ! I was still pretty young when I watched this, but I think it was the first time I felt "aware" of it being a movie that people worked on and made.

7. The Shadow - I am talking about 1994's "The Shadow" starring Alec Baldwin. I loved the movie a lot; a great deal of my enthusiasm stemmed from the soundtrack, which was the first soundtrack I listened to of my own accord.

8. My Neighbor Totoro - I thought at first it was surely some stupid kids movie, but ended being completely absorbed into a Hayao Miyazaki phase.

9. Pulp Fiction - Pulp Fiction blew my little 12 year old head off. Probably the first time I ever felt transformed after watching a movie. Head was spinning for years.

10. Fight Club - It's easy for a teenage boy to go completely apeshit for this movie. I did, all my friends too. We made our own fight clubs, watched the movie on the regular, and read all of Chuck Palahniuk's books. Hard to consider watching it again because I know it so well.

11. Once Upon A Time In America/The West - My dad, the man I have to thank for having shown me so many of my favorite movies, tried unsuccessfully to get me into Sergio Leone at the age of 11ish. It didn't work. Later on, after Pulp Fiction and Fight Club, he tried again and I realized what a fool I was.

12. Blue Velvet - Oh man. I can get drunk just by watching this movie.

13. 8 1/2 - Woo boy. This movie came out of nowhere for me. It was shown to me once, I knew I liked it. I couldn't stop thinking about it 8 or 9 months later and went out and bought it. Since then, I've become a real pretentious mother fucker and consider Fellini one of my favorite directors.

14. A History of Violence - The most recent movie on this list... it's so ridiculously good.

15. Because I Said So - I'm not sure why. It definitely affected me, and I can only assume it's because of
A- The Title
B- Diane Keaton
C- The scene where Diane Keaton can't work a computer and ends up being all over some porn websites.
D- Mandy Moore being a huge slut by dating 2 guys at the same time and banging both of them in a bizarre montage sequence.
E- I felt I had completely lost touch with humanity and myself after I finished watching it.

MORON FILM REVIEW - CITIZEN KANE

Citizen Kane is a movie that has been heralded for the ages since it was released in 1941. Orson Welles is one of the most famous directors because his first film was also his best, and the best of all time. He also drank too much in his older age, causing him a myriad of health and social problems related to alcoholism.

The film itself, which takes place in old timey America, is about a man, Charles Foster Kane, who is dying on his deathbed and says "rosebud". He is famous so everyone wants to find out what rosebud meant.

The movie itself is very great, with incredible photography and meticulous characters, and also some flashback cut scenes to add art. Something else I really liked was the depiction of Charles Foster Kane, who seems a tyrant, but also feels pain and is alone by the end of the movie.

My favorite character was the would-be singer, Susan Alexander. The truth is, she can't sing at all, in fact she's terrible. She makes a goddamned mockery of not only the opera she performs in, but of everything she claims to be interested in. Charles Foster Kane wanted to fuck her, though, so now she gets to be a part of the opera.

Gmail chat with one of my best friends

goes like this-
me: hey jho
miss u luv u
where u
how u
Jeff: i been callin u
me: WTF
Jeff: where u phone be
called u earlr
me: 2day?!>?!?
Jeff: and u kn no1 ansewred
yea
me: fuk
dunno
2bhnest aint herd dat fone rng n lng time
mayb broke
let m3 chk
LOL fone brk
or our telephone has been disconnected
Jeff: wtf
me: plugged into phoneline and power, no signal
Jeff: how imma suppoed 2 talk
fuck
me: now i have to get afuckn celli
Jeff: got a new ufl team
its called TEAM 5
me: heartbreak with the old members?
Jeff: weve been practicing everday
me: OH SHIT
you're doin it jho, you're livin ur dream!

REVIEW - District 9

First, things I didn't like-

While it suited what the movie was trying to do, the shaky cam stuff was a little much a lot of the time. If they had just spent a little more time keeping things in frame, it would have been better.

The soundtrack had some good moments, but relied on the classic "3rd world country wailing" to carry most of the dramatic moments. Using wailing is cheap and lazy. It's too bad they used it in District 9; for me it was the only serious flaw in the movie.

Now on to the positive stuff-

The main character, who we see start off as a nervous bureaucrat who is given entirely too power in an attempt to migrate 1.5 million alien refugees out of Johannesburg, is transformed by the end of the movie. All the things you see him go through make his choices in the latter half of the movie extremely satisfying. He's an asshole during a lot of the movie but remains likable and his choices all make sense- they generally don't cater to the cookie cutter conventions that plague a lot of epic action movies. You end up screaming "FUCK YEAH" a lot.

The alien creatures look incredible and their history and actions in the movie are all given extreme thought. They aren't a noble race being fucked over by humanity just because it suits the direction the movie wants to go. They are being fucked over by humanity, but they are shown to be savage and it appears that a great deal of them aren't very intelligent, just like humans. I got close to feeling like the government/corporations were being a little too evil, but I kept reminding myself that the world is actually a really fucked up place and that the scenarios presented aren't unrealistic. If the wailing soundtrack hadn't been present to make it so apparent that what you are watching is supposed to be harrowing, this aspect would have been perfect. As it is, it's great, but I see openings for people who would like to attack the depiction of human action against the aliens as being over the top.

The production design and everything about the slums of district 9 is completely convincing. The alien weaponry and technology isn't flashy, it's effective and fucking awesome.

Pretty much everything about the movie pulled me in and I was consistently excited to see what happened next. It wasn't predictable, it didn't give a fuck, and I forgive the shortcomings because they don't detract very much from what is overall the most interesting and exciting movie to come out in a long time.

I hope it continues to make a lot of money and brings some change to the current climate in the movie world where catering is king.

Neill Blomkamp obliterated the norm and for that he is my current hero.

GG Peter Jackson

To Pass The Time - Sphere

I am going to write about watching the movie "Sphere" as I watch it.

I am sleep deprived and not sure what drove me to watch "Sphere". I saw it as a kid and remember thinking it had some cool stuff in it, and the basic idea is pretty appealing. I apologize in advance for this entry's writing, which I'm not being careful with.
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Plot - When a 300 yearold spacecraft is found at the bottom of the ocean, Dustin Hoffman and his rag-tag team of scientists are called upon to investigate. They find a big sphere and it's spooky.

Impression of the first 40 minutes-

It starts off with a credit sequence that uses a shitload of effects on the credit text, as well as old drawings of spooky sea creatures. The sequence feels overblown. Elliot Goldenthal's score is pretty effective at setting things off spooky.








Opens to Dustin Hoffman in helicopter flying over the ocean to what he thinks is a plane crash. He is a psychologist and apparently gets called into plane crash sites to help people cope, but the helicopter pilot spooks him by implying there is no plane. He arrives to a naval fleet and learns that one of his old reports (a report he faked his way through in order to further his career) is being used as a guide on how to handle potential first contact with an alien race. Because his report was based on his favorite sci-fi books, Dustin Hoffman is joined by his brilliant goofy scientist friends, each a master of their field. Sharon Stone plays the life expert, Samuel L Jackson plays a math expert, and Liev Schrieber plays a physics expert. They all have a past together and seem more interested in their history than the world changing mission they are about to go on.

I don't feel like trying to explain more of the plot, because I have to move on. All the actors do a pretty good job, though Sharon Stone tries way too hard to come off as a brilliant scientist, though her lines don't help much. The biggest problem is the dialogue between the team... they don't seem like brilliant scientists at all... lines like "so you're saying this ship took a wrong turn?" coming out of characters that supposedly earned their first PHD at 18 sounds real stupid. The characters are all pretty cheesy and lame already, but it's all fun enough to drive a pretty compelling idea.

Sharon Stone really stuck out as being the one who seemed the least like a scientist. Her lines all come out sounding so lame. Liev Schrieber is pretty annoying too. Samuel L Jackson and Dustin Hoffman get off easier because they are the most naturally charismatic of the 4 of them. There is some govt officer hanging with them too, but he seems like a throwaway. Oh yeah, Queen Latifah is there too, hanging out at home base and not terribly involved.





There's an annoying sequence where, after discovering the space ship is American and from the future, Sharon Stone finds the last log. Of course when she touches it, a ridiculously detailed hologram explodes around them and makes them ooo and ahhh at the majesty of the future technology, and they see that the ship was swallowed by a black hole. The sequence reminded me a lot of the last sequence in Mission To Mars, where the alien is showing the M2M team how Mars died in ridiculous hologram fashion. Sequences like these are so fucking stupid.

02
03
04
05









NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I DONT CARE ANYMORE ABOUT THIS ANYMORE

Bullshit Words and Phrases - Issue 1

Maybe with some time to mature and a little bit of patience, I can reach a point where this stuff won't bother me. I have a feeling that it will only get worse over time.
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THE WORDS "SIMPLY" and "LOVELY", BONUS POINTS IF USED TOGETHER

"I simply had a lovely time."

The only person who can say this without bugging the shit out of me is an aristocratic woman, not born in the US, who is stunningly beautiful.

Acceptable. "I simply had a lovely time."

Even just a lady, irregardless of looks, as long as she's rich and pampered.


Acceptable."I simply had a lovely time."


Here's the real problem. A man of any kind. No matter if he's rich, pampered, foreign, gay, straight. Doesn't matter.


Unacceptable."I simply had a lovely time."

If you aren't a woman that qualifies as a socialite from a country that is not the US, you should probably not use the word. "Lovely" is one of those words that tend to replace more accurate words such as "beautiful", "pleasant", and "enjoyable" in order to add an elegant or regal tilt. Unless you were born into an incredibly wealthy family and have lived an exclusively pampered lifestyle, using the word lovely to describe anything other than your lover pretty much guarantees you are full of shit.
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Early Memories

FIRST MEMORY EVER

I remember the first time I considered a memory. There's no way to know for sure, but it must have been around 3 or 4 years of age.

I was crawling around the living room of the first apartment I ever remember living in. As I crawled past the couch, I scratched my eye and got pretty freaked out. It began with a fear of having hurt my eye, which I knew was delicate, but by the time my mom had arrived to take care of me, my fear had turned to something else. Somehow the trauma of scratching my eye caused me to think "What happened yesterday?"

I realized I didn't know what had happened at all. I knew my name, I knew my parents, I knew that one time my mother gave me a delicious red cookie, and I knew I had just scratched my eye. That was it.

Of course the thought process behind all that was much more abstract and from the perspective of a 3 or 4 yearold, but that was the basic thought process. I had no idea what had happened before I scratched my eye, and that scared the shit out of me. I remembered things after that.

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FIRST SOCIAL INTERACTION EVER

A little later, probably aged 5, I had my first day of preschool. I was fucking terrified. I did not want to go at all, and I was angry at my mother for getting a job and not being able to stay home all day with me.

A woman took my hand and led me immediately out to the playground, where I was still crying. There were a lot of kids out there and I went into a sideways tube and curled up.


An asian girl came by and asked me why I was crying. I said "I want to go home", so she sat down and held her hands up on an imaginary wheel and pretended to drive the tube like a car. She turned around and said "You are home now!"

I stopped crying, got out of the tube, and tried out climbing a jungle gym for the first time.

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FIRST NEGATIVE SOCIAL INTERACTION EVER

Probably around a month later-

Could you believe that it was a field trip? We were all going to go out to Dairy Queen to get ice cream, and I had to get a form and money from my parents so I could go. This day also happened to be "bring your toy" day, so I had brought a red race car (I had no interest in cars but it was hefty and metallic and at the time I thought it was the most impressive toy I had)

It looked a lot like that, but older and without an RC antenna. I was so overjoyed at being able to bring my toy AND get ice cream that I decided to spin around in circles, arms out, still holding my toy. A girl walked into my path and I unintentionally hit her in the head with the toy car. She cried and told on me. The teacher punished me by not letting me go to Dairy Queen with everyone else. I sat alone in the classroom for awhile, and when they got back, they all had ice cream while I was in a corner.

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LESSONS LEARNED

That asian girl was awesome and remarkable kindness does exist.
Morons will blindly walk into your happy storm so be careful.
Never ever forgive the teacher who kept me from going to Dairy Queen. Ever. Bitch.

Bathroom Bullshit

EDITOR'S NOTE

First, before I start, let me get this out of the way. This post is not meant to attack people with obsessive disorders. If there's one thing I understand, it's that sometimes, you have to do something even when you know it makes no sense.

Now that that's out of the way, this post IS meant to attack baby men who have no self respect.

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In the office building where I work, there seems to be a germ epidemic. It seems that every time I go number 2, some guy comes into the stall next to me and spends about a full minute preparing a toilet paper cover to protect his bottom from whatever scum is on the seat.


These men aren't my coworkers, just the people in other office suites. I've noticed a few things that seem universal amongst these guys.

They are always wearing khakis.


Once they've entered the bathroom and before they get to the stall, they tend to make a lot of weird breathing noises that seem completely fucking innappropriate for a work environment.



Oddly, once they've gotten to the stall (maybe once they've realized I'm in the stall next to them) they become extremely quiet.



So with those common attributes, there are a few different options for what exactly is going on with these guys, and here are some of my thoughts on it-

1. These guys are absolutely terrified of shitting. They wait forever to go to the bathroom because doing so is terrifying. Once they get to the bathroom (where I try and take a normal shit in peace, a little vacation from my workday) they are worked up trying their hardest not to unload some turds into their khakis, causing them to breath like dogs.

Actually, those are my thoughts on it. They are afraid of shitting, afraid of public bathrooms, afraid of germs, afraid of being offensive. I started this post off being irritated about the time it took these guys to create their little toilet paper seat cover but now all I can think of is the awful snorting noises they make coming in.



PS - toons4biz, fuck you

Pure venom, rage that flows

FUCK THIS PRINTER.

HEY RICOH AFICIO 3500 I'M TALKING TO YOU

The name of this printer is "Aficio", which I assume is based on the word "Aficionado"

Aficionado - a person who likes, knows about, and appreciates a usually fervently pursued interest or activity

I am fervent about my printing, and the only thing that stands in my way is the fucking RICOH brand Aficio 3500. I would be a printing aficionado if not for the fucking Aficio 3500. You ever try and print a manually double sides 160 page document only to have it eat 4 sheets of already printed paper 5 times in a row, completely destroying each batch? I know I have I HATE IT I HATE IT

Seriously, why the fuck does RICOH corporation (from Japan) use so much spanish sounding words for their company? Ricoh, like Johnny Rico from Buenos Aires, ready to take on the bug hordes who destroyed his home town. Except in this movie Johnny doesn't jump on the back of a tank bug and shoot the fuck out of its shell and shove a mini-nuke into the soft orange-y guts, he fucking blows his brains out after some of his tricky documents are continually fucked up by the Aficio 3500.

Oh jaysis. Imma go walk into the sun and catch on fire and be reborn.

I LIKE MY COFFEE BLACK

I just wanted to talk about Coffee for a little bit.


This is the machine that gives me my coffee.


These are the packets I put into the machine that gives me my coffee.


Breakfast Blend. This is the most popular flavor at the office.


As you can see, it has a strength (or force) of Two Coffee Beans.



This is Sumatra flavor. It is my favorite. Can you tell why?



It is my favorite because it has a strength (or force) of SIX Coffee Beans. (I've never seen a packet with SEVEN Coffee Beans!!!)




Pictured above is the coffee machine's control panel. You can choose "Full Cup" or "Half Cup". I'm not exactly sure what "Half Cup" does, but I believe it still uses all of the strength (or force) as a "Full Cup". That got me thinking.



What if I used the "Half Cup" setting on THREE Sumatra packets? That would be a strength (or force) of EIGHTEEN COFFEE BEANS.



So I load my first Sumatra packet into the machine.



It gives me a half cup of coffee with a strength (or force) of six coffee beans.


This is the second half cup, approaching a strength (or force) of TWELVE coffee beans!


This is the last packet! THIS CUP OF COFFEE WILL GIVE ME THE STRENGTH (OR FORCE) OF EIGHTEEN COFFEE BEANS!!!



This is the best cup of coffee I ever had.

James Cameron on Editing Action Sequences

"I think something happens to filmmakers, which is that they watch their own action sequences so many times that they actually learn where the next image – where the subject coming in in the next image is. So they’re already looking there. But the audience doesn't do that. So, I actually watch all my action sequences bilaterally transposed. Flopped. When I get it all cut the way I think it’s supposed to work, I’ll watch it backwards. I don’t mean backwards in temporal order, I mean in a mirror, right? I’ll watch a movie in a mirror.

So my instinct to look where the next thing’s happening gets short-circuited. It’s actually – you realize how dependent you’ve become on your own watching process. But it goes back to that thing I was talking about before, which is – you’ve got to be able to watch your own stuff with fresh eyes, to anticipate the audience’s reaction. I think it’s an art, and I think it’s a discipline."

from www.darkhorizons.com

REVIEW - Wendy's Sweet and Spicy Chicken Temptations

If you have a TV and watch any of the channels on it, or you have a radio and listen to any of the frequencies on it, you've probably heard about Wendy's new CHICKEN TEMPTATIONS.

According to Wendy's, they are a 5 star taste.



The TV commercial has the CHICKEN TEMPTATIONS being put on a nice asian plate in a bsuy kitchen. A waiter picks the plate up and the camera follows the CHICKEN TEMPTATIONS all the way through the fancy restaurant to the customer's table. The narration says something about a "5 star taste".

The ad campaign really irritated me because Wendy's is trying to convince me that the pile of slimy boneless nuggets on the plate is supposed to taste like something you'd get at some froofy restaurant. Just looking at the image above, my first thought is "wow what the fuck is that".

Anyway my roommate bought the Buffalo flavored CHICKEN TEMPTATIONS even though we had spent months talking about how gross they looked. He said they were "pretty good" but not worth "4 dollars". I had to try them out as well.

Yesterday I went to Wendy's for lunch and bought the sweet and spicy flavor. I was amazed to find out that they taste pretty good... so good I had to buy that shit again for lunch today.

The most amazing thing about them is that they look just like they do in pictures and on TV. That's pretty cool. My roommate said that they seemed just like Wendy's normal chicken nuggets, but covered in sauce. I disagree, I think that the meat is definitely of higher quality than the nugget meat.

Do you like sauces? Definitely try dipping your fries into the sauce. It's pretty good.

I had a Fanta orange beverage with my order.

I ate CHICKEN TEMPTATIONS.

Liked it.

U try it C if U agree

thank god thank god thank god thank god thank god thank god thank god thank god

ENEMIES OF THE INTERNET

First let me introduce you to Rupert Murdoch, if you didn't already know him.



How does that man strike you? Judging a book by its cover is a bad thing, but there's no escaping the fact that this dude is really old. He is 78 years old, worth 4 billion dollars, and is ultimately in charge of pretty much everything to do with FOX corporation. He also bought out Myspace.

I didn't know who Rupert Murdoch was until earlier when I was scanning through an article and found the following quote of his-

"The current days of the internet will soon be over."

He said this in reference to his plans for all of his online news publications (there are a lot of them) beginning to charge for their content by sometime in 2010.

I don't know much about Rupert Murdoch, though I feel like I know a lot because of a few things.

1. He is 78 years old.
2. He is worth 4 billion dollars.
3. He said "The current days of the internet will soon be over."

He owns quite a bit of the entertainment/news industry (they are one in the same) and I can only guess that he feels entitled to owning quite a bit of the internet as well.

When you think about it, the internet is a new world, a world where anyone with access to a computer can find the combined knowledge of the human race as well as contribute their own thoughts. Most people don't see it that way but that's what it is.

Rupert grew up in an older world, one where the internet fits into the same category as broadcast media and newspapers. His subscription news sites idea isn't bad, it's actually a fine idea, especially for the niche publications. The problem is his that he says things like "The current days of the internet will soon be over."

Anyone who uses such an authoritative tone concerning the internet, especially someone who runs Fox News and is worth 4 billion dollars... the only proper end for them is as follows-

Alas, alas

After twenty two years of marriage, it ends. My husband and I wept with wine over the irreparable. Not even our therapist, who has been something of a priest, a shaman, a guide to us in these difficult past 5 years could keep his composure. I began with the obvious, we simply weren't attracted to each other anymore.



Like clockwork, my therapist (Joe, 49) told us to try something different and rediscover the "spark" that first exploded our love. Without hesitation I swore to him that nothing could ever capture the heat of our first fucking, and with that I fired him. His suggestion might have made sense to a normal couple, but not to us. Not to Trevor and I.



Sometimes it feels like I never met Trevor, even during intimate moments with him. When the banality of life truly hits sometimes you forget how to laugh, and if you manage to remember, it isn't your laugh, it's a reenactment of what you felt before the schedule of your life began to dictate everything. Drop off the kids, go to career, have lunch with Linda, back to career, plan out a dinner that includes basil, oregano, and wild card crème fraîche, pick the children up, prepare dinner, exfoliate, then sleep. This pattern over the course of years dulled my mind. Trevor had his own brand, and at night, after intimacy, I would stare into his eyes and hope I felt something. Alas, alas. I knew I wouldn't. I never did.



Trevor, sadly, does not feel as pessimistic about the relationship as I do. We are civil, though his attempts to remind me of our lost love with pained glances and oddly timed pauses in conversation were abhorrent and made telling the children of the divorce more difficult than it had to be.



Lacy (7) and William (11), our darling children. If I live now, I live only for them. Lacy, bless her heart, cried even before I managed to explain that Joe and I were getting a divorce. William understood; his old soul recognized long ago the tell-tale signs of a weakening marriage. His maturity astounds me, and he is a truly wise boy. I could learn a lot from him.



Of course Trevor is caring for the children, and I indulge myself in poetry and wine, candles and hard to pronounce finger foods, and even the occasional art book to put on the coffee table in my new apartment. The children have been over a couple of times and always seem dreadfully bored.



Looking forward to the Opera tonight.

Respect

Jody Hill, the director of Observe and Report, talking about being a "story editor" for the reality tv show "The Mole"-


"JH: Oh my God. You would get all the footage that they shoot. Basically you shoot all this footage, and there’s usually some kind of event or contest or something that each week is structured around. I would have to watch all the footage and somehow make scenes out of this footage and put them together so there’s an A story, a B story, and all this stuff that leads up usually to this big thing.

But what’s weird is, you’ll take things from later in the season, like if there’s a big fistfight and you don’t really have anything going on. Like, say you have a girl and a guy hooking up, okay? And you don’t have any footage from that week of them hooking up, and yet at the contest that week, the guy helps the girl complete the mission or something. We would take something that was shot at the end and put it in that episode so it builds like there’s a storyline, basically. So I would have to watch, you know, hundreds of hours of footage and use different things to make it. I’ll say this, though, I think watching all that footage, as lame as those shows were and as miserable as I was—I was really depressed during that time. I just hated it, you know? It’s just horrible. I think just watching people—they might be phony folks, but they’re not actors—just watching all that footage kind of helped me a little bit, because I saw what people were just like in front of the camera, just doing their own thing, and I think that influenced the performance style I try to get out of characters and things."

Full interview is great-
http://www.avclub.com/articles/jody-hill,26484/

Tower Defense

Paul and I are on gchat talking about iPhone tower defense games. I'm about to buy pretty much all of them, because I'm crazy, and maybe I passed the bug on to Paul, because when I mentioned how I didn't want to buy Sentinel for 5 dollars, he responded-

Paul: fuck i havent even counted how much i spend
tower d iphone gamez switchen 4 lanez
touch screen finger printz money aint a thang
nigga i dont like it if i cant build maze
gimmie fuckin tower d
money aint a THANG

To me that's fucking genius to me.

Time 2 Get Real

1. Who was your FIRST prom date?
MY FIRST PROM DATE?! LOL I WENT STAG. I then had a prom date later on with a very lovely Linn Saletti.

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?
With extreme rarity.

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?
A rum and coke made by Nick Grant at Javier's dance party.

4. What was your FIRST job?
Video Editor for HCI Training.

5. What was your FIRST car?
A 1989 Honda Civic. I bashed it and it never recovered.

6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?
I DON'T TEXT OK I DON'T HAVE A CELLPHONE.

7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?
Myself.

8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?
I don't remember that woman's name.

9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?
New Mexico.

10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?
MK, we are roommates.

11. Where was your FIRST sleep over?
Wow what the fuck. I don't know.

12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?
Anthony.

13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?
What does this question mean? If it means "Who got married the first time you attended a wedding?", then it was my parents wedding. I was born a bastard and was around 1 year old when they tied the knot.

14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?
Woke up to my 2 alarms and tried to make sure I didn't turn them off instead of pressing snooze.

15. What was your FIRST concert?
Technically, some Willie Nelson thing. The first concert I went to of my own accord was for Tech N9ne.

16. FIRST tattoo?
I don't have any tattoos.

17. First piercing?
What is this?!

18. FIRST foreign country you've been to?
Mexico.

19. FIRST movie you remember seeing?
Batman or Planet of the Dinosaurs. The first movie I remember really being like OH SHIT was Aliens at age 5.

20. When was your FIRST detention?
I didn't turn in my homework in 6th grade one time and got some kind of detention called a TRAP or a RACK or something like that. It was the first of many.

21. What was the first state you lived in?
BORN IN TEXAS, I'M A WILD MAN.

22. Who was your FIRST kiss?
OMG too crazy to answer lol.

23. Who was your FIRST roommate?
Michael Harrison and Jeff Hogan