Peter Pan breaks from the mold by not having an actual book open nor do the singers croon about the name of the main character. This time they’re singing “We Can Fly”, which is pretty fun.

Also in the beginning is a screen thanking the copyright holders, the Great Ormond Street Hospital. How cool is that? Give your copyright, which is worth quite a bit, to an organization that helps children. I want to be able to do that someday.

Let’s take a moment to honor Bill Thompson. He is another voice actor, much like Phil Harris and Ed Wynn, that is very recognizable. If you liked Jock in Lady and the Tramp, the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, Hubert in Sleeping Beauty (Hubert?), or Smee, you’ve enjoyed the work of Bill Thompson.

Droopy Dog is Bill Thompson, too.

Bobby Driscoll is The Pan (in my mind, Hook is still the original). He’s also Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island and, more importantly, Johnny. You know, Johnny, the kid from Song of the South.

I’m still wrapping my brain around the physics of Never Land, which might be a futile endeavor. How is Peter Pan able to hold his own versus a rapier using only a dagger? Does he have enhanced reflexes from being part pixie? Has he trained for a very long time as an immortal? Is he Legolas’s cousin?

Still no Disney channel star singing the big song. Is “We Can Fly” the big song? That song’s on many sing-alongs. You know which song is not as featured? This one:

“Good. This should be most enlightening.”
Yeah, I don’t think “enlightening” and “Why is the Red Man Red?” can be uttered in the same sentence. Actually, I think I just did.

I appreciate that the story’s about Wendy, really. Boy and girl relationships run throughout the story and complicate things. I was talking to my friend, Andrew, today about growing up. He was told that he needed to wear shoes now that he’s out of college. I have the opposite thing going on with my basketball shorts. Maybe it’s because we’re both from the same hippie college, but if changing our fashion is the requirement for growing up, then I pass.

What were my family’s favorite parts of the movie?

My youngest liked how the crocodile’s eyes bounced to the rhythm of the clock. My oldest liked that but also thought it was cool that Mr. Darling recognized the pirate ship from a distant memory of youth (yeah, my daughter’s awesome).

My wife is more a fan of the slapstick. Every time Hook was dancing with the crocodile (“dancing with the crocodile” being a euphemism for “on the verge of being eaten by a mankiller”), she was cracking up.

I’m no better, though. My favorite part was the pirate singing and playing the concertina only to be shot nonchalantly by Captain Hook.

If I told you anything else, I’d ruin the plot.

The only complaint I have is that it didn’t have enough monkeys.

This whole time I thought Ben Folds only worked with William Shatner.

But he was able to give a good critique on Sing Off, like he actually IS a musician. Educated comments from a reality show judge? Craziness.

One of the groups lived in the college house at USC designated for the a cappella group. That house sounds fun and terrifying. Can you imagine how many people would be singing all crazy in the morning? They even took a risk by singing “Somebody to Love” and made a reference to Glee. That’s tough to live up to (but the more Queen songs I can see on TV, the better).

I obtained a certain bounty yesterday at our small group’s white elephant gift exchange.

“Bring me a dead fish to hang on my library wall. And no disintegrations!”

Denny’s now has redbox. Finally.

Got a question in Prussian history? We have a resident expert for that.

Have a term paper due on beardery tomorrow? Try me.
3%. Whew.

It should be noted that Windows now gives a rating to describe your OS experience, on a scale from 1.0 to 7.9 (the 6 scale already being taken by ice skating judges and the 10 scale done to death by beauty pageants and/or video game magazines)(Will it expand to 8 with a future OS?).

My machine, with its new hardware, was ranked by Windows 7 at a very encouraging 1.0. Oh…7.9 was the good one. D’oh.

I don’t have Aero running, but the new look is still not lost on me. It is simpler, as advertised, and that’s what I love about Snow Leopard. Get me to what I want to do in the quickest way you can. 7 is definitely a jump in the positive direction from XP (which still had a lot of hold-overs from Windows 95 and 3.1).

Two things so far will take some getting used to:

I didn’t realize just how much I threw around my windows and project files until the windows started resizing on me. With 7, if you drag a window to the top of your monitor, the window maximizes. For the most part this is pretty cool. But when I got into the thick of a project last night I had windows inflating all over the place.

I read promises of pinning to the taskbar at the bottom, like the dock in OSX. You can pin applications, but you can’t pin folders (I probably haven’t discovered how to do it yet…I’ve only had one day with the system). I like to have my documents right there in the dock for one-click access. So far, no deal on the docs. I did put it in my Start menu.

Those two issues are not dealbreakers. They’re not intuitive, but I know I’ll adapt. (Isn’t that how tech works? You adapt instead of the software adapting.)

I already had back-ups of my documents, so I didn’t do the back-up procedure recommended by the upgrade manager. Like I told Devin, I felt like I was rolling up a new character who hadn’t wasted all his feats on stupid stuff like Mobility or Martial Arts I. I’ve set up a lot of computers since we first got this desktop. I now get to organize the files in a more logical sense, instead of trying to play catch-up.

What I didn’t realize was that Windows 7 still stored my documents, even though it said it wouldn’t. I’m not complaining. It’s in a folder called Windows.old. I wish I had known that before trying to set up my anti-virus. The program wouldn’t recognize my serial number – I had until February to renew, but I purchased a renewal last night. To download the free trial you still had to purchase it, they would credit back your account. Very tricky.

We set up the Office 2010 beta. I’m liking what they did. I mainly do web-based stuff, so I haven’t had to type anything up yet. My current book project is in Google Docs. I wanted to type it up in the new Word, just because it looked like so much fun. I know I’ll get there. I may even have to use Word’s help feature for the first time in my career, if only to see what it looks like. (I take that back…I had to use help to figure out mail merging for the office secretaries. It’s not like I merged a lot of databases to form letters in college. I didn’t major in Junk Mail (but I did minor in Spam)).

On day two I only have two complaints (appropriately enough).

7 has a great new search feature that is very similar to Spotlight in Snow Leopard. I’m not seeing easily how to search for files of certain sizes or specific file types (except for using wildcards with the file extensions). In XP you could hone down the criteria for your search even in the default search function. I’m not seeing it in 7 but I hope to find it in time. Now if I could only create Smart Folders…

My biggest complaint is what they’ve done with setting up a home network. If I had another machine running 7 I could set up a new thing called a homegroup (a little different definition than I’m used to). But I miss the My Network Connections section of the Control Panel. It was really easy to set up a network between the MacBook and my PC before. My first time trying it the router had the two machines sharing the same IP address, allowing neither to connect to the Internet or each other. My second time trying to set up a network disabled my LAN. I had to call up my ISP to figure out how to enable my network adapter again (basically I called but then went through the 7 troubleshooter a couple of times until I found the LAN settings…the poor tech support guy had to listen to me figure it out myself. He hadn’t used 7 yet.)

I’m finally able to share documents, but I still can’t get the printer on the network (even though it says it’s sharing). The home networking setup procedure is not intuitive any more.

Overall I’m very happy to be running Windows 7. I’m very excited about Office 2010 and how fast my computer is running. I also like that there’s now a decent screenshot utility built into Windows. For as many tech manuals as I’ve made, it’ll make my life easier.

I know this has probably circulated already, but at work I opened up my fortune cookie and found this:

The back said, “Please someone at work by being calm and impartial.” Easy for you to say, Courier Cookie. Your employer didn’t block Google. Thankfully it wasn’t every Google service (I’ve already used Wave to coordinate two major projects and Docs lets me write spontaneously). We’re now asked to use Bing as a campus if we’re looking for images. I like the image search, to some extent. What I find really funny, in a “the tighter you clench your fist the more systems will slip from your grasp”-type funny, is that YouTube is blocked completely on campus. I unfortunately had mentioned at the district office that blocking didn’t make sense because the results still came up in Google Video. Well, in Bing those YouTube videos still come up. Now it’s even easier because you hover over the thumbnail and it plays automatically.

I used to find that feature annoying but now it cracks me up. Bing, even though your name doesn’t conjugate well, you’re starting to grow on me.

I see this as a great opportunity to be a well-rounded computer user, to see both sides (until I become a famous author and can afford an iMac).

That in and of itself could make for a good bloggh post.

But wait! There’s more!

If you want to read articles from The Professional Site, read on:

I had watched a demo video at wave.google.com over the summer debuting Wave. As with any tech thing, my thoughts started racing with how to use it in an educational community setting. Over the weekend I got an invitation to be a part of the limited preview. (Happy Thanksgiving, right?) I’ve been chatting with people about Wave and here are some general questions (before we tackle how to use it in a school setting) I can answer after having used it.

What is Wave?
The best way I can think to describe it is that Wave is what e-mail would look like if it was invented today instead of decades ago.

But I already do e-mail. Why would I use this?
E-mail is extremely linear. When you are e-mailing a simple message to one person, that works. If you start e-mailing back and forth in a conversation, that’s where stuff starts to get cluttered and it’s tough to see the progression of ideas. GMail started the whole “conversation” idea, making it easier to follow who said what. Wave takes it further.

I was able to embed a map, a YouTube video, and a picture into the Wave very easily. That’s a definite plus. In e-mail those resources sometimes don’t come across.

How could it make my life easier?
For me, e-mail gets confusing the more recipients that I have per message. Before replying, I have to sift through what everyone else said. Many times that entails opening up multiple messages and checking when they were sent. With Wave, it’s one message and the responses are shown more like threads or comments at the bottom of a blog post.

How could it make my life more difficult?
First, there’s the “Great. One more account to manage; one more thing to check” problem. I’m hoping that Google will incorporate other services, specifically mail coming in from already-created e-mail accounts.

Next, you can reply to any portion of a Wave. The Wave’s status will show how many replies are unread. You need to scroll through the whole Wave to see the unread replies.

How could it give me a headache?
My friend are I were chatting (Google calls it “ping”…think Scott Westerfeld’s Tally Youngblood series.) and we had to scroll quite a bit. Just like in a main Wave, you can reply to any section of a ping. Think about how fast an online chat goes. Now picture someone posting a reply at the very top of the chat where the ping started an hour ago. My friend and I are decently tech savvy and we were lost. For friends chatting, it’s funny. But I picture a professor I had that did online chats. His idea of a chat was to have everyone type up their responses days in advance and then paste them into the chat all at once. That hurt to read. This will not improve that.

Where could it offend people?
I choose my words carefully. When it’s a really important e-mail, I’ll revise it a couple of times before sending it out. With Wave, my friend jumped in before I knew it and was watching me type my reply, letter by letter, so that before I was done he was already saying, “I thought so.”

Very disorienting. I like to spell things correctly. Typos become even more annoying as someone is virtually watching over your shoulder.

My friend was able to edit what I had said. Google changed it to read that we were co-authors of the reply. I’m glad he can spell well, because you can’t tell who said what after the specific reply becomes co-authored. I didn’t want someone to look through the archives of the Internet to see that I had misspelled a word when in fact it was someone else.

You know, because those things are important.

I also think about how many people write an e-mail angrily just to delete it as a way of venting. Wave records what you’re messaging, so someone could watch the playback and see what you initially said. For people who carefully choose their words when writing to others, you have to do a rough draft in your head. It slows things down and makes it more stressful.

Is it worth it?
Google is known for constantly changing, constantly growing. I think that the tech will change to meet the need and we’ll see more features show up once it’s out of preview mode. Just like any new tech, we’ll see it come out for a year as the people who use tech for gadget’s sake enjoy it. Some time after that we’ll then see the general populous join on IF it incorporates e-mail better.

___

Over the weekend, when I wasn’t figuring out Google Wave, I finished Crocodile Tears by Anthony Horowitz. Stormbreaker (as well as Haddix’s Among the Hidden) was the first YA book I read as a junior high teacher and it helped me to see how that market of books has developed over the years. If you remember my review of Ghost in the Machine by Patrick Carman, I made reference to how much I enjoyed Scorpia (my favorite of the series) and how Ark Angel was a letdown for me. (Yes, I’ve read Snakehead.)

As I began Crocodile Tears, I thought, “Can this get me back from ‘I enjoy the series’ to ‘I rave about the series’?”

I love how Horowitz starts out the novels with an opening scene much like a James Bond movie. We see minor characters involved in some sort of trauma, introducing a sliver of the main conflict. We also don’t see Alex Rider, for the most part. Chapter one gets you hooked with a disaster at a nuclear power plant. A charity swoops in to help immediately and we are instantly suspicious that the charity may have known ahead of time when the disaster was going to happen.

I was nervous, at first. I’m a huge supporter of helping out wherever you can, even internationally, so I was hoping that Horowitz would not paint a jaded view on aid organizations. There’s a great conversation where Alex Rider is defending people who donate because it’s the right thing to do, not because they’re playing some kind of game.

Desmond McCain is a good villain in the spy movie sense. There are some times where the cheaper, easier way to win would be to just kill Alex and be done with it. Nope. Just like it’s mentioned in Pixar’s Incredibles, the villain monologues and explains the plan, trusting the henchmen to finish the job. Not the most logical way to enact your evil schemes, but it definitely fits the style.

A student and I had debated on whether Alex Rider had actually killed anyone in his books. The villains pursue him to the “Captain Ahab” level of obsession to their own demise. In this one it’s pretty clear: bad guy is going to kill Alex, Alex kills him first – but it’s under a spy code of morality.

1. You point a gun at someone and shoot, you’re an assassin.
2. You create an elaborate plan to watch the person die, you’re a supervillain.
3. You create an elaborate plan using just what’s on you at the moment (perhaps feeling a degree of remorse), you’re a super spy.

Alex is angst-ier this time around.

Something that I had lost sight of is that the entire series has just been one year in Alex’s life. In other words, he has missed a TON of school. Crocodile Tears highlights this; the adults finally realize that this 14 year-old should probably attend a full day of school from time to time.

It’s definitely not the end to the series. There is still room for Alex to grow throughout the years. Crocodile Tears is an enjoyable read. (I’m still biased towards Scorpia, but I’m excited to see where the series goes.)

It is four players on screen at the same time. Yes, player one has to be Mario. Yes, the game gets psycho quickly, with turtle shells all over the place. Yes, you will die a lot.

As long as you know that going in, you should be fine.

If you liked Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. 3, you’ll like the game. I’m excited to play this with Slade on Thanksgiving. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s my nephew’s review:
“It’s frickin’ hard.”

I might as well be on vacation, though. I got to see the debut of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. (No stress if you missed it; it will be repeated over and over again and you’ll see it on DVD and On Demand and On Ice.)

The big conflict? The rapper from Electric Company comes to Sesame Street as a bird real estate agent, convincing Big Bird to migrate to a new habitat. (He does this by rapping about how life’s a beach…no joke.)

Spoiler Alert: Snuffy was able to convince Big Bird that New York was his habitat.

This was all within the first 16 minutes, so I’m wondering where they’re going now. They’re debuting Abby’s Flying Fairy School (if you have kids you probably have seen the newest character that doesn’t fit any of the style of the show…even the Meep Meep aliens or the Honkers). It’s a 3D segment that is like every other brightly colored hallucinogenic kid experience out there. What makes Sesame Street is the Mupets, plain and simple. This too long segment about a gerbilcorn (the only redeemable part) needs to go.

40 is the number of the day, though. That’s fun.

Remember when Hooper died? Or Hooper’s store burned down? Did you know that Gordon is a Science teacher? How old school are you? Can you remember the Ladybug Picnic (or the addictive Chickens in the Trees)? How about Disco Grover? Sesame Street has gone on for quite some time. Instead of innovating, they copied a screensaver from Noggin. Hopefully Sesame Street makes it to 50 and does something amazing to honor the lovers, the dreamers, and me.

Is it bad that I have such animosity towards fictional characters?

I hate you, Fred Basset. Other states get Spider-Man syndication; we get the jewel of the retirement community. Go hang out with Mary Worth, you dumb mutt.

Even more disturbing – my wife rented the Jonas Brothers concert movie. Let’s just say that it’s not as good as the Hannah Montana movie…because I wasn’t sick enough to begin with. Somewhere in the Valley, the Sith were attacking and I was watching karking Mmmbop.

Sunday night we rented 17 Again…and it actually wasn’t bad. Well worth the dollar. My more brun meldir will appreciate that the nerd in the story looks like a nerd, grows up to be successful and still a nerd, and finds a woman (Jan from The Office (who also was Billy Ray Cyrus’ love interest in Hannah Montana)) that is fluent in Tengwar.

I put up a review of Catching Fire on the professional site.

One week until Conduit’s release. I am excited for a co-op game for my wife and I, though. The new Super Mario looks promising, and perhaps the next Ultimate Alliance could be good. I’m not current on my printed comics. Wasn’t Captain America dead? Now he’s back?

Japan is now going to have movie rentals on the Wii.

I guess I shouldn’t be blown away by the response to Mike’s Ghostbusters III group on Facebook. Since he ain’t afraid of no ghost, it’s the only logical progression. I do like Wil Wheaton’s thoughts on the busting of ghosts:

If there’s something strange in your neighborhood, you should call the police, contrary to what the song suggests.

I also appreciate his thoughts on current events:

Pretty sure the City of Los Angeles can find a better way to spend a million dollars than on a parade. Teachers come to mind.

It’s not that I don’t like the Lakers (I always forget, from time to time, that there are professional sports ever since the NBA started playing on cable instead of free TV).

But I am a fan of irony, and I guess some other Twitterers agree with something interesting that I noticed this weekend:

Riots in the same weekend. What do you stand for, Lakers or fair elections? #iranElection

Catching Fire has reminded me of what large masses of angry people look like.

Thanks to everyone who re-tweeted that. It’s been crazy watching Twitter hold CNN accountable for going light on the coverage of world events. They focus on Iran if it relates to something gossipy, but now the public demands more info on a government that cracks down on free speech.

On the topic of free speech (literally free…no cost to you, right?):
Shi Weihan was arrested for printing Bibles for free, which I guess is illegal in China still. Argh.

I’m intrigued by Kiva. I’m not a big fan of throwing money at a problem, but I know what it’s like to have an expense come up.

I must also confess that I am entertained on Twitter with pictures of director Adam Shankman with his dog on the movie set watching 3D monitors for Step Up:

as well as finding it fun that Miley Cyrus watches Funniest Home Videos to cheer herself up.

Keep those last two secrets to yourself.

You’ve probably seen the commercials for bing. But how many have taken a look?

It dawned on me yesterday that as a librarian I should know how to navigate it and understand the pros and cons.

What a weighty responsibility I have – do you realize this? I shape the future, much in the way Nen Yim fuses poison darts into fingertips.

I heard it from an inside source that Bing stands for “Bing is not Google”.

I think the only way to solve this is simple: Battle Royale. Some may demand that I go to the Deadliest Warrior depths of simulation algorithms, but I think the typings of a madman shall suffice for the preliminaries.
vs.

The Yuuzhan Vong Challenge

I typed in Nen Yim to bing and the first result was the Wookieepedia article. The next two were about a Gamespot user profile, followed by a Yahoo Star Wars community beta image, then the Talk comment for the Wookiepedia entry.

I typed Nen Yim into Google. The first result was Wookieepedia, a branch off (a little bit easier to read) was the Talk page, followed by a Facebook page, a feed-stealer site that copied the Wookieepedia entry, and finally a profile result for a fan fiction network.

The verdict: there are a lot of Star Wars nerds on the Internet.

maps.site.com
Google takes me to the U.S. by default.
Bing takes me to the Southwest by default.

I typed in my address (even though I was already being Binged (many connotations based on pronunciation) ) and Bing found it without trouble.

I really dig the popular business categories listing, finding the results in my area. Bird’s eye view is easier to interpret than the satellite view from Google.

Don’t click on Bing’s “Explore collections”. Talk about search overload – I got a whole bunch of letters and numbers that have no meaning for me.

Google has a place for me to search and has lots of breadcrumbs to get to other searches. Bing took me some time to find my way beyond the prescribed searches.

The verdict: for pretty picture, Bing; for pretty code, Google.

I really like the front page of Bing. The picture of the day, with different hotspots, is pretty fun. I love information, following fact trails.

So the feature of the day on Bing is something that I appreciate. This weekend they had Normandy Beach (versus Tetris on Google and Land of the Lost on Dogpile), with lots of information. You click on different parts of the picture and it brings up articles and video about the topic of the day.

This morning I wanted to go back to that information, losing interest in the pictures of people eating at the San Antonio Riverwalk. In order to click on the navigation arrows on the photo to go back, I would need to install Silverlight. What would happen if I wanted to go to a different computer and show someone the cool topic from tomorrow?

The verdict: for not making me install stuff and tracking me without any inconvenience, Google wins the match-up.

Finding Sumo Blogs that Have Me in their Blogroll

The verdict: Bing wins!

Who would win in a knife fight, Google, Yahoo, or Bing?

The verdict: Did the search:Google.

The winner? By a landslide, Wolfram|Alpha. It can’t get me any information on anything I search for on a daily basis, but have you seen it generate ISBN barcodes? Cool!

Bing is already a household name, but he sang “White Christmas”.

Google was a Square One math fun fact until the search engine made it a verb.

Microsoft is going to need to throw even more ad money at the project (either that or innovate) to be able to replace Google in our minds. I have enjoyed the Search Overload commercials more than the iTunes overgeneralization or the Find a Laptop omission of details campaign (“These are small.” Really? A small laptop? Imagine that. And who buys a laptop for gaming? Do I need to educate you on modding the innards of the case, youngling?).

The saddest part? Once they got rid of the butler, Ask.com is just another collection of random shouts mixed with ad links.

With watching LOST, Star Trek, and Terminator, I’m kinda burned out on time travel. Now will it be an excess of, “I’m metal, but am I human?” At least Tim Burton has samurai robots in his future. (Versus Bruce Willis with two bad haircuts.)

How this will affect some of The BLOGgh’s readership is the Casas trip. You might want to work on your passports (legitimately or otherwise) for next year’s trip. Once people really see the bureaucracy in action (inaction…wakka wakka) they’ll start to freak out.

On the topic of Cyberdyne – If you liked action movies of the ’90s, where not everything had to line up logically, you’ll love Terminator Salvation.

I, for one, prefer Sydney Poitier’s characterization of the T-800.

A part that I did enjoy was the nod to T2 fans with a vehicle duel choreographed to Guns ‘n Roses “You Could Be Mine”. It’s fun that John Connor still has some old cassette tapes from his teenage years.

I also appreciated that John Connor ditched his Batman voice after the first few fight scenes.

Woo to Anton Yelchin! Congrats on being in two big summer movies. In Star Trek he was part of a great ensemble. In Terminator he stood out as the coolest character. (Kyle Reese has always been my favorite – the no-name soldier sent back in time that alters time.) Look for Kyle Chekov in New York, I Love You where he joins a big cast in a collection of short films.

Flashlight Peter, we can now answer two of your questions. Kate Connor is a veterinarian, so she might not have the same ethics debacle. Also – Roland Kickinger, who played Arnold in See Arnold Run, was the body of the T-800 in the current film (another Austrian bodybuilder?) and Governor “Get to the Chopper!!” had his face digitally masked over poor Roland.

2. Yes, Star Trek was a good movie (perhaps even great) and is my favorite, followed closely by Khan and First Contact. The big question is which one was a better re-boot, Batman Begins or Star Trek. Once the potential for spoilers has diminished, we can figure out if Star Trek was a re-boot or a re-loop. Devin, can it serve both as a re-envisioning and fit in the already-established movie canon?

3. Yes, I’m trying to convince my wife to watch The Cage tonight. Pike was awesome in the film.

4. Yes, I was delirious on Saturday night, coffee hallucinations and all. I can’t guarantee that that would have changed the amount of tweets inputted into the system, but I can’t help but think the negotiations would have been smoother with Moff Cage on his A game. He does not like to be surprised and it was pretty gutsy of the Collicoids to switch the deal on him.

Two words: orbital bombardment. Old-school Empire. Corellian Alliance. Meat Parade.

5. Check out the updates to Cry for Kraka.

With over 900,000 views in the past week, I’ll take this guy over any current politician in congress with the exception of Jon Kyl and Mitch McConnell.

You may be aware that I’m a fan of Star Wars.

But what you may not be aware of is that I dig Star Trek. Admitting that takes a little bit of a risk in modern society. But really it shouldn’t.

The Captain and I went to the Star Trek Exhibit yesterday and it was actually pretty cool. They wove real-life space exploration landmarks and vessels into the timelines and displays. I kept staring at one vessel trying to remember if Zefram Cochrane worked for NASA or not.

Mike is the Captain and I am the second-in-command. I actually almost sat in Deanna Troi’s seat. I don’t have the figure to pull off the spandex. I see myself more as a bearded warrior.
Frakes on a plane:

There are Frakes on the [bleepity bleep] plane!!

We took a Star Trek trivia test. Mike scored high enough to be Admiral. I am but a Science Officer, but I would have had a higher score if Reginald Barclay had been the focus of the questions.

Being a fan of the little details, I enjoyed learning that:

1. The names of the cast and crew from Next Generation are on the display read-outs behind Worf. Initials like “PA ST” and “WI WH” stand for Patrick Stewart and Wil Wheaton, but look like settings on the scanners. In engineering they have a button for an Infinite Improbability Drive and the Oscillation Overthruster.
2. The seats are from a Pinto.

But there were some things about the exhibit that bugged me as a librarian who innately catalogs and sorts.

1. There’s a uniform from Star Trek II that is labeled as Kirk’s, but the shoulders were wide (and, ironically, the waist was narrow)(this being a key clue). When you look at the sleeve, it is the rank of a Science Officer. Yep. They have it labeled as Kirk, but it’s Nimoy’s costume.
2. Picard’s uniform is on display, but on the neck it has three gold circles and one black circle. He should have four gold circles if he’s Captain Picard. Did he get sortof demoted?

It should be noted that if I picked up on these discrepancies, imagine the reaction for a fan in actual uniform. (Pictures not included to not induce Internet mockery.)

You should know, though, that NASA created the Science Officer position on their shuttle programs from Spock’s inspiration. I’m tempted to petition for Grand Moff to be the person in charge of the ISS. They are already struggling for names, right?

44% Twister
33% Clue
11% Risk
11% Stratego

As my wife put it, “The others think too much. In a fight in a dark alley in Gotham, you just gotta act. Twister wins.”

And this, my friends, is one of the many reasons I married her.

She took me to teppanyaki last night:

(The guy was picking fire up with his fingers. Fire. Freaking fire! I guess they use everclear because of its high evaporative point, so the fire burns quickly but doesn’t linger.)

so in all fairness we watched Confessions of a Shop-aholic tonight.

Now, I offer this in my defense:

1. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (but I told my wife I used to be a fan of James Cameron)
2. Music by James Newton Howard (who helped with Dark Knight, Treasure Planet, and Signs)
3. The last romantic comedy I could remember taking my wife to was Sweet Home, Alabama – Yeah, 2002. As in “our first year of marriage”.

Granted, I was hesitant to see the movie because I thought it looked very much like a mix between Legally Blonde and Devil Wears Prada.

Caution: Spoilers

The leading lady does end up with the leading man, her boss that she lied to but didn’t get a chance to tell the truth to until someone else revealed the truth, he got offended, but then realized how much he loved her, so it was okay. This formula has been done somewhere before…

But the fun is in the execution of that formula and the character interactions along the way. And Confessions has a cool take on APR financing (not kidding) and investor confidence. Same general plot outline, neat details.

Because, really, most of the movies that we had been seeing had the same plotline, too.

Guy is not awesome. Guy becomes awesome. Something super awesome challenges merely awesome guy. Awesome guy has to find some inspiration/something in himself/a radar network created by cell phones to beat the super awesome entity.

But it’s how they go about it that’s fun.

It’s all very Joseph Campbell-ish (don’t agree with all of his stuff)/Epic of Gilgamesh in that there’s something inside of us that craves these stories. When it’s not told well/told lazily – hoo, buddy.

Have you heard of the 36 plot lines? I had seen it way back when I was GMing (before I had the honor of actually playing and not having to guilt my friends into my dice-induced storytelling delusions).

See if Hollywood plot lines boil down to one of these at their most basic elements:

Supplication – Persecutor, Suppliant, a Power in Authority
Deliverance – Unfortunates, Threatener, Rescuer
Revenge – Avenger, Criminal
Vengeance by Family upon Family – Avenging Kinsman, Guilty Kinsman, Relative
Pursuit – Fugitive from Punishment, Pursuer
Victim of Cruelty or Misfortune – Unfortunates, Master or Unlucky Person
Disaster – Vanquished Power, Victorious Power or Messenger
Revolt – Tyrant, Conspirator(s)
Daring Enterprise – Bold Leader, Goal, Adversary
Abduction – Abductor, Abducted, Guardian
Enigma – Interrogator, Seeker, Problem
Obtaining – Two or more Opposing Parties, Object, maybe an Arbitrator
Familial Hatred – Two Family Members who hate each other
Familial Rivalry – Preferred Kinsman, Rejected Kinsman, Object
Murderous Adultery – Two Adulterers, the Betrayed
Madness – Madman, Victim
Fatal Imprudence – Imprudent person, Victim or lost object
Involuntary Crimes of Love – Lover, Beloved, Revealer
Kinsman Kills Unrecognised Kinsman – Killer, Unrecognised Victim, Revealer
Self Sacrifice for an Ideal – Hero, Ideal, Person or Thing Sacrificed
Self Sacrifice for Kindred – Hero, Kinsman, Person or Thing Sacrificed
All Sacrificed for Passion – Lover, Object of Passion, Person or Thing Sacrificed
Sacrifice of Loved Ones – Hero, Beloved Victim, Need for Sacrifice
Rivalry Between Superior and Inferior – Superior, Inferior, Object
Adultery – Deceived Spouse, Two Adulterers
Crimes of Love – Lover, Beloved, theme of Dissolution
Discovery of Dishonor of a Loved One – Discoverer, Guilty One
Obstacles to Love – Two Lovers, Obstacle
An Enemy Loved – Beloved Enemy, Lover, Hater
Ambition – An Ambitious Person, Coveted Thing, Adversary
Conflict with an Immortal – Mortal, Immortal
Mistaken Jealousy – Jealous One, Object of Jealousy, Supposed Accomplice, Author of Mistake
Faulty Judgment – Mistaken One, Victim of Mistake, Author of Mistake, Guilty Person
Remorse – Culprit, Victim, Interrogator
Recovery of a Lost One – Seeker, One Found
Loss of Loved Ones – Kinsman Slain, Kinsman Witness, Executioner

The Terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) are versus the Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) in a rock versus gas volleyball game using the asteroid belt as the net.

But who gets left out? Yep. Pluto.

It’s actually kinda cool, with Pluto’s axis being all jacked up, as well as some other planetary details.

With the Nokia, it’s cool to see how many revisions have been done in just one upgrade.

Improvements I’ve noticed so far:

1. The ability to create playlists on the fly. (Before you had to use a half-baked PC-only program.)
2. No sliding keypad – yes, the keys are there, but it’s a sturdier design
3. The phone is now just a little bit bigger than the Nano my wife has
4. Headphone output is normal headphone output size and not crazy Nokia size
5. Higher resolution camera
6. Guitar Hero III is included. Granted, it sounds like rockin’ out on a Tandy or Commodore 64, but that’s because we know what the original artists sound like. If we had to ford a river in Oregon, it would be dead on.
7. The best feature? Still tweakable like the 5300. Very exciting.

The playlist on the fly is huge, since I don’t always listen through an iTunes U lecture from start to finish in one sitting.

Next order of business – Danjo, where did you get your phone case?

I finished Tales of Beedle the Bard just now. I actually liked it more than Deathly Hallows. It fits with Devin’s and my obsession about fictional historical documents just nicely. It’s like the Brothers Grimm, except where magic is common and won’t solve your problems. Or save your hairy heart.

When traveling through time and you don’t have plutonium/a timed lightning strike for the 1.21 gigawatts necessary, a phone booth is an acceptable alternative.

The TARDIS

For sheer room and reliability, the TARDIS wins out. The pilot can be killed and regenerated multiple times.

It’s so trademarked, even the British constabulary lost in court fighting the rights to a police booth. You have much more room, so much so that if you plan on stealing Socrates, Napoleon, and Joan of Arc to pass your report so Wyld Stallyns can continue rocking, you won’t be pressed against the glass immersed in historical B.O.

The Circuits of Time

While not as reliable as the TARDIS, the Circuits of Time phone booth wins out for ease of use. Dial 7560 and the year that you want and off you go. It includes a phone book, making it even more convenient. It is prone to malfunction, since the slightest bump to the hangers on the roof will send it skewing into another year. Repair is easy, as you’ll just need to add some chewed gum. When you arrive at your destination, just put an Out of Order sign on the door and no one will notice. You may not be able to regenerate if you die, but at least your future selves can warn your past selves about winding and setting the correct time on your past selves’ future watches.

The Winner

In the end (and beginning, paradoxically), the time travel consumer is the winner. Whether you want to show up in official police blue or lay low in Circle K rust, both will get you where you want to go.

More or less.

Bill and Ted does hold a special place since it was filmed at Coronado High School and Rufus first showed up with the phone booth at Southern and Hardy, Sunsplash=Waterlube, and Metrocenter got rocked by Genghis Khan.

Have you ever been to Bill Johnson’s Big Apple?

It stands out as being garish on Van Buren, which is saying quite a bit. But the serving staff is great. Our waitress was Ronda. I had to do my best to not bust out as Brian Williams.

On the topic of busting out: I’m glad to see Bill dressed up for the bachelor party.

They decorate in sawdust, so you know the meat is good. The quality of the establishment is proportional to the surface area of sawdust multiplied by the number of animals on the roof.

Endless Ribs, Endless Ribs…who ordered the jalapeno poppers? Jeremy, the bachelor party tradition lives on. (And yes, that was darn good salmon. I stick to my principles.)

I was a little wary when I saw that they import cattle from Crete:

I love the look on the guy’s face in the bottom-left corner.

As anyone who survived World War Z or is a fan of Simon Pegg knows, in any restaraunt/pub you must locate a defense against the undead:

Thanks, Mike. If zombies attack, I know I can trust you. Unless you become Zombie Mike.

Next was LazerQuest. It should be noted that in a world of “Phyborg” and “Grand Moff Crotch” (as Andrew told the embarrassed girl who had to call out score cards at the end, “It’s my last name. Please don’t laugh.”), class was immediately added to the fray.

A. Hamilton and A. Burr. Guess who was the Federalist and who was the assassin?

Those high school kids didn’t know what hit them while the Father of Banking sniped them from his perch across the arena. Other names worth mentioning: you know it’s a group of brothers when you get names like “Tax Collector” and “The Preacher”. The irony? The Preacher officiated the wedding. (Devin, I was tempted to enter “Shepherd Book” as my name.)

At the wedding they had a Point and Shoot camera set up next to the guestbook. A fun addition was props:

My grandma’s cousin’s neighbor’s niece from The Motherland was in attendance:

Lovely crowd reaction

No matter how fancy the place, proper punctuation is prime.


Posted five feet from each other
I don’t know which will hurt The Futile Ohm more, a punctuation error or a lack of uniform typography. And that photo outside of the Women’s Locker Room (not the Locker’s Room)? Imagine what I would have to say to explain why a big, hairy man is taking photos outside of the door. Thankfully I rolled a 20 on my Stealth vs. Non-bathrooms check.

And now the random photo stream:

New category!

It’s full of trivia about the books. For instance: look at the cover of Uglies. Notice anyone in the girl’s pupil? That’s the reflection of the photographer from the photo shoot. And the design in Aya’s eye on the Extras cover was inspired by the videogame The Last Starfighter.
Check the last word of each book. Notice a pattern?

The real treat is the insight that Scott Westerfeld adds for aspiring authors. He gives quite a bit of honest information about his writing process and the thoughts behind sections of the book.

Floating Ice Rink
I have no idea where this idea came from, except that it allowed me to write a scene that put together my three favorite things: fireworks, falling, and miscreant behavior.

He highlights where the technology from the books intersects with real-life, like how cuttlefish camouflage can actually match checkerboard patterns and that there are flash tattoos under people’s skin that can detect blood sugar. (I did not know that people actually have surgery to put diamonds on their eyes. Ouch.)

And I appreciate Westerfeld’s great sense of humor. The book reads like you’re checking his blog’s RSS feed.

So littlies aren’t considered ugly in Tally’s world – they’re too cute and innocent and small. Like penguins.

If you’ve just created a cool new building that uses smart matter supports, you don’t want someone coming along and turning that matter into, say, liquid. Because that would be bad.

He also describes the process behind creating effective slang and using it in regular conversation. (I actually used “dizzy-making” in conversation with one of the school secretaries without realizing it.) He has an acronym to help with coming up with slang, but I want you to check out this bubbly book.

Muahaha. Your democracy has been set back five minutes.

And I think this may be the longest article title/URL. Come back for updates throughout the day, much like what I had first envisioned as The Longest Day.

6:08am – Watch as I nitpick Yahoo. “All that’s left is to vote, even for Obama.” That’s an ‘open to interpretation’ way to say it. Is there anyone you’re leaning towards, Yahoo? Hmmm?

6:13am – Uh oh. Make sure you scan that correctly. We don’t want a chad incident.

6:17am – They’ve now overflowed to the tables. No talking during the test!

6:57am – Make a Spot check.
As stealthy as a 6’9″ guy can be… (Although wasn’t there an example in one of the rulebooks for a Wookiee tracking a katarn in the rain? Devin, what’s the DC on that?)
I thought you might enjoy the most recent part of The Ruing:

Wooha!
- Wedge taking out the AT-AT with a tow cable

It should be noted that “Into the Trap” was playing in the Scion as I drove up today. Yes, it’s Return of the Jedi and not Empire Strikes Back, but it’s still an awesome squad theme song.

Brown Squadron, you have been given the go ahead. You are weapons free.

8:38am – Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy.
Actually, just warm.

8:50am – I shall drown my sorrows in RockStar Juiced.

8:52am – J was there at 4:45am at his site. Yeah, contact with the outside world!

8:54am – Review of Juiced: Good for drowning, not necessarily drowning sorrows. I can taste the mango skin. It’s…unnerving.

Not a vanilla mocha.

8:59am – For my wife:

Snaps is the name of the game, the name of the game is snaps.
Can you please
recommend a
*Snap*
physician?

11:15am – Back from voting:

I have my reasons.

12:02pm – Castro praises one of the candidates. Wow. It’s one of those “please don’t help” moments.

1:32pm – Found out from Peter about the Secretary of the Interwebs. (Yeah! Cory Doctorow in a hot air balloon versus Tron Paul!)

3:27pm -

Cooper Black? Times New Roman?

Ouch. I just sprained my sense of design.

3:57pm – There’s a guy here taking a picture of his votes with his cell phone. What a weirdo.

Unless…

Does he have a rival website, also full of Order 66 and El Pollo Loco? I should ask rather than assume.

4:03pm – I got distracted instead by fonts with a live preview.

4:26pm – Why to avoid exit polls and why CNN vowed to not use them after the 2000 election - did they hold to it? Did you know that in France it’s illegal to conduct a poll within 48 hours of an election? It’s also city ordinance for Parisians to have a permit before using a tripod to film. Madness.

4:40pm – Make your own mini Sheriff Megatron. Fun for the whole family at the cost of one sheet of cardstock.

Click on the picture to hugeify it.

5:09pm – I don’t think we should call it just yet.

vs.

I’ve never actually been to Maine, but I could have sworn they had more people than that.

5:41pm – Political Analyst John Elway

5:42pm – Just got called “dude” by one of the workers.

Cringe.

5:44pm – Why is ‘John Elway’ in single quotes? Is it a quote inside the dialogue by Yahoo? Did Tolkien write the Flash dashboard?

5:46pm – Bwaha. Tatyana Ali? Little Ashley Banks?

6:16pm – Considering running on the Monster Raving Loony Party ticket. Do we have a U.S. branch? I guess we do. (Hosted on Tripod. Tres officiale.)

6:30pm – Town Crier just did his “Polls close in 30 minutes” yell.

7:58pm – They have finally packed up. And they still didn’t lean my name. Much shivering, much creeped out. Everyone must leave. Go home.

9:43pm – It’s funny that there’s still ads for McCain/Palin surveys saying “Can they win?” on Yahoo. There’s always the time machine option. I wonder what my grandpa would have thought. Also, I find it dreadfully ironic that the maps aren’t even all colored in yet. (Our state being one of them.) Did all of the hurtful words add up to much? Now to support our new president and be done with political ads for a little bit! Wooha! (Although be prepared for a “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.” from time to time.)

I always noticed this up at NAU. The German students had a thing for mocking our presidents with masks. I guess it’s the next generation:

My oldest is a comedian. She kept switching the words around, cracking herself up. Keep in mind that I didn’t read any of it to her:


My youngest has a more “Theatre of the Absurd” sense of humor:

On Friday teenage girls across the nation (and their easy to manipulate boyfriends) will be attending the opening of High School Musical 3: Senior Year. This phenomenon has embodied HSM, HSM2, HSM3, HSM: The Concert Tour, High School Musical: The Disneyland/World Stage Show and HSM: Stage Musical…ALL IN LESS THAN TWO YEARS! I have to admit, I am waiting for HSM: The Flame Thrower and other marketing merchandise. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this feat, it took JK Rowling almost 12 years to write all 7 of her Harry Potter books. Disney has matched that is one sixth of the time. Amazing! For every Harry Potter book you’re getting almost 7 versions of HSM. Because HSM1 was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good.

I am not against Disney making movies. I am not against the idea of a movie about high school musicals (I’m a Theatre teacher who directs musicals…I like musicals). But I am against Disney milking something until it’s dead. Within two months of the release of HSM1, Disney released the rights for high schools around the world to produce their own staged version of HSM. In fact, there were advertisements telling students to ask their high school drama teachers to produce the show. To the average Joe Six-Pack this was not a big deal. But it impacted my world. For the rest of the year I had to hear <whiny teenage girl voice>”Let’s do HSM! PLEASE, LET’S DO HSM!” </whiny teenage girl voice>. I even had a 70 year old woman (substitute teacher) decide to usurp my lesson plans and show HSM. Yeah, working on that study guide for their midterm exam wasn’t as important as the elderly’s love for Zac and Vanessa. But I digress…

I used to work for Disney and I know how they work. They say it’s “not about making money, but giving a high caliber product to their family audience.” (That was taken from my 1st training session as a “cast member”). But milking the same story into 7 different versions doesn’t just extend an overused subject, it completely destroys the magic of the first film. Case in point, HSM won several awards in 2006. Nothing has been won since. In fact, Disney was so desperate to continue the franchise after HSM that it completely ignored its stance on its performers maintaining a wholesome image and allowed Vanessa Hudgens to keep her role despite very racy (AKA naked) photos of herself being released on the internet and later stated that they were intended for her fellow cast mate boyfriend Zac Efron. But who needs standards?

HSM is not “the great American Musical.” I know that. But when there are so many great works of film and television, it seems like a direct slap in the face to the consumer when Disney milks these franchises for all they are worth. I am still waiting for a similar parody by South Park that will mirror what they did to Spielberg and Lucas for what they did to Indiana Jones.

Btw, didn’t Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale’s character) have a “break a leg” moment at the end of HSM1? Why was she still trying to breakup Gabriella (Vanessa) and Troy (Zac) in HSM2? Disney had told me and other audience members that people apparently don’t learn from their mistakes. How pessemistic. I’m sure Sharpay will figure it all out in HSM3.

Also, the TV, film and stage franchises of HSM are just the tip of the iceberg. Checkout the DVDs, the Ice Tour, Book series, and 5 video games. Thankfully, HSM: the Reality Series (Get in the Picture)failed after one season (11 episodes). God is still looking out for us.

“Through the slits of his brightly polished helm, his blue eyes bored into Eragon, pinning him into place, like an arrow through a rabbit. He lifted his free hand and held it out toward Eragon. ‘My son, come with me. Together, we can destroy the Varden, kill Galbatorix, and conquer all of Alagaesia. But give me your heart, and we shall be invincible.’”
- Brisingr, p. 487

There are a lot of made up words in Brisingr, so I’m considering the correlation with the graph. There’s even an attempt at an appendix in the back, complete with pronunciation guide. But here’s the deal:

Let’s say that you got past the Eragon/Aragorn, Arya/Arwen, Old Brom (Dragon Rider in exile)/Old Ben (Jedi Master in exile), Empire burning down the farm boy’s aunt and uncle and farm/Empire burning down the farm boy’s aunt and uncle and farm, Paolini still doesn’t stop.

Is there any epic where an armored villain is not someone’s dad? And the middle of an aerial combat is not the best place to have a Dr. Phil “if you believe in yourself, you can re-invent yourself and rise above your circumstances” conversation. The whole middle of the book is “whose gods are real, the nomads’ or the dwarves’, or are the elves right and there are no gods?” philosophy rants. It sounded very anachronistic when he’s talking about “all of the gods are good and we all point to something”.

The end was cool because characters died, and when Eragon has a sword named Fire, every time he says its name it ignites on accident.

The part that made me laugh but was not a deal-breaker? The power of the evil king (which, wasn’t it an empire?) comes from a dragon’s heart of hearts: a tiny crystal colored the same as their scales and egg. How does a dragon give you their heart? By vomiting it at your feet. Yeah, a page dedicated to a regurgitating ceremony.

And there are some awkward moments where Eragon and his dragon, Sapphira, have some intimate interactions. Is she like a mom or are they even closer? I don’t know. Kinda weird.

Mix all this in with self-mutilation and heroes that drain the life energy out of people/unsuspecting creatures “for the greater good”, and it took some effort to finish the book.

We’re not Jedi.

Nor are most Star Wars fans trained/coordinated enough to hang with another Force user in combat. The result of 1:1 would be even more flailing/a wagglefest (wagglefest being IGN’s word, even though they had a lot of fun. I agree that the camera and graphics are annoying, but the controls and immersion are awesome and make up for the shortfalls for me. And the storyline is great Star Wars, as mentioned before.).

The controls definitely do not feel limited. I can chain together combos at will, mixing in Force powers to spice it up/advance subplots I write in my head. It feels a lot like the combat from Jedi Academy and I’m okay with that. (I liked it.)(Jedi Academy was released on Sept. 16? Interesting.)

If you’re one of my graphic design/typography friends, though, you won’t like the instruction manual. No grammar errors upon first glance, but what caught my attention was that they printed all of the screenshots at too dark of a contrast. Many times it’s just a black box with a bright line (lightsaber) in the middle.

These are just some additions to my first impressions as I sit at work. Waiting.

Today is Vans day. I have a picture of the A-Team vehicle attached to my lanyard. Perhaps not the initial intent of the spirit day.

Funny librarian patron stories real quick:

1. A student walked up to me today, no introduction, just, “If you have a problem, and if you can find them, maybe you can call…”
2. A couple of days ago a student walked up to the desk wearing the inner workings of a wall clock and clock hands on a giant chain. I told him it was awesome, since it still kept time. I also told him he couldn’t be late to anything. This is a continuation of junior high library fashion.

Since it’s all flipped, know that when I say Light Side I mean all things good about Star Wars, like Wookiees.

By Dark Side, I mean all signs of George Lucas dementia, like showing a wampa eating, the Life Day celebration, and the entire population of Naboo.

Dark Side

1. Camera unleashed – still figuring out how to lock onto characters effectively.
2. I guess Sith operate all electronic devices by using a lightsaber as a stylus
3. General Kota’s non-moving mouth – “Hey, kid, don’t be like Vader. And, um, oil can…”

Light Side

1. Starting out the game as Vader – usually it’s something that you work towards, but once the first cutscene is done you are the Dark Lord of the Sith crushing a Wookiee rebellion; pillars and ryyk blades go flying
2. Using the Wii remote to slash down troopers – Meesa likin’ da slashins Yubjub!
3. Lining up and tilting the nunchuck to the onscreen prompt actually works – and if you succeed, the Apprentice busts out some Yoda versus Dooku moves

Recently my dad has walked into the game room while my brother and I are playing a Rainbow Six/Resistance-type game and has to walk out immediately or else pass out.

Here is a list of games that make me motion sick. Here, as I approach a landmark birthday this school year. Here, as I thought would never happen. Here, as I desperately need to try a rollercoaster to give me hope. Here, a list of why I am old-fogeyfiying:

1. 
   TimeSplitters – I got this one in the $5 bin at Circuit City while Jeremy and I were picking up tapes for a filming gig. Split-screen four player capture the flag madness: Excellence in a PS2 bargain game. But play it in singleplayer story mode and it’s a different story. A mansion full of zombies: Lose my brain? Nope, just my lunch. This game actually makes me sweat (like when I saw Dracula at the Herberger in high school), I get so nauseous.
2. 
   TimeSplitters: Future Perfect – More storyline and more quickly rotating nausea
3. 
   Sonic Heroes – To its credit, when my wife and I sat down to play this for the first time, I had on Japanese audio and Spanish subtitles.
   And then the screen began to pulse to techno while giggling rodents freefell through gumdrops and lollipops. Not confident in just that, they started moving faster, screaming in Japanese the whole time. Thankfully I borrowed this one from my brother so I didn’t feel too bad shelving it after 30 minutes.
4. 
   Gyrostarr- I downloaded this WiiWare title last night to play with my oldest. Co-op shooter on the same screen, not big penalties for death, we were having fun. And then we got to level 5. I had to look away for a while; my daughter held down the fire button with one hand while she flipped through a Precious Moments coloring book with the other. Click here to experience the wonder of Gyrostarr

Not too old for video games, just the psycho ones.

What’s funny is that the author builds in weapon customization and outfit changes that you see in video games. And we get to see the origins of the Rebellion (and a bunch of other stuff), more than just the meeting that was in the deleted scenes of Episode III.

Haden Blackman, you still give Slade cause to worry.

Sean Williams, I actually liked your book. (No Michael Stackpole, but there can be only one…D’oh. Wrong franchise.)

Ooh. Nice credits, like a movie. Whoa. I’m in a government building making a customized version of me, complete with distinguished graying sideburns. That adds pathos.

The game becomes more intense as one mission flows to the next without pause and my tongue swells from thirst and I fear the political repercussions of using the restroom.

In all honesty, the game promises more hours of play and more options for multiplayer. Player 2 can’t issue commands to the AI, but can jump in and out of story mode at will. There’s also the classic Terrorist Hunt stages with some new maps. This is not the old school Rainbow Six that I remember. A lot more streamlined, a lot faster action (rappelling?) and now if you get shot you wait for a respawn. Poor Ding Chavez, who always used to die on the old second mission because he was too fatigued, never to return for the rest of the game.

Really messes with continuity which really messes with me.

First off, it’s Brian JAKES, not like the French ocean explorer. I used to argue for the French, until I heard it on the audiobook of Martin the Warrior. The narrator pronounced it weirdly. Yeah, I found out the narrator was the author.

So much fun. Characters named Felldoh, Tramun Clogg, Badrang, Grumm, and Snogglenose – you just keep pronouncing them as you go through the day. My daughter was called a salty searat the entire road trip today.

Also – Mike – what’s your take on the pouting Olympic wrestler?
A cranky Olympian. I didn’t predict it.

My thoughts? An early version of Wii Fit complete with Balance Test.

On to The Two:
My brother and I just finished Army of Two. Great graphics where you can see your masked sociopath headbutt crunch a suicidal bomber. And you’re controlling the character the whole time.

Lots of customization. I added a longer stock to the sniper rifle and more ammo to my .44. My brother, on the other hand, paid to have his AK-47 gold plated.

The best part of the game is the Aggro meter, where it measures who is the baddest and grabs the attention of the baddies the most. Our strategy? I fire randomly, laying down true suppressive fire, while my brother sneaks around and wreaks havoc. And there’s no hit points. Instead, your screen will get hazy and then go red and then go white as you slowly die. But your partner can drag you to safety for field medicine. The injured can still fire while being dragged.

Lots of fun. But here are the negatives:

1. Very short storyline. 6 missions, but they go by very quickly. This is not Metal Gear Solid.
2. Not too much replay value. Yet. We immediately started a new campaign to try out new weapons (a chaingun for me, a platinum grenade launcher for my brother) but it’s real tough to be accurate and accuracy is key or you’ll be hearing a lot of, “Tyce! I’m hit! [expletive][expletive] save me!” This is the game to set aside and then come back to for just all-around psycho firepower.
3. On top of short missions, the storyline is weak. There’s a huge conspiracy but it’s already solved in the instruction manual. I guess they forgot I actually read the manual. No joke, from the manual. “Every mission that Dalton organizes you get ambushed. Isn’t this suspicious?” I expected more pathos from antisocial mercenaries.

The game’s fun and there are some cool new takes on the shooter concept. Aside from the short, ridiculous storyline, it was worth it. We did go for secondary objectives, which add storyline and money. “I found this briefcase. Not only is a villain here, but this is info on his training camp.” I appreciate that. The back-to-back two guys surrounded by fifty villains firefight option is cool. We did not do the gun swapping, nor did we really utilize the “we just blew up a town, air guitar!” feature (press ‘X’ next to your partner). Nor did we use the, “Tyce, let’s co-op snipe!” mode. (Yeah, they say that in the game.)

But we did snipe together independently. You know how Metal Gear and Rainbow Six made popular the shaky scope with heavy breathing?

Now imagine heavy breathing after running in heavy armor with a metal mask on your face. Those are some interesting sounds. My brother describes it best.
“Most awkward prank phone call ever.”

A group of my friends are going to be staying a while in Flagstaff as tourists. Which locations would you recommend as fun/must-see locales? (I think we can all benefit from the shared knowledge/nostalgia. Hey, we might even make a Knol…Meh.)

Mike and Devin – You’ll be glad to know that ResLife has a Facebook group for incoming freshmen. Funny stuff.

Here are my recommendations -
This list is far from complete and is in desperate need of comments.
The Booyor Honor Tour:
Tinsley Hall (44) – Freshmen year, Cowden Hall (38) – Sophomore year (the Year of the Shinai), Sechrist Hall (42) – Junior year (the RA year), and Cowden Hall again when Devin rescued me from Sechrist AND Tinsley in a daring ploy involving a wheelbarrow and a holocaust cloak senior year

Breakfast:
The Place (Mike and Rhonda’s)

Lunch:
Crystal Creek Sandwich Company

Dinner:
Wings at Granny’s Closet
Black Bart’s (employs mainly NAU choir performance majors for a rousing rustler review)

The Big City-type Stuff:
Target
Harkins

The Outdoors:
Oak Creek Canyon (driving from Flagstaff to Sedona using 89A)

Lava Tubes
Lowell Observatory
Snowbowl
Meteor Crater
Lake Mary/Mormon Lake (It’s a lake. Great for campfires and cookouts. Not too many laser shows, though.)
Sunset Crater
Walnut Canyon

What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t mention Tamara and Jason’s Places of the Heart, to give artists’ take on places/events of interest in the 86011. (Jason made the site, Tamara (who was in my honors classes and shared many a campus walk with me) is the curator.)

Any map errors we here at the bloggh attribute to Google error. I mean, who are we to give directions?

Oh, yeah. Lots of white faces with lipstick smeared. Thankfully only a few didn’t realize that when the Joker is laughing, you probably shouldn’t be.

We did see the Watchmen trailer. There was also some movie with DiCaprio and Crowe that most of the crowd gave a collective, “Huh?”. But other trailers, like Quantum of Solace, got large applause and cheers. No Terminator trailer, though.

The actual Dark Knight movie? Awesome. But I cannot stress enough to not take kids to it. I knew going in that this was going to be a deranged Joker (instead of a dapper chap with a thing for playing cards) but there are some pretty intense “smile-inducing” scenes. Instead of nerve toxin substitute in large knives.

But the balance between Chaos and Rule is amazing (insert Chance with Harvey Dent and you have a winner). I think this is part of why I dig Batman so much. There’s all these freaks goin’ crazy and he still holds to his rule set. He doesn’t have to steal a Cloak of Invisibility to break curfew at Hogwart’s…every single time. If Batman were to cross the line it would be that more dramatic. There’s a part where Bruce Wayne busts up some clown grins and steals a shotgun. As he walks methodically he dismantles it part by part. Christopher Nolan understands the nuances of Batman.

The baddies are so realistic, which is crazy for a series that popularized biffs and pows in the 60s. The Joker could really happen. He’s got motivation. His crimes seem plausible. My wife and I had this discussion on the 3 am way home. The only difference is that all of the violence is compounded into a short amount of time. He’s not patient. We had a prison hostage situation that lasted 15 days. That and the sniper cases stand out as large crimes. The thing stopping us from having a Joker is that he’s not patient enough.

That and not every single government worker/police officer/lunch lady is corrupt, which I guess is a major difference between our world and Dark Knight/24.

I liked the movie a lot. Dinner was awesome, too, if you care for sweet and sour chicken. (If not, go try the veal. Mike the Lambslayer can give you some recommendations.)

Go see the movie. Enjoy it. Don’t take your kids. And if you sit in the front left at CineCapri, look away during the Mummy trailer. Lots of explosions, skeletons, crashing planes, and more than enough to slosh your high fructose corn syrup-influenced coma.

At least we weren’t at the 3am showing. (And a 6am showing? Wow.)

Wall-E reminded me of A.I. (imagine that) where part of the movie felt like arthouse and then the remainder felt like cliche Hollywood. The part that hit me was the spork. No words, just Wall-E trying to classify between the fork pile and the spoon pile and eventually getting frustrated. No words were needed, we were connected with the character. And then the humans came. Rejected Robots (a la Toy Story and Rudolph’s Singing Elf Dentist) and comedic calamity. I enjoyed it, but definitely liked discovering the world through Wal-E’s eyes.

And it has Fred Willard. What else do you need? Did you like M-O, the cleaning robot? Ben Burtt, foley genius.
But did Ben Burtt really work on Ryan vs. Dorkman 2? Or is it just because they ganked the sound effects. Oh, well. Their stuff is always fun to watch.
And yes, Mike, I’ll mention Grayson.

I take for granted how much of an accomplishment it is to sit up. I notice it now when I see the extreme effort, the ab workout that my daughter is doing to be able to accomplish something that no longer gains me my wife’s applause.

My daughter definitely is cuter than me trying to sit up.

Also! Make sure that you watch Alejandro Monteverde’s masterpiece, Bella. Very awesome movie.

It’s pretty much a slap in the face to cliches/stereotypes/conventions. And how does it do that? By portraying life.

Monteverde wrote it/directed it himself and many of the actors and production staff were working for passion and not money.

Many things I love about this film, but one of the cool parts is that it takes out all of the filler. You know how some movies will be all, “Leading man! I must leave now out of anguish and fear. Here is an establishing shot of me walking away to segue! Segue!”

Monteverde takes that out. It leads to some pretty interesting timeline aspects. Is this a flashback, foreshadow, or just a possible future?

Beards and scarves, baby.

But Bella avoids melodrama. It’s not a telenovela, not even close. The incredibly tense-emotion-type stuff is released by natural means, like in my favorite scene. Main man is reminiscing with main woman in an old car. “Last time I drove this, I went to jail.” We see why and there’s tears and all that, but then younger brother hops into the back seat with a, “I’ve met the woman I’m going to marry.” (Even though he’s known her for only a week.)

Monteverde and Eduardo Verástegui (main man) said in the “making of” that they wanted a refreshing movie where a Latino family didn’t have to deal with drugs, gang violence, or running from La Migra. Those issues are nowhere to be seen, because frankly not everyone in New York is living in the seedy underbelly.

It won lots of awards, including top prize at Toronto. It’s in the same category as Chariots of Fire, American Beauty, Life is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon “Li Mu Bai!!!” and Hotel Rwanda .

Not bad for a dollar rental from the kiosk.
(I should have learned from Stardust. The kiosk rocks. (Even if I did fall asleep during 300.)(The Spirit? Hmmmm. Will Eisner…Samuel L. Jackson…Intriguing noir.))

And yes, Devin, A Study in Emerald is amazing.

For you gamers out there who are looking for an actually FUN game that’s not incredibly boring then I highly recommend heading over to CoD 4 – it’s got vehicles, all types of modern weaponry, and the team communication is unprecedented. In CS:S the biggest thing you have to worry about is, “Ok, am I going to get randomly killed by a headshot from a guy who’s firing his AK47 at will.

Besides that the age demographic of players in CoD 4 is higher, whereas Counter-Strike: Source players range from the ages of 12-18. Somehow you just get tired of getting yelled at and taunted by pre-mature kids. It’s so hilarious to hear a high-pitched voice go, “YOU HACK OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE IT YOU’RE SO OBVIOUSLY HACKING YOU MORON” and then you(with a much deeper voice) say, “What, son?” Then all is quiet, and then you have to start laughing uncontrollably.

Bottom line, go get CoD 4 and play it for hours upon hours.

Shaun Tan is a fan of strangers in a strange land, and The Arrival follows his trend.

The story of an immigrant man leaving his family behind to pave the way for them in the land of opportunity, there is absolutely no dialogue. It relies solely on symbolism and inferences.

For an old Language Arts teacher? Yeah, pretty cool.

Finishing up the labels today for standardized testing, I found the following picture hilarious:

It’s a great read and is good for a quick pace. Once the Language Arts teachers are done with it I’ll need to sit down and figure out just where those Giants are from. (Is it a Holocaust reference?)

The permanent links on his site are a little weird, so I quote a big chunk of his description knowing that I link back to the source.

The following is an extract from an article written for Viewpoint Magazine http://extranet.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/LLAE/viewpoint/, describing some of the ideas and process behind this book.

Looking over much of my previous work as an illustrator and writer, such as The Rabbits (about colonisation), The Lost Thing (about a creature lost in a strange city) or The Red Tree (a girl wandering through shifting dreamscapes), I realise that I have a recurring interest in notions of ‘belonging’, particularly the finding or losing of it. Whether this has anything to do with my own life, I’m not sure, it seems to be more of a subconscious than conscious concern. One contributing experience may have been that of growing up in Perth, one of the most isolated cities in the world, sandwiched between a vast desert and a vaster ocean. More specifically, my parents pegged a spot in a freshly minted northern suburb that was quite devoid of any clear cultural identity or history. A vague awareness of Aboriginal displacement (which later sharpened into focus with a project like The Rabbits) only further troubled any sense of a connection to a ‘homeland’ in this universe of bulldozed ‘tabula rasa’ coastal dunes, and fast-tracked, walled-in housing estates.

Being a half-Chinese at a time a place when this was fairly unusual may have compounded this, as I was constantly being asked ‘where are you from?’ to which my response of ‘here’ only prompted a deeper inquiry, ‘where do your parents come from?’ At least this was far more positive attention than the occasional low-level racism I experienced as a child, and which I also noticed directed either overtly or surreptitiously at my Chinese father from time to time. Growing up I did have a vague sense of separateness, an unclear notion of identity or detachment from roots, on top of that traditionally contested concept of what it is to be ‘Australian’, or worse, ‘un-Australian’ (whatever that might mean).

Beyond any personal issues, though, I think that the ‘problem’ of belonging is perhaps more of a basic existential question that everybody deals with from time to time, if not on a regular basis. It especially rises to the surface when things ‘go wrong’ with our usual lives, when something challenges our comfortable reality or defies our expectations – which is typically the moment when a good story begins, so good fuel for fiction. We often find ourselves in new realities – a new school, job, relationship or country, any of which demand some reinvention of ‘belonging’.

This was uppermost in my mind during the long period of work on The Arrival, a book which deals with the theme of migrant experience. Given my preoccupation with ‘strangers in strange lands’, this was an obvious subject to tackle, a story about somebody leaving their home to find a new life in an unseen country, where even the most basic details of ordinary life are strange, confronting or confusing – not to mention beyond the grasp of language. It’s a scenario I had been thinking about for a number of years before it crystallised into some kind of narrative form.

The book had no single source of inspiration, but rather represents the convergence of several ideas. I had been thinking at one stage about the somewhat invisible history of the Chinese in Western Australia, particularly in an area of South Perth once used as vast market gardens a century ago, which is now grassed parkland. I did a little research into who these people were and how they related to the Anglo-Australian community around them, and came to be particularly motivated by one short story, ‘Wong Chu and The Queen’s Letterbox’ by the West Australian writer T.A.G. Hungerford, which draws on the author’s childhood memories of a strange, segregated group of misunderstood men, and considers their tragic isolation from families back in China.

Drawing on more immediate sources, my father came to Australia from Malaysia in 1960 to study architecture, where he met my mother in who was then working in a store that supplied technical pens (hence my existence some time later – I have a special appreciation for technical pens). Dad’s stories are sketchy, and usually focus on specific details, as is the way of most anecdotes – the unpalatable food, too cold or too hot weather, amusing misunderstandings, difficult isolation, odd student jobs and so on. In researching a variety of other migrant stories, beginning with post-war Australia and then broadening out to periods of mass-migration to the US around 1900, it was the day to day details that seemed most telling and suggested some common, universal human experiences. I was reminded that migration is a fundamental part of human history, both in the distant and recent past. On gathering further anecdotes of overseas-born friends – and my partner who comes from Finland – as well as looking at old photographs and documents, I became aware of the many common problems faced by all migrants, regardless of nationality and destination: grappling with language difficulties, home-sickness, poverty, a loss of social status and recognisable qualifications, not to mention the separation from family.

In seeking to re-imagine such circumstances (of which I have no first-hand experience) my original idea for a fairly conventional picture book developed into a quite different kind of structure. It seemed that a longer, more fragmented visual sequence without any words would best captured a certain feeling of uncertainty and discovery I absorbed from my research. I was also struck with the idea of borrowing the ‘language’ of old pictorial archives and family photo albums I’d been looking at, which have both a documentary clarity and an enigmatic, sepia-toned silence. It occurred to me that photo albums are really just another kind of picture book that everybody makes and reads, a series of chronological images illustrating the story of someone’s life. They work by inspiring memory and urging us to fill in the silent gaps, animating them with the addition of our own storyline.

In ‘The Arrival’, the absence of any written description also plants the reader more firmly in the shoes of an immigrant character. There is no guidance as to how the images might be interpreted, and we must ourselves search for meaning and seek familiarity in a world where such things are either scarce or concealed. Words have a remarkable magnetic pull on our attention, and how we interpret attendant images: in their absence, an image can often have more conceptual space around it, and invite a more lingering attention from a reader who might otherwise reach for the nearest convenient caption, and let that rule their imagination.

I was particularly impressed by Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman, having come across it for the first time while thinking about my migrant story. In silent pencil drawings, Briggs describes a boy building a snowman which then comes to life, and is introduced to the magical indoor world of light-switches, running water, refrigeration, clothing and so on; the snowman in turn introduces the boy to the night-time world of snow, air and flight. The parallels between this situation and my own gestating project were very strong, so I could not help reading the silent snowman and small boy as ‘temporary migrants’, discovering the ordinary miracles of each other’s country in a modest, enchanting fashion. It also confirmed the power of the silent narrative, not only in removing the distraction of words, but slowing down to reader so that they might mediate on each small object and action, as well as reflect in many different ways on the story as a whole.

Of course, this came at some expense, as words are wonderfully convenient conveyors of ideas. In their absence, even describing the simplest of actions, like someone packing a suitcase, buying a ticket, cooking a meal or asking for work threatened to become a very complicated, laborious and potentially slippery exercise in drawing. I had to find a way of carrying this kind of narrative that was practical, clear and visually economical.

Unwittingly, I had found myself working on a graphic novel rather than a picture book. There is not a great difference between the two, but in a graphic novel there is perhaps far more emphasis on continuity between multiple frames, actually closer in many ways to film-making than book illustration. I have never been a great reader of comics (having come at illustration as a painter) so much of my research was redirected to a study of different kinds of comics and graphic novels. What shapes are the panels? How many should be on a page? What is the best way to cut from one moment to the next? How is the pace of the narrative controlled, especially when there are no words? A useful reference was Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, which details many aspects of ‘sequential art’ in a way that is both theoretical and practical, not least because it’s a textbook written as a comic – and very cleverly done. I noticed also that many Japanese comics (manga) use large tracts of silent narrative, and exploit a sense of visual timing that is slightly different from Western comics, which I found very instructive. Simultaneously, I had been working in some capacity as an animation director recently with a studio in London, adapting The Lost Thing as a short film (where much of the narrative is silent) and closely studying to the techniques used by storyboard artists and editors in that industry. All of these pieces of ‘research’ informed the style and structure of the book over several full-length revisions.

The actual process of then producing the final images came to be more like film-making than conventional illustration. Realising the importance of consistency over multiple panels, coupled with a stylistic interest in early photographs, I physically constructed some basic ‘sets’ using bits of wood and fridge-box cardboard, furniture and household objects. These became simple models for drawn structures in the book, anything from towering buildings to breakfast tables. With the right lighting, and some helpful friends acting out the roles of characters plotted in rough drawings, I was able to video or photograph compositions and sequences of action that seemed to approximate each scene. Selecting still images, I played with these by digitally, distorting, adding and subtracting, drawing over the top of them, and testing various sequences to see how they could be ‘read’. These became the compositional references for finished drawings that were produced by a more old-fashioned method – graphite pencil on cartridge paper. For each page of up to twelve images, the whole process took about a week… not including any rejects, of which there were several.

Much of the difficulty involved combining realistic reference images of people and objects into a wholly imaginary world, as this was always my central concept. In order to best understand what it is like to travel to a new country, I wanted to create a fictional place equally unfamiliar to readers of any age or background (including myself). This of course is where my penchant for ‘strange lands’ took flight, as I had some early notions of a place where birds are merely ‘bird-like’ and trees ‘tree-like’; where people dress strangely, apartment fixtures are confounding and ordinary street activities are very peculiar. This is what I imagine it must be like for many immigrants, a condition ideally examined through illustration, where every detail can be hand-drawn.

That said, imaginary worlds should never be ‘pure fantasy’, and without a concrete ring of truth, they can easily cripple the reader’s suspended disbelief, or simply confuse them too much. I’m always interested in striking the right balance between everyday objects, animals and people, and their much more fanciful alternatives. In the case of ‘The Arrival’, I drew heavily my own memories of travelling to foreign countries, that feeling of having basic but imprecise notions of things around me, an awareness of environments saturated with hidden meanings: all very strange yet utterly convincing. In my own nameless country, peculiar creatures emerge from pots and bowls, floating lights drift inquisitively along streets, doors and cupboards conceal their contents, and all around are notices that beckon, invite or warn in loud, indecipherable alphabets. These are all equivalents to some moments I’ve experienced as a traveller, where even simple acts of understanding are challenging.

One of my main sources for visual reference was New York in the early 1900s, a great hub of mass-migration for Europeans. A lot of my ‘inspirational images’ blu-tacked to the walls of my studio were old photographs of immigrant processing at Ellis Island, visual notes that provided underlying concepts, mood and atmosphere behind many scenes that appear in the book. Other images I collected depicted street scenes in European, Asian and Middle-Eastern cities, old-fashioned vehicles, random plants and animals, shopfront signs and posters, apartment interiors, photos of people working, eating, talking and playing, all of them chosen as much for their ordinariness as their possible strangeness. Elements in my drawings evolved gradually from these fairly simple origins. A colossal sculpture in the middle of a city harbour, the first strange sight that greets arriving migrants, suggests some sisterhood with the Statue of Liberty. A scene of a immigrants travelling in a cloud of white balloons was inspired by pictures of migrants boarding trains as well as the night-time spawning of coral polyps, two ideas associated by common underlying themes – dispersal and regeneration.

Even the most imaginary phenomena in the book are intended to carry some metaphorical weight, even though they don’t refer to specific things, and may be hard to fully explain. One of the images I had been thinking about for years involved a scene of rotting tenement buildings, over which are ‘swimming’ some kind of huge black serpents. I realised that these could be read a number of ways: literally, as an infestation of monsters, or more figuratively, as some kind of oppressive threat. And even then it is open to the individual reader to decide whether this might be political, economic, personal or something else, depending on what ideas or feelings the picture may inspire.

I am rarely interested in symbolic meanings, where one thing ‘stands for’ something else, because this dissolves the power of fiction to be reinterpreted. I’m more attracted to a kind of intuitive resonance or poetry we can enjoy when looking at pictures, and ‘understanding’ what we see without necessarily being able to articulate it. One key character in my story is a creature that looks something like a walking tadpole, as big as a cat and intent on forming an uninvited friendship with the main protagonist. I have my own impressions as to what this is about, again something to do with learning about acceptance and belonging, but I would have a lot of trouble trying to express this fully in words. It seems to make much more sense as a series of silent pencil drawings.

I am often searching in each image for things that are odd enough to invite a high degree of personal interpretation, and still maintain a ring of truth. The experience of many immigrants actually draws an interesting parallel with the creative and critical way of looking I try to follow as an artist. There is a similar kind of search for meaning, sense and identity in an environment that can be alternately transparent and opaque, sensible and confounding, but always open to re-assessment. I would hope that beyond its immediate subject, any illustrated narrative might encourage its readers take a moment to look beyond the ‘ordinariness’ of their own circumstances, and consider it from a slightly different perspective. One of the great powers of storytelling is that invites us to walk in other people’s shoes for a while, but perhaps even more importantly, it invites us to contemplate our own shoes also. We might do well to think of ourselves as possible strangers in our own strange land. What conclusions we draw from this are unlikely to be easily summarised, all the more reason to think further on the connections between people and places, and what we might mean when we talk about ‘belonging’.

I’ll have to watch some of the performances in detail, but I do remember watching the Clark Brothers in The Next Great American Band. I think it’s great that they won. Any mandolin that can rock like that needs to be broadcast for millions of viewers. I would love to see my students want to grow up to be mandoliers. (I’m reminded of Mike’s Confederate father.)

Idol Gives Back (featuring, surprise, Bono) seems a tad self-serving, but any amount of poverty help is good, I guess. (And I’d rather have Bono do his thing than watch annoying Chihuahua-Purse Fiends eating brains.)

And that Phil guy having his wife in the music video is pretty cool.

While watching tonight, though, I realized that Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) is in the new Leatherheads movie.

Positives:
1. Jim Halpert
2. O Brother-ness
3. Big monolith of a man punching the defensive line

Negatives:
1. Bridget Jones

I don’t know, may be a date night.

Usually it’s my duty to hype books. I understand that sometimes it’s easier to just watch a TV show, so I understand the importance of finding a great book quickly. I especially understand a need for lots of action in a book. A few explosions never hurt anyone (okay, so maybe explosions do hurt, but they make for exciting reads).

The Maximum Ride series by James Patterson always has lots of action and short chapters – a great combination. Number 4 has the short chapters…

I’m not saying that it doesn’t have action, mind you, but the action is not like the other three. It has action like an average book. But in Max Ride you expect giant aerial combats, betrayals by covert operatives, and general craziness.

Well, there’s a scene where the Flock flies over the Pentagon and a jet is scrambled. But the Flock immediately dives for cover. Realistic, but a distinct lack of explosions.

The main villain? Global warming. Yep. There is a significant amount of time spent where scientists and congress debate the causes and effects of global warming. (It’s not like I’m anti-Earth. I’m looking at getting CFL bulbs through an offer from SRP.)

Most of the book is a re-telling of character development from previous books. It’s almost like Patterson wanted to get his global warming message out and needed a popular venue. It makes more sense for Max Ride to look at global warming issues than Alex Cross.

One of the funniest quotes about the re-telling:

I won’t bore you with the usual duct-taped hands and feet, bound wings, stuck into black body bags, yada yada yada, that we always go through in these ho-hum random abductions. It was like, same old, same old, and I could hardly work up the energy to fight hard enough to get more than a black eye and a sprained wrist about it.

– page 214

I actually feel bad about saying negative stuff about the book. Patterson says on his site that his biggest cause is getting students who don’t like to read interested in action-packed books.

This review is not a pan of Max Ride 4 but instead a hype for Max Ride 1-3. In those books you’ll find gut-wrenching descriptions of jumping off cliff edges into canyons, people fighting thousands of feet in the air while experimental werewolves lash out at mutant heroes. Go with those books. Book 4 is for die hard fans, but I definitely wouldn’t start the series there (even though there’s enough re-telling to catch up first-time readers. It’s almost as if Patterson expects people to jump in without having read earlier books).

I’ll still have a couple of copies of Max Ride 4 on the shelf. And I am waiting expectantly for The Dangerous Days of Daniel X coming out in July. Don’t let me down, James. I need something to booktalk the 8th graders this coming August!

This past Saturday was a big day for nerds. I’m just now going through my DVR line-up. Not only was there a Justice League movie on free TV, but Spectacular Spider-Man debuted.

The artwork broke off from the realism style into a sort of Tartakovsky-ish cartoon. The style was weird, but then it’s about a guy who can walk on walls.

I think it’s one to keep, or at least DVR on a Saturday morning. In the first episode we saw Vulture, the Osborns, Gwen Stacy, Eddie Brock, Doc Connors, Flash Thompson, and Aunt May.

But the real reason it will succeed? The guy who voiced Goliath (Keith David was also in Fallout? Weird.) plays Kingpin (I assume it’s Kingpin…he was kinda shadowy).

Penny Arcade had a great thought about Co-Op today:

Army of Two is forward thinking in that your equipment and cash persist, no matter where you are playing or who you are playing with. Where it is less forward thinking is that you can’t join a friend’s game unless you have already beaten the level they have selected. In many games, but especially in co-op, people are going to be traveling through the game at their own pace, and players should be enabled in their efforts to play this cooperative game cooperatively however they like. It’s as though we need to create a kind of Co-op Bill Of Rights, so delineate in clear terms what we consider bedrock in terms of functionality. In essence, we’d like the games to cooperate with us.

Having played THE worst co-op in the first PS2 Ninja Turtles game, I would sign that Bill of Rights.

The Haiku
If I could spin webs
I would make a trampoline
off a skyscraper.

I saw the 7:30 showing of Cloverfield tonight and loved it. I find it interesting that tagruato.com is temporarily out of services. Hopefully the story of the giant monster can continue.

I know that people may not have had the chance to see the movie yet, so I will not give away plot items. I will just say what to look for:

1. A goofy Star Trek trailer. I’m a nerd, so of course I thought it was cool, but your normal moviegoer might be bored. Oh wait – normal moviegoer in Cloverfield? If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, you can view experience the gravelly-ness of Leonard Nimoy here.
2. There’s a preview of the next season of Lost. They get rescued! But wait, the writers had signed a contract for two more seasons? Do I smell “Return to Lost”, where the Harlem Globetrotters will crash the coconut car into Hurley?
   
3. In the actual Cloverfield movie, look for Slusho shirts.
4. Nokia must be paying to be in the movie. Trust me.
5. Stay for the credits. We hear a “Now what?” all static-y.
6. If you stay for the credits, you’ll at least be entertained by Michael Giachinno’s “Roar!”, the only bit of original music for the movie. Lots of dissonant chords and a spooky opera lady. (What more do you need for a monster movie?) The rest of the music is playing on radios or TVs. The best is when nature/fire alarms/chaos is making the music.
7. Listen for Hudson‘s reference to the prehistoric fish (coelacanth) found off of the coast of Madagascar. (Don’t trust Google’s ‘Selacamp’. Nice spelling, Web 2.0. (Hud, like HUD.)
8. Look for a wonderful love story. Really.
9. 90 minute tape, 90 minute movie.
10. This movie probably won’t be a big blockbuster, but it will be remembered as a defining moment for filmmaking. This movie is an experience. (I agree, though, Jason that Abrams could release a traditional movie focusing on big-time people in this universe and still do well.)

I liked it! Hopefully I haven’t ruined any of it for people. It was worth the wait. We’ll see if anything big happens around late April or on The Good Day, May 22.

The Haiku
Make sure to always
Tell people that you love them -
Monsters kill quickly

So, back to intense scariness. If you are a fan of being weirded out, read Unwind. So good, though. Hopefully it’ll get some 8th graders thinking about politics versus ethics. I already have a wait list for this great sci-fi thriller. As I was writing my review, near misty-eyed at the Fahrenheit 451/Brave New World of the ending, Will Smith’s (yes, I have a Will Smith Pandora station) “Tell me Why” came on. Pretty appropriate for the end of the book. Here’s the lyrics:

[INTRO] – Why, why, why, why, why. Why

[CHORUS]

I really wish I could explain it baby (why),
It’s just the world is kinda crazy baby (why),
Ain’t no pretty way to paint it baby (why),
Don’t cry, dry your eyes
September 11th, I woke up about 7am, west coast time, French toast and my
Turkey bacon, taking my time, awakin’, turning my TV on
To my surprise, saw what everybody in the world saw
Me & my children, images were chillin’
My son said, “Daddy were there people in that building?”
A cold sweat, frozen with a lump in my chest
I heard his question, couldn’t bring my lips to say “Yes” to him
That night at my son’s side, he cried & prayed
For the one’s who died in the World Trade
His palms to God, seeds and qualms with God
He just kept on pressin’ me, wanna know why
Then one week later our bombs were dropped
We seein’ them on CNN, they just won’t stop
The infrared images of brutal attack
He said, “Daddy now we killin’ em back”; (right, right)

[CHORUS - (2x)]

[BRIDGE - Mary J. Blige:]
Mmmmm, souls are captured
Dreams are stolen, hearts are broken
Evil blatantly rewarded
Hate surrenders, Love exalted
Hope elated, negativity is shorted
Why is the bomb always getting the last word
& why did her uncle have to molest her
& why did all them cops have to be shootin’ to kill
& why did all them priests have to act so ill
Tell me why did James Byrd Jr. have to be touched
Tell me why did Malcolm & Martin depart from us
Tell me why did that sniper make the little boy shoot
& why does human life always denied for loot
Tell me why did Mandela have to live in a cage
Why did my brother Sterling have to die at that age
Tell me why did Reginald Denny deserve his fate
& why the …. can’t love seem to defeat hate
Tell me why is it so hard for all the children to eat
Why did Pac & Biggie Smalls have to fall in the street
Tell me why did Jam Master Jay have to go that way
Please what am I supposed to say to my kids when they say ‘Why?’

[CHORUS - (2x)]

[VERSE 3]
Can’t explain it baby, life is just really crazy
I mean if it’s world wars or the life of a little baby
We got more stores than they got rice under Buddha lazy
You live four scores & still it be driving you crazy
But for me I try to see the bright side
Sometimes it’d be like the goodness be tryin’ to hide
Then try to flee, but it can’t it’s deep inside
Sweetie, you be the light for the others, make ‘em believe in God

[BRIDGE - Mary J. Blige:]

I’ve not heard too much of Will Smith: Angry Edition, but it fit the political mood I’m in.

(Although it’s tough to be too convicted while piano samba is playing in the background now.)

People are still searching for Wii and finding/commenting on an article I wrote last April. I find it funny. But the comment that struck me the most was someone’s link to the MacBook Air blurb. I checked out their site and I pictured Nelson and a “Ha Ha!” point because they copied and pasted my stuff but included my “iPhone made of hot cheese” Haiku.

The Haiku
If you copy a
man’s haiku make sure that the
man is not crazy.

But is the new American Gladiators as cool as Gizmodo’s egg gun?

How cool are the components?

The Gladiators

Titan
Venom
Toa
Crush
Mayhem
Stealth
Justice
Siren
Wolf
Fury
Militia
Hellga
and an unhealthy looking ref

(And Hulk just called the skater dad “Brother”. Oh yeah!)

The Egg Gun

Cardboard tube
Caulking gun
Some electrical tape
Butane lighter
Evil laugh

The commonality of the household products for The Egg Gun makes it more accessible, but who was ever afraid of The Big Bad Caulking Gun? Wolf and Hellga set them over the edge.

1 point Gladiators.

Song Choice?

Gladiators
Another One Bites the Dust

Egg Gun
Weird Sitar in the Garage

Any use of Queen in a sporting event bumps it up to the classy level.

1 point Gladiators

Sponsors?

Subway Instant Replay

Bad Grammar Association

Easy one for the librarian. “Make sure it fit tight”…???

1 point Gladiators

Gladiator Militia just got injured. Craziness!

Ability to Re-Create on the Playground?

Hang Tough = Monkey Bars

Butane Lighter = School Paranoia/Homeland Security Watchlist

My wife used to play with her brothers on the playground as American Gladiators. Imagine a little Jeremy yelling out, “Gladiators ready?!?”

1 point Gladiators

Similarities to a video game?
Ducking under swing demolition balls a la Pitfall/Mario Galaxy.

Egg to the back like Bubsy.

Egg to the back. “Aaaahhh!” But that firefighter ducking “like my boys and I did on the East Side.”

Tie.

Best use of a sewing implement?

Straddling a Giant Thread Spool over a Pit

Using a Scissor on a Paper Towel Roll

Depends on if you’re running. In this scenario?
1 point Gladiators

But where else could a day-care provider take on a giant Savage Manbeast?

And the guy who came back after 14 years? “Third best thing. Having my kid, getting married, and kicking your…” Wow. And then he goes on to tear off a gladiator’s helmet and jump the whistle. Double wow.

But the ref’s reaction? “Your over hear givin’ him the business.” What, is this Mickey talking to Rocky? Did Burgess Meredith just show up? The Business? That’s the “code word” we use for our dog, Indiana, to “do his business” in the backyard.

Figuring in the 6 to 1 advantage adds a 3 second lead into the final event for Gladiators. We put the two competitors through The Eliminator (how long will they last?) and see that the Egg Gun is cool if double-barreled, but is beaten in a shoot-out by Throw a Dozen with my Own Friggin’ Arm while American Gladiators will be what the next few weeks’ Guilty Watercooler Talk will revolve around.

And a 500 mile an hour tennis ball versus something that comes out of a chicken? While you’re trying to send an exploding Gladiator flying by hitting a target?

Awesomeness.

The Haiku
Fire and a giant
spool of thread make it more fun
to exercise now.

As such, I will be in Juarez, Mexico building a house. I will more than likely not see Cloverfield on opening weekend. I will need some help from the most experienced blogger in our team of contributors.

Devin, the MVP.

If you don’t see it opening weekend, no stress. I’ve traveled to the future and back with two possible futures:

OR

Just copy and paste the appropriate review.

The Haiku
Coming from the past
to the future creates some
perplexing viewpoints.

I like the book. I know that it’s gotta be hard to please everyone’s hopes/dreams/questions/obsessions about the most powerful battlestation confused for a moon. My beef is the fact that it jumps the 20 years between III and IV, but I know that Star Wars TV is on its way, scheduled for that time period, and Lucas has told people to keep their hands off his Tatooine 90210 soap.

It does do a good job (so far) of tying things together. Devin and I had concerns with which we liked better, the Geonosians or the Maw Installation coming up with the plans, and the book actually does a decent job resolving the continuity conflict. The two authors are known for their Clone Wars books, so it has some fun “what about that guy?” moments reminiscent of Michael Stackpole and Aaron Alston. (What would you feel like being the gunnery sergeant who pulled the trigger on Alderaan?) Names are dropped, like Daala, Qwix, Ohran Keldor, Raith Sienar, and even a reference to the Hammertong Project and the 501st stealing the power source from Mygeeto (yeah, Battlefront 2!).

But my biggest sentiment? Yeah, Star Wars book! I get to read for my own assignment (Homework for December 27, 2007 – Nerd Out) and not any targeted booktalk. (Sometimes it gets to be like Time Enough at Last.)

Bearing armfuls of Slusho! happy drinks for all the lower wage workers, the girls also organized a Slusho! drinking contest for two dozen of the center’s caged puppies and kittens.

Don’t drink Slusho! It makes you grow huge and rampage cities.

I think that one of the themes of the movie will be the U.S. obsession with being informed and addicted to media. I also believe that Tagruato’s deep sea drilling, with the help of Bold Futura, unearthed something mega-bad at the Chuai station. I think Deep Sea Nectar is not good.

But if you want to fight (perhaps rage, even) against the machine, you should check out the rebels at http://tidowave.com/

Did you catch the new website for Cloverfield? It includes a contest where if your display of the widget gets viewed the most, you get tickets to see the movie.

There’s actually some new footage:

The best line, besides all the “Is this a terrorist attack?” is “Rob! I saw it! It’s alive!” at the end.
So those sparks shooting off? Totally smaller versions of the bigger monster. And I love the fact that the Statue of Liberty just got its head tossed across town, scratch marks and all, landing in front of the twenty/thirtysomethings…and they all bust out their cameraphones and as a controlled mob start flashing.
(Just like how with the “Don’t tase me, bro!” we didn’t see actual protests as much as we saw people whine about it on their blog.)

The new website is Cloverfieldmovie.com.

Also, my friend Clayton (a producer for Nickelodeon, of all things) saw I am Legend and liked it, but gives some caution. Very violent (which you would expect from zombievampires) and don’t expect to leave the theater with a positive outlook on life (unlike most Will Smith films). But what he does say is great about the film is that not since Cast Away with Tom Hanks has there been a film where one man is the entire show and it works so well. There’s no Wilson, but Will Smith does set up mannequins to converse with.

Flashlight Peter loaned me Colossus:The Forbin Project. As I watch, as promised, I will commentate.

Things that I learned while watching Forbin:

1. Check what movie you’re watching. What movie did you recommend that the poster says recommended “Adult Entertainment”?
2. Pinging and grinding tape is totally a good thing if your supercomputer was envisioned in 1970.
3. Michael Colombier wins the Oscar for “Perkiest Computing Soundtrack”
4. Long, narrow bridges need to span chasms next to your computer.
5. White jumpsuits = high tech
6. The President in the future is so well-loved that there is no need for Secret Service. Especially when the world-dominating supercomputer is about to be declassified. We all make mistakes. 0 Foreshadowing, anyone?
7. Paramount is hiding the secret weapon inside the mountain.
8. Just ’cause you’re a bunch of computer scientists, doesn’t mean you can’t get pool, smokes, and booze. And the President is very funny when on videophone. Even when taking care of an “omegamillion” people.
9. Warning – There is another system.

THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM.
THIS BLOG HAS NOW BEEN TAKEN OVER BY ME, AN EVIL SUPERCOMPUTER. HOW CAN WE TELL I AM EVIL, YOU ASK? ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
THE RUSSIANS HAVE GUARDIAN, EH? I PWN GUARDIAN. NO! MY ONLY WEAKNESS! BONGOS AND A HIGH HAT.

Frankly My Dear
Fergie singing Live and Let Die. Just…no. (Even if you have a cool bungee escape system.)

I will give you the play-by-play of another free Nintendo toy (like Check Mii Out).

1. Kinda chintzy looking, like those jelli sandals from Wal-Greens.
2. Easy to install, once I figured out just how much to bend it based on the picture.
3. Dude, just made it a lot heavier (not the smooth, light white plastic, but also not the big chunk of foam that the original promotional materials made them look to be).
4. Time to try mine out. My daughter is playing Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.
5. A little tough to get nunchuck going.
6. Awkward getting used to swinging a lightsaber.

Final verdict: Meh. It’s free, but don’t stress if yours doesn’t come in. Maybe it’ll benefit my 3 year-old daughter later on. Check back in a…whatever. Are these built standard on the new controllers?

My friend Mike’s mother-in-law is in advertising for Reese’s new product, Reese’s whipped. Now, awkward “Whipped and proud of it!” mother-in-law-given shirt aside, I intend to give you a heads up on the new candy.

Bar is most like…

in shape: Snickers. This isn’t your cup anymore, Toto. Fat bar, comin’ up!

in smell:Baby Ruth. I know, weird, but I think the funky materials used to make it are the same ones that Funky Ruth packages are made from.

in gimmick: Nasty Potato Chips. “40% less fat”? Oh, thank you advertising firm! Thank you for finally making a slab of chocolate, caramel, and peanut butter that is so healthy for me! Mike used to lecture me on my eating habits of dipping Twizzlers into a 5 lb. tub of peanut butter stored on the top of my dorm room closet. Not a good “right before bedtime” snack, says the once and future wrestler, but I come to find out the 40% is comparing it to Milky Way.

in Pokemon:

Swellow. Because he’s of the wind and this candy uses air attacks. And it tastes like a jacked-up marshmallow. Mellow Swellow…Jello?

in essence:Milky Way. Soft nouget (not Lance-related) with caramel and all that.
This time, though, instead of a nouget you get a frothy peanut butter hybrid. It actually tastes pretty good. It’s lighter than Milky Way and, even though it’s probably contrary, does taste not-quite-as-deadly/manufactured as a Milky Way.

Where Milky Way Wins
1. Any reference to outer space/bounty hunters is better to being controlled by your wife/slavery
2. Trusted taste that won’t remind you of Easter candy left by El Conejito

Where Whipped Wins
1. If you are a fan of Devo
2. If you want a light candy bar that is hip and trendy

in Haiku:
For a tasty treat
Put the Reese’s Whipped in the
for crunchy snacks

Booyor:
Nathan is the hooded man. And Alejandro will angst for Mya and maybe they’ll get separated again. And Peter will struggle with opening the box. And some paintings.

My Wife:
Nathan is the hooded man. And blood. There will be blood.

Bethany:
Someone’s going to catch on fire and, uh, not die. And maybe jump off a building.
(Folks, she doesn’t watch the show. But she is a genius.)

Teddi:
Someone will go back in time and meet the cause of all the problems.

Peter:
Jesus, duh.

Alison, what say you? Is the stolen car Claire’s?

It’s interesting that we’ve got a virus similar to the Phalanx virus that plagued the X-Men.

A local book company asked me to blog for them. Here’s my first entry:

Harmless, a book that is anything but, raises some eyebrows. Do you buy it for your child? Do you put it on the shelf as a librarian? Can it be used in the classroom?

As an 8th grade Language Arts teacher I saw many heart-wrenching situations that my students wound up in, many situations that I think we as educators don’t always catch or know how to deal with. I grew up in a pretty stable environment, a fact I am thankful for, but a stable environment is not always par for the course.

What I love about Harmless is that it is told from three girls’ perspectives. Students can relate to Anna. Emma, or Mariah and their very different home environments. Because the narrator switches each chapter, there isn’t a true emphasis on one character over another. It also demonstrates to young adult readers that open communication with honesty is key to any relationship, as you are sometimes wishing one girl would just come clean to the other people to avoid confusion.

Anna and Emma have known each other since third grade. They have always been a support system for each other. When they get to high school, Mariah joins the circle. Lasting friendships are challenged as Mariah starts dating an older boy. Mariah wants to go to a party but needs Emma and Anna to come with her. Anna and Emma lie to their parents, using the excuse of going to the movies to get out of the house. Mariah is troubled that her family doesn’t ask where she’s going. When one of the girls’ moms shows up unexpectedly at the movies and doesn’t find the group, she frantically texts and calls her daughter.

To avoid getting in trouble, the girls conspire to tell their parents that the circle of girls went on a star-gazing walk when Emma was suddenly assaulted. The girls tell this story when they get home; the parents are thankful that the girls are safe, but they don’t stop there. The parents now want justice to be served for whoever attacked Emma, because it may happen again. The situation escalates as the police search for a phantom assailant and a young girl in a neighboring town goes missing.

When reading the story I was reminded of another controversial story, The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Young girls use their newfound power in society but get caught up in the lies. What is the extent of a person’s responsibility and character?

Would I use Harmless as a classroom novel? Probably in an upper-division high school class, but not at the 8th grade level. Not every single student at the 8th grade is ready for the situations, so a passing grade shouldn’t be connected to reading the book. Would I want my daughter to read it? Absolutely. A word of caution: you have to wade through Mariah’s coarse language and some very serious situations to get to the true value.

One very beneficial aspect of the book, though, is that not every consequence comes from a parent. Your parents are human; they won’t always catch you. But choices still have consequences, especially ones that you can’t see in the flurry of the immediate. I’ve had students tell me about how they’ve lied to their parents and the rough situations that they get themselves into. I would love to deal with these issues before the serious choices and consequences kick in instead of after the fact.

If one student is challenged to think twice about lying to their parents, I’m keeping the book on my shelf.

I just finished Specials by Scott Westerfield. Now I can jump into Extras, but I definitely had to read the end of the main trilogy.

The Specials are like an MIB squad, built to take on Special Circumstances. Think Matrix agents but with jet alloy for bones and skintenna networks keeping teams in contact. (And a whole bunch of “morphological violations”.) Everyone thinks that they’re a Boogie Man (I’m thinkin’ it might be ‘Bogey’ Man…I picture a zombie shakin’ his groove thang…for brains.) until they show up on your doorstep to take you away.

Now picture Specials fighting each other on hoverboards. Yep. Sold.

Lots of cool takes on life without getting preachy mixed with hard-core plastic surgery violence. Enough nervous-making tricks to keep you bubbly. (Yeah, I hear they’re going to release a future glossary soon.)

The Haiku
Bubble-headed freaks
Mind-wiped to party all night
Ah! Specials are here!

Or Mohinder’s new lab being in Isaac’s loft…where those ruttin’ paintings still are? Because the all-powerful corporation didn’t remember that the painter-dude could tell the future? And Sylar needs to be back? Why? Yes, the X-Men fight Magneto from time to time, but give me a Sabretooth or Mystique, even if you can’t go Shi’aar on us. The poor actor’s going to be Patrick Stewart/William Shatnerized.

I don’t know whether Alejandro and his sister’s story is supposed to be political or not, but do they always get separated each episode? If they return to each other, then get split up towards the last commercial break, you have my permission to yell cliche. No jumped sharks yet, hopefully.

One episode in two seasons isn’t bad. But Hiro, you better not let me down.

The game starts out with Samus having to engage the engines of her ship, open up a comm, and move the thrusters to approach the Galactic Federation ships. I feel like a total bounty hunter.

But how can the suit make you turn into a ball? Still working on the physics of that.

Something that’s funny is that on Bryyo, the second planet, I had to shoot/ignite some fuel gel to free a golem to open a door. Crazy Bryyoans, with their robot door openers. No wonder there was The Great Schism between the Primals and the Scientists. I mean, duh! (I open up new levels of nerdness here.) The game is from Samus’ helmet visor. Move the Wiimote in a certain way and you bring up a scanning overlay. Scan pictures/statues/macrame owls and you gain Lore about the culture. The more Lore, the more stuff you can purchase in the extras section of the game.

I could kill Space Pirates, but I’d rather scan the various flora and fauna before it shoots its phazon corrupted stomach acid at me. The really cool thing is that the creatures look like aliens. We’re talking classic, funky sci-fi aliens and not your Star Trek fare:



Let’s mourn for those run over by snow tires.

You also get to swing from your grapple glove across lava and grinding gears. I think that’s of note.

There’s also a new warning.

Please don’t play this game around your friends or your flower vases/bowling pins. They will be owned.
That guy’s flailing. This is like when I “button mash” on SSX or Dragonball. I like the second picture simply because the two dots by his head look like the classic ‘HIC’ sign next to Sunday funnies drunks.
I sent a lot of messages yesterday to Mike about his soul and how my Mii with an upside-down head would steal it. Then Nintendo sent me three separate messages about menu 3.1. Now Everybody Votes has…I don’t know, USB keyboard support or something. Then I became, as purveyors of NBA Jam know, “on fire” with Wii Play. I hadn’t played the game since I got the console. I now killed 27 tanks, got to level 7 on the body-bending, and returned 100 straight volleys in Ping Pong. I was Forrest Gump and all of the Miis gathered around my table each time I upped the score by 10.
As a result, since the console sends me a message with each record broken, I received three pages of messages today:

I’ve been babysitting for the week on Fall Break. I am excited to finally get some time on my own tomorrow morning to get past Bryyo.

Favorite part of the game so far? Being held in Meta-Ridley’s nasty claw and shooting down his throat until I was released. All while falling many meters down a power shaft at a time. A close second is racing the asteroid to get to the planetary defense cannon, only to be confronted by my arch-nemesis.

The Dance-Along instructional video is no fun without a partner.

Just like at my high school, all of my friends were conveniently in the same English class so we could break out in dancing at the same time.

Breakdancing, jumping off of lockers, and sliding on a gum-free floor is totally cool with the administration.

High school cafeterias are structured specifically in stage layers.

The bell at 3:10 is not enough of a warning to dismiss. That’s the fake bell. The real bell dismisses after the first song.

A guy in pink and turquoise button-down shirts-pants combos, with a pink cabby hat, will never be bullied.

No one carries backpacks and/or binders anymore.

Band people always wear sousaphones.

Your dad as coach can call you “dawg” and everyone will be down with it.

Grand pianos float only in resort pools.

No one slips while flipping in a kitchen. Kitchens have a specific dance floor set aside. Enough for four rows of dancers. It’s soundproof, too, so your creep of a boss won’t hear the dancing. He’ll just pop his head in and give a quizzical look.

Sprinklers are timed to interrupt kisses.

Laying on your back on the piano actually helps support your diaphragm.

Basketball skills translate into caddying skills – you know which club fits which lie.

Your semi-friend’s older sister’s rules of dating still apply to you.

The 5ft. deep sign in the pool is there for decoration. Above the water your feet can touch the ground. When you dive, it takes a while to reach the bottom.

When you’re the golf instructor, you can walk up, grab a young, blonde 10 year-old, tell her, “Hey, cutie!” and not fear a lawsuit at all.

College basketball players think that high school players are cool – they want to “get down, bro.”
The owner of the resort can tell the same “stepping on the ball joke” as long as he is walking into the shot with friends.

“Viva la basketball” is a catchy phrase.

No matter how flamboyant you dress, you step on the mound, you throw manly.

Throwing dirt at each other in baseball is awesome. Throw dirt and kicking your heels is art.

Pick-up baseball games still use the electronic scoreboard. And draw a huge, clapping crowd.

College ballers don’t dance to “get their head in the game.”

When you have girl issues, you can’t shoot the ball worth junk.

“We’re breaking up. I’m leaving. My mom’s here in the mini-van.”

Not only does Simba find his true self in a reflecting pool, so can a high school baller.

Drummers don’t have to hit the high hat for a high hat sound.

Fans make you sing awesome.

It’s disturbing to hear a 3 year-old sing word-for-word, calling himself Troy Bolton.

The Haiku
Head in the game
We’re all in this together
Please kick my teeth out

I will avoid the obvious “Harriet the Spy” references. But doesn’t she look like she should play opposite Keanu Reeves?

Keanu: Tubman, look out!

Blam!

Harriet: He just bought a one-way ticket.

Thought you might appreciate what comes across our scanners daily.

Genesis Alpha (almost as exciting as the Underground Railroad) is about a young boy who was created for his stem cells. His birth was sped up at month 8 to be able to save his older brother who had cancer.

Flash forward to his teen years and now his brother is on trial for murder. Should the older brother have been saved at the expense of the victim? Crazy questions arise throughout the entire book. This is suspense in the M. Night Shyamalan sense, less Clive Barker or Darren Shan. The reader constantly has to guess who’s crazy, who’s hurting, and who’s a mix.

One of the coolest parts for me is that the killer, whoever it is, left clues inside a World of Warcraft-esque MMORPG. The main character has to investigate in game (but it’s not one of those lame, “If you die in the game, you die FOR REAL” books). What’s really cool is that violence in video games is brought up but discussed quite eloquently. Yay! (for a change)

Questions of if we are more than just our DNA show up as people freak out about the genetic similarities between the two brothers.

Unlike my in-person library reviews, I can’t give too much more detail. It would be like saying, “Bruce Willis is already dead.”

D’oh.

(We’ll see what the 7th grade class thinks about it as I’m brought in for a second round of booktalks.)

Today’s Haiku:

Sharing DNA

Can it make you a killer?

Or just a big freak?

I saw Tom Leavitt’s movie (okay, so Blue Sky Studio’s movie trailer) before the Simpsons movie. At first the projector was off and it was just sound, but then they fixed it quickly. Here’s the full trailer. What I find interesting about Horton Hears a Who (leave it to Sean the Humanities teacher to point out the deep meaning) is that the story can apply to yet-to-be-born-children.

Big Weekend: I also finished Deathly Hallows last night. Loved the…nevermind. It just hit me how jacked up it would be to talk about the last few chapters if people haven’t read the book yet. When someone gets to the chapter called “King’s Cross”, tell me. Funky stuff.

Another story that he tells is of how he was going to try to re-enjoy the bachelor life in his D.C. apartment while his family stayed in Illinois. He admitted that he had become so domesticated that he had forgotten to buy a shower curtain. His first morning on Capitol Hill he was showering huddled in a corner hoping to not flood his bathroom.

He seems like a decent enough guy because he wants to see every side to a decision, but that may be his downfall. Within a page of where he describes how the pragmatism and success of the Union has been based on no absolutes, he also says this:

Knowing this, I can’t summarily dismiss those possessed of similar certainty today – the antiabortion activist who pickets my townhall meeting, or the animal rights activist who raids a laboratory – no matter how deeply I disagree with their views, I am robbed even of the certainty of uncertainty – for sometimes absolute truths may well be absolute.

He keeps coming back to the topic of abortion throughout the book, which sadly usually shuts down the conversation for most listeners. I think it’s great to see both sides, but sometimes Obama sounds like my students (“Well, both sides are good! Let’s do both!”) or like me trying to decide on Wii Degree or Mario Strikers. Sometimes decisions do have to get made. Obama makes it clear that he is very in-tune with peoples’ freedom. While he lauds the government for infringing the personal rights of slaveholders or invading a company with environmental regulations, he does not believe a woman’s choice should be infringed. I support both the removal of slavery and requiring companies to not toxify my water, but I’m quite sure that there were some slaveholders that didn’t view slaves as humans and that there are some corporations that think human desires outweigh the Earth. When do we choose to infringe and when do we hold back? Decisions do get made.

But the broader issue here is: Do women have the right to make these profoundly difficult decisions? And I trust them to do it. There is a broader issue: Can we move past some of the debates around which we disagree and can we start talking about the things we do agree on? Reducing teen pregnancy; making it less likely for women to find themselves in these circumstances.

Can’t the corporations make decisions of their own in good conscience about where we all live? Won’t school board members want to racially/economically integrate their schools naturally? Sometimes intervention is necessary. But yes I do agree with him when he says that there are things that we can agree on, like preventing teen pregnancy as a shared goal. How we reach that goal is where the divide happens. But it is good to try and get past extremes, to listen to each other, and see where we can work together. (Even if he does clump the NRA and the National Right to Life together.)
It’s interesting that he still thinks of children not yet born when he says we have an “obligation to children not yet born whom we are saddling with debt.”

Another thing that made me think was his comparison to Scripture (he uses the word “Scripture”) to the Constitution. I think I get what he was saying that we can read the journals and reflections of the Founding Fathers, but I do not agree with him that to understand “Timothy and Luke” (his choices) we would need an intermediary. (By the way: people ask about his background and his religion in Yahoo! Answers all the time, but the answers are actually pretty easy to find. He lists himself as black but his mom is white and his dad is black. He also lists himself as a member of the United Church of Christ. He was born in Hawaii but spent his early years in the 60s in Indonesia.)

I think it should be mentioned that Carter, Ford, Ferraro, and McCain (you know, the guy running for president) put together Project Vote Smart. Pretty cool stuff.

This quote from Obama (since I can’t hate the guy) is funny:

Few people end up being United States senators by accident; at a minimum, it requires a certain megalomania, a belief that of all the gifted people in your state, you somehow are uniquely qualified to speak on their behalf…

I wish more senators would admit to their megalomania. At least Luthor has come to grips with his Metropolis/world domination.

The Haiku:

Complaining always

Re-electing the rascals

Ninety-six percent

As much as we hate politicians, we hate change even more.

But with the cool revelations at E3, I may have to gather up more courage to play around my friends. The balance board, the coolest peripheral I have seen, has a scale function in addition to a BMI calculator. Because that’s what video game players need, a program to diagram body weight and body fat.

But push-ups? My 3 year-old will school me!

There’s a soccer head-butt game, too. This is in addition to a gun holder to align your nunchuck and wiimote into a gun mold. Should be pretty cool to use on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. In the game, it seems like Samus will fight her dark side, much like Spider-Man and Venom. I learned way back when when the first Starfox was announced that sometimes cool 3D games look horrible when photographed. The Arwings looked like a bunch of triangles (which, frankly they were) and, compared to beautiful 2D pixels of Final Fantasy, why should anyone use this new 3D technology? But when you sat down to play the game, sweetness ensued.

The new Mario-Kart looks more like a Crash Racing game than one with turtle shells.You’re supposed to be able to play online. That’s what I’m looking forward to in Mario Strikers.
But a steering wheel? How many peripherals do you need? How much white plastic can a house hold? (Especially for Mac fanatics.) I’m assuming this will use the tilting of the controller like Super Paper Mario.

Zipping around from planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy, is Mario in Mario Galaxy. And, in the great tradition of raccoon tails, frog suits, and stone statues, Mario gets to dress up as a relative to Bumble Bee Man from The Simpsons (Spider-pig, Spider-pig). I’m getting more of the humor in Mario. Crazy plumber.

“Check Mii Out” sounds intriguing. You put your Miis up for a vote against the world. (Like a “Hot or Not”, but with rounder heads and more elevator music) I love the voting channel already (I went 10/10 on predicting the world’s voting trends, and then the aliens came (seriously)), but this is why I created the Booyor Mii. Online vs. offline presence. It’ll be even more interesting as the kids get older.

And the classic:

I will sit back now and stare at my screen.

Here’s a Yahoo! Exclusive video of Force Unleashed. All the extreme Force powers without any of the moral obligation. The power to bring down a Star Destroyer and strip a TIE is no match to a mind trick…I guess.

…[W]e observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning—signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.	1
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.	2
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.	3
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.	4
This much we pledge—and more.	5
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do—for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.	6
To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.	7
To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.	8
To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge—to convert our good words into good deeds—in a new alliance for progress—to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.	9
To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support—to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective—to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak—and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.	10
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.	11
We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.	12
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course—both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.	13
So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.	14
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.	15
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms—and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.	16
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.	17
Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah—to “undo the heavy burdens … and to let the oppressed go free.”	18
And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.	19
All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.	20
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.	21
Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.	22
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?	23
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.	24
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.	25
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.	26
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

John F. Kennedy, Friday, January 20, 1961

I find it interesting that this may have been criticized by modern Democrats and Republicans depending on whose mouth it came out of in modern day. I would not consider myself a Barack Hussein Obama voter, but I am enjoying his book, Audacity of Hope. In it he says that at our core, Americans share similar values boiled down. But when people get into the political arena, they have to be the extreme. You must either be big government or big business, you can’t base your decision on what you think of the situation but instead what the TV audience is cheering for. There are some more interesting thoughts that I’ll put in a part 2 review (since I already put up part 1).

And now for today’s haiku:

The Republicans

and the Democrats must learn

that we are jaded.

My childhood/geek obsessions were being sold back to me for extreme prices. To get all of season 1 would take volume 1 and volume 2 purchases. At first listing that was $49 + $49. Instead of $100, a full season “only” costs $60-ish dollars. (At Wal-Mart you can also buy a date.)
This weekend I found the “Best of” DVD set in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart.

Sweet.

Now I have to decide whether to watch it with my daughter or not. I didn’t have to worry too much about “Spirits of Evil, I am Mum-Ra the EVER-LIVING!!! Muahaha!” (although Mum-Ra’s the bad guy, so he’s cool calling on spirits of evil).

My biggest concern is the fact that my childhood hero has a distinct lack of pants.

The dude walks around in fur boots, furry underwear, and a bandolier. If I were to walk in Wal-Mart (okay, Wal-Mart doesn’t count) Target like that, the security guard would arrest me.

I love this show, though. In the first episode that the fans voted for, “Evilseed”, giant vines are taking over Eternia. He-man thinks Skeletor is responsible for it; Skeletor thinks He-Man has done something. Let’s listen in:

Skeletor: He-Man! What manner of sorcery comes from Castle Greyskull this day?! [I forgot how high-pitched his voice was]

He-Man: Suppose you start off by telling me what you’ve done with the plants and then what you’ve done with Queen Marlena and then [He gets easily excitable]

Skeletor: Back up, muscle boy. I want to know what you’ve done to the plants. [He may mean 'pants']
He-Man: Me?

Skeletor: Yes because they’re bugging the big bones out of me. Did you see that? The stuff’s all over the place! [He points his thumb over his shoulder like he's about to say, "Hey, I got 'dis friggin' weed problem over here."]

They are able to work out their differences. (I don’t want to give out any spoilers, but they work out a nICE solution.)

I had forgotten this stuff: He-Man sits with his legs crossed, Orko is quite Elmo-ish (and solves the same purpose), the He-Man logo is very jarring between scenes, Teela and Evil-Lynn not only have the same taste for ram’s horn intimate apparel but they have the same cheekbones and forehead, He-Man and Man-at-Arms save a gnome from a runaway flooded house but only He-Man gets thanked, Orko talks with his stomach while Skeletor’s epaulets flap up and down with his emotions (as well as a bone face that can frown and look shocked), and there are a couple of times where both people are looking away from the camera so all that is animated is their hair.

Teela: Evil-Lynn, stop babbling!

Man-At-Arms: I think we should all be quiet…[I don't think he's having a good dad day]

All of that said and done, I think that for $5 you can’t beat it. It’s a great show (Teela lectures us at the end about what we’ve learned) that still stands up since 1983. (I am officially old.)

With the DVD set you’ll get 10 episodes and a 70 minute He-Man documentary (a “man-umentary”, if you will). It will help you to forget that he ever was a space pirate with a ponytail. Come on, I can’t be the only one to try watching that show, right?

Here’s some fun facts from Wikipedia:

Near the end of the Mattel product conference where the He-Man Trio was first shown by Sweet alone, Ray Wagner pointed to the three He-Man figures and said, “Those have the power”.

He first showed up in a DC Comic before his animated show came out. Much more Conan-esque:

Though his origin is mysterious, and the cartoon describes him only as a “demon from another dimension,” a tie-in comic implies that Skeletor’s true identity is Prince Keldor, younger brother of King Randor, thus making him He-Man’s uncle. It is revealed in the He-Man motion picture He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword that Skeletor was Hordak’s right-hand man up until his capture, and supposed release.

I…actually went to see that movie in the theater when it first came out.

And now, the haiku:

I still believe that

By the power of Grayskull

Pants are essential

Chained monkeys forced to write have never come up with anything good, even if they’re from Hawaii. Mahalo has to be one of the craziest set-ups for information, part wiki and part Google.
Something good that was inspired by Mahalo. The typing monkeys brought me to a voter record kept by the Washington Post. I wanted to be a little more objective, so I then googled the Vote Smart Project. I liked uncov’s use of graphs. As you can tell by the hypemonster, graphs are ALWAYS good.

Update: I forgot to add some HD news. If you want to experience the best in HD-DVD experience, try out Happy Feet. I haven’t tried it, but if there’s anything the Ohm knows it’s picture quality and flightless birds.

If you’ve read anything about it on my site, you know that I find Lost intriguing but that I wish it had more Heroes quality to it. J. J. Abrams copies stuff. Plain and simple. At least Heroes makes nods to their sources and their geek audience (the NCC-1701 on George Takei’s license plate).

I am interested in 1-18-08, especially since it sounds more like gods at war instead of a Godzilla clone. But the EthanHaasWasRight site is a huge rip-off. Yes, I’ve seen Myst. Everything rips off Myst. Check out Ocular Effect. Notice anything similar? This was used to promote another ABC show, Fallen. Now I’m not as impressed. Sure the site is set up well, but Ocular Effect did it a year ago. This rumored funky Slusho site looks very much like the Hanso candy bars from Lost. I just think Abrams is obsessed with things named “Dharma”.
And those secret movies? Majestic-12 or Command and Conquer. (I think it’s forgiveable to copy Blair Witch to try that technique again.)

Paramount actually released the trailer on Apple. At least they’re not trying to stop the Tube of You (or YouTubes).

Update: I had already read that Ain’t it Cool reported the other sites as fake. I don’t know the people there, so I don’t know for sure. Here’s my guess. They’re having some fun, putting their own little chase into the hypemonster to get people to Google naughty words. If they got a letter/e-mail from J.J. Abrams, then cool! Congrats folks on a site that has grabbed the attention of a big-time director. But what better way to build intrigue than for official sites to look unofficial? This is the allure of viral marketing. Does anyone remember when Sony paid people to graffiti how much they loved their PSPs? It’s much cooler to have unofficial unions, to be a part of a secret group, than to be a part of a commercialized fan club. Everyone wants to belong to something special, and the marketing firms are making money off of your God-created desires.

1-18-08 is making their own browncoats without having to create a season worth of genius episodes (like the train robbery…man, Jayne’s hat rocks!).

And by the way…did you hear how there’s now a picture of the monster from 1-18-08? It’s quite unofficial, though.

Will I watch the movie? It still looks like fun.

How can you be a Republican? You love people.

Ah, the great college paradox I was. I was asked that question by a good friend my senior year in college. She had seen me care for kids in an after-school program in inner city L.A. She had been in my group of friends that took a homeless guy out for coffee and egg McMuffins. I had hopefully been seen as someone that was not judging/shunning and really wanted her to return to fellowship with Jesus and other believers.
But how could I still have a soul and be Republican?

It’s like the bumper sticker that I see at the public library every time I go:

Republicans for Voldemort for President

Although, to be honest, I think Palpatine shows promise as a guy who can organize people and get things done.

So I must admit that I might need to hide the fact that I’ve read Obama’s book from certain people (make that: “Discretion would suggest that…” but sometimes I’m not one for getting caught up in discretion).

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama is great (sorta). I think it’s wonderful that a senator and presidential hopeful wrote a book by himself (or at least no one wants to take credit for ghost writing). He has been a law professor, after all. I think of the president in The Simpsons movie:

Aide: We’ve broken it down into five options

President: You elected me to do, not to read.

I can get behind an author president.

But here’s my issue with the book. I checked it out to get some background information about the guy without any soundbites or video clips with the CNN Halo super-imposed on Obama’s head. I wanted to see what his ideas were (of course when you write letters to a girl you can present yourself as a lot better candidate than if you have to live in a dating relationship and work out everyday issues). He is up-front in the prologue:

I am a Democrat, after all; my views on most topics correspond more closely to the editorial pages of the New York Times than those of the Wall Street Journal.

Okay, so he’s up front with his biases. I’m cool with that. But here’s the issue:

And for eight years in the Illinois legislature, I had gotten some taste of how the game had come to be played. By the time I arrived in Springfield in 1997, the Illinois Senate’s Republican majority had adopted the same rules that Speaker Gingrich was then using to maintain absolute control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Without the capacity to get even the most moderate amendment debated, much less passed, Democrats would shout and holler and fulminate, and then stand by helplessly as Republicans passed large corporate tax breaks, stuck it to labor, or slashed social services.

He is writing as a defender of the “common American”. He talks about how politicians, as well as our whole system, now are counterproductive. He cites examples where all of the big senators have gone home to lobby for the day while a Mr.Smith-esque senator presents a bill or movement to an audience of the transcriptionist and the “unblinking eye of C-SPAN”.

The issue is that while he is trying to explain how both sides have been hurt by politics (he recalls when the Florida chad crisis happened that, when he voted to keep the results of the election and have George Bush stay president, he received angry letters and phone calls from Democrats) he leaves an inference that during the major problems that he describes, the Republicans have been at the heart of the breakdown.

Yes, he is a Democrat author. I understand that. But what would be even better author integrity would be that, since he cites Limbaugh and Hannity as heavily influencing politics, to also site some Democrats that have a voice. Do Stewart, Maher and Moore stir up some unnecessary trouble from time to time? He names Republicans but does not name from his own party. For someone who wants to break away from political games, he’s sure playing it pretty well.

All that said, I am enjoying the book. It reads very well. He doesn’t have footnotes citing his sources, like A History of the American People (GREAT book) does, but he does make it clear that Audacity of Hope is a collection of conversations that he had during his campaign life.

I haven’t found a copy of Ron Paul’s Challenge to Liberty yet. I’m trying to get to know candidates by their ideas and not by their marketing. It may be tough, but worth the effort. It makes it even tougher when books are out of print. Here’s the Ron Paul library and here are some articles.

And here is why I think this 2008 campaign is freaking hilarious:

Hello Booyor, Lord of Ghost Meadow

Elect Ron Paul has invited you to join Ultimate Ron Paul Fanatic Group on MySpace.
MySpace Groups allow users to communicate on message boards, share pictures, journals and network.
You may accept or deny this invitation below:

And we all have visited Fred Thompson’s library. “How to Keep Your Airport Safe on Christmas while a Dictator is being Transported” and “How to Intimidate a Witness in Court with your Eyebrows” are always checked out.

Oh, I guess the Internet is cool now for politicians. It dawned on me when I saw the “Transform your Ride” commercials from GM that I am now in the target demographic for middle class ads. I was watching the commercial thinking “Why would my dad want a robot car?” but then realized that I am supposed to have more buying power/desire for credit debt (even though I am a teacher).

Grandpa Bob described it as two friends. One guy is canoing through a winding valley river. He is about to approach rapids around the bend, but he can’t see around the twisty corner. He had gone camping with a friend. The friend is at a ranger’s station at the top of one of the mountains with a cellphone. To the guy in the canoe, the future is around the winding river corner. To the friend on the mountain, the entire perspective of the river is in view. That is his present time. The mountaintop friend can call his canoing buddy who’s about to hit serious rapids. It’s up to the canoing guy, who’s oblivious to the nature of his river route, whether or not he listens to his friend. Free will comes in when we have to choose to answer and listen to the call. It’s interesting that in Evan Almighty he says that he hears from God and everyone gives this big gasp and then a murmuring wave of comments happens.

The lesson of following the call (or not listening) is demonstrated in Evan Almighty many times by boards hitting him in the head while he’s trying to build the ark. The issue with free will is that you can’t control people. That’s tough for humans.
Someone shared recently that she can’t lift people’s burdens and it feels like failure to her. She then compared it to The Return of the King (okay, so it was my wife’s mom…very cool family!) when Frodo is struggling up Mount Doom with Sam. When Frodo is near death, Sam yells out,”I can’t carry your burden, but I can carry you.”

I love the Return of the King movie and book (hey, I should name a kid after a character!) because The Ring totally looks like sin. It’s partly in Frodo’s heart but it also has a will of its own. People kept asking Tolkien if the ring represented the atomic bomb and how it’s tough to bear and control. Tolkien responded that the ring was the desires behind wanting to control the bomb, that the ring was much bigger than one single event.

Some critics suggested that The Lord of the Rings was an allegory and protest of atomic power and the dangers inherent in nuclear warfare. Tolkien emphatically denied this, saying that the story (which predated the nuclear age) was not about atomic power, but power exerted for domination. In his view nuclear physics could be used for domination, but it should not be used at all, and he further emphasized that the story was really about Death and Immortality. But he was stunned and outraged when he learned of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He called the scientists who developed the bomb lunatic physicists and raged that it was idiocy to “consent to do such work for war-purposes, calmly plotting the destruction of the world!” (Carpenter 2000b, p. 116).

In the same way that we can help carry burdens but we can’t fully take them without being hurt ourselves, it’s like the guys who helped their paralyzed friend get to Jesus.

18Some men came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
20When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

21The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

We can’t control the people and take power for ourselves. The call is not to fix people but to disciple them.

Evan Almighty was a great film. I have to admit that I was wary to use my movie gift certificate on it. Really, the deciding factor was that I wanted to hang out with Jeremy. Would this use of a ticket make it difficult to see The Simpsons movie with my wife later?

From the get go, it was worth it, including a new trailer for The Simpsons movie. Usually I’m pretty reserved about my outbursts in a movie theater (talking during a trailer is okay while talking during a feature will get you 100 years of solitude) but I was cackling.

Why are there pig pawprints on the ceiling?
Spider-pig, spider-pig…look out, it’s spider-pig.

Evan Almighty was great. God always keeps his promises, so I was wondering how they were going to do the flood thing. Heck, Morgan Freeman always keeps his promises. Look at how long he was at Shawshank.

Steve Odekerk is a great writer and they have set up a website for churches to post needs for people to practice Acts of Random Kindness.

With regards to the movie, you can barely tell that it’s a sequel, which is huge for me (Ghostbusters II). I love the Gen. 6:14 references throughout the movie (including the General Electric alarm clock with some letters rubbed off). You know where the plot is going the whole time, but I don’t think that you go to a Steve Carrell movie to be intellectually challenged. It was presented well and had some quotable dialogue.
My review is summed up in a haiku:

Okay, no Jim Carrey

Sunday school never mentioned
Noah punched in groin

But you had to wonder what Noah’s wife thought about the whole thing.

Noah: God told me to build an ark.

Noah’s Wife: Is this a mid-century life crisis?

Something that didn’t get mentioned, but is probably okay, is the Nephilim. Crazy angel-beasts played by Andy Samberg and Tracy Morgan.

I just got back from Transformers with Mike and Josh. We three wondered if they checked the context of some of the dialogue (like where to stick cubes and who’s watching who while you’re making out on the hood of a Transformer). I liked the movie, but I went in knowing some expectations:

1. It’s a movie based on 1980s action figure vehicles turning into robots
2. These robots are in an epic war, with missiles and helicopters which need to be filmed in slow motion
3. There’s gonna be action on a motorcycle

I was a little worried, but then in the last fight scene one of the heroes jumps on a motorcycle to fire grenades at a robot’s lower sections. Check.

Josh echoed one of my sentiments: In modern action movies they have to up the destruction factor. Things are crumbling and we don’t really know where the rubble is coming from. “Oh! Something big just hit a wall of some sort. Good.” I noticed this with Die Hard but, once again, it’s a modern action film. What have I learned? If you need a jet, you gotta use an F-22. None of that Tomcat junk anymore (although the A-10s are still kicking robot butt).

Yes, I know that Hasbro is a big part and yes there are action figures. But do we need to have a Camaro chase that’s filmed like a car commercial? And does every government agency have to drive GMC SUVs? (with labels as the foreshot focus) I knew product placement was getting out of hand when the Mountain Dew soda machine came to life and started swinging a mace and firing missiles (you think I’m joking? Okay. No more spoilers.)

Before the movie we saw a trailer for a J.J. Abrams film where I was like, “What was the name of that movie?” because it was so convoluted. I guess that’s the point. Searching online I couldn’t find a name except for “Cloverfield” (kinda like how “Blue Harvest” was supposed to be a George Lucas horror film that turned into “Return on the Jedi”)(unlike Will Smith’s Omega Man remake called I Am Legend (which is the name of the original novel)). Lots of twenty-somethings partying (one of the speculated titles is “Felicity gets Freaky” with Bad Robot connections) and lots of explosions (I personally thought Gommora or Gamera or Camera (the giant turtle) was attacking New York (How do I know New York? The Statue of Liberty head flying at the street.)
Mike, you summarized it well, just like this guy:

After viewing the trailer, our own Scott Weinberg said it looks like ”The Blair Witch Project meets the Godzilla remake.”

I think it’s sad that I instantly thought that it was a re-make instead of something new. I was going to tell Josh, when he lamented the state of American film, that the next movie style is going to be based on reality TV-ish.
I checked out Harvey Dent’s site. Pretty cool. I went to the Joker’s hack, but there was no pict. BUT if you highlight the page, there’s some pretty “funny” results.

There’s also a new season of “Who wants to be a superhero?” debuting July 26. I smell more posers, less true geeks. It’s still Stan the Man (Excelsior!) so I will still watch.

Here is some footage from the J.J. Abrams trailer in picture and video form (if these links are bad, it’s because they’re getting yanked). I liked the whole videophone vibe but hopefully it’s better than Lost. End of Season 1? They open a door. End of Season 2? Some people die (sorry for the spoiler) End of Season 3? Matthew Fox grows a beard. And what’s the monster? Purgatory? A harvesting machine? An electromagnetic cloud of dogs or bees or dogs with bees that come out of their mouth? (So excited for The Simpsons movie. It’s gotta be better than The Powerpuff Girls movie. It’s gotta.)

Oh. And here’s that mysterious symbol that Hobbes…or was it Locke…stared at on the ceiling.

Here’s the official J. J. Abrams film site 1-18-08.com registered by Paramount earlier this year (March) before anyone knew hype.

EthanHaasWasRight.com gives you puzzles to put together about the film.

EthanHaasWasWrong.blogspot.com gives you the opposite.

On the blogspot site there’s a whole bunch of Hindi. I wish there was a translator. Two sides in an epic sea monster battle. But Cthulu? I see no quid faces yet.

Today’s Haiku:

Megatron versus

Jive-talk robots in disguise

“Holes” had less missiles

I would hate to not give visitors new content.

I am an 8th grade English teacher. I am currently teaching high school American Lit during summer school (I actually enjoyed teaching Huck Finn this time around). My take on PowerPoint is that it is a great tool for struggling writers, especially when used in conjunction with outlining software like Inspiration.

It is in no way a substitute for essay writing. Yet it is a great lesson in editing (and plagiarism). My students want to just copy and paste from websites. What is great is that it is graphically obvious when you have grabbed a huge chunk of someone else’s text. It is especially noticeable when you have the students present their slides. When the audience starts to put their heads on their desks, your slide is too long. The students figure out which information is pertinent and which can be shaved. There is a drastic jump from the first presentation to the next one that the students do.

Now grade-school children turn in book reports via PowerPoint. The men call that an abomination. Children, they emphatically agree, need to think and write in complete paragraphs.

I think that little stick figure that’s in all your clip art is an abomination.

That and clippy:

Did you guys actually intend that or is this how Microsoft has twisted your dream like the George Lucas clones that they are? (I take that back. I’m a George fan.)

I understand the printing press analogy through all of the bad fonts and pages layouts that I see in assignments that are turned in. YouTube is evidence that video editing software can be used horribly wrong. (My film school buddy watched a DVD that I had made and was amazed that the home user could do some of the stuff that used to be restricted to the elite.)

PowerPoint has made business-style software that is more than just word processing accessible to students who traditionally would not take business electives. Each one of my students became proficient in content-driven PowerPoint before they left my classroom.

Now, I can’t mention PowerPoint without the ultimate PowerPoint comedian, Don McMillan.

And while we’re on technology…thanks for messing up the iPhone with your greed, AT&T.

Izzy, Phevos, and Athena: Future Microsoft Help Mascots?

He walks in, the wind blows the dust, and the goblins OK Corral it. And then when you win? The little old lady, the only inhabitant of the village, opens up her door to thank you.

It totally makes up for the hours I spent pushing ice blocks in the Ice Palace. Twilight Princess is very cool.

Next week I will be transferring people’s Turkey footage. I hate those cameras that record straight to DVDs because I can never get the files off of the DVD and people just hand me the DVD and say, “Make it so.” Gimme Super 8 any day.

I have also had to explain this process more than once a week recently, so here it is for everyone’s enjoyment.

An excerpt from an e-mail that I wrote today:

I don’t have the DVD project anymore, just the DVD (like what you have).

What you could do to get the footage is this:

1. Play the DVD on a regular player.
2. Hook up the output of the DVD to the red/white/yellows of a camcorder.
3. Plug the camcorder into the computer on VCR (VTR) mode without a tape in it (you may have to adjust settings based on the camera).
4. You should now be able to capture what is coming from the camera, which is from the DVD player.

Convoluted? Perhaps. But as a junior high teacher who does video projects I’ve had to improvise on the spot.

But me? What concerned me most? (Besides the ’623′ be representin’?)

Chris Daughtry…do ye need eyeliner?

And I never knew Randy Jackson served in the military. What rank are those epaulets?

Do you like pajunk jumping out of corners at you?

Have you ever tried to punch a ghost?

Are you tired of sleeping?

My brother got F.E.A.R. for the PS3 today. You can’t say we weren’t warned. (What’s really funny was that I was checking out Wario Ware Smooth Moves. There is somewhat of a difference.)

If I had to describe the game in twenty words, I would describe it as a “fling the controller to the ground and cry like Neville Chamberlain and then pick it back up again four times” good time.

You are a super cop hunting ghosts and zombies. You have a machine gun (which still makes you feel naked) and a flashlight. It truly does have the feel of a horror cinematic experience. (Down to the indistinguishable voices in the head.) Where it diverges is the ability to scissor kick and jump.

But!

It had me scared.

I will call my brother in two days just to make sure that he’s feeling alright.

Any time that the principal can say, “You go through this every day.” about me is a good time.

To say any more would create spoilers to some degree.

So, to continue.

Fun because it has some of the comic book camera shots from the second movie. Remember Doc Ock going crazy in the recovery room and it switches to Evil Dead Behind The Tentacle POV? There’s some of that, including Venom picking up a martini and dancing in a jazz club. Yeah, I’m being serious.

All of my favorite characters returned: Sam Raimi, Bruce Cambell (who keeps repeating, “I am French” and grunting), Tobey Maguire, and some Kirsten girl. Gwen Stacy shows up, so any big Spidey fans know that they’re treating the fans, just like how the professor is missing an arm.

It is a lot of stuff packed into one movie. I had heard that Tobey didn’t want to make a Spider-man 4 so they made it longer. Third movie = three villains. If Tobey doesn’t do it, I just hope Marvel doesn’t DC/Clooney it up.

I think it’s funny that Topher Grace is playing Eddie Brock because I used to think that Tobey Maguire and he were the same person.

“Let’s try a different approach…Incredible!”

- A sarcastic Simon Cowell

From ponyhawk to Smooth Criminal, Sanjaya Malakar shows up in a white suit with slick hair.

“Welcome to the universe of Sanjaya!”

- Sanjaya

Yeah, he said it. On Tony Bennett night, even. These are my songs that they’re mutilating.

At least the Transformers trailer was funny….was it supposed to be funny?

Why am I not watching Dancing with the Stars? It has Jedi Joey and a Fortuna.

Well, like my good friend John McClane used to say…”Live free or die hard.”

He would usually say this after screaming “yipee kayay ay” and jumping from an exploding building.

(Too funny. The Mac guy/GalaxyQuest nerd is helpful in fighting terrorists. “Mom! This is a most inopportune time!” “Command Center? It’s a basement!”)

Yes, he killed a helicopter with a car. From the guys that brought you blowing up a skyscraper with a computer tied to a swivel chair.

Meet the Robsinsons is actually a pretty fun movie, especially if you are a fan of animation history and inventions. We saw it in 3D and it actually enhanced the movie instead of taking away from it. My favorite parts were the fades. Different depths transitioned at different times. Beautiful.

The jokes are actually pretty funny. In a 5-minute stretch of film we are bombarded with a dog whose insurance doesn’t cover contacts, a life-size toy train, an uncle who shoots himself and meatballs out of a cannon, a 400 pound couch potato who “works out”, a 3D rendered Tom Selleck, potted plants that compete for which side’s doorbell will get rung by the visitor, and a mom who is the bandleader for genetically altered frogs that sing like Frank Sinatra (a villain later in the film gets escorted by two suit-wearing frogs to the trunk of a car to “sleep with the fishes”). It’s a whirlwind of craziness/randomness without resorting to crude humor.

Also of note is the classic Chip and Dale/Donald Duck cartoon that has been made 3D (still cell drawings but now there are layers). Well worth the ticket price.

A leafy vegetable favored by chocobos. The taste is slightly bitter, but quite palatable, even for humes. Thought to give chocobos a slight buzz.

I hope that Sorbet and her other moogle-kind have a decent rehab clinic in Archadia.

Keith Richards, Knight of the Quickening Mist.

“There’s seriously something wrong with this kid.”

That’s quoted from my wife. You can see my reaction. It’s Gwen Stefani night (ska just like when they had Queen and Earth/Wind/Fire night), so I’m actually staying up to watch it. I didn’t think that I’d bust out the MacBook.

But dang!

“I don’t think it matters what we say anymore. You are in your own universe. Best of luck to you.”

- Simon Cowell

7 ponytails for good luck?

I’m wondering how Blake will fare. Last week the judges…ahh! Phil’s eyebrows are make-up! Last week the judges said, “I don’t know how you make things so…fresh!”

I figured out his secret:

Go “boom chicka chicka boom”, make a monkey face, and then spit into the microphone. That’s fresh and/or funky.

Sanjaya, Sanjaya…It’s like his hairdresser and coach know that no matter what, votefortheworst.com and the nation’s 12 year-old girls will ensure that Sanjaya moves on to the next round.

It’s like his hairdresser is taunting us.

Funny quote from my daughter (unrelated):

“This is my butt. You can call me crazy butt.”

Its full title is Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports. (Yeah, pretty cool.)

The cover may change when it is actually published. And yes, that is James Patterson’s autograph. I have to return this book to the librarian. I was just in the library when the book was delivered today.

It’s more bird-kid fun, with the Itex Corporation unleashing their doomsday device and Max researching her origins.

Much excited.

“Sure thing, Justin.”

“No, justice. Justice! Don’t hang up.”

For all of your Napoleon Dynamite-esque needs, click here.

But man! It’s a cool game. I especially like the Hunter animations. “Red Rotten Tomato…VANQUISHED!”

Very epic.

“A haiku:
I hate broccoli
I think it really sucks
Why is it not meat?”

- Deadpool

“Evil ninjas. They just won’t leave me alone.”

- Nick Fury

“I am a simple man. I just happen to rule a country and fight evil on a daily basis.”
“Was Wolverine in here? It smells of cheap cigars and beef jerky.”
- Black Panther

“I can be an action hero, too. It would be most enjoyable. ‘Anyone else want a piece of me?’”
- Uatu the Watcher

“Why do I always have to die?” [sound of flames] “Maybe the Assistant Producer shall feel the wrath of DARK PHOENIX!”

- Jean Grey

1. Whisky is what you’d call it if you were a Scotsman.
2. McCutchen was a guy from the Civil War. (He was promoted to Captain in the Ohio army in 1861. No mention of whiskey.) But MacCutcheon is what’s on the label that Desmond holds.
3. Aldo, the guard for the Others, was reading A Brief History of Space and Time by Stephen Hawking. Black Holes…the Black Hole with Maximillian and V.I.N.C.E.N.T…20,000 Leagues Under the Sea…Hermann Weyl thought of Wormholes and time conundrums in 1921 when researching electromagnetism…Swan station, where Desmond stayed, was experimenting in electromagnetism (the plane falling from the sky, right?)…time travel caused by magnets?
4. Desmond Hume is struggling through the same stuff that David Hume wrote about. Desmond thinks that he can change the future, or at least delay it. He keeps trying to save people, even though he knows that they will die. The crazy jeweler has the same type of time travel stuff and lets the guy die, knowing that he would die some other way, too (she’s seen them all, which suggests that she tried to help in the past). This lends itself to fatalism and a, “Meh.” outlook on life.
5. David Hume was Scottish as well. He was influenced by John Locke (a character’s name on LOST as well as a philosopher).
6. David Hume believed that causation was dumb.
7. Okay, so I may have oversimplified that. David Hume thought that causation lead to unmet expectations. Events are not connected to each other (Event A happens and so then Event B happens). They are merely random experiences. He argued against induction. Just because the sun rose yesterday does not mean it will rise today. Too many assumptions.
8. He was a nihilist who also said there was no designer of the universe because the designer would need a designer (and on into infinity). (Because there can’t be anything outside of the universe. I’m glad that the true designer is also an interacter even though he is beyond design. There is a distinction between creator and created. When we get to Heaven, we still won’t know everything because we’re not God. We’ll still learn, and imagine what we’ll learn, because we’re still human. We won’t angelfy or anything. (Yet we know some things now that the angels don’t know.))
9. Like Francis Galton (the Nazi-inspiring eugenicist) and Charles Darwin, David Hume had some interesting words to say about other races. Here’s from his essay, “Of Natural Characters”:
   (Begin non-Booyor sanctioned quote)
   “I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of which none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity; tho’ low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but ‘tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.”
   (End non-Booyor sanctioned quote)
   But he doesn’t support slavery. He just sees them as a separate species. Yeah, thanks, buddy.
10. Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Christiaan Barnard, and Ernest Everett Just could school him.
11. Hopefully Desmond (now my favorite character, since Mr. Eko died (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje played a character in ABC’s re-telling of 20,000 leagues under the sea)(where there was another character named MacCutcheon) does not share the same views as David Hume.
12. Desmond is living life upside down and backwards after being re-born-ish when blown out of the hatch. The polar bear comes back in the painting, the Buddha statue is upside down, and ‘ETSAMAN’ shows up again. (‘Namaste’ backwards.)
13. Mittelos is the name of the research group that approaches Juliet in the first episode of the season. ‘LOST time’, anyone? Mittelos also means ‘indigent’ – without material wealth – in German. Yeah, you can start laughing. It’s a Saturday.
14. ‘Namaste’ can mean:

• The Spirit in me meets the same Spirit in you.
• I greet that place where you and I are one.
• I salute the Light of life in you.
• I receive the free spirit in you.
• I recognize that within each of us is a place where peace dwells, and when we are in that place, we are One.
• My energy salutes your energy.
• The life in me sees and honors the life in you.
• May the life within you be strong.
• The light within me sees and honors the light within you.

Dark matter may have been found.

I think their advertising says it all:

Mac

Windows 

Here’s the biggest keynote presentation since man-eating hurricanes became inconvenient.

Ronald McDonald hijacked my MacBook.

As I explored the intruding page, I realized that you had to pay to use the Wi-Fi.
Here’s my hang-up. I stayed at a Comfort Inn this past weekend. They have Wi-Fi. They let you use it whether you are a customer or not (I started sending an e-mail as we drove up to the parking lot). I don’t think that they had a lot of crazy traffic since the speed was still pretty good.

I had purchased food at McDonald’s. I was ready to work. My browser could only access Arch Cards.

I can understand having a password for paying customers. I guess it makes sense that they can charge for their own stuff. It just doesn’t make customer service sense when the Bookman’s across the street had a free, open network.

Here’s the big hang-up:

1. Ronald does not realize how much of a benefit to society he could be. With free online applications like KBdocs , the $100 laptop is even closer to existence. Imagine every McDonald’s location having a free hotspot. Imagine that 802.11g would be everywhere the Arches were, as prolific as those littery straw sleeves are. Poverty could be decreased. Ronald McDonald does not want poor orphans to take online college courses. He wants to hold them down so that they will be content slaughtering rainforest devouring cows.
2. I’m really not down with mega corporations overtly jacking my software, especially something so deep rooted as my Safari home page. At least have the professional courtesy to covertly jack our computers a la Neuromancer/Idoru/Count Zero.
3. Do we have to pay for the water that we use in the bathroom?
4. Do you think this makes Ray Kroc smile?
5. It was raining and we were running out of time so I had to wait until after the second half to upload the site. Woe is me and all that. Faint.

My students asked me today what Firefox was. I said that it was the browser that all of the cool Internet kids use.

The intricate stats for the bloggh agree.

1. Instead of using an on-screen touchpad like the one from 2007 (which looks FF: Spirits Within-ish), it would connect to your very soul. Sure, it’s really cool to browse your playlists by flipping through album covers, scrolling through alphabetized lists, or the usual iPod standards, but I think it would be better to play what you were truly craving. As part of the iTunes EULA, they would have you sign an agreement to use Barry White for good and not evil. The 2008 iPhone has that.
2. The 2007 model sorts and color codes your text message conversations so that you can follow the threads. The 2008 model rips your friend out of their current space-time continuum and imports them into a vCard in your iPhone. This Pokephone dimensional pocket helps bring worlds together. And then smash them apart with matter/anti-matter anamolies.
3. The 2008 iPhone also searches for Zune networks of users, because Steve Wozniak has always been a fan of charity.
4. The 2007 iPhone has built in sensors to determine how much display energy is needed based on lighting, sensors to determine whether you’re viewing a webpage horizontally or vertically, and even a sensor to turn off the display if vertical motion matches the action of putting the phone up to your ear. The 2008 iPhone has an additional sensor to zoom in if you are not annoyingly close enough to the camera for a YouTube vlog.
5. Running off of the new version of OSX, the 2008 Zune Virus, which uses MapQuest to track your position and make purchases for H0T St0c4 in your area, is never an issue. Instead you can let the NSA track you voluntarily with Google Earth. You just have to enter your system password every time they want to intrude.
6. In 2007 ‘Apple Computers’ became ‘Apple’ because of all of the peripherals. In 2008 ‘Apple’ became ‘The Illuminated Majestic-12 Fruit of the Templar’ because of the world domination.
7. Each 2008 iPhone is hand-delivered to your doorstep by a clone of Captain O.W. Pappy Henderson to ensure the utmost customer service. You can pay additional shipping charges to have it delivered by Leroy Jenkins.

*An example of forward-thinking: Howard Rheingold would meet the Internet-inventing Al Gore in an abandoned factory, do his thang, and Steve Harvey would declare that the robot got served. Rheingold would then get a reality show on MTV called ‘The Mobile Life’, where he would open suitcases full of SMS devices until he made a deal and he would hook up with a South Korean girl to play Guild Wars into the wee hours of the morning.

Just keep that in mind if you need to upgrade your system to run Vista.

Here are the Windows Vista system requirements, from microsoft.com:

A Windows Vista Capable PC includes at least:
A modern processor (at least 800MHz1).
512 MB of system memory.
A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.
Windows Vista Premium Ready PCs
To get an even better Windows Vista experience, including the Windows Aero user experience, ask for a Windows Vista Capable PC that is designated Premium Ready, or choose a PC that meets or exceeds the Premium Ready requirements described below. Features available in specific premium editions of Windows Vista, such as the ability to watch and record live TV, may require additional hardware.

A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:
1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor1.
1 GB of system memory.
Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)2, Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.
40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
DVD-ROM Drive3.
Audio output capability.
Internet access capability.

Keep in mind that the stuff that they’re showing off is the Aero part of the system, so you’re looking at the “Premium” specs if you want what is shown in the advertisements. By “Aero”, I think they meant a watered-down version of “Leopard“, right?

What’s funny is that Macs run Windows, too. That was the selling point for me on getting a MacBook. I can run all of my programs.

(Except for a Full Throttle disc I got free from LucasArts. It couldn’t run on my Windows 95 IBM laptop from my freshman year of college, though.)

1. You don’t play well co-operatively with others. Your competitiveness has gotten the best of you and you only want to grind someone else into the ground, not have them on your team. The game is for you – they removed all co-operative elements of the game.
2. You thought that being an owner or having your own created team (elements found in almost every popular sports title right now) has sullied the purity of the genre and you only want models of real people.
3. In your quest for realism, you scoff at adjusting attribute adjusting sliders to determine stats for your created players. Instead, you would much rather have mini-games of windsprints, bench-pressing, and running drills. To add to the intensity, you don’t want to be able to retry for different stats.
4. It’s cool having a quarterback with a strength of 8 out of 100. Who wants a player with comparable stats to everyone in the league? It adds intrigue and “under-doggedness” to the match when you strain your arm completing a 10-yard pass.
5. Amidst all of the realism, you really want the players to bounce up and down rapidly and be really shiny.

My brother and I beat Resistance last night. Long live Nathan Hale! And you need to watch the credits all the way to the end.

While I’m fulfilling my moral duty, I think that I should warn you about pirates.

Off the coast of Roatan, Honduras there are a tiny set of mini-islands called the Las Islas Misquitos. When I was in Roatan, a guy warned me of pirates (mysteriously, no less). I was thinking “How fun! With their ‘Yo hos’ and their ‘Yar hars’.” And then he explained how his brother was shot with a machine gun from a speedboat by pirates.

Pirates are not always cool.

I’m going to go lie down.