Mesquite HS - Sonic Restaurant, NE corner of Val Vista and Williamsfield, 8-noon

Gilbert HS - 24 Hour Fitness, SE corner of Val Vista and Elliot, 9-noon

Desert Ridge HS - Valero Gas Station, SW corner of Guadalupe and Ellsworth, 9-noon

Today was the start of my journey to find a comparable place that wasn’t expensive, and I took someone’s advice and headed over to the Arrowhead mall salon in JC Penny’s. I was surprised that I could get in without waiting for an appointment, but then I realized why when I was greeted by this:

This woman, to me, looked like what would be produced if my grandma’s old chain smoking decrepit neighbor and Emperor Palpatine had a love match. I was gauged about 3 different times around the neck and ear, and the conversation went about like this: Haircutter- “Come with me.” Slade- “Ok.” and dead silence from then on until she pulled out a hair gel bottle called, and I kid you not, “Short Fit Sexy Hair…guaranteed for Hard up hair” and right after I got past the initial w…t…h.. reaction I said, “Don’t ever use anything with the word ‘Sexy’ in it on me.”

I ended up walking out and my hair looked like this:

All I’ve got to say about that experience is

I looked at the magazine and sure enough, the president-elect and his “lady” were on the front cover.  She was very excited about it.  Then she found another magazine:  “Oh, Mom, it’s Obama and his girls.”  Yep, another one with the future first family on the cover.

She continued to talk about Obama and all his ladies until we were headed out the door.  I finally asked, “Do you know who Obama is?”  She replied, “He’s that man… that man that won the American game.”

Are you ready for the film of 2009 that is going to rock your planetary orbit?

You at least have to be excited about Simon Pegg as Scotty?

How about Leonard Nimoy playing…Sarek?

I’m just excited to see James T. Kirk riding a motorcycle.

It almost makes up for when he was riding the horse…

Why???

Star Trek

In Theaters May 8, 2009

They come out of the head end room to tell me that the hard drive of the clock computer is fried. The clock computer that was working five minutes before they showed up?

We have no official clock right. What we do have, though, is an unofficial clock.

Many times the secretaries will receive complaints if the slightest thing is wrong with the clock. You can imagine the phone calls when a clock is missing from instruction for an entire day.

Here’s how the daffy librarian made a temporary fix: (Peter and Slade, prepare the facepalm.)

In a step-by-step list, for all of those times a school is depending upon you to free them from looking at their wrists:

1. Find an old iBook
2. Connect it to Wi-Fi (and all of the fun stuff that comes with that)
3. Try a screensaver with the clock and realize it’s too small for a TV from across the room
4. Go to Google, like the double-standard librarian that you are
5. Find a Google gadget, preferably a simple one (and not the Bush or Twilight countdown ones)
6. Hook a component cable from the closed circuit system into the iBook
7. Turn off all screensavers
8. Zoom in on the iGoogle home page
9. Press Apple + Shift + 4 to get ready to take a screen shot (and move the mouse out of the way while zoomed in)
10. Dim the monitor but not the output
11. Laugh at the fact that your school clock now says “Simple Clock” and has screen coordinates in the top left corner of the TV
12. Build a hang glider out of chewing gum foil and an almanac

We’ve also had some good news.

photo by Cheryl Evans/ Arizona Republic

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!

This time, my daughter is signed up for preschool.

So you know, registration opens at 10am. Last time the class was full at 10:06am. We are in, thankfully. I can’t imagine if you tried using the touchtone phone option.

“Press 1 for….aaah!! Hurry up! Hurry!!”

I’m sad that I have to take down Vanguard. It’s not deleted, it’s just switched to Private. Sorry about that, Dad. Feed Stealers had locked into the Vanguard category and would be automatically adding my content to their site every time I posted. Not cool.

First Lorrd.com jacking my Star Wars posts, now this. When it’s my Star Wars content…meh. That’s my fanboy rant. But when it’s a book I want to finish before The Big Birthday?

The doctor makes his way down a safe road
as the delivered package begins to explode.

Impressive.

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.

1. You’re still using Internet Explorer.
2. You put up with IE’s rendering of my Sire for Hire sidebar slideshow.

I guess IE decided to render my Flash slideshow with a CLICK sound every time a new slide appeared. Tres 1970s Pentagon briefing… I have now simplified that ad (as well as turned the azcentral embedded video into a link (why autoplay? Is this Xanga?)).

For everyone’s information:
Monday Night Football, you are on notice.

I left my school at 3:30pm to visit my brother across town. I just arrived. 6:00pm.

Across town as in up the mountain to Flagstaff across town?

YA news: The Clique (very popular series by Lisi Harrison) is going to be a straight-to-DVD release on Nov. 18. Will it be better than Stormbreaker and Eragon? It’s a little easier with more “Did you see what she’s wearing?” and less “I, the Shadeslayer, banish thee to the depths of depthiness with my swordy sword!”

“You can wipe a memory. But can you wipe away a soul?”

Most definitely I am excited bout Dollhouse, Master Predictor. February 13, my friends.

But a production shutdown? When will they learn that…
Devin, clue them in about signal stoppage.

Every time you hear a cacophony of metal hitting metal in the video, that is J and I “cheering” with strained voices.

Also, the Scion has a feature that rocks. Some readers may view it as archaic, but I view it as borderline arcane: the exclamation point. When ! shows up, it is necessary to check tire pressure. 35 psi for the front, 32 psi for the back. This is in the comparison to the, “Eh, looks alright. Maybe fill up that other side a bit more, now that I see it” that the Reliant inspired.

[Booyor], you might be interested to see the map of Tea as a North/South Litmus Test.

Also of interest: A tourist map of Gotham.

What is your favorite Michael Crichton work? (I opened it to that in case you wanted movie/TV show/political critique/cookbook)

Secondary question:
Did anyone else know that he was 6′9″? I found that out today. That ROCKS!

Update: Did you know that he was working on Jurassic Park 4 and a re-make of Westworld?

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:

So now our future Presidents have spent $8 per voter to get me to choose them. On the positive, I think we’ll see record numbers of voter turnout (and you will hear all about our Day of Ruing tomorrow).

Two questions, though:

1. Could anyone actually become President without spending more than $1,000?
   (Or even a million?) What kind of system is it when only rich/famous people can become President? Are they more qualified? (Okay, so that was all question one.)
2. What could they have spent that $8 on?

Right now I can’t tackle what’s hugely wrong with a media-drunk information society voting. But I can make some suggestions on what to spend the $8 on next time if you’re buying for me.

1. Wii Points - I could have gotten a decent Virtual Console game from the NES, Genesis, or Super NES. Ninja Gaiden? Hello?
2. 8 double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s - Hey, I’ll foot the sales tax. And if you’re going to one of those crummy McDonald’s, I’ll settle for the Hot n’ Spicy if they don’t have double cheeseburgers. In Albuquerque, add some green peppers. Charleston - Mickey D’s Sweet Tea
3. A matinee movie ticket - We might even have enough left over to fill up a Harkins cup
4. A RedBox keeper - Sure, it doesn’t have the fancy packaging. But at least it’s Iron Man and not Let Me Blame the Other Guy…Man.
5. Two dozen donuts
6. 6 vanilla mocha RockStars - Mmmm…I love elections.
7. A book - When Hunger Games comes out in paperback, you owe me. Or get my library another copy of Bogus to Bubbly.
8. 8 songs on iTunes- Would that cover every Weird Al polka medley?
9. Health Care for a kid in Honduras for a month
10. 800 pennies - Put them in a sock and I’ll get you the votes you need.

These are just off the top of my head, fellows. If you’re going to make policy, at least send me a better gift.

Update: By the time we’re done, it will be an estimated $5.3 billion spent on everyone’s (the Hillarys, Dodds, Romneys of the world included) campaigns. $5.3 billion. Yeah, the GDP of Nicaragua.

Since I’ve been homebound (but loving the extra time with my youngest (who is now Bronx cheering me)), I’ll share with you what it looks like to have Halloween in New York.

Okay, so it’s not ALL complete lameness on Oct. 31. Check out the West Village (as caught by Jason’s iPhone):




Crazy night.

I propose a hypothesis: the number of trips to Home Depot will be directly proportional to the importance of the repair. After the third visit to Home Depot within a two hour span, I realized that it was a good thing to get the sink fixed.

Water is flowing freely, flowing like…water, I guess.

A neighborly gent commented, “Ah. The joys of home ownership.” I muttered under my breath a less than joyous response. Tonight, though, we sat down to watch Kit Kittredge (keep in mind the demographics of my house) and people were losing their homes to foreclosure.

In a time where people are struggling and some losing their houses, I’m thankful for what I’ve been given.

Now to shower and get the iron shavings out of my hair and eyes.

Addition: This is the first time where I’ve been helped by a sales assistant at Home Depot. I was helped three separate times, representing the three trips. I think it’s my Amish beard. I’m no longer a suspected thief but now a reputable barn raiser.

For all of you politicos: I truly have figured out why politicians do that goofy hand-thumb thing. It helps you to accentuate a point without a condescending finger point or an aggressive fist. I employed it in my speech today.

The fashion show went really well. Three journalists from the outside world attended , as well as a whole bunch of students that had a lot of fun. (Check this weekend’s editions of multiple papers for signs of giant, bearded librarians.)

We raised a lot of money (although not nearing last year’s amount…I think because the teacher wasn’t there to donate to) and I continue my conflicted existence: I think Halloween is one of the dumbest holidays (give me a flipping day off if it’s a holiday) and the fact that I want to be a leader on campus in reaching past ourselves. Mission accomplished. Many teachers also want copies of their intros, just like they asked last year, but I had to admit that some I change on the fly, while I’m emceeing. Like the teachers that dressed as the Spice girls. I had originally written on the index card:

They’ll tell you what they want, what they really, really want
a tasty croissant and a trip to Vermont

I looked down at the card and my brain said, “This is stupid!” Thankfully I was able to gain some guidance from Five Iron Frenzy’s So Far So Bad:

I thought I’d write an epiphany, how something good is changing me, but I guess we dodged some passing fad, it looks like it’s so far, so bad. This song is rad. You could ask your dad. He won’t be mad. This song is stupid.

Love those guys. We of the Flesh Eating Monkeys persuasion opened for them back in ‘97, back when ska walked the land and everyone was rocksteady with each other.

And, by the way, the wizard needs food badly.

Slade - I didn’t know that there was a separate campaign mode for co-op in Resistance 2, complete with class-based interactions that morph the objectives based on your different training. Yeah, Thanksgiving intrigues me. (Which, if you are taking notes, is such a holiday that you get two days off.)

Click here for awesome Resistance 2 videos, Slade.

I typed up a parent letter that got sent home today. It read “one of the way’s we can…”. Argh!!

And then I just noticed this in my fashion show costume spreadsheet:

Back to writing those intros…

Finally, it’s a reality…Guitar Hero: Metallica brings the music of one of my favorite rock bands of all time to the gaming systems. Ever since the original Guitar Hero came out I always thought that the franchise isn’t really complete until they pick up some of the greatest and most challenging hits from Metallica. There’s nothing like ripping through songs like “Enter Sandman” and “Master of Puppets”.
The only thing I really hope they include is some sort of bonus tracks for the Symphonic-enhanced versions of their songs. Next up…Guitar Hero: Genesis! (Not likely but I’d be one of the first to pick that up)

*Nathan Hale’s face as he yells, “I’M NOT A FRIGGIN’ ONE MAN ARMY OVER HERE”

Resistance 2 is on the way with a release date of November 4th. I can’t wait for this game to come out, and I can’t believe it’s finally here. With Square-Enix having betrayed their fanbase and crossed the lines by having Final Fantasy on both XBox 360 and PS3, this game is the only thing that PS3 owners can hold over the XBox owners’ heads.

Then it hit me after dinner. index.php was what I put up today. index.html was from the weekend. I hadn’t removed it from the server and the browser defaulted to it instead of the .php. I had wondered why it wasn’t updating.

I’m sure this has happened to all of you.

Simple solution: delete the old file.

Also, The Conduit may have a publisher. On the Sega ftp site, they had a folder up for The Conduit, suggesting by their web presence that they will be hosting The Conduit.

1. Missile Command
2. You Got the Touch/Transformers theme song
3. An action montage choreographed to Rush

And I enjoyed Heroes tonight. Finally, a supervillain. “I don’t think I’m better than everyone. I am.”

I’m curious to see next Monday night. Ruing? I think so. SNL advertisements for/against candidates the night before the election. I’d be interested in a slam tally. I wish I could say that the American people aren’t influenced by media, but…

Starclimber comes out in February of next year. It’s a lot of fun, in a “Canadian Victorian space exploration” sort of thing.

Definitely met expectations, unlike:


Check out the full story on Cake Wrecks, my wife’s and my answer to LOLcats in time-burning.
Updates:

1. Youngest does in fact have croup. A visit to the urgent care late last night resulted in a shot of MGH like her father before her (and nothing like Mohinder). She’s doing better today. Warm showers, cold breathing treatments. Tons of fun.
2. She’s going even crazier on the tottering/standing thing.
3. And I now have digital proof about the cuteness: all me
   

   MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter

4. I had forgotten about Apple’s original logo until I was looking through a company bio book I have on my shelves:
   
   Rockin’ the Apple portable in 1989:
   
   Yeah, I like my Macbook better.
5. The district site is coming along swimmingly. I spent yesterday afternoon staring at CSS pages. Here’s one of the resources that I used. Feel the power of CSS!
6. “Just get me back to 1972. I’ll walk from there.” I love pirates who don’t do anything.

Well, Mrs. L is blogging about all things cakes (is there anything else to life? I think not.) and she has great recommendations, like Cake Wrecks.

This is a blog that is just as disturbed as I am about the misspelling of ‘congratulations’

(and bad typography)

choking muppets

and a bridezilla that Jeremy and I may have seen before

Wow.

How do we explain it, Mike?

And should we tell Devin that Gabriel now runs part of the galaxy?

One of the more difficult challenges is finding a way to highlight the power and prestige of a veteran Jedi without embracing a stylish flair that’s completely at odds with the Jedi mentality.

Beautiful prose.

Later, I painted over a giant chip in my library:

See if you can find it.

Also, should my district have given me access to a district-sponsored domain name?

District Logo Rev 2.0:

My thoughts? Well, for the stormtrooper hoodie, let’s do a comparison:

$98

$10 Wal-Mart

$0.99 (Also from Wal-Mart)
Total cost: $10.99 vs. $98
And yet in both scenarios, you look like a doofus.

But the Mandalorian hoodie? I would walk up to the florist, buy flowers for my wife, and ask, “Will they survive transport? They’re no good to me dead.”

My wife wants this one:

but I told her to hold out for it in pink. And not $98.

This one = what?

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.

24 Hour Comics Day is where a group of artists/storytellers get together in one location and bust out 24 comics, one per hour. (I wonder if that’s how so many Marmaduke comics get made. Can you imagine if Gary Larson had done this?)

I can predict that they’d get pretty loopy pretty quickly. Here’s my attempt at the comics:

Hour 1

Click for full view

Hour 2

Click for full view

Here you can see the loopiness set in. I crunched 23 comics into one. There’s a ninja dinosaur bowling, taunted by a zombie robot, while being encouraged by a manga Cheshire cat. Yeah, we moved our drummer today. I got kinda tired. Maybe next year I’ll be more prepared, with the Wacom tablet instead of a Sharpie and a piece of printer paper.

Do my longtime readers remember my stealth plane?

But to copy an entire article? Not cool.

So, here’s the experiment. I looked up lorrd.com to see who owns it:

Ehsan Ahmad Rehan
G8 Model Town
Lahore
Punjab
042
PK

I removed his e-mail and phone number to give him another chance to correct the situation. I have e-mailed him.

I also commented on one of the sites:

Now comes the experiment: will lorrd.com automatically rip this article and put it on theirs? I’m curious.

I finished Force Unleashed today. There are some moments with the Apprentice theme that the same feelings occur. It does capture the Star Wars mood. And a battle damaged Vader versus the Apprentice, with Apprentice screaming, “You should have killed me when you had the chance!” as you are locking Wii Remotes quickly and savagely to push Vader back - yeah, fanboy moments galore (ever want to throw a squad of stormtroopers into a test-firing Death Star chamber?). Nice job on fanboy moments, LucasArts…now to make a classic game. We’ll see about replay value. It’s pretty much paced like a movie.

Today was the funeral for an old student from our junior high and on Sunday I have the funeral for my friend Chuck. If you see me in person and wonder if my heart is worn out, it is. Today was a good day for Star Wars. (On that topic - when are we meeting, paper and pencil friends? (Non-gamers have now assumed that I make origami companions.))

The “Happy Tech Could Help” Portion
Hey, the message from Renaissance Bible Church is up. We put it up earlier this week, but I got distracted by a Legend of Zelda theme that burned my brain. Check out their podcast for the message. Some context: the local church body that isn’t connected to Wachovia is connected to Lehman Brothers, so Matthew 6 is kinda gutsy and needed. He’ll mention how a “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” mentality is like telling someone to not think of something: they automatically think of that unwanted thing. To demonstrate, he mentions some “meal” involving bacon, syrup, and I’m assuming a defibrillator. For my non-Southern readers, substitute a steak (or, in my case, a toss up between sashimi and a Hot Pocket (although the Pillsbury Toaster Strudels bring back good memories)(Did I mention that I lost 10 pounds unintentionally using Wii Fit?)).

The Baked Goods Portion
Really, you should check out that Toaster Strudel website. Flaky crust Flash player hotspots. Peter laughs then cries.

The Proud Father Portion
My oldest got complimented in pre-school today. The teacher sat my wife down to tell her that my oldest is very artistically advanced. Woo! My daughter also has made up a word. To remember which feet her shoes go on, she calls them a backwards butterfly. Her word for that?

doval (n) - DOH-val a backwards butterfly; usage - “To remember which shoes go on which feet, ask yourself: Does this look like a doval?”

The first time she said it I thought she said dovin basal. (Refer back to The Star Wars Portion.)

The “Okay, So I’m Not Quite So Jaded, Just Cautious” Section
I went back to read my reviews of Obama’s Audacity of Hope (Review 1, 2, and 3) Even then I was jaded about this election, it was just in haiku form.

I remember enjoying the book, for the most part, but finding some key parts that bugged me. Check out the 1, 2, and 3 links for more detail. His peer evaluations for teachers has some flaws and he does clump in National Right to Life with the NRA, which makes me kinda cringe. I do (non-sarcastically) like Obama’s megalomania quote.

Innocent blood and a distaste for extremes: I wish we could take an average of the two parties. My big issue is abortion, plain and simple. It’s like a William Wilberforce abolitionist issue with me. Where were the slaveholder’s rights? Sometimes we have to infringe when it’s life-death issues. This is not a Republican/Democrat thing, because you can bet if Giuliani (or, my goodness, Bob Packwood) was the Republican option, I would not stick with party ties. Being a father of a daughter born a month early and the brother-in-law to a guy born two months early, we must be very cautious as to when we determine a person is a person. Yes, I agree with Obama that we need to increase the Family and Medical Leave Act to help with the financial burden of having a child. (Although I have more than one co-worker who is spending way too much money to adopt a child…there’s a disconnect.) Something that I think is forgotten is that rich women have abortions, too.

Check out my good friend from college (Mike, you’ll want to click) who just got accepted to be an adoptive parent.

I’m also a big proponent of feeding the poor (taking care of widows and orphans and all that). The government and big business do not have a good track record with this, both Democrat and Republican. This is why two of my mentors, Randy Alcorn and Don Miller, are sometimes at odds. (Although now seeing Donald Miller’s “Mentoring For President ‘08″, I dig Don even more.)(To add info that Don Miller doesn’t have is that McCain goes to North Phoenix Baptist. I can’t see into either candidate’s heart, though.)

Check the voting records for Obama and McCain for more details.

Check out Alcorn’s and Miller’s blogs for great insights from great writers.

And continue to be annoyed by Internet rumors that smear and/or relate to how Bill Gates will pay me a million dollars for forwarding that e-mail.

Editor’s note: Can anyone do a word count? I may have rambled more than Slade rambling about Shaq. (Messing with you, fool. CAN YOU DIG IT?!)

Here are the items:

1. Sonic Heroes
2. Parasite Eve
3. Myst III
4. Star Trek: Invasion
5. Legends of Wrestling II