Updates

Last night I installed the shed light. It was actually quite easy to do and I didn't have to drill a hole to feed the cord through. We have to vents on either end of the shed and I just fed it through the vent slot. It gives off decent enough light, not enought to work by, but enough to go in the damn shed and find what you are needing at light without tripping over crap by flashlight. We need three more fence panels, one-two more posts, and all the lumber for the deck and we are ready to go. Just have to get my Father-in-Law to bring his trailer down so we can haul the stuff home from Lowes. They will deliver it, but it's 65 bucks. I'll buy Doyle lunch as payment. We've rented some interesting movies, and have only watched one so far. Smoking Aces.....a great mob/action movie with an interesting twist and some bizarre characters. Reminds me of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Great cast as well. We've also rented Children of Men and Pan's Labryinth. Haven't watched them yet, but looking forward to tonight.

The Kids Are All right

I will upload the picture later of our two "other" children getting along just peachy now. As some of you may know, we have a 1 year old female, black, bob-tail cat named Panther. As you may also know, we were adopted by an approximately 2 year old, white and orange spotted, fuzzy male cat whom Olivia named Pumpkin. We found out that Pumpkin may have previously lived in our house and that the former owners just left him and moved out. We have several bird feeders in our yard because it's nice to be outside and listen to nature basically.....instead of the hum of a freeway and if you've never seen a Cardinal in person; wow! One gorgeous bird. We even have a Woodpecker that comes around. Well as cats are want to do, Pumpkin likes to hunt birds. Loves to hunt birds, a lot. He plays with them, doesn't really kill and eat them. Our bird feeders have become a Kitty Buffet if you will. We had been planning on bringing Pumpkin in the house, but weren't sure how Miss Thang would react (Panther can be a grumpy cat at times). The last straw was the other day when Olivia and I were in the house and we heard this God awful screaming sound.....we ran outside to see Pumpkin with a Mockingbird in his maw and it squirming. Olivia ran to the bird's rescue. It lived and Pumpkin was denied a toy. So much for that Animal Planet documentary I was going to film called "He Who Stalks the Yard!!". Miss Panther was sitting on her little play gym when we decided to let Mr.. Pumpkin in. He wandered into the house and Panther leapt off of the gym to sprint across the house to see this new "intruder". Now mind you, for the past several months Pumpkin has been hanging around outside the house. Sleeping on the back porch, etc. Panther is used to seeing him outside. The two of them stood nose to nose, sniffing each other. He took a swat at her, she swatted back and grabbed him and rolled him over. That was it. They backed off from each other, and were kind of leery but were generally okay with each other's presence in the house. Now they constantly play and engage in the running of the 1rst Annual Feline 500 whose course goes from our bedroom to the living room, dining room and through the kitchen. Little 2-5 pound animals make a lot of noise running across the floor. They also like to use the long crinkle tunnel we bought Panther as part of the track. There is the sound of muted paws on carpet running (kind of a dull thump thump thump) and then the sound of aluminum foil being crinkled as they shoot through the tunnel. It scares the crap out of you when you aren't expecting it. Little shits. On Saturday night we had the "bed controversy". Panther may be Olivia's cat, but she loves Cathy. Oh my God does she love Cathy. She absolutely insists on Cathy picking her up, and putting her over her shoulder like a small child. Panther will then rub her head in Cathy's hair. She's such a big baby. Whenever she gets a chance to sleep wherever (Liv likes to take her to her room with her) she will climb up in our bed and go under the covers and cuddle against Cath's legs. Well Saturday night Pumpkin decided he liked the big bed and hopped up there to sleep. Oh Panther was annoyed. She kept running in, jumping on top of our headboard and glaring down at Pumpkin. They ended up working it out. He can share the bed apparently as long as he doesn't cuddle up with Panther's Human. He doesn't care as he usually sleeps at the foot of the bed centrally located away from our feet. It helps that we have a King Size bed. Two humans and two cats, one small and one medium sized. The picture I will be uploading shows the two of them sleeping on the rug by the back door right next to each other. Heck on Sunday morning they ate with their bowls a few inches apart. Cats, gotta love 'em.

Ciao for now.

Fun weekend

Wow!!! As freaking hot as it was this past weekend, I had a blast! The regular June Airsoft game was Saturday, and only 50 folks showed up. This was nice. I like small games like this because the field becomes more open and you can work on your sneaking, etc while you play. Also all of the whiners and cheaters and bitchers didn't show up. There were zero complaints and I never once heard "call your hits". My buddy Justin's advice worked. He said to drink Gatorade the night before then again in the morning as well as drinking lots of water. It worked as I wasn't dehydrated all day. I went through an 8 pack of Gatorade but wasn't dehydrated. Nice. Sunday Cat and I went fishing at Percy Priest Lake. Nothing was biting because it was just damn hot, but we enjoyed just sitting on the little fishing dock nestled in the trees staring out at the lake taking in the sights. We were being stalked by two turtles in the water. You'd see this little black spot (the head) sticking up and moving along, then it would duck under the water. One of the turtles was fascinated by Cathy's day-glo orange bobber. It kept swimming around it no matter where she cast it out to and no matter where it drifted to. It was quite amusing. We called it quits at 11:30 and went shopping a Lowes and Home Depot. We've decided that "the fence project" would take way too long and be way too much hassle, and moving that fence six inches is what has been holding up our pond digging and deck building, etc. So we decided to leave it as is, put the one panel back up, get two more and be done with it. We bought the basic stuff for the pond yesterday. Liner, UV Filter (pretty damn sweet actually.....it constantly bathes the water coming through it in UV rays which help to kill the bacteria.......this is after the water passes through two filters and bio balls......), pump for the pond so we can pass the water through the UV filter and back into the pond as a waterfall, and a small self-contained pump/fountain. We plan to get a difuser to attach to the fountain pump so we can run a line to a spitting frog or something like that. The reason you put a spitting statue and/or fountain is so you can keep the water moving without having to run the big main pump/waterfall all day long. Saves you energy. Now we just need to keep digging the hole and it will be time to lay out the liner and all that. Whew!!! Fun fun fun. We also got a solar powered shed light. It's a 30 dollar solution to the lack of lighting in our shed. There is no electrical run to it so we had to take an extension cord, horsehoe nail it to a beam in the carport and then when we need light in there we run the cord to the outlet by the back porch and then plug into one of the two work lights we have (you know the ultra bright halogen ones.....) and we have light. It's a pain. This light uses LED's and has an on/off switch (so it's not on all the time). You mount the light, the mount the panel and run the cord to the light. Simple. We will see how much light it puts out.

The Discourser has moved

He's renamed his blog address because he has purchased his own domain The Discourser.com. Check the links for The Discoursers new home.

An Angry Mob!!!

Are those pitchforks and torches I see!!! So apparently the "higher ups" decided awhile ago that we needed a new timecard system for our Company. Let me give you a bit of background....remember the last Corporate Culture entry I blogged about (go look it up if you want, I'll wait)? As some of you may know I work for a Company called Amec. It is an Engineering firm like BKF was, but that's where the similarities end. With Engineering or Architecture or Law firms the "product" is professional people's "time". In other words, if a client hires us, it's because they want us to "engineer" something. For example, I bill the Geotechnical Department. They use their time determining the structural integrity of something, or how best to go about stopping a slow leak in a big dam that if left unchecked could possibly flood Nashville. The guys and gals run computer sims, do site visits, etc. The educated opinion and facts at the end of it all are the "product" we sell. So to accurately account for the time spent, we use a bill rate table that is driven by a persons "class code" (or professional title, ie Field Tech level 8). Sometimes we have clients who don't like our rates, but are huge clients and so sometimes one has to propose lower rates to get the business. Simple capitalism basically. If you and I are selling the same exact widget, I will make more sales and therefore my profit if I sell my widget lower than yours. Well apparently the powers on high thought they knew how things run in the company. (don't they always....I think they do crap like this to justify their existence and thereby their large salaries....but I digress). Did they ask us why the different codes? No. They know why....uh huh....sure you do. They were tired of people overwriting their codes (I'm still not sure why....they always give some ambigious answer...gee that never happens in a big corporation) so they picked new timekeeping software that doesn't use those codes. Great!!! Now we have to scramble to find another way to do billing. IDIOTS!!!! Let's just piss off our multi-million dollar clients and make ourselves look like fools. My Project Managers and Unit Managers are out for blood. I've told them they are preaching to the choir. Even my boss, Ms. Company Line herself, thinks this new system is shit. It gets implemented on June 25 th. Watch this space for many rants to come.

Ciao for now.

Giant Robots!!!

Transformers: More than meets the eye.
Transformers: Robots in Disguise.

Check out this pic. Yep in a few weeks the Transformers movie is coming out. The effects look great. It's also a Michael Bay movie (he of the massive explosions and awesome car chases) so it should be great.

Speaking of Speed Racer

Look at that man!!! It's the Mach Freaking 5 baby!!!! This had to be one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid. Now they are making a live action movie.....John Goodman is playing Pops Racer....it's going to be good. If they took the effort to make the Mach 5 look as good as that, then it should be good.

Ani-Monday

Anime, for those that don't know is an adult form of animation from Japan that derives it's storylines from adult themed comic books called Manga.  Most are action packed and are about soldiers or samurai and such.  Some are like teen or young adult romance novels.  Others have supernatural themes.  The most common Anime that most people know about but never realized it was Anime is Speed Racer.  Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion (yes I'm old enough to have watched that as a kid) are also examples of Anime.  The late night adult version of Cartoon Network called Adult Swim has been showing Anime for years now.  Some of it really good, and others just plain weird (but Anime is like that.).  Last night on Sci Fi channel they premiered their new weekly Anime show called Ani-Monday.  They ran the first US showing of Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society.  This is the latest installment in the Stand Alone Concept storyline based on Masumune Shirow's Anime movie Ghost in the Shell.  I've seen both movies, the second was very slow and a bit boring, and both Stand Alone Concept tv series and have been wanting to see this one ever since I found out it existed.  It was great.  The story of Ghost in the Shell is, at it's core, a philosophical look at the computerization of mankind.  Just read my blog entries about Cell phones and such.  Masumune was right.  The first movie was about a counter terrorist organization in the Japanese Government called Section 9.  It takes place in year 2030.  During that period of time, mankind has become cyberized.  Everyone has had their brains updated with cyber implants: computer parts that help our brains learn faster and help us surf the net via a cable connected to our brains (the plug in is on the back of the neck).  Cyber crime is rampant and it is the most heinous of crimes to hack someone's brain and take them over....this is referred to as Ghost Hacking (the Ghost representing the Soul which in Masumune's definition is that which makes us uniquely us).  The team members of Section 9 are all full conversion cyborgs (meaning they have "prosthetic bodies" with human brains).  A cyborg is basically a robot with a human brain.  The robot bodies look human, feel human but are comprised of a metal skeleton and no organs.  The only thing human about them is the brain and spinal column transplanted into the cyborg chassis.  The brain is also contained in a computerized metal casing (to protect it of course).  Masumune's philosophical question is (and this is echoed in the thoughts of one of the main characters, The Major) does the soul or Ghost of the person get transferred from the original meat body to the prosthetic one?  If it does, what changes does it go through or does it even survive the process?  One can look at it in this fashion; the more tech reliant we become, the less human we become.  Think about it.  Teens with cellphones.  They spend countless hours texting each other when the device they are texting on can be used to make a phone call so you can talk to that person.  Typing an impersonal electronic message has replaced face to face conversation.  Sounds less human to me.  In the movie the protagonist is called the "Puppet Master" because he is Ghost Hacking people.  At the end of the movie he hacks into a cybernetic Tank and goes on a rampage.  The Major, Matoko Kusanagi, a cyborg from Section 9 hacks into the tank to stop it and ends up merging her consciousness with that of the Puppet Master and now roams the net as a disembodied Ghost (or soul).  Very deep and action packed.  Fans of the original movie asked permission of Masumune if they could work on a project that explores the characters of Section 9 before the events taking place in the movie.  He read the proposed storyline and agreed, very happy with what he read.  Thus was born Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the follow ups Stand Alone Complex: Second Gig and Solid State Society.  The characters are great in the show.  Aramaki is the head of Section 9 referred to as "Chief" or "The Old Man" at various times.  The teams leader is Matoko Kusanagi also known as The Major (although we are never sure if this is her rank or just a nickname.  I think it's her rank because she is often addressed as Major by Aramaki).  She is the character that ultimately ends up a disembodied Ghost roaming the net at the end of the first movie.  She is also the character that Masumune uses to voice his philosophy of the computerization of mankind.  Next up is Batou an American and former Army Ranger who no longer lives in what is called the American Empire....he is cyberized to the point that his eyes look like two camera lenses and not human eyes.  Side note: in the year 2030, the US is no longer the Economic power of the world after having bankrupted itself with it's expansionist ways.  Whoa.....pretty damn close to our present way of thinking.  Wonder if Masumune and Orwell have ever met????  Boma is a big burly cyborg who is a demo expert.  Pazu looks very human with a slim build.  He is the "Face Man" of the team.  Saito is the sniper, and he's bad ass.  He has a cyber eye that he covers with a patch because when he uses it he can link with a global satellite and use that in place of the scope on his sniper rifle.  Google Street View comes to mind.  Ishikawa is human looking too and he's the computer expert.  A Wizard class Hacker is the term used in the show.  Togusa is the most human of all.  The others come from military and intel backgrounds, Togusa is just a regular cop.  He's also still in his original body with the standard cyberbrain enhancements the only cyber he has.  Side note: Togusa is always being teased by Batou about not getting a prosthetic body and in the latest installment not only is he in charge of Section 9 in the Major's place (she retired) he also has been cyberized.  It affects him as everyone sees.  His tireless cyborg body makes it so he's becoming a workaholic and easily emotionally detached.  Another example of Masumune's theory on the dehumanization of mankind by tech.  Good stuff, and very deep.

 

Can't wait to see what they show next Monday night.

Catch Up

No silly people not Ketchup...... Anyway....Weekend Update time.....
Saturday was fun at A Cowboy Town. Liv had a blast going on a two hour trail ride (the child loves horses...then again what little girl doesn't???) and Cat and I got to canoe and fish.....it was too hot and the fish weren't biting. The food was great and the gunfight was way cool (they basically took it from the movie Tombstone.....). All in all a great place to hang out and have fun. We plan to go back. Sunday was the Airsoft Baby Shower...that's what I like to call it....yes a bunch of grown Men who play "Army" threw a Baby Shower for our buddy Justin and his Wife Dawn who are expecting their second child. None of the traditional games were played...Thank you Tina!!!.....but a good time was had by all. It was a great chance to visit with friends and spend a nice Sunday afternoon. Thanks to Bill and his Folks for the venue and Tina Braddock for throwing it all together. The Sopranos also wrapped up on Sunday night as well. Now I haven't seen it as I do not have HBO, but alot of people were disappointed. It just ended with a "you will never know what happens" kind of air.....anti-climatic....and from what I've read about David Chase, exactly what you should have expected from him. He apparently doesn't like to make typical TV. I will miss my Favorite Dagos....someone needs to do a show about an Italian Family that runs a restaurant....maybe do a Sopranos spinoff with Artie Bucco and his New Vesuvio Restaurant. That would be pretty good. You know, Italians and food and all....

Leave the gun, but take the cannoli...

Ciao for now.

The World is a Sad Place

So Porus Whoreton has been sent home on "Mansion Arrest", probably got Gucci to design her electronic monitoring device, after 3 "full" days of jail time for some undisclosed medical condition.  On another note, the troop surge that was supposed to bring victory to the war on terror has done what I predicted it would do: provide the insurgents with more targets to kill.  3,500 troops have died occupying the Country of Iraq.  That's 3,500 too many I say.  The war has been over for awhile now, yet we are still there, our troops relegated to traffic cops and getting blown up at checkpoints.  So which story was the buzz of every cable news channel last night?  You got it....Porus Whoreton and how disgusted everyone is with her getting preferential treatment because of who she is.  You want these useless wastes of oxygen to stop being news?  Then stop buying tabloids folks.  Let's put People, Us, Variety, The Enquirer all out of business.  Let's make sure that shows like Access, and the E Entertainment Network shrivel up and die.  Guess what?  If we did this, if a picture or glimpse of these idiots wasn't news, they get treated like the rest of us.  There's nothing wrong with being famous for doing great work.  Al Pacino is an awesome actor (hey Godfather was on TV last night.....) and was just given a Lifetime Achievement Award from some Actors organization.  Do you see constant pictures of Al on the news?  On the cover of magazines?  No.  If you do, it's because he attended some award show and they got his picture.  Hell even Jack Nicholson a man known for his wild ways, doesn't make the cover of magazines for that.  There is a way to behave as a celebrity and then there is Porus Whoreton, Alchy Lohan and other wastes of oxygen and time.  Our troops are dying for no reason in a far away land, our Government is bowing to the pressure of non-citizens to make them Citizens (fine, but the better pay some back taxes and all be taken off of Welfare and have their Government sponsored health care taken away.  Hell I've lived here all my life and I can't get it, so why should they.), the Oil Companies have bent us over and our raping away and no one is doing anything to stop them, the Office of Homeland Gestapos has been slowly stripping away our Civil Liberties since 2001 and we've been letting them, our "Leadership" for the last almost 8 years has been a joke, the gap between Church and State has slowly been narrowing to the point where it's hard to tell the difference.......all this crap is going on in our Country and in the World and instead of the cable news channels reporting on all of this, or doing some investigative journalism to find out why, what do we do?  I'm almost ashamed to say it, but we ignore all of the important crap that actually means something to our future to focus every single minute of a news persons time to the discussion of a underweight, ugly, horse faced whore with loads of cash.  Wow....what a great day to be an American.

 

Ciao for now.

Busy weekend coming up.

We are going to my Company Picnic Saturday being held at a place called A Cowboy Town. This guy (a caterer and horse lover) bought 110 acres with a private lake and built a lodge and a replica Western Town on it. They even perform gunfights during the day. Pretty cool, reminds me of an old amusement park in the Bay Area called Frontier Village (it was demolished a few decades ago and is now condos or something). They have horse riding, fishing (you don't need a license because it's private property....nice), camping, canoeing, etc. It should be fun and it's only 10 miles north of Nashville. Sunday we have a Baby Shower for one of my Airsoft Teammate's Wife who is expecting a boy on my birthday.....how cool is that. Bill and Braddock didn't want to be the only guys there (Justin doesn't have a choice, it's his baby...) so they've invited all the guys to come as well. Should be interesting.

Charitable Organizations

Today at work we are having a Red Cross blood drive. I have never, nor will I ever, give blood in a blood drive. Selfish of me huh? It's like I am not an organ donor either. I think if I was I'd leave my eyes.....since I'm nearsighted that would be a final joke on the world I think. There are several reasons I don't. Number one is that organizations like the Red Cross are supposed to be Non-Profit organizations. You would assume that the majority of the money donated to a Charity goes towards the charities functions.....not for salaries. Yes, charities exist to benefit those who are without, but that good will doesn't pay the rent so those that work for the charity do need to get paid. Guess what? The Red Cross only uses 30% of what you donate for the charitable things the Red Cross does. Now mind you, millions of people donate to the Red Cross every year. Corporations, etc donate huge sums of cash. 70% of that goes to pay salaries, etc. That's some highly paid "volunteers" if you ask me. The blood you donate goes into a Citywide blood bank. The blood gets distributed to the following: Car accident victims, gun shot victims, stabbing victims, vain old biddies who come in for face lifts and tummy tucks and don't donate their own blood. So let's look at why the blood supply is so low.

Car Accident Victims: In Tennessee, like it was back home in California, Semis cause most of the accidents you see on the road. It's a well known fact, listen to any daily traffic report in Tennessee and in California....odds are 9 times out of 10 there is a Semi involved. If you've driven with them out here, you can see why. They drive like assholes; tailgating each other, passenger cars, etc. Cutting you off, speeding up and cutting each other off; it's no wonder they cause so many wrecks. Drunk driving is also the cause of a lot of accidents out here. Apparently it isn't as expensive to get a DUI in Tennessee as it is in California. Jerk off, rednecks in Pick Ups are also the cause of a lot of accidents out here as well. So let's look at the list: Asshole Truck Drivers, Drunken Morons and Rednecks.....yeah, those people are sooooo deserving of my blood. Let 'em bleed out I say and give the blood to the poor schmucks they've run into or off of the road.

Gun Shot and Stabbing Victims: Let's put the word victim in quotes shall we. In parts of Nashville there are a crap load of gang activity. There's always a shooting here or there or a stabbing somewhere. Let's look at this list: Useless punk criminals who shoot and stab each other "just because"......yeah, those people are sooooo deserving of my blood.

Cosmetic Surgery: Do I need to say more? Some rich old prune thinks she needs to look like she was 25 again so she undergoes "elective surgery" to have shit lifted, pulled, tucked etc...... Do they go in ahead of time and donate their own blood? Usually not. Yeah really deserving of my blood.

Same with my organs. One of these idiots would probably get my donated body parts.....hey it's my body....if I don't think these schmucks are worthy then they don't get crap. Period. They can have my eyes.....better yet, give my eyes to the vain old biddy. She will have to get glasses to go with her new pulled and tucked face. Hee hee......

The only charity that gets anything from me is the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. I've seen how their research makes a difference first hand. The Discourser's son has diabetes and I've seen The Boy's insulin pump go from a huge device to something the size of a small cell phone (think a flip phone). He's supposed to be getting a new one that will test his blood as well...no more sticking his finger and drawing blood. Nice. By the way, the JDRF puts 90+% of your donation to research!! When I was asking for donations for a walk I was doing for the organization, one of the people I was asking did research on the Charity. He was so impressed with the fact I've just stated that he gave me a 100 check!!! See that's what a charity should do. Not advertise, and sponsor sporting events, etc......people that work for a charity should not get rich from working there. Period.

A Quick One

I've noticed this a long time ago, but felt the need to comment on it today for some reason.  We as a Country are dumb.  Or at least that's what the manufacturers of products and services seem to think.  I have several travel mugs for coffee.  On each of them, somewhere, are the words "Caution-Contents may be hot".  No shit???  Really????  Wow I'm glad they decided to point that out to me because I never would have figured that out for myself.  Let's get real people.....do we need it spelled out to us that the container we are putting hot, steaming coffee in may contain "contents that are hot".  We have this cool little coffee maker at work now.  It makes one cup at a time using these little packets and it's a great little item.  When it is done making your cup of coffee, the screen says the following (yes it has a LCD screen on it....): Enjoy your drink!!  Caution-your drink may be hot!!!  Okay, we were doing good with the first sentence.  Enjoy your drink.  Why thank you coffee machine, I will surely try and enjoy my cup of hot, steaming coffee.  Caution-your drink may be hot.....wow you have now shown your stupidity machine.  Let's see, the mug is warm to the touch, there is steam vapors rising out of the liquid inside of it.....yep, it's hot allright!!!  Why do the people that make this stuff feel that we need the obvious stated to us????  On the side of a jar of Planters Peanuts, I shit you not, is the words "This product was manufactured on equipment that processes nuts.  May contain nuts".  I sure hope the Hell it was and does!!!!  Planters PEANUTS.....should have PEANUTS in it......shouldn't it????  Have there been occurrences of people highly allergic to nuts buying a jar of plainly labeled "peanuts" and then suing because....wait for it.....the jar of peanuts contains peanuts?!?!?!?!?  I blame the idiot judges.  Apparently because of some now long dead old woman burning herself with a cup of McDonalds coffee and being rewarded 2 million in damages, companies now have to state the obvious.  Do you remember this?  A lady goes through the drive in at McD's and gets a cup of coffee.  Now mind you, if you've ever had a cup of coffee from McD's, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, etc you know that the minute you grab that cup it's damn hot!!!  That's why Starbucks has those little recycled paper slips you put on your cup so you don't burn your hands.  So let's picture this if we will, shall we?  You are handed an extremely hot cup of coffee....your nerve endings in your hand tell you, no scream out to you "HOT!".  You are wearing a skirt and hose.  You voluntarily.....remember now this was a conscious act on her part, she made the decision to do this.....take said cup of hot steaming coffee and put it between your legs!!!!  Yep....the cup that is burning your hands you voluntarily place betwixt your thighs so it burns the insides of them.  Oh, and you hit a bump causing it to spill everywhere causing severe burns.  According to the judge who tried this lawsuit, this was McDonald's fault.  Huh?????  Did the kid at the window spill it on her?  No.  Did the McDonalds employee place the cup of coffee between her legs?  No, because if he did that would have been a lawsuit of a different kind I'm sure.   Let's restate:  McDonalds did nothing but fill her order and deliver the promised goods.  Somehow though someone's stupidity was rewarded and prompt service was not.  So now, everything obvious is spelt out for us because there may be some idiot judge who will award someone multiple millions of dollars for their own stupidity.  Thank God there aren't that many of those anymore.  The judge I applaud is the one that threw out the lawsuit filed by the hugely fat dude who was suing McDonalds because it was their fault he was fat.  Really???  Nice try pal.  Yeah all those McDonalds employees are holding guns to people's heads making them ingest Big Macs.  Don't think so.  Also, why do some things that need instructions do not have them why others that are obvious as to what they are used for do.   Take toilet paper for instance.  Why is there no instructions on how to use it?  Tampons have instructions, condoms have instructions but TP doesn't.   Sunflower seeds do though.  Why?  Peanuts in the shell don't have instructions, you just know that you are to crack them open and eat the nut inside.  So why do sunflower seeds say "Crack open shell, remove nut, put in your mouth and enjoy".  No kidding......I thought you were supposed to stick the sunflower seed up your nose!!!! 

The Best Movie of all Time

Star Wars, the original.  Just turned 30 this year.  I remember reading the book first then the comic and waiting in anticipation for the bloody movie to come out.  I was 12 and the year was 1977.  I had all the different T-Shirts, an LED watch (remember those....they were blank until you pushed a button then you got a glaring red digital readout...oooooooo very late 70's High Tech) and all the action figures.  I even had the soundtrack album and the Story of Star Wars album (the audio from the movie).  Yes I was a big Star Wars Fanboy.  I remember when the movie first came out, it didn't have a number on it.  It wasn't Episode IV: A New Hope.....nope it was just called Star Wars.  Having watched the original a bazillion times, I refuse to believe that Darth Vader was ever supposed to be Luke's Father.  Sorry, the BS explanation that Lucas came up with when Obi-Wan says "when Anakin turned to the dark side the man I knew truly died..."  Uh yeah George...suuuuurrrreeee......I believe it.... Empire Strikes Back is, of course, the best of the trilogy....but wait, you want to tell me "Dear Ranter....there are actually 6 movies...".  NO.  There isn't.  Just like there is no Highlander II, there are no such thing as Episodes 1-3 of Star Wars.  Nope.  Didn't happen.  This is what has pissed me off over the years with these movies; George Lucas has lost the concept of who the movies are for.  Remember back in the day when George was a "filmmaker"?  When George wanted to make a better movie than what was out there?  He did in the original Star Wars.  Then something happened; he ad libbed the rest of the story.  He had to.  Let's take the aforementioned episodes 1-3 that never happened for instance.  In the original movie series, Darth Vader meets Threepio several times, but yet doesn't recognize him as the Droid he built as a 9 year old boy on the Desert Planet Tatooine.  Yeah....bad story telling.  Also in the original, Vader's troops are orbiting Tatooine.....his birth planet, but yet he doesn't seem to remember it??????  C'mon.....  Then Lucas takes the best explanation of the Force (it's an energy field that surrounds us and binds us) and tries to give it a specific explanation (it's little microbial bacteria called Midachlorians.....WTF???????).  Stop it George....stop it now.  In the first movie, Han Solo (everyone's favorite character) is a pirate and a smuggler.  The definition of Rogue.  He blasts an alien named Greedo from under the table who is threatening to kill him.  Lucas didn't want Solo to be a cold blooded killer (uh.....that reaction to a situation is called survival.  Better them than you basically) so he changes the scene in the original movie to show the alien shooting first.  Why??????  This has always pissed me off.  The changing of an original work.  It's like that stupid colorizing of black and white movies.  Why????  Did that make it better?  No it made it look like my 3 year old Grandson was finger painting on your TV screen.  I don't mind "Director's Cuts".  I think that sometimes it really adds to the movie....and it's not really changing the movie per se, those scenes were part of it originally but were cut for certain reasons.  Go and rent the directors cuts of the Lord of the Rings movies, especially The Return of the King.  Wow!!!!  The cut scenes are freaking awesome, but make the movie over 4 hours long!!!  Going back and changing scenes because they weren't the way you wanted them to begin with is like Michelangelo rising from the dead and fixing the Mona Lisa's smile....... Spielberg is just as guilty with removing all the FBI Agent's guns in ET and replacing them with radios.  HUH?????  Oh yeah, Law Enforcement NEVER carries guns.  C'mon......the guns made the situation more tense.  It demonized the FBI Agents and accentuated ET's predicament.  You felt his terror and you felt the danger.  A bunch of Suits with radios is no threat to anyone.  Stupid move Steven......very stupid.......

The Sopranos Wrapping Up!!!

Wow!! I haven't had HBO since Season 5, but I've been keeping up with my favorite Drama about Tony Soprano and crew. Holy Crap!!! They are ending the series this Sunday, and boy are they ending it!! Most of the original crew is dead. Christopher, Sil and Bobby...all offed. That leaves Tony and Paulie Walnuts. I'm definitely renting this last season when it comes out.

Rant Coming

Isn't our world sad when an ultra skinny, horse-faced, blonde bimbo who's last name is synonymous with the "best" in Hotels is famous for performing Oral Sex in a cheesy video tape. Oh yeah and partying. Yep that's it. Paris Hilton is "famous" because of her last name and who she hangs out partying with and who she has sex with. Nice. Wow are we a sorry Country folks. So little Ms. Skank thinks because of who she is she can get away with anything. As she is now about to find out, enough is freaking enough. She is now going to jail for driving on a suspended license after getting a DUI. Yep.....Driving Under the Influence. A condition that if you get busted for in California runs you about $10,000 in fines, etc when you are all done. Nothing for Porus Whoreton of course...she probably had that in her wallet. Now Bimbo the clown is going to jail....and I couldn't be happier. Is it wrong to wish that someone shanks her while she's there???? As far as I'm concerned she's a waste of good oxygen.

Ciao for now.

Cha-cha-Changes

New blog look. I like this template, it looks like old parchment. It's a bit easier on the eyes to read as well. The top pic of the Palace of Fine Arts goes well with it too. Note: Pic of the Week has been moved to the bottom.

That is all.

Language

So for the last couple of days while driving around I've been listening to the Audio Book by George Carlin called "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?".  Yes the fact it was a book by George Carlin (one of my favorite comedians) coupled with the title made it so I had to buy it.  I've listened to it once through before and it's damn funny.  He has several sections on euphemisms.  Basically he rants on about PC language and how we as a people are constantly trying to upgrade ourselves by changing our language.  One of his examples is a Store Clerk.  You know, what my Wife does for a living right now.  She works at Ross.  She is not called a Clerk, she is called a Sales Associate.  I loathe our PC-ness in this Country.  It's gotten out of hand.  Folks are no longer Handicap but Differently Abled.  WTF???  So I guess those aren't handicap spaces but Differently Abled spaces????  Black became African-American, Mexican became Latino.....it used to be Hispanic a much more generic term for people from Spanish Speaking Countries.  Oriental (which was always stupid and didn't make sense) became Asian.  Much better (see some of these changes are really corrections...that's good) as Asians come from Asia....not the Orient...there is no Orient it's an Ancient term for the continental area known as Asia.  Garbage companies are now "Waste Management" companies.   It's the same thing.  Why the correction?  The guy that pumped your gas (which doesn't happen anymore, but trust me it used to) went from Service Station Attendant to Petroleum Transfer Engineer.  Really???  Engineer implies that you have a degree in Engineering......I don't think that one with a degree in Engineering would be working at a gas station???? Instead of laying people off, companies now Downsize....of course that is too negative so it's now Rightsize.  It's amazing to me how we create words.  No other language does this.  Sure there is slang in other languages, but I don't think they create new words in say Spanish to make things more palatable to folks.  Put it this way:  If you screw up at work repeatedly and are more trouble than you are worth, they fire you.  Simple.  Of course it's referred to as "Being let go" or "Terminated" (I like that one....there's a list of people I'd like Terminated...but I digress).  Why do we do this?  Can't we just call things what they are?  When you dial Zero on your phone, you get an Operator.  Of course it's known as Directory Assistance now (but wait how can that be...I dialed 0 not 411????)  Honestly folks, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck...guess what it's a Freaking Duck!!!!!  Not a Water Fowl.

 

 

Movie Reviews and TV Review

First post of June...woo hoo.....anyway the movie review. Cath and I watched "The Good Shepard" the other night. We both are of the same opinion about Matt Damon; he's good in everything we've seen him in. He's a far superior actor to his pal Ben Afleck. The Good Shepard was about the creation of the CIA. The CIA has it's roots with American's trained by the British OSS (the precursor to their MI-6). The movie basically said that the CIA was started by elitist, white Males who were Ivy Leaguers and members of the ultra-secret organization Skull and Bones. Great!!! No wonder Kennedy wanted to disband the CIA. It was an interesting movie, a bit slow paced, but not boring. Now for the TV reviews. Yes we watched "Pirate Master" last night. Hey I played a Pirate for 12 years you think I'm not going to at least give it a watch??? It was okay, but if the same format is kept each week it will get boring fast. We shall see.

GGoG

This stands for Gigantic Gathering of Geeks. In other words, a Gaming Convention. Click on the link on my blog page entitled "Dans Discourse" for three posts worth of humorous and well written description of this past weekends Kublacon event. Warning: don't take a big swallow of coffee while reading; it may just come out of your nose.

Three for the price of one....

So my favorite TV Critic Tim Goodman over at SFGate.com listed his "final" grades for the Network TV season. In alpha order I will give you mine.

ABC: Sorry I don't watch this network much, if at all. It basically has some of the stupidest shows on. "Ugly Betty" gets raves from the critics, but it just doesn't interest me. I was spoiled I guess growing up with Sitcoms like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Chico and the Man, Sanford and Son, just to name a few. Those shows were funny, the majority of the stuff on TV now just isn't. I always thought Friends was stupid and I've never found an episode of Seinfeld all that funny. ABC also has Lost.......I just couldn't get into it. It makes no sense whatsoever. The plane crashes on a deserted tropical island. The plane cracks perfectly in half with the front half going to one side of the island and the tail going to the other. So instead of a scripted "Survivor" we get the wheel of random sci fi like crap. A Polar Bear?!?!?!?!? A hatch that leads to a secret underground facility with computers?????? They have technology, but can't seem to find a way off of the island. Sounds like The Professor on Gilligan's Island. He could build a radio out of two coconuts, but seemed incapable of building a damn raft!!!! Now ABC is airing the National Spelling Bee....WTF????? They are also bringing you Bingo. Yep.....Bingo. They will be bringing you a Sitcom based on the characters from the Geico Cavemen ads. Those things are funny for 30 seconds. Not sure if they will be able to pull off 30 minutes, every week. We have Desperate Housewives. A show that just helps the divorce rate climb if you ask me. Yep, if you are bored, rich and married, apparently it's okay to screw everything that moves. Nice huh? Then we have Grey's Anatomy. A soap opera disguised as a medical show. They actually really tried making it a medical drama at one time but the ratings got better the more Doctors they had having sex in empty hospital beds. Yeah right, Doctors on duty in an ER with time to have sex with each other...oh and don't forget all those empty beds in the hospital. Whatever!! F is the grade I give ABC.

CBS: The network most watched in my house. Even the local CBS news we watch. They did mess some things up this year though. I was liking the show Smith but it got killed after 3 episodes. The story telling was a bit disjointed at times, and I think that's what may have killed it. Jericho just pissed me off. Started off great but slowly frustrated the crap out of me with the inane scripts every week and the fact it started turning into a huge soap opera. Gahhhh. The Unit better get better next season, or it will be gone. I understand having storylines with the wives, great actresses and all, but after awhile it gets to be a bit much. Too much wives, not enough dudes with BDU's and guns keeping us safe from some terrorist or whatever. Starting to approach the Jumped the Shark borderline. Speaking of sharks, Shark is great. James Woods is one of those scene chewing actors who paces and gestures and generally approaches a scene like a fat man a sandwich. MMMM ham on rye anyone....? The Amazing Race is always a treat. I used to avoid Reality Shows like the plague, but this one is really fun. If I ever tried out for a Reality Show it would be this one. I can see Cath and I racing around the world trying to win 1 Million bucks. Survivor has run it's course I believe. It was fairly good this year, but it's gotten to be old hat now. CSI: The Original is the best of the bunch. The Miami one is a cop show, not a show about crime scene folks. The NY one is kind of the same. Just can't get into those. Without a Trace is a meh with me. If I miss it, I don't cry. Numbers is lots of fun. Really great characters and I have yet to see a bad episode. Ghost Whisperer or should I say Hi My name is Jennifer Love Boobit....look at my Ta Tas........can just go away. It's really lame. I'm not really sure why they cancelled Close to Home. A really good show but they canned it. CBS gets a B from me

NBC: All of a sudden I'm watching NBC again. Why? One word: "Heroes". Yes I know, I've said it before and I'll say it again (as many times as the Discourser has said it); Heroes is the best show on TV. Period. It's pretty much the only show I will watch on NBC. They get an A from me.


Fox and CW.....who cares????? American Idol is crap and it has made the programming folks at Fox too lazy to come up with anything else. All they depend on is that lame ass show. The CW(for those that don't know...lame ass UPN and WB merged into one really super lame ass network) just crap. UPN when it first started was fairly good. They had Star Trek the Next Generation and show's like Pig Sty and Platypus Man. Love those shows. Then they dumped all that, started Star Trek Voyager (honestly one of the lamest Star Trek shows yet) and made all of their sitcoms geared towards African Americans. Nothing wrong with that, just doesn't interest me.....not my culture, and frankly none of them were the least bit funny. They finally did it when they aired Enterprise. The Prequel to the Kirk Star Trek years. Problem is, the original Enterprise had better tech than the old and every week became a let's see just how big Jolen Blacloks breasts really are. It didn't help that the story lines were lamer and lamer as the show went on. When something becomes a chore to watch, I stop watching. Now the WB part of the CW used to have Buffy and Angel. I like Joss Whedon for bringing us Firefly, but could never get into Buffy or Angel. Remember Fox way back when? 21 Jump Street, Married with Children, Werewolf (loved that show), the Simpsons.........yeah I know the Simpsons is still on, but it's like the only thing on Fox worth watching. Now all they have is American Idol oh and 24, which has gone in the crapper this season. Remember when UPN had some cool shows too, besides Star Trek? Nowhere Man comes to mind. Loved that show too. Neither network deserves a grade....Hell an F is too good for them. Go away so we can get the massive reruns of Mash we used to have years ago.

Random Musing

Passing by the smaller, older strip mall up the road from the house tonight I finally noticed the place titled "Laser Tag" was finally closed. When we first moved here I wanted to check it out, but was told that the Laser Tag part of it had closed down years ago and it was just an arcade now. Made me think of this placed called "Q-Zar" we used to go to. It was a Laser Tag place where you wore a vest that had a gun attached to it. The vest was a target and if you got hit 3 or 4 times, you were out and you had to go to a recharge station and recharge. It was a lot of fun, until the cheaters started showing up. Yep it wasn't long after the advent of cheating bastards, usually younger Teens, that all of the Q-Zar's started shutting down. I think there's one still open in Concord, Ca (probably closed by now, but last time I was there it was still open.). These Kids would cheat by hiding in the corner near the recharge station and shooting you out again after you recharged. Basically keeping you from playing the game because you constantly had to go and recharge. So you basically paid 20 bucks for 15 minutes of play to have some punk ass 14 year old ruin your fun. Can you see why they closed down? Apparently these little punks have migrated to the online gaming world. In Gamer Speak they are called "Spawn Campers"....... they basically sit in the section of the game where they know your character is going to "respawn" (basically come back to life after being killed) with the sole purpose of killing you again, and again and again.......now this gets them a high "kill" count, but doesn't achieve anything as far as the game is concerned. Say it's a military game. Your team has to achieve an objective; ie destroy the enemy fuel dump....their team has the same objective. You get big points for achieving this objective in a timely fashion. These "campers" aren't doing their team any good whatsoever. They are also the same little shits that are real brave and mouthy when they are sitting at home in their bedrooms at Mommy and Daddy's house. In real life they are scared of their own shadow, but because of the wonderous anonymity of the internet, they get to be rude, inconsiderate bastards. Kind of why I don't play online multi player games. These same cheating schmucks sometimes ruin a day of Airsoft for me....not anymore though as I have been given Field Marshall status at the Bad Karma field and can remove them from the game if I see them cheating. Ah....bliss.......I love having the power to tell these little punks to get the f**k off the field. Feels good. I know, a random musing but really a minor rant.

Ciao for now.

Movie Reviews

A couple of them this time around. 300...Wow!!!! What a great movie. Yes I have a copy of it at home.....that's all I'm saying about that..... The movie's message about soldiers and warfare and the honor of doing one's duty can be applied to our Soldiers in Iraq. The Persians are depicted as out there and very strange, but then you have to realize the story is being told by one of the Spartans who was there so it's his perception. Just like in Frank Miller's "Sin City" the filmakers took the atmosphere of the graphic novel and translated it to the screen perfectly. Sepia tones and dark moody storms....awesome to behold on the screen. The fight scenes....my God how awesome they are. The Spartans were the Special Forces of the Greek Army....like the Samurai they were the elite of soldiers. On the lighter side we have "Night at the Museum". A suprisingly funny movie through out. Cath and I couldn't stop laughing. I say surpisingly because I find most Ben Stiller movies not so funny. "Meet the Parents" and a few like that are fairly funny but one's like "Zoolander" and "Starsky and Hutch" (why that movie was a comedy I'm not sure...) were just unfunny. Even Owen Wilson was funny as a cowboy in a diorama who comes to life at night and has an unending feud with Octavius the leader of the Roman diorama next to his. Robin Williams plays a statue of Teddy Roosevelt that comes to life at night as well.

Irresponsibility

I've mentioned a certain Airsoft Retail establishment before and how they seem to be a bunch of kids who are constantly trying to one up each other. Mind you the store is owned by Twenty/Thirtysomethings so you'd think they wise up. Nope. This store, NA is the initials I will use.....is responsible for bringing people into the sport of Airsoft. Now everywhere else safety safety safety is encouraged and stressed over anything else. Most fields and organizations nationwide have done studies, etc and feel that an airsoft gun shooting at 400-425 Feet Per Second is hard enough and safe for folks to play with. Anything higher and you run the risk of serious injury especially if you don't have engagement distances. Mickey, an employee of Airsoft Extreme one of the best retailers out there, has a sniper rifle that shoots 600 fps. Mickey always engages from 200 feet away...that's it. He may go farther back, but he never gets closer than 200 feet. Why? His gun's velocity when it reaches the end of it's 200 foot range slows down to a safe level. If he was too close, you'd have puncture marks and heavy bruising. NA introduces people to the "mine is bigger than yours" mentality when it comes to airsoft. Instead of encouraging people to upgrade a gun from stock speeds (225-250) to medium range (300-400) they encourage upgrades to "let's see how hard we can make this thing shoot". Insane!!! They put on their own games at the Bad Karma Field and have their own waiver because they refuse to abide by the Bad Karma rules. The owner of the Field is fine with this as long as they have particpants sign the NA waiver. These games are games I refuse to go to. Many others that I know feel the same. Just this past Sunday a new guy with tons of cash to spend on Airsoft had a game at the field. His gun shoots 645 fps....I shit you not. These guys regularly play with high fps guns and use no engagement distances what so ever. I remember someone that went to their games giving someone crap for going off after he was hit point blank in the back of the neck with a gun shooting 612 fps. Ummm you hit me with a plastic BB at point blank range with something that almost has the same kick as a .22....then yeah I'm going off on you. I'm dropping my gun and kicking the crap out of you until you feel the same pain as I'm feeling. The irresponsible actions of these schmucks are going to get us some bad press and may even get our sport banned. I hope not for their sake.

Busy weekend.....Serious Crap going down.

Remember my "Paranoid" post? I was right. Little one figured out what the DGM is all about. She has become so scared of him that she refused to go with him this weekend. Wow....is all I can say. That's one brave little girl. Updates to come.

The View: Trying to take the place of the Springer show????

Yep, according to Barbara Wah Wah all of Rosie's idiotic antics on the show have given it the best ratings in a long time.  In other words folks want to see a Burly Mountain Woman argue with other Hens.......Well I guess you have to do something...I mean Rosie's standup was never funny and her show was supposed to be a talk show but it was always "Ooooo Look at me I'm Rosie O'Donnel, I'm so witty...he c'mon it's all about me don't you know that???"  So I guess Barbara Wah Wah is going to get some Ultra Religious Woman and a Former Porn Star next so the viewing public will get to see chairs thrown and hair pulling......ooo aaahhhh!!  What happened to you Barbara????  You used to be a respected Journalist, now you've turned into a hack Sensationalist.......is this how you want to be remembered???? 

Paranoid

It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid
I'm just stoned

Paranoid by Green Day

 

Yep that sums it up perfectly.  The DGM (Donor of Genetic Material) is a paranoid, stoner, alky.  He gets his Daughter a cell phone (against her Mother's wishes, he does shit like this all the time) so he can talk to her in private because he "knows" that Cathy listens in and tape records his calls......WTF?????  Okay looney boy......get over yourself, we don't give a shit what you say to her nor do we care to listen in or tape record your stupid conversations.  Cath got his ass good today.  He's making his Daughter as paranoid as he is and it's pissing us off.  Cath told her today that the cell phone is being taken away until the secretive crap stops.  She told the DGM that if he wants to pick her up for his visitation, then he needs to call Cath and let Cath know what time and not Liv.  He normally ignores the phone when he knows it's Cath, so she blocked the caller id from Liv's Cell and called him.  Miraculously he answered.  What an ass.  This guy works for a month, then is off for a month.  Does he call his Daughter at all?  Hell no!  He only calls the day before it's his time to come get her and he always comes late.  If this was my Daughter and I was off, I'd call her every day and come as early as I could to pick her up.  Oh wait, that's right I care about someone other than myself....right.....  With this prick it's all about him.  Never does he take the Child anyplace she wants to go, it's always to the lake so he can play with his boats.  Boring if you go all the time.  I think Liv is slowly figuring his shit out.  He thought he won when the Courts denied Cath the right to move out of State, all he did was get me in the same vicinity as himself.  Stupid, stupid Monkey.......

Rant Coming!!!

3-2-1.....Rant!

So now I know why the term Customer Service is a joke now a days. My Wife works at Ross. She has worked there since November. In that time she has gotten Employee of the Month twice. Do you think they would give her more hours and not treat her like a red-headed step child???? Hell no! She's the one that gets shat upon. My folks were in town last week. Cathy just needed Friday through Sunday off and was willing to work Monday. What did they do? they gave her Wednesday through Saturday off and wanted her to work Sunday. WTF???? What part of "my Sister In-Law is leaving Sunday" don't they understand???? Cat called in sick on Sunday, and now she is being treated like a P.O.S. Two young guys work there. One has an arm full of tatoos. Company policy says he has to cover that up. The sorry excuse for management at this store (and this is where the real problem lies) tells this kid he has to wear long sleeves. He does, but rolls the sleeves up when he gets in the door; at whatever flipping time he feels like!!! Does he get reprimanded???? Hell no. Even when a customer complained about it, and Cat went and told her "manager" the "manager" said "I said it was okay for him to wear short sleeves." Excuse me??? You were the one who told him he had to wear long sleeves and cover it up!!!! Freaking weak willed pain in the ass. His other male buddy and he go out and party until all hours....then come in late, slack off, etc. How are they reprimanded??? They get 30 hours next week. My Wife who has called in sick twice and never been late, has always been there when they needed her gets rewarded with 15 hours!!! Ummmmm Hello? So I guess mediocrity again is being rewarded. Got to love this Country sometime. This one chick doesn't call in or anything for weeks. Then she comes back begging for her job. I'd have told her to bad so sad. This weak willed morons give her the job back and give her a Monday through Friday schedule with set hours. Huh??????? Apparently it must take alot to get fired now a days. Now I know why shopping at a retail establishment is a crappy experience most of the time. The management sucks and they hang on to losers and drive all the good workers away. Thus the reason Cath is putting in an application at another store while studying for her Real Estate License test.

Cat Update

Well Panther is finally fixed, so hopefully no more bladder infections.....this also means we can start letting Pumpkin in the house now. Poor little guy, he sits at the back door and meows to come in. It's like he's saying "Dude I used to live here...why can't I come in?" Cathy is really cracking down on her studying for her Real Estate License test. She's planning on taking it sometime next week. I wish her luck.

Couple of Changes

Woo hoo....blogger has added new page elements. I've added a pic of my favorite Skyline at the bottom of the blog and also added the Pic of the Week box. If this weeks pic offends you; too bad. It's a joke get over yourself. I've also added links to 3 online comics about gaming and gamers that are pretty funny. Penny Arcade and PvP are about gamers and gaming geeks and general geekness. Looking for Group is a comic about your typical RPG party and their misadventures (you will love Richard the Warlock...). Click on the links and give them a try.

Everyone's Moving

I remember alot of my friends as well as Myself saying we'd "never move out of the Bay Area". It's hard to do actually. If you weren't raised there, you won't get it. Say what you want about San Francisco, but beneath the facade of "bleeding heart liberals" and "raging homosexuals" is a rather beautiful city with lots of history and some really cool crap to discover. I was born there, and we lived there until I was 2. We then moved to the Peninsula (San Mateo County) where I've lived in various cities until about 2 years ago. How can you not want to live there? In San Francisco you have the SF 49ers and the SF Giants. Across the Bay in Oakland you have the A's and the Raiders and the Warriors. Down South in San Jose you have the Sharks and the Sabercats and the minor league San Jose Giants baseball team. There are at least half a dozen or more venues to see live concerts in. There is mass transit that will give you a break from driving to work if it happens to be close to where you work. You've got the Golden Gate Bride; easily one of the most recognized landmarks in the world. The cons: it's extremely expensive to live there. Brian was the first. He was tired of the rat race (then again he lives in San Jose which has 1 million people and is a large metropolitan city......I'd want to move too) and he and Chrissy and their adopted daughter Kailyn moved to Kauai. They lived there for a couple of years, but now are back in San Jose. They didn't like it too much out there. Being a white, blond person in Hawaii tends to make one a target for discrimination. Funny huh? You know my story by now, I moved to Tennessee about 2 years ago. I miss my friends and family being close by, and I miss the tolerant attitudes and diversity of the Bay Area. I also miss the drivers, believe it or not. At least people in the Bay Area know how to drive on a freeway! Things are a bit cheaper out here. Cathy and I get by on a lot less than we would out in California. The one thing I still won't get used to out here (and it still bothers me) is that religion seems to be everywhere, in everything; basically shoved down your throat, and everyone accepts it!! Schools have prayer meetings before school hours around flag poles, I thought we had a separation of Church and State in this country?

Back on topic. So Brian sends me an email the other day asking which one of these places is close to me????? In it was a list of Hospitals where he was looking to do his internship when he finishes his Doctorate in Psychology that he is currently working on. One of them was Vanderbilt University in Nashville (a top medical school). So it looks like Brian may be moving out here in a year or two! Next I find out the Perfect Line was interviewing in the LA area (Orange County actually; Irvine I believe). A few years ago he quit his job that he had been working at since he was 17! He's 33 now and has been working in IT since the age of 17. He lucked out and was in the right place at the right time. He has no degree, just certifications and had been making 6 figures for 10 years or so. He bought a house in San Mateo, decided it wasn't what he wanted and sold it. He then moved in with a friend in SF and has been living there for a few years now. I guess he's been retired long enough now and wants to get back into working. He has also been entertaining a change of location. He talked New York, even Toronto, but has settled on So Cal. So to save money on travel and to make it easier to interview, he's announced he is moving down there in June sometime. He's having a big going away party....wish I could make it. Mom and Dad surprised me when they were out here. They really liked the new houses and it sounded like they were seriously considering moving out here. That would be nice. Considering the fact that they paid cash for their house in Elk Grove (200,000 at the time) with the money Dad got from splitting up of Grandpa and Grandma's Estate and it's doubled in price since; Dad says it's worth 400,000 now! Heck they can buy a new house out here with multiple bedrooms and 3.5 baths for 240,000 and be a few blocks away from me. Time will tell.

Ciao for now.

Heroes: Nicely wrapped up but leaving you wanting more.

Spoiler alert for those that haven't seen the last episode on Monday night.


So Heroes (the best show on TV) has ended the first Volume of it's Graphic Novel for TV essentially. It all came down to this: The bad guy gets killed by a True Hero finding the nerve to do what needs to be done no matter the cost. Another Hero makes the same sacrifice but to save an entire city (the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few or the One.....). Questions about who is really who and who is coming back. Oh yeah, and who really is that Masked Samurai? Here's my Theories:

Linderman, Mr. Petrelli, Mother Petrelli, George Takei and Simone's Father were all part of a 70's Super Hero group that somehow got disbanded and the individual purposes of the team bumped heads with the groups purpose. Mother Petrelli is pure manipulative Evil. She really was insisting the bomb go off in New York and that Nathan become the City's Messiah. The little girl Molly says there is a person she can track, but doesn't want to because when she sees that person in her mind he "sees her back!!" I think Mother Petrelli is really the one pulling the strings and it wasn't Linderman who was the head Villan. She is in control of the Agency that was tracking down the Heroes that Noah Bennet worked for. I also think that her "power" is that she isn't human. Hiro's father always told him a tale about Kensei and the Dragon....I think Mother Petrelli is the Dragon. In Asian mythos Dragons would often take the form of a Female Human to fool mortal Samurai. Just as I predicted, Nathan took the moral high ground and rescued his brother from blowing up and destroying New York by flying him to basically outer space (or the line between space and the ozone layer). Nathan has shown supersonic flight capability before and he sacrificed himself to save New York. My friend Brian suggests that Nathan may not have been vaporised as a result of being a ground zero of a nuclear blast. I'm not sure if Peter has enough control to extend his regeneration powers to others. Claire can't so I'm assuming Peter can't. Therefore Nathan is blowing in the wind (actually floating is space as little bits of dust) and Peter is stuck floating in orbit regenerating.......they may have him end up on the international space station.......somehow Peter is coming back. Parkman took four to the chest courtesy of Sylar but I think he will be okay. Hell DL sat around with a gut wound for a bit and he's good. Nikki and Jessica have merged into one and she's now She Hulk. Micah is the machine man....what a cool power. Missing are the Haitian and Invisible Boy. Hiro proved he had the guts to do what needed to be done as he ran Sylar through with a Samurai Sword. He gets thrown by Sylar as an after thought and teleports randomly to Feudal Japan. After all is said and done, Sylar's body was missing. There is a big, bloody drag mark (not crawl mark, Sylar was definitely dragged) leading to the sewers....then a roach emerges....was that symbolic or just a way to creep folks out? I think symbolic but I don't know how yet. Who dragged Sylar down to CHUD world??? I think it was Invisi Boy. I think he's still fighting the bad fight. Now for Hiro. He drops onto the ground with a Samurai Army advancing on him on one side, and what appears to be Kensei on the other. One good look at Kensei's eyes behind his mask and I swear it's George Takei. Which makes sense. All those stories of Kensei Hiro's Dad told him as a boy were basically about himself. Hiro's Dad is Kensei and he's immortal or slow aging at the least. Volume 2 has already started well and I hope it proceeds to be just as good as Volume One.

God I love this show!!!

Ciao for now.

It's been awhile

No not that overplayed Stained song, it's been awhile since I've posted here. The Folks are in town as is my Sis. It's their second time to Tenn and it's Sisters first. Sis left yesterday, the Folks are leaving tomorrow. She had a good time and they always enjoy being here. We rode the General Jackson PaddleWheel boat for the first time Saturday night. It was a bit cold but we handled it just fine. Cathy and I have decided to go back just the two of us.....possibly on our Anniversary in January. We will go for the dinner and show cruise which means you are inside...thank God!! Sunday we went Downtown so my Sis could get a view of Downtown Nashville.......yeah it's just like San Fran or any other City.......then we went to the Hermitage. This is the home of Andrew Jackson, Seventh President of the US. It's in the City of Hermitage which is right next door to our City of Mount Juliet. Basically I live next door to Andrew Jackson.....not bad eh? The grounds are beautiful as is the Mansion itself. This guy owned 1,100 acres!!!! I got a half an acre and I complain about maintaining it!!! We went shopping with the Folks today. My parents are very typical Italian. Generous to a fault. I had to politely refuse to let my Mother buy us a 400 dollar patio set, she's insisting on the 250 one......I will let her because there is no arguing (I could say no, and she'd buy it anyway......). They are great and I love them to death. They really like Cath....(they weren't really fond of PITA, but then again who was????) I knew they would. She's a wonderful Woman and everyone that meets her can see what I see in her. Anyhoo, time to rest then spend some more time with the folks tomorrow then send them off home again. I will wait to blog about the Heroes Finale (the GoG haven't watched it yet....soon.....). Speaking of the GoG...it looks like the Perfect Line is moving to LA.......trying to find out if it's for work/pleasure or both....... the rest of the GOG will be gathering at KublaCon this coming weekend. This is the second one I'm missing........there are no game cons out here (this sucks honestly it does......) some folks that came to our Yard Sale were talking to Cath about gaming and wanted me to call them. I got a chance to see these folks......AHHHHHHH!!!!! Sorry, not the GoG....not by a long shot. These are folks the Discourser will be blogging about soon.

Ciao for now.

TV Nirvana.....or something....

Heroes has been renewed for a second season!!! Next year during the summer break they are going to be airing a companion show called Heroes: Origins. Each week they will introduce a new Hero and the audience gets to vote to see if that character ends up in the series or not. Pretty cool. Jericho has been cancelled; no big surprise there. I stopped watching it about 6 or so episodes ago because it started becomming a soap opera and the people in the show didn't act like people would after seeing a nuke go off in the distance. The writers drove me crazy with their inane drivel they call scripts. Close to Home has been cancelled, and I'm not sure why? It was a decent show. I hear ABC is going to make a Sitcom called Cavemen with the Geico Cavemen in it. Not sure how funny that's going to be and for how long. I predict it getting old fast.

Animal Update

The Vet says Panther is doing good. It was a bladder infection and her being in heat caused it to become worse than it should have been. He's going to give us some antibiotics and possibly suggest we change her diet (Cath will have to talk to him today). Pumpkin decided to venture into the house last night. Cathy left the door open to see if he would. He wondered in and started sniffing around then headed straight for our room and under out bed. The bed in our room and the matching bedroom Suite came with the house. The couple bought it, and basically slept on it for a month or so before they decided to move. So we got a house plus a brand new King Size bed and really nice bedroom Suite. Pumpkin must have recognized the bed because he stayed under there a bit. He was definitely familiar with the house.

Animal Emergency

Panther, our little black, bobtail cat wasn't feeling good yesterday. She was in obvious pain somewhere and Cath took her off to the Vet. Finds out the poor thing has a bladder obstruction and can't pee. She's got a catheter in her now and if she has to have surgery it will be about 200 bucks (not bad actually). Poor Liv is very upset so I put a call in to my Sister who used to be a registered emergency vet tech for alot of years to ask about the cat's condition. Laura called and I had her talk to Liv. Auntie Laura must have said some good things because Liv was feeling a little less down about the situation. Whew!!! Not sure of Panther's status, we will find out. Recently (about 2 months ago) we were adopted by another cat. A long haired, white with orange spots and an orange tail Tom Cat. Cut little guy, still a young cat (I guessitmate his age at about 2 years old). He's very friendly and playful and seems to not mind Panther and she doesn't seem to mind him. When we get her fixed we are thinking of letting this other cat in the house. His name is Pumpkin (Liv named him) because the first time he came around was in October. He the disappeared for a bit, and about 2 months ago he just showed up and hasn't left. Now that we are feeding him, etc he definitely isn't leaving. Found out an interesting thing about Pumpkin last night. We were talking to my neighbor Paul (I was bbqing burgers and he commented that it smelled good and was there one for him) and he saw Pumpkin and he told us that he looked alot like the cat that the previous owners of our house had. Hmmm......I always wondered why the house came with a pet door but no signs of a pet. Makes sense though, I mean why would a cat pick our house out of all the others to take up residence in? My neighbors across the street have about 5 cats and you'd think the cat would go there. Somehow and for some reason he is very comfortable at our house like he's been there before. It's a shame really, that people can just abandon an animal like that. The lady that lived there before us was a single Mom for the longest time. She got together with her son's father years (like a decade or so) after that "one" night and they got married. They lived in the house for awhile but decided to sell it and take an RV across Country. Would explain why they ditched the cat. There is an animal shelter in Wilson County, they could have dropped the little guy off there, but no...all evidence points to abandonment. Yeah I know, it's just a cat, but it was somebody's pet....a beloved member of the family and he got tossed aside like a used paper cup.

Still Busy and OMG Heroes...Nuff Said.

Getting the house ready for my Folks and Sis' visit on Thursday (they are staying until the 22nd). Looking forward to it. I haven't seen my "kid" Sis in a bit (she's 4.5 years younger than I).

Heroes, Heroes, Heroes....what can I say. My Friend Brian just mentioned to me that this is the first show in a long time that has gotten us really talking about it and anticipating the next episode. Tim Kring (the creator) has done an excellent job. The GoG and I keep in touch electronically alot via a Yahoo Group that we created. It was mostly created to see when we wanted to game and what gaming conventions we were going to attend. Lately we have been bouncing around many theories about Heroes. Honestly it gets better each and every episode. Babylon 5 and Farscape used to be that way as well. Sadly they are off the air, but it was time for them to wrap up. Much like The Sopranos on HBO, the story needs to come to an end. I've also heard that Battlestar Galactica is wrapping up next season as well. It needs to. I was none too impressed with Season 3. I guess missing the first two seasons made me not get so excited about it like alot of folks I talk to. Ah well.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Whew!!! Been a busy few weeks around here. We've been having nice, sometimes humid, weather around here so that means lot's o' Spring Cleaning inside and out. Cathy, Liv and I tend to be clutterers. When we get home from work/school we tend to want to just plop down wherever and veg. Whether it's in front of the tube or computer or back in the craft room we just like to relax and do our thing. This leads to shoes being taken off and left where they lie, mail piling up on the table, you get the idea. Typical everyday life. My folks and Sis are coming to visit next Thursday from the Bay Area and the house is officially a disaster! Need to clean it up. Also have to finish the outside stuff we've been working on. We a "moat" of flower beds surrounding our house. It's about a foot high, walled off by those red wedge shaped bricks you can get at Lowes. It looks nice, but the previous owner had too much stuff all crammed together. Lot's of ground cover plants, some with flowers, some with nice leaves. Some decorative grasses (really nice ones, and then some that look like crap). Liv has three big juniper bushes in front of her room that need trimming (Thank God for the electric hedge trimmer) and there is another row of them to the right of the front steps near the front door. Ask the Perfect Line about junipers.....they can be spider colonies. He used to have an entire front section of his house in SM covered in junipers. They were cut in an interesting wave pattern which looked pretty darn good. Cath has been clearing out the crap, and keeping the good. The beds are looking really open now. We also have a "pre-rusted" metal Victorian Bicycle planter stand (you know the bike where the front wheel was ginormous) which holds three potted plants. It looks real good in the flower beds and we have some purple pansies and some blue butterfly flowers as well as some little reddish flowers. It looks nice. We also had this tall, scraggly bush that had those red berries on it that you were always told as a kid were poisonous if you ate. It's gone now and the space it occupied is so opened up it makes our house look bigger!!!! It's not that it wasn't a bad looking bush, it was the only one of it's kind and looked really out of place. That's the one thing Cath and I noticed, the previous owner had this knack for putting anything, anywhere. There seemed to be no ryhme nor reason to her vegetation placement. We still have the rest of one of the tree/bushes to hack up, then to get rid of the other tree bush that is right near our house. Now the funny thing about the bed it sits in is the previous owner planted a crapload of Day Lillies. In the winter they all die out and go into germination mode (they are bulb plants). When they come alive again they have huge expanses of leaves and one thin stalk that grows out of the middle with a really nice looking flower (ours are a deep orange color). The problem is the previous owner planted them all so close together it's like a dozen headed Hydra!!! A floral one that could easily be killed with a machete.....sorry about the Geek moment there. Next we need to straighten out the carport. We have boxes full of clothes that didn't sell at the yard sale and need to be carted off to the Goodwill Trailer out the City Dump about a half mile away or so. I like that we have a City Dump that is free!!! One visit a day and you have to be a resident of Wilson County (that's the County I live in). They have four ginormous debris bins and several bins that say "metal only" "Newspaper/paper recycle", "plastic recycle" "lawn debris" and "household garbage". One of the reasons Cath and I want to purchase a truck. You can fill up the back of the truck with kitchen garbage (bagged of course) and haul it off to the dumps and dump it for free!! How cool is that? No garbage day to worry about, no garbage company to pay. We pay for garbage pickup now. It's 60 bucks every quarter which isn't bad. I'm not about to haul nasty, bagged food garbage in the back of my car or Cath's car for that matter. The Ginormous debris bins are kind of cool. They are so tall that they had to build a paved hill between them. You drive up this hill, and you are right over the tops of the bins. You take your debris and toss it over then drive off. I remember back home in Cali where it was like 20 bucks a carload to go to the dumps!!! Outside the gates of the dump is the aforementioned Goodwill trailer. Boy are they going to hit the jackpot donation wise!

I've been reading about the Super Goober's car woes. Man P I pity you bro. He will just get the Perfect Line and probably Tim to help him out. The Perfect Line loves working on high end sports cars and P has an Audi S4. Sweet car. Hope all goes well man.

The Discourser has been hugely busy with school crap. Wow, he's the Safety Coordinator for his school district. That's pretty damn impressive, and he's the best guy for the job. He's a smart cookie and knows his crap.

Ntt is working hard at good ol' EA still. Getting ready for Alpha he says. From what I gather that's when the current game project is pretty much finished and they go into lockdown mode to get all the pieces working cohesively so they can start printing up the games and sending them out to stores. From what he says this means 7 day weeks!!!! Holy Crap!! But he does get lot's of comp time and often takes a month or two off paid. From the complexity of video games nowadays, he deserves it man.

See, I'm not the only one busy, busy busy...........

Ciao for now.

Capital Punishment

At 1 am this morning a man who was involved in a shootout 25 years ago and has been on death row since is finally dead. Finally after 25 years of bickering and arguing the punishment of death that was handed down for the act of killing a police officer in Memphis has been meted out. Why do we do this? If we have the death penalty, why does it take so long to put someone to death? We have a bunch of Doctors now saying they will no longer participate because they "cure people not kill people". Fine, who needs 'em. Oh it will hurt the convicted man if the chemicals are not mixed right. Your point is??? Scott Peterson is awaiting death. Currently he has his own cell, three squares a day, cable tv, internet, books galore, Hell he can even attend college if he really wanted to. What did he do to deserve all this? He brutally murdered his Wife and unborn Son then dumped them in SF Bay like they were trash. Why are we giving this man all this luxury. Sure he is in a cell until they execute him, but until then (which with all of the appeals he's bound to file plus the long line of folks that need to die ahead of him will probably be 20 years from now) he gets all this great crap. Some punishment. I believe you should be allowed 2 appeals, than that's it. If the Docs don't want attend the execution, screw 'em. Have the condemened kneel and put one in the back of his head. You won't need a doctor then to tell you if he's alive or not.

The Vehicular Cold War

Above is a picture of the car I am currently driving. There are many people out there who call it a "death wagon" because I could "be crushed by some idiot in an SUV." Yep, I am aware of this. I am also aware that the car has two airbags for driver and passenger and it is designed to absorb most, if not all of the kinetic energy of a collision. In other words, if I get in a wreck in that car all that will be left is me sitting on my driver's seat with an airbag in my face wondering what the heck happened. The car will be totaled and I won't be. Some people don't believe that, and it's this attitude that has cause the current Vehicular Cold War we have now.

Remember the Cold War? The Russians had nukes, we had nukes. The Russians built bigger nukes, we built bigger nukes. They added 10 more to their arsenal, we added 100 more to ours. It got so bad that both sides had enough nuclear (or nucaler if you're W) weapons to destroy the planet 10 times over.

This same attitude has run through our society when it comes to vehicles. People will buy an SUV as a deterent to the other "idiots" driving SUV's who will "kill them with their gargantuan vehicles." Huh??? So let me understand this? You bought a car you didn't want so you can survive an accident with other people in cars they bought that they didn't want?????? There are those that want the ginormous vehicle. They like them. Then there's the epitomy of ridiculousness that I saw one day; the stereotypical "Soccer Mom" in one of the original Humvee's (you know the one's that are as big as an aircraft carrier?). She was 5 foot nothing, could barely see over the wheel, and had two kids in the extreme backseat (they were in another zip code from their Mom). WTF!?!?!?! Why didn't this woman get a Minivan????? The kids would be just as safe, the seats are higher and the visibility is better and it gets better mileage than the military transport vehicle she's driving. Or the other idiot that almost backed into my Sister's car at a mall parking lot. The only reason she knew we were behind her is that I was banging on her back door!!!!! Her excuse "Sorry I can't really see out of this thing...." Huh?!?!?!? Why the Hell did you buy it then???? Better yet, why did you let your idiot husband talk you into buying it????? This happens to older couples alot. Hubby wants the macho car and wifey let's him talk her into it. She gets stuck with a behemoth of a vehicle that she can barely handle and his excuse is "I want her to survive an accident when those other idiots hit her". Hello????? She will be the "idiot" causing the accident because she can't handle the vehicle. I don't own one because I have no need for one. I also don't like ginormous vehicles. For a short dude like me, they are hard to see out of, judge distances in (try being 5-5 and backing an Escalade out of a parking space without hitting anything....pretty freaking hard) cost as much as a decent down payment on a house out here and the insurance....fuggedaboutit.... I'm not comfortable driving large vehicles. I remember my Dad had a 68 Plymouth Fury III....basically a large tank-like rectangle with an 8-cylinder engine that was like driving a cruise ship down the narrow ass street we lived on in SB. I hated driving that car.

Now it looks like the Cold War is ending. Gas is so expensive (and again with no real good reason other than "they can") that folks are ditching their SUV's. We've heard the term "crossover" alot lately. Basically these car companies aren't giving up entirely on their SUV's just making them smaller and calling them "crossover" vehicles. How pathetic are we that we as a people need to be "weened" off of our ginormous vehicles????? That is pathetic. Have we become that easily manipulated that we can't just say "no, I don't need that gas guzzling, unsafe vehicle. I am going to buy a Prius or a Honda Hybrid that gets 50 mpg." I bought the car I did because it is made by Toyota and it gets 35 mpg. It was also cheap to insure and has a sporty look. I didn't buy it with the thought "oh God!! If someone hits me in this I'm a dead man". A good driver avoids accidents. In my car I can swerve around danger in the road without fear of flipping it over!!! When everyone slams on the brakes all of a sudden, my car will stop long before Mr. SUV. I can also swerve to the side of the road and avoid a rear end collision faster and easier than Mr. SUV. When will we learn.....

Home Ownership: Does it ever end????

My Wife Cathy and I were commenting last night about why Mortgages are 30 years long; you need that much time to get the house looking like you want it. Even if you buy a brand new house, there are still things that you don't like, or want to do to it to make it uniquely yours. Our house is 30+ years old. It isn't the typical Tennessee "Ranch" style house (basically a big wide rectangle.....boring). It has interesting lines, and you can see which parts were add ons and where the original parts were. In our attic for instance is a TV Aerial antena, it is mounted to the attic floor as if that were part of the original roof. You can also see the frame of what once was the outside wall...it's now our living room. That would explain the vaulted ceilings. The house has siding on it except for Olivia's room; that's brick. So far we have gotten rid of as much of the hideous wallpaper we could (wallpaper that when it was put up, didn't have the old paper taken down first. They just papered over the old crap.) and discovered that there is about 5 layers of old crap underneath it!!! Still have to paint the kitchen, but we've finished the dining room and living room. The master bath has been retiled, but we still need to put in our new sink (we need to get some dry wall to cover a square hole that was cut into the wall when the old vanity was in there...........) it's a pedastool sink and we've just got a new faucet for it, so very soon it will be in. I will let you know how many runs to Lowes I had to do because we forgot something. Eventually we are going to rip up the carpet and put down hardwood floors (or the pergo type stuff.....) because we both hate carpet and think hardwood is nicer. We may tile the entire hallway and blend it into the tile we use in Liv's bathroom. We will probably keep carpets in the bedrooms for now (although I'd like to put hardwood in them too.) Sheesh!!! It never ends huh? Last night when I got home from work began the assault on the offending trees; thank God Mount Juliet has a City run Chipper Service that comes by every now and again and hauls off your branches for nothing. One day those offending trees will become mulch for the park or hamster bedding. As you can tell, I got to use my new chainsaw yesterday. Me like the chainsaw!!!!! Having never used one before, we started off on the small trees before tackling the evil Crabapple tree of Doom (cue scary music). The two trees we killed last night were the ones in our backyard that drive us nuts. These things are actually bushes that were allowed to grow as tall as they could. Instead of one trunk, you have a dozen all weaving about each other looking like some gnarly tree from the area around Yoda's house on Dagobah. Holy crap but we have two huge piles of branches for the chipper guy. Our across the street neighbor Bobby (older retired guy) noticed and chuckled a bit. He commented on just how busy we were and we were discussing home ownership. He said "You've got to do what you've got to do. Those things will take over and they are just a nuissance.". Then he commented on the joys of Home Ownership and how you never seem to be done doing stuff to the house; and he's lived in his for 32 years!!!! All in all though, I don't mind because I can say "it's my house and I'll do what I want to it", and that's a good feeling.

Heroes: Just Gets Better and Better

Spoiler Alert!!!! For my friends who haven't watched last nights episode yet.


You've been warned. Oh my Lord, this is easily the best show on Network TV right now. Essentially it looks like each season of this show is going to be one big Graphic Novel. This last episode was very similar to the X-Men Comic "Days of Future Past" where a future is depicted that shows Mutants put in internment camps and branded as such. Not allowed to breed, watched night and day, basically treated like the perceived "threat" that they are. Last nights episode of Heroes finds Hiro Nakamura and his pal Ando teleported 5 years into the future. The bomb that destroys most of New York that the painter Issac (he who can paint the future) predicted hasn't been stopped after all. In one of the earlier episodes we meet Hiro's Future Self, a bad ass, katana wearing warrior who tells Peter Petrelli "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World". Peter ends up doing so, but apparently it still doesn't stop the bomb. In this future world, Sylar (Super Villan extraordanaire) is blamed for being the bomb (yes there is a man named Ted who's super power is to explode......he doesn't blow up himself, he can just create nuclear explosions.....) when in reality it is Peter Petrelli (who, like Sylar, can absorb others powers....Peter does it by empathy whereas Sylar does it by killing the individual and examining their brain before injesting it). Nathan (the flying guy) is President, and apparently he's turned evil and wants to exterminate the competition (we find out Nathan is Sylar masquerading as Nathan...Holy Crap didn't see that one coming either....) The future looks bleak for our Heroes, and it's up to Hiro to change it......God I love this show........if you aren't on board, go to NBC.com and watch some episodes. You will be hooked.