I get excited

Okay guys, so here's the deal. I'm ridiculously excited about Christmas break, so I've been trying to line up the movies I want to see with family and friends. Anyhow, I've stumbled across a few soon-to-be-released films that look good, bad, and downright ugly. So I'll post a preview, draw conclusions about a book from merely perusing the cover, and you get to critique me. Here goes. 

The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed by Scott Derrickson

Release Date: December 19, 2008

Verdict: Bad. Although I'm excited they're doing a remake of a classic, I refuse to be a part of something that pays Keanu Reeves more than 10 million dollars to act like an alien. Seriously, I can think of at least a million better ways to throw away money than to pay Keanu Reeves to be himself. 

Terminator: Salvation, directed by McG

Release Date: May 22, 2009

Verdict: Good. T4 stars Christian Bale as John Connor? Okay, why in the world did it take them that long to figure this out? Throw in Helena Bonham Carter and Bryce Dallas Howard, without a doubt two of the most talented actresses right now, and I'm yours. Did I mention it's written by James Cameron, who wrote T2 and T3, directed T2 (arguably the best) and also directed Aliens? Yeah. That's right.  By the by, a much better quality video is here.

Avatar, directed by James Cameron

Release Date: December 18, 2009

Verdict: Good. It's James Cameron, it's apparently got the second biggest budget in film history (a quarter of a billion. That's right, with a b), and it's about Earth trying to take over another planet. It's either gonna be great or terrible. We'll give Cameron the benefit of the doubt, for right now. 

Bedtime Stories by Adam Shankman

Release Date: December 25, 2008

Verdict: Good. Adam Shankman, if you look him up on the IMDB, hasn't had a real miss as a director. Apparently Sandler took a cue from fellow adult comic Stiller and decided to do something kid friendly. We'll see if Courtney Cox can also drop the whole skank thing for a few minutes. It'll definitely be a stretch. 

Defiance, directed by Edward Zwick

Release Date: January 16, 2009

Verdict: Good. Daniel Craig is a great actor, and Zwick's credits include Glory, Blood Diamond, The Siege, and The Last Samurai. Looks like a winner to me.  

The International by Tom Twyker

Release Date: February 13, 2009

Verdict: Good. Yeah, Clive Owen is one of my favorite actors ever. This could go south and just be about vigilante justice, or it could actually be a great movie. But it's got Clive Owen, ya'll. And also, in a weird twist, Twyker recently broke up with his long-time girlfriend, who happens to be Marie from the Bourne movies. Has nothing to do with the movie, just a weird little fact. 

Valkyrie directed by Bryan Singer

Release Date: December 25, 2008

Verdict: Ugly. Guys, I'm sorry. It's always worse when great movies fail over a single, glaring oversight. Tom Cruise should not have been within a hundred miles of this film. It's directed by Bryan Singer (X-men, X2, The Usual Suspects, Superman Returns, and producer of House, M.D.), it's got Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, and even Eddie Izzard. Why, in the world, would anybody let this talent go to waste on a Tom Cruise movie!?! I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong, that this turns out to be amazing and Cruise pulls off the performance of a lifetime. But I don't think that's likely. 

Up, directed by Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson

Release Date: May 29, 2009 

Verdict: Good. Um, so can anyone actually think of anything they wanted to do as a childmore than this?! I mean seriously, this is a genius idea for a film. Pure genius.

Galactophagist (n.)

You heard me - Galactophagist. This is the new word of the day. Some of you philologists might be able to guess this one. Same rules as before (basically, don't be lame by cheating). Go ahead, impress me.

I play the prophet

Tomorrow, around 8 or 9 PM CST, the major news media is going to realize that this is a much closer race than anyone wants to say. States like Idaho, New York, Kansas, and Oklahoma will go exactly as polled. CNN's predictions, though, that Obiden will lap McPalin on electoral votes is just dang ridiculous. Virginia will not go to Obama, and neither will Montana or North Dakota. I'm having trouble seeing Washington going that way as well. I think Palin will swing a large portion. North Carolina is another easy shot for the Reds. We may have another state (a la New Hampshire in y2k) that's up in the Blue Northeast that ends up swinging over. The big problems will, as always, lie in the swing states. What will be interesting though, is that this election will do roughly what the 2000 election did. Ohio and Pennsylvania will be split between Dems and Reps. Ohio will again go to the Red and Pennsylvania Blue. The battle will end up in Florida, like it always seems to, and this is where Wolf Blitzer will get all shrill and flustered. 

All of a sudden he and the rest of the "best political team in the frippin universe"™ will realize that their polls were wrong. Here's the thing about Florida, Alabama, and Georgia: more than half of the people who will vote for the Republicans no matter who is running are the working class heroes that anarchist musicians love to sing about and then love to hate come November. They are the trailer-living, gun toting, beer drinking rednecks who would hang up on any pollster in the world. But they'll show up tomorrow, and Wolf Blitzer and Anderson "The Grease" Cooper will shake their heads in sadness, and swear blue streaks on and off of cats when commercial breaks come. 

Come 12 am on Nov. 5th, we'll be no closer to a result. This one will take days, more likely weeks. The battle will start in the courts, and we'll see how it goes from there. It will be quite interesting to see how Charlie Crist (FL governor), a democrat, will react when his sponsor John McCain (they have a long track record together) and his party's nominee are both fighting over his state's votes. It'll be a very amusing couple of weeks

N.B. I have made at least two dozen controversial claims unfounded on any sort of real data except my own, limited experience. Most of this is sheer conjecture. But I do really think it's what will happen. May God, as Pastor Wilson said this Sunday, give us mercy and not justice. 

I have found something both fun and addicting

Judging a book by its cover. It shows you the cover of a book, and you guess how many stars Amazon users have given it. I did this 30 times, and got 10 right. That's after going to 3 and 15, so I'm pretty proud of myself. It's a lot harder predicting where people are tasteless than you might imagine.

http://www.judgeby.com/

Props to the oh-so-wonderful Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter; my concession to my inner geek.

I find Scott Adams quite funny at times

So I was cleaning out the old email inbox today, and ran across this little gem of a link:

Best Fundraiser Ever

Now Scott Adams' blog (he's the guy who writes the Dilbert comic strip) is normally far from wholesome entertainment (Trey, remember the hat?) and I would greatly encourage you against reading it as a general thing. But this bit is extremely amusing to yours truly.

Microwave woes

Last night I was heating up some quesadillas in the microwave. It was one of those deals where you open the box, take out some stone-like things in the shape of a crescent, stick 'em in some sleeve, and then microwave the bloody heck out of them.

Well, I think there must be some universal law that you can't get a good ol' Aristotelian mean out of a sleeve pocket dinner. Either there's still a frozen portion (usually in the middle) or it becomes scalding hot. Actually, what usually happens is that you get both. The edges are scalding hot but the middle is nice and frozen. In the case of last night the edges were actually burned and the paper was about ready to catch fire. And yet, once again there is still a frozen piece the size of Alaska. So what do you do with the part that's already cooked to death? Slice around it and put the frozen part back in. But I don't want to ruin my nice crescent. . .

Maybe this'll be one of the things I ask God about when I get to Heaven.

I need some Sulfur Hexaflouride

really, really bad.



Don't try at home? Adam, be serious. I can sound like the devil himself, and you expect me not to try this?

I am helping cure racism . . .

By posting this.



NB: Please don't go randomly clicking on Flight of the Conchords videos, dear young readers. They can get rather mature rather quickly. And by mature I mean immature yet dirty. Funny, isn't it?

For legality - I downloaded this video using Google video. I'm obviously not using this for profit, just to make a few friends laugh. And this is easier than getting the embed thing off youtube, etc. I love the flying conchords, and if this is infringement I'll pull it at once. I just don't think it is.

We are amazing (and total nerds)

Guess what peoples? My esteemed colleague and I did something truly amazing and worthy of eternal remembrance. That's right.

We beat Halo on Legendary. And not just any Halo - Halo III.

The only catch was that we started the mission affectionately referred to as "Covenant" at Rally point Bravo. For those of you that haven't played this game, that's right before the two scarabs (ridiculously hard insect-like alien ships) and right after we took out the shield. But we did in fact play the part before it, just at another time and we didn't much feel like starting over (very annoying section; doncha know?).

Um, so well we didn't get to see the alternate ending (aka "the nerd's beatific vision"). We were ticked. AGAIN!