Whistle-Stop It Already

How does a young man like me spend his New Years Eve? By getting’ the cold shoulder from Whistlestop. And it’s about time too. Seems like they’re overdue. Either way, it’s a new story. Today was gonna be another work day, except the rain came down a little too hard and all the roads to my boss’ house were flooded. This I found out the hard way. And so, I had to call up Whistlestop and cancel our bus ride to the mall. Somehow, I knew we were going to be penalized for calling up and canceling late. We always are, so this time would have been no exception. I had to ask if we were going to be penalized and the woman said yes. I beg the question, what the hell? So I asked her why were being penalized and she said that we were at fault for this, therefore we must be penalized.

Quick recap: I got up way too early this morning, rode in a car across town and went through several large floods only to find out that every road to my boss’ house was blocked and I couldn’t get to work. I was about to be penalized for something that was out of my hands. How am I at fault for the roads flooding? Oh, that’s right, because humans can control the weather! We made the tsunami, we mad the hurricanes, and now we made the rainstorm! BS. So my dad asks for the phone, and I could tell he was kinda angry because he had that twinge of redneck tone in his voice that always comes out when he’s angry. And I was angry too, but he managed to talk her out of giving us a penalization. So that was that.

What kind of collective intelligence resides in a company that believes this sort of ****. Honestly?

Anyways, Happy New Years and all that jazz.

Teddy Bears No Similarity

Just got this quote in my e-mail from Teddy Roosevelt in 1907:

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." - Theodore Roosevelt 1907

These are the words of a Democrat in 1907. Flash forward almost a hundred years later and what is the common sentiment among Democrats to foreigners? Around here, it seems to be “Get out of my country, you filthy, job-stealing Hispanics.” OK, so maybe that’s a bit much, but that’s what is wanted in so many words.

I bring this up because I think this is another one of those cases where the left-wingism of yesteryear is more like the right-wingism of today. The conservatives I know agree, and so do I, that it’s best for an immigrant coming into this country to learn to get around like we do or risk being stuck pumping our gas for the rest of their lives. That’s the sad truth of the matter.

Flash Jihad

It would appear as though someone could be recruiting terrorists throught he magic of Macromedia Flash…Or not:

A three-minute animated film has been found on the internet presenting instructions on how to carry out terrorist acts. While the precise reason for this cartoon’s making remains unclear, experts have dismissed the project as “amateurish” and basically useless. In the meantime, those people responsible for crafting the video have yet to be found. News From Russia has more on this story.

“While the creators of this cartoon remain unknown, top security officials have linked to Unicef and the creators of the Smurf bombing cartoon.” Seriously, I know the terrorists do seem to enjoy using the technology of us infidels to spread their message (Nick Berg and all the other folks who job their heads sawn off), but do you really think guys that made a flash cartoon would be doing so to recruit terrorists? It seems more likely to me that they would be using it to make fun of terrorists. On the other hand, I wonder why the creators seem to be remaining silent. Maybe they just haven’t heard the news yet.

Christmas: Looking Back

Three cheers for the Egg Nog, kudos for desert
And the eating too much which made our bellies hurt
Lets hear it for stockings with trivia notes
And new party games with silly anecdotes
Thanks for the sweater, the raincoat, the shoes
Dad, I hope that joke book works when you get the blues
Thanks for the thirty bucks to spend as I like
And thanks for the new lock to put on my bike
Sarah, I think the watch wristband is dandy
I hope that you’ll find what I got for you handy
The toy plane is cool, I heard it goes fast
And I can’t wait to see it. Yeah, this rain won’t last
The trivia game for movies is perfect
I’ll have to keep playing it, ‘til it’s ineffect

Here’s to the given to, Mom you’re the first
May a fine adult fairytale quench your film thirst
For John, your new gloves, hope they are to your likin’
Cuz fingerless looks tough and mits are for bikin’
My gift exchange calendar, the bearer, take care
It has Bruce Lee on it. Drop it and beware
For my homies in South U.S., homeless or non
Have a happy Christ day and good New Years anon
And a happy “non-solstice” to Lee at Right-Thinking
If he gets home safely from all that drinking
And here’s thanks to Jesus who started it all
Happy birthday to you, Oh King-of-the-mall
And to everyone else that I do hold so dear
Hope you had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year

Manuality

Well, the holidays are upon us, I'm just recorvering from a terrible sickness and my present to all of you is (drumroll please) ANOTHER personality test. This time, my handwriting is the judge of me.



You plan ahead, and are interested in beauty, design, outward appearance, and symmetry. You are a social person who likes to talk and meet others. You are negative, fearful, resistant, doubtful, and/or selfish. You are a talkative person, maybe even a busybody! You enjoy life in your own way and do not depend on the opinions of others.

What does your handwriting say about YOU?

Hmmm. And while we're on the subject, I am Batman! It's Hammer Time!

Sparks Fly

With the almighty slew of Next-Gen systems coming, the Nintendo Revolution, the Playstation 3 and the recently released Xbox 360, how can a devoted gamer decide on a system of their own? First off, you can take a look at what I’ve got to report to help you decide.

Lesse, I remember many years ago when this die-hard Sega fan bought the Dreamcast. Most of the launched systems turned out defective, but I was the lucky one. And now, let’s see just how well the newer, better systems are doing. We’ll start with the Playstation 3:

I worked for GameStop over the summer, and this came up during the Madden 2005 [2006?] Release a few months back, and “confirmed” by our District Manager, I’m not entirely sure how true it is, but if you do some research on it, here’s what you’d be looking for:The PS3 is delayed until 2007, the decision for this came about through the failure of the initial hardware the PS3 Development Team created. Apparently, 300 PS3 Units were created and sent to various software developers to begin creating games for the new system. However, design flaws in the PS3 (Specifically, not enough coolant) caused the systems to overheat and meltdown after moderateuse by the developers.According to my DM (District Manager), Sony went and fired the entirety of the PS3 Development Team for this flaw. In short, from what I’ve heard, if Sony gained anything from this experience, it’s minor technical knowledge on what the PS3 can handle, but for the most part they were sent to square one.

Ouch. Looks like PS3’s out of the box for now. And how does our good pal Xbox 360 fare?

The official story: "We have received some isolated reports and calls of consoles not operating as expected. The call rate is well below what you'd expect of a consumer electronics product of this complexity."-- Molly O'Donnell, senior manager of global Xbox public relations.

Oh dear. I guess no console is perfect. And with the stories I’ve heard of Xbox 360s even melting the game discs, I’m kinda glad I didn’t get one. Now let’s look at the ever-skeptical looking Nintendo Revolution:

Just yesterday IGN Revolution launched with technical details on Nintendo's next-generation console, codenamed Revolution. And today more development sources have come forward with both clarification and even more tech specs. The latest news begins to paint a clearer picture of Nintendo's aim with its next platform.
………….
In yesterday's article, we wrote that Revolution would include 128MBs of RAM, or possibly less. Developers have clarified the makeup based on officially released Nintendo documentation. Revolution will build on GameCube's configuration of 24MBs 1T-SRAM and 16MBs D-RAM (40MBs) by adding an addition 64MBs of 1T-SRAM. The result is a supply of memory in Revolution that totals 104MBs. That number does not consider either the 512MBs of allegedly accessible (but hardly ideal) Flash RAM or the Hollywood GPU's on-board memory, said to be 3MBs by sources.
……….
We've also been able to unearth firm details on the storage capacity for Revolution discs. Recent rumors suggesting that the discs can hold 12GBs of data are false. In fact, Revolution discs can store 4.7GBs of data on a single layer or 8.5GBs when double-layered on a single-side. This is a massive jump from the 1.5GB capacity of GameCube discs and more than enough storage capacity for any non-high-definition game.

Wow, doesn’t sound so bad. Wonder how many of these will turn out defective. But wait, what’s this?

Software houses we spoke with also waxed on the immediate advantage to Nintendo's approach with Revolution, which is, of course, system price. Every developer was in agreement that Revolution should launch with a price tag of $149 or lower. Some speculated that based on the tech, a $99 price point would not be out of the question.

Holy Cow, Maw! Only $149? Say it ain’t so! I’ma jump on that bandwagon right now! Oh wait...The deciding factor for me is whether or not I’ll be able to buy that new Sonic game for it. They probably will. Oh, and what’s this:

Also features downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo 64, the SNES and even the NES. There will also be a bay for an SD memory card will let players expand the internal flash memory. Two disc formats, one slot instead of a tray, a single, innovative, self-loading media bay will play both 12-centimeter optical discs used for the new system as well as Nintendo GameCube discs.

GAAWWWD! That’s rich. Hmm, Looks like this system was made for both 2D and 3D. Waste of perfectly good hardware? I report you decide. Now if they’d release the Sonic game for it…They’d better…

RHDilemma

OK, so it’s about due time for me to get attacked again over my political beliefs, so I’ll go ahead and relay the events that happened today. Lesse, I did well in my Aural Exam this morning, my Voice class rehearsal went well…Oh, and I got attacked in the lunchroom for sending out an e-mail.

It all started a day or so ago when I read this blog from RHJunior. I wondered to myself, “Hmm, this is interesting. I wonder how much of this is true. Maybe I’ll send this out to folks on my e-mail list and see what kind of responses I get.” And so I did. Only thing is when you send out copies of an article with the title “WHO STARTED THIS CRAP????”, you’re bound to get some interesting responses. So I put in this little header:

“Wow, this LiveJournal post must be a real eye opener. I wonder howtrue it is. Beware of slam:”

There we go. I’ve opened the door to the possibility of this article being incorrect and I’ve warned the readers that this e-mail may not be of their tastes in so many words. I should be safe, right? Wrong.

Disclaimer: Author Jaimetud does not blame RHJunior for the events occurring within. The author takes as much responsibility as he deserves for the events that occurred today, which is to say not all of it. And I shouldn’t have to put in a disclaimer here, but I felt it in my best interests to forewarn the reader and let them know that if they post nasty comments about me putting all the blame on someone else, I get to wring their neck and force their purple face to reread this paragraph.

Let’s just say I sent this to a friend who I don’t entirely agree with politically, but we get along fine anyway. And he has a friend who reads his e-mails to him because he cannot read them himself. And let’s say that she’s Muslim and VERY sensitive about it. I’d just sent a very angry blog detailing some very nasty Muslim history to someone who would have a Muslim friend read it to him. Now you see where I’m going with this.

So I saw them today. And she didn’t seem to be too offended by the e-mail, so when she approached me and told me that some of the facts in it were inaccurate (That’s right, inaccurate meaning that they are not really facts), we decided to sit down and discuss what about the article was incorrect. So she went and got her lunch, and by the time she got back, I was already in the middle of retelling a story about something that happened a few weeks ago:

During an Improv cast party a few weeks ago, a few of my fellow actors decided to take some time to start bashing Bush over the most amazing mix of factoids and BS I’ve heard in over a year. Of course, I had to intervene and say a few things for myself. And yunno, many of them know I’m right-leaning, but they apparently don’t care. So I’m not trying to pick a fight, just offer a counter-opinion. I tried to tell them all that it’s really NOT a good idea to mix Drama and Politics in this manner because you run the risk of alienating your fellow performers. I got through half of that before I was rudely cut off and told that you can’t have Drama without Politics. BS. And when I said that I wasn’t taught that when I took Drama in high school, I was told by someone else that they always keep Politics out of everything. BS again. In no time at all, I’m told to “drop it.” And while I couldn’t agree with that person more, the person gave me the no-Drama-without-Politics BS tells me that she won’t drop it because “silence is the sound of agreement.” I can’t believe these people. This is exactly why I don’t like mixing Politics and Drama. Now I feel significantly less respectful of all these people and I’m supposed to work with them. So while I’m trying to defend myself from this girl, the “drop it” girl comes in again and tells me to “drop it.”

Me drop it? Tell that to the person who agrees with you who won’t. Oh no wait, I’m the only Conservative at the table. I should shut up. That’s right.

Flash forward to today again. I’m talking about that story with someone else when the Muslim girl cuts in to tell me that I ought to be ashamed. Apparently, I only want to bring shame to her religion, that I want to preach hatred about Muslims, that I’m a hypocrite for being sarcastic about something a few weeks ago, that my soul is going to hell and she really doesn’t care, that MY God hates me… And I’m totally pale in the face at all these accusations. I just wanted some verification, but instead I’m going to hell so it doesn’t matter. I didn’t write the article, I wasn’t the one trying to bash muslims…But before I can finish setting the record straight, guess what? I’m told to “drop it.” I kid you not. Then I’m attacked again and told to “drop it” again. Oh, where have I seen this before? Gee, couldn’t tell.

I know this is the land of free speech and all that, but I’m pretty sure that my unrelated “brothers and sisters” would be a whole lot happier if my lips were sewed shut with nylon, if that’s at all possible. I shouldn’t ask what’s wrong with me. I should ask what’s wrong with everyone else when they can’t be balls enough to listen to someone else’s opinion. And no, I won’t be sending any more of that stuff to that particular friend, but I won’t accept “drop it” the next time this happens. Next time, they’re friends need to drop it.

Dual Bloggage

OK, there’s been a lot going on in my life worth blogging about these past few days, so I gotta write a lot here tonight. First off, I’ve been reading the blogs of Mr. RHJunior who seems to be further to the right side than I am on certain things. And so I happened upon this post of his a few days ago: My Formula for Making Movies (especially animated movies) Better. And so I thought: “Hmm, a right-wing guy who likes animated movies. I simply MUST blog on this!”

OK, toads, here’s the deal. I’ll post what he said on his blog point by point and you get to read my 2 cents after each one? Capice? Good.

1) No celebrity voices. What you waste on paying the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire to be the voice of a talking fish, you could have spent on a dozen voice actors of equal or better quality and thrown in a more skilled writer on the side.

In case you’re animation-intolerant, this guy is referring to “Shark Tale”, which is an adequate film with one of the worst endings in movie history. Personally, I agreed with using Will Smith as the character, but actors these days take wy too much money for the work they do. If “Fresh Prince” really wants to do the movie, you can make him settle for SAG scale or tell him to buzz off.

2) No pop tunes. By the time that oh-so-popular tune gets to the screen, it's already a tired, annoying, overplayed cliche'. Take what you spent on the licensing for that pop tune and hire someone to do a proper music score.

Depends on the tune. Personally, I still think the “Macarena” is cool, but I’d never use it unless I REALLY needed to. And has anyone reading this heard the soundtrack for “Chicken Little?” Honestly, what were they thinking making poor, talented actress Joan Cusack sing “Wannabe?” No actor should be made to sing such songs unless they can sing right. Sorry Joan, I love you but you ain’t Britney.

3) Do not try to be "hip," "def," "phat," or any other version of "cool." and ESPECIALLY not "ghetto" or "street." That means no slang, no culturally trendy catchphrases, no gangsta rap references, no goofy pop clothing or hairstyles, none of it. That crap couldn't be more lame if you broke both its kneecaps.

Now I know this guy’s beef with “Shark Tale” is bigger than last month’s Thanksgiving meatloaf. But I digress, I still agree only to a certain degree. Street slang and that stuff can be cool, just don’t overdo it unless you’re trying to parody something. And the “old-white-guy-acting-street-and-coming-across-as-funny” gag is WAY too overdone.

4) Let the writers and animators off the leash. They are the creative team. You are the corporate team. They know how to do art, stories, and funny jokes. YOU DO NOT. Satisfy yourself with conducting the advertising campaign to get people drooling to see the movie when it comes out, and leave the artistic stuff to the actual artists.

As a filmmaker, I again agree. I know what it’s like to have a fanancier breathe down your neck. They don’t know how to do my job, so they shouldn’t pretend like they do or even tell me how to do mine.

5) A caveat to the above: Lose the grossout humor. Yes, I'm looking at YOU, DreamWorks. Every animated feature I've seen from you so far has had it--- apparently because you think, pathetically enough, that poop and fart jokes make your films more "mature" and cutting edge. In case you were wondering, no, they don't.Leave the poop, peeing, fart and other biological humor at home.

Ahem, you forgot Nickelodeon. There can be grossout SOMETIMES, but farting just isn’t too funny anymore in kids movies. And seeing Donkey pee out the fire in the first “Shrek” will always haunt my memories as a joke not only to be kept out of kids movies, but anatomically incorrect as well. If they model Donkey without privates, then don’t make him use them!

6) Do not make a sequel to a movie with a decisive ending. If the movie ends with the last highlander cutting off the head of the next-to-last highlander with a sword, it's a good sign that there's no room for sequels. And direct-to-video sequels are absolutely out. I know it's cheaper than exercising any creativity, but it makes you LOOK like a lazy, untalented bunch of hacks. Do not BE this person.

Here, I disagree on certain levels. If they can explain having the bad guy return properly, then I don’t mind them coming back so much. Of course, I’m one of the few people who enjoyed the “Matrix” sequels. And don’t whine to me about how much the sequels suck just because the heroes died at the end. Heroes die, tough cookies, move on please.

7) Quit using cliche plot devices and characters. I am so sick of movies filled to the eyeballs with characters right out of Cliche Hell. Look, if you go over the script and you see character types in there that you've seen in a dozen other films, UN INVITE them from your own movie. They've overstayed their welcome.

Once again, this rule shall only be ignored in spoofs.

8) Finally, if it takes making a longer movie to tell the whole story, MAKE a longer movie. ESPECIALLY if you're making a movie version of a book. If it takes 2,3, or even 4 hours to fit all the plot in, DO it. Quit dropping characters, scenes and plotlines from the movie "for the sake of time." And quit leaving pieces ESSENTIAL TO THE MAIN PLOT on the cutting room floor!

I really despise it when essential stuff is cut out. I loved “Young Frankenstein,” but it was always kind of bogus to see Dr. Fronk-en-steen bash the memory of his grandfather in his first scene and then suddenly jump at the opportunity to go see his castle. They had a scene in there that explained that a little further which can now only be seen as a special feature on the DVD. They SHOULD have left it in. Ah well, I won’t get my underwear in an uproar over it.

See the above list, moviemakers? This is the reason people like Peter Jackson, Pixar, and small-potato indie filmmakers are wiping the floor with you. Not because they're using the shiny new toys like CGI or "rustically authentic" filming methods. Its not any "formula" they're using, precisely because they're NOT being formulaic. Do you get this? the LOTR trilogy, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc, the Blair Witch project, the Emporer's New Groove--- they could have been live action, classically animated, CGI, claymation or done with SOCK PUPPETS and still have been good. Why? Because, for each of those, the story came FIRST. And they WEREN'T just trying to repackage the same sorry sad sack plot with some new trappings.

RHJunior’s job is finished.

Hammah Time!

Another bit of quiz randomness for me:

Your favorite thing to say in the bedroom is: It's Hammer Time!

Take this quiz at QuizUniverse.com

You know what's scary? My boss has been saying that to me lately.