One of the world's most valuable assests answers questions at the Orpheum theater
In an effort to help me update the site more often, I have created a new feature called 30 Second Review. Keeping the reviews short and sweet and without attaching a rating in stars helps keep the work load light. Today I popped off a few quick ones to test out the style. Let me know what you think! I will try and let you all know of interesting music and movies that you may have missed rather than just pilling up info you already know.
Cheers
Wow. That was a pretty intense exam period. I know most people probably had it tougher than I did, but it still took alot out of me. I don't like having so much riding on one test and that happend for most of the classes this term. Thankfully, the grades thus far have been beyond excellent (90% in Signals and Systems and 81% in Software Engineering). My second Poli-Sci paper (available in the post below) scored 85% which is amazing. I am very happy with that and the comments given regarding my ideas. It is nice to know that not only did I school a bunch of artsies at their own game but that I could easily switch over to arts without much difficulty.
Now that I have some more free time, I'm gonna try and work on the site a little more regularly. I have been thinking of changing my method of reviewing music and movies to one of simply suggesting new things that you may not have heard of. I have been ... uh... "finding" lots of new music... uh... around... in places... like on the floor... but not downloading. NO! Never. That's illegal. ;-) I will just say that BitTorrent owns all. I think I have become addicted to Trip-Hop music as I seem to be listening to alot of it lately. Any sexy sounding female singers interested in doing a Sneaker Pimps tribute band?
So I decided to purchase some new computer stuff... I got a 200 GigaByte harddrive which I have quickly started to fill with tons of useless junk... A new laser printer since the old one was pretty much shot... and the kicker... A 20 GigaByte iPod. Oh my, this is the coolest invention in the last 10 years. I have stored all of my "good" music and there is still about 4 gigs free. So sweet. Battery life is nothing like my MD player but it makes up for that in slickness and capacity... not to mention audio quality. The MD compressed everything to either 105bps or 66bps (shudder) and it just wasn't good enough. The high end was all mushy and made me want to listen to Zamfir or some crap like that just cause it would be less annoying.
So in the past three months there has been alot to post about but never enough time. Instead of trying to tell the whole dirty story, I'll just give the abridged version...
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Professor Chomsky was in Vancouver back in March in case you didn't see me at all in the last while. If you had, you would have seen the smile on my face and that sickening leftist/commie rhetoric just oozing from me. ;-) It was amazing to see him in person and hear what he had to say. I got to see him on Saturday night and Sunday morning and was pleased to find him talking on two vastly different topics. The first was basically a summation of his new book Global Hedgemony or Survival. It was nothing terribly new for me since he has been echoing his previous works for many years since nothing seems to change on the side of the American foreign policy planners. The big issue for the next while of course is nothing other than Star Wars, the dreadful missle defense shield.
Now for anyone with half a brain, it should be obvious that the word defense should be read "first strike." Why is this? Well, for starters, the actual military documents passed on through our parliment and handily posted online by Jack Layton and the federal NDP use this terminology blatantly. A sligh paraphrase of the report has one section that reads, "With the rising amount of anti-globalization movements around the world, a new level of military superiority is required." What I found humourous was that Chomsky's logic on the system. Most people who criticize it say, "It's too expensive and doesn't work." Chomsky's reply is, "Good, if it did work we might have a problem."
That problem would be simply that the enemies of the relatively free-er world would see this as a possible attack weapon (for good reason... Bush blew up Iraq for looking at us the wrong way, what happens when North Korea gets nukes? Oh wait they do... hmmm...). And how would people defend themselves against this weapon? With more nukes! Hazaa its a new cold war! Go Bush go! The contracts of many Lockheed Martin employees lies in the balance!
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The first gig went down one week before the last day of classes. We played a short set which included...
Unfortunately, the last tune was cut off as my amp decided to stop working. Andrew carried the song by himself for another minute before busting out with a John Bonham-ish drum solo. I got some good feedback from people there so it was overall a good experience. My leg wouldn't stop shaking the whole time I was up there, but I felt pretty confident even without more guitars or monitors that worked!
Anyhoo, that brings us up to speed for now. School has ended very positively for the first time since high school. I have gotten two A's this term (90% and 81%) and there is a chance I may get 4/5ths of my marks in this range. The other will most likely be a B or a high C+...
Last Friday I had an interview with Intrinsyc, a computer programming computer in Vancouver. I hope I get the job as the experience would be phenominal and there would be a good chance for future employement. This was the first job interview I have ever had that had ANYTHING to do with my field of study.
So peace out for now homies. Cheers
My goodness, to all of you who actually still come by this place, I'M SORRY! I haven't had two seconds to myself since school picked up again. Gah. I just spent the last 4 hours "touching up" my political science paper. I decided to play around a little bit this time and take some risks. For example, the title... "Dr. Fukuyama or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Free Market Economics"
I have about two months of journaling to catch up on, but I'm way too tired to do it all now. I have to still post on Chomsky's visit which was fantastic. I will try to compile my notes for you all to look over as well as post some pics from the event. Also, Andrew and I played our first gig out at UBC last Friday (so just drums, guitar and vocals...) and it went alright. The sound was crappy as expected and no one could hear my voice very well, but most people were positive about the set so that was good.
Anyhoo, I must sleep. May the Canucks dominate tomorow night and may you all have good fortune on your exams if you have any. Cheers.
It was a clean sweep for the Lord of the Rings crew. It seems that early speculation holds true that the academy wanted to treat the films as one and gave the final one the hardware in spades. 11 wins puts it tied with Ben Hur and Titanic for most wins by one film. I was so happy to see Jackson get his reward for 7+ years of hard work.
It was nice to have Billy Crystal back in action again. I should state that I really did like Steve Martin last year and hope to see him get the chance to return in the future. Crystal opened as per usual with some smart editing to put him into the years biggest movies. My personal favorite moment was during a clip of Return of the King where Billy is playing Legolas the elf dude. Running on the ground is none other than Michael Moore who is shouting, "Hey you Hobbits! Stop this war! This was not the will of the people of Middle Earth!" He is then cut off not by an orchestra, but rather by the foot of a trampling elephant. I'm sure Brian F stood up and cheered for that...
Another great moment was Jack Black and Will Farrell performing for the audience the words to the "Cut Off" song played by the orchestra when you go over the time limit. "You're bor-ring. Catherine Zeta Jones is snoring." Priceless. Also, Bill Murray told of how four members of the crew wanted to quit after four days of shooting Lost in Translation stating that the director didn't know what she was doing. He then said, "But we stayed and finished it anyways." Too bad he got shut out by Sean Penn and his Mystic River performance which I have yet to see. :-(
Another nice touch was Errol Morris winning for The Fog of War. I felt that it was outshinned by both Capturing the Friedmans (nominated) and The Corporation (not nominated), but Morris' little quip relating Iraq to Vietnam, "I fear we may be going down another rabbit hole..." was to the point and very classy in comparison to Mr. Moore's style the year before. Also, Mr. Penn's comment regarding the two things that all actors know, "1. That there were no WMD... 2. That there is no way to compare acting blah blah blah..."
Anyhoo, it was a good night on a whole. Much better pacing than usual and definately more upbeat. Jim Carrey with Blake Edwards and Robin Williams with Billy were some of the more interesting presenters tonight. Also, it should be noted that Adrien Brody who won last year for his role in The Pianist, gave a few shots of breath freshener before announcing the winner for best actress. The joke of course being how he gave quite the kiss to Halle Berry last year during his acceptance speech. He also remarked that he's "got a restraining order against him."
I must get some sleep now... last midterm tomorrow! Laterz all.
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How come my birthday always seems to be the same day of a painful midterm? Sigh. Being sick also didn't help but neither could completely drown out the fun of my birthday this year. I've been busy watch the South Park DVDs my Dad got me as well as admiring the artwork of my sister's amazing b-day card!
We went out to Tony Roma's for dinner as a family tonight and it was, as usual, fabulous. Gotta love those onion ring loaves. Mmmm.
Next Sunday I'll be hosting a large screening of the first part of the magnificent trilogy. We will be using a video projector and screen to get the image out to something like 6 feet or so. Should be a blast. I really REALLY like the Enya song at the end of the movie. It's so gentle and ties so well with the movie both lyrically and musically. Strange, it didn't get an Oscar nomination... yet the heavy handed Annie Lennox tune from this year's Return of the King got a nomination. Shameful.
Don't forget, Oscars are on tomorrow night with Billy Crystal hosting. Best to tune in for his entry song and monologue and then back in at 11:15pm for Best Picture. I'll watch the whole thing, but we all know that those are the highlights. ;-)
I have now applied for over 40 jobs and haven't gotten an interview yet. It is rather discouraging, but oh well. I'm pretty sure I'll get something before summer starts up.
I am planning to add some new sections to the website and am calling out for help to do so! If any of you have something that you would like to write about on a weekly/bi-weekly/monthly/annual basis, please let me know. For example, I have talked with my good friend Anne-Marie about getting her to do short reviews of restraunts she recommends. I also wouldn't mind people sending in their own reviews of movies or cds that I have or haven't reviewed. Let me know if you are interested and I'll contact you and let you know what we can do. Thanks so much everyone!
Last night, James and I (with a little help from Joel's video projector) threw what I hope will become the first of many marathons of random topics. The show of choice last night was Family Guy. Starting at 5pm, we managed to get through 17 episodes before finally calling it quits at Midnight. It was a good turn out and the laughs never stopped the whole time. Of course, since the intro plays each and every episode, we all became very skilled at singing along!
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Unfortunately, we came up with some good ideas for drinking games AFTER we stopped watching. Some good ones included...
We shall have to institute those next time... Of course, I don't think anyone would be conscious after 5 episodes if we followed those rules...
I just finished watching the most puzzling animated film I have ever seen. It's called Waking Life and the whole film is just people spouting off philosophy of dreams, life, society, and all sorts of things. It's very interesting and at times overwhelming... I found myself wanting it to end just so I could begin to process the information! But one scene of the film had particular meaning to me based on events that occured today.
The scene was simple these two people bumping into each other while going opposite directions on a stairway. One of the characters turns and says, "Hold up, I don't want to be an ant anymore." She goes on to explain that humans are very much like ants as we travel from place to place with little or no interaction with each other. Our "feelers" just looking out for people so we don't run into each other. I thought about that for a while since I had just talked about a similar idea with my friend Brian just this weekend. My take was that the laws of nature say that it is unnatural to meet people in transit. For me to meet someone on the bus or in an elevator is purely nonsense since it goes against the instructions of society that have spent so much time and energy prying us apart and keeping us isolated.
Thus, imagine my surprise when I struck up a conversation with a young commerce student while waiting for the bus to come. I had noticed she was carrying a VHS copy of Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (the director of which, Mark Achbar, recently directed the fabulous "The Corporation"). All ingrained social standards in me said to just smile at the fact that someone was about to watch an excellent documentary and not talk or share ideas about it at all. I sometimes wonder if the reason our society is becomming less and less able to unify on our similarities is simply due to our lack of social interaction. Ponder, if you will, the last time you had a conversation with a complete stranger. And I don't think classmates you've never talked with count... You have something in common and are held in place thus almost forcing interaction. And hitting on someone at a bar is also out. Being out in the open, even held in place at a bus stop, interaction is almost frowned upon. For such a civilized culture, we have a long ways to go before we become a social one.
Today I went to a disussion hosted by Microsoft. Now, don't get me wrong. I use almost all MS products and I really like them for the most part. Sure, IE should have tabs and guesture support by now, and it would be nice if the company didn't create the impression that they are scanning your computer for illegal software every time you upgrade your OS... but for the most part, everything works fine and using third party software or open source alternatives like Linux take more time and energy than they are worth.
Anyhoo, here's the part that really got me laughing. The talk was on Rights Management. The presenter was going on and on about how important Rights Management software is in the time of internet music piracy and movie sharing. The part that struck me as odd was that I'm pretty sure that 98% of the audience has never paid for any of their Microsoft products ... so why would anyone care about their code to protect information? Talk about a success story.
The other funny part was the number of questions from the audience that completely throw the usability of the product out the window. ie: So will this security work on older versions of Office? ans: Yes and no. Wow, what a definitive answer.
In the end, people are just going to throw MS software away and just use Linux for COMPATIBILITY reasons! The irony is just astounding.
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So when I got to class today, I sat behind these two big guys who looked like rugby players. They were joking around and being annoying but I tried to ignore them and focus on class.
A few minutes into class, I noticed that a girl was in front of the two blokes and was drawing a pictre of two girls sitting in desks. Her friend looked over her shoulder curiously but focused on class. The picture was one of those rudimentary stick people ones and then slowly I got the picture...
The girl then drew in two men in desks behind the girls in the picture. She added big comic balloons to emphasize their loudness and then drew a big arrow to both with the word, "RUDE" at the source. I laughed out loud as did the two guys in front of me. They commented to each other how sexy they both looked in the picture and apologized to me that I was excluded from it.
It shold be noted that I also learned some stuff about feudal systems... but that was much less interesting.
Well, I have been applying for lots of jobs already this term, most of them being in the software design area. I actually feel more capable to do these kinds of jobs and also feel the possibility that I could get hired for one of them!
One kinda scary thing is that I may have to move to Ontario for a term to do some of these jobs. I hope I don't get those ones. Altho, those jobs are with Research in Motion, the creators of the Blackberry mobile email unit. As a benefit of working there, you get a Blackberry for personal use! I think that is a good incentive for me to go out there... Sigh, you can always entice engineers with gadgets. Always...
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It's been a busy week, but here are the highlights for me...
Well, my good buddy Chris (not the one mentioned below mind you) is heading off to Japan tomorrow morning to teach english. I wish him well and may he be blessed with many hot japanese girlfriends. I'll miss ya buddy.
After missing out on the show last year, I made a big effort to get tix to this time around. I managed to snag row 28 center and plan to go with my good pal Kurtis. Kurtis likes the Muppets and buys lots of comic books. He's odd that way. But oh well. He has good taste in music and movies. ;-)
Two weeks ago, I went out with three civil engineers to try and catch the Canucks game at a pub somewhere. By civil... I mean field of study... not manners. I was with Vince, my good carpool buddy, Chris, the sex-focused chick magnet, and Ken, the not so chick magnet. We couldn't get into Jeremiah's which had the game on, so we went to Dently's or something and just had some brew and food.
Our waitress was rather cute and Chris started working his mojo right away. Chatting her up each time she came by the table, I wondered how this guy sleeps at night. Well, not really. I didn't want to think about that too much cause he usually isn't alone.
Anyhoo, Ken and I were complete pansies and started to feel a little woozy after only 2 pints and a bit each. Chris went and ordered four "Rusty Nails" which had whiskey or something in them... The intention was for us to each drink one. I had a few sips and had to pass. It was a little much for my tastes. Ken was driving and gave up on his too for fear of dying or something. Good call on his part. Chris quickly downed our "Nails" and went on to drink a few more beers. Our bill was a little nasty but it was due to being charged a little more than what we actually purchased. The "Nails" came out to be $24 for all 4... gah. There is ANOTHER reason I don't drink hard liquour.
Anyhoo, while Chris was paying the waitress, he continued his game of chatting and flirting around while the rest of us watched in awe. As we walked out, the waitress patted Chris on the back and then slid her hand down to his rear and gave it a good pinch. The man is dangerous... If Tucker Max ever had an illegitimate child, I bet Chris would be it.
Hello folks. Sorry about th delay in posting. I've been massively busy getting school sorted out and living la vida loca as they say. ;-) Well, not really. Just been having massive car troubles and spending lots of time on the bus.
So what's been happening? Well, I should probably try and break it all down into bite-size chunks or its going to be the longest post ever. Well, actually, I might fall asleep before I finish in which case it will be the shortest post ever... Let's just see how it goes.
I will have to post a review, but for now... GO SEE IT! This is the most important film of the year and by far the best documentary I have ever seen. A well structured thesis with commentary from corporate CEOs, Whistleblowers, Authors and other Filmmakers, this film is going to challenge the way you think. Right now it's playing at the Ridge on Arbutus and at Tinseltown near GM Place.
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I went to see it earlier this evening with my good friend Anne-Marie who I worked with at YVR. I posted a pic of her with the rest of my helpdesk mates on the pictures section, but she said she didn't like how she looked in it. I will soon switch it with this picture on the right. This was taken the night she became a certified Puma. For those of you who don't know, single females attain certain classes as they grow more... hmm, shall we say, experienced? 30-35 is a lynx, 35-40 is a puma, and 40+ is a cougar. I would extrapolate that 20-30 would be a cub of some sort and 50+ would be mountain lion...
Anyways, Bella (as we at the airport call her) and I had a splendid time watching the movie and then had a good brisk walk afterwards as we found that she had parked in a no-parking zone. That brisk walk was first in the direction of Buster's Towing as that was where the friendly police officer told us to check. Halfway there we saw one of their trucks going by and called the number on the side of the door. We then found out that Bella's car would be with the By-Law Impound Lot under Granville street bridge. Sigh, that was a good 1.5 miles away. The up side of course being that we had a very good discussion about the movie/life/everything on the way and it was very clear out. We finally got the car back and went for dinner at Bojangel's near the waterfront at Granville St. I had a wonderful chicken sandwich on cheese and onion bread and Bella had the split pea soup.
For the record though, Anne-Marie is NOT robbing the cradle. She is a good friend and enjoys teaching young engineers like those at the Helpdesk the finer points of the urban experience. Anyways, she has much more interesting prey at the moment in the form of a up and coming businessman with his eye on the prize. I wish her well in her hunt.
My bud Chris is heading to Japan to teach English this Friday. To give him a nice little sendoff, I treated him to a concert and went out for sushi last Saturday. For those of you who don't know, there is this great little sushi place on Davie street down by the Macaroni Grill (2 blocks past Jervis... near the beach) called To-Yo. It's one of those rickety sushi huts that you wouldn't think twice about and the service is nothing to brag about. The reason I am recommending it? $12.50 all you can eat... ANYTIME! That's right. Feel the need to down 30 pieces of salmon sushi at 6pm? No problem. Care to stuff your face with the best dynomite rolls in town? To-Yo is the place to do it.
To be a more complete advertisement, here are the details... You can eat anything on the all you can eat menu for $15.50 or go without sashimi and pay only $12.50. If you go vegan and eat no fish you only pay $9.50 (approx). The menu is full of good stuff including goyza, karrage-ika, dry garlic pork, all the standard rolls, cones, sushi, and for desert, deep fried ice cream. I was thinking about how they make that and have come to the following conclusion... Take a scoop of ice cream, dip it in batter, place in deep frier just long enough to cook the batter (make 10-20 seconds?) A seal will instantly form around the batter keeping the ice cream from melting too quickly. Slice and enjoy. I'm gonna try it out at home sometime. It probably won't work, but meh. It's worth a shot.
Anyhoo, the sushi almost destroyed me. I ordered a bit too much since I'm used to eating with people who eat more than me. Chris doesn't eat meat so I had to finish almost everything I ordered! I could barely walk after but we made it to the concert without too much difficulty. The show was pretty good but it was not a good night for the headliners, Coheed and Cambria. The lead singer was sick and the guitar player had cut open his finger on his left hand. Since they sing all their songs in the upper registers, the singer couldn't hit any line of any song 100% and was visably upset at this. The guitar player played valiantly thru the pain and kept putting tape on his finger tip to try and cover the wound, but it kept falling off. The music was solid though and even with the lyrics falling apart, the crowd filled in for the main parts and everyone had a good time. I hope they come back and blow us all away sometime in the future.
I was driving down to help my bud Kurtis play for an evening service at his church downtown and I noticed my car was acting up. Earlier that day, my car had stalled completely while driving in Richmond, but I started it right back up with no problems. When I hit 29th and Granville though, my car decided that it would not go any further. Crossing three lanes of traffic, I managed to coast around the corner and call BCAA for assistance.
The dude showed up a good 45 minutes later and found that the problem was that my fuse box contacts were slightly corroded which apparently is a common problem for my model of Volvo. He wiggled each one a little and presto, my car started again! Unfortunately, one of those fuses had broken during the wiggling and it controlled my break lights. I decided not to continue into the city with no break lights and went straight home. My dad had a spare fuse and we fixed the car, but I felt bad having bailed on Kurtis without being able to even tell him that I was okay but not able to make it. Kurt, if you are reading this, BUY A CELL PHONE! ;-)
Well, I had a great Christmas break! Sorry for taking a break from posting as well. I felt that I should say a few things at times, but I needed a vacation. Anyhoo, I posted some pics from the holidays so check 'em out!
So here is the breakdown of the first day. I decided to carpool in with Dave and Brian so we could catch a coffee before class. After pulling out of my driveway I saw that the tunnel was slightly congested. Sigh. We didn't actually get to school until 8:40 so we had to scrap the coffee idea. I took off for my first class, EECE 310, Software Engineering.
My first teacher taught in the UK for 15 years and has a wicked British accent. He seems really nice and should be a good prof. The course material will be less focused on programming and more on practice which should be very interesting.
The next class was for EECE 369, Signals and Systems. The prof again was fairly easy to understand and seems like a good guy. The material is about linear transforms and stuff... Joy.
That was folled by Dr. Jeff Joyce's EECE 321, Compilers and Language Translation. This should be the highlight for my term. Joyce was my UBC contact for my last coop term and is really smart. He actually worked at a company called Raitheon with Jason, one of the technical analysts I worked with at YVR. The material seems very useful and interesting.
After that I had to sprint down to the other side of campus for my Political Science course, POLI 220, Introduction to Comparitive Politics. The focus of the course will be on studying the differences of select countries and how some started off the same but ended up completely different. The countries of interest will be Congo, GB, Germany, and Chile. It should be awesome. As a bonus, the class actually has GIRLS in it! WOW! A nice change from the 20:1 male/female ratio of engineering.
At this point I finally got my first break of the day. I ran over the Koerner library to get my UBC Card renewed. It only took six minutes since the lineup was really short. Unfortunately, I had to go to the other side of campus to pick up my U-Pass. This lineup was outside in the -10 weather and was an hour long! My hands and feet were completely numb when I finally got inside. Thankfully, now that I have my pass, I can avoid troubles that were to come later in my day.
I met up with Dave after that and headed to the bookstore to pick up my texts. Along the way I hit the Studentcare office to complain about the Health Plan charge on my Fees list. I had opted out previously which should have carried over since I specified that I never wanted the plan. Yet, they charged me $124 bucks for it. After talking to the staff there (who were very pleasant btw) they told me not to pay that ammount as it would be removed shortly. They also said that they had an agreement with the School to not charge me interest or late fees if that ammount wasn't removed before the due date for fees.
At the bookstore, I got all but one of my texts and got in line. I found a copy of Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" for $28 and decided to pick it up as well. The final bill came to $528 for 6 books. Three of them were $120 each! Gah.
After that, Dave and I headed to the Bread Garden to get a coffee and read while Brian finished his last class of the day. We met up at 5:15 and headed to the car. Unfortunately, the car wouldn't start. We tried it every five minutes for half an hour and it just wouldn't budge. We decided to call BCAA and get them to come look at it. The lady on the phone told me it would be 1 - 3 HOURS before someone could come. I sighed and decided to wait. The guys ran off to get food from the SUB and bring it back.
After freezing my hands and feet again for 20 minutes, I decided to try and find an open building to wait in. The FSC was closed already but CISCR was open. We sat and ate our Subway sandwiches and had a Pocket Connect 4 tournament. I dominated all and won every game I played. I was on fire. After an hour and a half, the phone rang. The BCAA guy had arrived.
We met him out at the car and I said, "Here, I'll show you what's happening." I turned the key and... it started. Dave, Brian and I starred at the dash as it came to life. I looked at the tech who was chuckling quietly and said, "It's only because you are here that it did that. It was scared of you." Gordy, the tech, then laughed and said to let it warm up for a good 10 minutes to make sure it's alright. Gordy is my hero. We laughed so hard after he pulled away that we cried and our stomachs began to hurt. I drove Dave and Brian home and called it a night. It had been a long day.
Christmas is right around the corner and I still haven't wrapped my gifts... Ugh. "Last Minute" Mike keeps the tradition going. Woot. I feel pretty good about what I got my family this year. I think I finally did shopping without needing to ask anyone what to get them. I am actually very proud of this! ;-) I hope they all dig their gifts...
Here it is folks. I have gotten enough webspace to post the live cut of the band playing our song, Fearful, at our church for offeratory. The sound was recorded from a video camera so it is a little scratchy. You can download the mp3 by right clicking the link below and choosing Save As or Save Target or Save The Stupid File Somewhere.
Last night I went out with all the GEERing Up staff that I worked with in the summer of 2002. We went to Richmond Sushi to consume mass quantities of fish and fishlike substances. It was good to see the gang again and I got to have a good chat with my buddy James when I dropped him off at the bus station. I'm hoping to throw a Family Guy marathon of sorts in the next few weeks so stay tuned for that.
Now that I have your attention... oh wait, that probably won't get anyone's attention because no one seems to care. Read the new article in my Politics section and inform yourself about what's going on behind the scenes at BC Ferries.
So I bought two tix to see Coheed and Cambria at Richard's on Richards in January and I was just doing a little analysis of my receipt...
Ticket price: $12.50
Ammount: 2
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Total price: $33.00
A quick look at the math above shows that something isn't right... It's like I bought three tickets almost. Alas, it is the infamous service charge that has screwed me yet again. 25% of the total price is hardly considered a "charge" in my opinion. That's robbery. I know that everyone already knows about this, but it's worth pointing out again just in case people forgot that it didn't use to be this way. Of course, that was back in the 1920s...
That's right! Everyone's favorite left-wing, US bashing, MIT professor is going to be speaking at the Orpheum in March 2004. Tickets go on sale today at 10am for $25 each... plus service charge... urg. I hear that he will also be performing a few of his own folk songs and moshing will be allowed. Or not. Anyways, this should be an awesome night for some serious learning. Get your tickets early as this will definitely sell out fast.
Update: I got my tix... look where they are!
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Yesterday was a little crazy at work. Peter had to get three computers setup to play a new security video at the screening points yesterday but there were some serious limitations. First, the file was 2.5 minutes long but was totally uncompressed and was over 250 MB in size. Second, the computer playing the file was a 700MHz Celeron designed only for displaying webpages. This resulted in some serious chop action while playing the video. Third, there is an english and french version of the film (no audio, just text) and both were requested to play at the same time.
Peter and I tested the flick on Windows Media Player, Quicktime and RealOne and found that only Quicktime could play the film without skipping. The problem with Quicktime was that it couldn't go fullscreen; it would enlarge but keep its program border which looked very unprofessional. Running two side-by-side (english and french versions) resulted again in some serious chop. Jason came in and said he could try compressing the file so it wouldn't require as much CPU horsepower. After shrinking the files down to 20 MB each, we saw that the files could play without chop in Windows Media Player which is capable of going full screen. Success.
Now we had to get the videos to launch fullscreen and play repeatedly upon bootup as the computers will not be accessable once they are placed in the field. I found some command line options for Media Player that let you set these options and put a shortcut in the startup folder. Bingo.
It was a team effort for sure, and soon we had all three computers up and running and deployed them to the three screening points in the airport. It took 8 hours total to get this all done. And yes, I want a cookie.
I posted an article by Michael Moore regarding the recent capture of Saddam. Check it out in the politics section.
If you haven't heard, US special forces captured Saddam Hussein on the weekend in a small hole underneath a house in his hometown of Tikrit. The "Butcher of Baghdad" looked like Charles Manson with his beard grown out and his hair frazzled. Mr. Bush must have jumped at the news as this will surely give his election campaign a much needed boost. (Note: it isn't a re-election campaign as he wasn't elected before) I have posted an excellent article by William Rivers Pitt that helps remind everyone that catching Saddam will not result in less terrorism or a safer world. And where are those pesky WMD?
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As for the new toys... It's not really two toys. More like one movie and one toy. I just finished my first two E-Bay auctions and I picked up a Palm m500 and a limited edition copy of Meet Joe Black on DVD. The Palm comes with a fold out keyboard and few other extras and should be coming soon. Meet Joe Black is a three disc version that is out of print and extremely rare. It comes with a 5.1 DTS soundtrack, bonus disc of extras and the entire cut of the 1939 Death Takes a Holiday on which Meet Joe Black was based. I'm super excited about getting both and can't wait for them to arrive! E-Bay ownz all. |
I have finally posted my biography under my profile section. I hope you all will check it out sometime. It's bloody long so take your time!
I was lucky enough to score a ticket to the Canucks Superskills on Sunday. I went with some friends from work and sat in the YVR box. It was wicked fun and I hope to post some pics up sometime this week.
Go to www.google.ca, type in "miserable failure" and then click "I'm Feeling Lucky." I laughed pretty hard on that one. For those of you who missed it, also try typing in "weapons of mass destruction" and hitting the "Lucky" button for an interesting page not found error! Thanks to Mr. Russell for the tip on the failure!
I have waited about eight months for this day to arrive... I was so giddy at work that my pals almost duct taped me to the chair and shoved a rubber ball in my mouth. The nine disc dvd box set of the Alien movies has been released and it is aboslutely amazing! My major complaint with this set is the packaging. While it is a joy to look at and was well designed graphically, a "fold-out" set of 9 discs is completely impractical. Every time I want to pull out a disc, I have to find a space on the floor or table and unfold out two or three times until I get to the disc I want. Why couldn't they just package it like they did with the Alien Legacy dvd set with each movie put in its own snap-case? Sigh. Oh well. Besides that gripe, the only (and I do mean only) other thing that miffed me is the absence of DTS 5.1 mixes of Aliens and Alien3. While the Dolby 5.1 tracks will probably be better than average thanks to the THX remastering, if they wanted to blow me out of the water they should have done complete remixes. Again, this is a trivial gripe and does not ultimately affect my opinion of the set. Now for what this set does right. In a word... everything. Each movie is presented in both the director's or special edition cuts with THX remastering. All films have a multi-person commentary track including the directors (with the exception of Alien3's David Fincher) and most of the stars of the films. These were created specially for this set so owners of the Alien Legacy dvds will get new info and not just what was given on those dvds. The menu system is well designed and looks wonderful while also being easy to navigate quickly. The real beauty of these discs shows up on the extra feature discs that accompany the films. Each film has been given roughly 3 hours of new behind-the-scenes featurettes that detail the process of taking each film from pre-production through to releasing the film. I have only managed to watch 2 hours of the first film's extras and they are very interesting to say the least. They show the concept drawings of the alien that they had come up with prior to choosing H.R. Giger's design and it is hilarious! The film would have been completely different if they had gone that route. Anyway, this set is fabulous and will take me at least a few weeks to get through it all! So if you are trying to find me... I'll probably be glued to my tv in the basement! |
Check out the politics area for some very important new articles that are worthy of your time.
My movie night party was a huge success! Especially cool was how my pal Dustin from UBC got home from Edmonton and dropped in to join the festivities. Pizza was on the menu and Dustin and I watched the Animatrix and played Street Fighter II until people started to show up. To my surprise, Street Fighter was the focus of attention for a good hour and finally we started the movie at 10pm. X2 was the flick and it was wicked. I enjoyed this one even more than I did the first part. Heh, the sound was awesome as well; it had a solid DTS 5.1 mix on it. I hope to throw more of these movie nights in the future. It was good to see people from different social circles all get together. In all, I think there was 10-11 people crammed into my basement that night.
Here's a piss off... Tonight the C^3 is host to the Vargent tour which is featuring the Alkaline Trio. I'm not too aware of their material, but one of the opening acts is Reggie and the Full Effect! definitely one of my favorite pop/punk bands of all time, I would love to see them play live... but I have to work the 6am shift tomorrow morning so I don't think I'll be able to go. Sigh. Oh well.
I am almost finished my bio for my profile page. It's pretty long at the moment and I'm gonna get Vince to proof it first before I actually post it. I'll let you all know when it's finished and up for viewing.
A guy goes into a bar, sees George Bush and Colin Powell slugging down beers in a dark corner. He walks up to them and says "Aren't you the president and secretary of state?"
Bush says "Yes, I'm George Bush, most powerful man on earth, leader of the free world, and this is Colin Powell."
The guy says "Whacha doin in here?"
Bush says "We're celebrating that the war is gonna start and we're gonna kill 4 million Iraqis and one blonde with big boobs."
The guy says "Kill a blonde with big boobs----why?"
Bush turns to Powell and says "See, I told you nobody cares about 4 million Iraqis."
So here's the deal... I sure as heck don't feel 100%, but I feel vastly better than I did last week. I realized that I was just making myself more tired by sleeping all day and all night. By going out and getting some fresh air, my body stepped up to the challenge and I feel more alert and don't have as many headaches. The paper said that this flu bug takes 6-8 weeks to work its way out of our systems... sigh...
Well, maybe not so much a "party" really... I am throwing a movie night at my place this Saturday night. The choices for entertainment are as follows...
Details are still sketchy at this point, but so far Aaron and Jeff are coming but will show up around 9ish. If anyone else is interested please email me and let me know ASAP. Right now, the viewing votes have us watching X2. Should be fun!
I have noticed that the record companies have not limited their new pricing scheme to only music cds. A large amount of concert DVDs have been released for $13.99 or $16.99. The new Coldplay live disc is absolutely amazing. The editing and camera work is phenominal and the sound is super thick with a stunning 5.1 DTS mix. A must own. I'm very tempted to pick up the following discs as well...
Sigh, if only they were free. Anyhoo, I'm off to wash the dishes. Have a good night folks.
My more astute readers will have already noticed that the pictures section has been upgraded to be compatible with people (cough losers cough) who are using a screen resolution of 800x600. The other change there was to have all the thumbnails be almost translucent until you move the mouse over them. Of course, this feature is only available to IE users. Yep, gotta love those advanced features of Mozilla. Damn, what a great browser it is...
The profile section has been expanded finally. I have put in a top ten section that will be updated often I hope as well as a list of all my DVDs. I hope to write up a biography soon, but I don't really know what I'm gonna do with that yet.
Anyhoo, I'm hungry. Laterz
It's day two of my "Stay home from work cause I feel like crap" festival of doing next to nothing. I am having a hard time even looking at my computer so this will be anything but detailed. I should be back at work tomorrow (me need money) so hopefully I'll feel better by then.
On Monday night I went with my family to see the Mighty Wind concert at the Queen Elizabeth Theater. It was beyond awesome. For those of you who have never heard of A Mighty Wind or Christopher Guest... Shame on you.
Christopher Guest was one of the brains behind the brilliant film, "This is Spinal Tap." Along with Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, the trio became (fictionally) one of the world's most notorious heavy metal bands. The actors played all their own music and wrote the songs which are mostly hilarious lyrically. The really funny part is that the trio actually did some tours as Spinal Tap and stayed in character the whole time, blurring the line between fiction and reality.
Guest didn't stray too far from that concept on his next two films, "Waiting for Guffman" and "Best in Show." Guffman played the same idea of mockumentary on small town theater players and Best in Show focused on the outrageousness of the people who take part in dog shows.
The latest film from Guest's warped mind is "A Mighty Wind." This time Guest sets his wit on the folk musicians of the late 60's and early 70's. Creating three fictional groups/duos, Guest plays the movie out as a reunion of the groups in the present day for a memorial concert for their deceased manager.
The concert at the end of the movie was so well received that Guest and Co. decided to take the show on the road. Hence, the Mighty Wind concert.
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The show started at 9:15pm with the New Main Street Singers performing their brand of pop-happy-folk music. The audience was pumped to see Parker Posey and cheered every time she did anything. The songs were inter cut with Guest-ish humor with all the characters staying in character. It was like watching deleted scenes from the movie and I almost forgot it was live!
After they wrapped, The Folksmen took the stage and rocked the joint. Much tighter than the neuftet that preceded them, the Folksmen pulled out their hit "Never Did No Wanderin'" that climbed all the way to #17 on the folk charts... Riiiight... Their set was solid and highly entertaining to be sure.
Then the stars of the night, Mitch and Mickey, took the stage and held everyone breathless as they performed their masterpiece, "Kiss at the end of the Rainbow." I know they aren't a real group and this whole concert was a sham in a way... but still, these bands were good enough to be real groups back then and pull off the illusion perfectly. When they all join up to sing, "A Mighty Wind" at the end, the whole crowd was clapping along and you could feel the energy in the room explode. It was the most fun I've had at a concert in a long time.
No movie has ever done well when it is hyped up bigger than what is possible to achieve. Case in point, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. But, let it be said that Revolutions is not at all as bad as that stink-burger. But it sure isn't better than the first two chapters either. Anyhoo, I shall be posting my review soon in the movies section. Stay tuned.
After seeing the Matrix, I went out for dinner with the Helpdesk's favorite scheduler, Anne-Marie. We walked down to a restraunt called Random that was close to English Bay. The atmosphere was right up my alley. It was quaint with sparse light and the stereo was playing some solid ambient techno music. It felt high class, but I didn't feel out of place there.
For starters, I ordered the Butternut Squash soup. I swear that I have never had a better soup in my entire life and my Mom probably had a heart attack from heaven from watching me each that soup. ;-) It was just spectacular.
The main course was lamb sirloin with carrots, green beans and some crispy thingys I couldn't identify. It was served very artistically with the style expected of upper class $50 a plate restraunts. Each bite had to be savoured for at least 10-20 seconds as the meat simply melted in your mouth and the veggies and crispy things just added to the overall texture and flavour.
For dessert, we had a delicious slice of apple pie sprinkled with cinnamon and doused in a scoop of ice cream. I have to say that it was easily one of the best meals I have ever had and I would go back there in a heartbeat.
A special thanks to Anne-Marie for such a wicked dinner. It was a true pleasure.
Is it just me or did it get really cold this week???
Well, last night I finally got to see Alien in theaters. I have posted my review already so check it out! I hope to see Matrix Revolutions next week on Tuesday and should have my review up by Thursday at the latest. I have heard that alot of negative buzz has surrounded the first few screenings but I still have hope that I will enjoy it. (After all, it is all about me in the end isn't it?)
The concorde was supposed to do a fly by at YVR today on its way to Seattle for its resting place at the Boeing Museum but the pilots have said that they can't make it anymore. Shame, it would have been awesome to see it in flight.
Anyhoo, I should get to work. Laterz.
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What the hell is this? As a christian I am deeply offended that the words "TRUST JESUS" would be printed alongside images of destruction and death. The now cliche question, "What Would Jesus Do?" seems to be a thorn in the side of many pro-war christians since I doubt Jesus would pick up an AK-47 and say, "We need to invade their country, kill their leaders and convert them all to Christianity!" (Anne Coulter, resident republican airhead and psycho)
What is this war being fought over? Well, no one is really sure as it changes every week. First it was due to Iraq allegedly TRYING to aquire weapons of mass destruction. Once it became apparent to everyone that the evidence to support this speculation did not exist (and what evidence did exist has been discovered to be forgeries), the administration quickly altered the reason for war to regieme change. Well, that's great. Saddam is an evil monster and should be punished for his human rights violations. But does that mean that its okay to go to war with him? Many say yes. I say, why him?
If the reason for war is to remove a violent dictator, why did we go to Iraq? The Bush administration says it is because he has close ties to terrorist organizations. It was never said, but heavily implied, that Saddam even had ties to al Queda and bin Laden. But this is all speculation. There has been no feasible proof to show a link between Saddam and bin Laden, and their differences in religion (one is harsh secular (Saddam) and the other is radical Islam (bin Laden)!!!) tend to favor the idea that the Bush administration is full of BS. There are just as many "evil" dictators around the world that should also be disposed of. Why doesn't the US go in and change the rulers of North Korea? It actually is SHOWING OFF its nukes! WE KNOW they have them! They even brag about it! But we only suspected Saddam and we blew up the whole country of Iraq. What gives?
Here are some possible reasons...
Well, I could go on for days like that. Heh, it's fun for me to rant! But the real issue is much more serious than the above arguments.
Religious fanatics are commiting acts of violence against innocent civilians in the name of their God. Think I'm talking about Islamic fundamentalists? Think again. While it is true that some people have distorted Islam to allow them permission from God to blow up every infidel (ie: American) they choose, it seems that CHRISTIAN fundamentalists have taken a page from their book.
By saying "SUPPORT BUSH! TRUST JESUS" is elevating the decision of all matters to God. But did God actually install Bush as president? Many of my American christian friends say yes. When I started talking about world events with one, she flat out said, "Well, at least we have a christian president." Excuse me? What does that even mean? He says he is a christian, does that mean he is never wrong? If I said, "God told me to tell you that you owe me five bucks" would you pay me? How would you know if I was wrong or telling the truth?
The simple answer is that you wouldn't know. You would have to use your COMMON SENSE to figure out that I was probably full of crap. So why doesn't the same apply when someone like Bush says, "This guy is evil... let's get him!"??? From the get go, this never felt right to me at all and now the facts are pilling up to show that there never was a threat from Iraq. Without a threat there is no case for war.
Yet many believe that the fact that Saddam is a dictator is a good enough reason for war. Under international law, it isn't. This is where most people say, "Who cares about international law?" I don't know, maybe we should just all do whatever the hell we want. Why obey any law? International law was made to try and prevent things like WWII from happening again. By making it illegal to do first-strike attacks and forcing countries to use war as a last resort, the UN has provided some sense of stability to a chaotic world. It is far from perfect, but the alternative is much less desirable. Just ask any veteran of the world wars if they think war is a good idea. They fought in a war with a purpose. Hitler was about to take over the whole world. Anyone who thinks Saddam, who couldn't even annex Kuwait, is a threat, should have their head examined.
Now Bush is using fuzzy logic and backwards thinking to frame the war in a positive way.
"The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react. The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity is available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become, because they can’t stand the thought of a free society."
George W. Bush
So if we want the killings to stop, we should leave... right George? What a smashing idea. Why are we fighting for the Iraqis to be free when we set them up with a dictator in the first place? Regardless of who that dictator is, the powers that be in the government wanted a strong dictator there who would play ball with the US. If there was a democracy in Iraq, they would probably nationalize their oil and become a very prosperous nation... like they were BEFORE SADDAM! Did you know that Iraq used to have one of the best education systems in the region after the oil boom of the 1970s?
But now I want to discuss my major point again. That damn sign... If we are to believe that Bush is aligned with God's will and is a follower of Jesus, why did he lie about the threat Iraq posed to us? Lying, deception, greed are all frowned upon in the Christian faith yet Christians seem to be okay with supporting a leader guilty of all of these things.
It's not that I think Bush is the antichrist, sent to deceive the people of the Earth and lead them into hell. No, I would think that the antichrist would be a little more intelligent and able to get better than a C+ average in high school. Instead, he is simply a willing participant in what has been a campaign of lies and disinformation that has tainted the credibility of the United States for years to come. But by aligning himself also with God and this Jesus guy, he has placed their credibility on the line too. As a believer of Christianity this is not acceptable at all.
So I finally got around to posting some new music reviews. Check them out and keep coming back for more as I just got a crap load of new tunes to review. Sigh. The work never ends.
I also posted a short review of Naomi Klein's Fences and Windows. Read it. It's worth it.
Today, Riddley Scott's classic horror film Alien is re-released to theaters with a shiny new print and remastered sound track. Also, the film has been re-edited to have a faster pace and also a new scene near the end which would have made James Cameron's film MUCH different.
Halloween is this Friday. I don't have any plans. That is sad. Can someone call me and help me be less pathetic? Thanks. :-D
24 launched its new season last night with a few interesting twists. Most interesting trick was shifting the timeline forward by three years. This gives the writers large amounts of leeway with which to construct the new story. It also puts the audience in a position of confusion as we don't know what has happend and why people are acting strangely. But, there is one change that will require IMMEDIATE explanation... HOW THE HECK DID KIM BECOME AN UBER-GEEK COMPUTER WIZ?
That's right folks, our "favorite" hostage and perpetual stalkee has now landed a job at CTU working as a computer systems expert. Amid all the mass coughs of BS in my TV room last night, I managed to see the benefits of this implausibility. Think about it, how could Kim possibly get caught by a bear trap and then hunted by a cougar this year? If we can just let the writers have the benefit of the doubt, this could be the move that makes this season of 24 INFINITELY better than the previous two.
Other developments show that the president has a doctor who is treating him for whatever poisoned him at the end of season 2. This doctor seems to be interested in more than just Palmer's personal health. Near the end of the episode, our beliefs are confirmed as the two share a romantic kiss. Wonder what Sherri is gonna do about this!
Tony and Michelle have tied the knot and Tony has to decide to take a promotion to Langley or stay at CTU. The problem is that if he chooses Langley, Michelle will have to quit CTU and won't have a job out there. This will obviously play out more over the season.
Kate Warner is shown calling Jack and says "I miss you" hinting that there was some development in their relationship over the last three years that has since gone sour. I'll place a good bet that they broke up due to the emotional duress of Jack's hunt for Salazar and his apparent heroin addiction. That's right. It looks like Jack is a junkie. And it causes him to completely be on edge with everyone. He almost fires his assistant for no good reason but is stopped by his new, young partner, Chase.
Chase is what 24 needed last season. Jack needs a foil to hold him to reality. Nina helped in this regard in the first season but she went bad and thus didn't make for a great partner. Chase is also a good choice since it is a pretty good chance that Jack and him won't begin a romantic relationship. Especially since Chase is dating his daughter, Kim. Oooooooh, the fireworks are getting primed! Oh, did I mention that Jack doesn't know they are seeing each other? Woooeee! Fun will ensue on this one I'm sure. I just hope that I won't roll my eyes too much.
Finally, I am glad to say that CTU finally seems like an office with more than 4 employees. The scope of the office has grown to be a more central set piece with almost all the major characters (save Palmer) works there now.
In conclusion, this season, while still being overtly unbelievable, should prove to be 24 at its best. Good times, since West Wing is now looking like the worst show ever since Aaron Sorkin left.
For those of you who didn't wake up at all yesterday, there was a horrifying attack against civilian targets in Baghdad. The spin machines were in full effect by the evening news and most will probably take the bait hook, line, and sinker.
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What happend? The New York Times gives a little more detail in their article stating that "34 people had been killed and 224 had been wounded in the attacks." 26 of those dead were civilians and 8 were police officers. (NYT) The attacks were focused on the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and four Iraqi police stations.
This all comes after a jury-rigged rocket attack on the hotel where Paul Wolfowitz and his aides were staying. During the attack, a room on the 11th floor was destroyed. Part of the ceiling collapsed, the door was blown off and a hole was punched in the wall. This should be considered a close call for the Deputy Defense Secretary, as he was on the 12th floor of the building, showing that the attackers didn't miss by much.
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The "president" responded yesterday saying, "Basically what they're trying to do is cause people to run. They commit suicide acts against innocent people and then expect people to say, 'Well, gosh, we better not try to fight you anymore. '"
This is just a classic evasion of the real issue at hand. This war is far from over and yet the administration has not made any remarks on why they had pronounced major attacks to be over. Obviously, this was done to avoid any reference to Vietnam and how that war dragged on forever.
Simply put, this war will not go away. America has lied to the world about how Iraq had posed a threat and went in alone to deal with that threat. Now as they turn to leave the country, they notice the sign that hangs about the entrance to Iraq which says, "You break it, you buy it." (William Rivers Pitt) How ironic. The Americans will have to leave military posts everywhere to "keep the peace" while Halliburton execs run around trying to rebuild Iraq's oil industry. I am quite sure that once they are done rebuilding, Halliburton will allow Iraq to nationalize its main resource so the country will get back on its feet. Right? Riiiight. And while that is going on, maybe Bush will deal with the real threat of Saudi Arabia where his big time buddies in the royal family keep their human rights attrocities going full speed ahead.
In what was easily the highlight of my year thus far, I got to meet Michael Moore when he was at Chapters on Robson street during a book signing of his new book, Dude, Where's My Country? It was very nice to see a "celebrity" who was just like us, a normal person. Don't let any of that right-wing slander get to you, this guy is Joe-anybody who just happened to have the courage to not shut up about what he be lives in.
Anyhoo, it was truly an awesome experience to not only see Michael in person, but also to see and meet so many awesome people who may not all have the same ideas about how to solve the world's problems, but can at least agree that something needs to change.
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I got to Chapters at about 10 am and didn't see anyone at all on the main level. I went upstairs and saw an open area with Michael's film Bowling for Columbine playing. Figuring that I beat the rush, I looked around and picked up a copy of Noam Chomsky's Rogue States which I ended up buying later. I went up to the third level and saw a lineup starting near a table with a good amount of cattle guards (aka roped off lines).
There was about 70 people in front of me so I was pretty sure I would get my stuff signed. I talked to a few people around me and found out that Noam Chomsky will be coming to Vancouver in the near future. I gave my email to a girl who hopefully will let me know when and where that will be. I will post this once I have the information confirmed. Some of the guys near me were filming documentaries on a variety of subjects. They had some pretty interesting things to say.
When it was almost noon, a woman came around and was getting everyone to open their books to a certain page that "Michael prefers to sign." I joked with the guys around me about this saying, "Uh, somehow that doesn't sound like something Mike would say." We then turned to hear a cheer as Michael entered the store.
Before starting to sign, Mike came up to the mic and said, "If you don't mind, I'd like to finish my Oscar acceptance speech." The crowd cheered louder. He went on to give a very funny and insightful speech that covered many topics, focusing mainly on the upcoming election and the continuing occupation of Iraq.
The signing began after Mike's little 10 minute talk. Giddy, I didn't know what to say when I got to him. I blurted out, "Man, thanks." He smiled and humbly said, "You're welcome, and thank you!" I gave my camera to a Chapters employee who snapped the above shot. I turned back to Mike who had signed my book already and said, "You made a difference you know." He said, "Thank you" and opened my book again. "Who should I make this out to?" I said "Mike." He smiled and said, "Thanks Mike." I stood just to his left and fired off a few more shots until his security told me I had to move on. It was just awesome. I left feeling like a million bucks. I love that feeling...
Wow! Look at all that new stuff! Better go sign the new guest book! It's doubling as a suggestion box right now so please sign it and let me know what I'm doing right and what I should work on or add to improve the site.
I got a suggestion to start posting restaurant reviews and I thought it was a great idea! (Thanks Kris for that one). If any of you would be interested in helping me compile a list of good places to eat for different occasions with a short review for each, please email me! I think it would be a great resource for people looking to try new stuff.
I posted up the pics from Max's b-day party at Koerner's pub. Have a peek at the good times in the pics section.
The book review is of Al Franken's new book, Liars, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. It was pretty funny but kinda lacking on anything of real interest. A light political read to be sure.
Well, it looks like another slow day at work so I'll probably make some more posts today. Laterz
Well, XML is still amazing. And now, even my XSL abilities have taken that trait. Now, no matter what browser you throw at my site, all my XML will, at the absolute least, display the major information. Older IE browsers are unable to display with any sorting scheme though so the music and movie reviews are kind of messy. Sucks to be you. ;-)
This discovery was helped in part by Anne-Marie who commented that she couldn't find my review of Kill Bill. Many kudos to her and also to the now infamous w3schools for providing the hints that led to the final solution.
I am going out with some friends from school today after work to celebrate Max's birthday. I brought my digital camera today so I hope to get some fun pics of my schoolmates being drunken asses. Good times. ERTW.
I think I'll have people over to watch both Matrix movies this Saturday, or maybe just the new one... not sure yet. If you see this and are interested, give me a call!
So I used some of Telus' free cgi and made up the form now placed at the end of the Sign Guest book link. All it does is send the data to an email account that I will maintain and take the important info and place it on my website. There is nothing there presently and anything you "post" in it won't get on the site until I add it myself. Guess its a moderated post board now! Heh, suckers. Anyhoo, I kept a copy of the old board and will transfer entries from it to the new one, but if you want to do a new post feel free. It would be nice for you all to do that anyway cause I added a bit of a survey on the site there to let me know how to focus my energies.
Well, I gotta get some dinner... Laterz!
Alright, I finally got a decent update for you folks. My review of Kill Bill has been posted in the movie section. Enjoy!
In some not-so-good news, my guest book service decided to start charging $20 a year to use it. I decided against this and have saved the entries on my hard drive. I'll be posting them in a new format soon and come up with a way for people to sign the book in the near future.
It's still early in the day and I have lots to add so hopefully there will be more than just this for today!
Talk to you soon.
Amber, my friend who was recently in surgery for a tumor, has started to leak brain fluid through her ear. She has gone back to the hospital to get this looked at and I believe that they have fixed the problem. She will be back home soon and is feeling better. This kind of event really does underline how precarious our lives are. We should take a moment from our day to reflect on our lives and what we want to do with them. Also, please pray for Amber's recovery and for her family. They really appreciate it.
This is your life, is this who you want to be? Switchfoot
Holiday long weekends don't allow much time for web updates! Sorry folks.
I am planning on stopping my coverage of TV shows simply because it's TOO MUCH WORK! I spend more time on that section than any other and I doubt it is very useful to anyone. If you need TV info, check out TV Tome.
I should have my review of Kill Bill Vol. 1 up soon as I am going to see it tomorrow night. Also, Matrix Reloaded is out on DVD tomorrow so I should have it reviewed for the DVD section by the weekend.
I bought a mini disc player this weekend. It's pretty styling and never skips! Runs for 56 hours on a single AA battery. Each disc can hold a maximum of 5.3 hours of music at relatively good quality and 2.4 hours at high quality. I am very happy with it so far, just wish the sound quality would be better for the 5.3 hours. (And that Sony would support MP3s...)
Let us all lay rose pedals before Kah-lee-forn-yah's new lord and master who is "free of special interest politics." If you aren't laughing yet, you don't understand politics very well.
That quote was said by a TV pundit on CNN who was arguing with the female left-wing candidate tonight. She scoffed (as she should!) when he said it and brought up the fact that most of Mr. S' campaign contributions were from special interest groups. He fired back that Gov. Davis came in with a 10 million dollar surplus and is being kicked out with a 37 million dollar deficit. On the surface, I'd be pretty damn mad too. But let us look deeper into the issue that was said to DEFEND Arnold's republican platform.
Republicans are sort of like the IMF and World Band. Their mantra is "PRIVATIZE IT ALL THEN JACK THE PRICES!!!" Heh, sorta like Campbell here... Anyhoo, California was one of the first states to deregulate their power grid. The idea was that free market economics would allow for price savings for consumers and give the corporations more profits. Well, this kind of voodoo doesn't translate well in the end. The state of California had rolling blackouts not due to a power shortage as reported in the papers; it suffered from a lack of money to pay for power.
In the end, Davis had to spend muchos money to keep the power on: thus the deficit. Now, Davis is a huge dick anyway so I'm glad he's gone. I just wish they could have picked a real democrat rather than a republican. Then again, Davis was pretty damn close to a republican (he allowed the power to deregulate)
But I digress. The pundit guy was saying that Democrats spend way too much money and that a hard nosed republican will be the order of the day. That's just great. Let's deregulate more and make more money for Arnie's friends in the power industry. Hooray for democracy! It's the best one money can buy!
There were some computers at work today that happened to come down with a bit of a cold. These computers then made dinner for some friends but didn't wash their hands and thus passed on the germs. It didn't take long to realize that we had a few sick computers today. Sigh. It was easy to fix but it created some serious headaches for us.
In other news, the Italian Job came out on DVD today. You can pick it up bundled with the original version with Michael Cane or on its own. Lion King also came out (woohoo... I think...) I didn't get either. Instead I picked up the book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" which outlines the infamous human rights violators involvement with the East Timor occupation and other atrocities.
This Friday, Kill Bill will slice its way into theatres everywhere. I can't wait. Unfortunately, I'll probably have to ... at least until next Tuesday. Good old cheap night. Also on the forecast, Alien - The Director's Cut will be re-released into theatres two days before Halloween. With about 10 minutes of new footage added by director Riddley Scott (Gladiator, Matchstick Men, White Squall [heh, what an obscure reference!]) this should be an awesome experience!
Reviews for a whole ton of stuff will be coming soon... just got way too much to do lately! Cya laterz!
On Wednesday, my friend Amber went in for surgery to remove a tumor from the side of her skull. This would be her 5th surgery to remove some cancer from her body and thankfully it was a complete success and Amber is now back at home. I have added a link to her personal website on the links page. It gets updated every Sunday I think so check it out often.
Yawn. I want more sleep. But I need to go to work to make money. Sigh. Oh well... Anyhoo, I finished porting my memorial section from my old site onto the new format. Please check it out if you never have. Have a good day folks.
Hello all, I have been working the last few days on getting my XML style sheets up to code. Along the way I learned that most browsers are not fully working with XSL code and thus is why many older browsers won't work with it! Sigh. I don't care anymore. It will at least show up on the current version of Netscape. So if you can't see something on here, download the newest version of your browser of choice!
I posted some new TV show reviews. This section is going to be worked on the most over the next few days so come back often and check it out.
I have been noticing a sharp increase in the hit counter lately. I know it's not me, so somebody either is hitting refresh all day or there are actually people reading this thing. If the latter is the case, and you haven't already, SIGN THE GUESTBOOK! I want to know who is coming and why so I can try and get more of what you want on here! What works, what doesn't work, what isn't even here? Let me know!
Well, back to the coding. Laterz
Alright folks, I managed to get the data to display in both Mozilla/Netscape and IE now. Thank goodness for browser detection! I just added a little script to determine what browser was being used and to load the xml appropriately for each. The problem I see now is that Mozilla/Netscape doesn't fully support XML up to the standards set by the W3 Committee and as such some of the pages don't obey my CSS rules. I will try and find a way to accomplish this but as for now, some of the XML pages have fonts that are much too large and not spaced correctly. Oh well. At least the data is available. Alright, I'm off for breakfast. Laterz.
I am sorry to say that my site is extremely screwed up for people who are viewing it on any browser other than IE6 or higher. Sigh, after my "wonderful" upgrade to XML I unfortunately didn't test it on Mozilla/Netscape/old IE versions and have just realized that it doesn't work at all on them. I am trying my best to fix it but please have patience. Also, the background of this page is supposed to be white but I never noticed that older browsers default to gray. I thought this was standard now to have white but alas this is not the case. Double audible sigh.
So please bear with me as I try and get all of this back up and running for everyone. My suggestion is to suck it up and use IE6 and make my life easier! ;-) I bet Luke will kill me for that...
Well I just finished watching A Mighty Wind and I have to say that I really liked it. It wasn't the greatest movie of all time, but it was very well done and fun to watch. I have posted my review in the movie section.
An update for eager Perfect Circle fans... A&B Sound on Marine Drive has about 20 copies on their shelves! RUN! NOW! Good price too. $14.99. Thursday - War all the Time is $12.99 there too. Get both and save nothing but get good music! Woot!
I have also posted my review of the book Fast Food Nation. Check it out in the book section.
Bed is calling. Night all.
Alright, this is it. I'm going to go eat dinner and not touch the site again until tomorrow. I put up the TV section and it looks kinda silly right now, but it should get better as it fills up. I plan on posting when the next eps will be so if you don't like reruns keep checking with me here and you'll never have to be disappointed.
Time for food! Laterz
Okay, some of you may notice that my movies section has been redone as per my music reviews. I think this is a vast improvement and allows for easy updating of records and data. Does this matter to you? Probably not. But I am a nerd, so it does matter to me.
I am now going to start coding up my TV review page. Should be a good time...
While at work this morning I came across some wonderful code that allows my XML page to fade in! Oh, glorious day! For those of you who care, what I did was change the transformation from occurring on the server and rather do it on the client pc. There is a really simple java script you can run that does this and since you place it in an html document, which can fade, the XML appears to fade in once it has been transformed. I'm pretty excited about this which I know is really sad. Sigh, its hard being a computer engineer. No one appreciates the coolness of code.
West Wing last night was pretty good. They used an interesting technique for the opening which used a blurry/documentary style of footage inter cut with distorted tv clips of the press conference with Walker and Bartlett. I think I'm going to do episode reviews of my favorite shows on here so I will try and get that up and running ASAP as the season has already started. Shows I plan on reviewing are: 24, Alias, Angel, Smallville, and West Wing. I'm not sure if I'll have time to make these reviews more than a paragraph each (more of a summary than a review) but I will do my best to get enough info out so that if you missed an episode, you could come and find out what happened. You'll notice that all of these shows (not so much Smallville, but it's getting there) have continuous stories that run from episode to episode. I find that shows like this hold my attention more and seem to be like a reinvention of the old classic serial movies that came out when our parents were kids.
Anyhoo, I'm at work, so maybe I should do some. Sigh. Talk to you folks later.
Hey kids, sorry about the lack of updates the last few days. I have been busy evaluating the site and planning for the future. One thing I realized was that I had to rethink the way I was listing my reviews of different media to allow for easy alterations in the future. The choices were limited cause I don't have the ability to host my site on my own server due as I don't have one. ;-) I could use my main computer, but I have to turn it off at night cause I can't sleep with the fan going! This of course left me with one simple alternative... XML
XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language (similar to HTML which is HyperText Markup Language) and allows you to store information in very straightforward terms. For those of you who know some simple HTML, XML looks identical but you can make up the names of your tags. Of course, this way of doing things means that the programmer must also define how to read and display these new tags. This is done by using XSL. Sigh... I bet most of you have stopped reading this already.
Anyway, you will notice that the Music section no longer fades in. This is due to the use of XML on that page now to sort the reviews. Unfortunately, my code that ran the fade won't run in this section and unless one of you crazy web dudes out there has some hints, it's going to stay this way. Trust me, in the long run it will be pretty cool. I'm going to have it be able to dynamically sort the reviews by album, artist, genre, rating, and release date. I will also try and make it so the newest reviews are right at the top and then have the other reviews underneath. All in good time my friends.
Anyhoo, I picked up some warez today. I got the new Dave Matthews solo disc called Some Devil and the Christopher Guest mockumentary DVD collection which contains Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind. I've seen the first two and thought they were a riot and have heard many good things about A Mighty Wind. I just listened to the Dave Matthews CD and my first impression of it was very good. I think it will end up with a rating of four stars... just like everything else...
I never did get to a movie on the weekend, but it sounds like I didn't miss much with regard to Underworld. Beyond seeing Kate Beckinsale in leather shooting people there wasn't really too much left. At least that's the word on the street. For crying out loud, the tomato-meter at RottenTomatoes.com gives it only 31% (as of today)!!! I still need to see Lost in Translation though. Leslie, while bagging my groceries at Safeway, gave his approval of this picture. He was also glad to hear that I had managed to spare myself from watching Underworld.
For those of you still looking for the new Perfect Circle cd... YOU'RE HOOPED! I couldn't find a SINGLE copy at Future Shop today and they were supposed to get a new shipment yesterday. Best bet would be to either get one put on hold or show up at 10am on Tuesday morning. Good luck!
Alright, I'm gonna go have some dinner now. Hope you all have a good evening and make sure you watch West Wing at 9pm tonight! Hmm, maybe I should have a TV section to review all my favorite TV shows...
I posted my review of John Mayer's new album Heavier Things for you all to check out. It really is a great record so I highly recommend it.
I'm going to try and get some older reviews up from cds and movies that I have picked up over the past few years. I think I'll preference them by stuff that most of you haven't heard of or that I really REALLY like. It's really all about me in the end isn't it?
Anyhoo, I went grocery shopping today. It was... fun... I guess. Got some tasty lettuce, beefish substance, pasta-like material and some mushrooms! No, not the fun kind. ;-) Mom would be so proud if she could see me now...
Alright, so I'm gonna start getting dinner going and then go to bed cause I'm on 6am shift this week. 4:45am wake up for me! Woo hoo. Oh well, the glorious 2:30pm naps will return and that will be good. Laterz folks.
As promised the review of the new Thursday album has been posted. If you are a fan of the new screamo style of rock I would highly recommend them. And for those of you who aren't fans, this may be a good inroad to becoming one. The singer uses screams very sparingly and almost always is crystal clear and the songs are very melodic. Check it out at least, it's worth it!
Alright folks, I put up the review of the new Nickelback album that comes out next Tuesday. It's called The Long Road. Sigh, I'm kinda sad to say that it does suck but really, I guess it was expected.
I hope to have my review of Thursday's new album, War all the Time, up tomorrow morning. I'm also trying to go see Underworld or Lost in Translation this weekend and will try and post a review of whichever one I see the following night.
Time for sleep. Night all
I'm just heading out the door to work, but I thought I would draw everyone's attention to the new additions to the site. I started a section for book reviews and have posted the first one already. It gives insight into the book Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky. Collected from numerous teach-ins and seminars he has done over the past many years, this book is a literal treasure of information. I encourage all who are interested to check this book out.
Sigh, the work bells tolleth. Laters.
So I finally found a copy of the new Perfect Circle album. I guess it has sold out at both Future Shop stores that I went to because I only found one copy anywhere. Anyhoo, just as with Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, this CD had the now infamous words "Copy Controlled" written on it. Sigh. Here I am PAYING for the CD and getting told that I am not allowed to enjoy it on my MP3 CD player. The first thing I do with a new CD is rip it to MP3 and then store the original CD on my shelf for safekeeping. But alas, there is a way to defeat the scourge of copy protection. But there lies the whole idiocy of this whole debacle.
Do you need a fancy new CD ROM to rip cds? No. Do you need a super hacker type program? No. Do you need to ascend to the heavens and become the God of CD Ripping? No. What do you need? TWO PIECES OF SCOTCH TAPE! All that needs to happen is for the tape to cover the outer burn session which is marked by the faint line around the disc near the edge. With enough of the sectors covered, the copy protection program can't start and thus lets the disc read as normal. Suckers. Now go spread the word and enlighten your friends. The power belongs to the people!
So I went to Future Shop today to pick up my TGIT (Thank God it's Tuesday) warez and was happily surprised to find most of what I was looking for. I quickly picked up the new Thursday album "War All The Time" and the new John Mayer cd "Heavier Things." I did an impulse buy of "Gun Shy," a comedy that was only $8. Sigh. I'm a sucker for a good deal.
Anyhoo, the Thursday album is still causing me problems. It is so good that I don't want to go to bed without doing a full, song-by-song review and posting it for all the world to see. Since it is mass late already, I decided to simply post this news item up to let you all know that it will be getting a nice 5 star rating. The John Mayer disc is also good; not AS good mind you. It's definitely a completely different genre of music but one that I can appreciate. Definitely worth a listen.
Me go sleep now. Night.
I have to get this out in the open quick... that new Nickelback cd is quite far from good and very far from improved over the last album. The reason I wrote that yesterday is cause the first four tracks were really tight. Well, the rest of the album is quite far from being "catchy" and actually descends into crap. One song actually describes how Chad likes to be... well... "pleasured" by his lover in a rather graphic way. I usually can put up with garbage and obscene stuff but this went outside of good taste by a good stride or two and hence I will not condone it. Stay away! Far away!
I posted a LOOOOOONG speech by William Rivers Pitt, the head dude of truthout.org, that was given recently in New York. It details how a once ultra-right wing think tank's "crazy" ideas have become the USA's new foreign policy. It is VERY interesting to note who was part of this think tank and their positions now in the current administration. If anyone likes to argue that there isn't some sinister group of people planning out how the world is to be ruled from within the US government has some serious backpedaling and explaining to do.
It's always a pleasant surprise to surf onto your newsgroups and find a new album you have been waiting for. It's even nicer to find two! I got the new Perfect Circle album and have done a very very quick review of it and posted it for your reading pleasure. I will soon be posting my thoughts on the forthcoming Nickelback LP called The Long Road. My first listen through of both have revealed much growth of each (altho growth for Nickelback would be moving from 4 chords in a chorus to 5...) and I think they are both pretty good. Actually, the Nickelback is pretty good... Perfect Circle is amazing! A must buy in my opinion!
Anyhoo, I'm off to bible study. Night folks.
Well, work was SOOOO busy today that I wrote 4 music reviews and 1 dvd review. They have been posted for your spell checking to begin. ;-) (Shouts to Vince the "Dikshunairy" Bieber!) Also, I have posted a guest book! Sign it! LOOKIT THE BOOKIT!
Anyway, there are a pile of ribs with my name on them at my Grandmother's place so I'm gonna head over there and commit the sin of gluttony. Laterz.
Alright, you Netscape/Mozilla people better be super grateful for my efforts tonight. All the style sheets have been re-written and compiled into a master CSS (which I should have had before) and tested FULLY on each browser. The outcome? Beautiful. Almost every setting is identical minus the fade effect when switching pages. If anyone knows how to get this effect in Mozilla please contact me! The only difference I could find was in the picture galleries. For some reason, the thumbnails in Mozilla are touching the main image and in IE they won't. I didn't really care about this too much as most people will probably never notice the fix anyway. Sigh.
Well, tomorrow marks the 2nd anniversary of the worst terrorist action ever... that the US media has informed us about that is. I was watching a special on the attacks last Sunday night with some friends. I brought up the point that even worse atrocities have occurred and ARE occurring elsewhere in the world but we don't react the same way that we do when we see the 9-11 footage. It is true that we do not see vivid footage of the other horrible crimes against humanity and hence probably is the source of the difference. But there is yet another difference that separates the two categories. 9-11 was on every front page for a year. The US supported Indonesian occupation of East Timor didn't get a lick of print even though it lasted from 1975 to 2002! Over 200,000 people were starved, raped, and or killed during that time. And even though the occupation is now over, there are still horrible conditions there. Why are we not informed? Because it just isn't "Fit to Print" as the New York Times motto says.
Does this make you angry? Good, cause "Your anger is a gift" (Zach De La Rocha - "Freedom") If you want more information on East Timor, click here and get informed. You can go straight to the East Timor Action Network by clicking this link.
I know that probably belongs in the Politics section, but then no one would read it! ;-) Anyhoo, I'm gonna watch some Family Guy episodes and get to sleep. Talk to you all laterz.
Well, I found a way to mass update the photo section, and the spoils of my work can be found there in the form of three new galleries! Now everyone, be rather conservative with your viewing of these photos. I only get 25mb bandwidth a month and I don't want to hear from Telus that I am over that by a gig. ;-)
Tomorrow I will try and clean up my CSS code and get the Mozilla/Netscape users seeing ALMOST the exact same as the IE users. If anyone knows how to do DHTML fade in/outs for Mozilla please let me know. Otherwise, that will remain an IE only feature. Sigh.
Just watched three episodes of Family Guy Season 3 and it was so worth the money. Dang, that is the funniest show ever. I hope that Fox green-lights the proposed direct-to-video feature film that is being discussed. All that is needed is a budget and we could have a Family Guy Movie by 2005! Woo hoo!
Thanks for all the feedback on the site thus far! It's been great to have such support and gud spiel chickers (Shout out to my main man Vince "Dictionary" Bieber for his assistance in spelling caliber and hilarious. My goodness, it's hard to live with the limited features of notepad!)
Well, I'm off to bed now. Night folks.
Alright, I posted a site. Does that mean its always gonna work on everyone's third party browser? No. Sigh. I just spent 3 hours fixing the photo gallery to be non-browser specific... stupid w3schools teaching IE only tricks without saying. Losers. Anyhoo, some clever code fixed the problem. I guess it's nice to learn things like that now rather than on a school test or something.
So anyway, the photos should work now and the styles for the menu on the right were loaded wrong and should be fixed now. I just have to clean up my CSS code now and make it non-browser specific so it looks right on both. There is a slight screw up with some stuff still in Netscape/Mozilla but not in IE. Why is this? Cause IE actually is smart enough to fix these problems itself. Sigh, as much as I hate Micro$oft, they do put out software that I can't help but use. Oh kill me now my Linux Worshiping friends...
I got Monty Python's The Life of Brian and Family Guy Season 3 DVD's today. I would be watching them but this site keeps taking all my attention. Soon... soon it will be done...
No rest for the wicked... I'm back to work now! Laterz
I have posted a review for Donnie Darko and the new Deftones album as well as pictures from the summertime at Kits and UBC. For those of you who don't know, Lyndene and I are no longer dating. Just letting you know so there are no more awkward moments of "So how are the two little love-birds?" :-D
Also posted in the politics section is a new commentary by Noam Chomsky from the Toronto Star newspaper. I encourage EVERYONE to read it as it truly is fascinating.
Oh man, I can't wait 'til Tuesday. Family Guy Season 3 comes out on DVD! Gah! It's almost as amazing as next Tuesday when the new Thursday and Perfect Circle albums come out! Make sure you check back here often for full reviews of the albums. I hopefully will be posting more pictures and more reviews of all types as the week goes on. My hope is to rate every DVD I own by the end of the year. (I have over 110 so this may not happen!)
Sigh, too bad it was raining this Sunday. Septemburfest at my church had to end up being inside for the second year in a row. It was still a blast and I'll try and get the pics cleaned up and posted this week. They didn't turn out too well because the lighting in the gym is horrid and the flash can't illuminate the whole room. Sigh... The downfall of the digital camera.
Anyhoo, I'm off to work now. Have a good day everyone.
Dag yo! We are on the web! My first web page 100% done by hand! Kudos to me. I used notepad to do the whole bloody thing. Bow down at my feet and peel grapes for me.
To celebrate this amazing accomplishment, Chris is coming over with some bzzr and we shall play NBA Jam until our eyes bleed. Or until we run out of bzzr. Either way, should be an interesting evening.
Is that the White Stripes or Local H? I can't tell... Note the infamous water bottle...
My sister's artistic take on me... Note the Trogdor shirt and how the amp goes up to 11!
A blurry shot of the gang taking in the hilarity
The massive image of Lois is too much for Joel
This is my best rendition of the drawing... it's hardly as good as the real one. It had much more detail. Meh.
Chris is seen here enjoying the taste of a fine German Lager. Auf wiedersehen good buddy!
The puma is perched and ready to strike... beware!
The seating chart for the Orpheum... This is going to own
Saddam doing his best Charles Manson impression
The real threat is in a cave somewhere with his dialysis machine...
A great movie in a rare collector's edition. Like I wouldn't die for something like this!
This was the last non-color release but is capable of all the functions of the color versions
The DVD set that will be the watermark for years to come
Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara play Mitch and Mickey, the sweethearts of folk music until their bitter separation.
Spinal Tap...? No, it's the Folksmen! Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest "reunite" as the legendary folk trio.
If you want to learn more about Bush's ties to the Saudis, pick up a copy of Michael Moore's new book. The first chapter is a nice compilation of MAINSTREAM media that outlines some very suspicious links. Of course, you could just write off all of these FACTS by simply saying that Moore is a fraud and lives an indecent lifestyle. Hell, anyone who says anything bad about the conservative party is only telling the truth if they have never done anything wrong in their entire life. Use your heads people! No one is perfect. No one is without error in their life. Just ask Bush about his going AWOL while he was part of the National Air Guard to avoid Vietnam. Man, it sure is great to have a commander-in-chief who is too much of a chicken to actually serve in the military yet feels able to say "Bring 'em on!" after so many troops have died in post-war "terrorist attacks." The American people deserve better. They deserve the truth.
Here's me with Michael Moore. Notice the secret service dude in the back? Apparently there have been so many threats on his life that he has to have professional security with him on his BOOK TOUR!