Naginata

Nancy Pelosi

SNL brings the funny for the first time in years.

Casino Royale w/ Cheese

This is a review of Casino Royale, the latest Bond movie. Here's what I can say without spoilers:

Good but long.

Spoiler-enabled review below the fold.

Let me tell you, after the first little bit of the movie, with the chase through the construction yard, I was ready to leave. It was action porn, not Bond. James Bond doesn't go on top of some crane and engage in acrobatic flim flam to catch the bad guy, he waits in the bad guy's embassy and then makes sure he has an accident.

Then I realized what they were up to and HOLY CRAP. I'm not saying that this was the perfect Bond movie, but it's certainly good and new. That's saying something, considering that the series has, what, three or four movies just involving plots to destroy * from a giant death satellite? That they could breathe new and dramatic life into such a huge series is incredible, and they did a great job of it.

Unfortunately, the movie had a triple helping of endings... but I knew it wasn't over after the first one. The idea of Bond in love is heretical. Seeing Bond broken down and turned into the instrument of destruction and seduction that we all love, that was cool. I'm a little disturbed that I took such glee in watching the writers break a man, but I'm over it now. It's not like he had much in the way of emotion to begin with.

Also, it was difficult to keep from yelling "HE'S GOT THE NUTS!" in the theatre at the end of the card game.

Final note - while we were leaving, standing in the parking lot talking a bit, all the parking lot lights went out. Not cool. Of course, I reacted with typical paranoia, which may have freaked out my friends. Oh well. If you just got out of a Bond movie, and you're a little paranoid to begin with, and you're armed... I think I was remarkably restrained under those circumstances.

PS3

I see the playstation launch hooplah and the outrageously inflated prices on ebay and I wonder: why didn't Sony launch at $1,000? They still would have sold out. Then lower it to $800 for the second wave and down to $600 for the third. Had they launched at $1k, I bet we would have seen a little less craziness... as it is, it's the people who got in line and shoved everyone else out of the way who are raking in the sweet sweet profit - I don't get why Sony didn't keep that profit for themselves.

... and that's really all I have to say about that.

Are you a good citizen?

Enjoy this Citizenship Quiz. I'm only a little ashamed to announce that I scored a 24/30 - it is NOT easy. They consider 24 or so to be passing... in my book, you're allowed to miss 2 from the first 20 and then the rest are just annoying and mostly obscure.

I'm a smartass

Smartass You are 85% Rational, 57% Extroverted, 57% Brutal, and 71% Arrogant.

You are the Smartass! You are rational, extroverted, brutal, and arrogant. In fact, you could very well be the anti-Christ, as you are almost the exact opposite of everything Jesus was supposed to be. While Jesus says love your enemy, you say love beating the crap out of your enemy. While Jesus raises the dead, you raise hell. While Jesus walks on water, you tend to sink. You probably consider people who are emotional and gentle to be big pussies who are obviously in lesser stature than you. You have many flaws, despite your seeming intelligence and cool-headedness. For instance, you aren't very nice. In fact, you're probably an asshole. And you are conceited and self-centered. Not only that, but you are very loud and vocal about all this, seeing as how you are extroverted. There is no better way to describe you than as a "smartass", I'm afraid. Perhaps just "ass" would do, too. But that's a little less literary and descriptive. At any rate, your main personality defect is the fact that you are self-centered, mean, uncaring, and brutally logical. To put it less negatively: 1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive. 2. You are more EXTROVERTED than introverted. 3. You are more BRUTAL than gentle. 4. You are more ARROGANT than humble. Compatibility: Your exact opposite is the Emo Kid. Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Capitalist Pig, the Braggart, and the Sociopath. * * If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits. The other personality types: The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble. The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble. The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble. The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble. The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble. The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble. The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble. The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble. The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant. Be sure to take my Sublime Philosophical Crap Test if you are interested in taking a slightly more intellectual test that has just as many insane ramblings as this one does!

Fox vs CNN

This makes me giggle:

Can you figure out why?

Also, enjoy this political ad

Voter Rights

I went down to the polling place to exercise my rights today (and if you haven't yet, why not?).

It was sort of surreal. Not quite as much as the 2004 election deep in the heart of Soviet Virginia, but in a different way. First, it's important to know that I went with my colleague Ralph, wearing a shirt with "Infidel" emblazoned on the front in both English and Arabic, and carrying my .45 in a concealed holster. I figure as long as you're exercising one right, may as well exercise a few more, just to be safe.

Anyway, I go in and there's a row of tables with numbers. I have no idea what this means. In Virginia, they have a big friendly sign that says "Last Name A-F" and so on above each table. I approach the nearest table and say to the astonishingly young attendant, "I don't know what's number I am". He asks which apartment block I live in - turns out I had picked the correct table by accident.

I am then handed a piece of paper and the kid gestures to a machine behind him.

Now in Virginia, you get a thing, you feed it into the machine, and then you select your answers from a screen. Turns out in Indiana, you get a piece of paper, mark your answers, THEN feed it into the machine. Fortunately, one of the other polling place volunteers said "whoa now, did you mark that yet?" to which I got a not-so-bright look on my face and said "I don't really know what I'm doing here".

See? I'm willing to admit when I don't know the answer.

Anyway, the gentleman says to mark it up then feed it into the machine that matches my number. That makes sense to me - it's like some sort of scantron.

Remember scantron?

I know it's a secret ballot, but I'm comfortable admitting my selections. First, I trashed the straight republican sample ballot at the door. I learned my lesson in... um... well, before I could vote. I voted for nearly every libertarian on the ballot. For judges, I split the difference between republican and democrat. One of the republicans, I had heard of, and I figure hey, one republican to use swat teams at inappropriate times, and one democrat to get angry about it.

As for my reasons for voting libertarian... look, you vote your conscience. I can't vote republican anymore. I realize that the democrats are bad on almost every single issue, but the republicans aren't worthy of my vote anymore. It's as if I've been given a choice between killing 1 innocent or allowing 10 innocents to be killed. I can't do either one - so I vote libertarian and accept the consequences. As to the LP and I... we agree on a lot of issues. We disagree on almost everything about the war in Iraq. I don't think we can leave now - I think we have to stay until the Iraqi government is ready for us to leave. To do anything else would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, a victory we cannot allow. That being said, the domestic agenda of Team Bush is frightening on many fronts - not as bad as the Democrat agenda would be, but still bad - and it doesn't matter whether the terrorists win or lose if we destroy ourselves, distracted by the war in Iraq. I guess all of that means that I won't be able to vote for a LP president until Iraq is more stable... so you've got 2 years, Georgie Boy.

Anyway, while I was voting and mulling all that over in my head, Ralph was doing his best to vote. He attempted to register when he got his license converted to Indianapolis, but the BMV system was down. Heck, it was down for about 6 weeks - I know, I stood in the lines too.

Anyway, he asked the youth at my table if he could get a provisional ballot, and he was referred to an elderly lady. I include her age only because it makes the scene much funnier in my mind. Imagine your grandma yelling at you for not knowing the rules concerning provisional ballots. Note: it might only be funny to me. Ralph politely explained his situation and was told "yes, we have provisional ballots... I guess next time you'll understand the way things work, won't you".

And that was it. No vote for him.

After that, the same woman remarked to another attendant that she had fed a ballot into the wrong machine - a ballot from district 2 went into the district 4 machine. *(Disclaimer - I made those numbers up.) She then suggested that the best way to deal with it would be to take the next ballot for district 4 and feed it into the district 2 machine, to make up for the difference.

And that's about it. Who do I call about all this? Every time people talk about voting irregularities, I brush it off, because I've never seen any hard evidence, just people spouting vague platitudes about disenfranchisement. Now I see that they may have a point. The people running those polling places are the furthest thing from professional. You get what you pay for, neh?

Also, despite the little issues, I still support the voter ID law. It was the one part of the process that went smoothly.

Xenosaga3

I finished Xenosaga 3 late late last night. It's almost impossible for me to talk about this game without spoilage, so let me rate its various aspects on a scale from one to sauce:

Graphics: Salsa
Sounds: Guacamole
Gameplay: Alfredo
Story: Gravy

It's fantastic. All the little religious hints that they stuck in come together. The ending is bizzare, but ultimately satisfying. Also Margulis is a total asshole.

... that's all I can say without spoilers. The game is amazing. In terms of combat and story and such, I'll put Xenosaga 3 right up with the best that Final Fantasy has to offer, and you all know how I feel about Final Fantasy.

Thürsday Röundup

Brain dump time:

Here's a thousand words about John Kerry.

Here's the thing about John Kerry... I think that he misspoke. I think that he was talking about Bush, not about the soldiers. I also think that he has such a complete and total disdain for the American soldier that he didn't even realize what he was saying. Sort of like how, every once in a while, a good old racist will use the word "colored" without thinking.

Hey, that's a nice segue.

I went down to Starbucks today to get my usual (Triple skim venti light whip black and white mocha). There were three people working - one young white man, one black woman in her 30s, and Mike, a middle-aged manager sort with whom I chat for a minute or two every time I go in. Anyway, I yell that drink order out to the woman and she writes down "marble mocha".

Mike proceeds to make a marble macchiato. You see, there IS no marble mocha. It's called a zebra mocha. When Mike sees that it's for me, he, knowing my tastes, says "did you order a marble macchiato?"

Then began the conflagration. Mike turns to her and asks "is this a marble or a zebra?" She sets down her cup and in an angry and not quiet voice says "I find the word zebra to be racist and offensive. I've told you that once before and that was one time too many"

Mike turns back to his work, re-making my drink, knowing that this is NOT an appropriate thing to do in front of a bunch of customers. The guy at the register tries to make it "better", saying "look, it's a zebra mocha" over and over.

I had to choke down the impulse to yell "When I go to a restaurant and ask for chili, and I want something to crumble up and put in it, I ask for CRACKERS". Look, maybe I'm not sensitive to racial issues (I don't think anyone would claim that I am), but in this day and age, I'm pretty sure that almost every word in the english language has been used, at one time or another, as a racial pejorative.

... and that's pretty much all I have time for this morning. I think I'll go cry some black tears and scream at the sky.