Over construction?

That's enough reblogulating, I think. Time to make some ice cream.

Under Construction

The change isn't complete yet, but you get the idea. I'll probably finish up tomorrow.

Wow (the good kind)

The term 'customer service representative,' in theory, refers to an individual who will provide service to the customer. Most of the time, these people provide headaches and frustration to the customer instead. How many times have you had to practically yell into the phone to deal with these people to get them to reading from their prepared scripts that are designed to frustrate/confuse you into giving them more money?

But I'm not here to rant, because I just had the best customer service experience ever. Here's how it went down: Two years ago, I bought a domain and hosting plan from GoDaddy.com. In the last month or so, I've been getting emails telling me the plan was about to expire and that it was set to auto-renew (i.e. automatically debit my account). I didn't want the plan anymore, so I went to the website and turned the auto-renew off, expecting that to take care of the problem. But then today I check my email and there's a receipt for the auto-renewed plan.

Sighing the deep sigh of a guy who hates phones because of things like this, I called GoDaddy. The dude asked how he could help, and I told him what happened. Without missing a beat, he said, "Alright, I'll just go ahead and cancel your plan and get you that refund." No annoying questions about why I didn't like the service, no trying to sell me on the benefits of a hosting plan, no tempting me with a 30-day free trial. Just one 20-second conversation and the problem was solved to the customer's satisfaction. Wow.

The sad part is that I'm amazed by something that should happen all the time.

2 in one wake?

Here's the second Guilder report from our Necromunda campaign. I'm using a different hosting site this time, so we'll see if this one works better. I forgot to add a start button again, so this one autoplays, too. Oh, well.

Can I have 4 beers?

Hi, punk!

It took the brilliant combination of Will Ferrell and a baby to bring me out of my four-month blog retirement. I was searching Funny or Die for a series called 'Drunk History,' which I'd heard about on Current TV. It's actually not as funny as I'd hoped (well, Volume 3 is actually pretty good) but while I was there I came across the following hilarity:

[Edit: the embeds apparently don't like to load promptly. If you get tired of waiting, click on the links.]

The Landlord from Will Ferrell

Good Cop, Baby Cop from Will Ferrell

This is the kind of stuff I want to do with my own kids. You know, exploit them for the sake of comedy. :)

[Update: There's also an outtakes vid.]

Guilder report

Netty and I have started a long-term Necromunda campaign (long-term because we don't play often, not because the campaign is particularly epic) and I wanted a creative way of recording its progress and such, so I came up with this over the weekend: (I can't for the life of me get it to stop autoplaying, so you'll have to refresh the page to watch it from the beginning.)

[Update: I still can't get this embed to play properly, so here's a direct link.]
[Update 2: Right after adding the last update, it started working, so...]

Three Deceased People I Would Clone...

...and the Ridiculous Jobs I Would Hire Their Clones to Do:



1. Colonel Sanders, whose clone I would hire not as my chef but as a guy to sit on my front porch, shouting chicken recipes and shaking his cane at passers-by.










2. Paul Newman, whose clone I would hire to follow me around everywhere, each day dressing in a different costume based on his Newman's Own products.

3. Buckminster Fuller, whose clone I would hire to say the phrase "bucky balls" whenever I press a button on my Bucky Remote®. In theory, this will help accelerate my new plan to phase out the word "shenanigans." In the future, when you hear a load of crap, you'll say "I call bucky balls on that one."

And...cue repressed disappointment

Obama's being sworn in right now, and when I felt a twinge of the Fever that's running rampant, I decided it was time to say something. I mean, this excitement is infectious, but so is avian flu.

Constant media-induced aggrandizement has elevated a President-Elect (not a President who has done anything, mind you) to the status of Savior of the Free World in a matter of two short months. I obviously have a problem with heaping praise on anyone before they've earned it. But let's table that issue for the moment. The bigger problem here is that it's rare to hear someone say with any clarity or specificity how Obama might actually become worthy of their praise. That is, relatively few people are saying, "I can't wait until Obama does ______." They're simply saying "I can't wait until Obama." This is lazy thinking at its worst. So many people out there have only vague notions about our new President, notions like "notBush" and "firstblackpresident" and "ohboychange" and "holyshitimbrokemaybeobamawillfixthat," and somehow these vague notions were enough to earn votes. Obama voters who can actually justify their choice are in the minority.

I imagine this atmosphere of mindless Obamania will lead to some interesting results. I expect he'll start his term with a couple of high-profile "game-changers" that won't actually change the game in any significant way at all, but will make a lot of noise in some circles and quiet a lot of noise in others--that's the "Change" we've heard so much about. Once people realize he's not a messiah and isn't going to "fix" the world (because that's not really his job, after all), I anticipate a two-year, nationwide period of cognitive dissonance that should be all sorts of fun to watch.

Let me be clear: I don't have any major fears about Obama's presidency. In fact, I'm hopeful about at least one of his plans. If he actually closes down Guantanamo Bay, that would be a good thing. We're not the freaking Inquisition here.

Yes, he'll try to socialize health care and I don't care for that. But if we're being honest, the country has been moving in that direction for years now, and if it finally happens on Obama's watch he still won't be solely to blame for it. (On a side note, the very act of establishing a government is a step toward socialization, so the world has been on this road for a while, like it or not--and I don't.)

No, I don't anticipate any significant reduction in gun rights, at least not within a single term.

Yes, I think that, to the rest of the world, it makes us look good to have a black president, and to a certain extent I may even agree that it's a big step for us. However, the world is fickle and racist and has relatively little interest in Obama as a person or political figure, only as a member of a particular race, so screw them.

No, I don't interpret the election of a democrat as a sign of the End Times, any more than I would interpret the election of a republican as such. In fact, in a country that enjoys polarizing itself (and if that sounds dirty, it's because it is), we actually must have a democrat for a few years to balance out all those republican years. If we were willing to elect reasonable, moderate candidates, we wouldn't have this problem. But, alas, despite my vote for the impeccably-mustachioed Bob Barr (said vote being, as I understand it, one of several tens of tens), we will, apparently, continue on in our zigzag journey, first riding an elephant that consistently veers to the right and then a donkey that tends toward the left of the Path of Reason, which runs arrow-straight toward The Future. We'd get there a lot faster if we were on a Segway--those puppies only veer if you do.

Necessary to adhere

There are mods that are fun to play, and then there are the ones that have no earthly reason for existing. This one's hilarious. It changes your pet dog in Fallout 3 from a normal-looking dog:

To this:

I laughed pretty hard when I saw this. I don't know...maybe having a dog with angry eyebrows would make the game more fun. The description this modder gave makes it even better:

"Icannot speak English. Sentences are made on the WEB page of the translation. Thus, please forgive me though sentences might be wrong. This is a texture that puts up the eyebrow to the dog. It is lovely that the eyebrow has adhered to the dog, and always thinks that it is necessary to adhere. Nevertheless, because no one made it, it made it formyself."

If you're interested in an eyebrowed dog (And why wouldn't you be? It is lovely that the eyebrow has adhered to the dog, after all.), you can get it here.

A handwritten post, for kicks

This is what you've waited over two months for.

So, I'm giving an exam tonight, which means there's not much for me to do, so I was clicking around my computer and found something I wrote two years ago.  I don't know if it was meant to be the beginning of a story, or something I wrote in the middle of the night, but I've decided that it makes a great story on its own.  Here it is:


"Romance Chicken"



     “Tell me something romantic.”

     That damn chicken better get here quick.

SNL debate

If you watched the actual VP debate, this is hilarious.  If not, it's proably still mildly funny.

The Braskey Chronicles: Episode Two

Ok, that didn't take long. My GCast player is now in the sidebar, and Episode Two is up (it's not nearly as long as Episode One was, but it is a bit harder to understand because it was recorded in public).

P-p-p-podcast!

I wanted to discuss Spore, but I didn't feel like typing (and yet, here I am typing...) so I decided a podcast was the way to go.  I'm tentatively calling this experiment "The Braskey Chronicles," and the first episode features Netty and I discussing Spore and other things for 25 minutes.  Enjoy! (If this becomes a regular feature, I'll probably put the player in my sidebar.)



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First Response to "The Dark Knight"

I'll get right to it: this movie beat the bejeezus out of me with an Awesome Stick and I plan to go back for another thrashing because I f-ing loved it.  

Batman Begins did a fantastic job of setting up Nolan's new Caped Crusader as a guy who fights crime for his own reasons--not because he's a self-righteous do-gooder, but because deep down he's just fracking angry.  He doesn't hate crime because he feels sorry for the victims, he hates crime because of the criminals.  Because of the attitude they swagger around with--the "I own this town" crap that Tom Wilkinson portrayed so well as Falcone.  Because he can't stand the notion that the ones with all the guns and all the money can scare everyone else into submission.  

And Batman's fierce pissed-offedness, his desire to bash the snot out of bad men, which was set up so well in Batman Begins, makes The Dark Knight's introduction of the Joker all the more fun to watch.  This is a guy whose only agenda is to be bad.  He's not after money or control.  He's just out of his mind, and the best part is we never find out why.  The film never explains him, and although he gives us a couple of pseudo-origin stories, we're not given to believe any of them--although they are fantastically creepy as hell.  He's a bad guy without a reason to be a bad guy, a schizo-elemental, and Ledger takes that idea to a level that is scarily real.  His last scene is absolutely brilliant.  Ledger can freaking act.  I seriously don't know how he got that look in his eyes--a mix of child-like wonder and Krueger-like sadism that actually freaked me out for half a second when he combined it with that laugh.  You do not see Heath Ledger in this movie.  You see the Joker.

Ledger's Joker takes the Batman of the last film and turns him onto one mean S.O.B., and for me, that's the best element of the movie.  He's still technically on the right side, and there's still a line he won't cross, but in this movie he'll walk right up to that line and groin-punch it and spit on its grandma if he thinks it'll help clean up Gotham.  This is a morally gray Batman.  He's willing to hurt people.  He's willing to use all of the resources at Bruce Wayne's disposal, even when he has to strain the bounds of morality to do it.  And the best part is that it works...and at the same time, it doesn't.  You'll have to see the end to know what I mean.

I can't go without mentioning the supporting cast.  Gary Oldman takes Gordon to places I honestly didn't expect the character to go, and it just works.  Aaron Eckhart, an actor that hasn't impressed me up to now, makes Harvey Dent/Tw0-Face into a character I wish we could have seen more of.  Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes was a vast improvement over Katie Holmes' weak performance (I mean, seriously.  Who actually found that Scientologically-brainwashed twelve-year-old believable as an assistant D.A. in a town like Gotham?  No one, that's who.)  Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman reprise their roles as Batman's moral compass and moral compass/gadget man, respectively, and both do a fine job of developing their characters both as Batman's support team, and as interesting people in their own right. (Hunting jewel thieves in southeast Asia?  Who knew Alfred was such a deep well?)

If I haven't made it clear up to now, this is a great film and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  Whether you saw the first one or not.  Whether you like Batman or not.  Whether you trust my judgement of film quality or not.  After all the hype, I actually lowered my expectations a bit before going in to this one, just to avoid the kind of disappointment I experienced with Indy 4.  Turns out I didn't need to do that.  Like I said, I plan to see it at least once more, and I'll let you know if my opinion changes dramatically, but I suspect that I'll only enjoy it more the second time.

IMDb rating: 9.6/10
My rating: 9.8/10

Two things

Ahoy, internets.  I bring you  two (2) Items of Interest:

1. Hellboy 2 is a lot of fun.  Quite different from the first one, and better, I think.  Less Nazi occultism, which is kind of a shame, but more fairy tale-ness and steampunkery, which is spiffy.  I could probably watch the Troll Market scenes eight times and still not catch all the spiff.  If you like the first movie go see this one.  If you didn't like the first movie, go see this one.

IMDb rating: 8.5/10
My rating: 9.0/10

[And remember, this weekend was Hellboy 2, next weekend is Dark Knight, and the next is X-Files 2.  Try to keep up.]

2.  I just finished playing Portal, and the song during the end credits is, without question, the best song I've ever heard in a video game.  It's freaking brilliant.  It might not be that great if you haven't played the game (I'm actually curious about its non-Portal-player appeal), but here's the link if you want to give it a listen.  Note that there are a few minor spoilers in the song, so don't listen if you think you might want to play the game sometime--which you should.

Day 4

Our scenic adventures continued yesterday as Jenette, Michelle, and I went down to the Mile High Flea Market to do some treasure hunting. The place was huge, and a lot of it was just standard flea market crap--cheap/ugly clothes, obviously stolen car stereos, dirty children, carnival rides whose last safety inspection was in the late '70s, and mustaches a'plenty--but we came back with a few pieces of quality loot, including some ridiculous t-shirts (see pics in sidebar) and a really spiffy globe for our house. I might post some pics when we get home.

Later that evening we went to Colorado National Speedway and watched cars drive in loud circles while we ate unhealthy amounts of unhealthy food. I hope that last bit of funnel cake doesn't slow me down on my way to the checkered flag of life (yeah, the announcer actually uses that phrase in his ridiculous pre-race loudspeaker prayer). Normal races are ok, but I know what you're thinking. You're wishing you could see a race in which half-drunk yokels chain three cars to each other and then place mildly retarded dropouts behind the wheels of the resulting metal monstrosities so they can race in a figure-8. You know, like they do in the Book of Revelation. Well, they do just that at the end of the night. Here's a bit of video of the trains (sorry for the bootleg quality, but cameras are verboten at the races, so I was trying to keep mine somewhat hidden while I recorded).
EDIT: Blogger is being stupid, so the video will have to wait until my patience meter fills back up.


Today we braved the rain to check out the the Boulder Hippie Festival (or whatever it was called) and the Pearl Street Mall. We sampled hippie food, got rained on, saw some not-that-great-but-ok-I-guess belly dancers, got rained on, bought a couple of hanging chairs for our porch (spiff), got rained on, and ate at a pretty decent Japanese restaurant. Oh, and then we got rained on. I would post some video of the day's activities, but I didn't even take out the camera because, as I may have mentioned, it was raining all day.

Tonight, my hat and boots dry out. Tomorrow, Estes Park.

Summer trip!

So we're up in Colorado now doing some visiting and whatnot. We got in yesterday evening, after dodging most of the inclement weather, and ate with Gary and Linda at a little place called...something (I can't remember at the moment). They had excellent homemade pasta and decent alferdo (sic) sauce. It happened to be karaoke night, and although I didn't think we were the karaoke type, Michelle, Gary, and then Jenette & I got up to sing. Unfortunately, I only have video of Michelle because my camera battery died. But the real treat of the evening was that Kevin (yes, that Kevin, from "Scrantonicity") got up to sing. Michelle and Kevin are both in the video.


On the way home, we Red Box'd "30 Days of Night"...it was ok, but they could have done more with the background of the vampires (their history, how they got there, etc.)
My rating: 6.9/10
IMDb rating: 6.7/10

Today we went and checked out Main Street in Longmont. Highlights included a coin shop (or is it shoppe?) where they had some boxes of random bills and coins from around the world. We got $10 worth of some pretty neat stuff, like the Japanese 10-peso note that was printed when the Japanese occupied the Phillipines. We also found a coffee shop (or is it shoppe?) that had stop-worthy gelato.

Then the rest of the crew headed back to H.Q. while Jenette and I went to an amazing anqtique store, where we got some nice home decor--including a pair of very steampunky lamps. Now I'm back at H.Q. while part of the crew enjoys a soccer game (not my thing) and part goes to the races (which we'll all be going to tomorrow, anyway.) Nap time for me.

May 22! (Update: Indiana Jones and the MPAA of Doom!)

Lately it takes a lot to drag a blog post out of me, and this one isn't even going to requre any original thought on my part.  I'm simply here to point my finger and say "Look, isn't this freaking sweet?" (Oh, and it is.)




UPDATE: Thanks to the MPAA, who likes to treat people like children, the above U.S. version of the trailer has been edited. Apparently, it's not ok in a trailer to have a gun pointed at another person, so the guns that WE ALL KNOW ARE POINTED AT INDY had to be hastily CG'd out in order for the trailer to be accepted. We saw the Reds, we saw their machine guns pointed in a decidedly Indy-ward direction. But if we were to see the guns and Indy in the same frame, we might all...crap our pants...or something... I don't really understand the logic. Check out the comparison pics here.

Anyway, this little edit, along with an unnecessary and somewhat distracting American flag pasted across a few frames, has caused a bit of geek controversy around some of the Internets. I know, I know. Geek controversy would be flying around the Internets with or without an MPAA'd Indy trailer, but this little bit of it struck me as interesting.

If you want to see the unedited international version in 1080p, click here.  (Also available in 720p and 480p.)

Movie Catch-up

Haven't been in much of a blogging mood lately (still not, actually), but I figured I should catch up on a few movie reviews.  Since I'm lumping them together, they'll be short.

First up, The Golden Compass.  I was really looking forward to this one.  The early trailers made it look deliciously brass-and-leathery (which is to say steampunky), and I got the book for Christmas last year.  The beauty of the book isn't so much the story as the setting.  It's a pretty simplistic story, but it's set in a world with such a rich mythology that it made for a very entertaining read, despite the "young adult" focus (as with the Harry Potter books, or so I hear).  However, while that book series has translated well to the screen, The Golden Compass did not.  They took most of the important scenes from the book, pared them down just enough to be annoying to anyone who's read the book, and then crammed them all together.  The result is a gorgeous, well-casted mess of a movie that I won't be running out to buy on DVD.  Oh, and for no reason whatsoever, they wanked up the ending.  It'll be interesting to see if the sequels are ever green-lit.

IMDb score: 6.6/10
My score: 6/10

Next: I Am Legend.  This is another one I'd had my eye on for some time, and fortunately, this one didn't disappoint.  If you're worried about Will Smith's typical overacting--which, let's be honest, was perfectly suited to movies like Men in Black, et. al.--you don't need to worry here, because he turns in a nicely understated performance 
for this role, which is exactly what it needed.  After all, it's more about obsession
and loneliness than vampire/zombie things.  Actually, the CG monsters kinda look like crap when you see 'em up close, so it's good that they're not really the focus.  It's kind of a horror-ish version of Castaway, but set in an abandoned New York.  Not a masterpiece, but I
enjoyed it.

IMDb score: 7.6/10
My score: 7.9/10

And finally, Jenette, Michelle, and I went to see Sweeney Todd, which the fellers over at AICN have been hyping for a few months.  Of the three films in this post, this one wins.  This is Tim Burton at the top of his game...his dark, creepy game.  The sets and costumes are amazing, as was the casting.  Casting for the two lead roles was maybe a tad obvious (Burton loves him some Depp and Helena Bonham Carter), but it would have been a lesser film with any other actors.  Johnny Depp proves once again that in addition to being the definitive pirate for a generation, he can flip a switch and become someone entirely different, and Carter did her "creepy Victorian goth chick" thing even better than usual.  Then there were the nice surprises, like Alan Rickman as the evil judge...hm, I guess that's not surprising at all...but his performance was fun to watch.  And Sacha Baron Cohen made a hilarious appearance as a rival barber.  I won't say much about the story, because I don't want to ruin it for anyone, but I will say this: there is a lot of blood.  A lot.  Enough to make me squirm in my seat 
a couple of times, and movie blood doesn't usually bother me.  Speaking of "usually," I usually 
hate musicals too, but this one kicked ass.

IMDb score: 8.7
My score: 9.2