Nonentity

Now listening to: still more Modest Mouse

I managed to stay busy today. I mowed Trip's yard and did some weedeating in the insane heat. That was fun, but noone to blame but myself. I coulda waited for things to cool down in the evening, but I just wanted to get it done.

After that I came home, drank a gallon or two of water and cooled down. I then went to see a dress rehearsal of Corb's community theater production of Little Shop of Horrors. It was pretty much all I expected. The show was well put together and there were some talented folks in it, there were some technical problems, but it was a rehearsal and not an actual show, so I shan't over critique that. Corb did a really nice job putting it together, the sets look sharp and clearly a lot of work was put into getting everything just right. It did suffer from the same problem all plays in this area are going to suffer from, the target audience. But that really can't be helped. On the up side, there are a coupla cute chicks in the play, none in my age range, but it's nice to look nonetheless.

My biggest problem with going to the show was something I had foreseen, but there is no cure for it. There were loads of people I kinda, sorta know. Not people I wanna talk to, but people I'm obligated to speak to when I see them or I seem like an snob. So I get to have pedantic miserable faux conversation with them, when I'd rather be staring off into space.

I spy with my little eye...

So I actually left the house today. It was ever so exciting. Went to Trip's and then we went to Jerry's Pizza with the intent of dining there. They have been remodeling for what seems like forever and still are. The dining area is incredibly small because of this and so we decided to just take it back to his place as there were hordes of people milling about. Later we went for a Blizzard at DQ and it was also packed. The fun thing about going to places in Martinsville is the sites you see. I'm gonna give you a little list of things I saw that caught my attention.

• White trash family, including mom smoking in line (clear violation of Va. state law), eldest child wearing a t-shirt and filthy underwear and nothing else and younger child who decided that a shirt was too much and just sported a diaper. Altogether charming.
• Surly white girl who seems to wish everyone dead while taking their order.
  
• Surly black woman who seemed to wish everyone dead while making thier Blizzard.
• Annoying white guy who clearly wanted to use the N word on the surly black woman.
• Woman in her 40s wearing an outfit she didn't have the body for when in her 20s.
• Bald black man wearing a hairnet. Why was he wearing a hairnet without hair? Couldn't tell you.

After our adventures in the outside world Trip and I watched The Incredibles. I love that movie, seems to be as good as the first time each time I watch it.

New gig

well I have now started blogging about WoW at a new site. This will come as a relief to some of you who don't enjoy my WoW rambling. To those that do, you can check it out here. Just go to the MOG blogs and look for the WoW listing.

Anyway that's about all I got for now. I only halfwatched the WSOP broadcast last night and it wasn't what I expected really.

Today's the day they're handing out brains

So I've been watching a lot of tv the last coupla days. Sunday I watched the new Pauly Shore reality show. It was ok. I was always a but of a fan of Pauly, despite all the hate he gets. He's just goofy and became an easy target. I concede that his movies were stupid, but sometimes stupid can be good... not always, but sometimes. I do say that Biodome was excellent and will stand by that statement. Anyway that show was interesting, although I'm not sure I'm gonna be riveted by it always.

I watched Hell's Kitchen yesterday. It's entertaining, particularly when the head chef starts yelling. As far as the competition goes I'll be surprised if Ralph doesn't win. He's among the most capable and seems to have more of a traditional chef look and feel, moreso than the others anyway.

I also tuned into a couple of episodes of 30 days, the show done by the documentarian that did SuperSize Me, Morgan Spurlock. They had a marathon on FX and some of the episodes really didn't excite me. Two that did were Morgan and his girlfriend living 30 days on minimum wage. They did ok except that both of them had to go to the hospital for minor ailments. Of course, Morgan ended up working two jobs and they had no creature comforts at all. According to their budgets they would have needed to work three months to pay those bills off. Scary, but not really surprising.

The other episode was this West Va. native Christian going to live as a Muslim for a month in Michigan. That was interesting seeing this guy try to acclimate himself to living as a Muslim and watching how differently people reacted to him when he looks Islamic.

Tonight the 2005 World Series of Poker coverage starts on ESPN and I'm excited about that. I'm sure Nick will be Tivoing that up and watching it when Augustine allows a break in his schedule. I actually don't know who won this year and am eager to watch it without knowing in advance.

Electrons and unicorns

So I've kept a low profile this week, not leaving the house. I reread some Harry Potter books through the week and on Saturday read The Half Blood Prince. The new one is excellent. I'd give it a filet mignon rating, unreservedly so. It's one of the better Harry Potter books and they are all good.

I also finished the Gods of Aberdeen and would give that a definite +1 chainmail. It started out good, then the story crawled to a standstill and bored me.

Back to Potter I have a few thoughts on the book that have some serious spoilers, so I may wait til the end of the week to post them for the few readers I have to catch up with the reading.

I've also been listening to this song Astronaut by Luna, that I downloaded years ago. It's exceptionally good and I would like to get more of Luna's work. I have on of their albums that's not bad, but this song makes me want to hear more.

It's important to remember...

sometimes the bull does win. Anyway nothign going on. I'm preparing to apply for a bunch of jobs, so I got that going for me. I'm now going through and rereading the last coupla Harry Potter books in prep for the upcoming release of the next book. Woo, who's excited?

Well sadly that's about all I have to report. Been getting my nerd on with WoW and watching junk tv.

Sex and crap

Slow week on the posts, I know. What can I say, I'm depressed. Went to Trip's place one night and we watched both Kinsey and Aliens vs. Predator. Now there are two different experiences in movie watching.

I'll start with Aliens vs. Predator. It was horrid. Bad plot, sketchy acting and so not what I wanted to see when I heard the title. I mean I love the original Alien movies and I'm an apologist for the original predator film, but this was inexcusable. Not enough Alien on Predator violence. Somehow through the movie the predators become the "good guys' which seems odd. I'm saying this movie earned its mudbutt rating with a vengeance.

Kinsey was good, not the best movie ever, but good. I have always been fascinated by human sexuality (which is odd considering how little participation with it I have). It was a nice telling of how one man tried to banish ignorance and misinformation and replace it with scientific fact and how he was fought constantly. I find it amusing how his book on men was fairly well received, but when women's sexuality was discussed people balked and thought it was evil and dirty. Just an example of the patriarchal nature of our society. Anyway I'd give Kinsey a foot massage (no foot fetish involved).

I'm reading this book the Gods of Aberdeen and it's pretty good. It's about college life and studying medieval alchemical works. Kind of a Davinci Code vibe, except different.

I also continue giving entirely too much time to WoW. I'm a video game addict, maybe I should do a study of that. I could be the next Kinsey... cept I'd get laid a lot less... than Kinsey I couldn't possibly get...nevermind.

Anyway it's storming now, with some nice tornado warnings so I suppose I should go.

Stenches

Trip and I went to see Land of the Dead yesterday. I'm a big fan of zombie movies, even the silly ones. This, however, was not Romero's best work. I prefer movies where the zombies have just come to life and people are figuring out how to deal with them. This was an established zombie world and the living had created a city to live in and went so far as to use captured undead as entertainment. Really it was less about zombies and more about the abuse of power by man.

Another thing it seemed to be lacking was the cool zombie moment. One of the draws of these movies is seeing really disgusting things happen to the living or zombies with really bizarre deterioration. It had some of that, but not the depth of putrescence that I wanted.

On the up side, Asia Argento=hot. That's all I have to say about that. There was also a cool Tom Savini zombie cameo, but it seemed kinda tacked on. All in all I'd say this movie ranked about Meh. The Dawn of the Dead was soo much better, both the original and the remake.

Here is my brother and nephew in living color. Photo credit goes to my mom. This was an "action photo" compared to the sheer number of Stonehenge shots she took. 

Bombs bursting in air

My back pain seems to have subsided somewhat, which is a good thing. There is still an occasional twinge, but I don't have to ease my ass out of bed now. Three cheers for being relatively able bodied.

So the July 4 holiday is upon us and I'm actually gonna do some of the traditional activities I suppose. Trip is having a barbecue tonight and that should be fun. The speedway is doing it's fireworks (on July 1 not 4, who can understand why they do anything). Honestly I'm not that big on fireworks, they are nice but I can take em or leave em. But since I can watch from Trip's backyard and not have to rub elbows with every slackjawed idiot within 50 miles I can enjoy it.