Lord of the Rings, Donnie Darko Style

This is impressive on multiple levels. Now we need WETA to provide the CGI to finish it!

Iron Man 3 Super Bowl Ad: Extended Look

Robert Downey Jr truly is a master thespian.

Some fun for a cold and dreary Monday morning.

Proof the Japanese Are Weird

Hatsune Blitzkrieg.

I rest my case.

At least Squid Girl and Godzilla got some cameos in this odd tribute to the vocaloid idol. It still amazes me how obsessed Japan is with the Nazis, which goes to show how poor a job McArthur did in running the occupation.

Speaking of Squid Girl, the second season will start coming out on DVD in March. That’s good news for those of us who revere our squid overlord.

Big Trouble in Gangnam Style

Too perfect and it even has James Hong in it!

Words Fail Me...

Two movie trailers and yes, they are real:

The mind boggles.

Rambling Man

So this 2012 thing looks new and shiny doesn’t it? Wait, don’t rub that finish! Ah… errr, that isn’t rust under there, that’s primer! New finishes are fragile, don’t ya know…

It funny how we use arbitrary dates and magically thinks that they change things. While it is a good system to sort events out, there is nothing real about the change of a date. Things of the world still progress in their own way, ignorant of things such as calendars, appointments, and dates. It is the balance to humans living chained to clocks, calendars, and schedules while being ignorant of most of what else is going on outside of their lives.

December was a strange month ending an odd year. Losing the car to a deer and being essentially stranded here for the foreseeable future is not making me a happy camper. So the trip to visit my sister and her family in Indiana via Amtrak became a welcome respite from dealing with that mess. A mess that is still unresolved with documents promised from the insurance adjuster nowhere in sight.

The big news is my sister is pregnant and that is going to bring quite a few changes to that household. It will be interesting to see how the twins handle a new half-sister come late summer. Meanwhile, forget morning sickness, my sister has all day and night sickness. Not fun in the slightest and I hope she has an easier time of it as the pregnancy progresses.

Rare is it when I can be surprised by something and that goes doubly so for gifts. So when I spotted the huge wrapped box in the living room of their house, the thought that they might give me a Kindle evaporated. Surely that could not be an HDTV?

Of course it was. Just one little problem… how to get it home? Having ridden there on the train, I was sure it would not be allowed on as cargo. After verifying that, it ended up being shipped UPS with no possibility of insurance. So we will have a new TV if it survives shipping. Given the way things have gone of late, maybe I should not have ordered the Blu-ray player to be its companion. We will see.

My other gifts were socks (yes, I requested socks for Christmas – deal with it), pajamas (what, am I six again?), and a replica of my favorite Harry Potter character’s wand (Neville will always be the real hero of the story to me).

Speaking of unsung heroes, Bob Anderson died.  I have always appreciated great swordsmanship and never have gotten to see the real masters names who have been on the silver screen. Reclaiming the Blade goes on my Netflix cue ASAP.

Back on topic, whatever that was. Let me look…

Okay, the visit went well, no lives were lost and no animals killed or maimed in the process – despite being highly tempted. Their tiger cat, Teddy, has a compulsive tendency to micturate on our belongings and my laptop bag was the latest victim. Last time it was my father’s papers from a project he was working on.

Forced cat holding session begun.

Forced cat holding session ended.

My white cat Snooky is always demanding. Being gone for a week has aggravated her a great deal, so I am expected to hold her. Perpetually. Not gonna happen.

So back to the visit. Many a game was played and I won an unnaturally large amount of them. Typifying the mayhem, I won the final Sorry game by coming from behind with my brother-in-law and father with all their pawns in or in the safe zone. Given I was unable to even get on the board for the first go through of the cars, it was quite amazing. But I have to say my two victories in Apples to Apples were the real high point. There is nothing quite as satisfying as using people’s prejudices against them.

Forced cat holding session begun.

Forced cat holding session ended.

Good thing this post isn’t about a subject.

In the mailbox when I got home were the Pro Ana red/blue 3D glasses I had found on Amazon. They are acrylic with plastic frames and will be much harder to lose than the paper and gel kind. Experiments with them and PowerDVD 11 have been intriguing. As I suspected, the latest version of Star Trek converted very well to 3D. The way that film was shot lends itself to being turned into 3D and I have more experiments to perform. Sadly, I cannot put up any images because there is no way around the copy protection used by the program.

There are issues with everything getting darker and colors being somewhat off. Anything intensely red or blue becomes electric and skin tones yellow are the worst of it. Also fascinating is the ability to apply this conversion to still photos. What really surprised me is how useful this may turn out to model building. With depth I can better make out some of the subtle to complex bumps and lumps on aircraft walkarounds. So this may be something useful after all.

One fun thing about them is I can browse the various anaglyphic images on the web. Not bad for 17 cents and $2.98 shipping!

I was going to write about the experiences on the train trips, but enough rambling for now. That can be materiel for another post.

Fortune Telling?

I just arrived home from a gaming session of D&D and while we were goofing off and ignoring the DM, I pretended to auger a fortune from a bowl of left over Halloween candy.

“You will have a short and painful life,” I predicted to one of the players.

He replied, “Did you say a short and painful wife?!”

Best line of the evening, by far.

You Cannot Beat Reality for Weirdness

The perfect illustration of why.

Of course when you have a tinpot Marxist dictator in charge of the country, just about anything becomes possible. To me this is utterly insane, simply because it would inspire me to be worse. Frankly, if I found a video game involving running down mimes, I would buy it and play it too much.

While I do not “road rage”, I could easily mime rage.

Is Iowa Trying to Take Over the World?

del.icio.us Tags: Iowahawk,Iowa,conspiracy,Korea

 

Iowa long has had a disproportionate influence on American politics from having early primaries to hosting a giant straw poll at Ames.  Being a Minnesotan, I’ve long held suspicions about the sinister nature of our neighbors to the south, compounded by my 1st and 2nd grade experiences when we briefly lived there.  It

simply isn’t right for school buses to move with synchronized precision right down to the second at the school I attended.  It was all vaguely Stepford Wives’ish.

So when Iowahawk started wondering what was going on with Korea and the University of Iowa football team it became pretty clear what is happening.  He’s possibly stumbled on to a vast conspiracy that has global ramifications.  There is too much going on to be just a coincidence and Iowa’s political ambitions of political dominance are on record.

It is obvious the shadowy powers running the state have taken the next step toward realizing a dream of global empire not seen since the British colonial era.  The use of a Korean all girl pop group is the most insidious of weapons that can be deployed and should be stopped by international treaties.  Korea is only the start and I wouldn’t be surprised it Iowa tries to undermine New Zealand next.

But I must issue a word of caution:  Iowahawk himself might be in on Iowa’s nefarious plans.  Look at his online alias containing the words ‘Iowa’ and ‘hawk’ together, implying that he is a fanatical patriot of the state.  This could be a disinformation ploy to hid Iowa’s true agenda…

Attention Thomas!

Cough up the dough or the gnome gets it!

White Boy, err Redneck Blues?

Well, I took another frivolous web test, this time to see if I'm Yankee or Southern. It is also known as the "Redneck Test" across the Net and I got this result:

55% Dixie. Barely in Dixie

Looks like nature won out over nurture, my ancestry being from Indiana and Kentucky, with stops farther South along the way.

Actually, this is a rather clever test based on regional linguistics. The advanced test is fun too, I scored a measly 52% Dixie on that.

White Boy Blues

How White and Nerdy Are You?

I expected to be more nerdy, but maybe that NRA membership is having a transformative affect...

The Perfect Cat Torture Device

For those sadistic souls who like to torture cats, I have found a marvelous and cruel device to use on them. It is called a "weather alert radio" and can be found in catalogs or your nearest Radio Shack. Guaranteed to go off at a minimum of once a week, it randomly screeches loudly depending on the weather. The irritating sound is calculated to flay a cat's soul at a range of 50 feet and if the radio is placed in a high spot, nearly impossible for a feline to turn off. Depending on your house, it may even torment those cats outside. Yes, it is also the perfect thing to Confuse a Cat without the expense of hiring professionals.

Note: No cats were harmed in the writing of this post, including the kitten in my lap.

Why Are Zombies Popular?

It is the day to set up the county fair booths, so what am I thinking about after getting up this morning? Is it politics or the logistics of the materials needed for the booth? No, my brain is stuck on the inexplicable popularity of the walking undead, AKA zombies. No, not the drug induced Haitian slaves or the poor souls who followed the Grateful Dead around. I'm talking about cannibalistic, brain chomping, slow shuffling, spreading like lice movie zombies.

It all seems to have started with George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, a low budget B &W movie that tossed in at least a little serious social commentary on race, but mainly was about grossing people out. Ever since then, low budget horror movies about zombies have been churned out with great regularity. True, some of them are direct to video or the SciFi Channel, but they appear to be perennial favorites of horror fans. It has spread to comic books, with an entire miniseries called Marvel Zombies being popular, with heroes like Captain America, Wolverine, and the Fantastic Four becoming villains eating the population.

But why? I can understand the popularity of vampires, because that essentially has been about sex ever since Bram Stoker wrote Dracula and we all know that sex and sensuality sells. Women in particular are drawn to trashy vampire novels and there are even people who live a vampiric lifestyle. Werewolves are popular with the guys and I suspect that has to do with the whole hunting reversal theme in those movies. But what is the appeal of shambling masses of rotting flesh wandering around eating people?

I don't get it. My reaction if this happened in reality would be something like this, "Oh, look. A group of zombies is staggering down the sidewalk. I'd better walk a little faster, maybe cross the street. I bet they'll make good target practice after lunch. I wonder if I left the stove on."

The only reason I can figure for zombies being scary is we have become such a lazy society that a slow moving and unintelligent predator is a threat. Is this horror born of loafing around too much combined with our ever shortening attention spans? "DUDE! I'd have to get off this couch and walk to escape this flesh eating monster. That is so unfair! Oh look, Britney's taking her clothes off in her new video... *CHOMP!*"

Forget nukes, all our enemies need is to invent zombies like in the movies.