Bleach Ep. 19: Ichigo Becomes a Hollow!

The mini training arc continues, Bleach style. Slapstick comedy mixes with an intriguing dive into Ichigo’s very soul when his quest to regain his lost powers takes a very dark turn. Will he survive his training? More importantly, will he survive being abused by little kids?

I think everyone has had one of those days where they have found themselves restrained in a magical straightjacket and subjected to torment by small children. I hate when those happen, they are real downers. So when saw Ichigo go through the events of this episode I empathized deeply with him.

But it is Rukia who gets the short end of the stick, both in events and screen time. The episode opens with Renji freaking out when he finds out Rukia will be executed and his captain, her brother, approves of this. Byakuya may be a pretty boy by anime standards, but his personality is cold to say the least. There is not a trace of positive emotion shown toward his sister and the whole encounter leaves her in a deep funk while she tries to let go of all emotions like a proper noble woman. That is all we get to see of her.

While she is in a black hole of despair, Ichigo is in a hole of his own.

China Doesn’t Just Copy Electronics: The J-21

The military aviation world got a surprise a couple of years ago when the Chinese government took the wraps off of the J-20 stealth fighter, but that is nothing compared to what just showed up. Roughly in the F/A-18 Hornet size range and possibly a competitor to the F-35 Lightning II strike fighter, it is clearly derived from stolen data from Lockheed and subcontractors of the F-22A Raptor program. That is a scaled down F-22 if I have ever seen one with a radome more like the F-35. The proportions made a lot of us on the Net think it was a Photoshop at first, but I had a pit in my stomach when I studied the photos and better ones came out.

I knew our defense programs has been thoroughly compromised by the Chinese, but seeing the tangible results has been an unpleasant experience. As far as cyber security goes, our most classified and protected programs are in the hands of a hostile foreign government. It makes you wonder if the federal government is competent at anything at all.

Meanwhile, China continues to push claims on disputed territories with no fear of being countered.  With the continued aggression in the Pacific against neighboring countries, is it any wonder an arms race has begun in the region?

Odds and Ends 9-15-2012

It baffles me that certain movies are not out on Blu-ray or took many years to get issued, such as Lawrence of Arabia. Having obtained a minty used copy of the special edition DVD set of The Right Stuff and watching it last night, I can’t understand why there is no Blu-ray of it. It is a stupendously beautiful looking and sounding movie that deserves the full high definition treatment. It also is the shortest over three hour movie I have ever watched. By watched, I mean repeatedly over the years.

While I like my Iview Cypad 7” Android based tablet, I do need more horsepower. The Google Nexus was a disappointment in my view, since it has no HDMI out or memory card slot. The new Kindle Fire HD 7” looks terrific, but still lacks the slot and leaves you tied to Amazon’s proprietary store. Even with that, it is the current top candidate for a replacement. Ainol, a Chinese manufacturer, has a new tablet, the Novo 7 Fire, that has everything I want, but there are some early technical problems involving overheating. Its specs beat both the Nexus and Fire HD, so if they work out the difficulties, that is the one I would like to get.

After many years, Black Mesa rolled out yesterday. Black Mesa is a mod for the Source engine that recreates much of the original Half Life with all the bells and whistles of newer technology. I did a short run as far as the highly annoying jumping the crates level and have to say the wait was worth it. The attention to detail is simply amazing and the voice acting isn’t bad at all. There is a possibility they may do the Xen levels later, but hardly anybody liked those. I can’t wait to get into the fire fights and see how they are executed.

Making Faith Godly

Making a challenge when teaching Sunday school has its consequences. This post is one due to the fact that I have to live up to the challenge I delivered to the men in my class to write about their faith this week. Diaries, journals, wives' diaries, letter, mother's diaries, blogs, or whatever it took were part of my request.

 

So here I am, writing about my faith. It is more rambling than I would like due to being written during a hectic day yesterday and a very tired day today.

 

Faith is the first critical step towards finding salvation through Christ. Yet there are different kinds of faith, from the material to the spiritual. Only the most paranoid have no faith, though I suppose they do have faith in the idea that the world is out to get them. Simply having a belief in something unseen (ref. Hebrews 11:1) is not religious in itself, as was pointed out by the class during a lesson I taught in Elders Quorum this past Sunday.

No, there is more to it than that. So I find myself contemplating my faith in God and whether or not it is a Godly faith.

 

An Impressive Bit of Socially Engineered Blog Spam

Going through my email account revealed a comment waiting to be approved. While posted from that ever witty pseudo being, Anonymous, it looked legit at first before going off the rails:

Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point.
You definitely know what youre talking about, why
waste your intelligence on just posting videos to your weblog when
you could be giving us something enlightening to read?
Look at my homepage ... free porn

No video on the post is a wee bit of a giveaway even before the pornography offer (link deleted by me). Misspelling is no longer a surefire indicator that something is spam, so that can be forgiven. The idea of using constructive criticism as a form of social engineering in spam is a new one to me. I know it made me read the entire thing, so I bet this one is fairly effective.
Fiendishly clever is the phrase that applies, methinks.

UPDATED

Meanwhile, the Russian referral spam continues unabated. This time it is one from super-online-search . com that takes you to a site you do not want to visit.The Huns are at the gates, I tell you.

UPDATED 9-13-2012

A comment for another post is another clever variation of this that turned out to be a way to get clicks on a “survey” site as well as the video.

I'm having this exact problem with the video: http://www.youtube.com/(removed by me)  I've put one comment on the video site, but Youtube won't let me link your post as part of the explanation. So far, you are the only post that has tried to make sense of this stupid spam issue. Thanks for posting!

The identity of the commenter was “Ron” but the link to his profile is the afore mentioned survey at sprezzaturarrd . blgospot . com. Interesting development because it looks like they are aware of people trying to spread the word. Notice how the video gets another hyperlink via the comment?

Sadly they did get a couple of clicks out of me verifying the profile, but somebody has to take a look to see what is going on to warn others.

Runaway Inflation Is Now Unavoidable

Bernanke has chosen to do the worst thing possible and that is an open ended qualitative easing. If you have savings or an IRA, expect to lose your shirt since interest will be held low and hyper inflation will lower the value of every penny you have. I suggest looking up the Weimar Republic in German history to get an idea of what is going to happen now.

Stock up on foods and goods while you can, your purchasing power is going to decrease very quickly now. Buying ammo would also be prudent since it will be going sky high after this news is absorbed.

Incompetent and suicidal are the only words I can find to describe this development. It looks like a desperate bid to influence the election.

A Short Comment on the Embassy Attacks

Weakness is never a virtue and never, ever respected in the long run. What we are seeing in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen is the end result of trying to appease evil. Nothing good can come of that, so I expect a lot more to happen now that the United State is perceived as weak.

I have always advocated spreading democracy and republicanism to all states on all continents. Once I believed that it would encourage peace, but then I grew up and ceased being a teenager. Now it is because I believe that everyone must have their chance and be judged upon their resulting behavior.

Does that sound ominous? It should.

The Obama state department has been an abject failure since the beginning, insulting allies and cozying up to people who genuinely hate the West. Fear of offending our enemies and a perverse desire to offend friends has been a hallmark of this administration. So it was only a matter of time before the chickens came home to roost.

Al Qaeda and their associates coordinated the initial attacks on 9/11/2012 with the hope they would spread. Killing Osama bin Laden turned out to be as meaningless as I expected. This is a much bigger movement than one man.

Watching the media rally around the President and try to make Romney a bad guy for making a rational, not to mention needed, statement about the groveling message from the Egyptian embassy staff has been a depressing sight.

Once again, I repeat that weakness is not a virtue.

Gammera the Invincible (1966) Review

An American producer imports a giant monster movie from Japan and splices in new scenes. Godzilla, King of the Monsters? No… Gammera!  The result is something kids will enjoy and adults will find very silly. Park your brain – you won’t be needing it for this movie about a 200ft tall flame spewing turtle. And just what is the mysterious Plan Z? UPDATED September 2012 with DVD screen captures and revised text.

In 1965, Daiei Studios released Gamera the Giant Monster to cash in on the giant monster craze started by 1954’s Gojira. It was a decidedly low budget film that surprisingly did well and spawned a series of sequels. While never as big as the Godzilla series, many a kid watched the films about Gamera, the children’s friend.

The version reviewed is the first Americanized one distributed by NTA, not the even more heavily edited Sandy Frank one most of us saw on TV back in the 1980’s. This one is only mildly incoherent by comparison.  On to the review!

Gammera the Invincible begins with an overly serious narration introducing the setup. Dr. Hidaka (Eiji Funakoshi) is in the Artic to conduct some serious research. On what, I do not know. But he is a serious scholar and don’t you forget it! There he and his lovely assistant Kyoke (Harumi Kiritachi) meet an Eskimo chief. Pleasantries are barely exchanged before a squadron of Soviet bombers fly by at low altitude.

11 from 9/11

Watching the 9/11 ceremony streaming from the memorial site and listening to the names of the murdered read off has made the memories come back with a vengeance. One thing that strikes me is the names come from every ethnic background. When Bin Laden and company launched the attack, they did not attack just one hyphenated American, but the entire country.

I wish people would remember that this year when identity politics have gotten the worst I have seen in my forty plus years of living.

It is painful to listen to the families of the fallen speak and they are only up to ‘P’. It is one thing to remember watching what happened over a decade ago, but to see and hear just a fraction of the people whose lives were permanently changed reminds us of the very human dimension involved. So many kids left behind missing their parents and growing up without their presence are reading names.

Never forget.

Slow Motion

Since Saturday, I have not been doing so great, but managed to get out to socialize and go to church, though I missed the first hour of that. The drive home felt like it took a small eternity, which made me think of the excessive use of slow motion in modern action movies. Interesting in small doses and a massive chore to sit through when over used.

So today has been more of that wading in mud feeling. For over a week I have been working on two review posts and hope to get them up tomorrow at the latest. Part of the delay has been not feeling well, the other… well, sometimes reviews are painful to write. I have no idea how professional movie critics retain an ounce of sanity.

Actually, that would explain a lot of reviews, wouldn’t it?

New YouTube Based Blog Referral Spam

Well that is interesting. The Russian spammers have come up with a new one that delivers up a YouTube video of a Grand Theft Auto 4 sequence. Why would they do that? Well, the account holder gets money from the ads that run before it plays. This is why you see pretty girls doing reply videos to just about every subject out there – they make a lot of money from people clicking on them.

So if you see youtube.com in your referring sites, do not click and enrich the Russian mob.

Words Fail Me...

Two movie trailers and yes, they are real:

The mind boggles.

A Hail of a Night

It was another restless night, but at least this time the weather was overtly causing it. Around 1:30 AM a hail storm hit the house and hit loudly. You know the comic book sound effect “SPANG!”? I heard that quite a few times.

This morning revealed dents on the car hood, which just adds to the expense of getting it repainted. Hopefully, we will finally get it into the shop on Friday if it can be lined up. Also taking damage was a junk locust tree by the mailbox. One of its limbs broke and partially fell in the driveway entrance.

I dragged it around as much as I could, since it is still attached and far too out of reach to saw. Not that I am up for sawing something that thick! It was all I could do to cut the four and two inch diameter branches off to keep them from being run over.

WCA Phone Spam

For the last month or two I have been getting prerecorded messages from an outfit calling themselves WCA on an unlisted MagicJack phone number I have. The outfit is fraudulent and seems to be phishing for information, so do not press any numbers or call them back. The messages are often different, with variation including: debt collection, credit card offer, class action lawsuit settlement, assistance for the elderly, contest winnings, and free gift cards. It seems like this kind of scam is getting more common or am I mistaken?

I had not paid too much attention to the calls, since I thought it was some kind of service aimed at the disabled and elderly from what little I heard before hanging up. But after some of my recent experiences, I started listening to more of the messages and discovered they varied a great deal.

I will note this phone number has never been used on an Internet form or site and I assume it is the result of an autodialer. It is possible they were harvested off of an acquaintance’s smart phone or PIM on their computer, but it is highly unlikely.

Oddly, this reminds me of roofing and asphalting scammers I saw operating in Indianapolis back in the 1980s. The world probably has had con artists scamming people since the early days of civilization. I suspect they would survive being nuked just like the cockroaches they resemble.

Survived Another Holiday

I do not know when holidays changed from things to anticipate eagerly to things that strike dread in my heart. It probably was a few years into CFS that the demands of such days became apparent to me. Yes, I stubbornly believed back then that somehow, someway I would get better.

Then there was Labor Day, a federal holiday I always thought was pointless. I’m not a fan of holidays except to mark important events or to honor military service. It also seemed unnecessary with Thanksgiving not to far away and Christmas a mere month later. To me, it was inconsequential and gave it little thought.

So of course this year I completely forgot it was coming despite many announcements about the ward picnic. Postponed plans to go to the range to make some very badly needed zeroing in for a couple of rifles meant that yesterday morning was a must do. Then at noon the picnic would have to be gotten to. Oh hey, a phone call from a friend getting the online gaming group together for steak later that afternoon made things even more complicated.

I really wondered if I would survive Labor Day.

Health 9-3-2012

Going cold turkey on H202 to prepare for a full cleanse in September has not gone well. So I am now forced into restarting the maintenance regime and postponing the full. Such is life.

I am finding online multiplayer gaming to be more physically draining than I expected. It tires me greatly if it goes more than a couple of hours. That is one of the most annoying things about CFS, it does not care if real physical activity is involved and will be set off by anything I do no matter how trivial.

New week, new challenges to overcome. The first is Labor Day…

Mitt Romney Can Speak

Well, that was a surprise. His acceptance speech was in turns emotional, powerful, and presidential. Honestly, I did not expect this out of him, but it looks like Ryan’s pushing him to be himself has paid off.

I did not plan to watch any of the convention live, but my father wanted to check it out and PBS had it live. It was the testimonials by people who knew Romney when he was a bishop that changed the mood of the entire convention. Extraordinarily emotional and given by everyday people rather than politicians, the bored and barely polite delegates got teary eyed. For the first time, Mitt the real man was revealed to the surprise of the people.

Reaction on the conservative and libertarian side of the Net followed the same pattern. The whole night of speakers were very effective at conveying the Mitt Romney they know and included a liberal Democrat who served in his administration in Massachusetts. Her heartfelt endorsement of Mitt’s authenticity and goodness really was a special moment.

The Olympic medalists were a surprise and quite good too. It was good to see Scott Hamilton up there.

Clint Eastwood channeled a mix of Don Rickles and Bob Newhart in a devastating comic routine involving talking to Obama in an empty chair. Strange at first, it turned into something amazing by the end.

Rubio was smooth and impressive introducing Romney. I can see why great things are expected for him.

But it was Mitt’s make or break moment and he was incredible. Where has this man been the whole campaign? Absolutely tremendous speech and hard hitting on Obama’s short comings made even more impressive by the fact he writes his own speeches.
I think this is the real beginning of the campaign.

Bleach Ep. 18: Reclaim! The Power of the Shinigami!

That classic trope of shounen anime has arrived: the dreaded training story arc. But do not expect the normal kind of training, for the mysterious Urahara has rather… unorthodox methods. Stripped of his spiritual power, can Ichigo get it back in time to rescue Rukia from Soul Society?

Few episodes in Bleach veer so radically between comedy and seriousness as this one. There were times I felt I was suffering mental whiplash, but it certainly is not a boring entry in the series. With Ichigo accepting the offer from Urahara to get his powers back at the end of the last episode, it was pretty obvious we would get a mini-arc with a power up at the end of it. Oh how I dreaded it when first watching the show -- for they are the most boring things in anime to me.

Returning to school for the first time since Rukia was taken back to Soul Society, Ichigo broods constantly about her absence. Nobody else remembers her at all, which compounds the pain he feels. She haunts him to the point he visualizes her fading away like a ghost, which manages to inject some poignancy into the midst of the slapstick comedy involving his classmates.

In Defense of Fantasy and Sci-Fi B-Movies

In which I opine on the merits of B-movies of yesteryear, their decline, and how they haven’t really gone extinct.

Being a child of the 1970s, I was fortunate to grow up during a transitional period in cinema and before VCRs (along with cable television) changed how we see movies. The only places to see movies were at the theater and on broadcast, so a lot of very old movies were my main diet. Hey, movie tickets cost money even at the third run small town theater. Unlike other kids, it was rare to go out to see a badly faded and scratched print.

So I got to watch the badly faded and scratched prints cropped to television box format via the miracle of pan and scan. Most of the movies were much older than I was, so black and white flicks were watched nearly as much as color. Do not get me started on Ted Turner’s colorizing old films in the 1980s. The words “brain dead” would be the beginning of the rant which would veer into zombie killing at some point.

So what is a B-movie?

Hate: A Challenging Dream

An attempt to sleep in resulted in one odd dream that ended on a strange note and a profound question. Part of my ongoing series Hate.

Awaking and going back to sleep rarely results in memorable dreams for me. This is not the case this morning. It started as an odd jumble involving a look at the next Captain America film in a sociopolitical context at a nearby Catholic college presentation open to the public. In the dream, I was sick and bundled in a blanket in a front row seat.

The female professor making the presentation was very liberal and very much about being in control of the discussion. We watched a clip and then she asked a question that had absolutely nothing to do with what we had just watched. Tedious conversation followed.

At that point I was losing interest in the whole thing, since it appeared to be a waste of time and I felt lousy. I saw a friend sitting several rows in front of me and we waved to each other. Yes, I was sitting in the front row and suddenly there were rows in front of me. One has to love the ability of dreams to be completely inconsistent.

If I only Had a Brain

I have had this going through my head for a good part of the day. Why? Because I have been addled at best today. The early morning hours were not kind to me from overdoing things, so I did not make it to church. Trying to work on the post I started earlier this week turned into an ordeal and that is when this tune began to play in my head. Good thing, because it needed to be filled with something.

At least I found an old MP3 player to use as a Sunday only one. Where the good one went, I do not know. Also, I did work on changing the look of the site. Hopefully it is a bit more presentable now.

Health 8-25-2012

Well, that was not a good week. Gastrointestinal distress, high pain levels, and interrupted sleep contributed to keeping me at low ebb. I barely was able to start a rather large post and never did get back to finishing it. Chores around the house suffered the same fate.

It is pretty clear I overextended myself by making a shopping trip on Monday. There are no regrets, since badly needed items were gotten and the piper always has to be paid. Hopefully next week will be better.

Now to see if my shoe repairs worked this time around!

Headlines: Shootings and Armstrong Is a Doper

Early reports of three to four dead near the Empire State Building in New York City with the gunman dead. Like I have written before, I expect to see a lot more of this as society slowly comes apart at the seams. Too many economic and social pressures are causing marginally stable people to crack.

Meanwhile, Anders Breivik gets twenty one years for killing seventy seven people in Norway. He is eligible for early release in a mere decade. Way to protect your public, Norway!

The other big story is that Lance Armstrong quit defending himself and has been found guilty of doping. All seven Tour de France titles have been stripped from him. It puzzles me that people did not believe he was doping when that sport is completely dishonest. Frankly, all sports are populated by cheaters and dopers now and are not worth following. Certainly, the athletes should not be made heroes at this point, but the masses are desperate for secular gods.

Boy’s cancer a fight between good and evil

Boy’s cancer a fight between good and evil

I am friends of the Kuglers and have to say that Jonas is even more impressive in person. He has handled the whole ordeal incredibly well given his age. Watching the whole family deal with this has impressed me greatly -- they are amazing folks.

Movie Illiteracy

Hello to the few who read this blog!

This will be a short post while I continue writing a longer one which has brought a question to mind: Does anyone under 50 have any familiarity with classic movies these days?

I ask this because I will often mention a movie to someone below forty and get a blank look. These are not obscure movies and include:

• Lawrence of Arabia
• Doctor Zhivago
• Bridge Over the River Kwai
• Zulu
• Casablanca
• The Maltese Falcon
• Gone with the Wind
• Citizen Kane

And many more I could list. Hollywood is in a downturn and has been for some time, mainly due to the dreck they insist on putting out. The latest fad it to watch HBO or Showtime for original series rather than theatrical releases due to the supposed superior quality. I've sampled those series and am unimpressed, to put it lightly.

Since I am not film illiterate and something of a buff, it would be considered my problem, not theirs by the consumers of current film and television. But I wonder if they would have a different attitude if they were versed in classic films of yesteryear?