Jim's swingin' bachelor pad....

I have just recently added to my house the final accessory which makes my house qualify as a "bachelor pad"...You see, I now have something gasoline powered sitting in my kitchen.

While it is not a 1978 straight block V-12 engine (which also gives you extra points on your man license exam), it is a 1980 Honda moped I am trying to get up and running, with aspirations of possibly turning it into an art car. Possibly the result of too many episodes of American Chopper and Monster Garage.

Other qualifications for the bachelor pad include:

1. Having a refrigerator that has a science experiment in it. Otherwise, it is simply a place to keep sodas and beer cold.

2. Having rooms devoted to various and sundry hobbies, such as a large toy or comic book collection.

3. Having a television that costs more than what you paid for all of your other furniture...Combined.

4. Having a DVD rack that has absolutely no "chick flicks" in it.

5. Your pets eat better than you do, because your pantry consists of Pop Tarts, Cat Food, and Canned Ravioli.

The weirdness that is C-Span...

I was flipping channels today and I ran across the video game report card. Here is the Press Release...

The National Institute on Media and the Family has issued its eight annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card. The report gives a mixed notice on the video and PC gaming industry, with praise for the rating system and for retailers that have a ratings enforcement system but criticised the industry for easy access for M rating games for teenagers as well as not using the AO (Adults Only) rating for Rockstar's recent hardcore stealth action game Manhunt. The report also lists games for children and teens to avoid, including Manhunt, Max Payne 2, Postal 2 and the T rated Def Jam Vendetta, as well as recommended games such as Sim City 4, Rise of Nations and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004.

Now the odd part about this is they had a PSA to encourage parents to monitor what their kids played...But before this they showed examples....C-Span is showing a tape of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas where there is cussing and drive by shootings and the like. Then after that they showed this adult video game where you see real women topless...Now they didn't bleep out the language or pixelate over the nudity on any of this.

....And people are freaking out about Desperate Housewives... I love this country!

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

A mumbler's comments on public speaking...

Went to A RDA Lecture this week regarding the architectural history of Berlin. This was the second of a series of 4 lectures, and while I expected the first lecture to be painfully boring, I was surprised because the speaker actually knew how to talk and while the information he presented could have been boring if placed into the wrong hands, I found it interesting, because of this persons ability to speak to an audience.

No such luck with the second lecture.

This lady could not keep me awake to save either of our lives, and she used so many 10 dollar words (Geomancy, Didactic, Symbiotic, etc, and all in one sentence too!) combined with the fact that she was reading her lecture from what probably was chapter seven of her book in a monotone English accent, and you can see why it was a total snooze-fest.

Ahhhhhh! Why can't the English teach their children how to speak!

Ok, I feel better now.

KPHS- Interior Auditorium

KPHS - Auditorium Entrance

The Good, the bad, and the Ugly...

The Good:

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow...Great movie! Seen it twice! I want toys!

Three Seasons of Due South on DVD...This was a really quirky show that I liked about a Canadian Mountie that came to Chicago to find his father's killer, and teams up with a hard boiled American police officer. It's dramatic, funny, cool and has a really good soundtrack. Great stuff, really looking forward to watching all 42 hours of it.

The magic of TiVo. My new toy. I'll never miss ER and Smallville again.


The Bad:

Pesky Sinus infection and minor stomach problems...Go away!

The Ugly:

Apparently, one of the clients I work for finds the design for the school I am working on ugly...His taste runs towards the 1700's and our school is decidedly more modern than that, so I am ok with him not liking it. Everyone else likes it. I will post a pic soon for y'all to judge.

What Star Wars Character Are You?

http://www.matthewbarr.co.uk/personality/

I am Chewbacca...Loyal to a fault, a little bit hairy.

I have 5 bosses....The Emperor, R2D2 & C3PO, Obi Wan Kenobi and a Jawa.

What to do after falling off the face of the earth...

Well, after working 12+ hour days seven days a week for the last month, we finally got my project at work finished. However, we are going to take more time with it to redesign and make it the smaller school (thanks, school board.)

Anyhow, between the family coming to town, and working like a dog, I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth where my friends are concerned...It's a pretty odd experience, catching up with people that you used to talk to a lot, but it is very nice also in the way that you find out people actually care about you.

I had an Uncle who was one of my heroes growing up...He introduced me to comic books and drawing at an early age. He was quite the literary and artistic talent, but also a major recluse and introvert, to the point where he never left the town he lived in, didn't ever learn to drive a car and was generally uncomfortable with change. I was thinking today, that if he had some better friends, he wouldn't have died alone in a VA hospital.

Things like that make me realize I need to get out more, and will definitely take the time to reconnect with my friends, or I will lose them.

The Only Thing Constant is Change...

As usual work has been taking over my life again of late...I did actually take a weekend off from work a few weeks ago and went up to PA for a family reunion...Now, I hadn't seen these folk in 15 years and some I had never met, and it was nice to find out these people are pretty cool.

We had one of my co-workers quit this week, which will mean more work for the rest of us, and my neighbor is moving away, so I will have new neighbors on the 15th... My work project is expected to morph into a smaller school next week. I have also noticed people have been treating me as older lately, eg. not getting carded in bars, people calling you sir, etc. I don't even have the respectable haircut thing going or anything which is why I find that weird.

Lots of changes...But that's what keeps life interesting, I suppose.

work work work work...

I have been working a lot this week. My boss had a family emergency this week and so I was doing a large chunk of his job for him, plus doing my own. I realized I had actually worked over 80 hours last week as a result.

All of this is unpaid overtime...It supposedly factors into our bonus at the end of the year and we are allowed comp time, but I don't think they would let me take the supposed 8 weeks of comp time I have accumulated.

As for the bonuses, If you figure overtime at time and a half, then I am getting maybe 1/3 of that as a bonus...It's not bad to get at one time, but still, sometimes I feel that I am being taken advantage of because of my work ethic. True, I do have more freedom and responsibility because of it, but that means more work...A double edged sword, you can say.

The Celebrity Intelligence Index...
 
I was talking to a friend of mine last night before a screening of The Bourne Supremacy (good movie!)  and we were talking about reality television and how stupid most of the people are on it eg. Jessica Simpson and Anna Nicole Smith, which led into a conversation about smart vs. dumb celebrities.
 
It seems to me that actors are either real dumb or real smart with nothing in between. Occasionally you will see an actor or actress who seems like a regular person of normal intelligence, but not so often.
 
As a result I figured we could use a scale for intelligence...Anna Nicole being the lowest and Stephen Hawking being the highest. Jennifer Connely, Morgan Freeman and Mel GIbson are in the middle high end, Jessica Simpson is one above Anna, and Keannu Reeves, Jennifer Garner, Ben Affleck, and  Gillian Anderson are in the middle to low side end.

Personally, I figure I am somewhere between Quentin Tarantino and Morgan Freeman.

 

The "Family" is in town...
 
The last few weeks have been exhausting...My older, shorter brothers have been in town and one with their wife and two small chillun's, one 4 and one a newly mobile 9 months.
 
Now being the rebel and a loner that I am, while I enjoy seeing everybody, I am always amazed how LOUD it is when the Italian-Irish (McWop, as I refer to it) mix that is everyone is together, and then combine that with my brother's friends coming over and bringing their little extensions of their own DNA and well, it gets a little frazzled. I am going to a family reunion for my mom's side in August, so I guess this was practice for it.
 
Add to the mix a work deadline that required me to work 32 hours of unpaid overtime, and I am starting to need a real serious nap!
 
Still, It was fun. The All-Star game was here this week, so we went and sat outside during the home run derby watching people run to get home run balls that went over the back wall at Minute Maid Park. 
 
My brother's son learned a valuable lesson when the old people say "Don't mess with the Psychotic Cat" But he got to play with my toys, so I rate as the cool uncle.
 
My niece (who some people stupidly made me her godfather) finally stopped crying when I would pick her up. And I found out that babies are really fun to mess with psychologically. Kind of like smart dogs, actually.
 
...So when am I going to start my own family? Not for a while I think.

On Socializing with the Bosses...

Every once in a while our office goes for an "official" office happy hour. The reason for this is twofold:

1. It gives the employees a chance to relax and unwind and relax after a stressful day.

2. It lets us employees find out what the upper level people really think about us.

Seriously, we have a young (a few years older than myself) "associate", who whenever you get a beer in him, his tongue really loosens up, and you can ask him anything...For instance I am known by the higher ups as "the Union Rep" and "Superman", because I am always making sure all of the people I work with and who work for me are doing ok.

Its quite the valuable resource this happy hour thing...Much power happens here huuurrM? (Imagine Yoda saying that last part)

The other thing I found out is that not wearing a white dress shirt and keeping your hair longish translates into "being a non conformist who doesn't completely embrace the company line" during a performance review.

...Personally, I think all the old bald white guys are just jealous...

FREEDOM!

USA...USA...USA!


I love this country...It's the only place in the world where:

... People can be shocked by Bill Cosby telling it like it is

...Kobe can be flown from Colorado to LA to play in the NBA Playoffs, and Robert Downey Jr. can be let out of jail for an acting job.

...A documentary about the evils of the Bush administration can be the number one film of the week, while his standing in the polls is as high as ever.

...Where you can have Bill Riley and Al Franken fight over the use of a phrase.

...A former President can write a book admitting his affairs with white trash women in the oval office.

...Our current President who pronounces the word "tyranny", "tie-ran-ee"

...A cable network called music television does not play music.

I know it seems like I am bitter and cranky about these things, but I actually think it shows that this country is a tolerant albeit sometime misguided place. Freedom of Speech, and Religion, and sometimes the freedom to act like an idiot and be forgiven. I have a lot of foreign friends due to my days in grad school, and I always am surprised how much I have in common with them in the belief in the American Ideal, which for me was derived from too many Superman and Captain America comic books, but for them it is a true dream to come over here and through personal trial and effort, be successful.

I believe this dream is what makes America great, to have the opportunity to succeed, regardless of education, gender, creed or geek hobby you may have.

The inscription on the Statue Of Liberty Reads:

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed,
to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

— Emma Lazarus, 1883, written to help raise funds for construction of the pedestal.

Maybe Americans shouldn't get their freedoms automatically and have to work for it like immigrants.


By the way....Spider-Man 2 was awesome!

SMASHCAR!

So, I built a sandcastle a couple of weekends ago....

Ever wonder what happens when you get a whole buncha architects and unleash them on a large quantity of sand on a beach? The result is the annual Sandcastle competition.


This was our first year and of course we didn't win, but we had fun. It's always funny to go out on a beach and see a whole bunch of pale workaholic people try to actually construct things instead of just draw them. Combine that with a material that isn't all that structually sound and copius amounts of alcohol and having to get up real damn early and hilarity ensues.

here is the link for the winner folks...

http://www.aiasandcastle.com

Memorial Day...

Today is the day we are supposed to honor and remember the men and women of the U.S.A. who have fought to keep our freedoms intact. I have nothing but the utmost respect for those people.

However, I do worry about our freedoms...In a post 9/11 world we are slowly finding our freedoms eroding.

We have the patriot act.

There is talk of re-instituting the draft. I think this is completely wrong because I think one of the reasons our armed forces are so great is because everybody who is there has chosen to be there.

Censorship is more prevalent than ever. Look at Michael Moore's movie, The Nightline reading of the war dead was censored in a few major markets, The FCC coming down on people like Howard Stern (who I don't find funny, but I think he should be allowed to say what he thinks) Tim Robbins' univiting to the baseball hall of fame, because they were worried he would say something political.

It seems to me that Freedom of Speech is less free than ever. I agree with Voltaire, I may not like what you say, but by god, I think you should have the right to be allowed to say it. That's one of the things that makes this country great.

I realize that we have to be cautious and vigilant, however that does not mean we have to be restrictive.

This is from FDR's speech to congress on Jan 16, 1941

"The nation takes great satisfaction and much strength from
the things which have been done to make its people conscious
of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic
life in America. Those things have toughened the fiber of
our people, have renewed their faith and strengthened their
devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect.
Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking
about the social and economic problems which are the root
cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme
factor in the world. For there is nothing mysterious about
the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy.

The basic things expected by our people of their political
and economic systems are simple. They are :
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a
wider and constantly rising standard of living.
These are the simple, the basic things that must never be
lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of
our modern world. The inner and abiding straight of our
economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree
to which they fulfill these expectations. "

On self improvement...

I have never been one to gain weight or have to watch what I eat. Until Now....Ahhhhh!

At 32 years of age the body metabolism is finally starting to slow just a bit, and Not to mention going from biking 3 times a week to once or twice a month and eating TV dinners and take out (not to mention that I only eat mostly meat and potatoes and a little bit of what are lovingly referred to as the "Hamburger Vegetables") drinking a little beer and a lot of margaritas, and being one crappy ass cook, who can only make things with large quantities of starches and proteins and it gets the always skinny kid....

...Yes Virginia, Slim Jim has gained a few pounds.

I'm starting to notice a little bit of a gut...Not a large one mind you, but just enough to make me start to do something about it...Let the sit-ups commence (ugh, grunt, ouch!)

D'oh!

On Cats and Comics...

been a while I know, but I have been busy at work...Been doing 10-12 hour days and Saturdays a lot as well. People tell me I work too hard, but they don't offer solutions on how to stop the madness.

Things are ok though...Pets are fine, $ is coming in, been given lost of 'sponsibility at work...Hence the long hours.

The only bummer thing was my friendly neighborhood comic book store closed down without warning...And let me tell ya, for a comic junkie like myself, it's the equivalent of having to find a new connection, a new dealer, literally.

now here's the deal, there are two kinds of comic book stores:

1. The typical dark and dank place that is operated by guys that look exactly or are worse off than Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons (at least he got some from Mrs. Krabappel) Where it is a maze of boxes and shelves and you never know what you are going to find and...

2. The well-lit, friendly family style store. Usually a minorly successful chain. Clerks are courteous and nice, genuinely concerned to help you.

Personally, I prefer the former....It's kind of why some people prefer cats to dogs...A dog will love you no matter what, but it takes a special type of person to have cats love you. If the more surly comic book store likes you, you have accomplished more.

Maybe that's why I prefer my psychotic cats.

Got a "new" Computer...

The beauty of having friends in the IT biz... A friend of mine goes and upgrades his computer (to the typical god-machine that I can only dream of...He has 3 19" flatscreen monitors linked together...Awesome!) and asks me if he wants pieces to his old system, well of course you say yes!

So, while I may not have a system that is reserved for the IT gods (I do have that at work, though) , I at least have one that might be afforded to a lesser diety, maybe a house spirit, or a minor saint, depending on the belief system.

and besides anytime your own personal tech moves up in the food chain...it is good.

Work is not much different than this either...they are moving me up the food chain from "CAD Monkey" and have given me "CAD Chimp" by giving me management duties,and are testing to see how I will perform. I suppose eventually they will make me a real human boy.

Sorry...I read Planet of the Apes recently by Pierre Boulle. I have been slowly working my way through classic sci fi novels of late, Including Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, which I highly recommend. Working on some John Carter of Mars right now.

BTW, Go see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind....weird ass movie, but an interesting look at the nature of memory...really cool!

Life's Like a movie...

Had a surreal experience tonight...I pulled into this gas station and the loudspeakers were playing a static-free version of Fallen, by Sarah McLachlan.

What was so strange about it was that it started just as I hit the start button for the pump. As the song was playing, I felt like I was in some kind of movie with that song on the soundtrack.

The song ended right as I finished pulling the receipt out of the credit card device at the pump...Silence as I drove away.

Saturday Night at the Movies...

Saw Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ last night and had a few thoughts...


Things I liked...

Pilate being shown as a man who made a hard choice, and was conflicted about what he had to do to keep the political climate sturdy.

The portrayal of Peter was very well done, and I liked the scene where Jesus heals the ear that Peter cut off, how the soldier was simply awestruck by what happened was done very well.

Judas wasn't portrayed as a completely evil person, he was just weak. Somebody had to betray Jesus to fulfill the prediction, it just happened to be him.

However...

While I do agree that it does show a lot about sacrifice and devotion, I thought the Satan angle was played up a bit much...I don't really think Satan had all that much to do with the killing of Jesus, I think us humans are given the free will to be good and evil and in that particular case we chose evil. I've always though the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert was more for Jesus to understand what he could do, but to confirm to himself that he shouldn't do it the way Lucifer said. There is an interesting interpretation of this in Anne Rice's Book, Memnoch, The Devil, In which the story is told from the other side of the coin.

Lucifer, as a fallen angel, was simply jealous of God's love for man. After he was cast down, he could have argued for forgiveness but I tend to believe that he was asked to stay in Hell in order to help people's souls forgive themselves for their sins before they can ask God for forgiveness. Not your conventional Catholic belief, I guess.

Also, where was Joseph in the movie? Maybe I am missing something, but I could have sworn that Joseph was also there when Jesus died. It would have been nice to include a flashback with him as well, perhaps, showing him carpentry skills or something. I always thought he got the short end of the stick, He did help raise Jesus, so he had to have an impact on the man he became.

(I have been informed that since I posted this, that Joseph, Jesus' stepdad, was dead at this time...the Joseph I was thinking of was Joeseph of Aramatheia, who gave Jesus' his tomb to be buried in.)

Also, they never named the guy who carried the cross for Jesus, I think he is named in the Bible, but I can't remember.

(His name is Simon.)

The other interesting thing is I saw this with a good friend of mine, someone who barely believes in a god, let alone Catholic. I was curious to his reaction to the whole thing. I had to answer a lot of questions about certain points of the story and fill in a lot of the gaps for him. I wonder if they had started the movie earlier in Jesus' life instead of starting with his arrest it would have been clearer to him. I also wish they had showed more of what happened after he rose, even though I thought the last shot in the film was effective, I think there could have been more to resolve the story.

The other thing that he said which was interesting, was that if you completely remove all of the religion element from the story, this is pretty much a movie saying that torture and crucifixion is a pretty nasty way to die. I agree with him on that. There didn't seem to be much in the way of hope, and I think the flashbacks were intended to convey that, but there were not enough of them or they were not done effectively enough in some places to convey the proper message.

Overall, I did think it was worth seeing and if you can stomach the gallons and gallons of bloodiness (think Braveheart in Jerusalem), I would recommend it, but I think it probably wouldn't hurt to reread the gospel before doing so.

Politics, politics, etc...

So Senator John Kerry came to town today looking for $$ in order to topple our ever lovin' Georgie Jr. from his office.

here's the deal....You have a rich guy (his wife is the heir to somebody's major corporation, I can't remember what at the moment) 'ole school politician.

Vs. G.W. "Proof that you can be a C- student and still become POTUS" who is the son of another rich guy who used to be president.

They also both wear blue suits and red ties and have the same facial shape and sort of confused look on their face.



....Looks like I'm voting for Kodos this year...

On being an adult...

I was at my friendly neighborhood comic book store the other day (yes, ladies, he's one of those guys) and we started talking about how the Gen Xers haven't really got over being kids. We still like our Sci-Fi/ Fantasy movies and our playstation 2's. Not to mention all those great cartoons.

Personally, Justice League is my favorite...Hawkgirl cracks me up! Eyah!

Anyway, my own personal theory about this is we are the first generation of American Youth to never have gone to fight in a war. No World War I or II, No Korea, No Vietnam. Sure we had a little bit of Grenada, & Desert Storm, but those were over in what, a week? We also are the first generation to not have the draft.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm glad I never had to join the military, but I'm glad some people did, so I don't have to. I have nothing but respect for those people.

But you can't argue that Military service forces maturity, to put away childish things and all that, and not having that, our generation still holds to the childish ways of the PS2.

So while I still read my comics and play with my toys, I am also having to learn how to be an adult in the business world and figure out how to do things like buy a home without much of an instruction manual.

Wouldn't it be great if you turned 25 and they gave you a book called "How to be an adult"? It was have all sorts of that info that you usually have to stupidly ask your dad about...Fantastic!

Oh Well.....Back to the Cartoons...Futurama is on!

Super Bowl Sunday and Birthdays....

Like most every other American last weekend, I watched the Super Bowl...I'm not a serious football fan at all, in fact, I really don't care for the sport. Probably those formative years being messed with by the jocks...Course I could outrun them, because I was on the Cross Country Team.

...Anyhoo, the game actually was decent after the first 1/2 hour or so...But the thing that amazes me is this...NO ONE I KNOW HAS TALKED ABOUT THE ACTUAL CONTENT OF THE GAME! It has all been about Janet's Titty! Now she has been banned from the Grammys, while little innocent bastard Justin gets off scot-free...God bless America!

I feel Bad for the New England Patriots...They won a Super Bowl and nobody gives a $*!+. Congrats to y'all guys.

The other odd thing was the Game was here in my 'ol hometown. The majorly impressive thing is that it got people out into the streets downtown, over 200,000 people came out to see what all the fuss was about. There were also a severely limited number of arrests and injuries (under 50).

We just got this new light rail line, and people actually used it!

Traffic was only slightly more of a nightmare than it usually is!

....Yes Virginia, it's a Super Bowl Miracle.

Also my Pop's B-day was this week on Groundhog Day...We had him immortalized on the Wall of honor at the new Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C....He is a former rocket scientist.

Really, he is.

My older brother's was the week before...He claims he's only two years instead of 5 years older than me...Weird.

I was buying some toys yesterday....

I love toys...FAO Schwarz is going out of business in my area, and my office is quite nearby, so...

...Let's just say that damage was done to Mr. Visa Card.

Aneey-how, that got me to thinking about the concept of money. We exchange our skills, time and hard labor for a piece of paper with a number on it. We then take it to another place where we store it and maybe get some green pieces of paper to go and give to other people to get actual stuff. Or we give them a piece of plastic and then they look at it and record the numbers and give it back with the stuff.

It's quite the strange ritual when you think about it...I was thinking how this would look to Aliens or something of the sort:

"Well Zorblak, these fleshy things with the small eyes and the fur on their heads seem to exchange worthless pieces of paper for stuff."

"Why do they do that Greeblix?"

"I have absolutely no idea, Zorblak."

It's gotta go something like that.

I actually read a book the other day...

Yes, kids! An actual honest to god book...Not a "graphic novel" or anything with pictures in it.

Actually, I do it more often than I joke about, but I digress.

The book was called American Gods, By Neil Gaiman (who used to write a comic book called Sandman, Go fig) anyhow, It had this idea that Gods walk the earth with us, and they gain their power from the belief of people. Now the thing is, when people from overseas came to America, they brought these gods with them, and as such, America is full of gods from Everywhere...Europe, Egypt, Russia, Etc...Plus We have all of our native gods. To top it off all these old gods are fighting with the new gods of America, which are Technology, Media, Television, Etc.

Interesting read....And if you're not embarrassed to be seen reading a comic book, check out Sandman...Way cool stuff.

A New Year is upon us...

Man, I can't believe I have actually survived until 2004...Where are those dang flyin' cars they promised us anyway?

Last year was a good year, albeit a very quick one. I heard yesterday that they didn't have to add that leap second to the atomic clock this year because apparently the earth is spinning just that much faster. Maybe that has something to do with it, I dunno.

I got a niece this year...Got put sort of in charge of a big project for my office (haven't screwed it up too much yet)...Still have all the same friends, even though I don't see them as often as I like...Got a new cat...Got a calmer version of the old cat as a result...Went to two weddings and no funerals...Saw more good movies than bad movies...Went on a couple of trips...Got a raise...The truck is still intact (knock on wood)...Read a bunch of comics...Started learning how to drink... Drove someone home who was too drunk to drive...Got some cool toys and DVD's...& have started trying to get out more.

Anyhow, life's pretty good...Hope everyone else will have a happy 2004!