Futurama's Big Score!

I've been meaning to write about the return of Futurama. The first of four DVD only films was released less than two weeks ago, and, my my, was it fantastic! It was witty, clever, and crammed full of things for die hard fans. The only complaint I can possibly think of is that Leela was a little under utilized, but that may be made up for in the following volumes. From what was presented in this disc, it seems that this is Volume One of a four volume story. However, as usual with Futurama, it's the little details that make it shine, such as Nibbler's lament that the "Kitten Class" fighters weren't successful, or spotting the seven leaf clover that Fry is wearing in the past. This was outstanding, and I hope the next volumes are just as good!

How cool is the iMac?

Back in September, I bought a brand new iMac. It cost over $3000, but I saved up all summer, and I really love it! Over the holiday weekend, I was testing its built in camera. I got my 11 year old nephew and his friend to mess around in front of the camera. They staged a mock fight, then went off. I decided to fiddle with iMovie, and within a half hour, it had music and sound effects. It was so easy to do. The kids liked it so much that they did a sequel, which we choreographed, and then I burned them a very professional looking DVD with the iDVD program. I've had a Mac since the very first one in 1984, but this one is in a whole different league. I love it!

Despotism, properly scheduled

From today's Washington Post, "Elections [in Pakistan] were due in January, but when emergency rule was imposed, government officials raised the possibility of postponing them by as much as a year. The Bush administration has called for the vote to move ahead, and on Thursday applauded Musharraf's announcement. 'We think it is a good thing that President Musharraf has clarified the election date for the Pakistani people,' White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement."

[C]larified the election date!!!! The Bush administration acts as if Musharraf's trashing of their constitution was a simple scheduling problem?! I haven't been doing a lot of posting recently, but this just demands it! Probably the next time Blackwater kills someone unprovoked, the will say "Blackwater cleared up local misunderstandings."

I'm back!!!!

Hey there, I've returned. It's been a long time; let me catch up. The country is moving very quickly to Orwell's future. I read in the Washington Post yesterday that the Iraq war is now the 2nd most expensive war in our history, adjusted for inflation! Just obscene.

Last month I bought a new iMac, and I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's the most powerful version available, but since I purchased it on September 21, I'm not eligible to get a free upgrade to Leopard. I'll just have to buy it.

We're having our "Shocktober Classics" month at www.classic-horror.com. Each week we're reviewing films of four different directors. I wrote four reviews and a biography of Wes Crave for this event. Come and have a look-see!

I will be posting again soon :-)!

Aha! Now we've found it!

It took long enough, but the Bushies have finally found the answer... al-Qaeda is why we are in Iraq. I can't honestly believe that they are trying to play the old fear card AGAIN! How many times will they keep playing the same tune until we're driven absolutely crazy by it?!

"I'll show you what horror means!"

That's a quote from the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Our website classic-horror.com just did a Jekyll and Hyde week. I wrote two reviews for it. Take a look and see!

It keeps getting worse....

From today's Washington Post... this ugly story just speaks for itself,

"Karen Stevens, Tovah Calderon and Teresa Kwong had a lot in common. They had good performance ratings as career lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights division. And they were minority women transferred out of their jobs two years ago -- over the objections of their immediate supervisors -- by Bradley Schlozman, then the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Schlozman ordered supervisors to tell the women that they had performance problems or that the office was overstaffed. But one lawyer, Conor Dugan, told colleagues that the recent Bush appointee had confided that his real motive was to 'make room for some good Americans' in that high-impact office, according to four lawyers who said they heard the account from Dugan.

Bradley Schlozman is accused of favoring political conservatives in hiring decisions when he was acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division. He has since left the division.
Bradley Schlozman is accused of favoring political conservatives in hiring decisions when he was acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division. He has since left the division.

In another politically tinged conversation recounted by former colleagues, Schlozman asked a supervisor if a career lawyer who had voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a onetime political rival of President Bush, could still be trusted."

Can't they at least try to be subtle?

Come visit!

Our horror movie website, www.classic-horror.com comes online today with a fresh new look and lots of great new features. In a few days we are going to have a spread on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde films. I've written two reviews for this feature (1931's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Frederic March, and 1989's Edge of Sanity starring Anthony Perkins). Come give it a look see!

Hot Wheels!

Wow... as a person in an electric wheelchair, this news item gave me chills....

"PAW PAW, Mich. - A truck driver whose rig snagged a man in his wheelchair and unknowingly pushed him at speeds up to 50 mph for miles will not face any criminal charges, authorities said.

Van Buren County prosecutor Juris Kaps said investigators determined the semi accidentally hit the wheelchair, the Kalamazoo Gazette reported Tuesday.

Ben Carpenter, 21, of was attempting to pass in front of the truck June. 6 when the light at an intersection turned green and the 52-year-old driver, who was not identified, started to move.

The wheelchair turned forward and its handles got lodged in the grille in Paw Paw, about 140 miles west of Detroit. The rig continued picking up speed and pushing the wheelchair, with Carpenter strapped in it, down the highway until pulling into the parking lot of a trucking company.

Police said the wheelchair was pushed about four miles, but Donald Carpenter, the man's father, said the actual distance was about half that.

Ben Carpenter, who lives near Kalamazoo and has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, was not injured."

I also have Muscular Dystrophy, and this would give me nightmares!

Bush's warm enviornment

I've been trying not to do only political blogs, but I came across an article by Rupert Cornwell in The Independent, and I thought it was wonderful. He parses the president's half-baked token speech on curbing global warming. Here's an excerpt:

"From the President's speech in Washington yesterday:

'In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it.'

Translation: In recent years, my refusal to acknowledge the reality and seriousness of global warming has turned me into a laughing-stock and contributed to my record low poll ratings. So now I have to look interested.

'The United States takes this issue seriously.'

Translation: Al Gore takes this issue seriously, his movie was a hit, and it's causing me no end of grief.

'By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term goal for reducing greenhouse gases.'

Translation: By the end of next year, I'll be weeks away from the end of my presidency and this can be someone else's problem.

'To develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce the most greenhouse gasses, including nations with rapidly growing economies such as India and China.'

Translation: We will look as busy as we can without doing anything."

This is a perfect example of how this president seems to believe that sounding tough and statesman-like will somehow solve a problem. The whole article can be found at:

http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2600484.ece

40 Years Ago Today... plus one

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' seminal album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This album isn't quite the Beatles' best. Revolver is their best, followed by the White album. However, it's undoubtedly a great album and certainly their most influential. John's songs are the best (I've never been a big fan of "Getting Better"), particularly "Mr. Kite" and "Lucy." "Within you without you" is wonderful (if not quite as good as "Love You To" or "The Inner Light") and "When I'm 64" is the best Macca song. The best song on the album is one of Lennon and McCartney's best songs ever, "A Day in the Life." This was the first Beatles record I ever owned, and I always have a splendid time listening to it!

I'd much rather be wrong

Back when we were running up to the war in Iraq, I said to some friends that I believed this would involve us in a civil war for the next 50 years. Today in the Washington Post I read:

"President Bush envisions a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea where American forces have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years, the White House said Wednesday.

... [Tony] Snow said it was impossible to say if U.S. troops would remain in Iraq for some 50 years, as they have in South Korea. 'I don't know,' he said.'"It is an unanswerable question. But I'm not making that suggestion. ... The war on terror is a long war.'"

When I estimated 50 years, I thought I was exaggerating. I really hope I'm wrong on this one... at this rate, we're talking over 50,000 US casualties, and who knows how many more Iraqi casualties in that time!

It's been a while

Sorry it's been so long, but I've been sick. I haven't really been up to doing too much web stuff. However, I'm still here :-)!

Everything old is new again

I had an interesting thought yesterday-- the mid 2000s seems a lot like the early '70s. "Gonzogate" has many similarities to Watergate; it now has it's own "Wednesday Night Massacre." Also, the war in Iraq is as bad as, if not worse than Vietnam. About the only significant difference is that Nixon, as awful and paranoid as he was, at least appeared to have some intelligence. Bush is about witless, with the nice-for-him consequence that he's not paranoid at all. Everything is great, just ask him!

Please please give me a break

The MPAA today said that depiction of smoking can now affect a film's ratings! If it is glamorized or pervasive, a PG-13 movie can be given an R rating. Are we sure that we're in the 21st century? I've never smoked a cigarette or anything else in my whole life, but I've seen countless movies where the characters do. It must be a miracle! Those evil Hollywood smokers didn't turn me! The most annoying upshot of this is that now, watered down, teen horror movies that used to be PG-13 can be R rated. It's going to be so bland that one day a film like Arachnophobia will be considered a gore fest!

Another reason to hate Fox!

I just found out today that Fox won't produce any more NYPD Blue DVDs! "Poor sales," they claim, of seasons 1-4. This frustrates me to no end. Jeez, you can buy Dukes of Hazzard or Wonder Woman but not Blue!? Well, as I said, just another reason to hate Fox!

To "awaken thrilling horror"

I'm starting to write reviews of horror films at www.classic-horror.com! My first one, a review of John Carpenter's The Thing, has already been published. I'm now working on a review of the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It should be up soon!

The surge

April was the deadliest month for our troops in Iraq, as well as for British troops. Despite all the claims of "progress" that have been made, it seems that mostly what the surge has done is give the insurgency (remember... the one that Donald Rumsfeld told us was in the "last throes") more targets to shoot at. This is just awful and disgusting!

The aroma of hypocrisy

We know that most politicians practice hypocrisy, but this administration has taken it to an art form! Today the president said that the war spending bill proposed by Congress would "be to accept a policy that directly contradicts the judgment of our military commanders...." However, a Washington Post article from January states:

"Pentagon insiders say members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have long opposed the increase in troops and are only grudgingly going along with the plan because they have been promised that the military escalation will be matched by renewed political and economic efforts in Iraq. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the outgoing head of Central Command, said less than two months ago that adding U.S. troops was not the answer for Iraq." January 10, 2007, by Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks

This president can't ever bring himself to any kind of honesty or reality. What are we going to do with him as walls go up in Iraq and more people die every day?

No seems to mention....

We are, understandably, shocked and horrified at the Virginia Tech shootings (I work just a few miles from where Cho went to high school). However, I read in washingtonpoat.com today that in the capitol of Somalia, Mogadishu, there are hundreds dead due to "this week's battles pitting militias and Islamists against Somali and Ethiopian troops." The link to the story is:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/21/AR2007042100244.html?hpid=moreheadlines)

These kinds of stories, along with the genocide in Darfur, are reported but don't seem to emotionally affect us here in the United States in the same way. If it did, maybe this world wouldn't be so much of a constant charnel house. If I may (seriously) quote the original Star Trek, if we cared as much about suffering in the rest of the world as we do close to home, it might "render [our] history a bit less bloody."

Umm... Err... Let me see... I don't recall

After Alberto Gonzales' testimony yesterday, we're left with two options: either he's a political hack trying to cover for a white house unconcerned with justice and law, or he's an inept fool who shouldn't be in the office of Attorney General. He used some variation of "I don't recall" 64 times during his testimony! I tend to lean to the idea that he is a "loyal Bushie" who is in over his head, just like the president himself.

The shootings....

What an awful tragedy. It makes you sick in the gut. No commentary here, just a moment of remembrance.

Of all people...,

This also from Dan Froomkin's page on washingtonpost.com:

"Gordon Trowbridge writes in the Detroit News: 'Lee Iacocca, author of the original business management best-seller, is giving President Bush an 'F' in leadership.

"'In a book to be released Tuesday, the former Chrysler CEO -- who supported Bush's first campaign in 2000 but backed Sen. John Kerry four years later -- accused Bush of leading the nation to war 'on a pack of lies' and lacking the basic components of good leadership.

"'"I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while,'
Iacocca writes, according to excerpts from "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
released on the Web site of publisher Simon & Schuster. . . .

"'Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening?' Iacocca writes. 'Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder.'"

Wow, I couldn't have said it better!

How clear can it be!?

I saw this on Dan Froomkin's column on washingtonpost.com today:

"...personnel working on behalf of the EOP [Executive Office of the President] are expected to only use government-provided e-mail services for all official communication."

The handbook further explains: "The official EOP e-mail system is designed to automatically comply with records management requirements."

And if that wasn't clear enough, the handbook notes -- as was the case in the Clinton administration -- that "commercial or free e-mail sites and chat rooms are blocked from the EOP network to help staff members ensure compliance and to prevent the circumvention of the records management requirements."

Now they are going to try to get us to believe that the staff "didn't know" that it was doing anything wrong. What will be Rove's latest excuse?

Imus... ugh

I don't know why this guy hasn't been busted earlier. Slate.com has compiled a list of some of the more gross things he's had to say. Here's the link:

http://www.slate.com/?id=2163872

I'm a member of the ACLU, and I believe in his right to say anything he wants. I also believe that I have the right to say what a vile and disgusting person he can be, and it's also the the right of the people that he's slurred to (metaphorically) call for his head!

All news is good news

The Decider seems to have decided that any news is good. First, his aides cite anti-American protests in Iraq as progress (because, they say, Hussein wouldn't allow it), and now he says that the decrease in apprehensions of illegal immigrants along the Mexican border is progress because "When you apprehended fewer people, that means fewer were trying to come across.... And fewer were trying to come across because we’re deterring people from attempting illegal border crossings in the first place.” However, according to

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/09/bush-immigration-apprehension/

Bush in November 2005 declared:

"Our actions to integrate manpower, technology and infrastructure are getting results. And one of the best examples of success is the Arizona Border Control Initiative, which the government launched in 2004. In the first year of this initiative — now, listen to this, listen how hard these people are working here — agents in Arizona apprehended nearly 500,000 illegal immigrants, a 42-percent increase over the previous year."

See, all the news to him is good!

Those who cannot remember the past....

"Congress shouldn't tell generals how to run the war,...Congress should not shortchange our military. Congress should not use an emergency war-spending measure as a vehicle to put pet spending projects on that have nothing to do with the war."

No, this isn't a quote from the Vietnam War, it's from President Bush, regarding the Democrats' insistence on a withdrawal date from Iraq. Sometimes it's like living in a time warp... imagine the map of Iraq morphing into the map of Vietnam, and all the rhetoric about terrorism changing back to communism. The details have changed, but the story stays the same. It's like a bad remake of a bad war movie. Some of the details have been modernized, but it's the same old, bad story, with a very bad director named Dick Cheney and an awful starring actor named George Bush.

A worry

Okay, does anyone think that the Bushies will try to use the British captives in Iran as a causes belli to attack Iran? I think it's unlikly, but still way too possible for this "administration!"

Whiny complaint

Okay, here's an annoyance: I'm a big fan of NYPD Blue. It was the best American show of the '90s. Seasons 1-4 have been released on DVD. It was a wait of a couple years between the releases of Season 2 and Season 3. Now, I'm not sure if the rest of the show will ever be released on DVD. We can only see the later ones on TNT, and those are cut! Grumble, grumble....

Metro Access

I am disabled; I use an electric wheelchair. I often use a service we have in the DC area called Metro Access. It's a service that takes disabled people all over the region. I personally use it to get to work everyday. Overall, it's a good service, but it has several problems. The most serious problem is that trips are late too much of the time, and also that the equipment isn't kept in good shape. Back in January, for two weeks straight the battery went dead on the van; the first time we had to wait a half hour in the cold for someone to come and give us a jump. Three weeks ago I was left at work because they had taken my phone number down incorrectly. Many of the drivers blame the dispatch office for scheduling trips very inefficiently. I agree. My gut always tightens a bit when the pickup time rolls around and no van is in sight....

I've been working at my job as a customer service rep for eight months nw, and I actually enjoy it. I mean, it's not that difficult, but it pays pretty well, it's usually busy, and, if you work at it, you can make a lot in bonuses. So far, I've won four awards there; here's a picture of them :-)!

Executive Privilege

"Evidently, [the president] wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up."

This doesn't come from any Democratic member of Congress furious with President Bush over his wishy-washy offer to let Karl Rove and others answer questions regarding the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys in secret, with no transcriptions and not under oath. No, it comes from none other than Tony Snow. He wrote this in 1997 regarding President Clinton's claim of this privilege. This says several things, but most of all, it says that Bush and his cronies will say or do anything to do or get what they want.

1984-2007

Wow, my first political blog! As you might guess, it's about this dreadful war (or, more properly, ongoing invasion) that we are in. This is just as bad as, if not worse, than the Vietnam conflict. In 1984 George Orwell wrote that, for the government, "The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous." He meant that for a government to keep its control of a subservient population, there must be this constant war to distract them. This is precisely what this invasion is, and, after FOUR YEARS (approximately the same length as our involvement in WWII), it needs to stop!

New blog....

Hey there, welcome to my new blog! It's going to be pretty much like any other, but I hope I'll have some interesting things to add to the blogosphere. What does one put in their first post? Let's see, I'm 39 years old, I live in Virginia, and I'm married to the best person in the world :-). I'm working on a Ph.D. in Native American history, and at the moment I'm paying the bills as a customer service rep. I'm a big liberal, and an admirer of Star Trek, horror films (actually, any films :-)), and classic (or geezer) rock. Until my next post....