ebayer

Across the Universe trailer

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:21:51 GMT

I really liked this movie. Amazing plot born out of the music.

History errors in National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (spoilers)

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Ridiculous history errors abounded in the second National Treasure movie.

Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. All of the clues about his murder should have been from around that time or SHORTLY thereafter.

Just a small sampling of the Wrong stuff:
Resolute desk, first presented to an American President in 1880
The "combination" to the desk, accompanied by a lame explanation = 1876
(French) Statue of Liberty = small model was designed in 1876
(American) Statue of Liberty = full-size statue was presented in 1886

Additionally, the gold of Cibola could not have helped the Confederacy win the Civil War because it was already OVER when Lincoln was shot. Also, if the presidents knew about the gold of Cibola, why didn't the president save the country with it in 1929-1932-ish, when people STARVED to death during the Great Depression?

My point is, a history movie needs to have writers who do their homework. Wikipedia entries were two clicks away. Lazy, lazy writers. Or they didn't care.

There's more, but I have to go to work...

Live long and procrastinate

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:05:22 GMT

Me: My 51st birthday is Friday. I have it off.
Him: No it's not. It's Saturday.
Me: Saturday is your birthday. You're going to be 50.
Him: (looks at calendar) Oh yeah.
Me: What do you want to do for our birthdays?
Him: Buy a new DVD player and get some Netflix.
Me: (sigh) OK.

Video: Is Bush an idiot? (2 years old but still funny/pathetic)

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:13:43 GMT

I just wanted to say...

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:52:22 GMT

I just wanted to say: I love Canadians.

Yup.

The accidental shoplifter

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:13:35 GMT

Yesterday, spouse and I did a table at a small trade show, selling books and software. At one point, I noticed that a rather expensive book was missing from the table. I had just come back from the restroom. I asked spouse if he sold anything while I was gone. He said just a few magazines -- I was completely silent about the missing book, not willing to make a big amount of drama over something that couldn't be rectified. We were ripped off, but I didn't want to ruin the rest of the day for spouse, so I didn't say anything.

About 4 p.m., we started packing up to leave and a man came by and gave us back our stolen book. He said he bought some magazines and had accidentally picked up the book underneath the stack, not realizing that he had taken something that he had not paid for. He was so mortified, but he did the right thing in returning the book.

While spouse sat there looking shocked, I just gave warm thanks to the man for going the extra mile to do the right thing.

That sort of person restores my faith in humanity. It's amazing that there are so few honest people in the world, and still even more amazing that this man did something this difficult. It must have been hard for him to come back with the book and explain.

Good idea!

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:19:18 GMT

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN09301988

Rep. Kucinich calls for Bush impeachment

Question for a geek, please. Also, a do-the-math link.

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:47:57 GMT

Question for Kyle or any other computer security guru. At work, I was reading my screen for quite a while, as I am an editor and was looking up something in my style book, when lo and behold, someone, I think, remotely, was opening different windows that I had in the taskbar, but not active on my screen, as if they were trying to see what else I had open on my desktop. So I moved my mouse and maximized my Microsoft Word window again. I thought that as the user, I would have to grant permission for an admin to use something like PC Anywhere. So what I want to know is, can the administrator of a network just take control of your computer and spy on you like that without you knowing if you weren't right there staring at the screen?

***
OK and just for fun, do this math. At the Antarctica research station there are about 125 people, living in six months of darkness and they have 16,500 condoms...
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0943167020080609

Gas over $4.00 a gallon

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:10:44 GMT

Cheapest I ever saw gas: 18 cents a gallon in the 1970s, I forget the exact year, during a short and lovely gas war in which I saw the collapse of some independently owned gas stations in our neighborhood and the time I bought my very first car, a 1967 Lincoln Continental, marine blue with a white landau top, blue leather seats, and suicide doors (the back doors opened backwards) for $600. Well, ya know, $2 worth of gas and I could cruise Speedway till the wee hours with my friend/partner in crime, looking for guys to chat up. Speedway Blvd. in Tucson, Arizona, was our internet. It was our MySpace, our AIM, our ICQ, our connection to what was happening, once high school was over and before marriage and children.

So, we put our braless boobs in tube tops and pulled on our cut-off shorts and we turned up the music and we drove. Or I did. She didn't have a car yet, and when she did get one, it was a VW bug, not the pimpmobile, as she referred to my ride.

No pimping ever happened in that car, but there were interesting times about which I will never tell my children.

Then, the best part of America was the cheap gas. The worst part was the Vietnam War.

Some boys from our high school got killed and my graphic arts teacher, my senior year, was recalled to his reserve unit and he never came back. I wore a black armband for an acquaintance's dad named Appleby, an MIA but I remember they made me take it off at school because it was "distracting" the educational system.

So, it's 2008. We have a war and expensive gas and nobody wears black armbands. We tick away at our little computers and download music and watch You-Tube, but we no longer demonstrate in the streets against a war that nobody in America wanted, except for some rich men...

Nobody goes outside and cruises up and down the street looking for boys because it's a lost art (that is now obscenely overpriced).

The new season of Venture Brothers starts tonight on the TOON channel!

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:33:57 GMT

Once a geek, always a geek, but really, Venture Brothers is such a twisted cartoon! I love it. It's sort of a parody of Jonny Quest, but much more evil, sexual, deviant, and of course, entertaining. The villains are hilariously dysfunctional, and so are the heroes. That Brock Samson...

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2008/06/01/2008-06-01_jackson_publick_ventures_into_uncharted_.html

Stolen from the beautiful D.

Sat, 24 May 2008 17:05:42 GMT

Fill this out in my comments so I can get to know you!

1) Are you currently in a serious relationship?

2) What was your dream growing up?

3) What talent do you wish you had?

4) If I bought you a drink what would it be?

5) Favorite vegetable?

6) What was the last book you read?

7) What zodiac sign are you?

8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.

9) Worst Habit?

10) If you saw me walking down the street, would you offer me a ride?

11) What is your favorite sport?

12) Do you have a pessimistic or optimistic attitude?

13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?

14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?

15) Tell me one weird fact about you.

16) Do you have any pets?

17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?

18) What was your first impression of me?

19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?

20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?

21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?

22) What color eyes do you have?

23) Ever been arrested?

24) White or red wine?

25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?

27) What's your favorite place to hang at?

28) Do you believe in ghosts?

29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?

30) Do you swear a lot?

31) Biggest pet peeve?

32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?

33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?

35) Do you believe in God?

36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?

TV show "Bones" has jumped the shark!

Sat, 24 May 2008 15:43:22 GMT

In a complete manipulation of viewers, the show started out with Agent Booth's so-called death. Of course his death was faked, in order to catch a killer, but Dr. Sweets, who was supposed to tell Dr. Brennan, kept it a secret. It was the scond-biggest mistake of the season and her cliched punch in Booth's face, when she found out he was alive, was completely out of character for Brennan. Not only that, but if his death was faked, was the scene, the week before, of Booth getting shot by a love-stalker staged, or real? If it was staged, that means that Brennan shot and killed her for no reason, which was never addressed. What a tangled web we weave, writers!

The biggest mistake of the season? And I hated the way the season finale ended, with Zack, one of my favorite characters admitting that he murdered a lobbyist, as a puppet of a flesh-eating serial killer whose identity he didn't even know, helping him steal a skeleton, hiding evidence, blah, blah, blah, was so far off the mark that the show will never recover its former definitive stance between the good guys and the bad guys. Now anyone on the show could fall from grace, and has. I call it poor writing and poor planning. The FOX execs think it was brilliant to shock viewers, but what they did was BETRAY the fans.

Just because someone wants to leave the show doesn't mean you have to make his character into a murderer. More graceful and believable exits could have been concocted by the writers.

It is complete bullshit to compromise the integrity of a fantastic character like this. My trust in the Jeffersonian team has been broken. I feel like I've been had and I am not alone:

http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/TVGuide-Editors-Blog/Tv-Mattrs/Exclusive-Bones-News/800040137

This is way worse than the travesty that Battlestar Galactica has become. It's network insanity at its most unbelievable.

booky

Fri, 23 May 2008 00:59:45 GMT

We borrowed, from Netflix.com, Disney's Charlie the Lonesome Cougar. Because spouse doesn't have enough cheesy sentiment in his life, even with me, the queen of cheesy emotions.

After that, I'm going to take a shower and read the rest of a novel entitled Stalked by Brian Freeman.

I read a novel called Beginner's Greek by James Collins and liked it. It was sort of a mainstream romance, but from the guy's point of view. He keeps missing out on chances at love with this woman for 10 years, while they settled, married other people, broke up, etc., etc. I don't want to give spoilers.

This woman is so amazing.

Wed, 14 May 2008 05:20:12 GMT

I watch her videos and laugh, cry, and learn something about life. I need a girlfriend like that, or maybe I just need hand puppet self-analysis. Enjoy the beautiful artist, Suzi. She's about as honest as they come.

Eight Inches is a LOT of...

Wed, 14 May 2008 00:22:52 GMT

Snow!

Yes, it snowed like crazy today and I feel sheepish, but I loved it. I HATE hot weather and I felt perfectly at home in the big flakes that landed on my head when I took out the trash this morning. I wasn't expecting it though. Went back inside the apartment, took off the skirt and the suede ankle boots and put on long pants and hiking boots.

By 4 p.m. when hubby retrieved me from work, the snow was completely melted and the air was cool, not cold. The wind sure was blowing though.

Snow on May 13 and a lot of it! Who knew?

BG- Every other episode is crap now.

Sat, 10 May 2008 15:41:31 GMT

I used to really like Battlestar Galactica. Between the commercial breaks every ten minutes and mostly what I call an "infirmary" episode, last night was one of the crap episodes.

Nobody stays dead, either. Which I realize is the point. But still. A character gets killed and I am like, who cares? They'll be re-animated on the Resurrection ship and come back many more times. Except for Lucy Lawless, we haven't seen her character for awhile and don't know if we will. I'm having Lucy withdrawal and it's painful.

The writers should kill off Starbuck a.k.a. Kara Thrace. She's become the most annoying character on the series. I dread her now, so full of herself and so sociopathic about sex partners/husbands. She is so skanky looking and psychotic that I keep thinking that she's just playing someone on meth.

A side effect of school term ending

Sat, 10 May 2008 01:37:38 GMT

Today at the university, Dumpsters outside of residence halls are just filling up with amazing stuff: computers, monitors, TVs, furniture, linens, clothes, telephones, textbooks, magazines, even canned goods and reams of paper. Some of the TVs and computers have Post-It notes stuck to them that say things like, "This works great!"

Sad to say, signs are posted on Dumpsters saying, "No climbing on or in this container."

Because I work there, I obey the rules. I can just see me, at 50, getting arrested on campus for thieving from the trash. But if I was a young student, you can bet I would dive in and get some cool stuff. My God, capitalism is at its most wasteful, on an individual basis, that I have ever seen, just after finals at a big university.

Students are throwing stuff away faster than parents can pay it off. I've never seen anything like it.

(In Wicked Witch voice): "What a world! What a world!"

Don't let the handheld showerhead fall off the bracket...

Sat, 03 May 2008 13:25:47 GMT

Don't let the handheld showerhead fall off the bracket into your head/eye.

There's just no explaining how you were trying to use the Water Pik shower massager to get rid of a migraine.

Everyone knows what handheld shower massagers are really for. (poor English, I know!)

And to think, you can just buy it in a Wal-Mart.

That and Bigelow Earl Grey teabags. Yes, bags, not loose. I'm lazy like that.

The economy is now officially a suckfest

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:14:23 GMT

A couple fell in love with our house for sale. They wanted to buy it. Their financing fell through. I am just sick with disappointment. We're lowering the price. It's 30K under what it would have been worth in 2005, if we would have sold it then, which we could have, easily. Of course, I didn't have a crystal ball to see into the future when gas would be approaching $4 a gallon and a gallon of organic milk would leap to $8.65, for the store brand! I feel so sorry for them, because they went all the way with it and were even pre-qualified. I feel sorry for us, because we wait to get a bigger place, until our house sells.

The one-bedroom apartment is surprisingly quiet, clean, and comfortable, but I miss things that are in rented storage. My antique art books and craft magazines; related art, watercolor, and scrapbooking supplies; sewing machine and fabrics; other stuff.

I've e-mailed people who should miss me and they never replied. Not for 3 weeks. Not any of my former co-workers at the paper, not either of our children, not my mom, no one, except my husband and he has to or I'll phone him from work! Oh, and I wrote to a famous sci-fi author and he e-mailed me back within hours. Maybe I should just write to celebrities?

I e-mailed my old agent and he didn't reply. I'll wait a week before I just give up on him. I liked him. I really did. He should reply about my reversion rights. I need them!

A Job Perk: Microsoft Office Enterprise Edition 2007 = $10; Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 = $25; Microsoft Sharepoint = $10. I'm amazed at the deal they cut with MS. If I ever stop working for my employer, I have to uninstall everything.

Feral cats are everywhere here. They're all different colors and breeds. I think people move out and leave their cats behind.

My new yummy treat is teriyaki chicken from Sam's Club. The chicken is thigh filets and so tender, you just wouldn't believe it. I've been making excellent rice in my rice steamer, too. Why didn't I get one years ago?

Fat-free sherbet is so disappointing.

I completed two livejournal surveys that promised I would get paid, however, at the end, they said I didn't qualify to complete the surveys to get paid. I guess because I replied that I drink bottled water and didn't check alcohol? Oh well, don't fall for that gimmick banner on your home page - pay is not a sure thing, if at all. I should have known better, but I trusted livejournal and shouldn't have.

That's all I've got for today.

Gas went up 10 cents a gallon in one day in my city!

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:27:47 GMT

Price-fixing, much?

I swear, just because it's snowing, that shouldn't make the price go up that much!

Better thoughts

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:53:28 GMT

I took a walk with the spouse so we could see what was at the end of the street on which we live. The answer to the mystery of the very weird smells emanating at the edge of our new urbanity is that the curved dog's tail of our street is a piece of leftover forest next to an interstate highway. Across the interstate highway, there is a dog-food manufacturing plant that sends us odors that waver between sticking one's head into a 100-pound sack of Ol' Roy dog food and the raw smell of cows themselves - not their poop, but the sweat of their flanks - although the barbed wire of a once-forested cow pasture is completely battened down where the sidewalk ends. There is evidence of old play forts once built by little Arizona mountain-bred boys, in the form of wooden pallets that have fallen from tree crotches and a couple of faded, plastic beach buckets full of dirty snow.

I felt better after the walk since it is in the 50s today, not the 20s. For you Canadians, I meant for the degrees to be expressed in Fahrenheit.

Why the change of mood? The spouse peeled a sweet, juicy Clementine and brought me just over half of it in a paper napkin, his peace offering to break my tense, but silent anger that was churned up by yesterday's departure from our usually equal offerings to each other. It's a small peace offering. I'll take it. We never fight. Our strife, on both sides, is almost always this internal, infernal bastardization of microanalysis. Perhaps the lack of any shouting is our saving grace as a couple, though therapists would tend to disagree. The nuances of a longtime relationship that functions on subtle cues and walks together, after some discord, serve to remind me why I left my first husband, he of the four-letter-words and fists that he used as spurs upon my body and my still-scarred soul in order to exert power over me and get his way in any anti-Solomon-esque decision. I much prefer living with a genius, even if he is a quiet man.

The calmness spreads. I also read parts of the New York Times, which I do every Sunday, online, after I read the postcards displayed every Sunday, newly, at http://www.Postsecret.com. In the New York Times, which you can read most of by coughing up your name and e-mail address to them, I read of 51 more people killed in a senseless war of five years, which sobered me up from my blasted rant about having to take the bus and walk through a seedy neighborhood -- the thought of so many more people killed by war made my throat fill up with moisture and regret at the true inequities of the world, the ones that impact more of humanity than my selfish little universe could ever comprehend in odious rants about Mars versus Venus.

I also listened to some Cat Stevens on Youtube, specifically Moonshadow, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGNxKnLmOH4 -- this is a song which always makes me more grateful for what I have, than what I haven't.

For those of you who don't know my spouse, he's the "good son" - in fact, he is right now phoning his elderly parents to impart news impartially and in a melodious voice that bespeaks of his tenderness that I also know, when I am not being such a bitch.

Marriage is so much like my childhood studies of the Greek language. First, you have to learn the alphabet of your tormentor and learn to master it, or perhaps, "mistress" it.

100 miles to a changed life

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:54:59 GMT

I have to pack up my computer. It's time. We move tomorrow, with a big rented truck! It will be just the two of us, with no help.

I don't know when we will get internet at the new place. Oh internet, my electronic love, I'll miss you.

We're downsizing to a one-bedroom place, but frankly, the most daunting thing of all is that I am the major breadwinner now and, in a salaried profession, instead of an hourly job. Ack, pressure! (I did it to myself, though.)

In just eight days, I will be sitting at a new desk, as a real editor, with a decent paycheck. Shazam!

Today is my last day at the newspaper

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:09:01 GMT

I will be fed, "toasted" and roasted. I don't know what to expect. Nobody ever liked me (at work) as much as these great people. I feel both joyful and sad that I am leaving the bosom of those who adore me.

I invited my spouse to come to the party. I can do anything I want today. hahahaha, who am I kidding -- the editor told everyone in the building to load me up with work!

Middlesex

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:14:04 GMT

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

This rich story of a second-generation Greek-American family had me riveted to the pages. Perhaps because I am also second-generation Greek-American (with 1/8 Russian Jew thrown into the pot), I felt a kinship with his characters. I too, have a recessive gene -- mine was exposed after I had already had children. Where mine is a genetic blood disease with its roots in the Mediterranean, the protagonist in "Middlesex" is a hermaphrodite, which was caused by intermarrying, as my thalassemia is. I only know back to my grandparents and my own ancestors beyond that are a dead secret and I will never learn them, not through the most intense ferreting out of information, because the buck stops with the priests and they aren't telling and neither did they write it down, because of illiteracy in their own language, or because they were hiding something.

Back to Middlesex, the story is sensitive and does go back generations, as my own personal story does, to show how a family evolves into its descendents. I recognized my own oddball Greek-American relatives in this novel and not as the stereotyped characters in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," but in the nuances of speech and idioms, of bright ideas for making money, like a chain of hot dog stands (in my family it was broiled half-chicken restaurants and baklava home-factories), in Easter customs and urban life and suburban life, the interminable church services with heavy incense and a somberity that drove me first to the religion-lite of Protestants and then to a spiritual awakening that I won't share anymore, but always with a background that you are not a WASP-y American and a shhhhhh! denial from Mommy that your "color" may not be completely white, due to the "influence" of the Turks during the Ottoman Empire. (I find it nothing to be ashamed of, if that is part of my genetic make-up.) Whenever I ask what (podunk) Greek island the hillbilly Greek grandparents are from, so I can figure out how my parents are related, no one alive will tell me.

In the book, the subject of hermaphrodism is handled with emotional honesty, with an intelligent layperson's scientific understanding, with acceptance and love, with a growing understanding of the complexities of emotion and physical need, rather than cave to use the resolution of surgically "fixing" what society sees as "wrong."

I see his book as a social message in an even broader sense that we should accept "different" people the way they are, rather than labeling and compartmentalizing them or trying to force them into rigid change that would break their spirits. I've often felt that I am different but have stopped trying to meet other people's expectations for myself. I think the protagonist of the book evolved to that conclusion as well, but oh, how she-he gets there!!

I applaud Jeffrey Eugenides and plan to put more of his books on my "to-read" list.
Bravo!

Geek Music

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:20:11 GMT

Geek friends, especially Greg and Kyle, et. al, you might enjoy this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsU3B0W3TMs

I know I did.