Tag: Black

A Week of Tweets on 2011-04-03

Stuff on the Net
  • If I were in the Black Prophesy beta, could I tell you that I was? #
  • People. Trust me. Britney Spears is not doing a striptease at a private club in Las Vegas. Stop clicking the link on Facebook. It's spam. #
  • Reviewed Leaving for @Shakefire yesterday, http://bit.ly/h2Namu . Forgot to post because the movie was bad. #
  • You put the lime in the coconut. #
  • I'd never heard of @Unwritten_Law, but after reviewing Swan for @Shakefire I am now a fan. http://bit.ly/gpLVqa #
  • Sometimes life gives you lemons… sometimes it throws them. Hard. #
  • Well that's that then. Paperwork done. I ship off to Basic in three weeks. #
  • @peteroberth You'll be appearing on the first episode of Hoarders Hoarders. in reply to peteroberth #
  • Yesterday my monitor had a dead pixel. Today it's moving slowly and leaving dead pixels in its wake. Undead pixel? #
  • @scriptfrenzy I'll be writing while working my garage sale! #scriptfrenzy in reply to scriptfrenzy #
  • Workin' the garage sale, sellin' books, CDs and DVDs. #
  • Fortune: Let others know where you stand. Me: I'm in the kitchen. #
  • Mission accomplished! #

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Movie Round-Up: December 31st, 2010

Reviews

The last Friday of the year is also the last day of the year, and as cool as I think it would be to open on the last day of the year, movie studios must not want the headache of splitting an opening weekend between two years of books so opted not to open anything new.

So, I recommend going out and seeing something old.  Like True Grit or Black Swan, or maybe like me you still haven’t seen the new Harry Potter, or Tron: Legacy or even Gulliver’s Travels… but go tomorrow, after breakfast, and the handover subsides just a bit.

Have a safe and happy night!  See you next year…

Blood Rites

Reviews

Another Dresden book down… and another enjoyable ride.  In Blood Rites we find Harry matching wits with two sets of vampires: the Black Court, and Mavre, are out for blood, while the White Court is both employing him and working against him.

Thomas, a member of the White Court, hires Dresden to look in to some not-so-accidental deaths around the production of some adult films.  Someone is using a nasty entropy curse to force bad things to happen to good people around producer/director Arturo Genosa.  And when members of the Black Court make their presence known, Harry decides to take the fight to them and try to hunt down their lair and kill them while they slumber.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Dresden adventure if things went according to plan.  Six books in to the series, and I am still enjoying them very much.  My only concern is that I hope Jim Butcher does have an end in mind for the troubles surrounding Harry.  I’d hate for the books to go on for twenty volumes and become derivative of themselves like other series have done in the past.

Friday isn`t for the faint of heart

Random Thoughts

The day after Thanksgiving has become known as Black Friday. I’ve said it before, I go shopping on this day. The second reason I go is for some great deals. I’m not the camp outside all night type, so I never get the $100 TVs and things of that nature, but I’m more than happy to take advantage of DVDs under $5 and other such deals to help take the bite out of holiday spending.

The main reason I go out though is that I am, especially during the holiday season, an avid people watcher. I don’t do it as often as I used to, but every now and then I’ll head to the mall and wander around, or find a nice place to sit, and just watch people. The holiday season is great for this, largely because they are so focused on shopping that people rarely catch you watching but also because of that focus they are so interesting to watch. How people deal with crowds and lines and limited quantities, misprinted ads, misunderstood special prices and getting around from here to there and back again. It is a smorgasboard of idiosyncratic behavior of people at their best and their worst, and the two sides of every person struggling from moment to moment over which will win at any given obstacle.

The day after Thanksgiving, to me, is officially the “Christmas Season” and I love me some Christmas. If you do decide to brave the shops this Friday, do everyone a favor… every half hour or so, stop, take in a deep breath, exhale slowly and relax. One missed deal isn’t going to ruin Christmas. If it is, well, you’ve probably got far more problems than the wit and wisdom of a blog will ever be able to solve. Seek professional help.

Black Friday

Random Thoughts

It’s not just for Fridays anymore!

Seriously. The last few years, the wife and I have gone out and fought the crowds to do some shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving. And amazingly enough, we usually find some good deals. For instance, this year was a slew of DVDs for under $4 each. A few years ago, getting up at 4 A.M. was usually enough. Its just not anymore.

Yesterday, you know, Thursday, we were driving home from Thanksgiving dinner, and we decided, on a lark, to swing by the local Best Buy store. They were closed, but it was 6:30 P.M. and there were at least forty people lined up outside. Seeing as how forty people is enough to exhaust all the available Nintento Wii’s, PS3’s and every front page special from their ad, we decided not to bother. We’d just come in the morning like usual.

Right.

So at 4 A.M. we finish getting McDonald’s breakfast and head to Best Buy. There had to be easily more than five hundred people in line. The Best Buy is in a strip mall… Best Buy, Office Depot, PETsMART, and Sports Authority. The line went all the way down the strip, down the outter wall of the Sports Authority, out into the parking lot, and wrapped one time around the TGI Friday’s.

Target, on the other hand, had about twenty people in line. We went to Target.

Luckily, we didn’t really have our hearts set on any super-mega deals. We just wanted to pick up a few items at a deep discount, and we did. Score! We even went to Best Buy, after the line was gone, and managed to find all the items we wanted still available. Score again!

The only problem was the 2-pack of Ice Age and Ice Age: The Meltdown we bought… I mean, come on, who puts out a 2-pack where one movie is in Widescreen while the other one is in Full Screen. Idiots. So we need to return that. Or not. It was like $8. We might just buy another single copy. No big loss.

Under the Black Flag

Reviews

My wife has an affinity for biographies, histories and other textbooks. So that’s how I even had a copy of Under the Black Flag on hand to read.

I like pirates. In the debate over pirates versus ninjas I am firmly on the “Arrr!” side. So its no surprise that I enjoyed this book. Although, I will warn you, it reads like a textbook. Facts, followed by facts, and some more facts. In the end there is even a section of charts and tables, and a full bibliography of sources. Not terribly exciting stuff, but interesting in a “Hmm, I did not know that” sort of way.

Would I recommend it? Ehh… well, if you want to read a textbook about pirates, sure. But don’t go into it looking for a grand narrative tale.

Classical Metal

Reviews

From the first time I heard them I was a Metallica fan.

When I heard Fade to Black, I found that music could have a message without being a folk song. Hard and heavy (with meaning), the song stirred me… and the world. Newspapers actually covered the song, and its effect on its listeners.

They continued to make music, and I continued to be a fan.

Then one day, I heard a song being played that had a familiar ring, but seemed odd… different… good.

I sought out this music and stumbled onto something I had once joked about ("Heavy Metal Elevator Music… the songs of Danzig… on pan flute!") but had never thought would be anything I would consider amazing.

Apocalyptica. Their first album was a collection of Metallica songs played on four cellos. Simply unbelievable.

Since they have done more covers, as well as some original music. All of it stunning for the simplicity and complexity of playing music with cellos while retaining depth.

If you haven’t, check them out. I highly recommend them.

4 July 1998

Random Thoughts

We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!
Sorry, had to do it. Today is the 4th of July. Meant to watch “Born on the 4th of July” the other night, but I missed it. Now I think I’ll have to rent it.
Lots of little things going on ’round here… nothing to fantastic though. I start work on Monday. I got tired of sitting on my ass at home while unemployed, but now that I have a job… I don’t wanna go, I wanna stay at home and sit on my ass.
Ever get one of those weeks where you sleep alot, but you don’t seem to be getting any rest? I’m having one.
I’m thinking of redesigning my whole page here… the front anyway… making it a gate to all my other stuff… and linking the pages together better… now that I’m at Xoom, I can make subdirectories, and if you have ever made a webpage before you know how much subdirs help organize the mess.
Well, I still have that rant in the wings… but I’m gonna hold off until I get a chance to properly write it up, when I come home angry from work one day next week… :p
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Theater Review: Black Dog. This is a gem. Patrick Swayze, Meat Loaf, Randy Travis, and a mythical truck driver road legend of the, you guessed it, “Black Dog”. This is not a movie to see alone. Take friends who know how to throw a good one-liner MST3K style and you will have a blast. My personal best was finding ways to work in every one of Meat Loaf’s songs into his scenes, and I almost didn’t work in one of his most famous, Bat Out Of Hell, but he returned in the end (since he is one of the bad guys) and presented the opportunity as one of the actors says “What was that?” after getting rammed by Meat with a truck, “That’s a BAT OUT OF HELL, baby!!” This was a sad, sad movie… we were able to work in all of Patrick’s movies too. Not to mention all the Smokey and the Bandit jokes flying. I’m glad I only payed a dollar to see it, because in the sarcastic words of Kelly, “This is the best movie ever!”
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Today’s Song: First Cool Hive by Moby. It’s on the Scream soundtrack and they used it in some of the early previews for the 5th Element. It’s just a groovin’ tune.
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Today’s Movie: A Clockwork Orange. This is a sick, disguesting, demented film. But I love it anyway. And with Warner Bros. re-releasing new digitally mastered versions of movies for their 75th, I’ll be able to get a new copy of this (mine being worn out of course, I bought it previously viewed).