bwahahaha!

take this, you liberal buggers. a plan that will actually work (free registration required). and won't cost an arm and a leg. john writes about it much better here.

semi-related news items

first, rob over at say anything found this interesting article, which makes you realize how rediculous the government can be.

second/last, i saw a great sign today, also put up by the government, albeit the local one. it read: "Littering fines mean less beer money."

ouch

it just took me 12 minutes and 45 seconds (and, for the truly curious, 84/100s of another second) to run about a mile and a half. back in the good old days, when i was in shape, it took me a minute less to run 2 miles. oh well. someday, i will be there again. and some other day, i will quit saying "oh well" so much.

movie review

Title: The Aviator
Starring: Kate Beckinsale was the only one I cared about

Verdict: Not worth watching. It had a few funny moments, but didn't flow very well, and didn't explain the main characters mental problems at all. So unless someone else is paying for you to see it--or preferably paying you to see it--don't bother watching it.

Score: -15/42,000,000,000

yarrrgh...

so i spent all of yesterday downloading the beta for dungeon siege 2. when i tried installing it this morning, it told me i needed a key number, so i hopped online to find one. instead, i found out that the beta was already closed, and there were no more numbers. so unless someone decides they don't want to play the beta anymore and gives me their number, i'll just have to wait for the full game. oh well.

"oooh, pretty" part 2

so i checked up on dungeon siege 2 today. and it looks pretty. unfortunately, it'll probably have to wait until i have a new computer. which will hopefully happen before too long. anyways, here's a trailer and and a narrated demo video. enjoy.

dave would be jealous

so yeah. i was helping my bible study leader mike build a horse corral. and somewhere in the conversation it came up that he had met richard dean anderson. one of his past girlfriends was from yakima, and mike was visiting family down there. crazy, eh?

movie review

Title: Million Dollar Baby
Starring: Hillary Swank, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman

Verdict: Better than I thought it would be. Clint Eastwood is awesome as trainer/crochety old man #1, and Morgan Freeman provides an excellent back-up as janitor/crochety old man #2. Hillary Swank is not the best looking actress out there, but she's not bad. And in this movie at least, she's got a personality that you can really get behind.

I'd have to say that this movie is worth watching, but probably not worth paying for. Unless you have a lot more money to throw around than I do.

movie review

Title: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet

Good movie. Incredibly strange, and hard to keep up with at times... definitely something that needs to be watched all the way through to make any sense at all. But Jim Carrey is a good actor, and Kate Winslet is just plain amazing. Especially with the blue hair. Or orange hair. Or any hair at all, really.

Final verdict: eleventy-four out of green

"oooh, pretty" and other tales

"ooh, pretty." i'm a fan.

a lot of the time at work, i feel kind of like marvin the robot. i've got a huge brain and a whole month or so of training at the bank, and half of the time there's nothing to use them on. i'm reduced to either sorting through files or playing minesweeper, depending on whether the manager is in or out at the time. it's pretty boring. other days, it's ridiculously busy. either way, i really look forward to the end of each day.

and then there's days like today. this morning, an unnamed customer brought in a deposit of $576 in quarters. which is fine, in and of itself. but later, i noticed that one of the rolls was 50 cents short. being curious, i went through the others in my drawer (i had a fairly large amount because a local merchant was coming in for change). out of $300 i counted, they were roughly $11 off. one had a dime in it, and another had a 10 "cent" coin from french polynesia. since all the offage for that day was in my drawer, i was fairly upset.

but now it's the weekend. time to relax. maybe go out shooting. if nothing else, i really don't have to think about money for the next 3 nights, which will be great.

and on a side note...

rachel lucas is dead. or at least doing a very good job faking it.

about freaking time

In Washington, at least, future voters will be required to show photo ID. now if only the rest of the country would follow suit, we could go a long ways towards eliminating voter fraud.

well, it's a start

dr. le roy would probably enjoy this news.

--update-- (22 July)
the new york times has more on the new policy (free registration required)

hmmm...

the sad part is, i think she's serious. if she's worried now, her head will probably explode when i get elected.

beautifully accurate

multiculturalism

h/t rob

awesome or crazy

so these last couple of mornings, i've been getting up at 6:00 to run. which makes me either a) awesome, b) both a and c, or c) crazy. i'm leaning towards c myself, but i could be wrong. that has happened on a few occasions in the past.

movie review

Title: Garden State
Starring: Zach Braff, Natalie Portman, Ian Holm, and some other people

Verdict: good movie. Very different, but good. It was a little odd to see Zach Braff in a serious role, but he pulled it off well. Probably helps that he wrote and directed. And it was very nice to see Natalie Portman acting well again after Star Wars. She basically kicked butt. This will definitely be added to my collection at some point.

Final score: 7.8/8.2

i hate to say it...

but what the f--k kind of stupid idea is this? maybe it wouldn't be so bad if california broke off and sank. america's overall intelligence scores would probably go up.

h/t wizbang

again with the coolness

once more, mark steyn proves why i like him. now if only the stupid spectator webside wouldn't spread the article out over 5 pages...

h/t powerline

movie review

title: dark water
starring: jennifer connelly, camryn manheim, pete postlethwaite, and a bunch of people i didn't recognize.

the movie would make a lot more sense if they told you at the beginning, rather than at the end, that it was based off of a japanese novel. in my experience, japanese writing tends to make very little sense, which is about what this movie did. it was billed as a scary movie; it was fairly dark, but more startling than actually scary. and very strange.

verdict: worth watching, but not worth paying for. wait till it's out on DVD. [unless, like me, you like jennifer connelly, in which case it's probably worth paying for]

the benefits of banking

1) everything is pretty easy for about 5 or 6 hours out of the day. after that, 8000 mexicans who speak very little english will come in to cash harvest checks with me, who speaks slightly more than very little spanish.

2) entertaining coworkers. i think banking must warp their minds some how. most of the time, like at the last branch i worked at, that was good... everyone there had a great sense of humor. sometimes, like at the branch i'm working at now, it's not so good... the lady is spend most of my time working with is very paranoid.

3) as with most jobs, you occasionally have the opportunity to meet an attractive person of the opposite sex. today was a good day in that sense. i got to meet a very attractive canadian girl (by "meet" in this case, i mean i said hi and then the old lady i work with took over the conversation), a fairly attractive hispanic girl, and a very attractive farming girl.

4) that's about it, really. but it pays better than the last job i had, and having regular hours is pretty nice. now if we could just eliminate that whole morning thing, where pretty much nothing is actually happening anyways, life would be great.

cool

i'm not a huge fan of art, but i've got a friend that's pretty good at it. if you want to take a look, she's got some posters for sale.

son of a gun

i just learned the history behind that expression last night while watching "myth busters" on the discovery channel. great show.

anyways, the expression comes from a civil war myth. a man on the battlefield was shot through the testes. the bullet then hit a woman standing some distance behind him, striking her somewhere in the lower abdomen. 9 months later, she gave birth to several children.

the myth was, unfortunately, busted. they tested it using a civil war-era rifle, a pouch of sperm sandwiched between several layers of canvas etc. representing the guys clothes, and some sort of jello-y stuff under several layers of clothing to stand in for the woman. though the bullet passed cleanly through the "man" and hit the "woman" behind him, there was no trace of the sperm in or around the entry wound. they speculated that any that actually got caught on the bullet was fried by the heat.

don't you feel better about knowing that?

happy birthday, mr. president

I would like to wish a happy birthday to our President, Mr. George W. Bush. it's kind of late, in the sense that it's tomorrow on the east coast, but since he won't actually be reading this, i don't think it matters.

tomorrow: the origins of the expression "son of a gun"

thank you

thank you God, for this great country.
thank you for the brave men who helped to found it.
thank you for the men and women serving in our armed forces, fighting to protect freedom at home and abroad.
thank you that in spite of all our screw ups, you haven't decided to smite us.

happy 229th birthday, America. may you enjoy many more.

movie review

never, ever, watch the movie "the forgotten." or at the very least, don't ever pay money to see it. on a scale of 1 to 10, that movie lost hardcore... even with the help of alcohol, i'm going to rate it a negative 47 at best. it was very disjointed, it never really explained the bad guys, and julianne moore was a freaking psycho.