Random Photo XXXIII: Beating the heat

If you live in this nape of the woods, neck of the wape, area of the country, sooner or later you learn to either like the heat and humidity, or find a way to beat it.

Personally, I prefer the air conditioning and beer method of staying cool. But I think this denizen of the Kansas City Zoo has a pretty good strategy as well.


tagged: Random Photo, heat, Kansas City Zoo, hippo, hippopotamus

Movie Mini Review: Despicable Me

Title: Despicable Me

Cast: Steve Carell, Jason Segal, Miranda Cosgrove

Plot Summary: Evil super villain Gru (Steve Carell) plans his biggest caper yet, but he needs the help of three young orphans to pull it off. He adopts them out of evil selfishness, but in the course of pulling off the heist he grows to love them and has a change of heart… but he still pulls off the heist (spoiler alert).

My Thoughts: Over the past 4 years or so, I've seen a lot of "kids" movies. It seems, more times than not, when we go to the theater it's to see something for my daughter. I'm not complaining. Being the only dude in our household (even our dog is neutered) it's either kid flicks or chick flicks for me at the theaters.

I'm just sayin' I've seen a lot of them in recent years. Up, Finding Nemo, Shrek(s), Ratatouille, Kung Fu Panda and more. Believe me, this isn't to brag. It's just to say that I've got a base of experience to pull from here.

I can tell you that Despicable Me is one of the better efforts in this genre that I've seen.

We open with an introduction to the main protagonist, Gru, an super villain nearing the end of his career. He comes across as mean, more than evil. Sure, he's got the freeze gun that he uses on everyone in front of him at the coffee shop. Yeah, he smashes other peoples' cars and pops a kid's balloon. But his most nefarious accomplishment is the theft of the Times Square jumbotron, and a few fake landmarks from fake Las Vegas.

Contrast that with young up-and-coming super villain Vector (Jason Segel), a cocky hipster nerd villain with a secret benefactor who shows up Gru by stealing the Great Pyramid of Giza. Vector enrages Gru by stealing his shrink ray gun, a device Gru himself rightfully purloined from its Japanese creators and which he needs to pull off his magnum opus: stealing the moon.

So he needs to get his shrink ray gun back, but Vector's lair is impregnable. The only only people able to penetrate the tight security is a trio of orphaned little girls who are selling cookies for the morally questionable matron of the orphanage.

So Gru adopts the girls and uses them to gain access to Vector's lair to steal his shrink ray to steal the moon, to… well, I don't want to give too much away.

At this point I'll just say that the voice acting was pretty solid, as you would expect with the likes of Steve Carell and Will Arnett in the cast. The story was interesting and well paced, and the characters were for the most part compelling and interesting. I particularly enjoy the kind of story construction where an audience is led to root for a "bad guy" who eventually becomes the hero (the first Shrek movie did this quite successfully).

These kinds of movies also throw a bone to the adults in the theater by including some inside jokes that only the grownups would get. There are some delicious examples of this in Despicable Me, including the "formerly known as" moniker on the Bank of Evil (where super villains get their operating capital. What? You don't think they have all that money laying around the house do you? Do you have any idea how much a secret lair built into volcano costs?)

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 minions



tagged: movie, review, Despicable Me, Steve Carell, Miranda Cosgrove, minons, Gru, Vector

Everybody's French

Just a quick note to say Happy Bastille Day to all my French friends, and Francophile friends, and Rush fans.


tagged: France, image, humor, resistance, vive la resistance

YouTube Tuesday: A Day at the BP Beach

Looks like things are getting tense on the Redneck Riviera. Today's submission for YouTube Tuesday shows us a few moments from a day of a Gulf Coast citizen journalist.

On one hand, when I watch the video it seems clear that maybe the four and a half foot tall woman was actually looking for trouble. It seems to me she was wanting someone to hassle her and she really didn't care much about the personal privacy of whoever was in the ambulance.

On the other hand, she has a pretty good point about being harassed by a cop who was two-feet taller and probably 200 pounds heaver than her. The fact is she was on the beach legally, and based on the video she staying out of the way.



Of course, there have been a lot of changes in the law lately.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, Gulf, oil, British Petroleum, environmentalist, transparency, Obama

YouTube Tuesday: A bottle of anything and a glazed donut

Independence Day is right around the corner, the birthday of our republic and my personal favorite holiday.

It's easy after the last couple of decades to get down on America. Certainly she's taken her kicks to the stomach. She may not be as beautiful as she was when she was young. Her skin isn't as smooth. Wrinkles and cracks have appeared after a couple of centuries of abuse. Her breasts are sagging a bit from the years of feeding all of her children. Age spots are popping up, especially around the gulf area.

And although American may not be the world leader she once was — relinquishing some of her power and prestige to a few Eastern debutantes — as far as I'm concerned it's still a pretty damn good place.

Anyway, I can't think of a place I'd rather live.

So while it may be difficult, even unfashionable, to come up with new love songs for America these days, here's a classic lust song for our country from one D.L. Roth, arguably the best American poet of the last century.



tagged: America, United States, metaphor, David Lee Roth, Yankee Rose, YouTube, Tuesday, Independence Day, July 4th

Demon nights

So I'm laying in bed, fast asleep at the quiet dark hour of 3:30 this morning when suddenly and without provocation a demon from the very pits of hell sneaks up on me and jabs his white hot pitchfork deeply into the muscles of my right calf.

Laughing like pure malevolent evil, the archfiend began to rotate his blistering fiery pitchfork of maleficence as if to draw my eternal soul out of each fiber of my triceps surae like so much hell bound spaghetti.

Some how, some way I was able stifle a bone chilling scream that would have roused all of the people in our house, our neighborhood — even the entire city — by grunting loudly through clenched teeth.

Bolting upright in bed and gasping, I clutched at the monkey fist that my muscles had become, trying in vain to rub the knot out and relieved the pain.

I jumped out of bed, my foot twisted by the cramp into a spastic, crippled claw. I stood on the floor and leaned against the bedpost using my body weight to force the muscle to stretch. After a minute or two that seemed like centuries, the calf muscles released their contraction and I began to breathe easier.

Sweat dripping from my forehead, I sat down and massaged my leg, which had ceased to be excruciating and was now merely aching. Eventually I returned to a fitful sleep, restless in the knowledge that just one wrong move would summon the charlie horse demons again.

tagged: night, sleep, cramp, muscle, calf, demon, pain

Read This: Real Heroes Don't Let You Down

Back when I first started this blog one of the things I liked to do was point to other great blogs I'd come across.

I kind of got away from that for some stupid reason. It's too bad, because I think that's one to the best things about the blogging format. Anycrap, this post is an attempt to return to that. I plan on making it a regular category (well, as regular as things get around here anyway).

So I wanted to point you all over to Lodo's blog Lodo Grdzak Stays Put And Watches the World Go Round. He has recently posted a really great series titled Real Heroes Don't Let You Down, in which he recounts his 10-year epic quest to commune with one of his heroes…

You can never count on people. Doesn’t matter who they are: political leaders, legendary athletes, best friends, favorite artists; at some point, everybody lets you down.

But I still have my heroes. At 43 years old you may find that comical or pathetic, but I don’t care. I’m a secular person--heroes guide my life. That’s all I’ve got. So I read their books, listen to their music; study their lives and how they've handled their big moments.

This is a great series in five short parts. It's very engaging, well written and paced. A real gem that you guys should check out.

tagged: blogging, heroes, writing, Read This

YouTube Tuesday: Summer cold remedy

From what I'm hearing the summer cold season has started in earnest. In my opinion, summer colds are the worst kind because not only do you have to put up with the coughing, congestion, runny nose, aches, pains and fevers, you have to deal with this during 105-degree 105 percent humidity days.

Luckily, I haven't contracted the summer cold yet, but it's really only a matter of time. As a public service to my coworkers and cotwitterers who are fighting this disease already, I'm sharing my recipe for my favorite remedy -- a little concoction I like to call NyquiFed.

All you do is take two hits of Sudafed (or your pseudoephedrine of choice) and chase it with a double shot Cherry NyQuil (the original stuff, not that worthless non-drowsy daytime shit).

Next, put on Just Dropped In by Kenny Rogers, sink back into your couch and enjoy the ride.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, summer, cold, NyQuil, Kenny Rogers, Sudfed, health

Bullitt list -- 06.21.10

Today's category: Watching the watchmen

As we make the government more responsible for our everyday lives (food, shelter, health care, etc.) it stands to reason that it will require a more aggressive police force to, well, enforce all the rules we as a country have been begging for.

Well, welcome to the future…

• A group headed by the National Hispanic Media Coalition has requested that the FCC launch a probe to monitor hate speech and "misinformation" online. They say the FCC should gather and catalog information about who uses hate speech, when and where, then turn that information over to the NHMC so that they can "hold the media accountable" for hate speech.
  
  Aside from the obvious First Amendment violation this suggests (not that we actually care about the Bill of Rights anymore), this is a good example about being careful what you wish for.
  
  Often, a police state isn't forced upon a society, at least not initially. What happens is that through fear and ignorance, a group will demand the the government protect them from whatever bogeyman du jour they perceive to be out there. Then, too late, they realize they've given up their liberty in exchange for the illusion of security.
  


• Luckily, we live in a republic that recognizes certain inalienable rights that protects us from abuses of the state. Of course, just because those rights are inalienable, doesn't mean they can't be watered down.
  
  The highest court in the land got into the act recently when it declared that if you remain, then you give up your right to remain silent. Any watcher of TV cop drama's is pretty familiar with the Miranda Rights. I bet most of you could say it right off the top of your head.

  You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?

  Until a few days ago, the only way you could waive this right was to expressly say that you waive your right. Now the only way you can exercise your right to remain silent is to break your silence to expressly affirm that right. In other words, your Fifth Amendment (there's that pesky Bill of Rights again) right not to incriminate doesn't exist if you don't say it does.
  
  As my friend Joel rightly put it, police now get to assume you don't want your Constitutional rights. Makes trampling on the public that much easier, I guess.
  


• You know what else makes it easy to keep the plebs under your boot heel? Tasers, baby!
  
  That's right, another court ruling has established precedence that will allow your local stormtroopers to indiscriminately Taser your ass for something as harmless not wearing a seat belt while driving and wearing only boxer shorts and sneakers.
  
  Now granted, Tasing is probably better than having a cop pop a cap in you half-naked ass. And even I'll admit to seeing a bit of humor in the over use of the Taser in the past. But come on people, am I the only one who thinks its a bit of an over reaction to Taser these hippies? I know they smell bad, but I suspect this ruling might have turned our different if it had been caught on camera…
  


• …Then again, maybe it wouldn't. Another disturbing trend is that more and more people are being arrested simply for … taking pictures. In public areas… Where you would have no expectation of privacy… But there are police there.
  
  And this is one of the scariest developments in our nascent police state. Not only is the government using abusive tactics and ignoring constitutional rights, but now they are trying to criminalize the documentation of those abuses.

  A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.

  Look, I respect good police officers and I'm grateful for the work that they do. But in my opinion, the clear sign of an abusive officer is if they are afraid to be seen doing what they do. How else could this kind of law be interpreted other than to protect officers who abuse their authority?
  
  Kind of makes you want to right your congresscritter to complain. But that might not be such a good idea…
  
  
• You see, in a police state your best course of action is to stay low and try to maintain your anonymity. But that won't be so easy is some lawmakers have their way.
  
  A bill sponsored by New Mexico Democrat Harry Teague aims to use the Federal budget bribes to get states to collect DNA samples from ANYONE who is ARRESTED and put them in a national database.
  
  It doesn't matter if the person is charged, or even acquitted. Merely being brought "down to the station." This is some next level, pre-crime Minority Report meets 1984 meets Blade Runner type shit.
  
  Think of the message this is sending:
  
  "Okay kids, think what we want you to think, snitch on your friends, don't take pictures or we'll Taser your ass, haul you downtown and your DNA will be ours for the rest of your life."
  
  Sounds like Utopia to me.
  

tagged: Bullitt, police, abuse, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Miranda Warning, DNA, Taser, cameras

Random Photo XXXII: First quarter moon

I went out earlier this evening to try to get some decent photo's of the bright first quarter moon. This is one of the best results.

The moon is a fickle creature, and you pretty much have to shoot in manual mode to get the exposure right. That's okay, because I should really be shooting in manual most of the time anyway.

But I'm pretty pleased with this. In retrospect I should have gone for more depth of field, but I was more concerned with catching the proper lighting. Something to think about next time, though.

First quarter moon, 06.19.2010 (click to enlarge)

As always, your constructive criticism is appreciated.

tagged: Random Photo, moon, first quarter, night