Movie Tuesday - It's a Three'fer!

Well Blogophiles, this week you get Three For the price of Two, for I have not only prepared the usual 2 DVD reviews, but an actual "I broke down and spent the nine bucks to see it on the Big Screen" movie review!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - 2 out of 6 stars

My wife had been dying to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, better known as "The New Harry Potter Movie" for a while before we got the chance. When we finally got to see it last week, it cost over a Hundred Bucks, because we brought along 14 pre-teen and teenaged kids.

We had intended to take them Spelunking (that's a fancy word for crawling around in dark, muddy caves) instead, but our appointment at Raccoon Mountain Caverns got lost, and when we showed up at the gift shop with three vehicles full of children ready to go caving, we were greeted with the frightened stares of the just-slightly-older children who worked there.

So we went to the movieplex instead, and Becca knew exactly what we were gonna' see!

It has been mentioned elsewhere by myself as well as others that reviewing the third part of a trilogy is an exercise in futility. The same holds true for the fifth of the "Harry Potter" movies, if not more so. Those who are following Mr. Potter's Adventures are going to see it no matter what I say, and for those who have managed to avoid any interest in the first four films, I probably will not stir them to go see this one.

That being said, here is my verdict: the movie pretty much stunk. With the exception of seeing the originally peculiar characters of Dolores Umbridge and Grawp the Giant beautifully brought to life, there is little to recommend this movie. There are some really well-done Special Effects (The aforementioned Grawp is one), but there are also some really low-tech, cheezy ones, such as the Broom Flight through London, and Sirius' Fireplace appearance.

I thought the Movie could be better called Harry Potter and the Basic Outline of the Phoenix, or Harry Potter and the High-speed Montage of Doom, Or maybe Harry Potter and the Cliff's Note's™ of Destiny. The difference between the story contained in the Book and the story contained in the Film is like the difference between "Visiting The Grand Canyon" and "Visiting someone's home for a slideshow of their trip to the Grand Canyon".

The fact of the matter is this; it's impossible to make a single, good, movie out of any of the later Harry Potter Books. They are too long and complicated to compress into a movie that the Masses of Moviegoers could be expected to sit through. A four hour flick could probably capture the story, but, even as I just finished typing the phrase "Four Hour Flick", I heard the sound of wallets snapping shut coming from all the way in Hollywood. This movie made wads of money despite being, in my opinion, not much good, because it's riding on the High-Tide of PotterMania. But that tide has turned now, and Movie #7 will be coming out years after everyone who really cared already knows how the story ends.

Whether the Franchise would make it through all seven movies was a gamble the studio made when they took on the first. It has already weathered the death of the first Dumbledore, and the puberty of its stars, but I'm going to think hard before turning over my hard earned Nine-and-a-half Bucks for Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Synopsis

------- Haiku Movie Review™ --------
Book into a Film?
Might as well try Compressing
Film into Haiku
----------------------

RIYL - The last four Harry Potter Movies.

Happy Accidents - 5 out of 6 stars

Thank Goodness for Netflix! Without it I never would have stumbled upon this surprising little sleeper romance starring Marisa Tomei and Vincent D'onofrio. I love surprises!

I think Vincent D'onofrio is a terrific actor, but I had only ever seen him in weirdo, "Charater Actor" roles before, and I added this movie to my queue to see if he could pull off the "Leading Man" in a romantic comedy.

I don't want to give away too many of the twists and turns of the story, but it is much more than the basic romantic comedy I thought I was getting. It is more drama than comedy, and has a very clever story that picks up steam, from the basic beginning all the way through to a screaming climax.

Everything in this movie hinges on the identity of Sam, the mystery man played by Mr. Donofrio. He is clearly different, oddball even, but as we only get to view him through the eyes of Ruby, our "Leading Lady" played by Marisa Tomei, we are never given the chance to figure out exactly what is his deal, until the very end.

The Movie could have been a lot better - Marisa Tomei's portrayal of the "Sex and the City"-esque protagonist was not as likable as it should be, there were some quasi-flashback sequences in which the editing was distractingly stupid looking, and something seemed kind of "low-budgety" about the whole film, but the script tells an amazing story that is very well thought out, and keeps you guessing.

When I noticed I was still wearing a dopey smile on my face half an hour after the movie was done, I knew it had earned 5 out of 6 stars.

------- Haiku Movie Review™ --------
Something About Sam
Is Very Unusual...
What Is His Story?
----------------------

RIYL - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Garden State, Phenomenon


Hotel Rwanda - 4 out of 6 stars

I can appreciate this movie more than the others in this week's review, but I don't like it more. You can call me uncultured, or low-class, but I like movies that make me feel good. This movie made me feel bad. really bad. I knew it would, so I actually put off watching it. It is a good movie, maybe even a great movie, but I can't get over the fact that it is no fun to watch. It's about Genocide, for crying out loud!

I thought for a while that Don Cheadle was a great actor. Then I saw Swordfish and Family Man and changed my mind. I was wrong. The second time, when I changed my mind, I mean... I mean I was right when I thought he was great! He is. This movie settles it once and for all. Don Cheadle is a terrific actor, who was unfortunately cast in Swordfish and Family Man. His depiction of Hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina was outstanding. Another low-class prejudice of mine is a respect for accent work. I know, intellectually, that faking a foreign accent in a film is nothing compared to the sort of gut-wrenching emotional work that Denzel Washington did in John Q., or that Mel Gibson did in Ransom, but nonetheless, I hear a non-native accent come out of an actor's mouth and I think "oooh.. He is quite an actor!" Anyway, Mr. Cheadle gives us BOTH a fancy foreign accent AND a powerful emotional performance.

Other actors did well in this movie as well. Sophie Okonedo does an awesome job in her role as Paul's Tutsi wife, Tatiana.(Paul was a Hutu.) Joaquin Phoenix takes on a surprisingly insignificant role as a cameraman with a western news outlet. Nick Nolte pays a Canadian soldier in charge of UN peacekeeping troops.

The film was a work of art, full of great acting and memorable moments, but if you want to feel good, watch Cars or Happy Feet instead.

------ Haiku Movie Review™ --------
Hotel Manager
Paul Rusesabagina
Saved Twelve Hundred Lives.
----------------------

RIYL - Last King of Scotland, Life is Beautiful, Schindler's List.

Be sure to log on next week ("Same Bat-Blog, Same Bat-Channel"), when we put A Very Long Engagement and Everything Is Illuminated under the Review-O-Scope, squeeze them, and see what comes out!

Special Update: Taking Off

Holy WOW!

I just went and looked at the traffic for this site, and it has taken off like a.. Like a flying trike!

• Last Monday - 14 visitors "hit" the site 23 times.
• Tuesday ----- 11 visitors "hit" the site 15 times. (and I didn't even post that day!)
• Wednesday -- 11 visitors "hit" the site 16 times.
• Thursday ---- 9 visitors "hit" the site 13 times.
• Friday ------- 20 visitors "hit" the site 24 times.
• Saturday ---- 16 visitors "hit" the site 18 times.
• Sunday ------ 13 visitors "hit" the site 17 times.
• Today (So Far) 63 visitors have "hit" the site 110 times!

(late update: the total count for yesterday was 78 visitors and 128 "hits")

So this special update is to extend a hearty "Welcome!" to all you new readers who found this site through Becca's e-mail link; I hope you come back and check out the blog on a recurring basis.

Also, I am proud to note that the The Australian Marsupial Which Must Not Be Named has finally taken the bait, and checked up on me to make sure that I do not sully the good name of the Kan.... ooh, almost said it! Maybe I should just refer to the company I work for as Voldemort.

Nah.. that name is jinxed too! Besides, who wants to go to work every day for Voldemort? That would be just too depressing.

Anyway, that company looked me up again, and specifically looked at the posts that mentioned them. I guess they must pop in a couple of times a month. They didn't use a search engine to find me this time, though, so I must be on their reading list.

Also, if you are the person who checks in on TDBotD from a computer that is in some way affiliated with the MacMillan/McGraw-Hill School Publishing Company, please leave a comment, or drop me an email to let me know who you are. And Welcome Back, by the way. (I sure hope I didn't just get you in trouble with your boss.)

Also... (this "Special Update" is getting kinda' long!) I will be "taking off" this week for Dallas/Ft. Worth, Tejas (that's Texas, for you gringoes!) to attend The wedding of my wife's cousin Dale. I am going to try to have some article-length posts cooked up ahead of time, so that you will not be left without the Edu-tainment you crave,but even if I don't get that accomplished, I will still be Mobile Blogging from the road, one cell-phone text message at a time

Let's Go Fly a Trike!

So....

As I was finishing yesterday's post at the Sewanee Airport, where my wife works, a young man came in to check the weather on the computer next to me. from the fact that he was checking the weather alone, but referring to a "we" who needed to avoid the rainclouds, I assumed he was a charter Pilot. In his musical accent, which I presumed was Indian, the young man told me how he had been flying all the way from Chicago, through some less-than ideal weather, and was headed, ultimately, to Florida.

As I told him a little about our little town, in walked the other half of the "we" he had mentioned. Not what I expected from a charter passenger, the second young man had a bit of a Rock-Star, devil-may-care feel about him. Wearing something on one leg which was either a brace or a prosthetic, with a stylized Skull-and Crossbones logo on it, he was moving like someone who had been sitting in a car for hours, stretching tired muscles and talking a bit too loudly. The guys talked about their plans for a few minutes, getting their bearings on how far they had come, how far they had left, where they could stop along the way. The first guy mentioned thunderstorms that might be in their way.

"That's OK, said the second, "We'll just fly over them!"

As he looked over at me to see what reaction that remark would get, I decided to play along with the joke.

"I sure hope you guys have a pressurized cabin!" I said.

"We don't have any cabin" was the reply. "We're in an open cockpit"

Well, that explained their concern about the weather...

They hung out for a while longer, taking a great interest in the unique local geography and businesses, and I answered their questions as best I could, and eventually offered them the airport's "courtesy car" in case they wanted to go check out the beautiful Sewanee campus while they waited for weather to clear between them and their destination. As I walked out to the front to get a campus map for them I saw the craft they had arrived in, and was completely taken aback. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. "Open Cockpit" was a bit of an understatement; what they had been flying from Chicago in looked, as much as anything, like an expensive Italian motorscooter with a hangglider attached to it. It was one of the coolest looking aircraft I have ever seen.

Seeing my reaction, The first weather-checker, whose name I soon learned was Abid, asked if I would like to go for a ride in it! The part of me that was thinking how awesome this vehicle was said "Yes" before the part of me that knows that I am a complete coward could think about it. As they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I missed a lot of what Abid told me about the craft, but the "Trike" was basically just what it had looked like at first glance; a three-wheeled body smaller than some motorcycles I've seen, with a great big two-bladed propeller on the back, and, mounted on a mast several feet above, a large fabric covered wing that looks and acts like a hangglider. The steering is via a Glider-style bar in front of the pilot, which pivots the wing against the weight of the passenger compartment below.

This model had a very high-tech "Glass Cockpit", which is just a fancy aviation term for having your flight instruments display on a monitor instead of a bunch of little dials. The technology has caught on wildly only within the last 3-5 years, to the best of my knowledge, and pretty soon only "old fashioned" planes will have the vacuum-driven instruments that have dominated the aviation world so far.

After explaining every feature of the aircraft, as if he expected to sell me one, Abid said "OK, we'll go get Matt, and see if he'll take you up". Matt was, of course, Guy number two, the Rock Star, who had made some comments about liking to fly upside down, in addition to the comment about flying over thunderstorms, that caused me to worry a little. They *were* just jokes, right?

I was given additional cause for fear when we walked back in to see Matt,and Abid said;

"Matt, Frank here thinks he's got big enough balls to go up in the trike."

Soon, Matt the Rock-Star was giving me instructions on how to get in the darn thing, adjusting my flight helmet, and then... we were off! I was amazed. It was a completely different sensation than anything I had ever felt before. I had an opportunity to go hanggliding last October, But I missed it. I am sure that a glider on your back is the closest parallel to what we did, but we had the added element of POWER.

True to my suspicions, Matt was not at all meek once in the air, but flew like an adrenaline junkie who desperately needed his next fix. We stayed very near the runway, looping and reeling like a bird, waving at people fishing in the pond below, doing maneuvers that the best rollercoasters in the world are a pale imitation of, before Rock Star Matt decided to really show me what the trike would do. What it would do, it turned out, was around 100 Miles Per Hour, in a dive that felt exactly like I have always imagined the last few moments before a deadly crash would feel like. It felt like being strapped to a falcon which had just spotted a particularly yummy looking mouse in the forest below. To my great relief, we managed to avoid the part of the crash where you actually hit the trees and die, before bringing the trike down on the runway in a much gentler landing than I would have thought possible in such a lightweight thing.

You can check out more about these crazy "Airborne Jet-Skis" here

We didn't have a real camera handy, but We got a few pictures with my wife's dinky little six-year old Camera phone.


Here is a better Picture of the "Delta Jet". It isn't the exact one I went up in, but it is the same model, and the same color.

I Borrowed a Broken Bike from Becky B!

Holy CRAP, I am out of shape!

I just biked a whopping mile and a half, and my butt hurts and my legs don't feel like they will ever work again.

I am not really a very fitness-conscious person, but I am very fuel-efficiency conscious. My brief experiment with motorized two-wheeled transport last winter led to three days in the hospital and a compound distal humeral fracture. (that means "I busted my elbow really, really bad") So now that I am recuperated, I thought I would try pedal-powered transport.

My friend Becky... No, not you, Becky, the other Becky. No, not that one... Well One of my friends named Becky lent/gave me her bike, which had been sitting neglected under her deck for ...A couple of years? I took it to the Bike shop in the next town over to get it fixed up, and now I am riding in style on a 21-speed, front-and-rear suspension, Mountain Bike!

But Sweet Mother of Minivan! Riding a bike is a lot more exercise-y than I remember!
In college, I took a cycling class, and as our final project we had to make the 50-mile trek from Murfreesboro to Bell Buckle and back. That trip is the only time I ever visited historic downtown Bell Buckle, and I still associate the whole town with the Ice-cold bottle of RC cola I got there after biking 25 miles.

The thought of even doing five miles now on that.. that... that EXERCISE machine puts a chill in my heart. Good thing my house is only 8/10 of a mile from work. We'll start there, and work our way up to the 50 mile trips, I guess.

----------(somewhat) Daily Haiku of the (almost every) Day--------
I like to Save Gas
I also Like other Things;
Like an Unhurt Butt!
-----------------------------------

TDBotD FYI

I want the Daily Blog of the Day to be a friendly, welcoming site for my readers. I want everybody out there to feel at home here, and not alienated by fancy jargon or confusing initials or acronyms. (Initials and Acronyms are not the same thing, BTW. Acronyms are pronounced as a word, rather than individual letters. and BTW stands for By The Way, BTW.)

So this post will be my Compendium of Initials, Acronyms, and Other Internet Jargon, or CIAOIJ for short. (that's pronounced "Chowage".... I think....)

So WFA (Without Further Ado), here are the Initials I have used, or am likely to use, in this blog.

INITIALS AND ACRONYMS I MIGHT USE

BTW - By The Way
CIAOIJ - Compendium of Initials, Acronyms, and Other Internet Jargon
DSPN - (the) Daily (blog of the day) Sports Programming Network
FYI - For Your Information
PoTUS - President of These United States. (pronounced "Potus")
RIYL - Recommended If You Like
TDBotD - The Daily Blog of the Day (Pronounced "Tee-Dee-Bot-Dee" or "Tedebee of the Dee")
TAMWMNBN - The Australian Marsupial Who Must Not Be Named
WFA - Without Further Ado

INITIALS AND ACRONYMS I WILL NOT USE

LOL - Laughing Out Loud.
If I am actually laughing out loud, while I type, then probably Batman needs to come and kick my butt. Rest assured that if I start laughing out loud at any point during the composition of a blog post, then I will stop typing until I recover, at which point it would be a lie to type that I am laughing out loud. Besides, I'm not THAT funny.

ROTFLMAO or just LMAO - Rolling on the Floor Laughing My Arse Off, or just "Laughing My Arse Off.
I have once of twice in my entire life ever actually fallen to the floor in laughter, and even then I didn't actually roll there. Rest assured that if I ever find anything that freaking funny, I will share it with you using whole words rather than initials.

INTERNET JARGON

Blogosphere - The combined millions of words churned out by thousands upon thousands of internet-enabled bloggers, who tend to get their Ideas from one another, thus creating a gigantic, world-spanning "rumor mill" where reputations can be made or destroyed in a relatively short time. Occasionally the Blogosphere is aware of things before Themedia is.

Pwned - (pronounced "pyoond", rhymes with "mooned") Originated when someone who meant to type the word "owned" missed a key. The resulting quasi- word was used in competitive online gaming to mean "dominated, destroyed, or made a fool of" as in John thought he was a pretty good bowler, until he went to the lanes with me and got pwned! --also occasionally seen as "pwnt"

WORDS I INVENTED
(No Matter What Anybody Else Tells You!)

Bloggetry - The Greater Artform of which a particular Blog is an example. What "Cinema" is to a Movie, and What "Literature" is to a Novel, "Bloggetry" is to a Blog.

F'rinstance - An Example ; contraction of "For Instance", as in: "You say he's been getting in trouble lately... Can you give me a F'rinstance?"

Testosterrific - Overly Masculine in a way that appeals to Men. Like Sports Channels, F'rinstance.

As other Words, Initials, or Acronyms come up I will add them here. Did I forget any? Send me a line at phrankygee@gmail.com and let me know!

Literalert!

The Radio Ad for Economy Honda Superstore in Chattanooga says that their "Lot is Literally Overflowing" with quality pre-owned Hondas. I hope they don't get in trouble for parking them in the street.

Card Tricks

Ok "Sports" fans...

Welcome to the Daily(blog of the day) Sports Programming Network's...

Ridiculously wide world of "Sports"

For this, the 4th week of July, in honor of Comic-con San Diego, where my brother has been this week (I'm insanely jealous, by the way) DSPN will be taking a look at competitive Magic of two types. Magic:The Gathering, the Collectible Card Game (aka M:TG the CCG), and actual illusionist, stage magician, sleight-of-hand, type magic.

Everyone in my immediate family has some experience with one or the other of these two "Magics". My Father has recently become a National Champion Magician, (Here's his Magical Resume), and My Mother has taken up Magic too, now that her kids are out of the house. My Siblings an I stuck to the Card Game, but now that I think about it, I am the only one to have competed at both types.

Many Many Moons Ago, when I was ...oh, let's say 8 years old (between 7 and 10, for sure), I won first prize in the Youth Close-up category, at the Winter Carnival of Magic in Gatlinburg Tennessee. I did a trick called "The Matrix" in which I made quarters disappear from beneath a napkin, and a trick called "The Whispering Queen" which is a slightly theatrical take on the oldest "pick a card, any card, sir" trick in the book. I did these tricks so well, I won First Prize in my category, did I mention that already?

oh, by the way, I was the only person entered in that category....

I still have the trophy to this day. It is about a foot tall, and is topped with a hand holding a fanned-out display of cards. It sits next to my Spelling-Bee trophy from a few years later,on my mantel at home. I am a bit more proud of the spelling bee trophy, For reasons that are obvious to those of you with good eyesight.

Several years later, in high school, I became acquainted with some friends of my brothers (Hello, Mr. Lorrance!) who were collecting Star Trek: The Next Generation Collectible Card Game Cards. (aka ST:TNG CCG cards...see how handy these initials are?) I was not a big time trekkie, but the cards were kinda fun, and once I had the concept of a Collectible Card Game explained to me, I was hooked.

Collectible Card Games, (CCG's, even) are like narcotics in a number of important ways:

1. You start because your friends are doing it
2. You sometimes have to buy your own paraphernalia from a friend, a "specialty shop", or an ad in the back of a magazine devoted to your "hobby"
3. You gather with your friends to indulge the habit
4. You spend all your money on the stuff
5. The more you do it the more you need
6. A "harmless" CCG like Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokemon (yes, they are targeting CHILDREN with this stuff) can be a "Gateway Game" to the hard stuff, like Magic:The Gathering.

That being said, there are some important differences:

1. Drugs are actually consumed in the process of using them, whereas the Card-Flopper ends up with cratefuls of the things all over his bedroom. (And, Yeah, the masculine pronoun there was intentional, folks)
   
2. Drug Users don't have to be literate.
3. Drugs make you cool, CCG's just the opposite. (ok, just kidding... Drugs DON'T make you cool, kids. (They're BAD, m'kay?) But still... kids think that drugs will make them cool, whereas they harbor no such illusions about their Star Trek Cards. Lindsay Lohan and Robert Downey, Jr. never went in to Card Game Rehab, is what I'm tryin' to say, here.)
4. Also, there are no tournaments where people compete at their ability to do drugs (except for Major League Baseball, and The Tour De France)
   

And Sure Enough, the Star Trek Cards "Gatewayed" into Guardians cards, which in turn, "Gatewayed" into the Granddaddy of 'em All, Magic: The Gathering. Now I pretty much knew that CCG's were addictive by this point, but M:TG was supposed to be satanic as well. Just like Dungeons and Dragons! Turns out, it is no more satanic than bridge! (insert your own joke about your least favorite bridge player here) Well maybe a little more, but still, the reason it is the Granddaddy of all CCG's is that it is FUN!

Anyway, My brother and I entered a Magic tournament ourselves. I didn't bring home a trophy, (I was put out in the first round, as was my Bro), but I did become a Registered Tournament-level Player (which is kinda like having the word DORK branded into your skin, only less painful). I haven't played in years, and my cards have been stolen (unless I lent them out to someone and forgot) But every now and again I still want to pick it back up. Or maybe I should just try Heroin, instead.

Hey, at least I don't play the Trombone, too!

This is probably one of my worst posts ever

I would like to complain a little today about a phrase that I frequently hear on the NPR morning news. "One of the Worst", also sometimes "One of the Highest", or when talking about the Iraqi Occupation, "One of the Deadliest".

As Mark Twain once said that Benjamin Disraeli once said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Here is a little Venn Diagram (invented by Venn Vennsen, of course) to explain what I mean.

As Mr Vennsen's Diagram Clearly shows, the phrase "One of the most" only excludes ONE THING from the list; the least.

In other words, the 3 in a deck of cards could accurately be called "One of the highest numbered cards in the deck", because it is not the 2, which is the only card that can't be called that. It would be far more reasonable to say that the 3 is "one of the lowest numbered cards in the deck" but both statements are accurate. If you wanted to give some useful information, you might say that the 3 is "the second-lowest numbered card in the deck". That would give your reader/listener something concrete, a fixed point to go from.

So instead of hearing that the latest car-bombing in Baghdad made this month "One of the deadliest months so far" in the Iraqi occupation, which tells me nothing, why not say that the bombing made this month "The third deadliest month so far", or that it is "15% deadlier than last month", or that it "came within 5 deaths of the deadliest month so far, which was last October" But please, don't tell me that it was one of the deadliest months... Nearly every month fits that description.

A similar thing happens with the Stock market news. The little blurb at the top of the hour, which tries to encapsulate the massive, complicated workings of the U.S. and world financial markets into a seven-second paragraph, ALWAYS uses a superlative adjective to describe the current position of the Dow Jones Index. The tricky thing is, they keep adjusting the timeframe of the sentence to get to the superlative.

Here's a F'rinstance: If you had been growing out your hair for years, so that your hair now falls down around the small of your back, but you wanted it to grow more, so you had the split ends trimmed off, wouldn't it be a little misleading to tell someone that your hair was "The shortest it's been all week"? I wouldn't use the term "Shortest" to describe that hair at all, yet that is what they do with the Stock market news all the time.

Here's another: If you were a young man at a Ballroom full of Senior Citizens and children,you would by no means be the oldest or the youngest person there. But if you took your son over into a corner, you might be the oldest person in that part of the room, so then the word "oldest" could be applied to you. And if a news organization simply HAD to use a superlative age-related adjective to apply to you, then they would have to keep adjusting the list of people they compared you to until you were top or bottom of the list.

If you had a ten dollar bill to your name at the beginning of the year, then in February you inherited a billion dollars, then spent some of it in March and April, then in May your bank Account would be "At it's Lowest level in five weeks" even though it is up ,like, a million percent from January.

--------- The Daily Haiku of the Day™ ---------
You're "One of the Best"
As Long As There Is Someone
Even Worse Than You.
---------------------

The good news here is that the phrase "One of the sexiest people to have ever walked the earth" applies to you. So keep a picture of someone uglier than you in your wallet as proof.

The not-so-daily blog of the day....

Ok, so the more observant of you may have noticed that there was no Haiku Movie Review™ posted yesterday. As a matter of fact, I didn't post anything at all yesterday, marking the first lapse in my resolution to blog Daily. I am a miserable failure as a blogger, and I apologize to those who checked in to see what terrifically info-cational edu-tainment I had to offer, and found NOTHING instead.


There are a few reasons though, that there was no Haiku Movie Review™ yesterday.

A - I didn't watch any movies last week, because my brother beat me mercilessly until I added the Arrested Development 3-DVD set to my Netflix queue. So instead of getting two or three Feature Films to review, I watched TV. It was hilarious, by the way, and I am sad that there was no season 2. I recommend the series for anyone who likes great writing, and occasionally subtle humor. If you liked Napoleon Dynamite and/or the Animaniacs cartoons, then you should love Arrested Development.


B - The other reason I didn't post yesterday is that I just bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I'm a Bookoholic (although, as Demetri Martin might say, I ain't never seen no "bookohol") I slept on the couch again last night, with my Harry Potter book, Yes... I am a Sad, Strange, Little Man... I know.

C - The last reason I didn't post, is that I worked full time at two jobs last week, and between that and the new book (see reason B above), I didn't have the time or energy to post yesterday.

Like I said, miserable failure, yadda yadda... Apology, yadda, yadda, and so forth.

Search Engine Wrong Numbers for Mid-July

The Little counter gizmo I got from Statcounter.com has provided me hours of fun this week. By looking at the random ways that people find my site, I have learned a lot. For starters, there was the Kangaroo Pantry incident, but since then there have been another several visitors that have surprised me. I will call them Search Engine Wrong Numbers.

Search Engine Wrong Number #1 was a search for "Ham Sandwich Parody Libel"

What He Was Probably Looking For: A Story about the Guy Suing the Fox News Channel for running a story about him using a parody news story as their only source.

See, it's like this - The principal at Lewiston Middle School in Lewiston, Maine, a Mr. Levesque, suspended a kid for apparently intentionally placing a ham product of some kind (either a Ham Steak, or a Ham Bone, Depending on your source of info) on a table frequented by some Somali students who, like many Somalis, were Muslim. Muslims, like Jews, believe that Swine are unclean, and should not be associated with at all, much less eaten. So it was very offensive to tease them with pork products, and the kid was given a suspension, because he was being a jerk to some other kids in the lunchroom. Reason enough to suspend a kid, if you ask me.
So some guy on a parody website gets hold of this story, and decides to make fun of the principal for his perceived overreaction. Then the $%@#-offs over at Fox & Friends decide to run the story written on the parody website as real news. All of the "Quotes" that fox attributes to the principal were completely made up. Here is the YouTube video that compiles all the little blurbs that the program did all morning long, as they flak this principal for things he never said!

Why They Found The Daily Blog of the Day:
My Haiku Movie Review™ of Man of the Year griped about the movie's use of the ancient joke about Mama Cass, Karen Carpenter, and the Ham Sandwich.
My post entitled Outer Redneckia contained the phrase "every single parody of the rural south there is".
My post about the Pantry monitoring me online mentioned the pantry's possible concerns about Libel from disgruntled employees.

I would still be unaware of this story if not for the person who was looking for it finding my site by complete accident instead, It's like my good friend Nietzsche once said:

"When you stare into the Interweb, The Interweb also stares back into you"

Search Engine Wrong Number #2 was for "Dresden Tennessee Dog Fighting Charges". I'm not sure I want to know what that one was about.

Search Engine Wrong Number #3 was for "My Wife Left Me". Some woman trolling the web for newly eligible bachelors, maybe? Sorry, Wrong Number!

And just a Day after I (allegedly) coined the word Testosteriffic™ , Someone found my site using it as a keyword! (About 10 other uses of the word showed up, but none of them had the little "™" after the word, so mine's official.)

Also, I checked and if you Google "Outer Redneckia", I'm the first one on the results page! yay!

However if you Google "Daily Haiku", you don't get my site, but (among others) a Site Called DailyHaiku.com which trash talks the Bush administration with a picture and Haiku every day. It turns out there are a lot of people doing the Daily Haiku thing. Oh well... Here is a Haiku stolen from DailyHaiku.com.

I changed the toner
then tried to print a test page.
Turns out, it's a lamp.

DSPN's Very First Sport: Competitive Drinking

So, almost immediately after I posted the , uh, post, introducing my new feature about obscure and ridiculous sports, I was at Crust, when a trio of guys walked in, one of whom was wearing a black T-shirt with the words "WIZEST WIZARDS" spelled out in White, Iron-on lettering reminiscent of Napoleon Dynamite's "Vote for Pedro" masterpiece. The logo was cross shaped, with the horizontal "WIZEST" intersecting at the "Z" in "WIZARDZ" (The final "Z" at the bottom of "WIZARDZ" was actually a sideways "N")

Now, I have spent enough years in Outer Redneckia to be nervous when I see the word "Wizard" and a Cross in close proximity, but with one look at this guy, I ruled out "Grand Wizard" in favor of "Half-Elf Level 10 Wizard with 10d4 Hit Points, and 'Pockets of Holding' ability" (If that was all nonsense to you, congratulations, you didn't eat lunch at my table in high school.)

When 5 other similarly nerdy College-age guys came in wearing the same shirt, I thought "Oh, its a team of some sort", and a look at the physiques of these guys said "Science Bowl" instead of "Super Bowl". Since I had non-traditional competitions on my mind, I decided to ask what the deal was with the shirts.

"Well, There's this Drinking Game called 'Wisest Wizard'," was the answer. A Drinking game? They had Uniforms made for a Drinking game? Apparently unlike some other Drinking games , which involve some element of chance or physical dexterity, the point of "Wisest Wizard" is quite simply to drink the most beer. The reason for the name? When you finish a can of beer, you Duct-tape it to the can you drank before it, forming a "Wizard's Staff", and at the end of the night, whoever has the biggest "staff" wins. (nothing at all phallic there, eh?) So what common bond did these people have other than a love for Fermented Barley Beverages? They were all Trombonists. That pretty much explains it.

I was in the band (ahem, sorry, in the orchestra) in 5th grade... for about 3 weeks. I quit, not out of a dislike for music, or any musical inability (although that may well have been discovered had I stuck around long enough), but rather out of Mortal Embarassment at the condition of the Instrument my parents had been able to afford; a 35 Dollar Trombone. The other kids all had rental instruments from the store out in the mall that existed solely for the purpose of renting instruments to schoolkids. Their instruments were sleek, well-oiled, expensive-looking things with brass bright enough to blind you if it caught the light just right. My trombone came from the flea market, and cost my parents 35 bucks outright. The case looked even worse than the instrument it contained; The black outer covering, something which may once have been leather, was battered and peeling off in chunks, and it was lined with, instead of the black-velvety material in the other kids' cases, a red, shag-carpety material, which didn't look any better off than the outside. The Trombone itself was corroded in places, and had a couple of dents, right in the bell of the horn. I dreaded band class every single time it met, and as our first concert drew near (the orchestral equivalent of "Hot Cross Buns", I'm Sure - It was 5th grade after all), the thought of being seen on stage with my flea-market, hand-me-down horn drove me to drop out all together.

Good thing I did, or now I might be comparing "staves" with the other "WIZARDZ", after rolling 3d4-3 to determine hit point damage due to alcohol poisoning. And then going home alone to my trombone.

-------- Daily Haiku of the Day --------

Hey Dungeon Master,
Can We Use Brass Instruments
As Melee Weapons?
------------------

The Ridiculously Wide World of "Sports"

Jerry Yang, a 39-Year old psychologist, just won the Jackpot at the World Series of Poker. Who says a psychology degree doesn't pay? Seriously, an academic pursuit of psychology should be considered illegal performance-enhancing knowledge in this "Sport", shouldn't it?

Other Factoids about the world's newest Poker Champeen are: Mr Yang Grew up poor in Laos. (Much love to my Laotian Friends out there!) He fled to the Vietnamese village of Bao Trinh (follow this link to find out why he was fleeing), and from there to Canada. He will be donating a chunk of his Muliti-million dollar winnings to charities all over the world, and personally going back to his village in Vietnam to give back to the community that took him in as a youth.

The page from which I found out about Mr. Yang was peppered with comments at the bottom of the page (Unlike some daily blogs of the day that I could name), and many of the comments were about how Poker shouldn't be covered as a "Sport" by ESPN because, in the commenters' opinion, it isn't one.

That's just Crazy Talk, that is! Of course poker is a sport. If sitting in a boat, waiting to inflict needless pain on a fish is a sport, and sitting in a tree, waiting to kill a majestic woodland creature is a sport, and wearing silly clothing on a Golf Course is a sport, then why isn't sitting around a table holding cards and looking constipated? Maybe it is because you need specialized equipment to engage in Hunting and Fishing and Golf (the more expensive the better) , and Poker can't be a sport, because you can't show off to your neighbors your new 700 dollar Specially Reinforced Card-Holding Glove and Titanium/Carbon-Fiber Chip Rake!

And you can't say that it's because Poker is an indoor activity, because then there goes Hockey, Basketball, and quite a bit of Baseball too.

So, some people are against Poker being on ESPN. I am sure I don't want to hear what they think about My Favorite ESPN event, the Scripps-Howard Nashonal Speling Beee. As a Spelling Bee Champion, this event has a special place in my heart. (That sound you hear is my own horn tooting, just ignore it, it will go away.) Even I can't beleive that that one made it on the most Testosteriffic Channel on Cable (by the way, I just made up the word Testosteriffic™, in case you wanted to know.)

Anyway, as I have mentioned before, I don't have cable, but I do know that in addition to ESPN there is ESPN2, as well as a channel that I find completely ludicrous called "ESPN Classic", which lets you watch games that already happened, from seasons which are already over. Well, I say let's add another ESPN for the brand new, cutting edge quasi-sports. In addition to Spelling Bees, let's throw in Air Guitar, Crossword Puzzle Competitions, Halo Tournaments, Robot Wars, and the Speed Text Messaging Finals.

Well, as they say - If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself. Since ESPN probably won't add all of these, I will have to cover them here on "The Daily Blog of the Day's Ridiculously Wide World of Sports" or "TDBotD'sRWWoS" for short... You know that isn't actually very short, come to think of it....

How About DSPN, then? The Daily (blog of the day) Sports Programming Network.

I'll be picking some really obscure "sports" to cover occasionally, and bringing my findings to you, my readers. (All six of you. Four, if you don't count me and my wife. Sigh.)

--------- The Daily Haiku of the Day ™ --------
Whatever you Try
To be the Very Best At
Sounds like Sport to Me
-----------------

On Gift Horses and Mouths

I heard a story this morning about a guy who is suing FEMA for giving him a trailer to live in which was outgassing twice the acceptable levels of formaldehyde and other noxious gases.

I only heard a little news snippet about it, and haven't researched the details, but apparrently FEMA originally denied any fault, any knowledge of anything, they were nowhere near the scene and they've never met that woman in their lives, you know... the usual government response to anything, ESPECIALLY anything having to do with Hurricane Katrina, but now, after this guy had his trailer tested at his own expense, FEMA is now re-examining the situation,

I don't want to make too light a deal out of Katrina. It was a disaster unlike any the country has seen in my lifetime. It wiped whole neighborhoods off the map, and left whole cities, whole regions, broken and devastated. Many good people were killed, and many more were left without anything for which they had worked much of their lives.

And yes, the government screwed up the response. I will forever associate Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff with the radio interview he did with NPR's Scott Simon, in which he pooh-poohed reports of the horrific situation that was unfolding as he spoke in and around the Superdome. I wanted to climb through the radio and beat him to death, he was so pompous and uncaring.

BUT... It happened a long time ago now, and while the government did a miserable, unforgivably atrocious job handling the immediate calamity surrounding the event, an unbelievable level of federal financial aid has been made available to victims since then.

No, that aid will not bring back your dead or missing-and-presumed-dead family members,and it cannot get you back your bronzed baby shoes, or your kids' fingerpaintings, and it won't get rid of the nightmares you keep having of rushing water whisking away your struggling pet, Buster, but what all that aid WILL do is allow you to get your crap together well enough to go somewhere else (might I suggest ABOVE sea level?) and get a job, and start rebuilding your life as best you can. Is it fair? Posit that question to the Religious Professional of your choice. But whether it was fair that it happened or not, what YOU get to control is what you do with the situation.

Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOC's, can be a problem for certain people sensitive to the compounds released by materials in new construction. But for most people they are a minor problem, and one that will fade with time as the fumes spend themselves out. If my house blew up tomorrow, I would not expect the government to give me a new trailer. If the government did give me a new trailer to live in, I would probably be glad not to be completely, out-on-my-butt homeless, and not cry too much about the trailer giving me a headache. I am sympathetic to the plight of the Katrina Victims, but a guy who would invest the energy into working up a lawsuit exposing the invisible headache-gasses in his trailer, instead of getting his butt out of the trailer and into an apartment somewhere is just beyond my comprehension.

late edit: it has been hard to get consistent details on this story. A quick glance around the interweb got some stories that claimed formaldehyde levels were twice the recommended maximum, and some that said they were as high as 75 times the legal maximum. ((the latter number came from the Sierra Club's report, which might as well have been entitled "We're not biased against the Bush Administration at all, honestly!" )) Some stories talked about people dying from the fumes, some stories only mentioned persistent colds and sinus infections. the latter sounds more believable to me.

On Cats and Catflaps

Yesterday's Post was about Doggies, so in the interest of equal time, today will be about Kitties. I am not inclined to be nice about it, however, since I spent a chunk of my afternoon for the second time this month cleaning dead (or in this case, not-quite-dead) bird out of my house.

You see, my wife and I have two kitties. There's PC, a big gray male who's getting on in years, and the new kitty, Marbles. Marbles is a girl kitty, black and white, and young and frisky.

Our history with these kitties goes back to about 1999 or so, when my girlfriend (now my wife) and her roommate, Q, moved into a house in a VERY bad neighborhood. The houses in front of, behind, and to one side of theirs were Crack-houses, with shady characters rolling by constantly. This situation was just beginning to sink in to these girls at about nightfall on the day they were moving in. I was there helping them move, and so it was me and two girls in the house when all of a sudden there was a BANGING sound on the kitchen window!

I was quickly elected "Man of the House", and dragged all of my frightened, unarmed, 160-lb. self into the kitchen "to see what was the matter", as the poet says. There was a young gray cat perched on the windowsill, clawing furiously at the aluminum screen window, causing the frame to make more noise than I thought possible. Apparently, the girls had moved into HIS house, because when we opened the door (after re-swallowing our hearts), he waltzed right on in like he owned the place, a little curious about his new roommates, but apparently ok with sharing his pad with these new humans, provided they keep the food coming, and open the door for him whenever he demanded. Becca noticed that his jaw had been broken at some point in his young life (it WAS a rough neighborhood after all), giving him a lopsided, slack-jawed look (his tongue occasionally lolls out to the side making him truly ridiculous looking) So they named him Prince Charming, with a hearty sense of Irony about it, and called him "PC" for short.

Opening the door on demand became the theme for our relationship with this cat for the next 8 years. about 18 months or so after meeting PC, Becca and I were married, and moved into the tiny 3-room apartment I call "The Monkey Cage". We paid a big, fat, Pet Deposit in order to bring PC with us. We let PC out when he wanted, and back in when he clawed at the aluminum screen, making a sound like a barfight in full swing. Then one of the other tenants in our apartment complex, who drove a shiny black pickup truck complained that our cat was leaving footprints on it. We received a note from the Management informing us of the complaint and asking us to please keep our pet indoors.

We tried, honestly, we did try. For a whole week, almost, we tried. At the end of that week we had almost as many shreds of sanity as we had shreds of mini-blinds on our windows. Even the blinds on the back door located nearly five feet off the ground were not spared. Very soon the decision was made that we would rather risk eviction than imprison that whirlwind of destruction in our apartment against his will one more day. And so, painfully aware of the consequences of not doing so, we opened the doors on demand for the next several years, at three different addresses, regardless of the time of night or day, or whether we were busy or sleeping.

And then we got Marbles, a skinny little black and white kitten who showed up at the Airport where Becca works. Things were touch-and-go for a little while, with the frisky little kitten terrorizing the now at least 8-year-old established King of the household, but they co-exist peacefully enough now.

Then in the fall of 2006 we replaced our front door as part of an overall thermal-efficiency remodel. A lot of really cold air can come in the door when you open it in at 3AM to let the cat out, so I thought to my self, "Self, why don't you see if you can get a door with a pre-installed cat-flap?" As it turns out, my Father-in-Law had a better idea. If we put the cat flap in a window, rather than the door, then cats can get in (because they can jump), but skunks (and possums and probably racoons) can't!

Birds can, though. Especially if a frisky black and white kitten brings them in, crippled, so she can "Play" with them. Mice, Voles, Moles, Shrews, Chipmunks, and Rats can get in the same way. Being awakened at 3AM to let a cat in or out is actually rather nice compared to being awakened at 3AM by the cries of wildlife being eviscerated at the foot of your bed! Sunday night it was a rodent of some variety, and yesterday it was a Red-Breasted Robin. Holy Crippled Bird, Batman!

This is the THIRD robin that my cat has smuggled in through the cat-flap. The first one woke my wife and me up with its cries of pain and terror at about 5:30 AM. The second, just earlier this month, was a Mostly-eaten Carcass by the time we discovered it lying on the carpet in my Feather-strewn den. Yesterday I came home in the afternoon to find feathers in my den, AND dining room, AND bedroom, and the bird, alive and completely ignored, lying on my bedroom floor.

------ Daily Haiku of the Day™ -------
Okay, I get it.
You're A Sadistic Killer.
But Do That OUTSIDE!
---------------------

Ah, cats... ya' hafta' love 'em!

No, really, you have to, or they'll kill you in your sleep.

I posted puppy pictures yesterday, so I better post kitty pictures today. The only problem is I don't have any good ones, and I don't have any of Marbles at all.

Anyway here is our battle scarred warrior cat, PC

And Here He is, Ahem, taking care of some Feline Hygiene.

HeHe.. Catch you on the flipside, Blogophiles!

Doggies!

Apparently Michael Vick, of the Atlanta Falcons, has been indicted on charges of "knowingly sponsoring and exhibiting an animal fighting venture" on his property in Surry County, VA. Raising dogs for the purpose of making them fight to the death is a really, really sick thing to do. In rural Tennessee, I am surrounded by this type of thing, and it makes me want to punch people in the face. And then sic a pit bull on them, preferably one of theirs.

I have recently been accused of being afraid of dogs. I am not at all afraid of dogs, I love dogs. I do, however, have a healthy respect for the potential damage a skittish Great Dane or an Over-enthusiastic Malamute (each weighing in at around 140 lbs or more) can do. I was bit in the face by a dog that I was not at all afraid of, until about .0001 seconds after it bit me. I developed a very reasonable fear of that dog at that point, but still was not bothered at all by "Dogs" in the abstract.

Nor was, or am, I afraid of "Pit Bulls" in the abstract. And in the abstract is the only way you can fear "Pit Bulls", because the breed most commonly associated with the term "Pit Bull" is actually, according to the American Kennel Club, called the American Staffordshire Terrier, or "AmStaff" for short. (although the term is sometimes associated with the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, or the plain ol' "Bull Terrier. And yes, there is controversy among breeders on nearly all of these points.) These dogs have massively strong jaws, and other characteristics that make them ideal for use by sickos with Neanderthal notions of entertainment.

One of the things that has been bred into the breed is a tendency for "Dog-on-dog" aggression. This is a completely separate trait from a propensity for aggression against humans. Keep this in mind if you are pondering adopting an AmStaff. But Remember, potential Adopters...

------ Daily Haiku of the Day™ -------
If You Can't Afford
The Veterinary Bills,
Then NO PET FOR YOU!
---------------------

Or as the bumpersticker puts it (but not in elegant Haiku Form):
If You Can't Afford the VET; You Can't Afford the PET!
This Story is a happier story about a doggy. And in case you were wondering, here are my doggies. They're Kyeeewt!!

Movie Tuesday - "Taxi Driver" and "Ghost Rider"

It's Tuesday, friends, and that can only mean one thing....

OK, it can mean a great many things, but what it means for The Daily Blog of the Day™ is

It's Time for the Weekly Haiku Movie Review™ of the Week!

This week's movies have a vehicular theme. We will take a look at a Ghost Rider, and a Taxi Driver.

Ghost Rider - 3 out of 6 stars

This movie is exactly what you would expect from its genre. It is about two hours of really killer special effects, fight scenes, stunts, Bravado, and stuff blowing up real cool! The effects were awfully good, though. I had seen still photos of the rider, and I thought it looked a little stupid, but the motion really works, and the flame looks real enough to melt the camera. The plot is ridiculous and simplistic, but you don't watch Ghost Rider to be intellectually challenged, now do ya'?

While Nicholas Cage was a bizzare choice to play Johnny Blaze (yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, the guy whose flesh turns into fire at night is named "Johnny Blaze". "Johnny Storm" was already taken by the other guy who turns into fire and does motorcycle stunts) I thought that the young man who played Johnny for the first twenty minutes of the movie was really good. I was a little disappointed to see Nick Cage take over. Between having his character played by a young actor, and then later by a CGI construct, Mr. Cage was lucky to get any screentime at all.

------- Haiku Movie Review™ -------
To Make a Hero
Out of the Devil's Minion
Takes some real doing.
----------------------------------

If you want some mindless superhero action, or if, like me, you are compelled to see every Marvel Comics-based movie that comes out, then pick it up. And watch it on the biggest Hi-Definition Screen you can find, because those effects are pretty freakin' cool!

Taxi Driver - 1 out of 6 stars.

I expected to have one good movie and one bad movie to review this week. I didn't expect the Martin Scorsese Classic, Taxi Driver, to be the bad one. This movie is about a wierdo lonely guy named Travis Bickle who keeps to himself, doesn't say much of nothing to nobody, and has a real bad case of insomnia. If only Travis had been able to watch the movie Taxi Driver, his insomnia would have been cured.

The movie, by modern standards, sucks a lot. The saxophone soundtrack alone was enough to make me want to put my foot through the TV and then go watch some paint drying to alleviate the boredom. I like M.Knight Shyamalan's movies, and Christopher Nolan's movies, where, when something is shown on the screen, you know it has a purpose within the plot and narrative structure. You might not know what it's meaning is, but you know that the stuff you are seeing on the screen will eventually make sense; that it will all "tie together" later on down the line. Taxi Driver just shows you a lot of stuff. Some of it has to do with the plot, and with character development, but some of it is just some stuff we decided to throw in, because we were stoned while we edited, and we thought that it was kinda' groovy.

------- Haiku Movie Review™ -------
Finally! A Film
With All the Excitement of
An Hours-Long Cab Ride
----------------------------------

If you want to see what New York looked like in 1974, then watch Taxi Driver, and fast forward through most of it. If you, like me, don't care what New York Looked like in 1974, then pass on it all together.

I'm watching you...

After leaving the note about how your comments are the only way I know you are reading, I thought to myself... "Self, (cause that's what I call myself) is there no way at Blogger.com to look at how many people are visiting your site?"

Well, with just a little setup, there is. But it isn't anything built in to blogger.com, it comes from statcounter.com , where I signed up for the free web-tracker gizmo that lets me see who is seeing my stuff. It has yielded some interesting surprises already. Not only have I deduced that my friends (Yeah, you, Chesman!) and Family (Yeah, You too Jeremy!) have been to visit, but other visits that I can't pinpoint the source of.

It takes a little Internet Detective work to find out who is visiting, because I only get a rough geographic location and some connection data, but it has been fun trying to sort out, because I had a lot of spare time last night. One of the coolest (and scariest) visits came from The Pantry, Inc., who were interested in my post about my job at The Pantry.

Apparently they track any mention of their name anywhere on the internet, all the time. I suppose this is either an effort to sniff out Libel from disgruntled employees, or to monitor investor "whispers", either of which can affect stock prices, if left unchecked. Anyway, now that I have mentioned The Pantry (twice) in this post, I am waiting to see how long it takes their web search robot to find it. Oh, yeah, and I might also have to include the word "Kangaroo" for it to work, so... Kangaroo.

------ Daily Haiku of the Day™ -------
I know who visits,
Even if they Don't Comment.
I'm Just Like Santa.
---------------------

But what I don't Know is... who voted for Moe? I mean Seriously, Moe? Obviously Themedia underestimated Moe's chances in this race. He could be a dark-horse, come-from-behind candidate.

My Wife Left Me

My Wife left me this morning. I slept on the couch last night, and my wife informed me early this morning that she was getting on a plane, and not coming back. Until tomorrow, that is. She is flying a couple of teenage girls to Savannah, GA on a Charter Flight, and flying them back tomorrow. So she gets to stroll around alone through beautiful, historic, Savannah while I entertain myself at home by seeing how loud I can Belch.

I slept on the couch because I am addicted to the "Dresden Files" books by Jim Butcher, and I needed a lighted room so that I could continue reading well into the night last night. I fell asleep reading, and was still there this morning.

So I actually for the first time in several days have an evening off, and I get to spend it all alone.

Note: I have gotten several e-mails from readers using the wrong link on this site. The little envelope at the bottom of each post is for you to send the post (or its address, at least) to someone you think would enjoy reading it. Yeah, I know that isn't many people, but the little envelope is there anyway, Just in case.
If you want to email ME, then click on the "see my whole profile" link over in the "About Me" section. On my profile screen there is a link that simply says "Email". If your Computer is set up right, that link should open your preferred email program to send me a line or two. If you use online-only mail, then just go to your email site (preferably in a separate window or tab), and send a few lines to phrankygee@yahoo.com or phrankygee@gmail.com

And please, by all means, leave a comment if you feel so inspired. I love getting comments. They are the only proof I have that anyone is reading this stuff. You are reading this stuff, aren't you? Hello? Hello?

Outer Redneckia

This morning I drove to the town of Beersheba Springs (Pronounced BURR-shuh-buh) to do some balloon twisting, and on the way there I was treated to an excerpt of the "Johnboy and Billy" radio morning show. The bit was along the lines of "How to know when your girlfriend is from Outer Redneckia, and it was basically a list of "You might be a Redneck if.." jokes a la Jeff Foxworthy.

On the way there, I saw numerous yard sales, and I had some time to kill, so I thought "I'll stop in at the next one". The house I pulled in to next looked promising, until I realized that they weren't having a yard sale, hey just had a bunch of junk lying around in their yard. My journey through Outer Redneckia had begun.

I saw numerous mispelled signs, a Post Office that was a mobile-home style trailer, a number of Permanent Yard Sales, and a store about the size of a 7-11 where you could fill up your tank with gas and buy a couple of candybars, some mandolin strings, archery supplies, a Dale Earnhardt Lamp, get trophies made for your little league tournament, and hey, while you're there anyways, get a couch and a refrigerator.

I saw every single parody of the rural south there is, and yet rather than be embarassed about my redneck homeland, I felt a weird sort of pride in my Simple, Rustic, People. Of course, I didn't see any of the really BAD stuff associated with the South, which DOES cause me to feel shame for my redneck homeland, every single time. Sometimes, however you can laugh right through the shame, because some jokes are just too good to not tell. Like the proud sign outside the Law Office in Winchester, TN. (home of the Franklin County "Rebels", complete with little confederate mascot)


The Sign reads "Lynch, Lynch, and Lynch, Attorneys-at-Law"

Another Write-your-own-punchline, that is....

No Haiku For Now,
I'm Really Kind of Busy.
Please, Check Back Later.

Mobile Alert: I saw a

Mobile Alert: I saw a (living) coyote for the first time today. Then I saw another one tonight!

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Well, I am officially all-the-way re-hired as an employee of The Pantry, Inc. I start "Training" today, in the Jasper TN, Kangaroo location. I will be working there all morning, then working at Crust all night. Then Tomorrow morning I go do My Mr. Twister Balloon thing in Beersheba Springs, then go work all night at Crust.

Tonight, at Crust, I know I am going to be short an employee, and it's a Friday night, and I am going to be tired from "training" in Jasper all day. This is one Friday the 13th I am not looking forward to.

Oh, yeah, BTW, it's Friday the 13th.

Well kids, here's your haiku.

------Daily Haiku of the Day-------
Friday the Thirteenth
Doesn't Scare Me Much at All;
But Double Shifts Do.
---------------------

PS: - Someone asked me the question that should never be asked again last night.

New Words!

Well, Boys and Girls, Merriam Webster's Dictionary, the final word on words, has announced their New Official words for 2007.

We have new sports and hobbies, like snowboardcross, speed dating and sudoku, international words that have (ostensibly) become widespread in English usage, like telenovela, Bollywood, and chaebol. (I had never heard or seen the word "chaebol" before today, but apparently enough English speakers are using it somewhere. )

High technology, always a font for new words, has this year brought us DVR, and real-estate-speak brings us viewshed and hardscape

Common Usage among a new generation of english-speakers has brought us crunk, RPG, smackdown, ginormous, and perfect storm. (I may have to do a whole post about the "perfect storm" phenomenon at some later date)

Unfortunately, the "age of terrorism" has in some way or another brought us the next three words: IED, everybody knows what those are, flex-cuffs, the cheap plastic cable-ties that police or military use when they have just arrested or "detained" a very large number of people, and when handcuffs are impractical, and gray literature, which may not be directly related to the current administration, (it looks like it came from the Watergate Era) but Mr. President Bush certainly has generated his share of it.

A bizzare word that I had never heard of, but which is thoroughly useful is nocebo, the opposite of placebo. A nocebo is a harmless substance which is interpreted by a person to have caused a negative effect. For instance, the milk that you had this morning that you thought didn't smell quite right, could still cause you a bellyache, even if it was fine, because of the Nocebo Effect.

The world of food brings us our last two words. Microgreens are the young shoots of a regular salad green, like lettuce or endive (which is pronounced "ON-DEEV", campers)

And the last word...

The Last...

I almost don't want to say it, but the last of the new words in today's post is agnolotti, a round, filled pasta, from the Italian word for "little anuses". I wish I were making this up.

Yummy.

-------Daily Haiku of the Day-------
Please, Chef Boyardee
Elbow Pasta's Fine By Me,
But Not Anuses
---------------------

P.S. - It gets WORSE! the Wikipedia entry for Agnolotti says that the word "agnolotti" means "Priests' Hats" in Italian. That doesn't speak well for the Italian opinion of their Priests!

Priest's Hat = Little Anus ---I'll let you write your own punchline.

Reader Response - Stealing Jokes

The comment thread to my previous post about "Literally" has a lot of references to a "Beef" between comics over plagiarism. So I thought I would expand that into a post for today.

I don't have Cable. I read books, I watch my Netflix movies, I play Scrabble, I compulsively check my blog for comments, but I don't watch Television, so I know exactly three things about Carlos Mencia. I know he's got a TV show called "Mind of Mencia" on Comedy Central, I know that he's Latino (late edit: He's German/Honduran, apparently), and I know that he steals jokes.

Here is how I know.

The way my computer is set up (with Firefox 2), when I start to type something in to the Google Search Bar built in to my browser, the Google folks try to "Auto-complete" what it is they think you are looking for based on their database of what other people have searched for. for instance if I type in the letters "back", then Google thinks I am probably looking for

• "Back Pain"
• "Background Check"
• "Back to the Future"
• "Backyardigans"
• "Backgammon"

or

• "Backstreet Boys" (honestly, who is doing that search?)

If I type the letters "mencia" in the search bar, then I see.... "mencia steals jokes" as one of my options. As a matter of fact, out of the TEN search suggestions listed, six of them are:

• "mencia steal"
• "mencia steals"
• "mencia steals jokes"
• "mencia rogan"
• "mencia cosby"

and most succinctly,

• "mencia sucks"

For those of you not familiar with this topic, Joe Rogan is the guy leading the plagiarism charge against Carlos Mencia (a.k.a. Ned Holness), and one of the comics Mencia is accused of ripping off is none other than Bill "Jello Pudding Pops" Cosby.

I spent the better part of yesterday familiarizing myself with the Rogan v. Mencia case, and here are my insights.

First, many of the jokes Mr. Mencia [The Defendant] allegedly "Stole" were common observations from the news that anybody could have made (and several different people did make). If the news story is that we are going to build a big wall to keep out the cheap mexican labor, then the OBVIOUS joke is "Who's gonna build it?" I would be willing to bet that Jay Leno probably also made this joke. And he didn't steal it from Ari Shaffir. If I were Ari Shaffir, I wouldn't be claiming to have spent all night crafting this wonderful gem of a joke. Probably every "Wacky Morning DJ" type radio show did this joke. I also personally saw two different Editorial Cartoons that did this same joke. Some headlines just write themselves. If you did a joke about Paris Hilton getting advice on going to prison from Martha Stewart, and some other comic more famous than you ALSO did a joke about that, he probably didn't steal it from you. You just both picked a way-too-obvious target.

Next, nearly all of Carlos Mencia's material is in the "Way-Too-Obvious" category. If you do jokes about Air Travel, you are going to have real difficulty saying something that no-one else has said. If you do jokes about Michael Jackson being a pedophile, you are going to have real difficulty saying something that no-one else has said. And if you do jokes about Racial Stereotypes, you are going to have EXTREME difficulty saying something that no-one else has said. That's the reason that they ARE Stereotypes; because they are WIDESPREAD conceptions about people. People have been making Jewish, Black, Irish, Mexican, Polish, Italian and Asian Jokes for as long as these races have existed! You can bet that there were Midianites, and Amorites, and Jebusites making jokes about those stingy "shekel-pinching" Judeans. "What's the Deal with the Judeans?" I can hear it now. If you deal with stereotypical humor, as Mr. Mencia is very forthright about doing, then you're treading a very well-worn path. As those Judeans wrote in their Bestselling Book, The Old Testament, "There is Nothing New Under The Sun" (It's in the book of Ecclesiastes, FYI.)

But, finally..... I delved deep enough that I got to some obvious ripoffery. Sam "Been Dead For Years" Kinison did a bit in 1987 about Jesus trying to explain to a suspicious wife, after the crucifixion, just where he'd been for the last three days. That is not exactly an obvious joke. And then Lo and BEHOLD! "Mind of Mencia" has a sketch with the same premise. Not a word for word ripoff, but if Mr. Mencia claims he didn't get that idea from Sam Kinison, I would have a hard time believing it.

-------Daily Haiku of the Day-------
Carlos Mencia
Finds new Jokes Hard to Come by,
So he Tells Others'
---------------------

P.S. - In doing my research, I had to listen to a lot of comedy, and have determined that Ralphie May is Freakin' Hilarious!

Movie Tuesday - "Man of the Year", and "The Departed"

Hi Readers!

It's that time of the week again! Time for the Weekly Haiku Movie Review ™ of the Week! This week we take a moment to examine Man of The Year and The Departed.

Man Of The Year - 2 out of 6 stars

This movie was an overall disappointment. It couldn't decide if it was a political satire, a romantic comedy, or a suspense thriller. The worst elements of all of them were there. The acting was as good as it could be given the terrible, terrible script, but even a great actor (and I really like Laura Linney) can't make a ridiculously unbelievable situation believable.

Robin Williams pulls out Moldy-Oldy jokes like the one about about Mama Cass and Karen Carpenter (If they'd only shared that ham sandwich they'd both be alive today), and even tells jokes that he has already used on film in his other movies!

“God must have an odd sense of humor to put an amusement park so close to a waste disposal area”
-Robin Williams as Andrew Martin in Bicentennial Man

"People say Intelligent Design, we must teach Intelligent Design! Look at the human body, is that intelligent? You have a waste processing plant next to a recreation area!"
-Robin Williams as Tom Dobbs in Man of the Year

------- Haiku Movie Review ™ -------
Have you heard the one
About the Politician?
Yeah, I thought you had.
----------------------------------

If you are a Fan of political comedy, a la The Daily Show, don't watch this movie.

Come to think of it, if you are NOT a fan of the Daily Show, don't watch this movie either.

The Departed - 5 out of 6 stars.

Wow! Strap yourself in for this one! This movie knows exactly what it is; It's a violent, edgy, foul-mouthed, spooky, star-packed, cat-and-mouse suspenseful crime drama as apparently only Martin Scorsese can do. If you watch it like I did, with absolutely no idea what to expect, the first fifteen minutes of the movie are a whizz of fast cutting from one scene to another, moving forward through about fifteen years of exposition in fifteen minutes of film. Like I said, strap yourself in.

This movie made me think. About judging people, about true heroism, about compromise, about how I never, ever, want to move to Boston. I found myself wishing after the movie that there could really be anyone in this world as brave and heroic as William Costigan Jr.

Mark Wahlberg, in his role as Staff-Sergeant Dignam, the most vulgar, antisocial, and obnoxious human being on the face of the earth, gets to deliver some of the movie's most memorable lines. Unfortunately, I can't repeat a single one of them in mixed company. Here, edited for decency, is one of his short exchanges.

Dignam:(annoyed at the surveillance cameras' "blind spot") This is unbelievable.. who put the [bleep]ing cameras in this place?

Camera Tech: Whoa, who the [bleep] are you?

Dignam: (leaning in close) I'm the guy who does his job; You must be the other guy.

------- Haiku Movie Review ™ -------
The Cops and Killers
Both have Traitors Among Them,
Who will get Sniffed Out?
----------------------------------

If you are wide awake and ready to sit on the edge of your seat for awhile, pop The Departed into the ol' DVD player. You'll be glad you did.

Contranyms

Happy Monday, Blogophiles!

I've gathered you here today to talk to you about the word "Literally"

It grates on the nerves of my inner Grammar-Nazi to hear people misuse the word "literally" so blatantly. (It does NOT, however, literally grate on my nerves, which might literally be torture.) I will start compiling some of the worst cases of "literally" abuse, and I will make sure to post them as I come across them, but there is a doozy of an example in the movie "Man of The Year", starring Robin Williams (tune in for the full Haiku Movie Review tomorrow!)

I regret that I don't have the larger quote in context, but the line was placed on the lips of a television newswoman telling us that Robin Williams' character (A Comedian-turned-politician) had appeared before a joint session of congress where he "Literally brought the house down with laughter" If anyone in the U.S. Capitol building literally "brought the house down" it would be a national tragedy.

People frequently use the word literally for emphasis, in place of the word "really" or "very" or, as the surfers say, "totally"

So if your friend has just frightened you terribly, you might say,

"You scared me to death!"

or, if you want to be more truthful,

"You nearly scared me to death!"

but please don't say,

"You literally scared me to death!"

That last sentence can never be truthfully uttered. Think about it.

But people misuse it this way all the time. As a Matter of Fact, what people quite often mean when using the word "Literally" is its opposite, "Metaphorically", or often "Proverbially". You might be proverbially or metaphorically "up a creek without a paddle", but if someone is telling you that you are literally up a creek without a paddle, you are almost definitely not. Unless the person telling you this is in a creek with you.

While literally is often misused to mean its opposite, there is a class of words that are, in some context, their own opposite. These are usually multi-purpose words that can be used as nouns or verbs, like the word "seed". The word "Seed", used as a verb, means, in the context of "Seeding a lemon" means "to take seeds OUT". However in the context of "Seeding a lawn", the word "Seed" distinctly means "To put seeds IN"

Some folks gathered a list of words that have this peculiar characteristic, and labeled them "contranyms" - words that are their own opposite.

As my wife and I discussed this the other night, I pondered deeply. I thought, this sort of raises the question of what "Opposite" means. Not everything has an opposite. For instance what is the opposite of "Animal"? Is it "Vegetable"? "Mineral"? "Spirit"? "Man"?. We think of Black and white as the quintessential opposites, but what about Red?

On The color wheel, The "opposite" of red is green, and the same applies to stoplights. but on a brightness scale, Bright Red is the opposite of Black, which is not the opposite of Red, But White, as we all know... "So" I wondered aloud, "What is the opposite of "Red"?

To which my slightly-sleepy wife said, "deR"

It took me a minute. Think about it. My wife is a genius.

---------------daily haiku of the day-------------------

I'm All For Free Speech,
But I do expect you to
Follow Grammar Rules.

--------------------------------------------------------