I wish we all had this kind of an outlet for our opinions.
August 2013 = White history month!
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2006.
Here’s a fascinating little story about how Nestle made KitKat the candy king in Japan. As KitKat is my favorite movie candy (which has disappeared from most theatre chains, the bastards), I applaud their effort. Kitto Katsu!
The North American tour is most likely cancelled.
When did I find this out you ask? When I showed up at “The Chamber” in NYC last night to see them.
So here’s the deal.
My wife works as a technician at a veterinary hospital.
It is owned by a couple.
A couple of guys.
They are married.
To each other.
They ONLY hire gay doctors as apart of their staff. (OK actually there is ONE straight guy in the staff, but I bet he wasn’t hired for his ABILITY!)
Found another goofy, funny voiceover video on Josh Rehman’s blog. This one covers the scene in Lord of The Rings where Frodo wakes up and everyone comes to visit. We finally learn what they’re saying! Safe for work. I think.
Delocator is an independent coffee shop and cafe finder. I have had plans to do something similar for a long time now, albeit a bit more grandiose. I still may go through with them, or perhaps collaborate, but this does the job for now.
It Should Be Outlawed: Men who not only undo their zipper, but also the button and belt on their pants when using a urinal. If you’re over 10 and you have to pull up your pants after taking a leak, you’re doing something wrong. You should’ve figured that out around the time you gained enough coordination to wipe yourself. And I’m seeing engineers do this, for Pete’s sake! It ain’t rocket surgery!
30 years after his introduction, Marvel has finally released an official backstory for Wolverine. It was released in a miniseries (available in TPB) called Origin. The art is quite good, as you’d expect of a work of such importance. Without giving spoilers, it covers his parentage, upbringing, awakening, and passage into adulthood. Some details are given through innuendo, but it’s certainly clear enough for any adult reader with decent comprehension. A few plot points are a bit contrived; the character is fairly complex, and they tried to give an origin/cause for all major character traits and interests. Considering the age of the character (detailed in the book, finally), you’d figure some interests were developed later in life. Still, a must read for any fan, and who isn’t?
Just saw The Ice Harvest, and I have to give it a pass. It’s a film noir/dark comedy, but it’s too much dark and not enough comedy. For a good, relatively modern film noir, try Body Heat or LA Confidential. For dark comedy, try Army of Darkness or Shaun of the Dead.
The following are actual foreign titles for the movie RV:
- U.K.: RV: Runaway Vacation
- Taiwan: The Mission to Relax
- Spain: Vaya Vacaciones (”What a Vacation”)
- Other Spanish-speaking countries: Crazy Vacation
- France, Switzerland and Belgium: Camping Car
This goofy video has apparently been circulating long enough to get a nod in X-Men: The Last Stand (don’t worry, no spoilers). Basically, it’s a bunch of guys recording their own audio track for one of those ’90s era X-Men cartoons. It’s not safe for work, due to profanity. Obviously the cartoon is safe to watch, so I guess it’s fine if you’ve got earphones.
It seems like my luck with food is roughly the same as my luck with television. On the one hand, I pride myself on having simple, but good, taste; on the other, any time I find myself starting to like something, it gets yanked or cancelled. And for every “Andy Richter Controls the Universe,” or “Boomtown” that’s out there, there’s a corresponding food that I’ve enjoyed–some prepackaged, some not–that you can’t find any more to save your life. So here’s my top five:
- Snapple sodas: It used to be you could get something fizzy made “from the best stuff on earth.” Creative flavors, too. In addition to having a credible root beer (ie. good, but not as good as Stewart’s), they had flavors like Peach Melba, Cherry Lime Rickey, and Chocolate soda. Now that I think of it, any chocolate soda I’ve liked, from the Snapple to the inferior one put out by Arizona for a short time, has vanished from the shelves.
- Doritos flavors: It’s bad enough that they changed the formula for Doritos, so much so that they now taste closer to every other nacho chip out there. What’s worse is some of the past types that they don’t make any more. Some varieties’ passing–eg. pizza–I can’t say that I minded so much. But others, like Jumpin’ Jack flavor (much better than the current Pepper Jack) I really miss. The other old favorite, referenced in song* and story, is Taco flavored Doritos. They come and go like an old flame. They’re there for a bit, just long enough to get your hopes up, and then they vanish again, leaving you feeling cheated and just a little pissed.
- Peanut Butter Boppers: I’m not sure quite how to describe these. Think of… uh… well, it looked like a turd festooned with cookie crumbs. Maybe somebody was raiding the Keebler Elves’ outhouse or something. But still, they were tasty, and for a couple of years, I went through them like I now go through cigarettes… probably the reason that I am the fine, strapping specimen that I am now.
- Chicken Gyro, circa 1996: I’m not saying that you can’t walk into practically any place owned/run by Greeks or anyone else from the vicinity of the Mediterranean and get a chicken gyro. I’m saying that this chicken gyro would have made God Himself salivate uncontrollably. This, you see, wasn’t just a bunch of mechanically separated chicken,** formed into a cone and sliced onto a pita with some wilted lettuce, sad onions, and tomatoes stiffer than this morning’s erection. Oh, no. This was marinated chicken chunks, fresh greens, hummus, tabouleh, and tahini, expertly piled onto the pita by some Algerian guy in a little place in East Rutherford that became substandard Sushi takeout soon after. This was the sandwich-as-religious-experience.
- Dinner at Grandma’s: Whether it was fish dinner on Fridays (what do you want from a family of Irish Catholics?), her rice pudding, or a spaghetti that I have tried to duplicate but couldn’t (and this even using the same ingredients, as far as I can remember), I think that this is the one I miss the most. This isn’t to say that my grandmother was Julia Child; but I’ll miss those potato pancakes long after the taste of all the supposed “fine dining” has faded.
*Song, at least: “Fish On” by Primus.
**Like they use in Slim Jims. I shit you not; read the ingredients.
Variety reports that TV advertisers won’t pay for viewers watching the show on a DVR. Right now, those viewers make up only 4% of the audience for the big networks. But I wonder how will they make it up that revenue (i.e., charge consumers) as they lose commercial viewers.
I just learned of last.fm and their Audioscrobbler plugin. Basically, if you have a compatible player, Audioscrobbler will capture everything you play and upload it to the last.fm mothership, where it will create a net radio station with stuff you should like, unless you listen to a lot of stuff you hate. It can also create you charts, hook you up with similar listeners, and offer feeds to embed in web sites or blogs like this one. Sadly, there’s no plugin for Rhapsody, but that already offers RSS feeds (see my page for an example). Rhapsody also has a radio station creator, but it’s pretty weak compared to Pandora’s, and possibly last.fm’s.
I just took Amazon up on their offer for Amazon Prime. If you haven’t ordered from them lately (they pop up the offer every time you check out), it’s basically free 2-day shipping on almost every product (maybe no big appliances?), with no minimums, and you can upgrade to next-day air for $4.
It’s nice to not have to pad your order with crap you don’t need, just to come up with the $25 minimum for free shipping. And then get annoyed that instead of using a slower delivery method for free shipping, they’re delaying shipment for several days. It’s more frustrating to see your stuff sitting in a warehouse than it is to see it being slowly delivered.
The cost for Amazon Prime $80/year, which might not be bad if you’re splitting it among your family. The free trial lasts 3 months. If you want the service, there is a gotcha! If you read the fine print, at the end of your trial, if you don’t quit, you are automatically upgraded to 12 months of service. This means your service is extended by 9 months, not 12, but you still pay the full amount. So take the time to quit before your trial ends, then pick it up on your next order. Then you get 15 months for $80, not just 12.
Tags: ecommerce
Yeah, I haven’t been terribly attentive to the site lately, and nobody else has been picking up the slack (you slackers!). The main reason is that I have been investigating upgrading the blog software, and I’ve decided on WordPress (what, you thought I ran out of things to say?).
For authors, the change will be pretty mind-blowing. I don’t anticipate it to a big adjustment, it will just be easier to do certain things, and will have a lot more potential for kick ass features. One of the WordPress idioms (or that of certain themes) is the “aside”. This is basically a real quick post, just 1-3 lines or so, to give people a heads up. We write some serious content here, and I’d like think that some of it is of journalistic quality (I won’t pontificate on the journal). But that also brings a certain intimidation factor, you feel like you have to write a whole article, edit it, proofread it a couple times, etc. Asides take the onus off the writing process, so you can just write stuff like:
X-Men: The Last Stand was outstanding. Yes, you should see it, and yes, in the theatre! Make it a good one!
See how easy that was? Let’s face it, you don’t need a whole review for a movie like X-Men; people on the fence just want to know it lives up to the hype (it does), and those on the other side of the fence won’t be convinced by your review. They also don’t read this blog, because it would steal time from reading GayCowboyBlog.com, and eating pudding. In short, an aside is something you might preface with “BTW…”. (In fact, putting any post in the BTW category - and only that category - will render it as an aside.) Asides can also have comments, so it’s a quick conversation starter. I’ve often said you should post anything you would email or forward to more than one person, and now that can include quick links.
“Pages” are another WordPress benefit. They are separate from posts, but just as easy to create, and perfect for more permanent content. A prime example is Agent (author) pages - each agent can now write his own bio, and include a link to his personal post archive. If you have Rhapsody, Netflix, flickr, or del.icio.us accounts, it should be easy to include content from those in your page… I originally envisioned this site as an awesome knowledgebase of things we thought kicked ass. Pages allow us to slap together an article collaboratively. Best Restaurants. Best TV Shows. Best Movies. Best Albums. Lists are simple and powerful, and as team members of The Crack Team, we have an obligation to the public to disseminate such vital knowledge. We are saving lives.
There might be other cool features, check out the WordPress site (esp. themes and plugins) and let me know what you think. It may take some doing, but a lot more should be possible.
Also, I’ve started to set up “professional” blogs for various people, including Hulagun, Mystery, Masterchief, ThinkTank1, and myself. These are blogs to discuss serious topics related to your profession, and have domains like firstname.lastname.com. It’s stuff you want your name attached to, and while it probably could go here, I know that few of you who read this are really interested in my take on software development and its industry. If you are, good news, I’m creating a blog for that! And Hulagun will talk about design, Mystery, the entertainment industry, Masterchief, robotics, etc. Anyways, if you are interested, please tell me now whlie I’m setting things up.
Stay tuned for more…