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This is a fluffier book than Bonk or Stiff both grounded in a reality that's going to be a lot harder to nail in a book about research into the afterlife. Amongst other things Roach takes a look at ectoplasm, EVP that's the people that listen to noise and claim to hear things, past lives,attends a class in the UK on how to be a medium. She also looks at the science of testing "psychics" like DuBois and other cold readers that are cynical ,delusional or both ( my bias). That blunt an answer is something this book isn't going to provide for you but it's probably a good thing that she's not attempting to do that. She's a very entertaining writer,her footnotes amusing,and there's real science to follow up on. I just didn't learn as much as her prior works since it's hard to accumulate a body of evidence for life after death when all we have is evidence of bodies.

Fans of things Whedonesque  have got a lot to be thankful for.  This show may be instructive on proving that  Unions still have a use :) That point is  that whenever a sea change in technology ,be it media or  improvements to manufacturing , education ( yeah right)  they  are always present in the role of societal Canute.   I will grant you their role had value back in the early days but    in the latter half of the 20C it's been all about maintaining their power from that point  on , the organization  uber alles.  I digress but this show is a product of the WGA  strike and rumblings on  who gets paid  what  in relation to online content from both sag and aftra.  There's a great post on that here from the closest thing to an objectivist I think you'll find in media ( I saw closest as I am agnostic about their existence;)  

Anyway this is a mini web series , three episodes, and other than  note that anyone I know  already has this , so , so   who the hell am I telling?   Frak that .  

Think live action Venture brothers with a tad of Pinky  tossed in.  Seeing Captain Mal, er Hammer  again  rocks as the "œgood "œ  guy that wants to take the heroine  on a tour of a VW's rear , you know somewhere uncomfortable was great. It's not like most web shows , ephemeral to the power of mayfly   , you truly can  watch  and sing along more times that may be healthful:)   Don't be horrible,  buy this , don't rip it off as I want to see more, more more!

I swear my fellow diners at hospital canteens look in better shape than the mass that "meats" for late lunch at this location. This wasn't just a gray tide but a few human buoys had popped in too. Please withhold the " don't be so judgmental" holier than though attitude , this is a review after all.

Lately I have been working remotely ( or remotely working) on the Friday so I've been going out on Fridays for lunch since it's all "new" to me. The same places that I eat out at in the evening often have vastly different characters during the day and this Black Angus throws it into sharp relief. For example at night I have never been served stale bread.

Have a wide range of ages , group sizes and noise levels and there's some life in the place. Chilis that just opened up nearby and seems to have kidnapped the life leaving a quiet, genteel even , location that would be more fitting in the deep south when you don't have anything better to do. So far this is the only local place that exceeded my hour.

Food's ok , fitting with the price range and the burgers are well appointed, cooked to request and relatively tasteful. Fries tepid and it feels likelike the minimums you have to do to keep the blue rinse and Caddy driving class happy is all they are about. The only thing hip about this place is the replacement joints.

Coffee seems to have been held on life support and brought out when some unsuspecting fool that refuses to believe in coffee only being a morning drug. Usually the surroundings don't bug me but it felt like the Hometown Buffet , which I can live with until you give me stale bread past it's sell by date which I fear may a fitting epitaph for this place within daylight hours

More reviews over at Yelp.

I can see a JoCo song  / mashup for this little guy.   But I digress.

It's really going to be the future soon.  Wall-E  is one future but let's me just say that  I have nothing to add to the   97% rating that he's enjoying over there on Rotten Tomatoes.

Why this movie works for me.

Wall-E has more character than the prior Pixar incarnations because you come to him pure, he doesn't need to fit into car shape, rat shape, fish shape or any of the pre existing personalities from the toy box. 700 years of exposure to our ephemera and the worst that happen to him is show tunes. ( maybe the right wing folks had a point;) )   Wall-e  being seen as  antithetic  to the humans that made him is a point made in many  reviews  has been annoying me.

I  have to be simplistic here and claim that the  US division of thought  falls into right /left wing ideologies ( basically the same fundamental idiocy that reaches divergent conclusions on how it's best to steal from others for their own benefit, a setup you may  know  better as democracy.) 

This movie has been seen as  a massively pro environment/ anti capitalist movie  by both ends of the moebius strip  so I find myself on familiar ground  in the contrarian position that both sides are wrong.

So in my usual  Socratic ( that means avoiding having to actually solve shit;) )  manner  I have some questions and observations about both side.

1) How is this movie anti capitalist?  The  monopoly position is not practically achievable in capitalism without the intervention of the state and BnL didn't get that way without help.

2)  How is Wall-e not a reflection on those that created him, how can we be the bad guys in this piece?   Humans  made it to  space,  they made a fricking society that looks pretty close to socialism ( cradle to grave all needs met)  and it pretty much looked like what the  left has wanted to sell us for decades.  They also tried to solve the problem. 

3) The bit I really don't like.   Farming. We get to the stars  I  and the idea that  we circumvent millennia of improvements to go back to  nature. As if to think that  farming is a default human condition.

I was brought up on a farm have a non romantic view of animals(  unlike the Welsh) and have managed to escape the daily need to hunt food, shelter and the myriad other niceties of living pre dentistry , pre anesthesia  and pre Tetris.  The environment, would it help to call it location? in Wall-e is a background and necessary for his existence, character development.  Basically the framework isn't built to hang your ideas of the world on and  both sides do this movie a disservice by trying.

To end on a rant.

People that find this liberal really need to get a dictionary and perspective. The root of conservative means what again? It's more than a greeny trope and can just as easily be seen as an indictment on a socialized system that keeps people stupid , fat and reliant on the state ( corp) from cradle to grave. Seriously politics are what's stopping most of you from enjoying one of the more touching love stories/ characters in the last few years.

Why bother saving our place on this planet if this is the kind of thought that we're preserving?

Ah yes I remember this game, Mikrogen's "everyone's a wally" but not everyone this weekend was a Wall*e as Wanted took down some serious money too. Interview with director on ,Daywatch, his prior movie {seesmic_video:{"url_thumbnail":{"value":"http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/YwsQw7epV7_th1.jpg"}"title":{"value":"Wanted "}"videoUri":{"value":"http://www.seesmic.com/video/LPxLZ2nr1k"}}}

In a prior post  I related a fun non dining experience we had at a local restaurant.  Well I chatted with the franchise office and  their expectations  re what happened.      Found out the troublesome waitress had left   and that they acknowledged the  staffing/ management issues which they  had corrected but the changes were yet to be evident. Anyway  they invited us to have the meal we tried to get prior.  Usually when we get shafted this bad we've told people that  no amount of free food is going to cut it,  e.g   we're just letting them know why we're leaving.   This time I acquiesced since , we like their pizza. I've been to  2 more of their stores regularly ,dinner and lunch,  and this was  hopefully an aberration. 

Well the good news is the meal was  very good.  Pizza rocks,  wings are desperately average with nothing to recommend them but their fries were good and the kid loved them.  So  far so good.  I updated my prior scathing review but will   go a couple of times   paid before making up my mind. 

Written in less time than it took  Marillion's  Grendel to play.. about 17 minutes.

Two movies with heavy CGI that I've been "forced" to watch at the behest of ,what's occasionally referred to as my better half  contained Lara Crotch, I mean Angelina Jolie and both left me annoyed.  I could have watched  "no country for old men" but no ,  3d or not 3d that was the offer.  Wrong Joel E (than)  sadly. Apart from that monstrous pun  let's ready to diss this Dane.

Grendel... supper's ready. *

Technically I liked it, best dragon yet,  though there's a tendency towards too many "oo loook pointy" moments.Drawing attention to the 3D detracts from the movie,if you have to remind me it's in 3d then somethings gone wrong in the story department. Oh and if we're really going to innovate  drop the suspense shots that telegraph what's going to happen. geez, just add a fucking double take for the character's as Grendel bursts into Heorot.

In short the first half can be summed up as Happpy, drinky ,maudlin , screamy , Shouty, schemy, lusty, sleepy , fighty,  repeat.  Intersperse with a rapper's vocab on how cool you are,  and that you are indeed Beowulf.  Usual look into man's failings, who is  really a monster are present , but it's like watching a video game cut scene that you'd be  pressing triangle furiously on to skip the dialog and get to the kick ass dragon ending.

Keeping on the  theme  Beauty and the beast here's a couple of reviews that  may help.

From the  Flick Filosopher

:: rogerebert.com :: Reviews (xhtml)

*I had four cars named Grendel. My road home was along country lanes and the numbers of rabbits mowed down by my earth rim walker ( mostly accidentally )  led to the name.

Hell's donkey's. It's not Run Jason Run since thankfully it's linear and there's no need to relive it another two times( unless you had the misfortune to see the prequels) The first above 90% review on Rotten Tomatoes that I disagree with. That this is called intelligent thriller would seem to suggest a population too stupid to not keep voting for wars ( that would mean by voting either side) oh wait I'd better stop.:D Smart? I'm sorry but pointing out that most trained killers volunteer for this is hardly intelligent, it's a gee duh! Then again most of the country believes that doing so is the highest civic good. Smart? There's a reason Quis custodiet ipsos custodes isn't exactly a revelation. Visual flair does not equal unlocking a tripod and whip panning the audience into oblivion. There's a scene, a continuous take with Tony Jaa that show's exactly what's possible and yes the impacts lost on You Tube but I really can't stand violence choppy , fragmented and then it's carried over into cars. The Director must not have seen the amazing work on "Children of men" and decided that the real world is shaky, really shaky. It's like trying to watch a hammer work out it's relationship to a nail. The Bourne Ultimatum - Rotten Tomatoes

Looks like this thing couldn't catch a cold in the artic while wearing a wet woolen bra and an icicle dildo...

Microsoft OneCare Bombs Out In Antivirus Test - WinPlanet Windows Software Reviews

Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare antivirus software came in dead last in an evaluation of 17 antivirus programs in the AV Comparatives Web site's bi-annual software roundup. It runs its on-demand tests every February and August to test how well antivirus software detects known threats.

My alarm woke me up this morning.  That's not exactly a statement that's interesting , surprising or makes you want to read further so I suppose I should add more detail . My alarm woke me up at 220am  , was set for 525 ,  and not with the alleged super loud tone  it can produce  but the sound of a relay unable to decide which direction to go in life and rapidly clicking like a preteen with headphones playing at their xbox.

 I would tell you the exact time of death  but for reasons that should be obvious   I had no clock.

So ends the most expensive alarm clock I have ever purchased and the ONLY  one that has died on me. The tone generated by this thing, along with the flashing light, wasn't so much an awakening  it was rude.   I hate alarm clocks , all of you,  you're bastards  the idea that we still have to arrange ourselves  into work patterns based on  last centuries needs pisses me off but seems unavoidable the lower, or higher up the chain you get.  

Link to Sonic Boom Alarm Clock - loud alarm clock with optional bed vibrator and lamp flasher