Oh Sweet Jesus, No!

Ok, I saw they were doing a remake of The Shaggy DA over at Disney and rolled my eyes at the general lack of any kind of creativity, but now they've gone too far! Tonight I saw trailer for a remake of When A Stranger Calls. Just a hint for you all:

"Jill, we've traced the calls. They're coming from inside the house!"

No, I haven't spoiled anything. That crucial plot point is in the trailer to the remake of the crappy old horror movie. They're not even copying good movies any more. WTF?

It's A White Christmas!

So they got snow Friday night here, just for me. Too tired to get any pictures though, :-p When I finally got my car, I drove around in a daze, until I got up to my gram's place. Took a quick nap, did that last minute shopping, had dinner, napped some more before wrapping Christmas presents for the next six hours. Got me some Christmas presents, gave more out and generally ate, drank, and was merry. About to crash now. I'd sleep in, but I'm seeing a friend I haven't seen in about fifteen years or so tomorrow morning.

I hope all my friends are with the people they love and who love them. If I had any wine left, I'd drink a toast to all of them!
Merry Christmas, everyone!

Chillin' In Logan

So, here I sit, cooling my heels in beautiful Logan International Airport. For some reason I thought the flight got in at 6am, but it actually got in at 5. And the rental place doesn't open until 6:30. Feh. Didn't get a whole lot of sleep on the plane. And there's no discernible snow on the ground. Going to be a long day, I can tell.

Is it Christmas Yet?

<yawn> Man, I'm tired. I've been out straight for the past few weeks. If it's not getting ready for Christmas parties or having guests over, there's been shopping, and busting my ass at work. I'm almost there, though. Work work is done for the next week or so. In a few short hours I'm off to the frozen northlands for good times with my friends and family. Gotta go get ready for that.

Narnia Hip Hop Tribute

Aki forwarded me a link to this video and I was rolling with laughter.

We love love the Chronic-
What?
-cles of Narnia!

Movie trivia is the illest!

It's A Christmas Miracle!

I went to Fry's last night and got a new firewire case for the drive that wouldn't mount (with a bunch of un-backed up images on it). Popped the drive into the new case and wham, bam, thank you ma'am, I have a mountable drive! Oh frabjous day! I thought I had lost those files forever! Now for the making of the holiday prints...

Recovery

Whew! I had fourteen people who braved traffic and foul weather to come over for a dinner party last night. Things seem to have gone well. Yummy food and drink and good conversation were in abundance. I even got some gifts! How sweet is that? Now I just have to finish up with the cleaning before I disappear off to Maine. Put away a few things last night before I fell asleep on the couch for eight hours. Something to do with the lack of sleep the past couple of weeks. Hmm, I think I could use another nap. Things I learned:

• Using powdered bread crumbs instead of using a food processor is not an acceptable substitute in my stuffing recipe.
• Aspall draft english cider is really tasty!
• I probably could seat twenty five people in my house with a little effort. But it'd be crowded.
• Lysol sanitized wipes are the shiznit for cleaning!
• There is no way in hell that the beef roast will cook in an hour and a half.

Anyway, I'm really happy people came out had a good time.

Insane in the Membrane

... insane in the brain!

Christ, what a week. Two weeks? I can't even tell anymore. Tired all the time. Deadlines looming over me at work. Flying home soon. And dinner Sunday. Fortunately, I've reached the acceptance stage. Everything will be fine. Cats seem happy enough, so that's good. Ok, back to the chores before I go to bed,

Guitar Hero

So, Carl got a playstation game called Guitar Hero for Christmas that has a guitar shaped input device. It's basically DDR with a guitar instead of a dance pad. It's a pretty fun game. Ended up playing it for like three hours before I realized how late it was. Damn you Sony!

Narnia

Saw Disney's adaptation of the CS Lewis classic last night in Dublin. Other than a few, um, Disney moments, it fully met my Narnia needs. I.e. a fairly literal adaptation, I thought.

Thanks Santa!

So, I found a package from Amazon (one of their proxies, actually) on my doorstep the other day which was a little weird, since I thought I had already received all that I had ordered through them of late. Turns out that it's something on my amazon wishlist. But there's no info attached to indicate who exactly ordered it. So I guess Santa does exist. :-D Thanks for my cool video game Santa!

Music Industry Idiots Shut Down Lyrics Servers

So this guy wrote a little app so that Mac OS X users of iTunes can display lyrics of the song as it's playing. Cool, huh? Well, Warner doesn't think so: they issued a cease and desist order to stop distributing his plugin or get sued. They seem to think sharing lyrics is akin to sharing music. WTF? That's just dumb. [article]

Nooooo! Valerie and Eddie Split

Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen have separated (actually, they evidently did so in 2001). If these fresh faced kids can't make it, who can?? Who will watch over Wolfgang? [article]

NIN, Again

Saw Trent and the boys again, this time in Santa Cruz. Good show, I rocked out thoroughly. Different crowd than Oakland. Not so goth-y, more of a hippy type crowd. (Go figure.) Props to the Deadhead who has moved on from Dead shows (We still miss you, Jerry.) to NIN. And still do the twirly dance. Only faster. Much faster.

High Point: Gave Up Love that song.

A Christmas Story Bunny Re-enactment

Angry Alien Productions (with Starz) has released their latest 30 second bunny movie reenactment: A Christmas Story. Pretty funny stuff.

Dread

So much to do. So little time. Starting to experience periods of paralyzing dread. Which I will counter by blogging. Aiiiii!

Ok. Let's get some shit done now.

Coffee May Help Counter Liver Disease

A new medical study suggests that coffee and tea may help prevent liver disease in in heavy drinkers, the overweight, and people with too much iron in their blood. Hooray! Glad my caffeine intake is good for something other than keeping me away and needing to pee. [article]

New Species of Mammal Found In Borneo?

The World Wildlife Foundation believes it has found a new species of mammal which is somewhat like a lemur with a muscular tail on the island of Borneo. If true, the discovery of the creature somewhat larger than a cat would be pretty big news since new mammal species discoveries are somewhat rare. The bad news is that the reason the animal was discovered was that logging into the dense forest has made access into the forests easier, but also threatens newly found animals. [article]

Aeon Flux

Saw this movie tonight and it sucked considerably less than I expected it to, certainly less than rottentomatoes would lead one to believe. Charlize Theron has that detached, misanthropic attitude I would expect from Aeon. The movie made considerably more sense than the cartoons ever did. If you liked them, you'll probably like the movie. Or at least not hate it. It was a tad slow in spots, though, I thought. Great soundtrack by Graeme Revell.

Uh oh.

It's December! How did that happen???

Speaking of Morals

How about caveat emptor, when purchasing cheap electronics online? Check out this crazy story.

Es Regnete

So I get out of the gym tonight and I'm feeling peckish. No. Hungry. But there wasn't anything decent at work. What to do? After a short bit of pondering I settle on hamburger. Yeah, that's the ticket. There's a burger joint just down the street. I grab my fleece even though I am still warmed up from the workout. However after a bit of banter and gossip with a couple coworkers, I get there right after it's closed. There's a light mist. No big deal. There's another one just a short walk away.

So I go past the pizza joint. And the sandwich shop. And the Indian restaurant. And another sandwich shop. I really wanted a burger at this point.

So I finally get at the not closed burger joint and order my Cisco Kid (1/4 pounder with chili), small onion rings, and vanilla malt. I play some pinball. I read what the hot Christmas gifts the Japanese are giving. Finally my order is up and I jet outside.

Where it is raining. Really raining. I stick close to the buildings (where it's slightly drier) but it's not much use. There's nothing like watching the sheets of rain drifting lazily past the street lights to make you wish you had a raincoat. Or an umbrella. Needless to say, I was quite damp by the time I got back to work. There's probably a moral to this story. Let's say: Keep an umbrella handy.