And So, Taco Bell Makes the First Salvo in What Will Be the End of the Fast Food Wars

I think Taco Bell has finally unveiled its next-generation weapon in its bid to win the Fast Food Wars. We all know, thanks to Demolition Man, that all restaurants are Taco Bell. What we didn't know was how a place offering third-rate tex-mex food could possibly beat out the considerable allure of the golden arches.

Wonder no more. Behold, the Dorito Taco!

Having recently purchased this genius invention, I can attest that it is just as good as you may imagine it is. I think the competitors can consider themselves put on notice.

Sooooo goooooood

Also, Stacy has never seen Demolition Man, an oversight I feel obligated to resolve. She doesn't even know about the three seashells!

Two

Hm, where to start? Let’s see, I think we’ll go back a few months. Stacy and I have known for a long time that we have another daughter that’s missing from our family. Don’t ask me how we know it, we just do. Yes, I can see that look in your eyes and the answer is, we are crazy indeed. There, glad we’ve established that. Let’s move on.

Back in late January, Stacy and I thought that since neither of us was getting any younger we should try to have that last daughter. A few days later, we realized the error of our ways. Stacy still had an internship to complete for school as well as a couple more classes. The timing just wasn’t right. So we stopped trying and started preventing pregnancy again.

I tell you that story so you can have a good laugh at the next one.

Let’s fast forward to mid-February. We find Stacy gleefully holding onto a secret and desperately trying to get me to be bothered by the fact. Stacy hates that I don’t care about secrets. Here’s a little secret of my own. I don’t care because I know how bad Stacy is at holding onto secrets. Shh, don’t tell Stacy. This one, in a roundabout way, had to do with an order she placed with Thinkgeek. She broke down before the package could even arrive, which is pretty funny because Thinkgeek is local and their shipping rarely takes more than a couple of days. Instead of waiting, she sent me a link to the item she ordered, this one: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/bc2c/

Yup, that’s a maternity shirt. I was a bit surprised. I knew Stacy could get pregnant if I looked at her funny, but I didn’t think we’d make it in that small one-week window. Hah! We didn’t. It turns out that Stacy was pregnant a couple of weeks before we even started trying. That’s right, Stacy’s body laughs at the pill and condoms combined. One of these days, someone will explain to me what it is that causes pregnancy.

I’m excited. I know adding another child to our family will be a challenge. We still have to get Stacy through an internship so she can get her Master’s degree. I’m confident that we’ll be able to make things work. There’s certain to be some tough times ahead, but we can handle it.

Little did we know exactly what was in store for us.

Stacy’s first OB/GYN appointment was at the end of February. We’d held off telling anyone about her fragile condition* until we knew the pregnancy would hold and the baby was healthy. Dr. Nance, Stacy’s OB/GYN since Zoe was born, couldn’t believe we were going to have another. But, since Stacy is his favorite patient, he seemed to be on board.

Nance ran through all the preliminary stuff once Stacy made herself comfortable on the table**. Then he broke out the ultrasound machine. As he moved it to focus on the right spot, a very strange thing showed up. It registered, but I was too incredulous to believe it. That is, until Dr. Nance said, “Uh, there are two babies in there.” My jaw dropped.

What was Stacy’s first reaction? She hauled off and smacked me in the chest and exclaimed, “I hate you!” She was smiling, though, so I don’t think she was serious. Well, not 100% serious at least. I hope.

I passed the rest of the appointment in mild shock, grinning like an idiot. Two? That’s what Stacy and I continue to say to one another. Any time it’s quiet and our minds wander inevitably back to the twins growing in her womb, one of us will turn to the other and say that simple word and then shake our heads in mock disbelief. Two.

So here we are now. Stacy and I were planning on having five kids, but we overshot the mark. Heaven help us if at least one of them isn’t that little girl we’re waiting for.

* Now there’s a contradiction, fragile Stacy.

** There’s another contradiction, comfortable OB/GYN table. At least, so I’ve heard.

Ten Cent Repair

Ah, house repair. Nothing conjures the image of a cursing dad better than those words.

...dumb, frattin', housesnickle viper!

While I didn’t have to struggle with a rassafrassin’ furnace, I did have to fix our disposal. Somehow, someone* dropped a dime in the garbage disposal.

Not a pay phone

Naturally, this deposit into the First National Bank of Kitchen Appliances went unnoticed until the disposal was switched on. After some entertainingly distressing noises, the garbage disposal ground to a halt. Upon close inspection, the dime was revealed to have snuggled down into a cozy spot between the spinning bottom plate and the inner wall of the disposal. The spin of the plate managed to wedge it under a small bump of metal, encasing it both on top and bottom.

Secure in its Fortress of Solitude, the dime feared no interference from nefarious ne’er do wells

Stacy and I struggled with the dime for a while, but it was well and truly jammed. I determined that no less than removing the disposal to get into its innards would free the dime from its cozy new home. Not having the energy or time, I did one of the things I do best, put it off for later.

Or never, whatever

We lived the next few weeks with no disposal. It seemed that any time I was ready to work on the sink, either it was full of dishes or the dishwasher was running. Oh, also I was lazy. The stars finally aligned today and I was determined to vanquish the rogue coin. I armed myself with a bucket full of wrenches, screwdrivers, and clamps. One of us was going to walk away from this a victor, with the disposal possibly becoming collateral damage.

A few scraped knuckles and some under-the-breath curses later and I had freed the disposal from its hoses, clamps, and power lines. All that remained was the offending money. Stacy managed to pry the dime away from the inner wall with a screwdriver while I turned the baseplate manually. A few more minutes and curses and I was able to grab the dime with a needle-nose vice and haul it out.

The offending dime

The dime was somewhat worse for the wear, but I had high hopes for the disposal. It spun freely using the manual key at the bottom. The riskiest part was still ahead, installing it so there were no leaks and no crossed wires. Amazingly enough, the reinstallation went pretty smoothly with Stacy’s help. We flipped the switch and heard the sweet music of the disposal spinning, ready to macerate anything we dumped into it, barring dimes, of course.

In and done!

*Living in a house with four kids, “someone” could be anyone, and yet is never one of the people I ask.

Zzzzzzz…snort! Huh? Wuzzat?

Oh, sorry. I nodded off there for a second. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, Easter Eggs.

Wait a second, that was two years ago! Hm, maybe I should get a little more current.

I’m afraid I am resurrecting this blog on a very sad occasion, the passing of a member of the family. She had been with me before I even met Stacy. We’ve been across the country together. I’ve spent good times and bad times with her. I’ve spent more money than I care to recall to keep her happy over the years. She was fairly young when we first met, but we grew up together. I will always remember her as my first.

Mourners gathered in the hundreds to pay their respects

I am, of course, talking about my ’95 Ford Probe, affectionately named Nikki. She has gone on to the Automobile Elysium Fields, to race rice burners off the line. I had hoped to keep her until we broke the 200k mile mark. We were only 38k away when she was taken from me.

An artist's rendering of the victim

It was dark on that fateful January evening. The skies were clear and the temperature unseasonably warm for a winter day. The roads were empty as we zipped down the Dulles Greenway at a healthy 65 MPH in the center lane. I had just hung up my handsfree with a friend who urged me to drive safely. “Hah!” I replied, “I love driving at night, no traffic.” How could I know that those words would come back to haunt me so soon. I was nearing the exit for Old Ox Rd., just one exit away from the toll plaza that would let me out onto Route 28, a road from which I would sooner expect tragedy than the Greenway. I spied a full-sized snowplow on the left shoulder up ahead. It seemed he was preparing to merge into the left lane. Thinking nothing of it, I continued on my merry way while trying to impart some scholarly wisdom to my oldest daughter over the handsfree as she struggled with her homework at home.

Just a mere moment later, time seemed to slow down. The snowplow hadn’t stopped at the left lane, it began turning sharply as if heading for the right shoulder or Old Ox exit. By then it was too late to swerve to miss it on the left, so I gunned Nikki’s engine, laid into the horn, and started drifting to the right. My hope was as he heard the horn, the driver would get back into the left lane and a crisis would be averted. It was a vain hope. He didn’t hear me and continued on his path of destruction. I continued drifting over, past the right lane and into the shoulder. It seemed like I was going to make it, just barely.

The snowplow’s front edge gouged into my door, flinging off the outside panel and leaving it as a twisted heap on the side of the road. Nikki sailed into a spin. Reacting as quickly as I could manage, I steered into the spin and brought the car to a stop halfway in the right lane and shoulder, facing traffic.

It’s funny the things that go through your head during events like these. I calmly thought that it was about time I was in a serious accident. I have had a blessed driving history up until this point with nothing but a couple of fender benders at very low speeds. Meanwhile, Vicki had continued sharing her homework conundrum, oblivious to my LeBouf-inspired, “Nonononono!” shouted from my end. I got her attention and had her put Stacy on the line. I told her what happened and then hung up to deal with the aftermath.

Alternatively, Gogogogogogo! or Movemovemovemove!

The snowplow driver came up to my door to make sure I was okay. I was shaken a bit, but other than that seemed fine. He helped push me into the shoulder. As I tried to get out to survey the damage, I noticed the door wouldn’t budge. Still not thinking clearly, I gave it a heave with my considerable bulk and forced it open wide enough for me to exit. Had I thought about it, I would have climbed over to the other side, since forcing the door open meant that it would not close again, rendering the car completely undriveable (that is too a word, Word.)

In photo: Nikki, not pictured: Nikki's door

The other driver was pretty badly shaken. I tried to reassure him that I was okay and that things could have been much worse. As we waited for a state trooper, I got a better look at the carnage. My door was practically a taco shell now. It had ended up about 100 yards away, in the shoulder. As Casey said later, Nikki’s insides were now her outsides. The plow hit the fender lightly before gouging into the door and ripping the panel off, but other than the bent hinge and missing panel, the car was fine.

Yup, something like that

We exchanged information through the state trooper that showed up later. Stacy arrived on the scene shortly after. The tow truck wasn’t too far behind. All told, we were out on the road for about an hour. As the driver hauled Nikki up in the tow truck, I was hit by a wave of sadness. I had a feeling that I had just enjoyed my last drive with her.

Forlorn

My fears were confirmed three days later as the snowplow’s insurer informed me that it would be a total loss, the cost to repair being much greater than her value. I was told to retrieve my personal effects and prepare for Nikki to be totaled.

As Stacy and I drove away from the tow lot with my things in the back of the van, we reminisced about all the good times with Nikki. I proposed to Stacy in that car. We brought home our firstborn in the backseat. We’d driven through many states with her. She was my first car. While I got away with some aches and pains, Nikki was not nearly as fortunate. I hate the fact that I’ll never get to drive her again. Rest in peace, Nikki. I’ll never forget.

The face of destruction

Easter Hunt & Dye 2010

The McCoards joined us for Easter egg dyeing and hunting on Saturday. Stacy went light on the eggs this year, only buying 6 dozen.(!) We decided not to hide the freshly-colored eggs this year and went with plastic eggs outside. Oddly enough, the postage-stamp-sized yard we have didn't leave the Easter Bunny with many choices for hiding places.

House of Wax

We went to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in Washington, DC this morning with Vicki's Girl Scout troop. The kids had a great time posing with the figures. They even got to get their hands cast in wax. I did mine in the only pose I could, Web-shooting Spider-man style, in red wax, naturally. The figures were actually so realistic that it was a bit creepy. If you looked right at their eyes in their line of sight, it seemed like they were about to come alive and start talking. I don't have pics of the wax hands yet, but here's a nice big slideshow of the rest.

Accident Prone?

My traffic accident this morning all started with the funky colors appearing on my cell phone screen.

Yup, another accident caused by a cell phone, though this one is a little more convoluted than the usual. About a month ago the gorgeous display on my cell phone went wonky. Images looked solarized and there would often be flickering bands of color across the screen. As fun as it is to own a psychedelic freak-out phone, I'd rather have normal colors and images, thenkyewveddymuch. HTC (the manufacturer) recommends on their site to perform a hard reset to fix this problem.

Blech, that means losing everything I've installed, including the custom pain-in-the-ass theme I've had since I first messed with the phone. Well, if I had to reset it back to factory specs, I figured I might as well upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 at the same time. Since there was no official ROM of WM 6.5, I had to use a "cooked" ROM from the HTC Fuze community. I opted for one that also had the newer, slicker TouchFlo 3D 2, the pretty UI that sold me on the Fuze in the first place. I grabbed a beta version that a nice ROM chef had cooked up and went through the lengthy process of installing it on my phone.

It was sweet, too. The interface looked great, WM 6.5 had some nice new features and updates. I was enjoying it for a while. Then, I noticed that I wasn't getting notifications from calendar items or text messages. Well, that could be a problem since I rely on my phone both as my schedule-keeper and a communication device. I ran into a few other bugs with the cooked ROM that eventually made me realize that it just wasn't ready for prime time. Also, the hard reset hadn't fixed the color problems.

I knew that I'd have to restore to factory settings if I wanted to fix the color problem via the ridiculously expensive warranty I opted for the phone. Shoulders slumped in defeat, I went about reinstalling the old ROM. Well, not quite. HTC had released an updated ROM for WM 6.1 one with a couple of features I wanted, such as FM Radio and means to program the useless PTT button. Since it was official, I could still get the phone repaired under warranty. If possible, restoring the phone was even more of a pain in the neck than putting on the cooked ROM.

BUT! I had the FM Radio. Little did I know that it wouldn't work without a wired handsfree set. Apparently, that acted as the radio's antanna. I just so happened to have one, though, so I decided to head out this morning with the handsfree and try out the radio. I got it going in the car before I started driving, all safe-like. However, the darn thing could only pick up one station. Meanwhile, my car stereo picks up more stations than I have presets. WTH? I figured it was because of my location, so as I drove, I'd click the channel surf button every once in a while.

I continued doing this until I reached the Manassas intersection on 28 near the CVS. As I looked down to see what station, if any, the surfing had landed me, the car ahead slammed on his brakes. We had just barely started to move with the traffic, so I couldn't have ramped up to more than 5 MPH. I was going too fast to avoid bumping him, though.

Dammit.

Luckily, he and I had the presence of mind to pull into the CVS parking lot rather than ruin thousands of other people's days by sitting in the middle of the road. Neither of us were hurt, thank goodness. His (already damaged) bumper had two bolt-shaped dents in it where my license plate pressed into it. I mentally crossed my fingers that he would be willing to overlook it and we could keep the insurance out of the situation. No luck. He insisted on exchanging information and told me he'd call them after he got situated in the morning.

Dammit.

He seemed like a level-headed fella. He said his concern was that the bumper had been pressed in beneath the outer facade and might require work. My concern is that my premiums will go up, I'll lose any safe driving discount I may have had, and an accident will be on my insurance record.

Dammit.

Meanwhile, the graceful curve of my front end is now marred by the license plate bolts being driven deeper into the bumper.

What a great way to start the day.

At Odds with Life

During the course of any given day, it seems like I come at odds with a variety of inanimate objects. It's not just general clumsiness, though I'm sure I have plenty of that as well. It seems that inanimate objects go out of their way to frustrate, annoy, damage, or dismember me.

Today's example:
While driving back to work from picking up lunch at Chick-Fil-A, I had just disconnected my headset after talking with Stacy. In the process of grabbing my phone from its case, I managed to jar my drink with my elbow. This wasn't your everyday jar, though. No! I jarred with such ninja-like precision that only the maximum amount of mess could be the result. Through whatever confluence of events these inanimate objects seem to thrive under, the straw managed to place itself right under my elbow. No big deal with a paper cup. It would be just a little bit of pain in the elbow and a mild expletive and I'd be on my way. No, this was a Chick-Fil-A cup, made of styrofoam with a convenient break-away bottom and break away it did! My center console was covered in cookies and cream shake. I'm sure the gods of misfortune were cursing the fact that it wasn't a sticky soda.

"Ha ha! That's unfortunate, Scott!" I hear you say.

"Shut up, jerk!" I reply.

I set some napkins under it and mopped up the mess, all while driving mind you (don't worry, it's all in the reflexes, let it never be said that I'm not a safe and concientious driver. What? I'm not? What I was doing was the exact opposite of safe and concientious? Well, darn.) I quickly ate my fries so I could get something more solid under the mangled, jagged whole in the styrofoam and the gooey, dripping mess of shake. I then attempted to put the whole combination back in the bag so I could carry it easier. Naturally, the angle and dagger-sharp point of the bottom of the fries containter sheared right through the paper bag. I thought it was odd to see them grinding the edges of the fries containers on a whetstone in the drive-thru. This left me clutching the bag and cup awkwardly to keep the rest of the contents from spilling out on the way to my desk.

I'm a winner!

undeadWe Tshirt Numbered for Gaming

undeadWe Tshirt Numbered for Gaming, originally uploaded by chopshopstore.

Any undead fans want to take a crack at naming the characters on Chop Shop's latest awesome "We" shirt? I need to get me the whole collection.

Sure, He Can Talk the Smacketh, but Can He Sing?

Yup, another sporadic post on what used to be a less-sporadically updated blog. I've been having problems finding the time and inclination to post lately, not sure why.

But you didn't come here to listen to me whine about updating a blog that no one reads! You came here to see Thor's version of the Rubber Ducky Song*!

Rubber Duckie thou’rt the one,
Thou makest bathtime lots of fun,
Rubber Duckie I am awfully fond of thee,
Vo-vo-dee-o!

Rubber Duckie, joy of joys,
When I squeezeth thee, thou makest noise,
Rubber Duckie thou’rt my very best friend it’s true!

Oh, every day when I maketh my way to the tubby
I findeth a little fellow who’s cute and yellow and chubby!
Rub-a-dub-dubby!

Rubber Duckie thou’rt so fine,
And I am lucky that thou’rt mine.
Rubber Duckie, I would loveth a whole pond of,
Rubber Duckie, I am awfully fond of thee!

Oh, every day when I maketh my way to the tubby
I findeth a little fellow who’s cute and yellow and chubby!
Rub-a-dub-dubby!

Rubber Duckie thou’rt so fine,
And I art lucky that thou’rt mine,
Rubber Duckie I am awfully fond of thee!

* Somehow, during our sorting of his comics last night, Jon and I got on the subject of Thor's bathtime ducky. Don't ask me how, it just happened. This is the product of that conversation.

Movies for People that Hate Themselves

What's that? A blog, you say? No. I don't have a blog. I think that if I had a blog, I'd know.

Oh. Well look at that, a blog. It's mine, you say? I used to update it sporadically? Huh, how about that. I guess I'll get to it, then.

Having never had a real theme for this blog, I sometimes lapse into long periods of inactivity punctuated by brief posts with viral videos and such. It happens. Most likely because even when I have time to update the blog, I'm easily distracted.

Oh! Look! A shiny Internet! No, wait, I was doing something, what was that? Ah yes, the blog.

Well, still lacking a coherent theme, I might as well add another entry into my semi-regular-but-mostly-sporadic movie reviews. This one is a rare gem as I review not a recent blockbuster, but an older flop.

Jon and I have been reading a column on The Onion's AV Club site called, "My Year of Flops" in which the author, Nathan Rabin, reviews, well, flops. Some he marks as secret successes, those that were critically and publicly panned but shouldn't have been written off. Others he labels as fiascos. Those are failures that not just failed, but failed spectacularly, giving the viewer some schadenfreude at the very least, I suppose. The last category is just plain dismal failures.

Rabin's reviews are pretty entertaining. I highly recommend checking out the archives. His review of the fiasco "Lady in the Water" prompted Jon and I to check the movie out last night, albeit with an excellent iRiff from Rifftrax.com to accompany us, shielding us from the worst of M. Night Shamblingplot's excesses.

For those of you interested in avoiding spoilers and wasting another precious portion of your time today, here's my summary from my Facebook status last night after watching the movie.

"Watching 'Lady in the Water' is like having M. Night Shamalamadingdong slam you repeatedly in the face with a crayon-written tome of plot."

I suppose there is a fine line between subtly leading your audience along the strands of your plot until you've got them hopelessly ensnared in an intricate web of allusions, symbolism, and tantalizing hints and just laying your plot bare, tweests and all, for the audience to see from the beginning. M. Night Chamois does not walk this line. He doesn't just cross it, either. He pole-vaults past the point of beating the audience with blatant symbolism, sticks the landing in the realm of bludgeoning the audience with every obvious plot point, and leaps up, chest welling in pride as he waits for the applause that will never come from an audience too bored to care about his self-aggrandizing back-patting.

Right! The review! So Paul "Sadsack" Giamatti's character, the stuttering and depressing Cleveland Heep (not the most ridiculous name in the movie, honest!) is the super in a dismal apartment building. He finds a narf (almost the most ridiculous) named Story (alias, Bryce Howard Dallas, yes, Opie's daughter) living in the pool. Naturally, he takes her in and clothes her in one of his shirts. Never any pants, shorts, sweats, or any sort of covering on her lower body, just the shirt. Not important, just a head-scratcher after an entire movie. Story is trying to "awaken" a specific human, which involves making him feel tingly inside and filling his head with ideas. Maybe that's why she never wears pants?

Story is fettered in her quest by arbitrary rules that M. Night Sheboygan parcels out whenever he feels the movie is progressing too smoothly. The biggest fetter also holds the dubious distinction of having the most ridiculous name, a nightmarish wolf-like creature made of grass and roots called (snicker) a scrunt.

Yeah, let's take the least assuming, most harmless noun we can think of, runt, add a couple of letters and BAM! You've got a fearsome beast of the night! Sorry M. Night Shaboopie, it's just that everything you do makes my eyes roll up to the back of my head.

Heep is tasked with finding Story's human and, as the retarded plot points are triumphantly slapped down on the table like cards in a $70 million game of gin, Story's special helpers. These include a healer, an interpreter, and a guild. In an epic tweest that we couldn't possibly have seen coming as soon as the characters were introduced one at a time, Heep fails miserably and gathers the exact wrong group of helpers. He does first succeed, however, to find Story's special friend. In a fit of egomaniacal self-insertion, M. Night Sham-WOW! cast himself as the genius writer whose book is destined to change the world. Everything, and I mean everything in this movie is as transparent as that mind-numbing bit of self-congratulatory dickery.

So Heep gets it all wrong and in a complete lack of symbolism and leading the audience (at least, last night's audience) to a complete "about time!" moment, he figures out the real cast of helpers. Our narf, excuse me, madam narf (so much more special than an ordinary narf!) Story gets picked up by the magical antlion (ugh, I wish is was an antlion) I mean Eatlon, or ginormous eagle. The J.G. scrunt (in an uncharacteristic bit of obfuscation, M. Night Shirley never tells us why it's a "J.G." scrunt, it just is, dammit! Hey, maybe that's the real tweest!) is destroyed(? Eaten? Dragged off? Treated to a make-over? I don't know) by the evil law keepers (yeah, solve that cognitive dissonance) the Tartutic (tree-dwelling monkeys made of vines. Don't ask me.)

In the one scene that M. Night Chazzpalminteri could have let symbolism speak for him but instead ruined earlier with more face-slamming foreshadowing, Heep says farewell to the strange pantsless lady from the water, the credits roll, and we will never ever get our 110 minutes back.

This movie hurt me. It was painful to watch. The only joy found here was in the uncommonly good riffing provided by the lovely Tristan, Tracy and Kevin from quiptracks. Thanks for the laughs, guys! I experienced literal pain from laughing so hard at Bill Irwin (Mr. Noodles to the preschool crowd) gobbling like a turkey. I don't think I'll ever see him without thinking of turkeys. I'm actually laughing now thinking about it.

So yeah, I was going to suggest that you never watch this movie. However, if you can snag the iRiff and just watch the turkey scene with Irwin near the end, do it. I give this movie three out of two thousand nine hundred sixty seven balls of gem-crusted healing poo on a scale that I just made up that doesn't mean anything.

Cute Overload!

For those of you that don't know about him, Parry Gripp (YouTube channel, ParryGripp, oddly enough,) is the masterful musician that created The Girl from the Video Game Store for Attack of the Show on G4. For those of you that don't understand any of that, sorry, can't help you.

Those of you that know about AotS, Kevin, and Olivia would probably enjoy the AotS video. However, if you want to see something so cute that your brain asplode, watch on. Parry Gripp is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.

If you don't find yourself singing "Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom," to yourself later today, then I have failed here.

The Earth Opening Up to Swallow Me

Or just my backyard after a couple of weeks without rain? You decide!

Quasi-evil?

Just 60 miles to pure eeeee-ville mileage.

PS3 At Last!

I'm a bit excited to get home tonight. No, Publisher's Clearinghouse won't be waiting at my doorstep with a comicly-oversized check guaranteeing early retirment.

For those of you that don't know, Stacy and I had a deal. I wouldn't plunk the substantial amount of change down to get the PS3 until the next Final Fantasy game came out. When we made the deal way back when the PS3 was released, it was scheduled to come out the fall of 2009. Things changed, as they often do with video game releases (Duke Nukem Never, for instance,) and it's been delayed until Christmas.

However, my company bonus just came and happened to be a little more than Stacy was hoping for to pay bills. My wife, displaying her ever-gracious nature, gave me the green light for the purchase. I ordered the PS3 Tuesday and got it Thursday, how's that for standard shipping?

I got it all hooked up and messed around in the UI for a bit. The PS3 I bought came in a bundle with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, but I didn't have time to get into something like that before bed, so I spent an extra $5 to download PixelJunk Eden. If you have a PS3 and haven't played this game, I highly recommend it. It's a puzzle game of sorts, but doesn't really fall into that classification easily. Regardless, it was a lot of fun messing around with it before bedtime.

Now if only I had an HDTV to enjoy the higher resolutions the PS3 can display. No luck though, The PS3 came with the stipulation from Stacy that the next big purchase would be a refridgerator. Can't say I blame her, either, since ours doesn't exactly freeze things in the summer so much as give them a slight chill. Ice cream is more cream than ice in there, if you get my meaning.

Is It Safe?

This mutant chip emerged from my bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. Luckily, I was paying attention to what I was shoveling into my maw. The dark area appears to be a 1/2" x 1" cheese powder tumor. I'm fairly cerain that consuming concentrated artificial nacho cheese powder in this quantity is fatal.



Hm. Maybe I should sell it on Ebay.

Thoughts on the Cinematic Merits of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I liked it.

Seriously.

I know the movie has been panned critically and by the Transformers nerds online, but I still liked it. You see, the critics and the haters of Michael Bay's Transformers have completely different expectations of the movies than I do.

I went to see giant transforming robots beat the crap out of each other and to see Megan Fox.

I saw those things.

They were good.

That was enough for me. I didn't need masterful plot development, deep characterization, or thought-provoking dialog. As a matter of fact, sometimes I don't want those things and this was one of those times. There were problems with the movie to be sure. Plot holes abound, juvenile fart jokes throughout, etc.

But none of those things could ruin the enjoyment of seeing Optimus Prime take on three decepticons and still kick tailpipe like Chuck Norris with frakking swords for hands.

So, critics, say what you will. I'll probably agree with many of your points, but that won't ruin my enjoyment of the movie. Michael Bay haters, rant all you want, your hatred only gives me power. Oh wait, not power, amusement. The rest of you, set your expectations on eye candy and enjoy the ride!

I give Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen forty-two out of forty-nine wrecking ball testicles on a scale that I just made up that doesn't mean anything.

Their Mere Existence Makes Me Shudder

As learned from the June 12, 2009 Entertainment Weekly

Clash of the Titans remake
Piranha 3-D
Alien Prequel
New Moon

I tossed that last one on there as an afterthought. The first one was so horrible that words can scarcely describe it. Want to see a few more soul-numbing (or exciting! depending on your level of masochism) projects in the works? Check out this site I found on an ill-advised google about movie remakes.

http://www.themovieinsider.com/classic-remakeville/

Vicki to Me Earlier Today

Daddy, what's worse, pink eye or black eye?

That was after Stacy came home from the doctor's diagnosed with pink eye. I think Stacy would rather have a black eye at this point.

Vicki to me today:

"Daddy, which is worse, pink eye or black eye?"

This after Stacy came home from the doctor diagno

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