Update #9

Movie News
We watched a few movies the last couple of weeks. We first saw War of the Worlds. I was looking forward to seeing this movie because I had heard of the commotion the radio broadcast made back in 1938. I also read the original novel written in 1898 and I wanted to see how the novel and movie compared.

At first, I was pretty ok with the movie as it seemed to stay true to the original novel. Even though the movie takes place in the 21st century, the plot still seems very 19th century. The aliens, who have planted ships under the Earth for 1 million years (more on this later) decide to return and exterminate all humans.

I'm making an assumption that since these aliens have been around for over 1 million years and have mastered traveling the vast stretches of space, that they are much more civilized than humans. Assuming, that is true, don't you think they could have thought of a slightly better way of getting rid of us? We're the stupid ones and we have figured out a better way to kill ourselves off. Three atomic bombs and that's all she wrote. However, these aliens have to steer several thousands of mechanical robots and shoot beams at all of us so we can get vaporized. For all that work, it seems like the human extermination was more sport than duty.

I let those details go since the novel was written a while back and such machines would've seemed far beyond human capabilities in the 1900's. THEN the screaming started. Spielberg decided to put a family in the movie (this wasn't the case in the novel) and the little girl has some serious issues. Apparently, when she is under stress she vents by wailing like a banshee. The first time I thought it was a good dramatic effect. Since this is an action/thriller movie, she ends up screaming A LOT. Very very annoying. For a brief period of time, I was rooting for the aliens. Chomp off her head!! Then I felt like a traitor to my genus so I decided that maybe she should live after all.

The rebel son causes grief for poor Tom until they have a inappropriate tender moment in the middle of a battlefield. Tom lets the son go fight with the soldiers (who never asked for his help in the first place) and the entire valley gets blown up in a raging inferno. If I were an alien, I would also like my humans well done. Do you know how many diseases they carry? (More on that later)

So the humans are hopelessly outgunned and we have no way of defeating these alien machines. Just like the novel, the aliens start to die off. Why? Apparently, the aliens did not have the biological defenses needed to combat all the germs in the Earth so they slowly began to die off. The novel played the deaths of the aliens MUCH better where the main character would hear these howls of pain until there was only one left, then he figured out what happened.

The major flaw in the movie was that Spielberg made the aliens plant their machines 1 million years ago and then they come over to kill us. 1 million years. That's a long time. Don't you think that they could've had some time to, I don't know, maybe PLAN THE INVASION OUT? Maybe a little alien brainstorming session on what could go wrong? Maybe? Not one genius alien scientist had ever thought of disease? What about giving out some homework problems to high school aliens over in system Zetacrom 4? Let the kids figure it out. Nope. No such forethought on their part. They came, they conquered, they died of VD.

We watched another movie that I own (I own very few) called Following. This is a movie by the same director of Memento (which I also own). This director likes to make you work to understand his movies. Both Following & Memento are told in a very effective but awkward style that keep you paying attention to the plot so you can figure out what's going on.

The movie is in black & white, only 1 hour long and tells the story of how one guy, who is a writer, gets into the habit of following interesting people on the street for a little while so he can have material for his stories. He gets caught following one guy who ends up being a burglar. They both start of teaming up going into peoples homes and taking small stuff. Not burglars for pure profit but burglar for discomfort. They do take some valuables but they also take certain personal effects in order to make the victim feel more violated.

The movie is very good and things get much much more interesting after that but I don't want to give it away. Here's the trailer.

Finally, it has come to my attention that next month, members of Netflix will be able to rent.....Kontroll!!!!

Site Traffic
As I have mentioned before, I know my readership will plunge after Update #10 but I am not above asking for you guys to refer me to others! I need an audience. Speaking of audiences, I took a look at some of the visitors to this blog and I wanted to see how they came to the website. Imagine my surprise when I saw that one guy came here as a result of a Google search. Do you have any idea what search term led him to my page. No lie (I simply am not creative enough to make this stuff up) but this guy was searching for

El Monstro de Babahoyo

WHAT??? ME? A MONSTER? BABAHOYO??? Well, the phrase, disturbing as it may be, did ring a bell. Further research showed that this 'Monstro de Babahoyo' was a serial child rapist & killer. The reason, that I showed up in the search was that this was the subject matter of the movie Cronicas which I had previously reviewed. Phew! I thought I was being framed...

The Kitchen Diaries
Time for an update on the status of my survival & its close relationship to the contents of my fridge. Here is the latest photographic sighting:

As you will see there have been several substantial changes to the refrigerator situation.

1. Of great interest to the dieting crowd (you know who you are), you'll see that the two boxes of cookies are now gone. The dieting crowd will take joy in the fact that these items were of a fat free nature and had Net Carbs of 0. For the rest of us, remember that gustatory pleasure is directly proportional to the quantity of Net Carbs. In other words, Cookies with Net Carbs of 0 taste exactly like unwiped donkey ass (aftertaste included)!

2. The spinach is also gone. Please note that the spinach and the cookies did not end up in the same place. Spinach doesn't keep as well as the 'Net Carb = 0 = Net Taste' cookies. I decided to give up the pretense that I was ever going to eat that particular batch and dumped it.

3. The milk spoiled.

4. The bagels are still there but since I ran out of PB, I wasn't able to consume any more of them.

5. The spaghetti sauce is also still there but on strike on account of non-use.

6. The mashed potatoes have been relocated to the freezer. They have adjusted well and have been there for 2 weeks now.

7. The bread is also gone, much to the relief of the Atkins folks. I make it a point to buy whole grain bread. The last few slices had some funky residue of indeterminate origin. It could've been whole grain related or mold. I decided to play it safe and threw it out.

Epilogue
It has come to my attention, through sources that I have refused to name to the Federal Justice System, that the bread & spinach are now co-habitating in an area near my home. Since we parted on extremely strained terms, I have decided to raise the food borne terrorist threat level in my household to mauve. Although operating under an increased level of alert, I have communicated to the rest of my household (I found a spider in my bedroom this morning) that we should under no circumstances, change our daily routine or let the threat of terror govern our lives. The color coded threat assessment system has been carefully calculated to show the exact colors that strike fear into the bosoms of terrorists.

Epilogue #2
Marvin, the name of the short lived spider found in the corner of my bedroom, is no longer an inhabitant this household. Unfortunately, he met his demise at the business end of a paper napkin which was at the business end of my hand. No more moochers in this home!

Truth is Stranger than Fiction
I'm reading this news article about Gary McKinnon, a guy who broke into NASA and the Department of Defense computers. He rummaged around in there before he got caught. I thought that was pretty ballsy of him to do and also took a great amount of talent. Then I kept reading and he apparently made some pretty amazing discovereies as he was searching around. It's a two page article but pay close attention to the second page.

The guy says the US already has an antigravity device. You think so? If they do, you know what that means? TONS of plastic surgeons will go broke! NO MORE SAGGY BOOBS!! YAY!!!