The thing is, I do have lots and lots to talk about, just no time or energy to do it. I don’t even have the time or energy to read other people’s blogs, assuming there are still such things. Are blogs dead? Did Facebook and Twitter kill the blogio star? Are we all just lame ducks waiting for the destructive palinization of civilization?

And does anyone remember MySpace? Oh, the hairstyles of three years ago make us so embarrassed, don’t they?

Everything we eat is bad for us, unless we nurtured it in the dirt ourselves.

Medical marijuana has come to Colorado and the Dispensary Wars threaten to tear the city apart. If only Hick can become governor and unite the state and find a decent defensive coordinator for the supremely defensive McDaniels. Jason Sheehan is leaving for Seattle and the last reason to read Westword goes with him.

We all wear masks, but why is it so hard for me to find one that fits?

I have a feeling iPhones are doomed sooner rather than later.

The cloud contains all our information and all our media, but what happens if we lose access to it?

Olympics. Olympix. Olympia. The gods look down from the control booth and try to get someone to care. But the only thing we worship is a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas under $2.

2010. The Year We Make Com-post.

Latre.

Though the movie is over-the-top, and utterly preposterous in the way that John Cusack & family keep narrowly escaping getting turned into fossil fuels for the next species that arises to dominate the planet, the movie is not without its charms. At least it wasn’t boring (for the most part – see “pee breaks” above). So I was willing to go with it. It brought me back to those heady teenage days, watching flicks such as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, though the scale of 2012 dwarfs any catastrophe Irwin Allen could splatter on the screen in the 70s.

However, there was one thing that I just could not forgive. Granted, the movie takes place over only a period of a day or two. But during that entire time, John Cusack’s character (I could never figure out if he was named Curtis Jackson or Jackson Curtis – even the movie seemed to be confused on that point*) never takes off his tie. He is subjected to all manner of potentially life-ending scenarios, almost literally clawing himself back up from hell at one point, and yet he keeps that dang thing on like it’s the only link that humanity’s survivors will have to their past great civilization. The world is going down in flames, but dammit, I’m going to look good! GQ may not survive the holocaust, but future societies will still know how important fashion is. There’s even an extended sequence near the end of the flick were Cusack spends a lot of time underwater trying to fix a particularly vexing problem, and he still has that damn tie on. I kept thinking it would get caught in the gears he was dealing with, causing him to get crushed to death, but I guess that would’ve been too ironic for the filmmakers.

I tried to rationalize it by saying maybe he just didn’t have time to take off the tie, but there were a few minutes here and there where he wasn’t running/driving/flying/swimming for his life, including some time on an airplane when I think he was sleeping. So maybe he was keeping it on for additional warmth. Or he thought he might need it for a sling or tourniquet or something. I don’t know… it’s just hard to take the End of Humanity seriously when your protagonist is not even flustered enough to remove his tie.

Although at least he did loosen it.

Latre.

* – People kept calling him “Jackson”, and the cover of the book he wrote says “Jackson Curtis”, but at one point he shows his driver’s license to another character and it clearly says “Jackson, Curtis”.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Can Oliver Platt ever play a character who’s not full of himself?

Perplexing Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “pocket pool registration”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Still none.

First of all, on any given day, a few of them will be off/out of order. Currently 2 of out 10 are completely dead. One TV is working, but has blotchy black edges around the picture, like Shadow Creatures are attempting to possess it. Every day, they devour a little more of the screen from the outside-in. It totally freaks me out.

Some of the sets have closed captioning on and some don’t. I’m assuming very few people actually plug their headphones into the jacks on the treadmills, ellipticals, cycles, etc and listen to the TVs. I think most people are like me and they listen to their MP3 players while occasionally glancing at the sets. Therefore, CC should be on for most, if not all, of the sets. With my luck, CC is on only for the sets furthest away, which I can’t read very well when on the treadmills without my glasses. I prefer not to wear my progressive lens glasses at the gym, since they get covered with sweat and I can’t see through them anyway. (BTW, I’ve totally grown used to the glasses and wear them at all other times, even when on the computer.)

Then there’s the content. Lately, some of the TVs at the gym have been set to the Food Network. This seems overly sadistic to me. Are they thinking that by getting people to crave food after a workout, they’re more likely to keep coming to the gym and pay those membership fees? Like I really want to see someone rolling dough while I’m huffing along at 7mph on the treadmill.

Sometimes some TVs are set to infomercial channels. Or at least to channels that show infomercials during the time I go to the gym (the Food Network does this sometimes in the early morning). That is unacceptable. Even if I were interested in the product, how am I going to remember the phone number or URL by the time I get home? Man, I could really use that weed whacker that uses the special double helix fishing line.

What’s especially weird is when the infomercials showing are for fitness products that could conceivably cause someone to stop going to the gym. When I see one of those, then I know the gym doesn’t have a plan like I thought with the Food Network thing. If I go home and send for the Become Totally Ripped At Home In 90 Days With No Exercise Equipment And Eat All You Want DVD, then what use would I have for the gym?

Also, they almost always seem to have a couple of the televisions set to the NFL Network, even when it’s not football season. Does 24-Hour Fitness have some sort of arrangement with the NFL Network that requires them to constantly show it? Do I really need to see some Titans/Ravens game from last year while I’m sweating it out?

At least they’ve stopped setting the TVs to channels that show scripted dramas such as Law & Order reruns. Those are pretty useless when working out, since chances are you’re not going to see the whole thing and won’t know how it turns out.

Ideally, the channels should be set to “small digestive bites” networks. I like when some are set to a local station for the local news and some are set to a national news channel like CNN. I am also willing to put up with ESPN, since that seems logical for people working out. And some days, they do have the televisions set up that way, like this morning. But that’s becoming increasingly rare.

Of course, the best bet would be setting them all to The Erotic Network. That I could go for.

Latre.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “i’m not the one you were looking for home and away”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: None

I’m getting tired of taking the reading glasses on and off all the time. I kind of long for that pre-LASIK time when I had one pair of glasses that I kept on at all non-sleeping times. Sure, it was a hassle trying to find the bathroom in the middle of the night sometimes, but I think that beats trying to read something and having to search out some glasses. I want an all-in-one solution to my vision needs, even if it means going back to wearing glasses “full time”. Oh, I still want to go without glasses when working out at the gym or doing other sports-type things (one good thing about the LASIK), but for everything else, I could definitely go back to the 4-eyes scenario.

So at my annual vision checkup this year, instead of going with another pair of reading glasses to cover just the degradation in that area, I decided to go with a pair of progressive lenses. They have a tall area at the top of the lens for magnifying distance vision, and a gradation of zones at the bottom of the lens for helping with various close-up and reading issues. The doctor said I should be able to wear them all the time. And indeed, they’re fantastic for almost everything. It’s not that big a difference when driving, but it’s enough to be noticeable. I can read street signs and license plates and such that are a bit further away than I used to. But the best thing about using them when driving is I can now read the dashboard and the multi-function display a lot easier, just by tilting my head up a bit. I no longer have to struggle to figure out the name of the song on the MFD playing from the iPod. It also makes texting-while-driving a lot easier. (Just kidding.)

And I’ve also noticed that wearing them around the house improves my TV-watching and videogame playing experience. I feel like I’m getting the full HDTV experience for the first time since buying my plasma TV and PS3/BluRay. I no longer have to sit on a bean bag chair in front of the TV to see all the enemies on screen when playing videogames. And I can actually read while watching TV, without having to take glasses on and off! (Yes, sometimes I multitask.)

I also find that using the new glasses to read in general works better than my old reading glasses, especially for graphic novels. Although that could just be because my prescription has gotten worse.

So, the glasses have changed my life in a very positive way and I adjusted to them very quickly. However, they’re not the all-in-one solution I was hoping for. The one thing they don’t work well for is computer work. In order to read a computer screen with the glasses, I must have my head tilted up at an uncomfortable angle. And even then, the zone of sharpness is not very large, and any head movement at all makes me lose it. This is very headache-inducing. So, I still need to wear reading glasses when I’m at the computer. And seeing as how my work involves staring at a computer screen all day, and I’m also at the computer a lot for personal reasons, that’s a large chunk of time having to wear a different pair of glasses. Bummer.

I talked to the doctor about possibly getting a pair that would also work for computer work, but that would be difficult. They’d have to move the mid-range zone up on the lens, which would take away from the distance zone above and would probably also mess up the closeup zone below.

So I’ve gone from two vision situations (reading glasses, no glasses) to three (reading glasses, no glasses, progressive glasses). Although really the “no glasses” situation applies only to the gym and sleeping these days. I’m having trouble adjusting to switching to the progressives when I’m away from the computer. Keeping a pair of reading glasses next to the computer is not a big deal, but for some reason I always forget to keep the progressives handy too, especially at home. At the office I usually don’t have that problem.

This has definitely caused some mixups. I was playing a videogame yesterday and needed some help getting through part of it. So I went to the computer and looked up something on the Internet. When I got back to the video game, I was having a hard time and getting a headache. I chalked it up to the fact that the section of the game I was playing had a lot of snow obscuring the action. Finally, N walked into the room holding my progressives and said, “Don’t you need these?” I had been playing the game while wearing the reading glasses, which I had put on while at the computer. Ha ha – I’m such a Plugger!

Even though there are problems, I’m looking at this as a positive development. It’s opened up my world in a way that hasn’t happened since I got my first pair of glasses in high school, or right after I had the LASIK operation when I could still read without reading glasses (a time period that didn’t last long).

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: The amount of tweaking you have to go through when changing WordPress themes in order to still get things to work like you want them to. I think I finally got this new theme working okay, but it took a little fiddling around. Good thing I know some PHP and am beginning to figure out stylesheets. And now I don’t feel so beholden to any one particular theme and can probably change themes a little easier now.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “you crush me 2009″.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: I’m playing an awful lot of God of War 2 lately on my PS3, even though it’s a PS2 game. I never did play it when it came out, so I figure I should finish it sometime before GoW3 for the PS3 comes out next year.

I wish I had gotten some pix of the family of foxes living in my neighbor’s yard, but they vacated before I could get a decent shot. I did get one video, but you can’t see much in it.

Latre.

Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Exercising Since Last Blog Update:

• “I Got You” (Split Enz)
• “Sorry” (Youth Group)
• “Weathered and Torn” (The Dream Syndicate)
• “Sweet Creature, What’s Your Name?” (Anton Barbeau)
• “Artists Only” (Talking Heads)
• “A Summer Wasting” (Belle & Sebastian)
• “Strangest Things” (Longwave)
• “Camaraderie” (Ian McNabb)
• “Do It” (Buzzcocks)
• “I Love You” (Barenaked Ladies)
• “6′1″” (Liz Phair)
• “Can’t Take The Heat” (I Am The World Trade Center)
• “Gift” (Curve)
• “The Well and the Lighthouse” (Arcade Fire)
• “Someone Else’s Friend” (Shake Some Action!)
• “Not About You” (Jonathan Coulton)
• “Snakes with wings” (Bill Nelson)
• “Get In Or Get Out” (Hot Hot Heat)
• “Love Is Only A Feeling” (The Darkness)
• “Ego” (The Sounds)
• “The Fall Of The House Of Usher: II. Arrival” (Alan Parsons Project)
• “The Light Pours Out of Me” (Trotsky Icepick)
• “Meeting the Remarkable Men (Show Me the Hero)” (Harvey Danger)
• “Tissue Tigers (The Arguers)” (XTC)
• “It’s Now” (Imperial Teen)
• “Stuck Between Stations” (The Hold Steady)
• “Praise The Lord” (Poi Dog Pondering)
• “Lovely Little Swan” (Close Lobsters)
• “The Dead We Wake With Upstairs Drums” (Bill Nelson)
• “Dark Wave” (Stephen Malkmus)
• “You Never Know” (Goldfrapp)
• “The Beginning (Week One)” (The Features)
• “500 (Shake Baby Shake)” (Lush)
• “Rocks Off” (Loud Family)
• “Relive The Magic…Bring The Magic Home” (Reggie and the Full Effect)
• “The Mask of Shame” (Steve Wynn)
• “Astronomer” (Trotsky Icepick)
• “Morning Star” (Fastball)
• “Walking With the Beggar Boys” (Elf Power)
• “Twin Cinema” (The New Pornographers)
• “Dancing With Myself” (Nouvelle Vague)
• “Blowin’ Smoke” (Arcwelder)
• “#37 (Feels So Strange)” (The Greenberry Woods)
• “Promise” (Violent Femmes)
• “Thank God” (The Maggies)
• “Hole” (Penelope Houston)
• “Destination Anywhere Else” (Shalini)
• “The Stranger” (Elf Power)
• “Uh Oh Hello” (Elefant)
• “Stranger on the Bus” (Berlin)
• “The Ghost of You Lingers” (Spoon)
• “Something Happens” (Mighty Lemon Drops)
• “Control” (Alphaville)
• “Real Cool Time” (The Feelies)
• “Rumour Sets The Woods Alight” (The Records)
• “She Can Do What She Wants” (Field Music)
• “In Passing” (The Lemonheads)
• “Starry Eyed” (Cinerama)
• “The Way We Get By” (Spoon)
• “I Often Dream of Trains” (Grant-Lee Phillips)
• “‘Cause It’s Love (Saint Parallelogram)” (Robyn Hitchcock)
• “Pre” (Relay)
• “She’s Slipping Away” (Stranglers)
• “You Were Beautiful” (Material Issue)
• “Ofor1″ (Poster Children)
• “Sunburst” (Lloyd Cole)
• “Magnetism Made Me Do It” (Bill Nelson)
• “The Time Machine (Dr Evil Austin Powers Mix)” (Alan Parsons)
• “Close…But” (Echobelly)
• “Top Banana” (Palomar)
• “Harness And Wheel” (The Kingsbury Manx)
• “Stray Dog And The Chocolate Shake” (Grandaddy)
• “Annie” (Elefant)
• “Aound the World” (Ho-Hum)
• “Angry People” (Barenaked Ladies)
• “The Breath in My Father’s Saxophone” (Bill Nelson)
• “Too Bad” (Girls Say Yes)
• “Find the River” (R.E.M.)
• “Two Yous” (Drop Quarters)
• “Modern Love Is Automatic” (A Flock of Seagulls)
• “Love’s Not A Competition (But I’m Winning)” (Kaiser Chiefs)
• “It’s Gonna Rain” (Violent Femmes)
• “Finished With Lies” (They Might Be Giants)
• “Fluke” (Mates Of State)
• “1995″ (Luna)
• “24/7″ (Hugh Cornwell)
• “Your Daddy Don’t Know” (The New Pornographers)
• “Oh Christien” (The Greenberry Woods)
• “Love And A Bucket Full Of Holes” (Bill Nelson)
• “You Or Your Memory” (The Mountain Goats)
• “Chymepeace (an ending)” (Bill Nelson)
• “Like Egypt Was” (Michael Penn)
• “Why” (Elefant)
• “Horrorshow” (The Libertines)
• “Wysteria” (Bill Nelson)
• “Nightclub” (Gay Dad)
• “Me Next” (Cinerama)
• “What I Say And What I Mean” (The Like)
• “I Miss My Life” (The Maggies)
• “The Strangest Things” (Hail Social)
• “Heavenly” (Possum Dixon)
• “Water on the Brain” (Flamingoes)
• “L’Amour Looks Something Like You” (Kate Bush)
• “(Gatekeepers Opening) Asu no egao no tame ni” (Yumi Matsuzawa)
• “A Simple Request” (Gene)
• “Pull Yourself Together” (Hefner)
• “Oh My Golly!!!” (Pixies)
• “Sean Penn Blues” (Lloyd Cole)
• “In Our Darkest Hour” (Phantom Planet)
• “Rubbish” (Luxuria)
• “Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause for Your Step-Mother!” (Sufjan Stevens)
• “Johnny Feelgood” (Liz Phair)
• “Adventures in Modern Recording” (Buggles)
• “Here Come the Warm Jets” (Loud Family)
• “Waking Up to You” (Hefner)
• “Frozen” (Ho-Hum)
• “Vermillion” (Mercury Rev)
• “Cruel Reminder” (Heatmiser)
• “Open Car” (Porcupine Tree)
• “IDK” (Relay)
• “Persimmon” (Poster Children)
• “No Reaction” (Absolute Zeros)
• “Roommate” (Don Dixon)

Weird how a Robyn Hitchcock song played right after Grant-Lee Phillips cover of Hitchcock’s “I Often Dream of Trains”…

Pet Peeve of the Day: When the local channels forget to “throw the HD switch” and I record a show expecting it to be in HD and instead get standard def and the black bars on all sides.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “heathenism resort, mexico”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: I actually finished Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS) and have started on Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (DS). It’s been forever since I’ve played an PS3 games, but I think that’s because anytime I turn on the TV, I feel the need to get through my huge DVR backlog.

List of current stress factors:

• More work, more responsibility, less pay.
• Need to get the girlfriend moved in by the end of the month. Still a lot to do to combine households.
• Need to get basement finished, but that’s not going to happen until after N moves in.
• Haven’t done taxes yet. Haven’t gotten my dad’s taxes back from the accountant yet.
• Need to fix floor in upstairs bathroom. A small part of it is rotted due to a (since fixed) leaking toilet.
• Will be working from home more soon, and current home office is not comfortable. Need a new one in the still-unfinished basement.
• DVR constantly almost full.
• Getting time to resume yardwork.
• Gravity exerting greater pull. No energy or time for working out.
• All my friends are on Facebook and I’m not.
• The Broncos are disintegrating and the season is still 7 months away.
• Will need to work 30 extra years before I can retire.
• Have severe sleeping disorder, which compounds all other stresses. Sleep deprivation is a horrendous and dangerous thing.

I anticipate that most, if not all, of these will be resolved, or at least made less anxiety-inducing, within the next few months. But for now I’m bugging out, man! Actually, it’s probably good that everything is coming down at once. If I’m going to be stressed, I might as well be really stressed.

Latre.

Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Exercising Since Last Blog Update:

• “Baby Elian” (Manic Street Preachers)
• “Strasbourg” (Julian Cope)
• “A Better Home In The Phantom Zone” (Bill Nelson)
• “Spy vs. Spy” (The Spinto Band)
• “Blue (Pipe) Line” (Failed Energy Giants)
• “Powderfinger” (Beat Farmers)
• “Small Talk” (Immaculate Machine)
• “A Life Less Ordinary” (Ash)
• “Back Of My Head” (Gil Ray)
• “Song in B” (Fretblanket)
• “The One That Got Away” (Al Stewart)
• “I Wanna Destroy You” (Soft Boys)
• “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” (R.E.M.)
• “Mad Jack” (Chameleons UK)
• “Intro-MC” (The Church)
• “Curse Of The Frontierland” (Game Theory)
• “New Routine” (Fountains of Wayne)
• “Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives” (Voxtrot)
• “Cemetery in My Mind” (Midnight Oil)
• “I Love Trouble” (The Information)
• “Fantasy Island” (Anne Summers)
• “Bullet Proof…I Wish I Was” (Radiohead)
• “Field Jacket Blues” (Robert Pollard)
• “Domani” (Greg Dulli)
• “Two Rooms” (The Feelies)
• “Paperback Believer” (Go Home Productions)
• “The World’s Easiest Job” (Game Theory)
• “Mute Witness” (Morrissey)
• “How ‘Bout You” (Brendan Benson)
• “Human Fly” (Nouvelle Vague)
• “Glass Is Falling” (The Vanishing)
• “Gone Daddy Gone” (Violent Femmes)
• “It’s Getting Better” (Popinjays)
• “Love” (Poster Children)
• “Passion Is The Only Fruit” (Butterfly Child)
• “Sound It Off” (Mates Of State)
• “Still Life” (The Connells)

Pet Peeve of the Day:The kid down the block has a drumkit in the garage and practices with the garage door open. Guess this should be in the stress list. At least kids aren’t camping out on my lawn!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “crabs name tha begings with letter p”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)

Some of you may have noticed that I didn’t make any New Year’s Resolutions this year. Isn’t joining a gym (as cliché as that is) enough? No, it’s not. The real reason is that I’m not done with last year’s resolutions. And everyone knows you can’t start new resolutions until you’ve finished off the old ones. So, let’s take a minute and check the status of those 2008 resolutions:

1. Sell my comic book collection.
   Miraculously, I finally did that this week. I did save a few rare ones to sell on eBay if times get rough, but I actually sold the bulk of the collection (nearly 20,000 comics in 60-some longboxes) to a local collector who found me through my Craigslist ad (which was posted for all of a day). I even got something close to my asking price (in cash), and got rid of the warehouse shelving unit they were stored on at the same time. I thought I would be sad, but it feels like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Although my shoulders hurt from helping to load the comics into his SUV, which involved multiple loads.
2. Eat less and exercise more.
   Didn’t do very good on that one, though I’m hoping the whole gym thing will help me with that this year.
3. Keep in better touch with friends.
   Not sure. I don’t think I did very well, though probably better than 2007. What’s bad is that I didn’t take any trips to visit friends in other parts of the country, and I definitely want to do that this year.
4. House repairs and remodels, including replacing some appliances and finishing the basement.
   Didn’t accomplish any of this, although now that the comics are out of the basement I can finally start on the basement finishing project. Well, after I get rid of a lot of other stuff down there. Oh, I did at least secure a Home Equity Line of Credit.
5. Rip all my CDs to the computer.
   Ha! I barely kept up with ripping new ones, much less making any headway on the back catalog.
6. Read more books and play more video games.
   I finished one book and got halfway through another, but that’s probably not better than the previous year. I did however play (and finish!) more video games.
7. Learn a new skill or technology at work.
   I took some training classes but I’m not sure I really “learned” anything. Although I’m on a new project now that should give me a chance to learn some new stuff.
8. Take a trip to a beach with the gf.
   Yep, we went to Cancún in April.
9. Avoid driving into things.
   Yeah! No accidents in 2008! And so far in 2009…

Well, I mentioned in that post last year that I would be happy to accomplish any two of the resolutions, and it looks like I did even better than that. So I’m happy!

For 2009: More of the same. Plus I want to appear on Hell’s Kitchen. And see more movies. And listen to more music. And write more blog entries, or at least more than I’m writing now. And upgrade Wordpress again and change the theme.

Latre.

Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Exercising Since Last Bog Update:

• “I Have Faith” (The Dream Syndicate)
• “Poking Myself In The Eye To Spite My Finger” (Anton Barbeau)
• “The Day Of The Triffids” (The Celebrity Pilots)
• “A Different Man” (The Church)
• “The Return of the Beserker” (The Futureheads)
• “Head Full of Steam” (The Go-Betweens)
• “Hairdresser on Fire” (Morrissey)
• “Tall” (Poi Dog Pondering)
• “Detonator” (Ash)
• “Strong Enough” (Bill Nelson)
• “Dirty Mouth” (Hot Hot Heat)
• “Between the Worlds” (Be Bop Deluxe)
• “Parade of Punk Rock T-Shirts” (Maritime)
• “Driving to Damascus” (Big Country)
• “Pastimes & Lifestyles” (Dogs Die in Hot Cars)
• “Yolanda Hayes” (Fountains of Wayne)
• “The Day The Rain Came Down” (Felt)
• “The One You Never Had” (Lloyd Cole)
• “Quality” (Barenaked Ladies)
• “Love’s Great Adventure” (Ultravox)
• “Distance Makes” (Maxïmo Park)
• “Dream The Moon” (Pere Ubu)
• “Limboland” (Sun & the Moon)
• “Just Too Bloody Stupid” (Close Lobsters)
• “I Come from Another Planet, Baby” (Julian Cope)
• “Lucy” (54-40)
• “From Georgia to Osaka” (Gene)
• “Conjure Me” (Afghan Whigs)
• “A Certain Bridge” (Last Man In Europe)
• “Return of the Roughnecks” (Chameleons UK)
• “Road To Ruin” (The Libertines)
• “Easy Does” (Let’s Active)

Pet Peeve of the Day: I may be totally off-base here, but it seems like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have gotten shorter and Comedy Central is throwing more commercials in. Anyone have any statistics? Although I guess that’s not a bad thing, since it makes my morning routine go faster.

Ben Affleck’s Wife-Related Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “juno yuppie woman”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS). Still brutally hard!

That’s it. I’ve had it. I give up. I’m not going to watch the Academy Awards this year. This is ridiculous.

Here’s my interpretation of what went on behind the scenes at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (I know this isn’t really how it works, but play along with me here):
—————————–
Academy Elitist 1: “Okay, for Best Picture, we’ve got Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, and Milk. We need one more. Any suggestions?”

Academy Elitist 2: “What about The Dark Knight. It got great reviews, and really brought people into the multiplexes this summer, thereby reversing an alarming trend of dropping box office receipts and helping to revive our moribund, morally-bankrupt industry in these troubling economic times. Plus, it was a whopping good tale! Heck, it was the second highest grossing movie of all time! It showed that we can make a serious movie about superheroes that really has something to say and which everyone can enjoy.”

Academy Elitist 3: “The Batman movie?? Ha ha ha ha ha!”

Academy Elitists 1, 4-10: “Ha ha ha ha ha!”

Academy Elitist 1: “Didn’t we already throw a sop to the geek crowd with Return of the King?”

Academy Elitist 2: “Yeah, but that was five whole years ago. Memories are short!”

Academy Elitist 3: “Jackson accepted the Oscar in his bare feet, fer chrissakes. We don’t need a repeat of that shit. That King Of The World crap from Cameron was bad enough. See what happens when we award movies people like?”

Academy Elitist 2: “They actually tune into the Oscar telecast?”

Academy Elitist 1: “Who cares. Besides, we’re already throwing out the Supporting Actor to Ledger, who won’t even be there to accept it, so that should be enough for the plebes.”

Academy Elitist 4: “Isn’t there already enough comic book movies? If we nominate Dark Knight, then won’t there be even more of them? I want to act in some real films, not prance around on screen in a cape and tights!”

Academy Elitist 2: “Shut up, Clooney.”

Academy Elitist 3: “That settles it. It’s a new spirit of Elitism in Washington and Hollywood. Fifth spot’s still open. How about Doubt?”

Academy Elitist 1: “Not depressing enough. Plus, the critics generally liked it.”

Academy Elitists 4-10: “Down with the Critics!!”

Academy Elitist 4: “Iron Man? Ha ha, just kidding. Downey killed, though.”

Academy Elitist 5: “We’ll just give him a nod for Tropic Thunder instead then. So how about Gran Torino? Or The Changeling?”

Academy Elitist 3: “You’re still afraid that Eastwood’s going to kick your ass if he doesn’t get nominated, aren’t you? And the creator of Babylon 5 wrote The Changeling, so the geeks would like it to get nominated. Let’s shut it out of a screenplay award too.”

Academy Elitist 4: “Babylon 5? What’s that? Aren’t you embarrassed to know about that?”

Academy Elitist 1: “How about The Reader? It’s got everything: WWII, Nazis, a war crime trial, Kate Winslet having an affair with a kid. Plus, it got very mixed reviews by the critics: 60% on Rotten Tomatoes and 58% on Metacritic. And if we nominate it, we get the usual kickback from Harvey and Co.”

Academy Elitist 4: “Perfect! It’s just the kind of movie we want to put on display as the pinnacle of Hollywood achievement. We’ll show Middle America who’s in control!”

Academy Elitist 1: “Okay, now on to Best Director…”
—————————–
I admit I haven’t seen The Reader (or any of the nominated films) yet, but c’mon. Really, AMPAS? The Reader? Really? Do you always have to reserve that fifth spot for the Weinsteins? Didn’t you learn your lesson with Chocolat?

This is just beyond disgusting. I won’t be tuning into your self-congratulatory spectacle this year, Mr Academy. So take that!

And yes, I know DK probably would not win, but it should’ve at least been nominated.

Latre.

Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Exercising Since Last Blog Update:

• “I Don’t Know What It Is” (Pete Shelley)
• “Demon’s Kiss” (Blue Öyster Cult)
• “Adventure Rocket Ship” (Robyn Hitchcock)
• “A Decade Under the Influence” (Taking Back Sunday)
• “What Goes On” (Midnight Oil)
• “Linus And Lucy” (Game Theory)
• “China Crisis” (Hefner)
• “My Alibi” (Lloyd Cole)
• “Wasteland” (Maxïmo Park)
• “Point of Exhaustion” (The Hyphens)
• “Marquette County, 1959″ (Great Lakes Myth Society)
• “Karaoke Plays” (Maxïmo Park)
• “Migrane” (The Coral)
• “She’s Not The Enemy” (Jason Falkner)
• “Never Sad Again” (Poole)
• “Rock and Roll Rhythm” (Fancey)
• “Time For Tea” (Madness)

Additional Pet Peeve of the Day: Hollywood’s recent fascination with the subject of my main phobia. I’ve already been told that I can’t go see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Now, it looks like I can’t go see the new Henry Selick/Neil Gaiman flick Coraline. It’s a shame, since Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. I quote from the description of the trailer in the above article: It will give you chills, and if you weren’t originally afraid of buttons, Gaiman will make you shiver every time you put on your winter coat. So even those without my phobia run the risk of developing it if they see this movie.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “no pudding with my beef song”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Castlevania: Order Of Ecclesia (DS)

I can’t believe it, but I actually laughed at a Garfield strip in the paper this morning:

This seems like a throwback to the original Garfield strips, which were actually, y’know, funny at times. Hard to believe, but true.

Or maybe my sense of humor is just getting… old. That must be it, since today’s Dennis The Menace also made me laugh. Or at least nod in agreement.

Speaking of getting old, Pioneer has announced it’s finally going to stop making LaserDisc players. What the…? Who knew they were still making them after the advent of DVD and then Blu-Ray? Maybe there’s a market for my old LD’s after all…

The mid-season premiere of Battlestar Galactica from last Friday night continues to haunt me. Wow. The Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan has compiled a number of writer interviews and such about it in her column. (MAJOR SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE EPISODE! Even the URL was a spoiler, so I had to tinyurl it.) I spent a long time this morning reading through that, and it was very illuminating. I was a little disappointed with the first part of this season (from way back whenever it was on – last summer?), but it looks like they’re going to be making up for it heading into the final stretch here.

Speaking of Spoilers (and BSG), commenter yellojkt has an interesting discussion about that in his Foma* blog entry yesterday. Yellojkt also recently had a fascinating in-depth series on what he considers to be the four big failures of the Bush administration, which starts here. Well worth reading. Yello brings the whup-ass!

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: Guess I have to use my $10 Circuit City gift card really quickly! Like this guy, I won’t miss the chain. I’ve had too many bad experiences in their stores. But I don’t like losing $10!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “lardbutt oprah”.

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Still none! No time!

In previous entries, I have detailed how I have migrated Contacts and Calendar info (both now syncing with Outlook on my PC desktop). Unfortunately, for some stupid reason, the iPhone does not also sync Tasks and Notes with Outlook. So if you want to have syncable notes or tasks, you have to use other applications. For Notes, I use Evernote (detailed in this entry), and for Tasks, I currently use Toodledo. Both Evernote and Toodledo do not sync the iPhone with a PC, but they do both sync with websites that you can access from a desktop, so that’s the next best thing as long as you don’t mind your personal data being out on a third-party website somewhere. (There is an Evernote Windows desktop client, but it doesn’t sync directly with the iPhone as of yet.)

As I’ve mentioned before, I feel the loss of DateBk6 the deepest. I was really dependent on that application on the Palm PDA. There are no third-party or built-in apps on the iPhone to come even close to its functionality, which really surprises me. The built-in calendar app on the iPhone is barely usable. The developers of DateBk6 are coming out with a Windows desktop calendar application called Pimlical that includes all the DateBk6 functionality and then some, but they still don’t know if there will be an iPhone client for it like there will be for other mobile devices. But I keep hoping.

Anyway, here’s a list of the major applications I use on the Palm followed by the “equivalent” I’m using on the iPhone.

Calendar: iPhone Calendar app
Contacts: iPhone Contacts app
Memos: Evernote
Tasks: Toodledo
ListPro (CD/DVD lists): Nothing yet, though the developer is promising an iPhone ListPro Reader soon, so I’ll probably wait for that.
eReader: eReader/Stanza.
SplashShopper: GroceryIQ
InfoSafe Plus: SplashID
Pocket Quicken: Nothing

I’ll go into more detail on these in subsequent entries.

Yes, I know it’s a little weird that I’m using GroceryIQ instead of SplashShopper, since there’s an iPhone version of SplashShopper that actually syncs with a PC desktop (and I’m using their iPhone version of SplashID), but you know how that goes. And it’s also kind of strange I’m using SplashID instead of eWallet, since eWallet is from the same people who do ListPro, but there you go. I love to mix it up! I have my reasons, which I’ll go into.

Latre.

Pet Peeve of the Day: One of my complaints about Evernote in my original analysis was that the note data was not cached locally to the iPhone. A subsequent update rectified that by including a “favorites” feature, where you could designate some notes as favorites and then they would be always available on the iPhone whether you were in contact with the Evernote server or not. Great idea, but it doesn’t always work in practice. There were many times while doing my Christmas shopping where I was in stores where my cell phone network access was blocked or iffy, and Evernote still tried to connect with the server before displaying a “favorites” note, like it was trying to get the latest version of the note or something. Since I was using Evernote to store the Christmas lists for my family, this was extremely vexing. In some cases, it wouldn’t display the note at all.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “how to get rid of crabs”. (Predictably, I see this one a lot.)

Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Entry: None!