Very good stuff. I highly recommend it. The story stuck to the plot of the novel fairly well, save for a couple of key points. It was, by far, much better than The Omega Man. As far as reimaginings go, it was definitely better than Planet of the Apes (the Tim Burton version).

It has its sad moments, and certainly a couple of startling ones, but I would say it’s pretty tame–unfortunately, your loved one will probably not jump in your lap for this one. lol.

Will Smith is just plain awesome. He seems to be a big fan of scifi, for all of the movies in the genre he does. He’s pretty versatile, though.

I had an odd dream last night, but I pretty much forgot what it was as I was waking up. I guess it wasn’t too terribly odd, if I forgot it so easily. lol.

Last day of work until after Christmas. w00t!

startrek.com is shutting down production, effective immediately.

Worth a letter-writing campaign?

So, yup, it was that time again yesterday. It was legendary, as always. You wouldn’t believe the kind of schmack, drivel, song and chant that gets spouted during one of those 🙂 It is absolutely hilarious–probably one of my favorite parts of it all. We played a lil bit of Halo 3 and a lil bit of Gears of War–mind you, about 8 hours worth between the two. Next time, I hope, we’ll all have Call of Duty 4. Aaron was playing a bit of that at the end of the evening, and it looks glorious. It may not be WWII as its predecessors were, but it does look absolutely smashing.

A house burned down the street yesterday 😐 I don’t know if anyone was hurt, but an ambulance was right out front, along with a fire truck and a couple of police cars. I had heard the sirens, but I didn’t realize it had been so close. It’s at the end of the block, on the corner. It appears that the flash point of the blaze was the garage–perhaps they were doing some handyman/woman stuff and things got a bit out of control.

Ruthie’s up in Louisville for the next couple of weeks, chillin’ with the fam there and in Gatlinburg. I’ll be joining her later in the week for a big extended family Christmas party. It should be quite a hoot. I only hope my flight up there isn’t canceled, what with all of this crazy weather going on across the country.

In other news, it looks like the Soviet Union never really died. Now, I know Putin is ex-KGB and all, but daymn. He’s done so much to reverse any semblance of reform from back in the 90s, that they may as well be the Soviet Union–certainly in spirit. Booooooo!!!

It’s 34 frickin’ degrees out there right now. Brrrrrrr!!!

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So, is anyone really all in dire straights about this writer’s strike? It seems that the very idea of it hurts a lot less than it did the last time, back in the late 80s. An end to this strike doesn’t seem to be anywhere in sight. Talks broke down last week, the writer’s are staunch in their position–which is certainly understandable. Internet profits are certainly an untapped resource. Their work is deserving of due compensation, and they aren’t being duly compensated in this arena at this point.

Nevertheless, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll be slightly disappointed that I won’t get to see more Lost for a while, or that the end of Galactica might not happen, or that I won’t see the possible end to Jericho for the next good bit. The disappointment is much slighter these days, though.

TV is not the most important thing on the list right now, nor are movies. The Internet is full of distraction, books are more important to me than when I was as young as I was during the writer’s strike of the 80s.

And the TV studios have it even better…reality shows.

On a brighter note, I’ve gotten Call of Duty to run under Wine in Linux 😀 This makes me happy…it’s my favorite game to play on ye olde computer with the bro.

So, I have some kind of ear infection thing going on, me thinks. I don’t know. I’m headed to the doc later this morning to get it checked out. It feels like there’s cotton in my ear whenever I lay on my right side for an extended period. It almost feels the way my ears felt whenever I was on a family trip and needed to use ear plugs to keep my folks’ snoring at a tolerable noise level. lol. They were the silicon jobs that you put over the opening. When I took them out in the morning, my ears would still feel plugged 😐 It makes me wonder if some of that gunk ever got in here… 😐

If not, if that’s just dire pondering, then perhaps it’s just a crazy little ear infection. It seems like whatever it is that’s causing it started about a week or so ago. It only happens when I lay on my right side for a time. Maybe I should lay on my right side when I am given a room at her office. lol.

Compound this with having awakened at 3am because of it, and I am not one happy camper this morning 😐

So, a bunch of friends and I watched the first part of Tin Man…

I swear, TV needs to get better

Yea, I’m hating politics more and more. It seems totally useless to me–full of contradiction, stupidity and general thoughtlessness…basically, it’s the worst of humanity wrapped up into one little package called politics. It leads to nothing but misery, conflict, war–and that’s just between ourselves.

My latest funk when it comes to politics comes from the campaign trail. The Dems have outlined their plans for the manned US space effort. Oddly enough, Clinton actually sounds the most sane in this regard, mirroring the path that NASA is progressing down as I type.

Obama, on the other hand, is the source of my beef. He suggests pitting the education system and the space effort together for money. He suggests “pausing” the space program and funneling that money towards education. WTF?!?! This is so wrong on so many levels. It’s the cart before the horse. You kill the space program to fund education? When you do that, what do you need education for? What’s going to inspire young people? What bigger inspiration for young people to continue in school, particularly striving in math and science, if not the space program?!?!?!

The space program takes up about $16 billion dollars per year…the entire budget of the United States is about $3 trillion. For those of you who aren’t all that good with math, that means that the space program takes up 0.53% of the budget. We’re exploring Mars with robots, persisting an aging and expensive shuttle program, and planning new moon and Mars efforts and a bunch more with 0.27% of the entire US budget….and that is too much for Mr. Obama.

The space program has always been in the same pile as HUD, so it has always fought an uphill battle when it comes to funding. Bloody hell, though. What’s the good with education if it’s not for the betterment of humanity? The space program is the staple of bettering of humanity. This solar system, particuarly the moon right next door, is full of resources the likes of which we may not have even thought of yet. There’s also the possibility of life on Mars–and perhaps even clues as to why we are here.

And imagine what it’d be like if we were to start pulling Helium-3 off of the moon…the energy independence we would theoretically gain. But, no. Obama wants to “pause” the space program until 2024, when China will be reportedly beginning to put landers on the moon just for that purpose. All of the education in the world won’t overcome energy dependence on China when that time comes, if we don’t have a moon program in the works by then 😛

Hence, cart before the horse–you need to have a reason for all of that “education” he seems to be touting. Flippin’ idiots.

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