Movie day.

It's been a bizarre week. I lost my iPhone and had to buy a new one. Which meant I had to convince Allison to get a new one too to ease my guilt over having lost the stupid thing in the first place. So, two new 3-G iPhones later and...well...it's not as exciting as the first time I got an iPhone, but it's still...um...something. It's good. It's all good.

Anyway, it's all movies today, so have at it. (note that there is no movie attached to the black list of scripts, but they're all movie scripts so it still counts).

Dogs Love Snow.

The terrifying French world of the Sims 3.

Carol of the Christmas Pickle. Christmas and pickles. Yum.

The Black List of Scripts. Script ideas voted by Hollywood executives as being worth looking into, but no one's doing them yet. Interesting stuff.

Dragonball movie trailer. Oh dear, I don't even watch this show and I know this looks terrible. And nothing like the show it's based on. Dear kids, I'm sorry Hollywood sucks. Here's some random college singing group doing the Pokemon theme to make up for it.

You, know...magpie stuff.

Man, I have to start updating more often. Somebody send me an email every week and brow beat me into updating my page. Or something. I'm a serious slacker. It's been like 2 or 3 weeks now. I'm not even sure. I'm too lazy to even check.

Magpies. So, I'm reading some internets and I come across this. Apparently Oxford and Cambridge, two utterly prestigious schools, ask some really bizarre questions on their applications.

For example: What would you do if you were a magpie? (thus my title up there).

Here are some more:

Would you rather be a novel or a poem? (Novel. I don't think I rhyme with anything.)

How would you poison someone without the police finding out? (I think this one is one they just send all the answers to the cops so they can start checking for this stuff).

Why don't they let the managers of Ikea run the country instead of politicians? (Seriously, that's one of the questions. How bout, "Cause we don't want the country to fall apart if someone bumps into it.")

What does it mean to be happy? (I think you'll have to ask a magpie.)

How would you market a rock band? (I think putting their albums in poetry books would probably work good, don't you think?)

If it could take form, what shape would the novel "To the Lighthouse" become? (Duh. Lighthouse.)

Can a thermostat think? (Can a writer for a college application?)

How do you organize a successful revolution? (Guns.)

Is it morally wrong to attempt to climb a mountain? (Depends on what the mountain thinks, I guess. Kilimanjaro, no. Everest, yes.)

If I were a grapefruit would I rather be seedless, or non-seedless? (There's a vasectomy joke in there somewhere, I just can't find it.)

Do you think you're clever? (No. I think I'm a magpie.)

Would you say greed is good or bad? (I think it's good. No, bad. No, wait. What do magpies think?)

I'm stuck on the magpie thing. I couldn't tell you why.

Again, someone remind me to update this thing more often and I will. Next time I'm going to put a picture up of the Santa and the reindeers my parents brought me from West Virginia. I'd do it now, but I haven't gotten the picture off my phone yet, and yes, I'm too lazy to do it right now. Sue me.

(For all the good it'll do you. I'm a magpie.)

(Don't forget to title the page...)

Saw Quantum of Solace on Sunday. That was pretty decent. I'm not sure it was better than Casino Royale, but all in all I'd say the new Bond is a success.

Saw this trailer later that day. Okay then. More Witch Mountain. The Rock looks funny though.

Then I saw this (trailer 2). Looks terrible. Do I really need to see Kirk acting like an idiot little kid? Seriously? Nothing breaks the mood of a Star Trek movie like having guys driving around in cars near mountains. Apparently we didn't learn our lesson from the rock climbing scenes from Star Trek V. (Worst. Movie. Ever.)

I have to wash Trek V out of my brain, so I found this really cool game that I can't stop playing called Robokill. It's like Robotron, but with a plot and levels and stuff. (Yes, I know, technically Robotron had a plot. And technically it's called Robotron:2084. But really. Let's just move on.)

Mah-nah-mah-nah vs. Star Wars. Delightful.

Did you know there's a Snoopy World War I flying Ace game coming out? Me neither. Looks fun though...

Oh, and Finally, a big shout out to my good friend Cindy (EJ's wife) who got her book published! Awesome, awesome, and more awesome. I am totally jealous and extremely happy for her at the same time. Good work, Cindy. Don't stop. We need more good books. Now everyone go buy it.

I took October off.

From updating my blog. To see if anyone noticed.

It is completely unclear to me whether or not anyone did.

I don't care.

I'm still typing. Look at the words, here, they were all typed by me. I can't stop typing. I'm a typing machine. What would you call a typing machine? A typewriter? That's ridiculous.

Today we're all about randomness because, well, why not? Forgive me if I ramble a little bit. This thing is going to cover all kinds of bases from sports to shoes to world of warcraft. Get ready. Here we go.

My favorite new mini-game in World of Warcraft is the "Can I type my password in fast enough that I don't have to watch the undead dragon land and make my screen shake" game. Seriously. I can't get enough of it.

Shoes. Imelda Marcos would have been proud. Wait, is she dead?

NBA standings as of today have 3 unbeaten teams: The Lakers (Yay!), The Jazz (good for Utah), and the Hawks (uh...what?). That would be the Atlanta Hawks. For those of you who don't follow basketball, let me give you an analogy. That would be like saying the three best companies that
make cake are Sara Lee, Duncan Hines, and Firestone. Yeah, try to figure that out.

Best part of the Muppets was always these two guys.

For the life of me, I can't believe I didn't see the last line of this video coming from a mile away, because...well, just because.

Oh my gosh, so much fun. ASSEMBLER! (Physics are neat).

I had a physical on Friday and my nurse told me I was "terribly healthy". My blood pressure is awesomely low and I had a great EKG. Afterwards the nurse was like "You don't smoke, do you?" And I was like "I do, actually." She gave me a look and she says, "Noooooo." Like she doesn't believe me. Isn't it great to be able to do that? I'm ridiculously healthy for an overweight smoker. That's good to know. The whole point was that I'm starting a clinical diet next wednesday. I thought I was going to have to start it on Friday, but the nutritionist is meeting with me next Wednesday. I asked the nurse if that meant I could continue eating like an idiot for five more days. Her response? "We don't recommend it."

Obama. That is all.

Ok, maybe that's not all. Actually heard from a friend of mine that some people at his job were taking the day off to recuperate because we'd elected a...well, that word...as president. They were calling it "Black Wednesday" (which is even funnier to me because the election was on a Tuesday. Just straight up smarts with these people.) Anyhoo, my friend called it Honkey Introspection day. Which made me laugh. So, I'm sharing it with you. I hope you laughed too.

Sometimes you just don't know what to say.

A truly good friend of mine, a very intelligent person, honestly one of the smartest, funniest people I have ever known, passed away over the weekend. Jeff Freeman was a truly remarkable person and I will miss him tremendously.

His website was a constant source of hilarity and inspiration, and it makes me sad to think that he won't be updating it anymore.

You will be missed Jeff.

Running Commentary From My Head

The building I work at is creating a lake.

This is how weird things have gotten, that we're actually building a lake behind this office. I'm imagining in my head two guys from building management having this conversation:

Guy1: I'd like our property to be on the lake.
Guy2: Lakefront property is expensive.
Guy1: Hm...I have an idea.

It's actually full of water out there and they put a fountain in it that sprays water up in the air. Won't find that in any naturally formed lakes, let me tell ya.

I just find that bizarre.

Today's rant is about Tea and Coffee. For the Love of all that is holy, I would like tea and coffee that tastes like, and I know this is bat-guano insane, tea and coffee. Is that too much to ask?

Every different type of coffee we have in our office has some flavor in it. It's hazelnut, or french vanilla, or "paris" flavored and I don't know what "paris" is supposed to taste like but I'm guessing it's "artsy". Possibly some kind of cheese based coffee flavor. We also have "Kenyan" which I'm assuming tastes like 26 miles of running. I don't know.

I want to buy Tea in a can so I can stop drinking soda, but apparently Tea in a can is impossible to make without adding 50% lemon flavor. I don't want lemon flavor. If I wanted lemon flavor I'd buy Country Time Lemonade. I want Tea flavor. This does not exist.

I wanted to buy individual tea packets that I could pour in a water bottle so I could drink tea all day long. This is also non-existant. Oh, they make packets that you can pour directly into bottles of water. They come in the following "tea" flavors: Blueberry, Green Tea, White Jasmine, Blackberry, Strawberry, Lemon (STOP IT), Orange, Mango, and no kidding, pomegranite. There is no tea flavored tea.

I went to a restaurant on Tuesday and ordred Tea and the waiter says, "Have you had our tea?" This is a bad sign. Something bad is coming. I say, "No..." He says, "It's mint with a hint of grape flavoring and GAAH!-" Because at that point I was strangling him with the napkin from the bread basket.

Ok, not really, but I was thinking it.

When I order tea you shouldn't be asking me things like, "What would you like it to taste like?"

Uh, I'd like it to taste like Tea. Thanks.

Ok, Rant over.

Here's some Games I've been playing on the web:

Fantastic Contraption. This must have taken a long time to make. It's a really neat game where you build things to try to get your little square into the giant box. Careful what you build, some things will work and others won't.

Elements. This is sort of a weird "breakout" style game, where you actually rotate the level and try to get the ball to fall down to the next level. The goal is to get to the bottom of all 25 levels. Neat.

Loops of Zen. I thought this was cool, it's just connecting up all the connections so that nothing is lonely. Sort of a metaphor for life, don't you think?

Light-Bot. This is brilliant. They should give this to kids to teach them about programming. I've probably spent more time with this game than all the others combined. It's all about programming a robot to light up areas in your factory.

Gravity Hook. This is fun in a "Spider Man Web Slinging" climb to the top kind of way.

Maze Stopper. Neat idea for a game. Win the race by putting blocks in front of your opponents.

Neat things I saw on the web:

NinToaster. A guy with way too much free time on his hands.

Custom Receipt Maker. You ever buy something and you don't get a receipt so you have to write it down, but then you have this scrap of paper in with your receipts that doesn't look like a receipt? This webpage is here to solve that problem for you. It's a tiny little niche problem, but they've solved it.

Kentucky Math. This is why you should make sure your accountant isn't from Kentucky. Very funny. Plus, I love that math and numbers even allow stuff like this to happen.

Robocop Vs. Terminator. Very slick fan made film of the Terminator fighting...well, it's right there in the title. Oh, and a special guest apperance at the end from one of my favorite things.

Still alive...snakes haven't gotten me...yet...

So, Allie apparently saw another snake in the front yard (smaller, less aggressive, not actually looking through a window) but he's vanished now, and we haven't seen anymore since then. Though we don't walk into the backyard without a military commando style check out the window and a brief flashing of the porch light if it's dark.

So, all in all we look to be safe from the invading hordes of legless reptiles. For now. I'm sure they're simply planning their next attack more rigorously (what if we sent two snakes at the same time!).

Anyway, there's blogging to be done, and I'm not going to let anything that doesn't have the ability to wear shoes deter me from blogging. Blog, blog, blog.

It's a stupid word.

Anyway.

Zombies go to the prom looks like it will require a rental.

If Snakes aren't really your thing you could always just play with this spider.

And speaking of shoes...would you actually wear these? That's pretty cool, though, right?

I'm not sure exactly how to play Gride, but the point seems to be to get your car over the hills. It does have some pretty funky music though.