Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

It wasn't actually snakes so much as it was A snake.

6:45 Allie wakes me up to tell me "There's a giant snake on our backporch."

6:45 is not a good time to be woken up. And in the list of reasons why you wouldn't want to be woken up, "There's a giant snake on our backporch." Is right near the top of the list along with "The police want to ask you some questions." And "I think something's on fire."

So I get up and go look, and I see this guy:


Yeah, that's a 4 and a 1/2 foot Rat snake, sitting on Allie's chair, looking in our window. That's just creepy.

Well, first, before I got too involved and he was just sitting on the porch, Allie went and hit him in the head with a hoe. I'm all like, "What are you, Conan?" But now the snake's not just hanging out on our porch, he's mad. That was when he moved to the chair to wait for us.

He's looking in the window like, "Come back out here and do that again, wench!"

So, now I have to call people.

At this point Allie's like, "I gotta go to work. Deal with him."

Fan-tastic.

The first place I call is the exterminator that usually comes to do our bugs. He tells me, "You should call animal control."

Good idea. I call animal control and have this conversation:

Me: Yeah, there's a giant snake on my back porch.
Animal Control Lady: Can you get out your front door?
Me: Uh...yeah?
Animal Control Lady: We don't send someone unless you're trapped.
Me: Uh...ok then.

Animal Control is not helpful unless you can't possibly get out of your house without being attacked. Good to know. I'll file that away for future reference.

So, I look up Snake Removal on Google (Google is your friend!) and the first guy I call tells me, "It costs 229$ just for me to come out there and if he wanders away before I get there I still have to charge you."

Yeah, no thanks dude.

So I call someone else and this guy's like, "It sounds like a rat snake. You don't want to get rid of him. It eats Rats."

I tell him, "It's going to eat me if someone doesn't come get it. Besides I have 3 cats."

He says, "Well, fine, I'll come get him, but it's 75$."

75$ is way better than 229$ so I agree and he shows up. He has a metal hook and a plastic tub. He says, "They're really not poisonous, but they can be a little aggressive."

Yeah, he's taken up watch on my porch and he's waiting for me to open the door so he can attack Allie. We're a bit past aggressive at this stage.

The guy goes out and snags it's head with the hook, and then puts his hand on the middle of the snake and picks him up. He says, "See? He's docile." The snake waits until that sentence is finished and then he starts striking at the metal hook holding him up. The guy goes, "Oh, well, there's the attitude."

Mr. Snake got a spot in the tub and a 75$ trip to the woods behind the snake wranglers house (Bet his wife loves him).

Anyway. That's the excitement for this week. Next week I hope to find a nest of scorpions somewhere so we can do all this again.

Here's a couple more pictures of Mr. Snake.

Where oh where have i been?

I so need this. Take note people who might buy me gifts in the future.

So, this plus this equals this, right? That would be a great 3 movie box collection.

Also, build your own arcade. That's nice. I made a Dragon's Lair.

Not much else today. Just making sure everyone's still alive.

Short post today.

So, thinking about Batman, and how he keeps tearing things up while he's driving that tumbler around, the question occurred to me: Is Gotham the only place on earth where you can make a legitimate auto insurance claim for "My car got Batmobiled"?

While I'm still on a Batman kick, here's an interview with Heath Ledger about it.

Awesome 3-D painting for a parking garage: Check it out.

Star Wars Dance Off. Nuff said.

Dark Knight

IS THE BOMB-DIGGITY.

How's that B-Fish? He asked me for a Dark Knight Review. It is, quite possibly, better than Batman Begins, which is quite possibly now only the second best live action Batman movie ever made. That's not a lot to compete with, I know. But in my head the list now goes like this:

1. The Dark Knight (2008)
2. Batman Begins (2005)
3. Batman (1989)
4. Batman (1966)
5. Batman Returns (1992)
6. Batman Forever (1995)
7-1,304,402,948. Every other movie ever made (18??-20??)
1,304,402,949. Batman and Robin (1997)

That's right, every other movie ever made, ever, is a better Batman movie than Batman and Robin. (By the way, I made that number up, I can't back that up with facts).

Oh, and I'm not putting the animated movies on this list (there are now three of them) because they exist in their own seperate world, and they're all really quite good. If I had to put them up there they'd be numbers 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3.

I know there are people who disagree with me, that think Batman Returns was pretty good. We can all agree that the 1989 Batman with Michael Keaton was pretty good, better than people thought it would be. Jack Nicholson is a passable Joker, though really, he's just playing Jack Nicholson in clown make up. But that's ok. We all love Jack.

I was so disappointed with the second one though, with the mutant Penguin biting people's noses and giant penguins with rockets strapped to their backs...I mean, come on. That would have been something I expected from the old Adam West Batman. And yeah, Adam West Batman made it onto the list ahead of this because at least they knew they were being campy. They weren't pretending to make real movies.

Batman and Robin, though? What an atrocity. I mean it's Star Trek V level of bad. Remember that? When Kirk went across the universe to meet God because God needed a space ship? Yes, that's for real. That's the plot.

Dark Knight though, man, there's nothing that's not good about that movie. It's long. It's almost two movies in one, but I couldn't get enough of it. Heath Ledger is beyond amazing as a crazy Joker who is genuinely creepy and funny, just like a homicidal clown should be. He's, well, he's the Joker.

Let me not spoil any of it, but know this, Joker is just bat-guano crazy. There's no Darth Vader-esque backstory that ruins the Joker by showing me his troubled childhood and why he became a villain. And I think villains are all the scarier for that. I loved Vader before I knew he was just a whiny punk who didn't think he got enough respect from Obi-Wan. Man, I wish I could forget those movies existed. (As a side note, there's a new Conan movie that's supposed to come out next summer, despite the fact that they don't have a cast, a director, or anything resembling an idea of what they're doing, except apparently they're doing Thulsa Doom's backstory...Yeah, the character James Earl Jones played in the original Conan. Cause we need to see his childhood and figure out what whiny thing happened to him to make him go bad. Great. Thanks jerks. This is what I need.)

Anyway, Ledger is Awesome, Aaron Eckhart is awesome as Harvey Dent, Bale is still a great Batman, Michael Caine is still a wonderful Alfred, and Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) is still just as fantastic as he always is. The whole cast is great, the script is above and beyond, and the movie is just a phenomenal amount of awesome all packed up together.

Iron Man was top notch, and now Batman is raising the bar. I wish all superhero movies were this good.

My Laker Depression Has Ended

I think I'm over it because Mom was here last week, and I've had Brandon and Kayla here, so that always makes me overly happy. They came just in time to cure me of my Laker Woes. (The Lakers will be back in the finals next year).

We had a great week with Mom and the kids. So much fun. I can't believe how little shopping we actually did, and on top of that we actually cooked food at home instead of going out most days! I know, it's crazy, right?

Plus, while she was here, me Allie and Mom sat around and watched the entire two season run of Sports Night. (Check it out if you haven't seen it, great show).

Now I'm heading back to work (and I'm glad about that too, in case I haven't mentioned it, I love my job). But just to let you know I haven't forgotten about the three or four of you who actually read this thing, here's some linkage:

I can't remember if I posted this or not before, but I'm posting it again anyway. It's the Supercook. It's fantastic. You give it a list of ingredients you have in your house and it tells you all the great food you can cook with it. Give it a try. It'll also tell you things like "You're only 1 ingredient away from being able to make ". I've found some good stuff here.

This is cool. 3-D scribbling. If you have some of those old red and blue glasses you can supposedly see all this in 3-D as well, but I had fun just doodling. (Doodling and Googling are very similar words. I wrote googling like three times before I managed to type doodling.)

Here's what Google News would look like if everything in the world just went right for awhile.

I was amused by some of these pictures. This is what happens if you use an old camera that takes film (it's the digital age, keep up!) and use old expired film. Creepy.

I kept seeing this link on a bunch of pages I frequent regularly, and I wasn't even going to post it, but I watched it, and Brandon and Josi watched it with me, and we were all pretty amused by it. Gnar Wars. Star Wars on snowboards.

You ever have people call you and you don't know who they are? Weird 1-800 numbers and whatnot where people are trying to sell you something or get you to take surveys? Check this webpage and you can find out who those people are without answering your phone.

I love my funky shoelaces where I don't actually have to tie my shoes. They just go into my shoes and keep them tight enough for my feet to stay in them. But if you need to know, here's a bunch of different ways to tie your shoelaces.

I must have had at least half of these (or knew someone who did). Pictures of old toys.

Stores with Punny names. Some of these might be sort of not safe for work-ish type names. Innuendos and whatnot.

Lakers 103, Celtics 98.

Oh man, still alive, still alive...

Roomba + Pacman = This.
There's not enough pen and paper gaming stuff on my page. Here. By the way, I played all but one of those modules. In case you care, it was Gargoyle.
Here's something awesome I owned as a kid.
Here's Al Green hanging out with Chicago. What a great song.
This game is awesome cause you get to draw your own avatar.
I thought this was funny.
Kinda weird, kinda cool. Moodstream.
Here's a neat game called Starshine.
Think you could do a better job with the budget than congress? Prove it.
Here's something fascinating: Things people have left behind in old books.
Epsilon: Cool game.
As tired as I am of desktop defender games, this one is cool cause it has a nice RPG aspect to it: Gemcraft.
Finally, I thought this was fun. Build the blocks to make the correct shapes from 3 angles.

Lakers 87, Celtics 81.

Man, that took longer than I wanted it to. Go Lakers.

Anyway, here's my debut album:


If you don't know what that means, check here.
Random Logo + Random motto = Hilarious.
Sometimes a joke requires a rimshot.
Learn math through current popular music. I think this is a good idea.
I love this blog. Monsters from classic movies.
Fascinating voting information.