Paul Harvey has passed away

You want to know one of the biggest reasons why this blog exists?It's because for the longest time, I dreamed of being like Paul Harvey.I first discovered Harvey as a kid in elementary school. Dad always had one of the local AM radio stations playing on his truck as he drove my sister and I to school, and the timing of the commute every morning happened to coincide with Harvey's...

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Meditation on baptism

"Baptism in Kansas", John Steuart Curry, 1928It was ten years ago today that I was baptized. It happened at First Baptist Church of Elon, the church that sponsored our college's Baptist Student Union. I put on a big white nightshirt and my friend Arnold Gosnell, one of the associate ministers, dunked me down in the bathtub at the front of the church. Later that night I...

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More classic SESAME STREET: Ernie's Thunderstorm

I really need to post more vintage Sesame Street clips, especially the older Bert and Ernie skits. In this one, Ernie confronts his fear of thunderstorms... with hilarious consequences! By the way, this one mentions Olivia and David, who haven't been on the show since the 1980s, so that makes this sketch a clear product of its time...

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Warner Bros. made Zack Snyder cut out smoking in WATCHMEN

Alan Horn, head of the movie studio at Warner Brothers, demanded that the smoking be cut out of the film adaptation of Watchmen to such an extent that Laurie won't be enjoying that weird but neat-looking pipe of hers. According to director Zack Snyder, it was either remove the smoking or "the movie wouldn't have been made, literally." Although the Comedian will still be puffing his cigars because he was deemed "evil" enough.So let me get this straight:...

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TSA forcing costumed mule drivers to submit to background checks

Ya see, this is why I've come to say that TSA stands for "Too Stupid for Arby's"...The Transportation Security Administration is enforcing federal law that requires background checks on those involved with the transportation industry to such an extent that mule skinners - AKA costumed, seasonal mule drivers at a historic park in Easton, Pennsylvania - must also submit to the...

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Tapped-out Hollywood

They are remaking Total Recall.And they are remaking The NeverEnding Story, too.And as if that were not enough, they are also remaking Arthur.I can kinda see how a re-do of Arthur (a movie that I haven't seen in ages) might work. But Total Recall and The NeverEnding Story? I have Total Recall on DVD: nineteen years after it first came out and it still holds its own against just about anything contemporary.But regardless, I guess we are going to...

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Regarding that individual who asked for my help on live television

This is all I intend to say about this...It's not my policy to render assistance to anyone who is not only a heartless liar, but has also without any evidence whatsoever accused a church of engaging in child pornography.And I do not believe that this man was sincere at all in asking for my "help" to begin with. It was no doubt some silly stunt. The purpose of which likely only making sense within the confines of his own gray matt...

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So here's what I thought of tonight's LOST, "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"...

HOLY #@$&!!!!!!!!Quite. Possibly. Best. Lost. Episode. Ever."The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" is how brilliant television rewards the loyalty of its viewers. Future showrunners, take note!That one hour of television, by direct implication or indirect inference, touched on nearly every bit of mythology of the past four-some seasons. And then it kept pouring on more.WHY DID BEN DO IT?!? Everything was hunky-dory, until the moment that Locke...

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Faith, hope, and love... New Hampshire style!

Whether by fate or fortune or free will, this blog - I like to think anyway - offers up something for everyone. In the past five years it's been an outlet for commentary, a chronicle of what it's like to run for office, a "cinema" of sorts for rolling out new movies, a quiet spot to meditate on God and His wondrous ways, a front line in the fight against evil in this world, a rallying stump for civil disobedience, a showcase of community theatre,...

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No Verbinski, no! Make BIOSHOCK instead! PLEASE!

The last time I heard any news about Gore Verbinski (who helmed the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for Disney), he was gearing up to direct the big-screen adaptation of the video game BioShock. And Universal was said to be wanting it to come out in the summer of 2010.Apparently, plans have changed.The Hollywood Reporter is breaking the word that Verbinski will be working...

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"The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" to be told on tonight's LOST

"'We have to go back'? 'We have to go back'?! Who do you think you are?! You call me over and over again for two days straight, stoned on your pills! And then you show up here with an obituary for Jeremy Bentham?! Well he came to me, and I heard what he had to say. I knew he was crazy. But you... you believed him. Him! Of all people!""You know, when you came back, I was waiting for one of you to come see me, but nobody did. Do you know who...

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Change we can ALL believe in

Found tonight by my friend Phillip Arthur...

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My very first WARHAMMER 40,000 army!

It's taken about a month of on-and-off work, but tonight I put the finishing touches on eight pieces of my first playable army for Warhammer 40,000...So yeah, now I've gotten into Warhammer 40,000: a game that some have told me "is worse than crystal meth, don't even think about it Chris!" But I couldn't help myself. Recently I got back into playing BattleTech for the first...

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Christmas in January: "Watching" $tate of the Union Address 2009

As I do every year, at the moment I am watching the Presidential State of the Union Address. And by "watching" I mean that, per my usual custom, I have my back turned to the television so that I'm not tuned in to the imagery at all. Stripped of the visual component, my brain is more keenly listening to what Barack Obama is really saying.So what do I think? He is definitely far more articulate and presidential-sounding than George W. Bush. Unfortunately...

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Got to see Comet Lulin tonight

Comet C/2007 N3, better known as Comet Lulin, is having its apogee (closest approach to the Earth) this evening. Earlier tonight I went out with a good pair of binoculars and found it in the west-southwestern sky, to the right of Saturn (Fox News has more on where to find it). Out in the darkened countryside, with a clear sky and a cold night (meaning less air turbulence),...

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Marshmallow from Hell

Here are some photos that I took in Dad's knife shop from this past weekend.This first one is of a roller bearing welded to a piece of rebar, heating up in Dad's propane-powered forge. At around 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, you can understand why I dubbed this the "Marshmallow from Hell"...Another shot of the forge. Dad is on the left and Eric Smith is on the right...The next...

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Funniest DILBERT cartoon ever

Yesterday's Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams brought whole new meaning to the term "comic strip" (while also skewering the entire "green" movement). Click to enlarge...

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American newspapers struggling to survive

I've long contended that the most accurate perception of what is going on with the United States comes from looking at it from afar. So it is that I find it hard to disagree with what Rupert Cornwell of The New Zealand Herald has written about the newspaper industry and institution in this country. The age of printed media's supremacy has come to an end, Cornwell declares.It is very difficult to argue with him. In my own neck of the woods, Media...

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For those having tech issues playing FALLOUT 3 on a Windows machine...

Two days ago I wrote how I was currently hooked on Fallout 3, Bethesday Softworks' amazing continuation of the classic Fallout video games from the late Nineties.Well since I wrote that, I had to take my copy of the game back to the Target store that I bought it from. Why? 'Cuz my copy of the Windows version didn't have the white sticker inside the box that had the Windows LIVE Access Key printed on it for that particular DVD. So I uninstalled...

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Boy bleeds to death after office chair explosion sends metal shrapnel into rectum

According to a story up on Gizmodo, a 14-year old boy in China is dead following the explosion of a gas cylinder in the base of the office chair that he was sitting in. The cylinder, which is used to adjust the height of the chair, blew up and propelled "chunks of metal into his rectum". The teen subsequently bled to death.Here's a photo of the culprit chair...That has to...

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In Wesley We Trust: Wil Wheaton says WATCHMEN is "(expletive) AWESOME"

Wil Wheaton is one of us: a proud geek who "gets it". And if Wheaton (perhaps best known from his work in the movie Stand By Me and his portrayal of Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation) says that "I can't think of a better, more faithful, graphic novel adaptation, ever" about the film version of Watchmen, then his word is bond.And if the movie is as good as the...

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Santelli is right: Time to show the American government who's boss

It's become "The Rant Heard 'Round the World": CNBC's Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange two days ago, blasting President Obama's mortgage bailout plans and calling for a new "tea party"...Santelli's impromptu screed alarmed the Obama Administration enough that Press Secretary Robert Gibbs attacked Santelli during the daily White House press briefing yesterday.Most of y'all who read this blog on a regular basis know what...

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Listening to Three Dog on Galaxy News Radio while stalking the Capital Wasteland...

The first time I played Fallout 3, my character escaped the bowels of Vault 101 by killing the Overseer before he could do me in. For my heinous act of self-defense his lovely daughter jilted me forever. Tonight I started fresh, and for sparing his life the girl came to my aid and wished me well as I prepared to stride into the nuclear-blasted ruins of Washington D.C.Fallout...

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Witchcraft now fastest growing religion in America

According to a book by two Christian researchers, Wicca - often known as "witchcraft" - is the fastest growing religion in the United States. Marla Alupoaicei and Dillon Burroughs' book Generation Hex estimates that the number of Wicca practitioners is doubling every thirty months. And it's not just in places like the West Coast and Salem, Massachusetts either: Wicca is...

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Atlantis still missing, says Google techs

Late last night this blog joined many other outlets in passing along the word that the Google Earth application had discovered something weird on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean west of Africa. And a lot of people were quick to suggest that perhaps this might be the sunken remains of mythic Atlantis.Already we have an answer: no, it's not.According to the eggheads at Google, the odd grid array is a visual artifact from the sonar process that spawned...

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Finally have a Rorschach action figure!

Ever since the first time I read Watchmen, I've thought it would be neat to have an action figure of Rorschach to decorate my shelf or computer desk with.It's taken twenty years, but today I finally get my wish...Found it at Books A Million in Greensboro while out on some business this morning.Now all we need is for someone to make a big plush Rorschach doll that goes "Hurm"...

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Has Google Earth found Atlantis?

The latest version of Google Earth, which has a new oceanographic feature, has found a very odd feature on the Atlantic floor hundreds of miles northwest of the Canary Islands. Here's the screengrab that I took of it, including the coordinates...It's said to be as large as Wales, and sits beneath three and a half miles of water. Some are saying that Google Earth might have...

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CHILDREN OF EDEN at The Sanctuary in Greensboro starting this weekend!

Longtime readers of this blog know that my favorite musical is Children of Eden. This past summer I was extremely blessed to have taken part in a production of it by the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County. Well, if you've never had the pleasure of beholding this amazing show and you live near Greensboro, North Carolina you're in luck this weekend and the next. Jay Smith,...

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Descendants of Geronimo sue to get his remains from Skull and Bones

Family members of Geronimo, the great Apache warrior, are suing the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale University. The purpose of the lawsuit: to compel Skull and Bones to hand over the skull and other remains of Geronimo that were allegedly stolen from his grave in Oklahoma in 1918. Supposedly, Skull and Bones (the membership of which includes many business leaders...

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WATCHMEN coming in 3 crazy flavors of DVD and Blu-ray!

Collider.com is reporting that director Zack Snyder has confirmed that there are three cuts of Watchmen. The first will be the theatrical release that will come out two weeks from tomorrow, and will run for 2 hours 36 minutes.The theatrical cut will be coming out on DVD probably "around Comic-Con of this year" (mid-July or thereabouts) and at the same time there will also...

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Post #3000 is reaction to tonight's LOST episode "316"!

Wow... three thousand articles (and other stuff) for this blog to date! Thatsa lotta writing over the past five years :-)And "316", tonight's episode of Lost, had a lot of everything that makes this show, so unprecedented for the television medium.That was probably more new mythology that got introduced - or revealed, however you wanna say it - in just the first few minutes of this week's installment than there has been in many entire stretches...

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Ratio Depopulata

Such is what has become of our world."Reason laid waste".Feel free to comme...

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President Obama signs "stimulus" into law

The $787 BILLION package is now enacted legislation, as President Barack Obama signed the bill at a ceremony in Denver.There might be another "stimulus" coming soon, believe it or not.And on the day of this esteemed occasion, the Dow dropped 297.81 points, -3.79%, to close at 7,552.60.And on a somewhat related note, I've been hearing some curious rumblings about stuff going down in the Eastern Europe markets, that might bear watching for the time...

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Travis the Chimp, on Xanax, goes bananas and mauls woman before being shot dead by Connecticut cops

So help me, my eyes are tearing up with laughter after reading that headline, even though this really is a horrible story...Travis, a 200 pound, 15-year old chimpanzee who had appeared in TV commercials and "was toilet trained, dressed himself, took his own bath, ate at the table and drank wine from a glass", went berzerk last night in a Stamford, Connecticut neighborhood...

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Ramos and Compean finally free (they never should have been in prison to begin with!)

This morning, former Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos were freed from the federal prisons they had been in, and rejoined their families.About time. But then, their imprisonment was a travesty of justice from the beginning. Regardless of their sentences being commuted, a whole lot of people in this country will never forgive George W. Bush and his lackey Johnny Sutton for taking sides with a known drug smuggler against two men...

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Trailer for TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

Giant transforming sentient robotic organisms and lots of Michael Bay-hem signature carnage and 'splosions (with a soundtrack by Steve Jablonsky). What more could you ask fo...

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Trailer for INGLORIOUS BASTERDS

I must regretfully confess that I have never seen a Quentin Tarantino movie during a first run in the theaters......but I am already sold on Inglorious Basterds, due for release this summer."Each man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps."See Brad Pitt pour out unbridled Jewish rage on Fortress Europe below...

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PRIDE AND PREDATOR?! Are you kidding me?!?

Elton John's Rocket Pictures has begun production on Pride and Predator: a cinematic adaptation of a Jane Austen novel that deviates wildly "from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about."This is, apparently, not a joke.One of the producers...

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Kansas and California have run out of money

The state government of Kansas is no longer issuing tax refunds and may be unable to pay its employees.Meanwhile, California is $40 billion in the red and may have to lay off thousands of workers soon.Dare I mention that "Hell Époque" thing that I first wrote about last ye...

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BIOSHOCK bringing moral chaos to mobile phones

BioShock, 2K Games' smash hit first-person shooter that tries your personal ethics as much as it tests your aim, is now coming to mobile phones courtesy of Indiagames. The reveal came at the 2009 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Indiagames is working on two versions of BioShock for mobile devices: a straightforward 3-D port of the original game, and... a 2-D rendition,...

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Banker gives $60 million of own money to his employees

Lately it seems like the "feel good" stories have become even more few and far between. So when one is found, I feel more than a little compelled to give it a shout-out.Take, f'rinstance, what Leonard Abess Jr. did. Back in November he sold a majority share of his holdings in Miami-based City National Bancshares.And then, Abess gave away $60 million of the profits to EVERYONE...

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Creepy and kooky: 5 months in jail for man who whistled THE ADDAMS FAMILY theme

Leopold Wrobel of Wingerforth, England has been remanded to gaol by the constabulary for a period of twenty weeks after being found guilty of harassment and violating an "antisocial behavior order" that was sought against him by his neighbors.Apparently, what Michael and Kathleen Sharpe found so offensive is that Wrobel would constantly whistle the theme music from The Addams Family whenever he saw them.In his defense, Wrobel claimed that he was...

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Apollo astronaut Schmitt sez: Humans not causing global warming

Harrison Schmitt - geologist, former senator from New Mexico and one of the last men to walk on Moon during the Apollo 17 mission - has voiced his strong belief that global warming is not happening... or at least that it is not being caused by human activity.And what's more, Schmitt also states that "global warming" is being used as a political tool to increase the presence of government in people's lives...Schmitt contends that scientists "are being...

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Chris sings the praises of HandBrake 0.9.3!

A little over a year ago I posted the how-to tutorial on putting video content from a DVD onto an iPod. The workhorse program that I found perfect for my needs was HandBrake. When it came time to convert Lost Season 4 for my iPod classic ('cuz I like having all the Lost episodes hanging on my belt... along with my own movies, the Star Wars saga, etc.) I found that HandBrake...

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Federal government's fiscal obligations calculated to be more than WORLD's gross product

Jerome Corsi has published a wallopin' eye-opener of an essay. According to his figures, the United States federal government's runaway spending (like the "stimulus") combined with its already existing financial obligations, is more than the gross domestic product of the entire world.There is no way we are going to be able to pay for all of this in our lifetime, the lifetime of our children, and quite possibly the lifetime of their grandchildren....

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"We're fine. We're all here, fine. How are you?"

Something screwy is amiss with this blog on the technical backside of things. It looked fine yesterday (so far as I can tell) but in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, stuff is missing.If this place looks more whacked than usual, it's prolly just me monkeying around behind the scenes trying to get it all fixed ...

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Immigrants can now fast-track to citizenship through U.S. military (and what this REALLY means about America...)

According to a story at The New York Times, the United States military is about to offer American citizenship to legal immigrants if they enlist in the armed forces. Some might be eligible for citizenship in as little as six months.The reason for this, is that the American military is admittedly "stretched thin" in Iraq and Afghanistan.So let's go review what happened a little over a millenia and a half ago, when the cost of maintaining its vast...

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It's the trailer for WATCHMEN's TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGHTER with the voice of Gerard Butler!

If you've never read Watchmen (what's the matter with you? Go read it now!) then this requires some 'splainin'. In the graphic novel there's this kid who's reading a pirate comic book at a newsstand. The comic book, Tales of the Black Freighter, is shown to us the readers as a "story within a story" and it parallels a lot of what's going on in the greater scheme of Watchmen. Zack Snyder didn't have enough time to include it in the feature film...

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The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre was eighty years ago today

It was on this day in 1929 that the mob war between Al Capone and Bugs Moran came to a violent head inside the garage of the SMC Cartage Company in Chicago. Seven members of Moran's gang were ambushed in a well-executed plan by Capone's enforcers (some dressed as Chicago policemen) and butchered mercilessly by machine gun fire. Moran himself by some twist of luck managed...

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...But where the heck are Spider-Man and J. Arthur Crank?!

This afternoon I finally got to watch the new version of The Electric Company on PBS. It's a revival of the very fondly remembered original series from the 1970s.So what did I think of it? I watched many of the episodes of the original The Electric Company a few years ago when they ran on Noggin, and was surprised at how well the show had held up over the years. The Electric Company circa 2009 remains faithful to the purpose of its parent... but...

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"Stimulus" file size: Is Congress TRYING to keep us from examining it?

ReadTheStimulus.org is reporting that the final language of the "stimulus" bill has been posted on the U.S. House website. But if you think you're going to get to exercise your right to easily pore over the legislation, think again. From ReadTheStimulus.org...Final Language PostedPosted at 11:00 pm on Thursday, February 12, 2009The final language has been posted; you can find links to the various docs at the Speaker's website. Update: The speaker's...

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THE PEOPLE VS. GEORGE LUCAS trailer is online! Guess whose film you'll see a tiny part of???

Awright, I've been sitting on this for the past week or so, eagerly looking forward to when that e-mail would arrive with the official announcement and now... it's here!Alexandre Philippe is a filmmaker who is currently working on an ambitious project called The People vs. George Lucas (here's the official website: PeopleVsGeorge.com). Tonight, Alexandre and his crew released the first trailer for their film.Behold!Want to see it drastically embiggened...

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Something I just caught from last night's LOST...

If you have "This Place Is Death" recorded, or from iTunes or whatever, then do yourself a favor......and listen very, very carefully to the scene early in the episode where Jin, Danielle and the rest of her team are on the beach. In particular, listen to the voice that's reading out "the numbers" on the radio.It sounds like Hurley's.As if this story isn't loopy enough alrea...

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Man apparently rid of HIV following radical stem cell transplant

Extremely exciting medical news coming out today: a 42-year old man who had previously been infected with HIV is now, apparently, completely free of the virus and is displaying no symptoms of further infection. This following a stem cell transplant from a person carrying a unique mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS.The patient has now been without detectable HIV for two years now, and is not currently on any antiretroviral...

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