Ken Jennings misses question on taxes: no question taxes won't be missing HIM!

Engrave the name of Nancy Zerg alongside those of King David, Luke Skywalker, the 1983 N.C. State basketball team, and anyone else who's ever toppled the reputedly invincible. Seventy-five consecutive nights - equal to three and a half regular seasons of the average sitcom - came to an end this evening on "Jeopardy" as Ken Jennings proved he was flesh and blood after all. But at least he gets to walk away with a cool $2,520,700 before Uncle Sugar comes knocking for his share of the loot.

Incidentally, it was something related to the IRS that dealt the deathblow to Jennings' insane streak. "Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal, white-collar employees work only four months a year," Alex Trebek read aloud during the Final Jeopardy round. Jennings' answer in the form of a question: "What is FedEx?" (it was actually "H&R Block"). Zerg, a realtor from California, succeeded where Jennings failed and no doubt will get to do a Top Ten List on David Letterman's show. I guess all good things must come to an end but look at the bright side: Jennings held his own longer than anyone, he's donating a huge chunk of the money to his church, and Trebek gets a long-earned respite after having to come up with so many clever comments about one contestant!

But you wanna know why it is that Ken Jennings' accomplishment is REALLY mind-boggling? Moreso even that he did so well for so long, I'm stunned that someone like him got onto the show to begin with. I tried out for "Jeopardy" this past May in Nashville and lemme tell ya: it's very tough to make it all the way to a taping in Hollywood. First you have to take a 50-question timed exam with questions much more difficult than get asked on the show. Make 35 or better and you get asked to stay with everyone else who scored high (which I didn't, by the way: admittedly, I'm not all that keen on 17th-century Italian opera) for a brief interview and a mockup round of the game. Then you go back home. If you're lucky you'll get notified a few months later that you've been asked to fly to Los Angeles (on your own nickle) to be a contestant on "Jeopardy". But even THEN you're not guaranteed anything: out of all the folks that show up at Sony Pictures Studios, only a fraction will be selected (by an independent third-party group) to go before the cameras. If you don't score a chance then, you can always retake the exam the next time the "Jeopardy" crew comes to town but again, it's never a surefire thing. I met a guy who'd aced the exam four times, wound up passing the one that I took with him also, and so far as I know he might still be waiting for that coveted invitation from Merv Griffin Entertainment. So for someone like Ken Jennings to slip through ALL those cracks and get on the show and then stay there... well, you can sorta appreciate how the odds got licked bigtime.

Anyway, congrats Nancy Zerg and congrats to Ken Jennings on an awesome run!

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A truth so simple that it didn't hit me until tonight...

Liberals don't have any damned idea whatsoever about what conservatives really are.

Conservatives don't have any damned idea whatsoever about what liberals really are.

Why then should I give a damn about conservatives or liberals at all?

The next person who tells me that I should blame something on "conservatives" or "liberals" will be notified that before I can do so, that he/she must tell me the exact reason why it is that I should think that "those people" are so despicable. And if they can't give a sensible answer, they will quietly and politely be ordered to shut the Hell up. It'll be pretty obvious to me by that point that it's going to be a waste of my time to subject myself to the "persuasions" of someone who hasn't bothered enough to exercise the mind God gave him to even think for himself.

Just needed to make that clear. Anyone wants to discuss something with me, I'm gonna hold him (or her) up to high enough a standard as I like to think they'd expect of me also.

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Wanna go ape over six minutes of Middle-earth porn? Return Of The King: Extended Edition trailer is online NOW!!

The day before Christmas Eve last year Lisa and I decided that for our next holiday season together, we would begin a family tradition. Being only two years or so into this gig we don't have many traditions to call our own... but this one is really special and it kinda suggested itself. So starting this year - and continuing every year from now on a week or so before each Christmas - we are going to spend an entire day watching the complete The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy as a family.

We want this to be our way of keeping alive a little of the magic that figured so greatly in the first few years of our life together, because The Lord of the Rings has been a part of our relationship almost since the beginning. Lisa had never read the books until the fall of 2000 when we started dating: by the time December '01 rolled around she was a real Tolkienphile. The soundtrack CD for The Fellowship of the Ring got released the day we were engaged, so that morning I bought two copies: one with Frodo on the cover, the other with Gandalf. I was going to let Lisa choose which one she wanted so I dared not listen to it that entire day while waiting for her to arrive (she picked Frodo, as I figured). Leaving Asheville that night for the 3-hour drive to my parents' home we popped that CD in and musta played "Considering Hobbits" at least five times. A few weeks later we did the midnight first showing of Fellowship: another new experience for Lisa. Several months afterward at our wedding, I held up my ring-adorned hand for the videographer and uttered this stanza...

One Ring to rule him all
One Ring to bind him
One Ring bought at the mall
And now she'll ball and chain him

Those are just a few things, 'cuz between both of us there's countless little ways that this story got insinuated into our story. And we want to keep it part of our story... especially as we look forward to sharing it with our own children someday so they might enjoy it as we have.

But in the meantime, we do have at least one more holiday season of fresh Middle-earth goodness from Peter Jackson and the boys at WETA. A little while ago TheLordOfTheRings.net released a six-minute trailer for next month's release on DVD of The Return of the King: Extended Edition. This bad mutha is gonna weigh in with an extra fifty minutes of footage added to the original. Looks like lots and lots of stuff that didn't make the initial cut and Tolkienmongers everywhere are going to absolutely bathe in this. F'rinstance, take a gander at this ugly mug...

That new scene on the left is Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli confronting the Corsairs from Umbar as they're about to invade Gondor. But check out those teeth on the Mouth of Sauron! Bruce Spence must feel like the luckiest actor in the history of anything after this: he was in two Mad Max movies, played the Trainman in The Matrix saga, has landed a crucial part in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and he gets the nastiest human role in the entire Rings trilogy! That's most of the big movie epics that he'll have made his mark on when all's said and done... and ironically both the Star Wars and LOTR roles cursed him with the most atrocious dental hygiene ever.

Awright, 'nuff jawin': slash here for the ROTK:EE trailer! And while we're on the subject of Peter Jackson and what he's working on next with the rest of those stalwart crazy Kiwis, there's this bit of concept art...

...from Jackson's remake of King Kong (still shaking my head about Jack Black getting cast to play Carl Denham, but Jackson knows what he's doing) due out next Christmas. See that tiny woman in the corner? That's going to be Naomi Watts. It's gonna be all black and white or something, Jackson's said: classy move there. Anyway if you wanna read more about Kong head over to MSNBC's story about the production.

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Honked-off Muppet threatens Israelis with AK-47 rifle

Now this scares me. We were safe when the Muppets could only beat you over the head with foam-rubber letters and numbers, but now they've upgraded their arsenal. From NewsMax...

Palestinian 'Sesame Street' Urges AK-47 Massacre

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2004 10:15 a.m. EST

In a recent episode of the Palestinian version of "Sesame Street," a furry chick character threatens to get an AK-47 and massacre people who have torn down his olive trees, a common complaint by Palestinians against Israeli Defense Forces in the region.

In a scene rebroadcast Saturday by the Fox News Channel, a little girl asks the talking chick, "What would you do if someone cut down your olive tree?"

"I'll fight them and make a big riot," the chick replies. "I'll call the whole world. I'll bring AK-47 assault rifles and commit a massacre in front of my house."

(snip)

I heard a story years ago that Yasser Arafat almost made a guest appearance on the original "Sesame Street" made here in America (guess he was jealous of Koffi Annan and Hillary Clinton hogging all the fun with Elmo). I guess it could all be just a coincidence.

'Course, I always figured that Bert would be the one who turned rotten. But that wouldn't be the first time that the felted freaks of Sesame Street have hooked up with radical Islamic terrorists, is it? Remember THIS photo that showed up during Mid-East rallies supporting Bin Laden right after 9/11? Yup, it's becoming obvious that we're through the looking-glass here, people: Children's Television Workshop is a front organization for radical terrorism. I don't think EVERYONE there is a raving mad jihadist though: Kermit the Frog always struck me as being the rational one. He'll no doubt be set up as the patsy when this whole thing blows up.

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Blazing Saddles is showing on AMC right now

Yeah, I got it on DVD ('twas the very first one I bought after getting the player) but it's too much fun to watch all the edits for television done to it. Not to mention that the TV version usually shows the scenes deleted from the original, like the baptism scene ("Praise the Lord! Pass the chicken!") This ain't just Mel Brooks' best movie ever: it's probably one of the best movies made, ever at all!

By the way, this movie came out like the week before I was born. It's also the very first movie that I remember seeing (when CBS aired it, I was probably 3 years old and was with my Dad as he watched it). Yup, one of my earliest memories is watching Blazing Saddles.

There's a lesson in there somewhere, I'm sure of it.

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Thanksgiving 2004: Hellfire, Hot Oil, and Turkey Hunger

The most dangerous form of cooking known to man is widely considered to be cutting and cleaning the fugu blowfish. It takes a chef ten years to finish the training required to be certified to serve the dish. The final exam is easy: the initiate prepares a fugu and eats it himself. If he can skillfully slice it up without exposing the delicious meat to the deadly tetrodotoxin in the rest of the fish, he gets his license. If he screws up he dies a horrible death by drowning without water as his brain loses the ability to command the lungs to breathe and the master fugu chef announces a new opening for an apprentice.

Preparing fugu is the most deadly culinary art around. Deep-frying turkey is said to be the second most deadly.

What else can be said about a procedure involving flame and hot oil that propels even professional firefighters into the emergency room with horrid burns? That sends panicked family into the streets as it engulfs their house in smoke and ruin? That uses equipment that has been know to explode minus simple precautions, sending searing-hot contents outward like so much Cajun napalm?

And yet... I'm madly in love with this!

It was two years ago, beginning with a trial-run the week before Thanksgiving, that I deep-fried my first turkey. That one came out great, save for being more than a little burned on the outside. Maybe 15 birds later and I've gotten pretty darned good at both marinading it, then bathing it in Perdition's flame. 'Course, it took me three years after first hearing about it, and then a TON of study into how to do this - what to do and what NOT to do - before finally getting up the courage to take a stab at it. I'll never go back to basted turkey again if I can help it: fried turkey is so amazingly juicy - and with a REAL taste finally, which I never knew turkey even really had - that in my book it's the ONLY way to prepare turkey. Despite the risk of injury and destruction that comes with it. But if you don't mind taking a few common-sense precautions and be patient throughout the process, it's really a very simple and relatively safe thing to do. Just don't approach it as a routine means of cooking: treat each bird as a unique work of art. That's all there really is to it.

Two full-sized turkeys this year. I started marinading them early morning the day before yesterday. For REAL good ideally you wanna try to start juicin' 'em up 36 hours before frying. If that's not possible, at least somewhere around 24 hours. It yields a lot better bird than doing it a few hours before.The first turkey - a 21-pounder - was the biggest that I've done to date. Even despite my little trick of how you can figure out how much oil to put in the pot, it was enough displacement to send some overflowing and into the propane flame below. I took it extra slow on this one, giving the oil enough time to fill the internal cavity so as to take up some slack. The picture doesn't do it justice but we had a hella good flame going around the pot for awhile there...350-degree Fahrenheit peanut oil. I've done many turkeys since starting to deep-fry them two years ago and this was the first time I ever came close to injury but only 'cuz the sheer size of the bird played havoc with the setup. It did get in there and the oil level brought down to a safe level, but while lowering it in some oil splattered up and onto my hand. There's a darn good reason why you wear stuff like heavy gloves and eye protection when you do this, kids.A little over an hour later (figure 3 1/2 minutes of frying time per pound) and here's the result...Lately some models of turkey fryers have been hitting the market claiming to be safe enough to use by anyone because they're electric, not propane. Some are even supposed to be used indoors (?!?). Blasphemy and sacrilege, I say: turkey-frying is an outdoor sport, done with propane and without any fancy computer to monitor the temperature for you. This is power cooking. This is a man's way of cooking: women and children should be confined to the house while it's going on. I'd even suggest parking all cars and trucks away so that the tires don't melt. It's NOT something for the faint-of-heart or the remotely skittish. You have to WANT to do this enough that even knowing what's at risk, you judge that it's worth getting a turkey this delicious out of it. Come to think of it, you have to be positively crazy on some level to even think of doing this.I mean, people have been killed doing this. I myself would have received horrific third-degree burns on my hand yesterday were it not for the heavy gloves. A lot worse than that could have happened too.

I can't wait to do it again come Christmas!

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Civil war looms after election of "Weird Al" Yankovic

Yankovic apparently "fixed" the polls during Ukraine's presidential election and public protests threaten to spiral the country into chaos. News agencies are reporting that although a nationwide general strike has been called by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, Yankovic is already assembling his governing council: earlier this afternoon Doctor Demento was appointed Minister of Health.

Okay, so that wasn't very funny. But every time Yanukovich's name has come up I'm reminded of this guy:

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Beware the Flying Shrimp Platter of DEATH!

If this story is accurate, it means that Forrest Gump possesses the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. From the AP via Ohio News Network...

Family sues Japanese restaurant for tossing shrimp

MINEOLA, N.Y. A New York family has filed a ten (M) million-dollar lawsuit, claiming a Japanese chef who tossed cooked shrimp at a man caused him to die ten months later.

The family of the Long Island man (Jerry Colaitis) says he ducked away from the flying shrimp, wrenched his neck and died from complications caused by the surgery he had on his neck.

The family is suing the Benihana Restaurant in Munsey Park, Long Island. The restaurant is known for having its hibachi chefs slice, dice and toss food when cooking the meal in front of customers.

In the lawsuit, the man's wife says her husband was healthy until he went to the restaurant. She says the chain of events that led to his death began with the shrimp.

So a tiny little shrimp caused THAT much grief? Maybe the Benihana chefs were throwing lobsters around that night and everyone in this family was too nearsighted to tell the difference. That's the only credible explanation (which ain't saying much) that backs up what they're claiming. Otherwise, although it's sad they've lost a loved one, this smells too much like a frivolous lawsuit and it'll probably get tossed out of court.

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Spike Lee, I owe you an apology

So I'm gonna be up all night: have two turkeys to prepare for deep-frying about 36 hours from now, and in-between injections of marinade (once every 4-6 hours usually) I'm putting the trailer for Forcery together in Premiere Pro. Hopefully the trailer will be online come late Thursday or Friday. And I needed some background noise...

There's only two movies on teevee right now that even remotely interest me. HBO is running Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, which if you can ignore the time years later when Pee-Wee's wee-wee got over-exposed, it's still a really good movie. It launched the career of Tim Burton and it has what might be one of THE few legitimately scary scenes in movie history: when Pee-Wee is riding in Large Marge's truck. Classic film that I've seen at least a bajillion times over the years. It's something that I can trust.

The other movie is Malcolm X on AMC.

Malcolm X came out when I was a senior in high school. There was a lot of interest in it back then, but I never saw it. In fact, I've never seen at all, period, as in anything more than a 3-second clip, until tonight. This was the unknown quantity competing for my peripheral attention.

In the end, Malcolm Little won out over Paul Reubens. It's now about two hours into this four-hour-plus monster of a biography... and I'm really, really regretting not having seen this before.

I said that I was working on Thanksgiving dinner and a promo for our film. Since my attention started gravitating toward Malcolm X those projects have still barely started. Just about everything is working in this movie: Denzel Washington's acting, the editing, the pacing... and the directing. I wish that I'd taken the time to watch this before literally almost running into Spike Lee years ago, when he came to our college to film He Got Game. I didn't know who he was at first (I knew about his movies, just not what he looked like) but after finding out, I thought that Lee was too wired, like he'd taken an overdose of No-Doz. He seemed like someone who was too frenetic for their own good. Haven't watched He Got Game yet either (though friends swear that I'm seen walking around in the background in one scene) but I've seen a few other Lee movies. And though Do The Right Thing is still pretty unique, nothing else by Spike Lee has really piqued my curiosity. In my mind he seemed like a director who could only work with variations on the theme of Black American/White American. And after awhile, that gets boring.

But so far Malcolm X is... well, perfect.

No small feat this, considering that its subject was a man possessing so intense a complex character that Malcolm X - I think anyway - became one of the most enigmatic figures of 20th century American history. I wish that I'd caught this in previous years, because so far it's completely changing my views on Spike Lee. Before tonight he seemed too much a hack filmmaker driven by agenda to me. But while yet in the middle of Malcolm X, I'm coming to realize that he's a very talented director with a rare grasp of historical narrative.

Lee should make more movies like Malcolm X and steer away from the angst-ridden projects of his earlier career. This is real art. You don't get something this good by making it come out of a sense of anger or frustration. If Lee ever does something this high-caliber again, I'll gladly pay money hand-over-fist at the box office to catch it opening day.

Gonna go watch the rest of it now whilst I be shootin' up some turkeys with garlic butter.

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Turning on comments again

Last week I turned off the comment feature. In retrospect I wish that I hadn't.

For awhile it looked like this blog was attracting more than its fair share of (a) 14-year old hormone machines calling themselves "Lance" who get their jollies by pretending to be Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket, (b) chronically unemployable beefcakes who vent their rage at the rest of humanity by hacking out inane statements at their keyboards while under the influence of 190 proof Everclear, and (c) garden-variety losers who use pledge-drive time at PBS to phone bomb threats into local stations as dread harbingers of death and destruction unless the network brings back "Red Dwarf". A few people even sent such threats to me.

My initial decision to remove commenting stems from the fact that although I have time to post to my blog when the Muse so leads, I have neither the time or desire to actively police the comments. I'd rather comments be used for serious discussion: meaning that I'm really not that welcoming toward anyone who'll try to convince me that all my worries will disappear... if I only subscribe to one political party or another. One person even said that I was "traitorous" in regards to some of the things I was saying, which had to do with the fact that America has become a self-shamed mockery of her former glory. Well, I'll note this: when you really love a person, how can you possibly live with yourself if you do nothing while that person destroys his own with alcohol or drugs or addiction to porn? Answer: you can't. It works the same between citizens and their countries too... and no amount of blind nationalism can change that.

I got fed-up with the people who insisted that it could. Enough to the point that even though I enjoyed reading the thoughts and comments of most of my readers, it seemed more necessary to keep it a REAL discussion, hard as that became with all the trolls that started showing up. But as a friend told me tonight: "Why should you stop doing something because some idiots can't understand what you're doing? Why should you let them take away your fun from this?" He was right, too.

So, for the time being anyway, I'm going to open up the comments to everyone, including anonymous posters. If abuse begins again, I'll keep the comments going but will find other ways to direct the comments toward meaningful discussion. And if anyone sends in or posts a threat, either to me or another commenter...

...well, guess I'll get to use the IP numbers (that are attached to ALL comments) to track down the person responsible, and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.

In the meantime, to those of you who may have sincerely enjoyed this lil' site and the fresh content that I'm trying to provide here and were enjoying the commenting for all the right reasons, welcome back! And to those who have just discovered this place: sit a spell, take your shoes off, and y'all come back now ya hear? And feel free to post if your own Muse, or heart, or Holy Spirit leads you to do so. And to those few who were trying to ruin things for other people: take a hike. Or post anyway and reveal yourselves to be the mental munchkins that you are. Or make a threat, so that I can post your lovely mugshot on this blog after you're dragged to the cooler.

(I mentioned "nationalism" earlier. Will write soon about the difference between nationalism and patriotism, and how there is actually very little real patriotism in America today.)

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Your laser printer is sending hardcopy to Big Brother

It used to be standard policy in the Soviet Union that if you - whether as a private individual or one of the few small businesses allowed during perestroika - wanted to purchase anything that produced printed material, the party wouldn't let you play with it right out of the box. Instead you first had to take your typewriter, printer, fax machine or copier down to the local KGB office where you would "register" it with the state: by submitting typewritten or printed samples created with the machine. The samples would be kept on file with the KGB so they would have a unique "fingerprint" of your particular device.

If you were ever suspected of circulating any "subversive literature" around, the offending leaflet could be compared to the samples of your machine. If they matched... well, it usually meant you'd won an express ticket straight to beautiful Dzerzhinsky Square in downtown Moscow, of which your hosts made sure that you'd get to tour "the basement". Hey, beats what would happen if you were found with an unregistered printing machine: those were usually dealt with by summary execution.

I mention all of this 'cuz since America is now well into the phase where we've gone beyond laughing at the Soviets and are now determined to actively imitate them, this next story is totally apropos. But think of the bright side: at least this way you don't have to burn gas money trudging your new printer down to the CIA... not when they've got its serial number tagged with the credit card that you bought it with. Convenient, no? Awright, just read this from PC World via Yahoo!...

Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents

Mon Nov 22, 4:00 AM ET
Jason Tuohey, Medill News Service

WASHINGTON--Next time you make a printout from your color laser printer, shine an LED flashlight beam on it and examine it closely with a magnifying glass. You might be able to see the small, scattered yellow dots printer there that could be used to trace the document back to you.

According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters.

Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says his company's laser printers, copiers and multifunction workstations, such as its WorkCentre Pro series, put the "serial number of each machine coded in little yellow dots" in every printout. The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins.

"It's a trail back to you, like a license plate," Crean says.

The dots' minuscule size, covering less than one-thousandth of the page, along with their color combination of yellow on white, makes them invisible to the naked eye, Crean says. One way to determine if your color laser is applying this tracking process is to shine a blue LED light--say, from a keychain laser flashlight--on your page and use a magnifier.

(snip)

If the practice disturbs you, don't bother trying to disable the encoding mechanism--you'll probably just break your printer.

Crean describes the device as a chip located "way in the machine, right near the laser" that embeds the dots when the document "is about 20 billionths of a second" from printing.

"Standard mischief won't get you around it," Crean adds.

Neither Crean nor Pagano has an estimate of how many laser printers, copiers, and multifunction devices track documents, but they say that the practice is commonplace among major printer companies.

"The industry absolutely has been extraordinarily helpful [to law enforcement]," Pagano says.

According to Pagano, counterfeiting cases are brought to the Secret Service, which checks the documents, determines the brand and serial number of the printer, and contacts the company. Some, like Xerox, have a customer database, and they share the information with the government.

Crean says Xerox and the government have a good relationship. "The U.S. government had been on board all along--they would actually come out to our labs," Crean says.

(snip)

For the rest of the story punch here.

So... if we're not just following the same procedure that the Soviets used in controlling the spread of printed material, but have instead improved upon it, that's not necessarily a good thing for the people of this country, right?

Right?

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"Despicable" computer game reloads the JFK assassination

Nope, Electronic Arts didn't roll out The Sims Lone Gunman Expansion Pack while we weren't looking. It ain't a joke either: this is an actual screenshot that I took from JFK Reloaded a short while ago.

Available for download starting today - the 41st anniversary of the JFK assassination - the computer game from British software outfit Traffic puts you in the role of Lee Harvey Oswald at the infamous sixth-floor window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. The left mouse button toggles the sniper scope, while hitting the right one rains down virtual bullets from your Mannlicher-Carcano. Score points by sticking to the "findings" of the Warren Commission, but they’re deducted if you accidentally put a round through First Lady Jackie. Apart from the absence of the cheering crowds (sorry: no "Umbrella Man" or "Babushka Lady" here) you're opening fire on a VERY realistic 3D-rendered simulacrum of Dealey Plaza that Traffic assembled from the most studied motion picture footage in history: the Abraham Zapruder film. Watch the scene unfold in first-person mode, in third-person overlooking Oswald's perch, or from the "Grassy Knoll". You can download a demo of the game that's fully-functional minus being able to actually shoot (thus letting Kennedy safely ride off) or pay $9.99 online to unlock the full game so you can get "JFK blown away, what else do I have to say?"

Well, for starters paying ten bucks to register the game makes you eligible for a $100,000 prize if you're the one who comes closest to replicating Oswald's ummm... "accomplishment". And Traffic is assuming that it was Oswald and no other: "We've created the game with the belief that Oswald was the only person that fired the shots on that day," Traffic's managing editor Kirk Ewing said, "although this recreation proves how immensely difficult his task was."

Having a big cash payout for best imitation of the murder of the century is a pretty cold thing to do, in my opinion. JFK's younger brother Senator Ted Kennedy released a statement calling the game "despicable"... something that's maybe the first thing I've ever agreed 100% with him on. And thinking that a videogame like JFK Reloaded will encourage young people to become more interested in history – which Traffic claims was one of their motives in producing it - is pretty condescending. But I've got to admit: after downloading the demo and installing the optional high-resolution patch, it must be said that JFK Reloaded is an amazing marriage of historical events with modern gaming technology. Simply put, the game looks stunning, though I couldn't possibly shell out money for the full version with a clear conscience.

Meanwhile, unsubstantiated rumors persist that two days from now Traffic will be publishing an add-on pack to JFK Reloaded, tentatively-titled Jail Basement Transfer. Players can either act as Jack Ruby or witness his lunge forward from the perspective of "the Man in the White Hat".

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ATTENTION LADIES: Kyle Williams is officially an eligible bachelor!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to wunderkind writer and teenage theological revolutionary (and great guy to have as a friend) Kyle Williams, who hits SWEET SIXTEEN today. This day holds special meaning for Kyle: he can now drive a car, he can now date his female admirers (of which one has told me that "Kyle looks HOT!") and never again can someone dismiss his thoughts and claim that "he's too young a pundit" out of desperation!

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Internet history - and other kinds - got made three years ago this weekend

Would have remembered to post about this yesterday, 'cept at the time I'd been going on 7 hours sleep total across the past four days (most of that time spent working on this film). Anyhoo...

It was November 20 in 2001 that six months of planning, starting from the moment this bizarre plot was first hatched, culminated in a single keystroke. My friend Joshua Griffin did the honors: as Editor of TheForce.net he was the one who had first brought me aboard the site. And more than just a co-worker, he became an awesome friend and brother in the Lord... and a great counselor in all things about love between a guy and his girl. I couldn't bring myself to do this so I asked if he would. How much did I trust Josh? Enough to put the entire rest of my life into his hands... literally!

"It's away!" Josh yelled over the phone as his finger went down on the "Post Article" button. Lisa didn't arrive at my apartment for another hour and a half. By the time she did the entire free world had come to know that she had to be something very special if her boyfriend was crazy in love with her (or just plain crazy) enough to announce just HOW much it was that he loved her!

It was after I had read her a passage of scripture from Ephesians, and then removed her boots and sock to wash her feet in a basin of warm water as a sign of how I wanted to serve her, that Lisa got to see that. I was kneeling beside her by then, wearing the same outfit and holding out the REAL ring (but no lightsaber this time :-) She said "yes" in less than a second.

A few people have told me since that so far as anyone's been able to figure out, this was the very first time ever that a major website like this was used to do a marriage proposal, and possibly even done on the Internet at all. That's neat that TheForce.net got to make history like that... 'cuz it sure did for me and Lisa :-)

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"...Because there were no more worlds to conquer."

CNN is reporting on several angry Greeks threatening to sue Warner Brothers over the upcoming film Alexander. The contention is whether or not Alexander the Great was bisexual.

If this movie is based on the script I read parts of years ago, it would not only be a great flick but the issue might be a legit one for polite discussion. But it so happens that the addition of a single factor should poison the well of historical debate as much as it leads me to weigh against plunking my money down at the box office to see it at all...

Alexander is directed by Oliver Stone.

After what he did with JFK and Nixon, I can only surmise that Alexander of Macedonia was a safe target 'cuz so far as major world leaders go, there are no more for Stone to conquer... errr, I mean "to obfuscate".

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A thought that came to me a few days ago...

No minority is so despised and ignored as the individual.

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Thoughts and prayers with Condi Rice this afternoon

It's being reported today that Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's now-National Security Advisor and soon-Secretary of State, underwent surgery this morning to remove non-malignant growths in her uterus. The procedure is called a "uterine fibroid embolization" and word from the surgeons who performed the task is that Rice came through very well.

I'm led to keep Doctor Rice in prayer this afternoon, and wish her a speedy recover so that she'll soon be back in action and none the worse for wear. Yes, I know: she's one of Bush's innermost cabal and I've made it quite clear - and with very good reasons - why he can't be trusted. How he's deluded a lot of Christians into believing he's the embodiment of saintly righteousness when his real character shows him to be a very bitter, angry, vindictive and hateful man attempting to hide an evil nature behind the Bible. How he and a lot of other people in his administration are making America a far more socialist - and I don't mind saying "fascist" also - state than it's ever been before. And I don't agree with a lot of things that she's said previously...

...but Condi Rice has always been my very favorite person in this White House. Easily the smartest brain in there. On top of the Doctorate in Political Science she's fluent in French, Russian and Spanish. She helped engineer the reunification of Germany. She plays concert cello and her biggest dream is to someday be running the National Football League. And she's the one I'm inclined to find more trustworthy than most of the others in this administration. In a sane world, she'd be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue right now instead of working there. Say what one will of the people around her, she's the kind of lady you just gotta admire despite all that.

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