V for Vendetta trailer hits the net

No, this ain't a big-screen movie about the man-eating alien lizards that NBC shocked us with back in the mid-80s...I will be there opening day to see this, even if I can barely explain it to anyone else I know. I borrowed this graphic novel from a friend in college about ten years ago. It's... interesting, to put it mildly. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore is something like...

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Open the Windoze and look at the Vista

It's been almost four years already, and Bill Gates thinks that's long enough to go without a new operating system: Windows Vista will be arriving late in 2006. 'Course they announced Windows 95 a few times and it kept getting pushed back more and more, so it may yet be '07-'08 before this sees shrink-wrapping.Sobering thought that until very recently there were only three things that people would line up for at midnight to pay money for: a new...

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Scotty has read his last technical journal...

James Doohan - better known as that most lovable of Starfleet engineers Montgomery Scott or just simply "Scotty" - has died at the age of 85.I met him once, very briefly. Super nice guy, Doohan was. I just read that he was a veteran of D-Day, even lost part of a finger on one hand during the fighting.He beams up to the good company of fellow Enterprise crewmember DeForrest...

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My thoughts on John G. Roberts as Supreme Court nominee

I don't know much about this guy, but from what little I've read so far he sounds like a pretty strong practitioner of judicial restraint. Eager to see what his views are on the Second Amendment and the recent Kelo decision (the one that allows cities to steal private land and give it to rich developers) but I found this quote by Roberts to be quite interesting indeed..."We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled."Roe...

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About "that thing" in Half-Blood Prince...

Someone read my review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and shot me an e-mail saying "whatever happened isn't that big a deal is it?"Oh yes it is.The more I think about it, what happens at the end of chapter 27 (that's as far as I want to go in pinpointing what exactly it is) may well go down as one of the top ten all-time greatest moments in English literature: right up there with Sherlock Holmes's apparent death at the hands of Moriarty,...

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That's a darned tempting target for any snipers...

I don't have the heart to post this picture here: AfterShock found it so you're going to have to visit his blog inste...

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William Westmoreland is dead

Just coming off the wires that retired U.S. Army General William Westmoreland has died at the age of 91.Westmoreland was the commander of the American forces during the Vietnam conflict. I've never thought that was a war worth our fighting in, but Westmoreland did the duties given him to the best of his ability, as honorably as anyone could hope for in that kind of situation. I think his was the classic example of a general whose hands were tied...

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Two great articles by Vox Day and Kyle Williams

These are two of the best writers working today, I honestly believe. They're definitely the two best regulars that WorldNetDaily has writing for itself. First up is Kyle Williams's piece from this past Saturday on "evangelical Republicanism":...I still consider myself very much conservative in the way I view government, morality and even theology. Yet, I firmly believe the way the American evangelical leadership has responded to the power struggle...

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"Dirty Harry" Potter: Half-Blood Prince a brutal read

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the least "Potter"-y book of the series. Almost 24 hours after finishing reading it I feel... depressed, but not let down. This was NOT what I was anticipating at all. And you know why that is? It's because of something that hit me as we left Border's bookstore late Friday night...The next Harry Potter book is probably two or three years away from now. By then, I might very well be a father myself. ...

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Midnight launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at Border's in Greensboro

Well, finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince about 30 minutes ago. Going to need some time to let it all "sink in" 'cuz this one packs about the biggest wallop I've ever seen for a kids' book.Is it even still safe to call it that anymore? I will say this again later: there are things in this book that make what happens in Star Wars Episode III seem mild...

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27 chapters into The Half-Blood Prince and...

Whoa.Let me rephrase that.Whoa.It can't ever be said that J.K. Rowling plays it safe.This is about as mean a thing to do as there's ever been done in a book, kids' or no. This is the sort of thing that would make one squeamish if it had happened in a far more mature book.That sound you're hearing this weekend is millions of children from ages 6 to 106 screaming in abject horror.Three chapters left to go in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince....

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The half-way point of The Half-Blood Prince

Just finished the Chapter 16 (of 30) of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which puts me at page 348 out of 652. I started reading about 1:30 a.m. this morning, right after we got back from the "midnight party" at the local Border's bookstore. Will have photos up from that soon, but at the moment I'm too engrossed in this book. Finally put it down for the night at 4 and then picked it right back up around 10 this morning. I might have it...

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Man, this just wigs me out to look at it...

Philip K. Dick is dead. Nevertheless, Philip K. Dick is making live interview appearances at Comic-Con in San Diego this weekend.Click on the link if you like. I gotta say, that's just darned creepy-looki...

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President Bush supporting CAFTA here in North Carolina this afternoon

I just saw that on the noon news broadcast. Bush is speaking at Gaston College near Charlotte, promoting the Central America Free Trade Agreement.For him to speak about that, here in North Carolina, is sorta like Heinrich Himmler making a speech in the middle of the Warsaw ghetto about the merits of "relocation".Seriously, that takes some brazen bones to do that here. North Carolina has lost countless jobs in the textile industry under the North...

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Forcery having worldwide appeal

As of this morning, Forcery has been featured on no less than two websites from the Netherlands, three in Great Britain, two in France, one in Taiwan (I don't even know anyone from Taiwan... yet anyway :-), two in Belgium, two in Norway, and even one out of Luxembourg.I sorta feel like the Jerry Lewis of the fan-film scene now ...

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This week's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us...

21-year old woman in Myanmar now a man after growing a pen...

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Following the Judas goats over the cliff...

Really good essay by Butler Shaffer over at LewRockwell.com. Titled "Saving a Dying Corpse", Shaffer writes about how it is that the American people are so blindly following to ruin men of little integrity or scruples...An Associated Press news report told of 1,900 sheep following one another over a cliff in Turkey, resulting in the deaths of 450. The sheep had been grazing when, without explanation, some members of the herd began leaping from...

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