James Rising

Tuesday Review:

I actually ventured out of the house for this one.

A side note before I review Super 8 2011 PG-13

We don’t go out to the movies much anymore. Reasons are multiple. We are busy, we are lazy, not much appeals to us enough to bother and…it’s freakin’ expensive. Especially since the advent of 3-D and I-MAX. But yesterday we had a free ticket. So we went to see Super 8 and we debated for about a nano-second about upgrading for the “D-BOX Motion” seats. Till we got the price. $ 8 upcharge. So our free movie day out would have cost the long-suffering wife and me $16.00.

Nope.

Thankless job: being the usher who has to check the tickets to make sure you paid for “D-Box Motion Seats”.

Here is a film with no “bankable” stars but two high power names, director J.J. Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg but one that is doing blockbuster at the box office.

The problem I have with the film is not that it’s not good. It is. Very well made, loads of heart, over the top special effects up the whazoo.

The issue: The film tries too hard to be too many things. Is it E.T.? Is it a Science Fiction send up of the movies I used to see at the Saturday matinees? Is it a message film about misunderstood aliens, who are just hungry and scared?

I dunno.

I will say this for J.J. Abrams. He is a great storyteller and has the craft down pat. The movie moves pretty well and the plots and sub-plots (Daddy really LOVES you, and dope is bad kids, mmkay?) are woven together without being overbearing.

LSW noted that the B.E.M. (I forget who taught me that term. Issac? Harlan? Is dat you?) Bug Eyed Monster, only makes one clear appearance. Myself I thought that was about right. He did nothing for the picture, sort of like Marlon Brando at the end of “Apocalypse Now!”. Kind of reminded me of Marlon, too.

The clear intent is to make you feel for the alien. Meh. It ate all the dogs and quite a few people and stole all the microwaves. I don’t care for it.

The young cast is really superb, especially dishy (whooooops..she’s only 13, right?) Elle Fanning, who has quite the camera magnet thing going for her. Joel Courtney plays Joel Lamb with just the right amount of wide-eyed innocence.

Too bad real kids in that age group aren’t as charming.

As a send-up of old time horror films it was entertaining. I am not sure that the references to George Romero and that sort of thing were meant for the average audience but I got them.

Stay for the credits. They should win an award for that.

Amazing how different previews make the movie look:

The Rant D’Jour is about dogs and their eating habits.

In my experience dogs will eat just about anything. They really aren’t fussy about price, presentation…more

In my experience dogs will eat just about anything. They really aren’t fussy about price, presentation or even freshness dating.

In fact my dog even, by the evidence left, consumed a….well wait we are getting ahead of ourselves here.

Even though dogs are not fussy about what they eat their masters and mistresses, hereafter referred to as owners, are.

And so the giant dog food makers are poised and ready to take advantage. Let’s look at the menu, shall we? Roasted chicken with pasta and carrots. Simmered beef with wild rice and spinach. Kibbles and bits with pasta and vegetables, Savory sauce in three flavors, bacon, chicken and roasted beef. Alpo this is not.

The doggy food guys are just using what they call the humanization of pets to cash in. You see this humanization with dog owners all the time. Dressing them up in sweaters, talking baby talk to them, asking them questions. So it’s only natural the owners want to feed poochie the same sorts of food that they themselves would want. We know that feeding rover table scraps is not good. So the pet food chefs whip up a beef stew with peas carrots, rice and barley. One test family told Procter and gamble that the products, labeled Beneful, were “like people food. It’s what I would feed my family.” The family canines, Snowball and Sparky were wild about the sophisticated dog chow.

And that’s what it’s all about. Dogs will show you they love the chow with wagging tails and excited woofs. But as I started to say before, my dog was just as delighted with her meal of black and white furred beast. I wonder if the dog food makers could come up with filet de skunk?

Or

From time to time a picture will grab my eye (and drag it several hundred feet before letting go, vicious little things) and I will save it in a little file on my desktop.

Most of these are screen grabs from various sources, chief among them the New York Times reader, the best on-line newspaper there is. I highly recommend it but there is a problem with getting it. You have to be a subscriber to the “dead-tree” version of the Times to access all its features.

I subscribe to and have received for years the New York Times Sunday edition. I read it all week and enjoy it tremendously. A few years back they pointed me at the reader. You have to download a very large program – Adobe Air – which seems as resource greedy as Photoshop to use it. It takes a LONG time to load. But it is hands down the best newspaper experience on the internets, now available on computers.

As I use and become more comfortable reading newspapers on-line my need and enjoyment of the NY Times Sunday edition has diminished. Many weeks it sits on the counter until Saturday unopened and gets tossed. But I continue to take it.

Why?

A few weeks back ago I guess the person who delivers it changed. The new one evidently cannot read numbers because three weeks in a row he didn’t come through. I called and called complaining about this and I finally got someone in New York (New York, the city so nice they named it twice) and found out this:

I can subscribe to the on-line “reader” version only for $30.00 monthly, BUT I will not get all the features. If I continue to take the newspaper, which I don’t really want and only shows up sporadically I get everything and the four week bill is $35.00.

I wonder at this. Why would they penalize anyone who wants to get them out of the dead tree business? It’s puzzlement.
But back to the pictures.

Here’s one:

The caption explains what is going on. Not what interests me as usual. My meandering eye looks at this guy:

And I look at the knife in the scabbard on his belt.

That’s called a Scimitar methinks. A long knife with a curved blade, excellent for slashing opponents while riding on a horse.

Several things occur to me.

There really are cultural differences in this world of ours. If I saw a guy wearing a big knife in a belt at the flea market I might think twice about buying what he is selling.

However, I also gaze in wonderment at Cops at flea markets, book sales and high school basketball games with guns on their hips, so don’t go by me.

The scabbard the guy has the knife in. It’s green. And it’s really curved on the end. I am guessing the knife doesn’t have that much of curve to the blade.

And check out the top of the knife. Is that a jewel?

I can amuse myself for hours with such questions.

I don’t know if that is a good thing, or a bad thing.

It is what it is, I guess.

The Rant D’Jour is about Monday.

Today is Monday. How is your heart feeling? Oh I am not being romantic here. I mean that dense mass of muscle in your chest.

Have you ever heard the idea that heart attacks are more common on the first day of the work week? Well some recent studies by egghead scientists have proven it’s true. In fact the chances of you vapor locking while rushing to that all important meeting on Monday morning is twenty to fifteen percent greater than the rest of the week.

The studies have suggested several different reasons for the hefty increase in chest pains on Monday. One Scottish study seems to point to heavier drinking over the weekend as a cause. But the truly interesting thing to me is a study of people who were retired also had a bigger chance of Monday heart attacks.

So quite possibly the problem is Monday.

My suggestion and I think it’s a good one is ban Mondays. Everybody hates them. They have been proven to be dangerous. And who came up with this two day weekend idea anyway. As a matter of fact while we are working on this let’s make the weekend four days long. Friday thru Monday seems a whole lot better than what we have now. A three day work week and a four day weekend. Now were talking. Except…and I hate to suggest this. What if Tuesday becomes the new Monday?

Sunday Wrap:

That's a wrap

Monday 6/27/11

Rant D’Jour

Blog Post

Tuesday 6/28/11

Rant D’Jour

Blog Post

Wednesday 6/29/11

Rant D’Jour

Blog Post

Thursday 6/30/11

Rant D’Jour

Blog Post

Friday 7/1/11

Rant D’Jour

Blog Post

Saturday 7/2/11

Rant D’Jour

Blog Post

The Rant D’Jour is about food on the go.

It’s a guilty pleasure of modern society. What would our forefathers make of our modern tendency to eat on the run? There is not…More

It’s a guilty pleasure of modern society.

What would our forefathers make of our modern tendency to eat on the run? There is not a person alive in America who hasn’t wolfed down a meal of some sort while blowing down the highway at 55 mph plus. In fact a recent study shows one third of us do it once or twice a week.

Car manufacturers are even getting hip to that fact and redesigning cars for that very purpose. Take the lowly cup holder as an example. In the beginning there was one, and we were lucky to have it. Now a sport utility Volvo has 18. Nine for cups and 9 for larger bottles. The thing only has seats for 7 people. You could put out a forest fire with the amount of liquid in this SUV!

Take into consideration the Honda Pilot. It has a special armrest that folds down to reveal slots meant to hold…wait for it…dipping sauces.

Taco bell has even gone to the lengths of hiring a research company to do a study to see what foods work best for consumption one handed while piloting your craft over the highway. In case you’re wondering which item is the safest to eat on the move the majority of car passengers (85 percent) rated the Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme as the most ideal “Eat On-The-Go” menu item. McDonald’s chicken McNuggets, the Subway Tuna Salad Wrap, Wendy’s Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger and Burger King’s Chicken Tenders followed respectively.

All this doesn’t come without it’s hazards of course. Theres the obvious danger of driving off the road or into another car while stuffing your face. But you may also be doing damage to your car.

The Ford motor company has begun to install tiny little guuters under the gearshift panel to carry spilled liquids away from the workings of your gear selector. It’s been dubbed the Coke managment strategy.

Just one more report from the slippery slope to the hot place.

Aggregate Saturday:

This week seems like it was longer than most. Odd because it has the same old same old written all over it. Weird how our perception of time is. I wrote a couple of good pieces on that. I will look for them, perchance to update and recycle.
–
I am toying with cutting down to one post per day. The fresh one. The “Rant D’Jour” has always been recycled from the vast archive of Rising at Ten and But then again… but now It seems to me I am repeating them. This is worth thinking about, I think.
–
Gosh I love coffee. I wish I could swim in it, sometimes. How did I ever give it up?
–
Green Mountain is hands down the best. Most expensive but oh so good. Current fave:
Colombian Fair Trade select Single origin
It’s pricey because it comes in a 10 oz bag as opposed to the regular 12 oz size for the same price but man oh man. It’s a treat that can’t be beat.

I would love to try this one: Special Reserve La Union Mexico but I just can’t get beyond a $25 price point (With shipping). Fathers day is coming. Next year. Umm….my birthday is coming.
–
I am beat beyond recognition. Mowed the grass at the in-laws and our joint. BUT BUT BUT. The Godforsaken lawn tractor which does 2/3rds of ours with my ass in the seat stalled out after one lap. Start and park for you NASCAR Fans. I dunno what’s wrong. Seems like it might be fuel filter related but it’s above my pay-grade. It’s parked and I did the ENTIRE 2.5 acres with the little self propelled. Yeah, it is self-propelled. I am not.
–
This week and last I have been experimenting with a little wine with dinner. Not every night. And no more than 2 glasses.
On those nights I was…less than compliant with my food intake. Pretzels, premium ice cream etc. Fasting blood sugars the next day in the 100 teens range. Yesterday I did all that exercise and really ate almost nothing. No wine.
Blood sugar 137 this am. AND…this is the day after I take my injection of Gila Lizard venom. This disease is baffling in the extreme. Conclusion? The wine seems to bring down my fasting blood sugar. More study is needed. I will keep on my research diligently.
–
The pool chemistry is also puzzling me. It’s now well over a week since I have run the filter. The water is sparkling clear. Oh, there is a certain amount of debris floating and on the bottom there is a little pile but nothing a quick vacuum won’t deal with. The chlorine level, which is only dispensed when the filter is running, is still off the charts. The PH is improving daily. When I was a new to it as a pool custodian I ran the filter 24/7 all summer long. It’s not cheap electrical bill wise. Two years ago I experimented with running it only at night. Now I am wondering how much, if at all it needs to run. CAVEAT: It has not been really hot. And no one has been swimming because the temp is still just above 70.
–
I leave out articles when I am writing. Not on purpose. Elmore Leonard leaves out verbs and adverbs. I put the articles back in when I proof. I have to look very carefully to find out where I miss them because my stupid mind fills them in.
Maybe I should leave them out. Could it be my key to success? Good lord I hope something is.

The Rant D’Jour should have been called, Hello Dolly. Hello Human.

It won’t be long before we are bombarded with ads on the TV for children’s toys. Christmas after…more

It won’t be long before we are bombarded with ads on the TV for children’s toys. Christmas after all is only days away, at least in terms of the marketer.

Wait till you see what Santa’s helpers have come up with this year.

As technology marches on we now have a doll that can recognize voices, identify objects and…wait for it…show emotion.
This little cyborg is called Amazing Amanda and it’s very scary.

Invented by a childless 65 year old toy designer named Judy Shackleford the 100 dollar doll bears about as much resemblance to chatty Cathy as your new car does to a horse and buggy.

When you bring this little creature to life for the first time it yawns, opens its eyes and begins asking questions. As the kid responds it voice prints the child’s speech and then knows who Mommy is. If someone else speaks it says, you don’t sound like Mommy.

It not only talks and listens but has Disney like animatronics so if you ask it to make a funny face it smiles and its eyes..shine. Ask it to cry and the lower lip comes out and the eyelids droop.

But wait there’s more. It might ask for a cookie (included in the purchase price are fake cookies and other items) and if you give it a rock it will tell you a rock is not a cookie. The damn thing is smarter than President Bush!

The senior citizen designer of this plastic fantastic doll says girls tell dolls all the time that they love them.
This doll acts like she loves you.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Faithful readers know I go to lot of yard sales/flea markets/church sales etc. , Ad infinitum.

We lived off these sales for a year while I was between jobs and did quite well but it’s a lot more work than a full-time job. You do find bargains and lots of new stuff that is priced real low. If you know what you are looking for you can, as I mentioned, make some money but recently I think the bottom has dropped out of the market for a lot of categories. We were specializing in books, children’s books, most specifically what are known as “Series Books” – Nancy Drew is one example. A recent round of items we put up fetched far under what we paid so I guess we will wait and see if the prices come back up.

But we still go to the sales, out of habit I think sometimes, but the long-suffering wife also has a side project of putting together fund raising “Baskets” filled with dog stuff for her sister and her myriad doggy friends who have organizations and such that need them. The baskets are quite nice, stuffed with dog everything and the LSW works very hard to gather the stuff to stuff them with for cheap at the “fleas”. At some point I will document the building of one of the baskets.

I look for electronics and people watch. I don’t buy much but I do enjoy looking and marveling at what people think will sell (come on, NO one wants your USED cassette/VHS tapes) and what they think stuff will sell for.

Here is an example that stunned even me.

In case you have NO idea what you are looking at (and that would not surprise me in the least) that is a modem, the old kind that used to connect to a phone line (NOT DSL) and your computer so you could “log on” to the internet, which in those days pretty much meant AOL or a BBS.

This isn’t even a particularly fast modem, note that it says 288 which is 28.8 kilobits per second-as it says on the box you can get an online upgrade to 33.6.

Just for a little perspective, a cable modem now can do 30 Megabits per second – Kilo being thousand, mega being one million.

This nifty little piece of hardware would have been introduced in 1991-and would have been obsoleted by 1998 when the 56k units came out.

I must have a dozen or more modems in the attic. While none of them are new in the packaging like this one I can certainly vouch for them working when removed from service.

No way would I have the sack to put a price tag of any sort on them.

They don’t even make attractive paper weights, and anyway with what I do for living there is NO paper.

The Rant D’Jour is about existentialism. Lucky thing I are got speeelcheck.

Can we unlatch ourselves from a goal driven life? Why is it that we always seem to be working for more…more

Can we unlatch ourselves from a goal driven life? Why is it that we always seem to be working for more stuff? A better car, bigger house, a vacation home? Are we just wired that way, or it something we have learned and having learned it can we unlearn it?

I have seen this in my own life quite often. I will really want something, let’s say a sports car. I will work and save and beat down the objections of my long suffering wife and finally I get the thing. Now I don’t want to say for even minute that I don’t love and cherish my little car. But it somehow seems that the wanting was a much stronger emotion than the having. It’s sort of like, now what?

The answer is in there somewhere. The happiness of the little sports car was in the pursuit. I spent literally years seeking out the perfect for me car. I logged countless hours on the computer, learning about the type of car I wanted. I searched e-bay and other sites trying to find the perfect one in my price range. I must have looked at fifty or more of these cars in the area and even while on vacation. Wait honey, pull over- there’s one in that farmer’s field. It might run. Is that a tree growing out of the hood?

So if a material achievement leaves you happy for only a short while, why do we keep going after the next goal? Lately I have found myself looking at other sports cars. Wouldn’t it be great if I had a corvette? My long suffering wife just shakes her head and sighs.

Sometimes it seems like this is a sort of like being on a treadmill. I always wanted a house. I got a house. Now I want a bigger house. Or I want a house by a lake. But taking care of the house I have and making my mortgage payments makes the dream of that other house a real stretch. But maybe if we work and save and do without and make ourselves miserable in the process, maybe we can find that bigger house.

But when we get there, will the same thing happen again?

The best advice I have heard is choose your treadmills with care. You will be on them for a long time.