I am stepping away from blogging for some time. Don't know for how long. Things could do for a little respite, and some realigning, and you never know how they'll settle out in the end... but I rather believe that it will be for the better. Don't be surprised if this blog is entirely different when I return. Don't be surprised if I'm entirely different. Who knows, I might be a whole 'nother person that you've never seen before when this is finished....
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
When Bush says "I want more power", start worrying
So, President Bush is asking Congress to give him more powers in the event of major catastrophes. The article suggests that he may ask to be given the authority to:- Order mandatory civilian evacuations- Dispatch U.S.-based armed forces for emergency search-and-rescue operations- Grant wider leeway for active-duty U.S. military personnel to carry out law enforcement operations.The last one is the really troubling possibility: that Posse Comitatus...
For a few dollars more: "The Man with No Name" coming to Xbox/PS2
IGN.com is reporting that a videogame based on Sergio Leone's "The Man with No Name" trilogy is coming to Xbox, PC and Playstation systems sometime in 2006. It's possible that Clint Eastwood might be brought onboard to provide vocal talent for the game.This might be what finally gets Dad to pick up an Xbox controller ...
Episode III goof: Ring around the collar
This has been bugging me ever since I caught it the very first time I saw Revenge of the Sith. The scene where Anakin is on the slab, getting rebuilt into classic Darth Vader. Here's three cuts in succession. Notice anything wrong here?Give up?Okay, in the top image there's Anakin in most of the Darth Vader armor (for the first time I'm noticing that he's not wearing the...
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
New toy to play with
Lisa found me a 256 MB flash drive. Previously I was using a 128 MB one. I know they make them much bigger (like a gig or so) but I still think it's a pretty neat gimmick to mess around with. I find it amusing that this is 80 megabytes bigger than the hard drive in my very first computer. First things I put on it was the medium-sized Quicktime of Forcery and a Quicktime installer, so I can carry around a much larger version of my own movie with...
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Four years ago today al Qaeda defeated the United States
Osama bin Laden got pretty much everything he wanted. The country that existed prior to 9/11 is gone now. In its place is a land where no-warrant searches take place, where you can be locked up indefinitely without being charged or put on trial, where our women and children are fondled obscenely at the airport, where guns are now seized from average citizens, where Big Brother monitors all of our communications (if you don't think the government...
This church's pastor is an idiot
From KLTV.com come this heartwarming story of Christian "love":Local Church's Sign Offends EvacueesA confrontation this morning between an East Texas church and an evacuee from New Orleans. It centers around a sign out front of Woodland Hills Baptist Church on Old Jacksonville Road in Tyler, about a mile inside the loop. Some say the message is offensive."I drove by that sign...
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Interdictor blog has been the site I've most visited the past two weeks
There's going to be a movie made about these guys someday, bank on ...
It was four years ago tonight...
...that I started writing the script for Forcery. Feels so curious now, to finally have that behind me.Two days from now will more or less be the official start of pre-production of our next project. Which will be something of an experimental way to make a movie. I'm really excited about what this is going to be, all the things that are going into making ...
KWerky Productions website is still down
No, we ain't out of business (yet :-), we're just working through the intricacies of a physical relocation of our server. Should be back up soon (along with news on our next project or two). It'll be at the usual address when it comes back onli...
"It can't happen here"
Avearge American citizens are being removed from their homes by force, are having their weapons seized at gunpoint, and are being removed to government-run shelters "for their own protection", in a major American city. A federal court just ruled that the government can detain anyone it calls a "threat" for however long it wants to.All of this is happening under a Republican President, by the way. You know... the party that this kind of thing isn't...
Another Saturday so you know what that means...
Another solid piece by Kyle Williams that WorldNetDaily refuses to put atop their front page.To their credit, the pieces by Dr. Kelly Hollowell and Jerry Falwell are pretty good this week. Hollowell is contrasting the tragedy of Katrina with that of abortion, while Falwell is generously offering free tuition to students who came out of Katrina at his Liberty University, which I've heard firsthand over the years is a pretty good school, despite some...
Friday, September 09, 2005
Red Dawn over New Orleans
Well, this is a post I never thought I'd ever have to make...About twenty years ago there was a movie called Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell. Maybe you've seen it before (probably during one of those hundreds of times that TNT used to run it back in the late Nineties) so you already know it's horribly dated by today's standards. But if you haven't: it was about the Soviet Union dropping paratroopers into the American heartland...
I've never even watched Firefly before...
...but I found this to be pretty darned cool. Wish I had that many bricks to play with ...
Thursday, September 08, 2005
AAAAHHH it's a Crazy Frog, SHOOT IT SHOOT IT!!
This is supposed to be a big thing over in England and the rest of Europe. I guess it'll be catching on here pretty soon: every decade sees America getting some imported "cuteness" from elsewhere. In the Eighties it was the Smurfs from Belgium. Then the Nineties it was Pokemon from Japan. So Ed came by earlier tonight for dinner and afterward he showed me Crazy Frog, which...
Will the big rigs put on the brakes?
WorldNetDaily has a story today about commercial truckdrivers possibly staging a strike in the very near future, to protest the rising cost of fuel. I've heard this talked about for at least the past month or so and... well, I'm of the mind that this is altogether possible. Not to mention easily understandable given the frustrations of these truckers. Most of them are independent contractors who have to purchase their own fuel, and a lot of 'em...
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Katrina victims to get $2000 debit cards from U.S. government
From the Associated Press...Katrina Victims to Get $2K Debit CardsSep 07 3:42 PM US/EasternBy DEVLIN BARRETTAssociated Press WriterThe federal government plans to hand out debit cards worth $2,000 each to families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff, under fire for his agency's response to the disaster, held a conference call with governors of states with evacuees and described the plan. While many...
Bush kept cancer patients from getting chemo?!?
Unbelievable, but apparently true.Someone is probably going to jump flunky on me for posting this though, likely tell me something like "Bush was there to boost patients's morale" or somethi...
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Gilligan has left the island. Maynard G. Krebs has banged his bongos for the last time.
Just hitting wires that Bob Denver - forever stranded with the rest of the Minnow crew on Gilligan's Island, not to mention wondering if he should "Work?" as beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis - has died here in North Carolina.Nothing else to say, 'cept another legend has left us. Say hello to the Skipper and Thurston Howell III up there, little b...
Monday, September 05, 2005
So, ummm... you saying the hurricane was GOOD for some people?!
Barbara Bush said this today at the Astrodome, no joke:"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this... this is working very well for them."Now, what kind of person is it that would divy-up the victims of something so impartial into either "privileged" or "underprivileged"?I'm almost reminded of the "steerage" passengers aboard the Titan...
Europeans building Doctor Octopus fusion machine
Physicsweb.org has the scoop on some scientists re-enacting the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster...Europe plans laser-fusion facility2 September 2005Laser physicists in Europe have put forward plans to build a £500m facility to study a new approach to laser fusion. A panel of scientists from seven European Union countries believes that a "fast ignition" laser facility could...
Together from across a century...
105 year-old Nita LaGarde holds hands with Tanisha Blevin, the 5-year old granddaughter of LaGarde's nurse. LaGarde, Blevin and some others spent two days trapped in the attic of a house amid the flood waters in New Orleans, before rescuers were able to get to them. LaGarde and Blevin then spent four days at the Convention Center before they were finally evacuated.This now...
Hoping CBS doesn't turn this into "Survivor: New Orleans"
Another uplifting story: holdouts in New Orleans's French Quarter banded together into "tribes" to help each other out.I think in years to come, what's happened in the Big Easy because of Katrina is going to be a hotly-discussed topic in sociology circles. This has brought out the worst in some people, and the very best in others. Why that happened is going to be well debated for a long ti...
About Bush and me...
I feel the need to clarify something that really can't be emphasized enough:I do not hate George W. Bush.I do hate the things he is doing to this country.F'rinstance, he is committing treason by letting untold millions of illegal immigrants flood across the border from Mexico. Illegal immigrants and God only knows who else: it's a would-be terrorist's dream come true.He lied us into a war with Iraq. The reasons for this war have never been consistent....
By any other name, Divx still sux (Blu-Ray news)
No not DivX the AVI video codec, which I like a lot. I mean Divx: that bastardized DVD format that was sold at Circuit City several years ago, just when DVD was getting to be popular.Good lord those were some of the most shameless TV commercials ever made. I actually felt sorry for that poor guy who was being paid to smile into the camera as he explained how Divx players "play both DVD and Divx titles". The really scary thing is that some studios...
Sunday, September 04, 2005
The Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon is on
It's a little different this year: it's raising money for both the Muscular Dystrophy Association and for the Hurricane Katrina victims. Jerry Lewis is lookin' good: a few years ago he didn't look so hot but he's buff enough now to do the Nutty Professor again it seems. And darn, Ed McMahon looks pretty good too! Anyway see if it's on locally and if it's not head over to...
Goofs and all, I like this new show Rome on HBO
It holds nothing back in showing how colorful, brutal, lecherous and oratorical those wacky Romans really were. Tonight's was the second episode and it was decidedly better than the first one. By the end of the hour I just knew where this chapter of the story was gonna end, on the other side of a certain lil' creek on the northern border with Italy. Definitely recommended but I did catch something that, maybe it's just the historian in me but...
Happy 75th Anniversary to Dagwood and Blondie!
The actual 75th won't come until later this week but today is the "official" celebration of Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead's 75th anniversary since they first appeared in the comics! I'd thought of marking the occassion by making a real Dagwood Bumstead sandwich but I gave up after seeing all the ingredients that go into it. Just as well: I don't like mayo anyway. May try...
We could kiss Saudi goodbye: VERY cool news on the fuel front
The boys at Shell R&D have been busy: "a billion barrels a square mile" would make the United States energy independent until the end of time. From Rocky Mountain News via Scripps:...Since 1981, Shell researchers at the company's division of "unconventional resources" have been spending their own money trying to figure out how to get usable energy out of oil shale. Judging by the presentation the Rocky Mountain News heard this week, they think...
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Chief Justice Rehnquist has died
I saw him preside over a Supreme Court case in January 1997. I heard from a lot of people who worked there that he was a really nice guy. A real gentleman through and through.The bad news just keeps coming lately, it seems. A good man is gone.I hope people are mindful about that.This sounds horrible, but I'm wondering how long it will be before "the ghouls" come out relishing the now-vacant Supreme Court seat.EDIT 11:22 PM EST: Well, that didn't...
"Plan? You mean there was a PLAN?!"
City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan pertaining to hurricanes.I'm wondering how much of this was actually followed-through ...
So Bush is selling crude oil from the strategic reserve...
...to supposedly help with the fuel shortage.Dumb, dumb, dumb.The problem is not so much supply right now as it is a refining problem. Simply putting more crude out there on the market is not going to have any significant effect on gasoline prices.I've no idea why he would do such a thing, but there it is, defying all wisdom regarding petroleum economi...
The New Orleans situation as a model of American government
That's practically what's being argued at Enemy Of The State blog right now. Is what's going on truly "Anarchy in New Orleans??" Here's a sample:Friends of mine have come up to me with almost gleeful self-righteousness and proclaimed,"SEE! SEE! This is why Anarchy can't work!"Ironically what is going on in New Orleans (specifically the looting of private property) resembles the behavior of Government and not philosophical Anarchism.Philosophical...
KWerky Productions website is down at the moment
Ed asked me to make a note of this a few days ago and it somehow got lost in the jumble of things. The KWerky Productions website (including the Forcery website) is currently down because of a physical relocation of the server. It should be back up and running fairly soon though. This is happening because of a development that is seeing KWerky Productions branch out a bit in terms of what we can and want to do. More on that later. In the meantime...
This bar never closed (uplifting Katrina story)
The Toronto Star has a story about a bar in New Orleans's French Quarter that rode out Katrina and is still doing business! This place will become bigtime legendary if the city ever comes out of this, like Cafe du Monde (which I understand is still standing and could recover pretty easily). Here's the start of the story:Doors never closed at this Big Easy barROSIE DIMANNOThe sign behind the bar says "Never Closed."That ain't no lie, cher.At Johnny...
Another good piece by Kyle Williams at WorldNetDaily
Now, if only WorldNetDaily would make it so you don't have to dig through the site to find it. Williams went from being one of the most at-the-forefront writers WND has, to being someone... ahhhh forget it I've ranted about this enough already. Head over here to see what Kyle has to say about some Christians who think Katrina was an enema sent by G...
Found a better picture of Jabbar Gibson
Somebody commented on the earlier post that Jabbar should drive the bus back to New Orleans and take over as mayor :-) If you're just now hearing about it, Jabbar Gibson is a 20-year old (not 18 as previously reported) from New Orleans who stole a schoolbus, picked up victims of Katrina and drove them all the way to the Houston Astrodome. Theirs was the first busload of...
Friday, September 02, 2005
So... who was at fault for the destruction of New Orleans?
I've been thinking about that a lot during the past few days, and the conclusion I'm coming to is......that it was nobody's fault, but a lot of people were not adequately prepared for this.If anyone, blame the French, or one lousy Frenchman anyway......Because Jean Baptiste Lemoyne, Sieur de Bienville - the founder of New Orleans - conned the King of France to making all the cheap swampland that he swiped up near the mouth of the Mississippi be the...
August activity made for a busy blog
I just looked through all the posts made in the previous month and August 2005 was the most active one yet: 70 posts total. This past month covered hit on just about everything. There were a lot of them toward the end as Katrina bore down and the aftermath, but otherwise it's a nice normal peek into the tortured psyche of me ...
PaleoBlog on pro-war hypocrites
Lee Shelton posts a good essay about pro-war hypocrisy on PaleoBlog. Here's a sample:Over the last four years, the message sent by neoconservatives to the rest of the nation has been clear: Get behind the Bush administration's "war on terror" or be prepared to face the consequences. But when the grieving mother of a fallen U.S. soldier tops the neoconservative most wanted list of treasonous, terrorist-sympathizing, America-haters, you know something's...
Video games becoming too easy?
AfterShock posts on his blog on an interesting phenomenon: are video games becoming a pushover to play? One of the things he cites is Super Mario Brothers 3 on the original Nintendo system, that it had no "save" feature so you had to play through the entire game in one sitting. Anyway I thought it and the article he found was pretty neat reading so check it o...
Teen steals school bus to get others out of New Orleans
Give this kid a medal now! From Local6.com:Storm Victims Steal School Buses To Flee New OrleansPOSTED: 12:13 pm EDT September 2, 2005UPDATED: 12:52 pm EDT September 2, 2005Several school buses were stolen from Orleans Parish, loaded with storm victims and driven out of New Orleans toward Houston in desperate acts to leave the ravaged city, according to reports.Three school...
This might explain where Dick Cheney has been...
Halliburton just landed a contract to repair Navy installations in the Gulf. Whatcha wanna bet Cheney's been working behind the scenes the past few days getting all the paperwork in order for this?Whatcha wanna bet that this was a non-competitive bid, t...
Was New Orleans aid held back for a Bush photo op?
I'm getting several reports (including this one and this, Interdictor's blog which has been an invaluable source of firsthand information) that supplies of food and fresh water had been brought to New Orleans already. But the National Guard was under orders not to begin distributing them. They only started going in with the supplies today when President Bush arrived. They could have started rolling into the Superdome and Convention Center areas...
George W. Bush is officially worse than useless now
I'm "watching" him on teevee right now (which actually means that I've got my back to the screen so I'm only listening to what happens, without the visuals distracting me). No leadership qualities coming out of the President of the United States at all. He's congratulating a lot of other politicians, saying a lot of broken phrases, is stumbling for words. I heard that just...
"Lestat"... with music by Elton John?!
Haven't read many of the more recent ones (I think Pandora was the last one and that was some years back) but I've always enjoyed the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. If nothing else than because of its sweeping sense of history: it's set against the backdrop of so many eras and locales.As anyone who's even casually approached the books knows, New Orleans is a major setting for most of the series. That's where the story of Louis begins in Interview...
I'm gonna try to lay off the hurricane posts for awhile
For the past several days I've been watching the Katrina tragedy, pouring over probably ever news story that's come out of it. I've been posting about a lot of them here, mainly the ones that had some particular interest for me. And I've been writing about how Katrina is effecting some things here, even far away from where the storm hit.Mostly, this has been for my own benefit. As a personal chronicle of how I watched this story unfold. And it's...
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Fats Domino has been found
Updating from a report earlier today, it's now being reported that Fats Domino has been located and that he is okay. So some good ne...
MSNBC cameraman's historic account from New Orleans
You need to be using Internet Explorer to watch this 'cuz it's a Media Player stream. Tony Zumbado at MSNBC shot some horrific video and has a report from the New Orleans Convention Center that may be one of the most important first-hand accounts of what's really going on there.It must be said: there is something very, very wrong with a situation when the person most in authority is Harry Connick Jr., a musician. I'm hearing that Boy Scout troops...
It's like readying for a siege: report from a grocery store
I went to the Food Lion just down the street earlier tonight. You would think this place is about to get hit by a blizzard or something: the milk aisle had 1/10th, maybe less, of its full capacity of milk out and available. If they have any more in the back fridge they better restock fast. Otherwise... sheesh I've never seen that little milk on sale at this time of year.Just out of curiosity I checked the availability of other items. I noticed...
Fats Domino is missing
The music legend hasn't been heard from since Monday. He reportedly was going to ride out the storm. His address is now underwater.Praying he and his family made it to safe...
The efficiency of FEMA
This is going to sound cold-hearted and cruel, but I'm going to say it anyway...It's been talked about in conspiracy-theory circles for years how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is supposed to be the means by which an evil cabal of politicians will take over. That FEMA has all kinds of rules on the books (and they do indeed, folks, you can look 'em up) that empowers them to deal harshly with their fellow Americans if the word comes down...
Some good news
Colonial Pipeline is restarting its line up and down the east coast. Once they're back up to capacity we should see a lot more gasoline around here.It can't come soon enough though. I went out for supplies last night - Lisa and I have decided we will not be making any more trips out than we absolutely have to, and to consolidate the trips out as much as we can 'cuz there's no telling how much gas there is out there right now - and the cheapest...
