Salad Is Slaughter

This entry is for the people searching for pictures of Hoover Dam:

Dam –

1. A barrier constructed across a waterway to control the flow or raise the level of water.
2. A body of water controlled by such a barrier.
3. A barrier against the passage of liquid or loose material, as a rubber sheet used in dentistry to isolate one or more teeth from the rest of the mouth.
4. An obstruction; a hindrance.

Damn –

1. To pronounce an adverse judgment upon. See Synonyms for condemn.
2. To bring about the failure of; ruin.
3. To condemn as harmful, illegal, or immoral: a cleric who damned gambling and strong drink.
4. To condemn to everlasting punishment or a similar fate; doom.
5. To swear at.

So, if you’re looking for pictures of Hoover Dam, it’s best not to search for pictures of Hoover Damn.  That’s very different.  I’ll bet I see this at least 5 times per week. 

Apparently it’s Inflict Your Offspring On Your Coworkers Day. If I had known I would have brought the dogs. I hate Inflict Your Offspring On Your Coworkers Day.

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Janet is in Oregon attending a friend’s graduation, so I’m the dogs’ sole caregiver for the rest of the week. Part of Janet’s job while in Oregon is to find red wine for the rehearsal dinner. The parents should expect another shipment. And there’ had better be 12 bottles this time.

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I’m just not happy with this year’s tomato plants. I wasn’t happy with last year’s either. They just didn’t get big and bushy and the yield last year was pretty poor. This year’s don’t seem to be growing very fast and look a bit sparse in the leaf department. I bought a cherry tomato plant a few weeks after I planted the others and put it in a pot and it looks great; at least twice as big as the others. I suspect our soil just isn’t good. The high water table may also be an issue. I’m thinking about putting in raised beds containing about 35 cubic feet of dirt each instead of the non-raised beds we have now. But that may have to wait until next year. I’m considering transplanting the others to pots to try and save what I’ve got.

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When Janet tried to schedule a luncheon at the Forest Park Boathouse, the woman who answered the phone was an extremely rude bitch. Janet is taking her business elsewhere.

We didn’t have a lot of time to watch movies this weekend, but we did manage to rent three.

Ladder 49  B+  The story, told in flashback form of a young firefighter from his first days at the station to when he gets trapped in a burning building.  Normally I avoid anything with John Travolta in it, but luckily his role was pretty minor.  It was an interesting and emotional look at America’s unsung heroes.

Without a Paddle  B-  It wasn’t Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, but it was still pretty good.  Three friends meet at a fourth friend’s funeral.  Later they visit their old tree house and find that their dead friend wanted them all to take a trip to find D.B. Cooper’s treasure.  It dragged in spots, but overall it was pretty amusing.  The Oregon scenery in this movie was gorgeous.

Flight of the Phoenix  B  The remake of the classic film might be better than the original.  The aircraft designer is much easier to hate and most of the characters are pretty interesting.  If you’ve seen the original, there won’t be too many surprises in the new version.

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Sideways  B-  Every time I saw Paul Giamatti on screen, I kept thinking:  “if Billy Crystal and Chris Elliot had a child, this would be the result.”  It was kind of distracting.  Sideways was watchable, but I don’t understand what all the hype was about.  I enjoyed Giamatti’s waxing nostalgic about drinking a ’95 Opus One, but the overall story left something to be desired.  When a main character steals over $1000 from his mother and nothing is ever said about it, you have to wonder if they did any edits on the script.

Final Cut  A-  Robin Williams is an amazing actor and he turns in another great performance in Final Cut, a science fiction film that got almost no publicity – at least none that I remember.  The basic story is that in the future, parents can elect to have an organic recorder implanted in their children.  The recorder stores visual and auditory inputs throughout the person’s life.  Upon their death, a Cutter will extract the lifetime’s data and cut out the best memories to be played at a “re-memory” ceremony.  Robin Williams is a cutter who takes on the hardest jobs from some of the worst people because he has some skeletons in his own closet that he has to deal with.  It’s really a good story with some interesting characters.

Mr. 3000  B  Mr. 3000 drags in spots but it’s a decent story about a self-absorbed ball player who is upset that he isn’t in the MLB Hall of Fame even though he had 3000 hits in his career.  His ex-manager hates him because he retired immediately after hitting number 3000 and didn’t wait until the end of the season to quit.  The media hates him because he was such an asshole.  His former team mates hate him for the same reason.  When the Hall does some research, they find out that Mr. 3000 is really Mr. 2997.  He tries to make a comeback to get those last 3 hits that he thinks he needs.  It’s a nice story about  him finally maturing and realizing what’s important.

Taxi  B-  Queen Latifah continues to surprise me.  She was great in Chicago and entertaining in Bringing Down the House.  She seems to be a genuinely likable person.  In Taxi she plays a bike messenger turned taxi driver who wants to race in NASCAR.  She gets caught up with an inept cop (Jimmy Fallon) who is trying to solve a string of bank robberies.  Jimmy Fallon is awful in this movie.  It seemed like he was trying to do a Mike Myers impression and failing miserably.  When Queen Latifah was on screen, this movie was a solid B+.  When Jimmy Fallon showed up, it was a D+.  I thought the very end was pure fantasy.  A black woman accepted by the NASCAR crowd?  Yeah, that’ll happen.

I Heart Huckabees  F-  I spent the first 30 minutes of this moving asking myself “WTF is going on?”  After 30 minutes I turned it off.  It’s quite possible that the only way you could understand this movie is to load up on illegal recreational pharmaceuticals and watch it in a mentally altered state.  Since I don’t do recreational pharmaceuticals, I have absolutely no chance of getting this movie.  I don’t know what I Heart Huckabees was about, and I don’t care.

Oceans 12  C-  Oceans 11 was a remake of the movie of the same name starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and the rest of the Rat Pack.  The remake was far better than the original.  Oceans 12 is the sequel to the remake and its pretty much of a dud.  Most of the movie is pretty dull, but I stuck it out.  It finally got entertaining about 45 minutes in, and was okay / borderline good for about 30 minutes.  The ending seemed to be filler that went on forever.  It wasn’t a complete waste of time, but I wouldn’t bother to watch it again.

Technorati Tags: movies

Art Mijares, a bay area religious kook wants the federal government to rename Mount Diablo because he’s offended by the name which means “Devil Mountain” in Spanish.

“Words have power, and when you start mentioning words that come from the dark side, evil thrives,” according to Mijares. “When I take boys camping on the mountain, I don’t even like to say its name. I have to explain what the name means. Why should we have a main feature of our community that celebrates the devil?”  Details of this guy’s complaint can be found at http://www.nbc11.com/news/4380275/detail.html

If Mijares is successful, I’d like to start a campaign to get some California city names changed.  First of all, I’d like to change Manteca.  Manteca is a brand of lard, and this city’s name is offensive to everyone who tries to maintain a healthy lifestyle.  I guess the city of Stockton would also have to be renamed, because stockyards are offensive to vegetarians and vegans.  Come to think of it, vegetarians and vegans would also be offended by Manteca, because lard is made from animal fat.  That’s two strikes agains them.

Next, we need to change all city names that honor saints and other spiritual entities from the Christian mythos because they are offensive to non-Christians.  At first glance, the following cities must be renamed:  Angels Camp, Antioch, East Los Angeles, Lake Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Andreas, San Anselmo, San Bernardino, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Clemente, San Diego, San Dimas, San Fernando, San Francisco, San Gabriel, San Jacinto, San Joaquin, San Jose, San Juan Bautista, San Juan Capistrano, San Leandro, San Luis Obispo, San Marcos, San Marino, San Mateo, San Miguel, San Pablo, San Pedro, San Rafael, San Ramon, San Simeon, San Ysidro, Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Clarita, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe Springs, Santa Maria, Santa Monica, Santa Paula, Santa Rosa, Santa Ynez, Santa Ysabel, South San Francisco, St. Helena, Trinidad, Trinity Center, and West Sacramento.

We’ve got a big job ahead of us, but if we all work together we can get all offensive names removed from the California map.