Salad Is Slaughter

I had a few extra days off before Xmas and rented some movies. It was a mixed bag, from surprisingly good to just plain awful.

The 40 Year Old Virgin B- This movie got a lot of hype that it didn’t live up to, but it was overall an okay movie. Steve Carell (The Daily Show) plays a shy guy who spends most of his time collecting action figures. When his coworkers find out he’s a 40-year old virgin, they try to get him out to meet some ladies. Although he has ample opportunity, he passes them by for the single mom who he really likes. The characters are pretty interesting, and there are some good jokes but the script needed to be tightened up a bit because it seemed to drag in spots. But maybe that’s because I was watching the unrated version

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory A I liked this one a lot and think it was much better than the Gene Wilder Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Johnny Depp was perfect as the quirky Willie Wonka (although at times when he spoke I kept hearing Mike Myers for some reason), the bratty kids were over the top and played their parts perfectly, and Charlie was just too goody-two-shoes to be real. I liked the updated Oompa-Loompa songs; they reminded me of something you would pay big bucks for to see in Las Vegas.

Must Love Dogs C- Standard chick flick. Very predictable. You can be doing something else while this is running and not miss a thing.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith A I was surprised how good this one was. It had an original plot, some good acting, guns, and things blowing up. Don’t miss it.

Kicking and Screaming C+ Basically it’s Will Ferrell doing The Bad News Bears Play Soccer. Former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka is pretty funny and Robert Duvall does a good job playing the over-competitive father. It’s harmless, mindless entertainment.

Star Wars Revenge of the Sith F— What a piece of shit. I know it’s hard to believe, but each Star Wars movie is worse than the last one! The plot ranged from stupid to non-existent, the dialog was unnatural and painful to listen to, the acting was stiff and forced, and after nine movies Yoda still can’t form a proper English sentence. Do you get the idea that I hated this movie? So why did they make it? Two reasons. The first is that there are legions of lemmings out there who really liked the first couple of barely watchable Star Wars movies and worship at the George Lucas throne. Basically, they’ll eat any kind of crap he puts out, and their uncritical fandom pays the bills. The second reason are the big sales of toys and action figures. The Star Wars franchise doesn’t care if their machines are workable, just so they can sell more garbage at Toys R Us. Why have a boat thing with big wheels even though it’s obviously unstable and no engineer in his right mind would design something like that? Because you can sell the toy at Target. Why is that guy riding a cross between a chicken and a lizard? Because you can sell the action figure at Walmart. I’m glad the Star Wars series is over, and I hope Lucas never pollutes another piece of film.

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We had to put Jake to sleep yesterday.  One day last week he had a couple of seizures that were scary, but then seemed to recover fine and went about his business.  He seemed to be doing fine lately.  

Yesterday he had a really big seizure and took over an hour and a half before he was back to himself.  We were at the vet yesterday afternoon ready to see the doctor when he began acting like himself again.  We decided to bring him home and watch him over the next couple of days.

Last night while he was lying down he started to run around like he was trying to get away from something that was hurting him.  Janet calmed him down but we could tell that he was telling us that it was time.

We spoke to the vet last night and she said that the seizures were probably due to complications from his diabetes, and that his recent rapid weight gain and the hard lump on his belly was probably due to cancer.

When we got home again the dogs knew something was wrong.  We had to coax Rolfe away from the front door and Sammi away from the laundry room door because they were waiting for Jake.  Lisa just lay under a table.  Then all three dogs just laid around like they were depressed.

We knew this was probably going to happen within the next couple of months.  We just didn’t think it would be so soon.

A lot of people have been following the court case in Dover, Pennsylvania which pitted some members of the school board wanting to teach Intelligent Design/Creationism/Fairy Tales in science classrooms vs. parents who preferred that schools teach theories backed by overwhelming scientific evidence, peer-reviewed research, and sound principles.

Apparently enough parents were pissed off enough that they voted out eight of the fanatics on the school board in the last election. However, the lawsuit continued and the Judge rendered his verdict: keep that ID crap out of biology class. Okay, he put it more lawyerly:

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs’ rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendants’ actions. Defendants’ actions in violation of Plaintiffs’ civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

…
To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy. 

I wonder what kind of bullshit the Discovery Institute is going to try next in their effort to destroy science education in this country.

About a week, or maybe a week and a half ago, the Pope issued what has become the annual lament of the Christian world: people are ignoring the original meaning of the season and instead are immersing themselves in commercialism.

Now, I have no problem with commercialism because commerce makes the world go round, and the lack of money is the root of all evil. But let’s get back to the Pope wanting to return to the holiday’s roots. If we look back on history, originally this time of year was set aside as a Pagan winter solstice festival. Just as an aside, it’s a myth perpetrated by Christians that Pagans worship Satan. They don’t. Anyway, the Christian world, wanting to avoid persecution, moved the observance of the birth of Jesus (if he existed, scholars say he was born in the spring) to coincide with the Pagan parties.

So, the true meaning of Christmas should be dictated by the Pagans. Somehow, I don’t think the pope wants that.

“Aren’t we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? The birth of Santa!” — Bart Simpson

I can’t believe the past week, maybe week and a half I’ve had. To start off, I’m going to be getting a lot of money. I’m going to be helping a Nigerian woman get the cash from a secret account her dead husband had stashed away. Next I found out that I won an international lottery, and I don’t even remember buying a ticket. What luck!

But the final bit of good news came within the past couple of days. I thought I was pretty happy with my new job, but I received the following actual email. Now tell me YOU would pass up this opportunity:

Hello Sir or Madam,
MNS, Inc starts a new project in the USA and for this reason is looking for a responsible, well-motivated, well-executive and reliable person to take care of the project’s needs. According to this fact we are offering you a position of the Executive Manager of MNS, Inc. If you are in searching of the secure job, please response this message for more detailed description of the opportunity. Don’t think that skill requirements are straight - for us it’s much more important to find responsible, well-motivated and reliable person to handle our needs.
Please forward all your questions and comments to joboffer999@yahoo.com With due respect,Human resources department of MNS, Inc.

In case my sarcasm went over your head: The above sounds like a scam, probably a variant of the Nigerian bank scam.