The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Opinion

  • Now hiring Geeks

    I posted this geek poem on my door at work:

    Roses are #FF0000
    Violets are #0000FF
    All my base
    Are belong to you

    And nobody here gets it! We need more Geeks!

    15 December 2006 update:
    ThinkGeek is where I first saw this poem

  • Ambrosia…

    I love my wife. She is great! There is very little that can top a hug from her.

    But coffee comes close, some days.

    And today is one of those days. The first sip of coffee just makes me want to sit back and do nothing for 8 hours. The headache starts to clear up and I feel (almost) awake and normal.

    FSM save me and my coffee addiction. Not a caffeine addiction, although I’ll handily admit to being addicted to that, but coffee. Sometimes, it takes the aroma and taste (two very different things, when it comes to coffee) to get me going. Devil brew? Probably, but it’s oooooh so good.

  • Peter Jackson = LotR? Maybe…

    Three times in 12 hours, I’ve been spammed by a Save The Lord of the Rings post relating that only Peter Jackson could possibly do a movie based on The Hobbit.

    Obviously this took a bit of time to ramp up, because, as you can see from this website it’s been a week since The Announcement Of Impending Doom, that Peter Jackson will not be directing The Hobbit, according to New Line Cinema.

    Now, frankly, I don’t care about the spat between Jackson and New Line. They’ll figure it out, I’m sure. What I’m more concerned with is the assumption that only Peter Jackson has the vision, skill, knowledge, chutzpah, to do another Tolkien-based film. The underlying base to that assumption is that Jackson had the vision, skill, knowledge, chutzpah to do the first set of films. I personally don’t think he did that great a job holding to the vision of Tolkien.

    Oh, I’ll be one of the first to stand up and say that he produced three epic awe-inspiring, legend-setting, fan-base-swooning movies. They were cinematographic triumphs! As long as you don’t care about the various travesties he rendered unto J. R. R. Tolkien and his masterwork.

    As an avowed Tolkien afficionado, I liked The Fellowship of the Ring; I disliked The Two Towers; I despised The Return of the King. I acknowledge that there are corners that must be cut to turn LotR into a movie that is watchable in less than 15 parts, but some of the libertys taken were over the top. Peter Jackson entirely slew the character of Faramir, a crime that is unforgivable. The intransigence of Elrond was all wrong and the appearance of the elves at Helm’s Deep nearly killed me. Then of course, there was the entire Return of the King which had so little resemblance to the actual story, it doesn’t even bear mentioning.

    [sigh] Deep breaths…

    Back to the Question that everyone seems to be assuming the answer to: Is Peter Jackson the only person who could direct The Hobbit? I don’t think so. He did a ground-breaking series of movies, but The Hobbit won’t be the same, and studios won’t need to be shown that it will make money. So, if it doesn’t work out between New Line and Peter Jackson, I’m not going to wail. I’m going to expect them to go out and find someone who loves the books as much as Peter Jackson does, with their own vision, and make a great movie.

  • Lost? How Lost are you?

    I suspect that the number of comments I received on this post about Lost was due to the juxtaposition of “Lost” and “Shit” in the same googleable sentence. Somebody even popped up just last week to drop a comment. I’m quite proud of my most popular post. [sniff]

    But, I digress. If anyone pops over to this post who still watches Lost, I’m curious what you think about the show now that it is in the third season. Some people I work with swear that it jumped the shark last season and that it’s not worth the air to blow it out the lock. Rumor has it that there’s a second island now, and that frightens me.

    So, what do you think? Does it suck? Does it rock? Does it sock?

    I’m now under the strange compulsion to watch Bones and Heroes, and I do not miss an episode of Battlestar Galactica, practically the only good show on the SciFi channel. Rumor has it that the new SciFi show based on the Dresden Files will be good, so I’m looking forward to that.

    Update: 28 Nov 2006
    I should have waited to post this. Then I could comment about the Lost action figures!

  • Phenylephrine HCL

    I’ve been sick the last few days. Usually, I get a cold, it sucks but I take decongestants or cough suppresants or analgesics (or all of the above) and just deal with it. Rarely do I feel the need to just sit and do nothing while the microscopic war is raging inside my system.

    Unfortunately, the last two days have been the stay-at-home-avoid-moving-cause-my-head-will-throb-off type of cold. Sinus pressure has built to the point that I expect my head to just blowout like a steam vessel relieving pressure.

    Again, normally the decongestant (read: sinus relief) I would take is Pseudoephedrine HCL, but Georgia is now one of the states that locks it behind the counter and requires background checks and waiting periods for purchase so you don’t go home and whip up a batch of meth with that one box. Thusly, aside from two doses I took on Tuesday, all we had for me on Wednesday was Phenylephrine HCL.

    It does not cut the mustard.

    So, happy readers, if you are sick and need relief, stay away from Sudafed PE, and go straight for the good stuff. Thankfully, I remembered that I keep some pseudoephedrine in my work bag for situations such as this one, so today will be ok, until I run out and need to go to the pharmacy and get strip searched to purchase more.

  • Newark Liberty International Airport

    I was reading the NY Times this morning when this article caught my attention:

    “NEWARK, New Jersey (CNN) — A commercial plane with more than 300 people on board bumped an empty plane Tuesday at Newark Liberty International Airport.”

    When did NJ rename Newark? A quick google search indicates that it was 2006. Ok, why did they rename Newark International? I don’t recall it having some pesky name like “Newark French International Airport”, or something like that.

    I have problems with this renaming trend that’s going on because of [picture GWB here], “the war on terrah.” The terrorists, extrememists, whatever, are not going to materially affect the territorial integrity of the U.S. nor it’s political system, unless we let them. Going willy nilly renaming everything in sight as if we are fighting the Revolutionary War is plain dumb.

    BTW, no one was injured on that plane.

  • Asia -> Spain: Holy Crap that's a long way!

    I’ve been hearing a lot of press recently about the Canary Isands being the port of harbor for African illegal immigration to Europe. The geography makes good sense. The Canaries are only 150 miles (give or take) off of Morocco. Not entirely dissimilar to the Cuban and Haitian boat refugees trying for Florida.

    However, this load of people came a lot farther. All the way from (they suspect) Pakistan and Sri Lanka!

    Wow. I quail under the thought of what those people went through during their trip.

  • Flag Displays in the Classroom

    Over at About.com, the geography man Matt Rosenberg has caused a bit of a rucus in the comments of this post.

    Do you think the Mexican flag should be displayed with “equal promininence” to the US flag in an American Classroom?

    Go! comment on Matt’s entry.

  • The NSA-T&T likes Me! And You?

    I was all ready to get worked up about this but then I checked around and realized it was a fake. God I hope it’s a fake…

    National Surveillance Agency? There’s No Such Agency…

  • AOL and its Customer Service Practices

    I know nothing about AOL.

    I know nothing about AOL’s services, customer treatment, or business practices.

    I’ve never had an AOL account and been one of “them.”

    However, this link, forwarded to me by Meandering Starre shows a depth of disprespect that is unconscionable.

    I honestly don’t know what I would have done in Vincent’s shoes, but I doubt I would have been nearly so composed. Makes me want to record all of my customer service calls from now on.