eric135

The Godfather I, II and III; The Stimulus Package

General bits:

• I've been watching the Godfather movies over the past couple of days (Godfather I was on AMC, now I'm working on II and III on Blu-Ray). Never realized before, not many strong female roles or role models in that movie. Women were basically furniture and/or window dressing. I'm about an hour into Part II, maybe they'll fix that... [Update: 6 hours later, and into the 3rd movie, Kay and Connie have emerged as pretty strong female roles].
• I'm thinking about the stimulus package... I think they should just directly put the money into folks that have lower credit scores -- say <600. I mean, folks with better scores will save/hoard the money for a rainey day. Lower credit score folks have already established a record for doing what is needed most -- spending money in an economic environment that is telling consumers to constrict spending. Even if they spend the stimulus money on paying off old debt, generally, they will take those zero balances and buy, well, shoes. Or Blu-rays. Or cars. Or big screen TVs. I don't think stimulus money will be very effective going for tax credits for buying new houses. Should the housing market continue to shrink, that will just put more folks behind the 8-ball. We need folks that will cash the check and immediately start spending, not try to get a loan. Just my opinion.
• It has been raining all day.

Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection

 

Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection

Happy New Year! We spent most of the night listening to our college-age neighbors test fire a jet engine (that's my guess, no way anything that ear-splitting loud is music).

Well after the ball dropped, I watched some of the Planet of the Apes marathon on TV. Roomie gave me the 40th Anniversary Blu-ray disc set for Christmas.

I remember watching these movies back in the 70's with my parents. It's not what I would think they would have liked but I remember how much we liked the movies when they first aired on TV.

The scene that I remember most was in the second movie, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, where Zera gets shot in the back and her newborn baby is shot half a dozen times.

One detail I missed when I was a kid was that Roddy McDowell was playing different roles. Back then, I just thought that was one long-lived chimpanzee.

That's also where I thought of myself more of an orangutan, and gods how I hated the damned gorillas in my junior high school.

Yeah, we orangutans were picked on a lot by those gorillas, even though we did most of their homework, and let them cheat off our test papers.

Frakkin' gorillas.

Weather, TV and Politics...

What a dull and dreary day today (at least up until about 1pm when I went to bed). We had a rain storm this morning, and the noise it made on our roof put both of us and 1 of our kitties on our balcony to... well... watch the rain come down. It's the same storm system that has wreaked havoc in California and Nevada, and causing problems everywhere else. Our problem has been some flooding in low-lying areas, and as I type this, I'm watching a clip on CNN where yet another Phoenician muckhead is getting yanked by helicopter off the roof of his car because he ignored a "Street Closed" sign.

We've been watching the first season of Babylon 5 on DVD. It's become our new morning ritual (we watch either DVDs of a show's entire season one episode at a time) whenever we don't have new shows to watch off Tivo. We got a bunch of DVDs of TV shows for Christmas, that will hopefully keep us entertained during the writers' strike.

I've decided to try to keep more informed about this year's political race. Today, I tried to request an early ballot for the presidential primary to be held on February 5th. It turns out that the online voter registration was down, and the fax machine at the county recorder's office wasn't answering. Hopefully, the changes I made online last Friday will get us early ballots but if not, I guess we'll go to the primary polling site and see how this happens. I was hoping for an early ballot because, every time I vote, there are dozens (hundreds) of other offices that are usually voted on at the same time, and it's a total random crap shoot as I totally guess and make random marks on the ballot (I kid you not, some of the local offices I voted by how their name sounded as I said them silently in my head). Hopefully, with an early ballot, I can at least go online and do some research and make some sort of educated vote. My links (these are admittely only presidential, I'm on the lookout for local links):

CNN Political Ticker

2008Central.net

Politics1.com

Race 4 2008

Road to 2008

Political Realm

Doctor Who Seaon One DVD

We've been recent fans of BBC America. The three shows we watch are How Clean is Your House?, Torchwood, and Doctor Who.

BBC decided to start the series with the second season, and there were a lot of references to things that happened in the first season. So now we have it.

I didn't realize they had changed the actor that played Doctor Who, and I was surprised when the first episode didn't have David Tennant as the Doctor. We've watched the first 3 or 4 episodes, and I've liked about half of them.

I notice each episode is written by a different author, and I wonder if that's why the episodes seem to feel different, and why I would really like some episodes and dislike others.

The word is that they'll be changing the Doctor once again at the end of Season Four.

Retirement, MRSA, Vids, Joshua Bell, Dementia, Chondroitin

• A NY Times (eric135/eric135) article about how it's as important to prepare psychologically for retirement as it is to fund your 401k or IRAs. Hell no. I'm ready psychologically.
• Athletic trainers see rise in MRSA Infections.
• A very weird exercise video. Obviously CGI but still oddly hypnotic. They need to make one with kitties. No idea what the hell is going on in this exercise video, but I laughed so hard I snorted like a pig.
• On January 12 2007, Joshua Bell played a 43-minute concert at the L'Enfant Plaza, one of the stops on Washington DC's metro. It was an unannounced free mall-side concert given by one of the best (probably the best) violin virtuosos ever. He played on a 1710 Stradivari. JS Bach's Chaconne, Schubert's Ave Maria, and other masterpieces ended... to thunderous silence. He made $32 in change, after 1070 people rushed by, few even looking his way.  He usually makes about $1000 per minute. You can hear him for a short while in the video clip in the middle of the article.
• Dementia Care costs worldwide reach $315 billion.
• A list of things to make your offline life easier. My favorite, of course, is to not feel ashamed to use a ManPurse. I have several. Unlike the author of the article, I don't think backpacks count.
• Now they're saying that glucosamine and chondroitin may not offer any real benefits. I've been taking a supplement (the pills are so big I had to check the label to make sure they weren't suppositories). I think they have increased my flexibility, and it has been a long time since I've had a flair up. Figures. Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that there are problems with Ambien... Oh, wait...

LInks

• An incredibly cool video, The Inner Life of a Cell. This is the short version (with a really cool soundtrack... anybody know what it is?). Here's the longer instructional version (still really really cool). My favorite part is the transport protein that pulls the vacuole through the cell. They look like they're wearing big brown slippers. Originally from Science Blog.
• Conan O'Brien's commencement speech to the Harvard Class of 2000. Funny.
• Children of Men. Totally not funny. Most of the movie felt like the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.
• If you are NOT a Nancy Grace fan (and I most certainly am not), you will find this clip from Jon Stewart very funny.
• I finished my taxes. I guess I had better re-check the numbers to make sure I don't get audited.
• An article from the BBC that says we don't necessarily need 8 hours of sleep. I need at least that, or I tend to drop off in the middle of a