Netflix Bullshit

Alert readers may have noticed that I got new Netflix selections.

Well I did. And I already watched one of them. The Adventures Of Mark Twain. In claymation.

The movie was....interesting. It is rated G but is probably not for general audiences. Kids may like the claymation, but they would be bored or even scared by the content. It starts off with the jumping frog story, but then moves on to more heavy things. Like this.

Now it seems that The Mysterious Stranger was an unfinished work. I have not read it. So it was a strange thing to include in the movie.

But whatever. The Diary of Adam And Eve was more entertaining. That Twain was one warped individual. I have a feeling that if I were transported back in time we would get along well. My views are somewhat similar - or so it seems.

So anyway, the claymation thing is strange. On the surface, made for kids. But the subject matter is beyond the age group that one would think the movie would target. A very strange creation indeed.

In other news, Netflix finally got Conan The Barbarian on DVD. It seems that this movie was just never let out on DVD, or that Netflix never got it in their inventory - for whatever reason. Who the hell knows why. So I had it added to my "saved" list, and then it just arrived in the mail - after being on the "saved" list for a while. Song Of The South is still on the saved list, and will be there for a long time to come. Disney will just not release this movie. You can however get this movie on DVD if you go to Euro Disney.

Kids who ride Splash Mountain have no idea what that ride is all about. The characters are all from Song Of The South.

Beer Breakdown

Well I broke down. I could resist myself. The Polish Beer in the fridge was beckoning me. It was all like "drink me.......drink me......". So I did.

I opened something called "Lomza". I think. The "L" looks kind of like a lower case t. In fact the letter is NEITHER a L or a T, it is some other letter that is part of the Polish Alphabet.

From Wikipedia:

Łomża is a town in north-eastern Poland, approximately 90 miles (150 km) from Warsaw and 50 miles (81 km) from Białystok. It is situated alongside the river Narew and has been in the Podlachian Voivodeship since 1999; previously, it was the capital of the Lomza Voivodeship (1975-1998). It is the capital of Łomża County.

As best I can taste, this beer is some sort of lager. It has a pleasant golden color, and is very well balanced. I do not know if it is "malty" or "hoppy". 6% ABV (alcohol by volume) means it has some kick, but not too much. Good stuff.

In other news, Netflix rules even more than it used to. With my account I now get.....UNLIMITED ONLINE MOVIE WATCHING ACCESS! That is right! Unlimited. I used to get 1 hour of online watching time for each buck spent per month. Well now that is UNLIMITED.

I may never get any sleep again.

The GPS gets shipped off for repairs or whatever today. My plan is to insure it for $400 and HOPE UPS destroys the GPS in transit. Loss of the GPS would also be acceptable. Then I can get my insurance money and just buy a newer unit. Heck maybe I can insure it for $5 ,000 and then get an even better GPS and a cool as all hell Humminbird side scan sonar thing with built in GPS and a full color digital traditional sonar. That would rule.

SO.....how about you do your thing UPS? Make the package vanish. See to it that it is never seen again. Ill even leave a fresh crisp un-marked $100 bill in the box for the driver as my way of saying "thanks for dumping this box in the trash burner where it will never be seen again".

I know that if they try hard enough, UPS can totally trash the GPS.

And in other news.......looky here what I found on Craigslist! No, not the boat. THE TOP! Some guy makes these tops for $600. Really good deal here. The tops come with 6 rod holders (which would give my boat a grand total of 18 rod holders, or .95 rods per foot of boat length), two outrigger mounts, four antenna mounts, and 4 light mounts. That is an ass load of mounts. Now why get the T-Top when I already have a Bimini top? Good question. There are many reasons why I would want the T-Top over a Bimini top. For one, I can get an electronics box and mount that in the T-Top, giving me more dry storage for stuff. I could also get a T-Bag which holds life jackets for quick access. The rod holders mean that ONLY the rods I am actually using are in the active holders. The rest are in the T-Top holders or the in the side of the boat rod holders.

The Bimini top may provide more shade. But there are also support poles that attach to the gunwales of the boat. So if you are fishing and need to walk around the boat while fighting a fish these supports get in your way.

But I already have a plan to work around this. Simply make it so that I can put the Bimini top up forward of the T-Top. So if I am just going out to goof off or something, I can have both tops and provide shade for most of (if not all of) the boat. Or I can remove the Bimini top and leave it at home if there is to be a fishing mission.

Or I can sell the Bimini top. It is in excellent shape and I could get at least $200 for it. So that would make the new top cost only $400. Much better than $600!

I plan to check out the seller's handy work some time this week. If I like what I see and the welds are good and the materials are of acceptable quality - then I may just get the top installed.

Getting Lazy With Watching Movies

You may have noticed the lack of movie circulation in my Netflix list. This will change next week as I will mail off all three movies Monday. They will get to the distribution center Tuesday, and on Wednesday I will have three more movies. The next three on the list are from Korean director Chan Wook Park. Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance. These movies are known as his "revenge trilogy". Each movie features.....well....revenge. I do not think the movies are like Kill Bill V. 1 and 2, they are each separate movies. But I shall see. A lot of people rate the three movies very highly.

So now for some MOVIE REVIEWS!

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (BBC TV series). Excellent. I never read the book, but I meant to. I just never got around to it. The series is broken down into 6 episodes of about 30 minutes each. The series is adapted from a BBC radio play, and of course as is typical of BBC productions the budget was low. Now this is a GOOD thing. See, the story line and dialog becomes more important than the special effects. So the result was a very funny series. Totally great. 5 tail whips for the series. If you read the book, then you will love the BBC series. And if you did not read the book, but enjoy the kind of humor presented by the book - then you will like the series. So rent it. Trust me here. By the way, the radio play predates the books. That is right, the books are based on the radio series. And the TV series follows the radio play. So in effect, the TV series is the original story. I think the infinite improbability drive had something to do with this because usually stuff is based on the book - not the other way around.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (the movie made with a higher budget). Not so great. They cut parts that were in the series out - like The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. How can you leave that out? They mention it, but never end up there. And the story line is changed. The Vogons are chasing the characters for the whole movie, because in the movie version Zaphoid is the Galactic President (the people thought they were voting for "worst dressed being") and the Vogons think he was kidnapped. Totally not in the original series. And Marvin The Paranoid Android is not nearly as depressed nor nearly as funny. And so on. And did we really need a "so long and thanks for all the fish" song? NO! The original bit was much funnier. The think about God vanishing in a giant poof of logic because the Babelfish proves his existence and therefore there is no point in having faith and without faith God is nothing was also removed from the movie. And much more. Skip the movie and just watch the TV series. 0 tail whips for pissing me off by taking what was a perfectly good story and plot and screwing it up by trying to change it so you could have more special effect shots.

Wag The Dog - BORING! What a turd this movie is. I am watching it now. Here is the general plot as I understand it. There is an election about to take place. Two weeks or so before the election there is some kind of scandal involving the sitting President and some girl. And of course the person running against the President makes a big stink about it. Public opinion is going against the President - who is in China when all this breaks.

So the staffers invent a war. Not the "find a fake reason to go to war with some other nation then invade" - they invent a totally fake way. In a studio. With actors. And digital enhancement to turn a bag of chips into a kitten. And stuff.

Of course the real nation is a little concerned when US news is showing a war where there is none. And for some reason, nobody in the USA is watching the BBC which in real life would be reporting from Albania showing no war. But whatever. The CIA "ends" the fake war so some other story is made up about someone stuck behind what was once enemy lines and they run with that. And it just goes on and on.

The movie is a "comedy". And I suppose it is a comedy, in the way that it is totally absurd.
The events are pretty out there. But it works. The news is manipulated, public opinion is changed, and so on. So I guess there is a message there too. If it is on TV, it is real. And it is easy to get people to buy almost anything.

But the pace is slow, and the comedy is dry. 2 tail whips. Not a very good movie.

More stuff about Skipper and Korats on Monday. Maybe. If I remember.

Sunday Something Starting with S.

And containing a H. And a T. Oh yea and it needs a vowel. How about I?

What is it called when you use a bunch of words that contain the same sound? Alliteration? Something like that. Anyhow I like doing that. That would explain the title of the post. Just in case you were wondering.

Don't really have time for more. The boat is hitched up, the digital camera is charging, and I have a full complement of beer. And fizzy water. And possibly all sorts of other stuff I am forgetting about. Like for example.....drain plugs? I don't know anymore. I just hope I do not forget the boat keys. That would totally suck. It would suck to the second power.

The drain plugs in the new boat require a wrench to put in. So I have to not forget to bring the proper size wrench. I keep an adjustable wrench in the truck tool box so it is not likely I will leave home without it.

And now, for your viewing pleasure - people falling off on or off boats! Some of the people in this video may have needed pain killers afterwards.


NETFLIX UPDATE! You can now watch movies right from the Netflix website! It helps to have a high speed internet connection. Coolness. I can watch 18 hours of movies online every month. For every buck you pay a month you get 1 hour of viewing time.

MOVIE REVIEW - The Bridge. This film chronicles, through interviews with friends and family, the story of a few people who choose to end it all by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

REALLY heavy subject matter here. After this movie, you will not look at that bridge the same way. I had no idea so many people jump from it. This film defies a rating.

BLAZING SADDLES - I think everyone has seen this movie. It is said to be Mel Brooks's finest film. I do not know about that. I thought that History Of The World Part I was his best movie. But Blazing Saddles is funny. For its time it was probably much funnier. I had seen it before. I rented it again because it was a "special edition" DVD. It was the same movie.

Second Amendment

First, more movie reviews! Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is a strange show that is part of the "Adult Swim" block shown on Cartoon Network. If you like the stuff that the William's Street people come up with, you will probably get a few laughs out of the movie. If you have never seen it before - you will not get this movie at all.

Today I should get two more movies from Netflix. The Constant Gardner and Hotel Rwanda. The Constant Gardner is the reason I got Netflix in the first place. I rented this movie from the video store, and never got around to watching it. So I kept it for t he full 5 days. On the 6th day the late fee was equal to another 5 days rent. So I kept it. For three weeks. And I never did watch it.

Now for the main post.

Due to current events, once again the Second Amendment is in the news. Seems to happen a lot. Anyway, what exactly is the deal with it?

I do not think that there is a Constitutional right to private gun ownership. Really. Even the NRA knows this. Here is a link to the NRA store and the "2nd Amendment T-Shirt". The shirt reads "... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". Now the Second Amendment is only one sentence, so why use the dots? Why shorten it? Because the part about "a well regulated militia" is not something that the NRA wants to talk about. They would rather those words not be there - but they ARE there. And they can not simply be ignored. "The people" is a collective term. Notice how the First Amendment only contains the phrase "the people" when talking about the right to assemble. A single person can not "assemble" anywhere. One person in the park is just one person in the park. So the right of "the people" to assemble means form a group. Collective. There are other examples too. Like the 4th Amendment. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons...".

Persons. As in more than one person. And so on.

Also, there have already been many court decisions on the subject. Lower court, appeals courts, and even the Supreme Court.

For example - if I have an unlimited "right" to own guns, why do I need a permit to carry one? I do not need a permit to speak. I do not need a permit to write a letter to the newspaper. I do not need a permit to obtain the due process of law. I do not need a permit to hire a lawyer, or a permit preventing the cops from raiding my home without probable cause. I do not need a permit to attend whatever church I want to attend. And so on.

But I need a permit to pack heat. And FL has fairly "liberal" gun laws - meaning not very strict. Hell almost anyone can get a gun here, and only machine guns are restricted. But with the proper permit I can get a machine gun.

So what is up with this permit shit? If the Constitution says I have the right to keep and bear arms, how can the State "limit" this by requiring a permit? Why does the Supreme Court not declare this Unconstitutional?

Because it is Constitutional. States CAN restrict guns. Just about all of them do.

And what about ex felons? When a felon gets out of jail they have all of their Constitutional rights restored. Well all except the right to keep and bear arms and vote. But FL is considering allowing ex felons to vote (as they should, it is supposed to be a right guaranteed to ALL Americans, not just some). And when ex felons are allowed to vote, should they also get back their "right" to own guns? I mean, it is in the Constitution right? Felons have the right to free speech and religion and stuff. They even get the full due process of law. They get fair and speedy trials, have the right to a defense attorney (private or public) and so on. Because all that stuff is clearly intended to apply to everyone in the Constitution.

But nobody, not even the NRA, is suggesting that ex felons should be allowed to own guns.

It seems to me that if the Second Amendment really gave individuals unlimited rights to own and bear guns, there would be no permits. All states would have to allow concealed carry. No types of guns would be restricted. Every kind of ammo would be legal. And any attempt to pass laws would be struck down by the Supreme Court. And yet even in Texas you have to get a permit to carry. Only that liberal Vermont allows concealed carry with no permit. You do not hear the NRA blasting Texas for violating "the people's" rights.

Weekend Madness!

Welcome to Saturday!

You may have noticed my Netflix movies on the side bar thing. Well I done watched em all. Memento is one crazy movie. It is in reverse. It begins with the end, and ends with the beginning. The plot takes place in reverse. It is a bit tough to keep up with what is going on.

But the DVD has a nifty feature that will play the movie in reverse, but since the movie is already in reverse it is double reverse - which means forward. Watch it the way it was cut first, and if you need to watch it in "reverse" after. It really is a good movie. I like movies one has to pay attention to in order to keep track of what the hell is going on.

Not everyone will like it. But this is why I like Netflix so darn much - they have everything. Even the stuff a regular video store will not stock. You put it on your list and it arrives in the mail. Pretty slick.

I will dump the movies in the mail today and they will arrive Monday, and I will get more movies Tuesday.

Blogger now has this word verification bullshit on new posts. What the hell is that for? Spam blogs? So now I have to word verify my own posts. That I write. What kind of bullshit is that?

It is high time I used the boat again. Maybe I should do this. But not this weekend! This weekend the wind is a bitch, and bay waters are "choppy in exposed areas". Not good. This means a lot of bow spray, and if the wind is into the bow then the wind will pick up that spray and soak me. This is why I need the next boat to have an enclosed helm. F the bow spray in the A. And FORGET ABOUT going offshore! Not unless you are insane! Saturday seas are 4 - 6 feet near shore and 6 - 8 feet in the Gulf Stream. Sunday we are looking at 5 - 7 foot seas near shore and 7 - 9 feet in the Gulf Stream.

Maybe next week. 9 foot seas means waves as high as half the length of the boat! And a choppy Biscayne Bay is no fun to be in either. The sea, she be a harsh mistress.

The fat orange cat just clawed me for messing with his foot. Fat bastard! See if he gets fed today. That will teach him. Anyone got some of that rat poison recalled food handy?

Lazy Movies

I love Netflix. It is perhaps the greatest thing ever invented. You sign up, pick a bunch of movies, and DVDs start to show up in your mailbox. Watch them then mail them back. Then they send you more.

Anyhow, sometimes I still go to the real movies. Like on Tuesday. I went to see Pan's Labyrinth.

Pan's Labyrinth is a good movie, but not for everyone. First off, it is todos en Español. Not that this is a big deal - it has subtitles. And it is set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. So what language do you want the movie to be in? How about Russian!

Oh yea and it was a Spanish/Mexican production.

Anyhow, it is a somewhat dark and disturbing movie. It has an R rating for language (they say conio a lot) and some violence. And here is another cool thing - the creatures are NOT CGI! It is a guy wearing a lot of makeup.

So go see the movie before it is out of the theaters.

Anyhow - here is what I have right now from Netflix!

1. La Vallee. This is a French film.
Viviane (Bulle Ogier), a straightforward young woman, sets out on a birding
expedition in New Guinea, where she meets Olivier (Michael Gothard), an adventurer
who's about to leave with some friends on an expedition into the jungle. The goal
is to discover an unknown valley in the phantom regions of the island marked only
by blank spots ("obscured by clouds") on the map. Only the natives suspect the
valley is where the gods live. …

Oh yea, the soundtrack to this film is contained on the album "Obscured By Clouds" by Pink Floyd. Good luck finding this in a video store - it is a foreign movie and therefore nobody wants to see it. But Netflix has it. And now I have it.

2. Tideland. This is a Terry Gilliam movie. You know, they guy from Monty Python who wrote and directed such films as Time Bandits, Jabberwocky, Brazil, 12 Monkeys, The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, The Brothers Grimm, and some other stuff I am forgetting about. I missed this one when it was in theaters, but now I have it.

3. Jesus Camp. A documentary featuring "an unfiltered look at a revivalist subculture where devout Christian youngsters are being primed to deliver the fundamentalist community's religious and political messages. Building an evangelical army of tomorrow, the Kids on Fire summer camp in Devil's Lake, N.D., is dedicated to deepening the preteens' spirituality and sowing the seeds of political activism as they're exhorted to "take back America for Christ." On a side note, the formerly reverend and currently VERY fabulous Ted Haggard is in it, spouting off about something. Probably about how terrible gay people are.

Plus 95 more movies in queue, and another 11 in the "saved" list. The "saved" list is where you can add movies that have not yet been released on DVD. Tideland was once there.

Netflix is great.