Commies for Kerry?

This looks like a joke to me (albiet an elaborate one) but then again I knew some avowed commies in college who were working on "get rich quick" schemes. Idiots.

SpaceShipOne

Well, SpaceShipOne has completed half of its requirement for the X-Prize competition, albeit with a few more barrel-rolls than intended. This is great news, if you ask me. The US space program has stalled for the past thirty years (how many kids dream of being astronauts anymore?) and this is the swift boot that it needs.

Glenn Reynolds has interesting thoughts on this over at Tech Central Station. As usual, I think he's hit the nail on the head.

I hope this is just the beginning. To paraphrase Prince on the Batman soundtrack, "I've seen the future and it will be..." SpaceShipOne?

More Dew

Puck, there's also another Dew that you missed in your Pitch Black rant: Mountain Dew Baja Blast. It's supposedly a limeish flavor by my coworker who tried it is claiming "grapefruit". It's only available at Taco Bell (why? does that drive taco sales?) so that might explain why you hadn't seen it. The logo just looks like a faded Dew logo to me so even if one went to Taco Bell you would easily overlook it.

The biggest problem with all of this is that "Mountain Dew" has been diluted to mean almost nothing. If you say you like Mountain Dew many will ask, "regular or Code Red?" (or Live Wire or whatever). The brand means almost nothing now.

This isn't the first time PepsiCo has done this: in the 80s we were deluged with Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Free, Diet Pepsi Free, and so on; CocaCola had Coke, New Coke, Coke Classic, Diet Coke, Coke II, caffeine Free Coke, etcetera.

The end result is that if you want a Coke you must specify "what kind". Alright, in some parts of the country where Coke is sysnonymous with "soda" this has always been the case. But, if you ask for a Mountain Dew you must specify "what kind". This is idiocy as the whole point of a strong brand is brand recognition: The more you dilute the brand the less it means anything to people.

I think I'll stick to water.

Pitch Black

I loved Pitch Black, the movie. Vin Deisel rocks! It is probably one of the best sci-fi horror movies to come out in the past ten years and it worked for me.

I have no intention of trying MDPB, but dont dis' the film!

I Love Feminism

This just goes to show some of the garbage that American Feminism is spewing. (Thanks Andrew Sullivan for the link.) Holy crap!

Itchbay.net

Itchbay.net is moving along. I won't have a forum initially but this blog will be housed there as well as possibly some other things.

I must say, Speakeasy is by far the best ISP I have ever worked with (I have worked with three other broadband ISPs, including SBC which SUCKS, and four different dial up ISPs). They are quick to respond to my issues and work to get me the best deals within their terms. The staff is always available by phone or email or web form and have been universally helpful for me. You get what you pay for and with Speakeasy you get great service! Note, Scot Kurtz hosts PvP on Speakeasy so it can't be all bad.

If your wife can stand the speakeasy.org email address then by all means go with Speakeasy.

Astonishing!

spoilers follow...

I had all but given up on the X-Men franchise after multiple tries. For a long time the X-Men was my favorite super-hero group and there were some great stories with great characters written and drawn by great creators. The Brood War! The Phoenix Saga! Wolverine! Nightcrawler! John Byrne! Chris Claremont! Great stuff, to say the least.

However, after a while it began to drag, anchored by the weight of it's own continuity. It came to be that it wasn't a super-hero group as much as it was a soap opera (will Kitty Pryde and Peter Rasputin get married? Is this the real Phoenix or her evil clone? Who's on death's door this week?) and you couldn't read the various books without a crapload of back story. On top of that, the series got bogged down by its own popularity. It was the flavor of the week and to make the most of this cash crop, Marvel began publishing a million and one X-comics (with various X-spin offs) and the X-Men made appearances in everyone else's book ("Gosh, sales of The Defenders are plummeting, we should have the X-Men guest star!").

Garbage!

I gave the X-Men a try more recently when Grant Morrison began writing one of the books. He had some cool artists drawing his stories and they seemed pretty good, for the most part. Interesting ideas which were fairly well executed. Then I had a revelation that his stories weren't that great at all and the new characters he introduced (mainly to kill off it seemed) weren't that interesting. What he did in his last arc really put me off and I decided "no more X-Men!"

I almost came back when I saw Claremont and (Alan) Davis were doing a book together and realised it was just for the art. The story was soon revealed to be more garbage and not worth my dime (or $2.95 as the case may be).

Screw that!

Well, my LCBSO turned me on to Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men. Joss Whedon is the genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The art looks great (look here for a sample) and there are a few issues out so I can try it for a bit.

WOW!

We have some of my favorite X-Men (Cyclops, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde and Beast) plus one that I can't stand (Emma Frost) drawn and written well. We have the return of another favorite of mine (Colossus came back in #4). The art is clean and nice. The story thus far is pretty good. The X-Men are super heros again.

And they have a new (returning) reader. Bravo!

League of Extraordinary Garbage

I saw LXG last week and just had to comment. This is easily one of the worst action movies that I've seen in a long time and should never have been made!

The plot is predictable. By this I don't mean that I should have known what was coming, I mean that I would predict to Julie (and she sometimes to me) what was going to happen and, voila, that's exactly what happened. The plot twists weren't. Most garbage coming out of Hollywood these days isn't deep but this is absurd.

The characters are wooden. The League is comprised of British pulp fiction heroes of the late 19th century: Mina Harker, Alain Quartermain, the Invisible Man, Dr Jeckyl (and his alter ego), Dorian Gray, Captain Nemo. Of course they added Tom Sawyer to give it some American flair. With this cast you'd think the characters would be interesting but they were anything but. They spent a ton of time explaining who they were (as most of the general public don't know these characters) and essentially no time on development. The only character that was at all interesting was Dr Jeckyl and only because they played up his natural internal conflict rather well.

The action was confused and poorly done. Quite a few times Julie said that it felt like a video game, and she was spot on. The problem is that video games make good video games but not good movies. And LXG would have made a really bad video game, to boot.

And the Nautilus! OK, so they have a sub the size of a tanker that can easily weave its way through the canals of Venice and through rivers to the heart of Asia? Give me a break! To make matters worse, there is no reason to have the bad guy's fortress in the middle of Asia -- they could have done the same cool mountain/snow/ice thing by setting it in Antarctica (and had a literary reference to boot if they'd claimed his fortress was in the heart of the Mountains of Madness). Look, I'm all for the suspension of disbelief and all but that is absurd!

The biggest problem, in my mind, is that they took a great limited series (released as a graphic novel) by one of the better writers in comics about some of the coolest characters in late 19th century British literature and turned it into a horrid and uninspired movie. Crap! Crap! Crap!