Miley Cyrus' pictures? Damn, are people overreacting, and I'm one of the first to complain that they are over sexualizing that girl. We've got to draw the big thick line between artistic photography and pornography. Plus, people, her FATHER was there. I trust his judgment in regards to his daughter over the judgment of 90% of the country.

Open Source Boob Project? I'm late on this one. Much ado about nothing - a tale of sound and fury, told by some idiots. On both sides.

Mission Accomplished? Yeah, in my ass.

Las Vegas is like the girl you take home at the end of a long night at the bar when you're too drunk to notice that her make-up is on thicker than latex paint, and that all the flash and beauty is more artificial than Pamela Anderson's boobs. Every time I hear some born again, evangelical preacher calling for God to obliterate this city, I kind of agree. Though I'd like for him to wait for when I'm not here. My reasons are different, though - I'm afraid to actually leave the hotel. I don't want anyone to give me any fliers, and the fact that they are running some kind of time-share selling scam in the lobby makes me want to stay in the room.

Rich

Current Music: Bastet's Dream - Lost Causes

Why is "smiling" so important?

The first time someone brought that up in a way that made me begin to question it was in 1989. The Cult was on the cover of a rock magazine sold at the record store where I worked, and some customer commented "Look at these jackasses, not even smiling."

Why does it matter?

I don't smile often. Part of it is my crappy teeth, and part of it is just that I think people who walk around all the time smiling look kind of retarded. In the bad way of the word.

People get mad about it. "Why don't you smile??!!??WTFBBQ!!??"

"I don't feel like it."

But that's apparently not an answer.

I know the relation between the human smile and the 'primate fear face.' The smile that implies "I mean you no harm." While I don't wish anyone physical harm, I can't guarantee that I won't put a little emotional harm on certain people.

I just don't get this.

Rich

Current Music: BlackSheep - This or That

Yep, it's me in City of Heroes, on the Champions server. UnkyRich is a man of iron will, who likes to set people on fire. (A Natural Tanker with the Willpower primary power, Flame Melee secondary power, and he also got Speed today. I'm a dork.)

Rich

I just got addicted to CoH and CoV. I play on Guardian and Justice servers (but am wiling to go to other servers as well.)

On Guardian, I have the following characters:

Arthur Guin (Magic/Tanker - level 9) - big bald guy in a leather jacket.
Sham Haine (Scientific/Scrapper - level 9) - huge panther guy with claws and regeneration
Machina Ex (Mutation/Blaster - level 12) - electrical blaster who I really want to raise up to level 14 so I can get flight.
Gaia-Child (Magic/Defender - level 10) - healer, teleporter, psionic.

And on Justice, I have the following:
Asphyxiatress (Mutant/Corrupter - level 7, IIRC) - dark bolt stealthy character, and currently my only villain
Blak Bird (Technological/Defender - level 6 or 7) - archer and martial artist
Thraka (Technological/Blaster - level 5) - Basically, a Shadowrun Ork with an automatic rifle, some hi-tech grenades, and a love of shooting gangsters.

So if you see any of those, say hey. Plus, I'd love to team up with people I actually know.

Rich

It's been a while since I've done a meme.

( It's here because I HEART you. )

Cil and I adopted a trio of rats from somenoe who couldn't take care of them anymore. They are three young females - Abby, Sophie, and Gwen - who are fairly sociable and friendly. They came with their own cage, which is a multi-level thingee that I've never thought about purchasing for a pet rat before.

They don't fight as much as other rats we've owned together - which is odd.

We also are taking some steps to make sure Othello doesn't get neglected.

I think we're going to give the a bath, though. They were apparently kept in a cage where the previous owner used newspaper for litter - this never works. So they smell terrible. Cil and I are giving them a couple of days to clean themselves off, and then it's bath time. That'll be fun.

Our anniversary weekend was fun - kind of - and also slow - kind of.

Friday we spent the day together, went out for Chinese food at a place called (I believe) P. F. Chang's, which adverstizes itself as a "Chinese Bistro." The food was good, and the waitress was really nice and fairly skilled. She seemed surprised by the tip that Cil and I left. (I have a post about this.)

We then went to Half-Price books, and almost beat our previous record. (We once spent almost $150 at HPB. That would be about $300 in normal books.)

The two of us went home and then slept.

Saturday, I was sick. That's the only explanation - I spent about 15 - 16 hours sleeping, and when I woke up, all my upper joints were sore. And I couldn't keep my eyes opened. Still, we went out for dinner, then came home and watched "Death at a Funeral."

And today we picked up the three girl rats.

I have a big post I need to do, as soon as City of Heroes finishes loading. (This is taking a ridiculously long time.)

Rich

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: Some movie that's a modern update of Jekyll and Hyde

Today is Cil's and my 10 year wedding anniversary.

I wrote a disgustingly sickening message on her card, and I'm waiitng for the flowers I ordered to arrive.

She's taken the day off from work.

No idea what else we are going to do,

But it's nice to be together.

Rich

A Bikini Wax? For an Eight Year Old?

And the article just keeps getting worse and worse. I'm even unhappy with the writer's end point.

Bleah. People.

Tags: misanthropy

Without links.

So last year, I started to watch the "8 Movies to Die For" series. These are indie horror movies, with the premise that they are "so horrifying, the studios don't want you to see them." Well, after last year, I thought "if by horrifying you mean horrifyingly dull or horrifyingly bad, sure."

Still, this year I gave it a shot. So far, it's been an improvement, though also kind of a mixed bag.

Mulberry Street was the first one I saw - it's pretty much survival horror, with a kind of infectious, were-rat like disease rather than zombies. The setting is a tenement in Manhattan, and the characters are the people who inhabit said place. Manhattan goes insane while were-rat mutants attack everyone they can.

This wasn't a bad movie, but it wasn't exceptional, either. One problem with using rats is that you need to use domestic rats for the animal sequences, and domestic rats just can't look like wild rats, no matter how hard you try. (Provided you know the difference.)

Unearthed is the movie I almost gave up on. It had an over-used plot involving some scientists digging up something they shouldn't have, which then goes upon a killing spree in a small town. My big problems included not being able to stand any of the main characters (except two), and not being able to stay awake through the film.

I almost gave up here.

Fortunately, I didn't.

Crazy Eights has an interesting premise - a group of friends who forgot about each other are re-united after one of them dies. They uncover the mystery of their past, what binds them, and - oh - the corpse/skeleton of a six year old girl in one of the boxes the dead friend left them. This all ties up really well, the plot and secret are interesting (even if ruined in the first 15 seconds of the film), and this movie has decent star-power for an indie horror film (Dina Meyer, Gabrielle Anwar, Frank Whaley, and . . . er.. . . Traci Lords.) The ending isn't much of a twist, though people make it out to be. Or maybe I'm just jaded.

Still, this began to redeem the films for me.

Tooth and Nail was a film I thought I'd hate. The synopsis from Netflix mentioned words like "Post-Apocalypse" and "Survival," and I couldn't figure out what it was doing here. Watching it though . . . among the stars, you have Robert Carradine (Revenge of the Nerds and Lizzie McGuire), Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs & Sin City), and Vinnie Jones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, & X-Men 3, & Eurotrip). Not A list, but not bad, either.

The apocalypse of the movie setting is one of a whimper - not a bang - and happened fairly recently. The world ran out of gas - literally. With that, society breaks down,with people doing their best to survive. But don't worry people - this isn't some preachy film about relying on a message about fossil fuels. Oh, no sir.

Early on, you meet a group of people surviving in a hospital, who use Red Cross food rations to survive, and are trying to recreate a society within which they can live.

And then they get confronted by cannibals. (The 'happened recently' is within the past 5 years, I would guess.)

This movie asks more tough, philosophical questions - at what stage do we stop being human and revert to just being animals? Is remaining humane more important than remaining alive? What do people do when confronted by one of the most evil acts we can imagine?

This film was actually really, really good. I'm putting it on my Amazon list to remember to buy it later.

So that's it - half of the eight films to die for. More as they come in.

And special treat:

Fight Club: Members Only aka "The Bollywood Fight Club" has nothing to do with the movie or the novel. I can't really describe it for you, except to say that if you like Bollywood movies, liked the movie Road House, and like over the top fight sequences (not quite wire-fu, except in a few places), this film is great. It's almost 2 1/2 hours long. As long as you can deal with the spontaneous song and dance routines, and don't mind the rather superficial level of the film, it's good - it's pure entertainment, no depth, nothing to think about.

Rich

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Naked Raygun - Treason

Hey all.

My sister is gone now. It was nice seeing her.

We didn't get to spend much time together - a little Tuesday and Thursday, and then all day Friday.

While I don't agree with all of her parenting choices, I can at least admire the fact that she's one of those rare parents who follows up on her limits and threats. (Threats is the wrong word. If she says "If you do that with that toy again, I'm taking it from you" and then the kid does it again, she takes the toy away, no matter how much they may cry over it.)

She's doing well. Though her husband is not only abusive - I now think he's mildly retarded. (Okay, truth is he's an alcoholic, with all the crap that comes with that.) Apparently, he called her cell phone contacts at 1:30 AM again. Then claimed that Nick, their three year old child, did it.

To which my sister replied:

"Right. Nickie managed to figure out my password, dial 10 different numbers, and proceeded to delete the calls from my cell-phone? How stupid do you think I am?" (She works for the company who supplies her cell-phone service, so she can see when her phone was used.)

I'll admit that both Joey and Nickie are precocious, but I doubt either of them are that brilliant.

(Speaking of which, Carrie still has problems with the idea that I was reading at 3 or so. The problem as I've pointed out is that my mom thought my development was normal. It wasn't - I was delayed on a lot of physical things, and accelerated on a lot of mental things. I spoke well at 2, but had problems running and with hand-eye coordination. So my mom STILL says things like "Richie was reading at that age" to my sister.)

Still, the week was nice. I wish she and I could see each other more often, without some major change in either of our lives.

Rich

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Kosheen - Overkill