Even though I’ve been really busy the last few … well … months, I have been watching a lot of movies thanks to NetFlix’s new policy on viewing movies via the web. (It’s virtually free!)

That said, I’m waaay behind on my movie reviews. So here goes.

Now I hope you’ll forgive me for the fact that most of what I’ve watched is older than I am. I’ve enjoyed catching up on the classics. By the way, if you haven’t read about my grin rating system, click to check it out.

Soylent Green
This one is the real thing. Good ol’ cold-war, post-apocalyptic, dystopian entertainment. And Charlton Heston to boot! This one is a must see, right up there with “Planet of the Apes” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still”.

And speaking of…

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Lacks the big name stars but more than makes up for it in importance. There’s something important about this movie. You can feel it when you watch it.

The Omega Man
I’m eager to see “I Am Legend”. When I heard it was a remake (imagine my un-surprise) of yet another Charlton Heston dystopian flick, I had to check it out! It’s no Soylent Green, but it’s worth watching.

Oh God!
I remember this movie from when I was just a kid. I remember thinking how funny it was to have God portrayed as a tiny, little, old man. As an adult, I still think it’s funny, just not “ha ha” funny. More like “how sad” funny.

Harvey
This quirky little show stars Hollywood’s quirkiest leading man in, most likely, his quirkiest role. Jimmy Stewart shows us that some of the most insane people in the world may actually have a better grasp on reality than most of the sane people that ever lived.

Fahrenheit 451
I dabbled in Ray Bradbury’s work (among others) in high school. I remember it gave me that important feeling you get when you think you “get it”. I’m sure thousands of people got that feeling from Bradbury and Orwell and Huxley and Emerson and Whitman and Thoreau. I’m just grateful that kept on going. I grew beyond non-conformity and transcendentalism and all that bull and learned that life is a lot easier to live when you live in reality. (Even if that requires a little bit of nuttiness a la the above mentioned Harvey.)

Being There
We watched this movie in Honors English class my senior year. (Yes, that’s about the same time I thought I “got it” mentioned above.) All I could remember was that it was really weird. I remember right. It’s entertaining, but only if you have as weird a sense of humor as I do. Think of it as the Nixon era’s “Napoleon Dynamite”.

Frankenstein
Yes, the Frankenstein. 1931. When the horror movie genre was just coming of age. What a great show. Sure it’s campy to our 21st century eyes, but if you look at it in its own era, this movie was brilliance defined.

Bride of Frankenstein
Then again, isn’t it funny that no sooner had horror movies been weened that they started making bad sequels? Ah well. Kids will be kids.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Well, if I’m going to go back to the father of the genre, I might as well check out the great-grand-father while I’m there. Not only is this a silent movie (from 1920) it’s a foreign silent movie (from germany). Now tell me I’m not all dripping with culture! I actually enjoyed this more than “Bride of Frankenstein”!!

Believe it or not there are more, but it’s getting late and this post is far too long. I’ll try not to wait so long before my next movie review post. I’ll try.

A wise man once said:

Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask how much you will be forced to pay (under threat of imprisonment) for the things your country does for other people… lazy people who don’t have enough money to pay taxes.

That might not be exactly what he said, but it’s a rough paraphrase. And, in case you’re wondering, that wise man was a Democrat.

This is going to be another low traffic week for me. Very little surfing which leads to very little blogging. I’m redoubling (quadrupling??) my efforts at work.

This week is our annual distributor conference. Most of our international distribution partners will be here in Texas and the marketing and executive folks will be all tied up talking about sales strategies and quarterly gross differential margin analysis (read as, “stuff I know nothing about”). But for me that means that this week should be fairly uninterrupted by problems with the web site. The “squeaky wheels”, so to speak, will be otherwise occupied.

And all that explains this week’s white board quip.

I can’t because I’m all busy eating a carrot stick.
– Dilbert

Last weekend Tammy and I made the drive to Amarillo. Much of the family was in town and it was good to do some catching up.

We all came to see “Willy Wonka Junior” performed by the Lamplight Youth Theatre on stage at Amarillo’s relatively new theater, the Globe News Center. (The venue is really cool; pretty classy for Amarillo.) But the real attraction was my nephew Caleb Spaw.

Caleb played Augustus Gloop. True, he was the first kid to be consumed by his bad behavior in Wonka’s homicidal factory, but it was still a big honor. He got the part primarily because he was able to pick up the German accent in a snap. Seems he shares some genes with his nutty uncle who also has a knack for accents. (I’m so proud!!)

Caleb sang several songs did a bit of dancing and, most importantly, never dropped his accent! (The girl playing Veruca Salt was only British for two or three of her lines. The rest was decidedly Texan.)

The show was very entertaining and the production was impressive for an all volunteer children’s theater.

In case you’re interested, the rest of the pictures I took can be downloaded in a zip file.

So far this year, I’ve failed miserably at one of my resolutions: to memorize 52 Bible verses in 2008. So far I’m at zero. The good news is our church is testing out a new curriculum that includes scripture memory. Now I can finally start wrestling that particular demon. Which brings us to this weeks white board quip.

I tried to wrestle my demons once, but they used too many illegal holds.
Steven Wright

So the economic stimulus package is a done deal. Let’s take a look at what this really means for you and me.

The government is going to send you some money. The knee-jerk reaction is, “Woohoo! Free money!!” But, like your grandpa used to tell you, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The $150 billion dollars that Uncle George is dolling out is not coming from some store house of cash on the White House’s back lawn. It’s a tax rebate. Again, knee-jerk, “Wooho! Lower taxes!” Well, not really. Think of it more like an advance.

When you go to one of those check-cashing scams er… businesses, they advance you some money (that’s what intelligent people call a loan) and then when you get your actual paycheck, they take a slice out of it to cover what they loaned you, plus interest (sometimes a lot of interest). That’s what we’re about to experience.

Now, as for me, I stay away from loan sharks and thus avoid the mess all together. But Big Brother has made that decision for us. We don’t get the option of staying away. Imagine if Guido’s Cash Hut sent you a check with a little note. “Here’s $1000 for you. We’ll come by in twelve months to extract $1500 from you at gun point. No need to thank us. We live to serve.”

Surely our government is no Guido. Surely they have some good intention. Yes. They do. They want you to spend that money in order to buoy the economy. (I talked about this before.) But, when you think about it, what should you do with that check? What’s going to benefit your economy more? Should you go out and buy a big screen TV? Or should you wisely pay down your debt, even if this ends up just being a drop in the bucket? Or if your debt is under control or even nonexistent, you could put the money into a high-yield savings account or other investment.

“But Trint, it’s my responsibility as a patriotic American to help the economy by spending money I don’t have!” Of course it is. And when you get kicked out of your house for defaulting on your mortgage, I’m sure one call to the White House will solve everything. Good luck with that.

As for me, I’m probably going to open a high-yield account with mine. Then I’ll sit back and live the high life with that $50 a year in interest. Well… $42 actually. Can’t forget about those taxes.

[Edit: Thanks to RandyPants for the digg.]

I think a little self-congratulatory back patting is in order. If this was a horse race, I’d have just one the trifecta twice in a row! Well… almost. Stupid Virginia.

Here are my predictions for the race as of February 2nd:

Washington was close; much closer than I expected. In fact, if Huck presses his (completely valid) legal objections, Washington my be overturned. But for now, all I’ve missed is Virginia.

I won’t lie, losing those 60 VA delegates hurt Huck. But make no mistake, I’m still on the Huck-wagon. There is no way I can, in good conscience, support John McCain. In my mind, he has repeatedly betrayed the conservative republican base and there is nothing he can do to repair my opinion of him. He is and ever will be a RINO in my book.

This week’s white board quip reminds me of… umm…

Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

Although it sure is cool. I’ve been holding on to one of these links for almost a year. The other link my dad just sent me. For all you Discovery Channel geeks out there, let’s start with the AA-12 fully automatic shot gun. “Future Weapons” covered it and talked about some of the really wild rounds they’ve developed for it, including a finned mini-grenade. Watch the video, then come back here for more.

AA-12 on Future Weapons – Clicky clicky

OK. So that’s pretty crazy. A low recoil, fully auto shot gun with a 32 round magazine. Add to that some really amazing, high-tech ammunition and you’ve got a nasty little weapon. What could possibly make it any scarier for the bad guys? How about if you could shoot it from an unmanned vehicle. Or even better, an unmanned flying vehicle.

The “Autocopter” is a remote controlled helicopter. If you know anything about RC choppers (or even real ones) you know that they are insanely hard to fly. It’s been compared to balancing a baseball bat vertically on your pinkie finger in a wind storm while someone is shooting at you. (OK, I’ve never actually heard it said that way before, but now you can say that you have.)

What makes the Autocopter different is that it’s controlled not by juggling a 2D stick, foot peddles and a throttle like a normal chopper. It’s controlled by the arrow keys on a laptop. You click take off, it takes off. You steer it where you want it just like you’re playing a cheap video game. Then you click land and it lands. Amazing.

So, now you take this fly-by-click helicopter and mount the afore mentioned fully automatic shotgun on it and you’ve got one amazing weapon of the future.

(You should probably pause the video to read the captions so you can see when it’s being flown manually and when it’s running autonomously.)

Autocopter maintains level flight while firing AA-12 – Clicky clicky

[Edit: When I emailed the autocopter link to Uncle Robert, who did three tours in Viet Nam, he replied with the following:

“An attack and recon robo-helicopter…I want one, please, pretty please”

The voice of experience.]

So, on my way to lunch at the deli, I heard Rush mention Romney’s speech, which was going on at that very moment. Then Rush say’s Romney is dropping out of the race. I nearly ran off the road. (No, not really. I’m just trying to illustrate my surprise. I’m actually a very good driver. Honest.)

Romney’s out. All the talking heads have been saying for weeks that Romney was the closest thing to a “true conservative” that we had (to which I scoffed). So now that he’s dropped out, what will his 293 current delegates do? They can’t cast their votes for him, so will they go with whoever is most popular or whoever is most like Romney politically? Hmmmm.

Let’s just say, in my little pipe-dream world that all of Romney’s delegates switch to Huck. That would put the current count roughly at 700 for McCain, 500 for Huck. If the trend continues, Huck will likely carry the rest of the deep South for 200 delegates. McCain eeked out victories in Missouri and South Carolina where Romney and Huck split the conservative vote, so I’m going to say Huck can carry Kansas and North Carolina for another 110. I think he can also count on the “old south” states of Kentucky and Virginia, so there’s 110 more for somewhere around 950 comfortably in hand.

I have to cede the Yankee states (VT, RI, PA, and the District) to McCain for around 170 delegates. I also think he’ll take the bluer states in the Northwest, Ohio, and New Mexico gaining another 190. That gives McCain 1050-ish unquestionable delegates.

So now it becomes a battle for the Mid-West where just over 200 delegates are still up for grabs. I think those states will lean towards Huckabee, but realistically, it’s going to be an uphill fight. David versus Goliath if you will. Although, a 70 year-old, five foot tall Goliath doesn’t really fit the analogy very well.

[Edit: When I listed the “Yankee states” I intended to include MD.]