Oh… pleeeeease can we make time go faster! I’m seriously jonesing for the Office. Isn’t that pathetic? I just watched their promo that aired during the Olympic opening ceremonies like four times and laughed out-loud all four times.

Okay, five times. *sigh* I’ve got issues.

This one is for you Joss Whedon fans out there!  What? You don’t know who Joss Whedon is?! But how?!

Joss is the mastermind behind the Firefly series, which I watched on DVD about five years after it was on TV. Serenity is the movie that tied up all the lose ends in the prematurely canceled series, and I watched it on DVD about three years after it hit theaters. Joss was also responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I never watched cuz it looked stupid, and Angel, which I never watched because, well, just because.

So, as you can see, I’m a die-hard Joss fan.

Okay, maybe not. But still, I really do like some of his stuff and when I heard he did a made-for-the-interweb short, I had to see it. A co-worker… umm… procured a… umm… backup copy… you know… for security and stuff… from a… very reputable… bit-torrent movie pirate site. Anyway, that’s beside the point.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is… what? Why are you laughing? No really, that’s what it’s called. I’m serious! It’s not funny! Well, yes. It is funny. That’s the whole point. It’s hilarious and supremely entertaining and now you can watch it legally and free! At the same time!!

Clicky clicky for the must see sing-along blog.

I had great success with Weight Watchers last winter. I lost 30 pounds in a few months. But I last Spring I quit counting my points thinking I could just live off what I learned and eat better. It didn’t work very well. After hitting 225, I plateaued and have slowly gained back about five pounds.

Now, I have renewed interest in counting my points. I was trying to remember how many points I was allowed. I finally found a formula. Yeah, I know. Weight Watchers formulas are patented and I’m probably going to jail for life for publishing it. Then again, I like to live dangerously.

The food-point-value formula is widely available on the ‘net along with oodles of sites that offer pages and pages of food value tables. I’ve only found one site with the point allowance formula. So, I’m linking to that page and republishing it here to help folks like me have more success when they google it.

Based on a series of questions, you add up points to get your daily allowed point total. And don’t forget, no matter what your daily allowance is, everyone is allowed 35 “flex” points per week. You could look at this as an extra 5 points per day, but it’s better to take this weekly so you can have lighter days and heavier days throughout the week.

1. Gender: Female (2) (Add 10 points if you’re nursing), Male (8)
2. Age: 17-26 (4), 27-37 (3), 38-47 (2), 48-58 (1), over 58 (0)
3. Weight: Add the first two digits of your weight in pounds (ex. 199 lbs. = 19 points)
4. Height: Under 5’1″ (0), 5’1″-5’10” (1), Over 5’10” (2)
5. Activity Level: How do you spend your day? Mostly Sitting (0), Occasionally Sitting (2), Mostly Walking/Standing (4), Physical Labor (6)

For me, it looks like this:

So now I can start counting again and we’ll see if I can get down to 200 by Thanksgiving. That gives me three months to drop about 30 pounds. I think I can I think I can I think I can…

It’s finally here. The presidential election season starts today with the Democratic National Convention. Boy, it’s about time we started hearing news about the election, huh? I wonder why the media waited so long to start covering the race.

Oh, wait. That’s right. They’ve been beating us over the head with it for over a year already!

The next time we elect a president, for God’s sake can we do a background check?
– David Letterman

Amen. So how much do you know about your candidate of choice? Hmmmm?

 Ok. Time for a change of mood.

I’m waaaay behind on my movie reviews (once again) so rather than doing a half dozen posts on movies I watched ages ago, I’ll lump them together and shorten the reviews. Here’s your ticket. Grab some popcorn and hang on tight.

Nanny McPhee – I had high hopes for this 21st century Mary Poppins style kid’s show. Those hopes were surpassed. McPhee is darker than her umbrella wielding predecessor. No spoons full of sugar. No marry-go-round horse races. To be honest, Nanny McPhee is a teeny tiny bit scary, maybe scary enough to upset kids of single digit age. But the story is superb. The artistry is fantastic. The acting is sublime. Four grins!

Night At The Museum – Conversely, I really didn’t expect much from this one. Ben Stiller and Robin Williams have both been on my list of annoying non-actors for a while now. I list Stiller along with Will Farrell, Adam Sandler, and Jack Black as comedic actors who just aren’t funny anymore. They stoop to that seventh-grade-locker-room humor that wasn’t really funny even in the seventh grade. Williams, much like Jim Carrey, is such an over actor, he usually ruins an otherwise good movie with his over-the-top performance. But I’m happy to say that both of these generalizations fail in this film. Stiller keeps the humor above board and I am completely shocked to say that Robin Williams acted in this movie. Honest! And he played a supporting role without even trying to steal the show. Amazing! This is a really fun flick that gets a well earned three grins.

Blade Runner – This Sci-Fi classic takes you back to the good ol’ days. Harrison Ford played this role the year after Raiders of the Lost Ark and the year before Return of the Jedi. Tell me this was not the best of the best years for Mr. Ford! Blade Runner has that mystique of being released twice. Once the way the studio wanted it and then later as the director intended. The studio felt the movie was hard to follow because there is very little dialog. So they had Ford come in and add narration in post production. I watched the narrated version keeping in mind the directors cut. I don’t think the narration was necessary, but I also don’t think in ruined the film. It’s a great, dark, brooding, dystopian story that leaves some room for your imagination and doesn’t drag like so many in this genre. It’s no Soylent Green, but it’s good show for it’s niche which earns it three grins.

When I got into my movie trilogy phase a while back, I watched the Alien franchise, which turns out to be a tetralogy with a bonus spin-off franchise in AvP. The Alien franchise fits pretty well into my theories about Hollywood and trilogies.

Alien – Like many movies that grow into franchises, the first one is, IMHO, the best. You have to watch it with a 1979 frame of mind. Remember that you don’t know what the alien looks like. You don’t know about the acidic blood juice. You don’t know how the parasitic, pupa, face hugging thingy works. You don’t know about the chest exploding hatchling. This movie will rock your world and give you nightmares. Awesome sauce! Four grins!

Aliens – Unlike theatrical three act trilogy, Aliens is not a transitional second act. Thus it does not suck. In fact, most fans would say that part two is better than part one. Aliens is arguably the best sequel ever. It doesn’t have the same shock factor as the first one, but it is much more action packed. There’s no question about who the hero will be, but you know the final smack-down will have you on the edge of your seat, cheering and spilling your popcorn. As a bonus you get a genuine, secret bad guy and a tough, cute kid. This film would make a great show without it’s predecessor which makes it a brilliant sequel well worth four grins.

Aliens3 – A full thirteen years after the first movie proved sequel worthy, we get the classic Hollywood unnecessary third chapter. When you run out of ideas, why not resuscitate an old success and hope it still works. This time it didn’t. Sigourney Weaver’s tortured Ripley goes from survivor (part 1); to reluctant, even unwilling, hero (part 2); to smug, bad-attitude, bald-headed, tuff-chick. Blech! On top of this the special effects really suffer in this one. The aliens look almost campy compared to the previous installments. The story is not bad. The acting is tolerable, but it just doesn’t live up to its lineage earning only two grins.

Alien Resurrection – As if we hadn’t learned our lesson from part three, we get yet another unnecessary sequel in part four. And this steamer is just off the chart weird. Adding some star power (Winona Ryder and Ron Perlman) helped a little, but it wasn’t enough to save the show. If the G.I. Jane-esque Ripley in part three ruined a good character, imagine the genetically-engineered, petri-dish Uber-Ripley 2.0 introduced in part four. I won’t ruin the surprise for you (since it’s the only surprise in the whole movie) but let’s just say Ripley is not the sweet Earth girl we used to know. My advice is to leave this one in the bargain bin where you found it and walk away with one grin.

Alien vs. Predator – When I saw the previews, I dismissed this as a genuine shark jumping, combining two long dead series. But I have to admit, this time, it worked. As if to bring the Alien story full circle, AvP goes back to the mysterious feel we had in the first Alien movie in that we are allowed to discover the new plot along with the characters. (Although the title ruins a little of the suspense. They should draw and quarter whoever came up with such a lame label.) It’s intriguing and exciting, a good mix of mystery and action. As awful as this one should have been, I’m giving it three grins

Whew! We made it. And to think that’s not all the movies I’ve seen since my last purge. But seriously, how could I have clumped Dark Knight in with this lot? That would have been sinful!

In case you’ve been living under a rock or only watching “MSM” coverage (these two are synonymous), Russia has thumbed its nose at the world to an even greater extent in the last week. Russia has now signed two cease fire agreements, both of which stipulate an end of aggression in Georgia and the latter of the two requires Russian’s to pull back to their August 6th positions. They have done neither.

In this clip, a Georgian reporter is making a live report for the outskits of  Gori (where Russian troops are razing the entire town and killing anyone who has not yet evacuated). In the midst of her report, she is struck in the arm by a sniper’s bullet, presumably Russian. From what I can find out, it’s an injury she’ll recover from, but the video is shocking none-the-less.

This is the third video I’ve seen in the last two days in which Russian troops open fire on press teams approaching the city. Remember what I said about the invasion and video coverage? The Russian army does not want any media within 100 miles lest the world get a glimps of atrocities they are perpetrating.

This news article confirms the location and identy of the reporter.

The Middle School Mission Tour 2008 video is finally uploaded. Sorry it took so long.

This week’s white board quip comes from a Dilbert comic, but was chosen because I’m overwhelmed with political, international, and sports news this week, all of which remind me of the hopelessness of the human condition.

When things don’t sound evil enough on their own, I like to toss in a “BU-WHA-HA-HA-HA!”
– Catbert, Evil Director of Human Resources

How long will Washington continue to tip-toe around Russia’s grotesque genocide in Georgia?

“[Russian soldiers] said, ‘Putin has given us an order that everyone must be either shot or forced to leave.’ They told us we should ask the Americans for help now because they would kill us if we stayed.”

Read the complete article.

I remember back a few years ago, when Russia was beginning to recover from their economic collapse, seeing Vlad Putin make an impassioned speech about Russia’s return to greatness (or something like that). I remember getting a cold feeling about Putin. He just looked so “Soviet.”

I shrugged it off and blamed it on the fact that I grew up during the Cold War. Probably just some old propaganda in my subconscious, right? Riiiight.

In more recent years, good ol’ Vlad has been doing a lot of chest thumping. Blocking Bush’s missile defense plans. Making friends with our enemies (*cough* Iran *cough*). Generally sounding more and more like the old bullies that the “old Cold War propaganda” warned me about. Still, this is just a guy looking out for his own country, right? Doing what a president… er… sorry… prime minister should do. Right?!

But don’t forget. Russia is famous for it’s chess masters. They understand dubious strategy (maybe better than anyone). Let’s take a chess master’s look at the Georgian conflict.

With oil hitting record prices, the entire western world has been focused on our energy dependence problems.  With all our hand wringing over the Arab shaikhs taking all our money, we probably didn’t notice that Russia is a huge oil exporter and has been quietly raking in the dough, not to mention that Putin’s government has been centralizing the energy market, putting all that black gold under government control.

Georgia, a pro-western US ally, has been working with its central Asian neighbors to build some natural gas and oil pipelines to eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. This would undercut Russia’s control of Asian oil.

For the last few months, any headlines that are not about the high cost of gas are focused on the US presidential race. Now, for the next couple of weeks, every self-respecting journalist in the world is holed up in China covering the Olympics. You could say we’re all a bit preoccupied.

If I was a power-hungry leader of a first-world country and I wanted to punish a tiny little neighbor of mine for mucking around in my power structure, my first concern would be media coverage. If a bunch of bleeding heart western journalists started broadcasting video of my tanks crushing this third-world annoyance, there would be all sorts of outcries, political pressure would abound and those saps over at the UN would start spitting out non-binding resolutions like crazy. I can’t have that. So, I’d wait until all the world’s journalists (at least the good ones that anyone will listen to) are completely preoccupied and unable to combat my state controlled media reports.

If, somehow, the word did get out, and the West got wind of my little sand kicking exercise, I would make sure the world knew that the little guy started it (“The aggressor has been punished…”) and then I would graciously offer the little pip-squeaks a cease fire.

Of course, the conditions of that cease fire would have to include that the little guy’s military would have to stay exactly where they were. No retreat and regroup. No fortifying weak spots. Just freeze. Then, I could run a couple dozen tanks right up to whatever target of opportunity I could find and blast the blazes out of it. No media means no video and no video means I can deny the whole thing as sympathizer propaganda. (“A Western news photographer” is a pretty poor eye witness. Easy to dismiss.)

Some pundits are waxing quizical over Russia’s apparent back-stepping. They look to internaltional pressure, economic threats, etc., to say that Putin has been “forced” to back down. That’s straight up bolshevik. Putin did exactly what he wanted to do. He gave the little nerd a big, puffy, black eye and now he just has to mutter an unsincere, “sorry,” and walk away. Nerds with big, puffy, black eyes tend to be more careful in the future about crossing the big bully.

Georgia is not destroyed, but they have been punished and that’s all Putin needed. He’s set a precedent. If you mess with me, I’ll black your eye and it’ll be over before the teacher can do anything about it. I may get a detention, but you’ll still have a black eye. And don’t think for a minute that all of Russia’s little neighbors (all former soviet republics, by the way) got the message loud and clear.