The Bleeding Edge of Reality

…well, like this chick! Let me begin by saying that I have NOTHING against asian chicks, or asian people, or the asian culture. In fact, I find asian chicks most attractive and I really dig asian culture. So, say what you will about me, I’m just an observer.

That said, I have found myself in two very harrowing near-miss automobile incidents in the span of two weeks which:

- were not my fault
- happened for no good reason
- were both fully the fault of young, cell-phone yacking, SUV-driving asian chicks who seem to be completely oblivious to what’s going around them!

Is this coincidence? I think not. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, perhaps it was just my “luck”, as it were. There are plenty of other lousy drivers out there who aren’t asian chicks, and I’m sure there are at least some asian chicks who drive with surgical precision and common sense oozing from every nook and cranny of their vehicle. These two occasions, however, were the fault of the afore mentioned asian chicks.

Since the above incidents took place, I’ve begun to notice the driver of vehicles that are doing the following:

- Travelling on a 4 lane road in the left lane at the same or slower speed than traffic in the right lane, even though the traffic ahead of them has long since moved beyond the visible horizon. SPEED UP OR GET IN THE RIGHT LANE DAMNIT!!
- Attempting to merge onto a highway at the speed of smell, confusing the vehicles already on the highway, as well as making drivers of the infinite line of vehicles they’re holding up frustrated beyond any measurable level. MERGE ALREADY! DEPRESS THE ACCELERATOR AND MEET THE SPEED OF THE TRAFFIC YOU’RE ABOUT TO MERGE WITH!
- Adjusting speeds randomly so nobody behind them can make an educated determination as to what the next move will be, so I can get the fuck out of their way before they kill someone with their 3 ton gasguzzler. IF YOU’RE GOING 10MPH BELOW THE POSTED SPEED LIMIT, AND YOU NOTICE SOMEONE TRYING TO GET AROUND YOU, DON’T SPEED UP TO PREVENT IT YOU GODDAMNED GOOBER, PULL THAT PIECE OF SHIT OVER AND LET ME PASS!

I’m sure much of this is the fault of the Oregon DMV and their apparent lack of attention to teaching “respect on the road”. As a matter of fact, I’m quite certain that, if more attention were paid to teaching folks respect with regard to driving, road rage incidents would fall dramatically.

For all those that have them it goes without saying that allergy season is upon us. I never used to have allergies before I moved from the midwest to the west coast. Well, that’s not to say I wasn’t allergic to anything, I just never suffered the misery that is allergy season. Since I’ve moved out here, I have become allergic to cats, and to what must be a month or more of whatever blooms during the month of April (um…everything? Who knows…). I look like a goddamned cartoon. My eyes are literally swollen shut, I look as if I’ve just been maced, and my throat itches like I’ve just eaten a large mixing bowl full of Super Poison Ivy Crisp. Sleep?! That’s a thing of the past, and something I get to look forward to in the coming months, but for now, it’s hell.

Allegra? Claritin? Bah. They’re worthless and don’t do a damn thing. Benedryl? Great, if you’re into 12 hours of drowsy almost-sleep. There isn’t a damn thing on the market that does anything for me to relieve the allergic reactions. Enough ranting. I’m so in need of sleep right now that even my ranting is becoming red, itchy, and matted with seepage…

I decided that, after some seriously depressing family issues over the weekend that what we all needed was a good dose of dinner and a movie. We’d decided to go to our favorite mongolian grill (I didn’t say it was a SPECIAL dinner…christ, it’s not Ruth’s Chris…) and then take in a movie.

We got to the theater and all was well. There are so many good movies out (well, high draw movies anyhow) that the Amityville Horror was relatively empty. Bonus!! Anyhow, it’s the movie we wanted to see, and I’d read the book and seen the first movie, both ages ago, and thought with the new capabilities in the motion picture industry that this would be a great remake! I recall reading the book and being pretty freaked out (ok, I was in 8th grade, but whatever… ).

Once inside the empty theater, about 10 mins before the movie begins, folks start filing in and taking some seats. The first gaggle of giggling idiot bimbos and one super-fem dude decided to sit right behind us…RIGHT behind us. I guess they were on a mission to impress their flaming friend, because not only did they NOT stop yacking (I SWEAR I’ve never heard conversation go on that long…TAKE A F’ING BREATH YOU CACKLING HENS AND GIVE US A REST ALREADY!!), but they’d “outdo” each other with their absolutely HIDEOUS laughter. I thought it’d never end. Then, two gals and a dude, must have been in the 17-21 crowd, show up and sit just to the right and rear of where we were. Similar situation, but you could hear these idiots coming before they even got in the door. I’m sure the mentality is that of the high school dufus who thinks it’s “cool” to talk loudly, and just figures everyone wants to hear what he has to say. The two simpletons with him did the same laughter thing, except this went about 20 minutes into the movie. He’d make some stupidass comment outloud so we all could hear, and the two sluts would seemingly compete to see who could laugh the loudest along with him. Absolutely atrocious. After my wife leaned over and said “can we move? I can’t even focus on the movie!”, I stood up, leaned over to them and said “excuse me, would you mind just shutting up entirely, or whisper into each others ears? Your discussion is entirely distracting.”. They looked shocked and amazed, but they did shut up. Very cool outcome.

The most disturbing part of the audience was the 20-something couple that brought their FIVE YEAR OLD SON TO THE SHOW. A 5 year old who asked questions throughout the movie. Now, his little voice wasn’t so distracting, but the thought of these inconsiderate assholes bringing a kid to a movie with incredibly disturbing images of shotgun deaths, graphic torture, demons, horriffic screams and sounds, etc, brought my blood to a boil. I couldn’t bring myself to go confront them because I was so angry that I would have blown the initial contact and just likely bitched outright. I only hope the kid isn’t scarred from the experience, and if so, I hope these idiots lose sleep and spend countless $$$ on counseling for their kid. How lame.

“What about the movie?!” you ask. Well, this is a well-known story, so I won’t repeat it here. I’ll outline my pros/cons though, for those who’ve seen/read previous renditions:

- This rendition left out even more than the first movie.
- This rendition took more liberties with the plot and changed it so much that you won’t recognize much of what’s going on from either the book or the first movie
- The graphics were fantastic
- The acting was mediocre
- The chick who played the mom was incredibly hot!
- The movie was barely 90 minutes. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but they certainly had 1/2 an hour to play with and make the content at least similar to the book.

Anyhow, great horror story, some moments, but nothing that’d take your breath away. Go enjoy the show!!

We’ve all seen them. Some gimp decides to grab a copy of notepad and start “crafting” up a personal webpage, intent on publishing his/her ignorance worldwide. Some of these folks do it to present personal facts, some do it to create a soapbox upon which to preach to the world, some do it just to try to learn HTML, and some just do it because they want to look “cool”. There are so many examples of these vomitous digital tomes of nonsense that it’s hard to pick one as a prime example of what a website should NOT look like, but I’ve got one here that truly takes a prize for The Worst Website in Cyberspace.

In order to take an award for The Worst Website in Cyberspace, it must meet some rather stringent criteria. It must:

- contain little to no entertainment value.
- contain a large amount of grammatical errors, including spelling and misused forms of words (to, two, too come to mind)
- contain a ridiculous amount of pointless text sizing and colors which would offend Helen Keller
- contain little to no actual scripting, but simply a “body” tag with endless variations of fonts and colors
- contain emphasis on conjunctions like “but, or, and”, etc
- contain excessive use of 8 color sprite graphics and 2 pane animated gifs harvested from other hideous sites
- contain self-serving content which interests nobody but the “author” of said travesty

Extra points are given for gratuitous asskissing, making “pointless points”, and lack of cohesive information flow.

Well folks, I indeed have what I consider to be not only the prime candidate which meets the above with flying colors, but a clear winner that none of you can top. Visit (link removed to protect the guilty ), but be forewarned, this is one gawd-awful site capable of further blinding the blind, and WILL make you retarded for reading it. I believe you’ll find that this site is indeed The Worst Website in Cyberspace.

I’m not one for hype, and I’m sure not one for expecting that turning graphic novels by Frank Miller into a movie would work. So, I took the plunge and went to see Sin City last night, my expectations a mixed bag of “this could suck outloud” coupled with a slight anxiety and hope that it would be fine tribute to Frank Miller’s “Sin City” novels.

I went to the 7:15 pm show on a Sunday. At 6:45 pm I purchased my tickets, and asked the attendant how full the show was so far. He said this showing had 95% of the seats STILL AVAILABLE. “Oh man…” I thought to myself, …”this is going to be a bomb”, but something still gnawed inside saying “give it time, this is gonna be great!”.

Well, I have got to say that this was the most unexpected, most cutting edge, most incredible film I’ve seen in years!! An incredible cast of stars and amazing direction brings Frank Miller’s “Sin City” to life right before your eyes. The cityscapes are breathtaking, the art is amazing, and the integration of the characters is brilliant.

The list of stars who appear in the film is amazing. Benecio Del Toro, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba (does she EVER stop getting hotter?!?), Rosario Dawson, Michael Madson, etc, etc, etc…the list goes on forever. The women in this film look so amazingly gorgeous, at times it’s like a Victoria’s Secret ad. The film is engrossing from the very start and keeps you glued to the screen through the entire film, not a moment going to waste. The makeup, costumes, animation, and direction come together in a way that I’ve not seen in a film…ever.

The film is essentially a handful of stories tied together a la Sin City style, where initially the only tie to each other seems to be the backdrop of Sin City, and the dark violence that envelops everything within. There are small clues throughout the movie that indicate that at some point these characters will cross paths, and cross they do. I don’t want to do a full review here, or offer any “spoilers” as it were, but the film is roughly about cops vs. bad guys and how the lines of what’s right and wrong are seriously gray and blurred. Much criminal activity, lots of prostitution-based plot lines, again, very true to the Miller books. There are social overtones as well as personal vendettas, all coming together to create a very dark, very fanciful, and very engrossing film in which the intertwining plot is riviting, yet not so complex that you require a second viewing to define what just happened. The character development is flawless and the plot lines are tied together in such a way that the last moments of the movie really drive it home. There isn’t a dull spot or uninteresting point in the entire film.

Needless to say, this is THE MUST SEE FILM OF 2005!! Absolutely incredible…I’m still blown away. This is cutting edge stuff folks, and you MUST SEE IT on the big screen! I know I’ve got a date with the cinema for a few weekends to come.