Also Drudge:
Two Dead in Samurai Attack in Irvine

"We're in Irvine, California," said Denese Ecker, who works at another Albertsons. "You just don't think things like this will happen. It makes you think about what's important."

Yeah, like take your samurai sword to work with you to prevent such attacks.

It does make you wonder though; If we can't be safe from sword wielding madmen in Irvine California, where can we be safe?

From Drudge:
Watcha Gonna Do, When Tropical Storm Billy Runs Wild On You?
...Today, meteorologists said Tropical Storm Bill, the second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season and the first Gulf storm, was expected to be mostly a rain producer

Bill formed just after the 46th anniversary of Hurricane Audrey, one of the most destructive June hurricanes to hit the United States. It struck the Louisiana-Texas coast on June 27, 1957, with a 13.9-foot storm tide and wind gusting to 180 mph. It killed at least 390 people.

While Bill is only predicted to be a minimum tropical storm, Lichter said parallels can be drawn to another minimum storm: June 2001's Tropical Storm Allison, which paralyzed the nation's fourth largest city.

--I imagine that much like myself this storm will just peter out pretty quick. All gas and no substance, so they says.

Like science fiction? Want to read a pretty good sci-fi novel? Go read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. You can download it for free at that site. I printed out a copy, it's about 65 pages long on regular printer paper.

I'll work up a review of it later.

28 Days Later takes some of the best elements of Romero's Dead trilogy and spins them in somewhat new directions.

Harry at AICN made the distinction that this is an outbreak film about a virus, not, as the trailers were saying, a reimagination of zombie horror. He's right to an extent, but this is a zombie movie at its core.

The zombies in this film, infected by a bloodborne rage virus, are quick and of resonable intelligence; more in keeping with the undead from Return of the Living Dead than Romero's films. They rush at their targets, screaming and frothing at the mouth. They also vomit up quite a bit of blood.

If Romero is planning on making the fourth Dead film, tentatively titled Dead Reckoning, he should pay carefull attention to what works in this film, because it is simply the elements that worked in Night and Dawn. Simple situational horror.

Director Boyle and Writer Garland pay homage to Dawn with a brief foray into a supermarket, and they do Romero one better with their use of soliders than he did in Day of the Dead. They even pay homage to the captured zombie from Day with a solidier chained in a courtyard.

This is a quite movie and felt like a seventies horror film to me. I don't know if the graineness of the filmstock was entirely purposefull, but I think it added to the roughness of the film. This is not a polished looking movie, it is ugly and brutal.

"The tow trucks are like sharks down there J. When I got down there to the place I said every cuss-word in the book to them. I said you fat overgrown Gorilla. And I say, You lucky you behind that mirror-or you lucky you behind that door, cause I will bust the mirror down and get the keys and steal one of these cars.
I don't care whose car it is."
--Dorsey on the tow-trucks in Florida

I was going to review Hulk here, and I'd written a few hundred words on it already, but I don't think I'm going to.

I liked the movie. It serves its purpose. The end.

I'm off to see 28 Days Later in the morning.

I just saw a new local wrestling show. It was on at midnight and was taped at the VFW hall in Gallatin, Tn.

It was predictably terrible.

It was SWA Wrestling. I just tried their homepage, but Tripod says it has exceeded its hourly bandwidth limit.

Must be alot of people out there that just saw the show like me and just had to go check out the website.

That must be it.

Who would have thunk it? Strom Thurmond dead.

I never would have guessed on Wednesday when I posted the story about his obituary that it would be true today.

I weep for the children.

From Mainchi:
Month old corpse found hanging outside courthouse

You know, there was a time when there was a hanging outside a courthouse, everybody knew about it.

Found on Fark:
JUNE 25--Meet Dion Milam. The 30-year-old California inmate may be the scariest looking criminal TSG has ever seen.

That is one scary looking guy, they do not lie.

So I re-design the Main Page and what do I change? I make the navigation bar red instead of orange. That's about it. I'll probably get around to changing the look here to match at some point.

Look here. It's a page I wrote four years ago for the MTSU Quiz Bowl team. Sorry for the many animated gifs, but I didn't know any better. I like that I never got around to the team Constitution. This just goes to show you how often MTSU checks its own server and purges old accounts (at least of organisations, man my homepage was gone like that off their server). I still like the timeline in the records page.

I worked out two days ago with pushups and crunches, and in the months since I was a health-nazi I seem to have become very weak, because night before last at work I couldn't hardly do anything. I think everyone thought I was sick, but actually I was just hurting really bad. My stomach was so sore It was upset and it hurt when I sneezed. I felt better last night and was able to work at almost a normal pace. Tonight I should be all better, which means tomorrow...More pushups and crunches.

I can't wait to start running again.

Also from Fark:
Sortof Like 'King Ralph,' Only Without John Goodman, and the Guy Really is a Prince Anyway

Found on Fark.com:
Masked Sssemblyman Survives Identity Challenge

You cannot defeat the Great Sasuke's Superabundant Power so easily. As anyone should know, laws do not apply to wrestlers in their masked personas. Only a hair vs. mask match or some other such stipulation such as Title v. Mask will do.

Anyway, maybe he's hideously ugly, like, say, Kane. Nobody really wants something like that in their elected body, now do they?

From SmokingGun.com:
Strom Thurmond's Obituary

It's good to see that various news outlets are prepared in the event of the elderly statesman's demise, but shouldn't they keep these offline until then. I know that they now do, but, think of the children who might have accidentaly googled onto these pages and thought that their hero was dead.

Think of the children.

Allright, here's what you people with the glorious High SPeed connections to the intranet are going to do (I won't force those of you who don't, but I would reccomend it).

Go to the Flaming Lips Homepage (I don't care if you think I'm a pussy for listening to them or not Chad) and download The Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Flash movie and Fight Test Flash Movie(Definitely some Freudian overtones there). They're in the download section, or at the links above (but I think they'd prefer if you went through the page).

Then watch them fool.

Found on DailyRotten:
Man killed for singing Sinatra off-key - smh.com.au

Nobody out there get any ideas now. I know that Joey and I sing terribly, but no stabbing please.

Guess what?

Metallica's Stanger is still a turd. Hasn't grown on me yet. Though I would be very worried if turds started growing on me. I imagine that would mean there was something physically wrong with me.

TNN Files Jones Papers In 'Spike' Case [Yahoo! News]

Just to keep you up to date. They should get a petition by everyone they can find named Spike next

Do you like to get nostalgic? Of course, we all do. I wax poetic about my glorious childhood pretty often, but only VH1 seems to have made a programming schedule around it.

I understand that it is very cheap (probably free most of the time) to get b-level and lower celebrities to come and sit in a studio for hours on end and talk about anything you can think of from Rubix cubes to Blondie's Heart of Glass, but enough already.

On VH1 during the daytime we have shows like I Love The 70s, I Love The 80s, One Hit Wonders, VH1's 20 Women Who Rock, VH1's 19 Funny-Ass Videos, Top 25 Greatest Videos To Get Busy To, and various Greatest videos/songs of different time periods. What is the premise of all of these shows?

Celebrities tell us what they think about these things in extensive interviews that I imagine take place in front of a blue screen and last for days at a time so they have enough material to fill out the entire VH1 schedule for the year.

Really though, I just don't like seeing Henry Rollins have to talk about things like Care Bears.

Did I just see a commercial for Crest that had a woman doing Irish line dancing with multiple William Shatners? Was that just my imagination?

I hope so.

And there he was again in the next commercial for one of the VH1 list shows.

Something is wrong in television land. Very wrong indeed.

From Techlive:
TechTV | Putting the 'Whee' Back in Pee
The 'You're in Control' game takes potty humor to a whole new level.

I think that they should market the strap-on water gun as well. That's the real innovation here. You get to squeeze a bladder below the nozzle which is set up to be on level with your groin.

Anyway, with the game wouldn't that be fun in crowded bathrooms where you can taunt the guy beside you for his poor performance on the game? Imagine the fights in bars that would start over that tupe of thing.

From Drudge:
TheKansasCityChannel.com - News - Bees Swarm Highway After Tractor-Trailer Wrecks
Bees Swarm Highway After Tractor-Trailer Wrecks
Crews Work To Clean Up Estimated 50,000 Bees

"Bees! Bees!"
Do you think somebody was covering up a heist with this? Possibly the same guy from the shoplifting story awhile back. Maybe he's moved up to stealing gold ingots or something.

CNN.com - New Zealand farmers fume over flatulence tax - Jun. 20, 2003

This story was highlighted just now on Tech TV's Techlive just now, and I think that host Chris Leary, formerly an announcer for the then WWF took special joy in being able to say that the tax is for methane belched and farted into the air. He especially liked saying the word farted.

This story leaves me thinking. If they brought a tax such as this to the US I would be paying alot more taxes. I'm just left wondering if it's a tax per head and averaged out to how much methane they should produce, or if they'd put up some kind of meter to measure individual emissions.

I'd feel sorry for the scientist/engineer that had to work on designing and implementing that project.

I would advise against dropping a handful of thumbtacks into your bed and then forgetting about it until it becomes painfully obvious. In no way does it relate to what I would term a good experience.

Just thought you should know.

Paganism, witchcraft on rise in UK
TV shows, Internet, Harry Potter boost membership

I thought we bloody well crushed them centuries ago. Stupid frigging pagans, who do they think they are trying to continue with their beliefs when they've been bloody well disproven. Just because most of the popular pagan spiritualities (Druidism, Wicca, Catholicism) are based on beliefs from the area of the UK doesn't mean they are welcome there.

Using literature to promote to the young as well. Do we really want alot of whiny neo-pagan new-agers out there?

I'll tell you who to blame...It's those damn Beatnicks. Some of you would blame the Hippies, but they were just late-comers. All of them are communists anyway.

...Wait, what was I saying?

I put the new logo up anyway. Looks out of place. I don't really care right now.

I can't seem to find the template help that the old version of blogger had either.

I know, bitch, bitch, bitch.

You know, I'm sure that cascading stylesheets are lovely and save lots of time for professional web designers, but sweet JEEBUS I can't figure out what the hell's going on in half the code on my template page. I've been working all day on this pretty new design that has a bitchin logo, but can I get it to work and have archives and all on it?

No.

It's a bit like Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition, it's pretty and supposedly simpler than 2nd edition, but is it more fun? Can I make a character sheet on one small piece of paper with only a few numbers and go?

The answer to both of those questions is no my internet family.

None of the basic blogger templates even has black as a background color so that I can just modify one of them. I think what this is is that programmers have decided that they don't like all these point and click interface programs that design web-pages and are trying to wrest the control back from the people.

I code the long way in my html and I like it. I know my tags. I know my formatting, but I don't want to learn a whole new damn way of doing it. I have a 3 year old bare-bones editing program that i use for most of my pages and that is enough.

Don't even get me started on the fact that every time I try to work with my new page design it keeps trying to make all the links bright blue when that is nowhere in the code.

Damn the internet and Cascading Style Sheets, Damn their eyes.

AlterNet: Meet 'The Family' Meet 'The Family'
By Anthony Lappé, Guerrilla News Network
June 13, 2003
It sounded like a reality show on the PAX network: Six conservative politicians living in a DC townhouse owned by a fundamentalist Christian organization. What happens when you stop being polite and start finding Jesus?...

...GNN: What are some this group's core ideas and what level of secrecy is involved here?
SHARLET: The goal is an "invisible" world organization led by Christ – that's what they aspire to. They are very explicit about this if you look in their documents, and I spent a lot of time researching in their archives. Their goal is a worldwide invisible organization. That's their word, and that's important because it sounds so crazy.

ROWLING LOSES CONTROL: 'HARRY POTTER' TURNS VULGAR WITH OFFICIAL 'BOOGER', VOMIT-FLAVORED CANDY; BUBBLE BATH, DOLLS, DVDs, LEGOS, TOOTHBRUSHES...

I find it interesting that DRUDGE thinks that this is the most interesting facet of this story. The Bertie Botts beans are mentioned in the first book as having every flavor, even boogers, vomit and grass (as well as earwax, and we could take that a bit further you know, but it wouldn't really be polite). You only very rarely get such an awfull flavor out of the bag anyway. I think the Horseradish one is the worst, so did Tommy when I gave one to him and refused to tell him what flavor it was. I think I said something like "I think it's Pineapple."

I think the most interesting things in this story are the plug for the anti-Potter writer buried in the second page. He's looking for interviews all you news outlets, go listen to the crazy. Potter will lead your children to the occult and Satan, he teaches kids how to do Magic you know. All you have to do is first be invited to join a mystical academy by Owl Post, then make your way to Diagon Ally and buy your books, then find a Railway station that doesn't exist, then loose all touch with reality. Sounds simple don't it?

Also I admire the effort that Rowling makes to keep her books free from the type of blatent exploitation that every new programmed hit at the box office recieves. I do think it would be interesting to see what would happen if new books started recieving the same treatments as movies though, Imagine, if you will, the New Hunter S. Thompson Book, being promoted in this way. His scowling, face glaring at us from every product, from every television screen and commercial..."Buy my goddamn book," He would say with a sneer. "While you're at it, buy some Pepsi, it's the choice of the Freak Power Party." Of course he would be voiced over by some talented young actor, because, who really wants to know what's in a book? It's all about the movies and the merchandising man.

But she's trying to keep it pure on the book level, and, really, how many of those books that will sell do you think are going to parents who are just trying desperately to please their children and will sit on the shelf unread because waiting for the movie is easier? Just as many as all of those Left Behind books.

Yahoo! News - Appeals Judge Denies TNN's Name Change

There shouldn't even be a consideration phase here. The judge should be able to look at this and say "Spike Lee is full of shit. Next case."
If they had changed the name to Woody TV, would Woody Allen have had a case, or Woody Harrelson? If they'dve changed it to Skeet TV, would Skeet Ulrich?

Let me ruin the Hulk for you.

Eric Bana is Corey Feldman. The star of the new movie is the eighties icon.

I noticed it while watching the MTV Movie House show on the making of the Hulk. It's there in the eyes and the shape of the face.

Now when you see the Hulk, just remember, that's Corey up there raging.


Eric Bana, the Corey Feldman for the new generation, now where's our new Corey Haim?

Shoplifter Releases Bees As Diversion
"He probably started yelling 'Bees! Bees!' or whatever the case may be, then created that big diversion, then got out," said police Cmdr. John DeGonia.
...
Now, is it just me, or does this seem like alot of trouble to go to for $60 worth of stuff? Firstly, you've got to raise some bees, or catch them, then you've got to conceal them in a container and carry them into the store, then you've got to steal while keeping the bees on your person.

Maybe the guy was just as startled by the bees as everyone else. Perhaps it was a freak occurance and he disturbed a beehive in the restroom.

I just like the image of someone running out of a restroom yelling "Bees! Bees!" while swatting at his head and trailing a swarm of pissed off honeybees.

I was just cleaning out my in box, and I was thinking about how I've heard and read that companies are so worried about spam and say that it has made e-mail almost impossible to use.

What?

It took me about a minute to clean out my in-box of spam. Click the boxes then click delete. Anything that's from an adress I don't recognize and doesn't have something in the subject line that doensn't sound like spam. They're not really that hard to spot you know.

Chances are if it says "I need to speak with you, urgent!" it's spam.

Do people out there really think that you have to open and read everything that comes in? I throw away almost all the little bit of mail that I get from the USPS.

Well, enough of that, back to the wonders of the infotaiment superhighway with you.

Well, my blog is now in the new Blogger interface. Hooray!

About Schmidt is funny and sad, but should be in the horror section because of the naked Kathy Bates scene.

That is all for now. Carry on.

The Italian Job is not the best heist movie with Jason Statham, that would be Snatch. It's not as good as Ocean's Eleven with George Clooney either.

One thing that it is though is an excellent commercial for the Mini Cooper.

It's a good movie, good action, good direction. 'Nuff said.

The Twenty-Fifth Hour is a good movie as well. A bit slow, but with fine performances from all involved. It seems that the last two days were Ed Norton days for me. Also Anna Paquin is hot.

A certain person got me the Incredible Hulk Returns and Trial of the Incredible Hulk DVD two disc set for my birthday, and I was watching the Return yesterday. Did no one who was involved with that call the writer/director on the fact that the writing and directing on the film are horrible? As a director, Nicholas Corea seems to have real trouble framing an image. As a writer he's marginally worse than Stan Lee's early days. I kept expecting Bruce Banner to defeat Thor using the mighty power of leverage or a Judo throw. The dynamic between Thor and Donald Blake doesn't make much sense either, why doesn't Thor stay outside the hammer all the time? Is he some kind of Norse Genie?

Luckily, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk is much better. Who can forget Kingpin's flying car at the end? Or the wonderful way that they do Daredevil's senses, or his wonderful ninja costume?

Hey, guess what.

Metallica's new album Stanger is a complete and utter turd. A big, festering sloppy green and brown turd. There's not even any corn to liven the thing up.

Apart from the fact that it comes with a DVD and the booklet is nice, it just doesn't do it. I haven't tried the online crappery that comes with it, and I don't think I will either.

I know alot of people really dogged Load, and Re-Load, but they were tons better than this. They sounded better, and the songs had more of a hook to them. There's no "King Nothing" or "Fuel" on this album.

What's more, the music sounds muddy, much like it's still in a demo version much of the time. It doesn't sound garagey, just amatuer.

Lars's drumming is too forward in the mix and the guitars seem listless, without anything realy to do.

It's grinding metal allright, but grinding and boring without purpose. It's like listening to any Godsmack album, you hope and hope that there'll be something there, but in the end you finish listening to it and can't really describe what you just heard. At least Godsmack have that Voodoo song, this has nothing like that, nothing.

There are a few nice lyrical flourishes there "My lifestyle determines my deathstyle," but nothing really is that memorable. Maybe a really kickass video for one of the songs would help nudge it along, like much of the new music today seems to need.

It sounds like they are trying hard to write for disenfranchised youth culture, but it all sounds hollow.

I think they need to fire Lars, bring back Newstead (The new bass player seems cool enough, but I don't think he even played on this album, I'm pretty sure Bob Rock did most of the bass on it), and bring in Dave Mustane as a third guitarist (I'll lay odds that Lars was the one that had the problem with him to begin with). They could even get Tommy Lee to come in as a drummer. Granted the new band wouldn't really be Metallica, but this album doesn't sound like Metallice either. It sounds like James Hetfield and a bunch of studio musicians playing original songs by a Metallica tribute band on second rate equipment.

I should have listened to myself and let this one die on the rack like Jacko's last one, but I saw that free DVD, and the $9.99 price and said, what the hell. What the Hell indeed.

If this is what we get when Hetfield doesn't drink, he needs to start again quick.

Bloomberg.com: News & Commentary In response to customer pressure, Wal-Mart did say it will obscure the covers of several women's magazines because they often feature sexually explicate material. Plastic shields will be placed over Glamour, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Redbook magazines beginning next month.
Wal-Mart last month stopped sales of three men's magazines, Maxim, Stuff and FHM, after customers and Christian groups voiced concern about their content.

Ashcroft Wants Broader Anti-Terror Powers (washingtonpost.com)

You know what we need? Martial Law. Not the condition where there are militarily enforced curfews, but rather the Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill created comic bood character who was basically a rip-off of Judge Dredd. He would drive around killing off bad guy super heroes. That's what we need in this country.

Maybe they should just let the Attorney General lock up anybody he thinks is a terrorist, or just disagrees with, indefinitely. Then they could sieze their assets and whatnot. I bet they'd love to go sieze, say, Eddie Vedder or Tim Robbins bank account and throw them in jail without telling anyone. Probably Michael Moore as well.

I feel safe, don't you?

It's birthday happy-fun time for me. Try not to spoil it.

Today whilst out and about the 'Boro I...

...was attacked by a bird while at the ATM Machine. I don't know if it was really attacking me, but it seemed pretty pissed off and swooped behind me, hitting my back as it went by.

...had the hardest time finding the Animatrix. Wal-Mart near my apartment didn't get any in, and Hastings only had it on VHS. There was no copy for rental at Video Culture. I ended up not getting it today.

...ate lunch at the McDonald's in the Wal-Mart. The ceiling in the joint is too high. I don't want to eat somewhere that the ceiling is like thirty feet above me. The should really think about getting a drop ceiling in there.

...walked around Hastings with a copy of the full series of the Lodoss Wars on DVD. It was $32 and I talked myself out of it because I know I'll never watch it all.

...wasted almost two hours in the aforementioned Hastings, only buying one used cd (f-you record industry, I may not file-share anymore, but I'll sure as hell buy them there cds used).

...fixed my seat-belt on the passenger side of my truck. All must now hail my super-genius.

...saw what I assume was the same bird from before fighting with another bird in the parking lot of the aforementioned Video Culture (It might have been a different bird, I don't know). Are violent birds a sign of immenent Earthquake?

Who says I never do anything on my day off. I still have wrestling to go to tonight.

The post so good I had to post it on both blogs, in case you don't read the other one:

You know I was just over at NWATNA.com and I saw this picture in the banner for the preview.

I didn't notice it when I went there for the preview, because I didn't really go there for the preview. I got that from StevesWrestling.com. I don't really remember much about Russo's entrance last week, drunk as I was with the joy of being myself (I need lots of pictures and evidence to remember things other than things about me), except for the white towel covering his head as he stood at ringside.

But doesn't he look really girly in this picture? He needs to be constantly flipping his hair back, or running his fingers through it. Not since 70s rockers (or on my own head) have I seen such a pretty girlish mane of hair.

What is he trying to get back into the other Vince's good favors? It's well documented that Vince's love of the luxurious locks. Just look at HHH or Shawn Michaels, or even Hogan.

There are just some people that do not look right with long hair and no beard. I am one of them, and Vince obviously is as well. I think it is something to do with another trait that we both share...the monobrow. He can try to hide it by plucking or shaving, but it's there. It's genetic baby.

I'm off to go pluck my eyebrow now.

Tornado 1-Evilhippy 2

You know, eventually it had to happen. I let my guard down and my hated nemesis, the Tornado was able to blindside me and defeat me, if only briefly.

After I humiliated it the last time, I had assumed that the Tornado would have done the honorable thing and dispersed itself into the atmosphere, but I was wrong. Last night at work I was going about my job with my usual aplomb, when, out of the corner of my eye I thought I spotted some movement.

By the time I reacted it was too late and the Tornado had struck, knocking me to the ground and ransacking my work area.

It was not pretty.

I vow revenge.

Steve "Oldschool" Corino is a wrestler that is not necessarily one of my favorites in the ring. He's oldschool, mat-oriented. None of that flippy nonesense. In other words, most of the time I find him pretty boring to watch. He does cut a good promo though.

In this interview he talks about alot of things, but this one bit caught my eye. He talks about his list of names of people that he wouldn't feel bad about if they left the mortal coil. The reason that it stood out to me is that Tommy has (or had) such a list. I don't know if he would want me blabbing away about this, but, if I remember correctly Keanu is also on Tommy's list.

Does this mean Tommy and Steve Corino are much the same person? I'm pretty sure that Tommy has nothing against Corino's ex-mother in law, but the Keanu thing is creepy. Do other people have a major mad-on for Mr. Whoah, I know Kung-Fu?

Personally he doesn't make my list because he brings such joy into our lives, and he has to live on to usher in that Utopian society with his friend Bill S. Preston, Esq. We all want that don't we?

Steve Corino Interview: ZERO-ONE, Curt Hennig, NWA-TNA, ECW, And More SC: It’s called THE LIST. Charlie (LeGrande) and I made it up. It’s a list of people that I want to die. It people that if they died I wouldn’t care. Number one of course is my ex-mother-in-law. Number two is Keanu Reeves.
AW: Keanu Reeves?
SC: Keanu is a dick (laughs.) There are other people, including some wrestlers that I won’t give the free publicity to. It’s a fun thing to do. People hear they’re on THE LIST they hide in fear. It is a list of people you just wish would go away.