Just a little over a month away...

It's gonna be great!



September 9th...

By the time this posts...

Yeah, I'm sure that by the time this thing actually posts (I try to get a good number of reserve posts up to automatically post so that I don't have to scramble at the last minute), the new Conan the Barbarian movie will only be a month away, but I think there is room for a post here anyway.  The cheesy trilogy (counting Red Sonja) was one of my favorite action/fantasy movie series growing up (long before the far superior Lord of the Rings trilogy came along), so I'm interested to see how this turns out.  I followed the Stargate: Atlantis series back when Scifi Fridays* was a 'thing' that geeks like I participated in, so I'm pretty sure I know what to expect from Jason Momoa - although admittedly I thought he was a smallish choice (recognizing that the concept of Conan being a bodybuilder was created entirely by the fact that Schwarzenegger played him in the movies - he was much smaller in the comic books and original stories).  But it will be a nice change of pace for the character to be played by someone that can enunciate...

So, to celebrate this upcoming movie, I offer for you a movie poster and the trailer for your viewing pleasure.  I'm not entirely jazzed that it's in 3D, as most movies I've seen that way have been more 'miss' than 'hit' in recent years, but hopefully it won't suck.  Not that it would probably matter to me anyway.  The chances that I'll see this one in the theater (reads: before it comes out on Netflix) are pretty slim.  But anyway... on to the eye candy:

* Scifi Fridays: before the Syfy channel changed its name, there was a period of a few years where you could watch a trilogy of "original" programming every Friday evening: Stargate, Stargate:Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica.  Probably three of the best series produced by the Scifi/Syfy channel... before or since.  There were various tag along shows that were featured with the trilogy (most of which switched off to a different night, or died altogether), including Eureka, Dresden Files and others, but the staple three were the reason geeks everywhere tuned in. 
 
Why did it change?  Well, we can only speculate as to why poor decisions are made by stupid people, but [RANT ON] the moron President of both USA and Scifi (yeah, she was in charge of both at the same time) discovered that the USA network was losing its market share for that time slot -- losing its share, most likely, to the superior Scifi programming.  But since USA was/is considered a more mainstream network, shows like the more (arguably) mediocre Monk were having a hard time competing with the superior Scifi offerings, there was an assumption that the Scifi channel was essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul (i.e. the USA and Scifi audiences were largely the same people), and USA had the bigger advertising dollars, something had to give.  And geekdom suffered.
 
The result: the Scifi programs that were the anchor of Scifi Friday eventually petered out once they were spread out over the week -- hence giving people that would have only watched one or two of the programs no reason to sit through the extra two hours of commercials.  Thus, three great programs died, and the inferior (arguably) Monk got to limp along for more seasons than it deserved. 

Thank you television executives for proving, once again, that just because you've got your head so far up your butts that you can see daylight does not mean that you're in the clear.  Your head is still in your butt.  And no the smell will not go away until you remove it.
 
Oh, but yeah, that's all speculation...

[RANT OFF].

 

News for the Masses

Watch this:

Within 5 years I predict the word "journalism" will be considered a synonym for "tabloid" or "joke" (and possibly "fuck-tard") by all reputable academic sources... if there are any left.

Seriously folks, what the hell kind of world are we living in when this is considered news worthy by the media 'powers-that-be'? And here I thought there were plenty of serious problems that needed addressing in the world rather than dressing up non-issues to display our overwhelming prejudices and abject stupidity for the world to mock.

Remember the simpler times when we used to keep the village idiot behind closed doors so that he wouldn't embarrass us in front of visitors from neighboring towns?  Not any more! Now we call them "journalists" and "psychologists" and pay them more money in a month than three honest and hardworking folks can earn, collectively, in a year while actually contributing positively to society.  It is an exercise in total intellectual dishonesty to call these news outlets anything other than "entertainment" (more and more often in the same offensive vein as hardcore bukake porn and snuff films)  and should be required to introduce each and every "show" with a disclaimer providing as such so that the actual village idiots among us know when their chains are being yanked.  We totally need to resurrect Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, infuse them with the power of the Incredible Hulk (possibly letting one of them carry Thor's hammer), and let them met out some brutal medieval justice on the mockery of what journalism has become in the United States.

For the good of the order, the producer(s)/editor(s) at each of the actual * "news" outlets that green lighted this story should be immediately deported to Tunisia or Libya or the Fukushima reactor in Japan or someplace else that actually has something news worthy going on, until they remember (or 'figure out' if no one ever bothered to tell them before hiring them as a news editor/producer) what journalism is supposed to be.  And if they can't figure it out in six months... while being on scene of an actual human tragedy... how said tragedy relates to producing "news" and how to identify what kind of "news" should  be shown on a "news" program, well, then they can fucking stay there.  We've got enough morons in country as it is, and we really need to start getting rid of some of the louder and more obnoxious ones.

* Or "purported 'news' outlets" in the case of Fox News.

Ugh. Rant over. At least we get to enjoy the Daily Show's righteous mocking of yet another exemplar of just how stupid we are becoming...

Cartoons Can Be Very Dark...

Below is a trippy little cartoon that I found on the interwebs...  Remember when "cartoon" meant The Smurfs or the ever so slightly darker He-Man and the Masters of the Universe?  I do.  This is NOT that kind of cartoon.  Progress?  Regression?  ...Depravity?  You be the judge.