Hey, Yankees, listen up.

Merry Christmas Eve.  There, now that I have the pleasantries out of the way...

Attention, Yankee restaraunteers:

Effective immediately, you better have god damned sweet tea when I order god damned sweet tea.  No, I don't want raspberry tea.  It tastes likes old, chewed bubblegum.  No, I don't want unsweetened, iced tea.  Sugar crystals don't dissolve in it, and you aren't smart enough to put a syrupy, pre-dissolved sugar solution on the tables like several countries in Asia I've visited.

From here on out if I am in your establishment and order a god damned sweet tea, you better bring me a god damned southern-style sweet tea.  If you tell me you don't have it, or worse, offer me a raspberry-flavored tea instead, I will simply leave your establishment, get into my car, and project my rage at you until the entire restaurant explodes.

God damn it.

Fucking sweet tea.  It aint hard.

Movie Review - Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny

Best movie ever with the words "Tenacious D" in the title?  Possibly.

Saw this movie weeks ago, but I've been too much fucking busy to review it.

This is a goofy little comedy movie about the fictional origins of the World's Greatest Rock Band, Tenacious D.

Tenacious D is an acoustical (usually) power duo featuring Jack Black (JB, Jables) and Kyle Gass (KG, Kage, Rage Kage).  KG handles lead guitar and JB is lead vocalist.  Satan is, for the most part, the 3rd D as The D is powered by Satan, as is all metal.  As it was written.  In accordance with prophecy.

First of all, despite the comparisons to Citizen Kane, this aint it.  I like The D, but drug humor just doesn't do anything for me... and this movie has plenty of it.  Yawn.  That's really the only bad thing I can say about the flick... but I say that as a fan of The D.  I'm sure your typical 50 year old Americans (for all of the Animal House nostalgia) would get a lot less out of this movie than I did.  (Disclaimer: I'm 35, but I'm REALLY immature.  Way more immature than most people.  So I have that going for me.  [Gunga Golunga.])

And liberal hippy Tim Robins has a bit part, too... now, Jack Black is a liberal, but he doesn't let that taint his art (ala George Clooney, Madonna, and a whole lot more).  That's great.  And we know Tim Robbins is a liberal, from his vocalizing during the last two presidential election cycles... but I tell yeah... he has a GIFT for doing comedy which punches holes in his own smarty-pants, windbag persona (See: Anchorman, High Fidelity, this movie).  He is self deprecating, and I can dig that.  I would have a beer with Tim Robbins.

If you are a fan of The D, this movie rates 8 cock push-ups out of 10 (Unless you are bored with bong-and-weed jokes, in which it's down to 7 out of 10).
If you are a Psycho Fan of the D, 11 burgers with bacon and chee' out of 10.
If you are a grown-up, skip this movie completely.

NO SPOILER discussion thread. (Registration required)

SPOILERIZED discussion thread.  (Registration required)

Movie Review - James Bond: Casino Royale

Best actor to play James Bond, ever?  Possibly.

The movie itself was also quite good, adding something the the last two decades of bond have lacked: actual suspense.  There are no day-saving, deus-ex-machina gadgets, here.  Nor is there any stupidly extreme luck, or perfect unflappability from our protagonist.  This James is a real human with real emotions, and the actor is able to portray those emotions while remaining stony faced.  That's a good actor.

The story itself is good enough: James Bond has to play some cards against a global supervillain to keep him from funding terrorism-hobby.  Only thing that kinda, sorta bugged me was the choice of game, instead of Baccarat.  You already know what game they play, even if the name is never uttered in the movie.  Too trendy to be cool.

A couple hidden swipes at evil Amerikkkan foreign policy, but subtle enough for me to convince myself they were accidental and ignore them.

The movie leaves me somewhat confused as to how they play with the timeline of the franchise, much the same way Sum of All Fears did... are they restarting the character in the present-day, ala Batman Begins?  Has there been more than one James Bond who inherits the name in addition to the double-oh-seven-rating, like The Princess Bride?  Or what?  Maybe someone who has read Ian Fleming's work has an explanation for me.

Overall, a good enough movie to catch in a theater.

Eight and a half invisible cars out of ten.

Non-spoiler discussion thread (Registration required).  NO SPOILERS!

Spoiler discussion thread (Registration required).

Bad voting machines.

But seriously, for a moment...

Simple "accept input and total it" is just about the most simple and basic task for any average computer programmer.    How in the hell do you screw this up?

The makers of these machines really should be held accountable.  Computer programs that WRITE COMPUTER PROGRAMS that can handle this task are already available and common out in the world, and they still don't have anything like real intelligence.  Whoever is programming these machines (and whoever is in quality control, and the project manager) should be banned for life from writing code.  I'm completely serious about that statement.
 

The Great Exodus.

I'm busy packing so I don't have a lot of time to post, but I just want to add a few final thoughts before I Leave The Country with the rest of my fellow conservatives:

• The uproar is huge but the Democrats are burying the fact that electronic voting machines are set to hand the election to the liberals.
• All the suppression of conservative votes done by the democrats.  It's on every right-leaning blog, how can they ignore it???
• The media cover-up the Kerry Riots by military "youths" after Democrat John Kerry's insult.
• Did you hear about how all the military absentee ballots were ignored in states where democrats won senate seats?
• Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, and Bill O'Reilly all made good on their promises to Leave the Country if the Democrats took the midterms... so I will mindlessly emulate my leaders.  Per the memo.

Oh, wait, I guess none of that happened... I was just flashing back to the 2004 election.  In reverse.

But the rest of the world sure is happy about the election, that's for sure.  It will probably usher in a new era of peace on Earth that existed before Bush came into office.  Thank Allah the long, national nightmare is over.
 

Time for a change

For nearly six years we have had a single leader. While things initially looked good, we've suffered recently. What was once a source of greatness has become a source of conflict and despair. This year, in particular, has been an embarrassment.

Today, however, good news has arrived. After weeks of speculation and rumors, our leadership has changed. While it's not quite official, the media is reporting that it is a done deal.

Welcome, Butch Davis, to Chapel Hill

But he supports the troops.

By tomorrow it will have been spun into nonexistence, but today it still happened.

Dramatic.

Walked by a television the other day that had Oprah Winfrey on it.  I don't know what bullshit crisis she was highlighting that day, but I caught a line as I walked by.  She said, "I've had such a hateful reaction since I first aired this subject... I even got one email that said, 'This is America and if you don't like it take your hairy black ass back to Africa.'"

This got the appropriate GASP! from the audience.  My thought was, "Yeah, right, whatever."

I've been going about this thing all wrong.

From now on whenever I want to make a point but lack facts, I will use an imaginary email from a hate group to make you feel that if a hate group is against my argument, then you must surely support my argument... for surely you have nothing in common with racists!  

Why, just yesterday I got an email from Hitler telling me I'd better shut up with all my bashing of dirty hippies.

GASP!

Amtrak Seems to Suck.

Just attempted to book passage to Toronto from Toledo, and I could neither get a date I wanted nor a departure time that wasn't 1:30 AM.

Instead I'm going to drive 1.25 hours into Windsor where they have 4 trains a day going to Toronto and back.

The stupid government should stop subsidizing this shitty-ass passenger train service and give a contract to VIA Rail Canada to run it in America. Maybe when service improves drastically more peeps in this country will travel by train.

As shitty as air travel has become, I'd love to have more convenient train schedule available to me.