PVP has been doing some interesting things since the marriage of Brent and Jade. Skull has been made to leave and is being place in different families. This lastest family has been the one from the Circus. The Religious Family Circus!
Casey Ontiveros: July 2008 Archives
Holycrap. People on Long Island have something else to fear besides bad accents and even bigger hair. Holy Crap!
Wal-Mart's explosion into the US scene.
It's a weird flash animation that just explodes onto the scene in the US. It's just maddening to see it explode. I wonder if back when it started off did the WAL-Mart zombies exist?
This is further proof that Eric Cante is beyond awesome when it comes to illustrations.
Here is a link to his blog.
Cuil, which is pronounced "cool," is a new search engine. A new search engine of badass proportion. It's google with Yahoo's design sense. Actually, Cuil was backed with $35 million off the bat. The woman who developed Cuil last venture out was purchased by Google to make their system better. Huffington Post has an article about this new startup. But the one thing that it points out is that Google is so entrenched with the idea of searching for things, that does it matter how good a search engine is, when Google is the Band-Aid of adhesive strips?
This fills me with a perverse pleasure. Simon Pegg rubbing Keith Olbermann's nose in the face that some blonde beat out her somewhat identical blonde non-sister for the role of Elle Woods from Legally Blonde. This all happened on The Soup with Joel McHale. Act now, and you can get the podcast from iTunes Podcast section so you can get this clip too.
Season Four season finale is going to make me wet my pants. I just saw the finale and I nearly wet my pants watching all the great things happening. It looks like from the teaser for next week that Donna is a weird hybrid Dr./Human. I guess her mom was seduced by Time Lord and here we go. I wonder about the human Time Lord that they showed a while back where she doesn't regenerate like a normal Time Lord, but comes back to like like Captain Jack.
Of course there is a regenerated Dr. I wonder who he's going to be now. And the Dialeks. JESUS! There are so many things for this season finale. So much shit that's going to happen. I can't believe that waiting for a week is such a pain in the ass.
Forgive me for the rather erratic post, so having a geekgaism.
For a while now, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, or the guy known as Fake Steve Jobs has been telling us an ear/eyeful of information about the technology world for a while now. Well, now Fake Steve Jobs is now Real Dan Lyons, former Forbes writer and now Newsweek writer. He keeps his wit about him since Fake Steve has left the building and Real Dan takes over.
If you know me, you know that there is a font that I wished had died. A horrible, horrible death. Century Gothic is cute.
You get the entire feel for the series in this riff on LLCoolJ's song Going Back to Cali.
As much as I would like to see these cross posting plug-ins for Movable Type. I can't get them to work. So, for right now, fuck'em. They cause the server to just fucking break and I don't want another broken server, even thought I'd love to start reposting in places that I have accounts. It would be a great thing to be able to do. Posting at LiveJournal and Vox all at once. Makes life easier.
But fuck it.
I've upgraded to Movable Type 4.2 RC1. This is an experiment to see if MT has done what they promised and made MT less like bloatware and more like the lean machine that they've been known to have in the past. I hope that is the case now. Otherwise, I might to try to make Wordpress work for me.
This is such a weird thing, trying to figure out blogging software. I use to use textpattern. It was pretty good, but I wanted to see more from it. It was a free ultra-grassroots blogging software.
I just found out that Movable Type 4.1X is bloatware. Bloatware is something that just takes up too much of the computer to really be called a good product. While I have to admit that Movable Type is a good app, it's bloated. It's really bloated. It's the reason why I can't save anything without having to worry about getting a Error 500. Supposedly Movable Type 4.2 is getting rid of all of these problems.
At least that's what they write. I have my doubts. I'll need to follow up on a few sources to see if that's the case. I had no troubles adding app to the server or starting it up, it's been interesting since then. I've actually been adding entires to this blog since I've switched over to Movable Type. I prefer it to WordPress. I like the elegant coding styles and lack of PHP to worry about.
I have on You Goddamn Fucking Cunt an install of WordPress 2.6. I'm going to poke around under the hood to see how difficult it is to actually use. Might be that I've been wrong about it and that skinning that bastard isn't as hard to use as it was as the original 1.X version.
2.X is suppose to have some killer features that I think would work really well in community settings to allow linkage between people. A true feeling community from entry to entry.
I'm working with my son here today. He's been wanting to stay home with me all week. Even being a little bratty at school since he knows that I'm here at home working. This is the first time all week that he's been here. He even was pushing Melissa out the door this morning when it was time to go. He really want to stay home.
I'm still having trouble with that Movable Type 4.12. There is this problem trying to get the entries published. It publishes on when you publish the index page. I know this makes no sense, but that's the problem. It's a pain in the ass. I need to contact the hosting company and possibly Movable Type about the problem. There might be an issue with 1and1 hosting. Which I'm hoping they might have a fix for it.
This is new, I'm still having trouble with Movable Type on my server. I might have to actually contact my hosting company about this little problem. This is a real pain in the ass.
My dad had surgery. His two big neck arteries are clogged, one was above 90%. Just fucking filthy. So dad went in yesterday to get that one artery cleaned out. He's also on day 37 of not smoking. For a guy who has been smoking cigarettes for about 36 years. That's pretty good. So anyways, he's in the ICU right now, he'll be there for another day while the doctors make sure that he's going to no have any problems when he gets home.
He's already walking around.
Dad had a catheter, I don't need to tell you where, but he had one. It was really painful. I'll take his word for it. He said it was about the size of McDonalds straw. Every time he moved, he felt it. So when they took it out, and it really fucking hurt, he said it really fucking hurt.
So he's doing OK now. In three weeks, he's getting the other side done. And I might have to get him another balloon.
Wait, this requires a story... When my sister Chelsea lived with my dad, she put a sticker on his work truck. My dad works construction. She put on a rainbow sticker. My dad knew that she was gay, buy didn't know about the sticker. So he drove around, site to site, with the pride sticker on his truck. At the time, my dad played the field. So all of a sudden my dad is driving around with a pride sticker on his truck.
Everyone was looking at him funny. All of his laborers, drivers, sparkies, and carpenters.
He had no clue.
After a while, someone told him what the sticker meant and he was at the back of his truck with a claw a hammer taking off that sticker. Scratching it off faster than the Flash in a whore house.
We got dad a rainbow balloon. He wasn't sure if it I was being a smart ass or just clueless.
Batman Gotham Knight was something else to watch. I wasn't expecting it to be basically one long story broken into six parts, 9 if you count the first story. The first story really sets everything up, the feel the vide and everything else. You start off with a story about what different people see when they see Batman. It's basically one story with four parts, the base story of these kids telling what they saw with Batman and the neck that connects them all together.
The same thing goes for the rest of the animation. It's six stories with a different director interpreting Batman in a different way. But it's basically one big story broken down. You get the essence of Batman and all the players in Gotham, but just vast different styles.
It's a nice trip.
Batman is voiced by THE bat-voice, Kevin Conroy, the man who made Batman from the first animated series done in the nineties. There are a few other voices that would be recognized. Also the directors are all well know anime directors and the writers are all well respected.
The only thing I don't get with the Gotham Knight is the replacement of Rene Montoya. They have another character, the same person, different name. I just wonder why they excluded her?
Nothing like having a constant Server Error on this system that doesn't allow me to update the blog that easily. So right now I have to figure out a way to get everything to work simple. Of course it might be a pain in the ass that I have to deal with on the level that it's the server that I'm on and not an I.D.10T. Error.
Right now my son is watching Lupin the 3rd, DeadorAlive. Naked with a glass of milk and some sliced turkey. He's just really comfortable.
This is a guy driving and SMSing on the freeway. Which is pretty hard to do normally, but in Indian, they prefer to do it on a motorcycle, while laying down on the motorcycle.
There have been tons of reasonings as to what Batman is and why he does what he does. David Brothers at the 4th gives the best explanation as to the real reasoning why. I think it fits everything together so well that it should be the primary reasoning now.
I had a conversation with Larry Young(the proud papa of AiT/PlanetLar) last week in a thread of upcoming comics. In this thread, Larry mentioned that Aces, Curse of the Red Baron was coming out and no one had told him. It seemed like a book that had some promise and it was nice that it was someone else asked, what the book was about. Larry was nice enough to tell use what it is about, to sum it up, the Red Baron fakes his death and a Yank and Brit take the credit and a woman is out to find the "corpse" of the Baron. So far I was sold. It was a World War I Rex Steele, Nazi Hunter.
Then the list for this week's comic came out and there was no Aces. Which is a huge pain in the ass, because this was something that I was really looking forward to reading now. I was seeing shades of Jack Kirby, OMAC, which I'm still waiting to get my hands on to read. Diamond keeps fucking the order(another story). So all I had to do was hope that the shop in Tucson had ordered it. Generally they get one of everything. They are the Ark of Trades. At least two of everything.
Larry then tells me that if I can't find it, he'll locate a comic for me. For those that don't know, Larry is right hand of the nebulous comic pimp. James Simes being the left hand. So if you need to get something that wonderful to read, find AIT/PlanetLar and get to ordering from them. You won't regret their catalog.
So Aces, Curse of the Red Baron, it's a grand fucking comic. It starts off with a fight that ends in drinking. If you've ever been in a fight that ends in drinking, you know that it's a good fight. Unfortunately, it's mainly an off camera fight, but it's a fight that brings two people together in such an odd way. This was a fight about two guys claiming to be the guy who killed the Red Baron, the guy who Snoopy has been trying to kill for at least the thirty years that those cartoons have been showing, a legendary pilot that had killed more Allied pilots than everyone else. So when two people claim to have killed the Baron, you can bet that things are going to turn to blows over the claim that one killed the Baron over the other. This story's introduction is pitch perfect to the tone of rest of the book.
The British pilot, Heath Bennett, found a map that tells them where the gold of the Baron was held, his private stash of his spoils of war. The pilot sharing a beer now with the man, a Private Frank Grayson of the U.S. Army, that he was pages earlier was fight, decided that he's going to share the loot. Naturally two men of this hellish war are going to try and get those spoils, plus it would be a short comic if they didn't go forward. They steal a plane and are chased all the way to Switzerland by the Allies and the "ghost" of the Red Baron. Trying not to kill their own men that are chasing them and not die in the process.
The woman who wants to get the Baron is a high ranking official of an organization that was responsible for the start of World War I, the Black Hand. She the femme fatale that is behind every good story. In my mind, she's a redhead. Something about her rings redhead. Possibly because it would be a great color for a member of the Black Hand. Anyways, she's sex incarnate, which means that if in the proper circumstance had presented itself, 9/10 of us would have died just by smiling at her.
Where the end up is an island that doesn't exist. Held in place by things that should exist for their time or ours.
The story is wonderfully put together by Shannon E. Denton, G. Willow WIlson and Curtis Square(wonderful name, but his site is down(http://www.curtie-pie.com))-Briggs. Denton and Wilson pull off such a great script that has humor, suspense, intrigue, comedy and solid dialog that makes a good story ring well with the readers(at least if you have two brain cells to rub together). If you had to have a visual, you'd be seeing those words flying at the reader like a 40's movie trailer(except for the brain part).
Now we can't discount the artistic endeavors of Square-Briggs, who pulls out a vivid story that brings out the weird and calm moments with such wonderful resolve. The inking and grey-toning brings out most wonderful environments that evoke the harsh reality that was War World I. It has a nice quality that reminds me of early Paul Pope with a hint of Asaf Hunaka. Which is a great thing. It lends so much to the story and storytelling. With panels that flow into each other that even the "hottest" artist still can't get down.
The entire crew of Aces are Aces. Wilson and Denton have been doing good things in both the medium of comics and other mediums, Denton works mainly in animation and Wilson does print and some work for DC/Vertigo. Square-Briggs is a relative newcomer in the area of comics, his work is mainly in design world with dabs in music.
I don't like to really over hype books. You tend to get disappointed with a title once that happens because people make it better than what it might actually be. I will write that Aces is good, solid story that is worth you're $12.95. At the very least it's worth your $12.95, most places, you'd be paying a pretty penny more.
Great thing about this comic, it lends itself to more stories. Aces can be adapted to other folk stories, myths and legends. Aces, Rasputin's Unkillable Ghost & etc., etc. In fact, I'd really like to see more stories from this group in any capacity.
As an afterward to this, I didn't know until I picked this up, but it was Larry who was publishing this book. I read in his earlier post that this would be a book that was right up his companies alley, I had no clue that the alley lead right up to his door. Again, you can't really go wrong with an AiT/PlanetLar book•.
• [ I paid for this book and would never do a disservice as to kissing up to Larry with a positive review, that would cheapen the work that was produced by doing so and against my own ethics. But you really can't go wrong with a bulk of AiT/PlanetLar books. ]
Chocolate News is a new news show that is from the black prospective coming in October from Comedy Central just in time for the election. Chocolate News. Is going to be an interesting addition the other shows that Comedy Central has produced.
I like shows likes these because they offer some insight. What kind is dependent on how it's produced... Some people will give us a smart look at the psyche of a group of people. Or it's just one clusterfuck of bad stereotypes.
It's from David Alan Grier, so you never know.
The following are ads for the new Hellboy movie. They might be some of the best that I've seen in a long time. James Lipton just seal the deal with "BOO-YAH!"
Hellboy Inside the Actor's Studio
Someone is obviously batshit insane to create this game. I'm also sure that Chuck Norris will win this game just by looking at it. Chuck Norris isn't meta so Chuck can't play with himself without the universe collapsing on itself.
It has happened again. I always get these weird charges on my phone bill. Last month it was 7 - 7 calling and Push2Talk. It actually happened again this month. Also today happened to be day that maybe my SIM card has died. Or it could just be the phone. I hope it's not the phone, the particulars of my marriage makes it that calling me wife is the only way to get any sort of connection.
A voice is only comfort I get to my family. And once that comfort is gone there isn't much for me to do during the day. Work and little else. It's a mental comfort more than anything else.
I need to get my phone fixed.
There is this program that someone wrote that enables the motion sensor in the MacBook to relay to this program the sounds of the lightsaber. It's pretty brilliant. I'd even wager that it's pretty fucking scary to know that someone dug that deep to write this program.
I just hope that no one has dropped their MacBook over this program.
EDIT: I wonder when this program is going to be ported to the iPhone. Then how long to we have to wait until there is a YouTube post.
Continue reading FSJ.
AppleInsider has a few overviews of the new iPhone 3G. So far the same things that I've been worried about it are present. After the Steve effect, I've been rethinking about getting an iPhone. Really rethinking the whole idea. About two weeks ago I was already popping song down for possible ringtones. Now that the sobering amount of confusion over the AT&T plans surfaced. I don't know if I want to get one.
At least I'm not in Canada right now. As nice as they are, they got shafted by Rogers.
I'm a member of the Club Camera of Tucson. They need an overhaul of their website. I might want to try and re-do the site and call it a loss on my taxes. The site looks like hell. It's old boxes and has a few no-nos in the terms of web design. It could be better. there are things about the layout that can be expanded and maybe even used to connect photographers better. The meetings at the JCC of Tucson are great to see other people's work and ideas are interesting. A good site can pull more people into the club and is great marketing.
Maybe a proper forum would work it better to pull people.
I dunno.
I really couldn't think of something witty to talk about so things that explode seems like something should cover the cost of the post. Fuck it the magic is lost.
So, let's talk about something important today folks, the Middleman. The Middleman is the guy saves the world from the weird. He also has a new hired named Wendy Watson. Together, they save the world and talk really fast.
In someways it reminds me of the witty banter of Hudson Hawk. Without the use of the F-Word. This show is on ABC Family, so the f-bombs are covered under the guise of black boxes over the mouth and a beep. There are a few. Wendy is a potty mouth and the Middleman drinks milk and listens to country older than this country.
This show is all fast talk, low-fi and wonderful action.
It also has the chairman from Iron Chef American as Sensei Ping, you can watch Episode three here.
So all you jolly ranchers out there, make sure you get yourself to see the Middleman and make it apart of your life.
Also soon, The Middleman complete collection is coming out July 25th. It should be a good comic to read. All things considers it's about 340 pages of awesome. There is an appearance by Waldo in the book with a group of fighting Luchedores.
Ok, so Machine Girl is a Tokyo Pop movie. This is basically a Japanese Troma Film. Actually Tokyo Shock movies are better budgeted than Troma films. It has girl with a machine gun arm, track suit ninjas and horrible special F/Xs that make this a glorious movie. I was originally going to let Dev watch this movie, but after watching most of this movie, I find that in good conscience, that it would be a bad idea. Hell, I don't even think my own wife would want to watch this movie.
My brothers are going to love it.
Here is a group of the toys from this one line. Lucian is playing with Batman and Flash. We don't have the others. But Batman, you should figure out and the Flash is the red guy. He runs really fast and it's been told that he has a bit of a premature problem.
And of course here is the Bender toy. I can't believe how attached he got to the toy just by looking at it.
I still wonder about what his reaction to Zoidberg toy would be like since I'm not sure if he knows the character. He's one of my favorites.
This shirt, which is a wonderful shirt. I think I need to get this for my son. I think that I would get it for both, but I have my doubts that the elder one would wear it. I had purchased a shirt from this company for him around Christmas a few years back. He had no clue what to do with it. It was a fat man doing a body slam on to a man a recliner. It was a funny shirt.
But this shirt is pure awesome.
This sucks. I can't talk with anyone over a whisper. Which when you're with a three year old, makes everything a little bit harder. Kids always ask questions. The best way to gauge to sheer volume of questions that children ask. Think back to high school or college and that one really annoying person in class who would slow down the progress of class by asking the dumbest question or interjecting with an absurd amount of information that is beyond the need or relevance of the class you're taking. That' what a small child will ask in a span of a morning. This is just to expand of get a concept. Which is pretty cool.
Last night, along with the Lupin the 3rd movies, Lucian really wanted the Bender(Futurama) toy. My son has class. Along with that toy, I picked up a Batman and Flash based off the comic New Frontier, they were clearance items, buy one, get one free. Lucian was really excited about Bender and wouldn't put the toy down.
As soon as we got home, he played with Bender for a little bit, then he wanted to play with the Flash and Batman for the rest of the night and even right now, at nine in the morning. I have to play the Flash, and Lucian is Batman. He even has the PJ's to prove it(when I ask him who I am, he says I'm Superman).
But all that right now is a bit on hold since I have to mime everything to Luc. Which he can't understand to begin with at this point in time. As it is, he looks at me like I'm possessed by the ghost of Marcel Marcel.
I can't really speak, I can whisper.
Maybe this a nice little sign that I have to take the kids to see WALL•E. I wanted to take them on Friday, but Melissa slept until 3:30 in the afternoon and this was the day that I puked up a ton. I would have like to have done it today or yesterday, but Devon's friend has been spending the night that last two nights. I just wanted to take the boys not the neighborhood. I know it sounds selfish, but I just wanted to do something with my family. When you bring along friends with pre-teens, they tend to scuttle about to weird places. With Devon, it tends to be in the front of the theater. It just a place where I, Melissa nor Lucian want to sit for about ninety minutes. We, Melissa and I, will walk out afterwards old. Neck in such an odd position for the rest of the day.
Last Tuesday, I didn't fall asleep. At all. I was up until about seven in the morning just watching television. I couldn't fall asleep. My head was killing me and my temperature was up to about 101.4. It didn't go down until Thursday about 5 in the afternoon. This was about two hours on a shuttle trying to get to my wife and kids. I was wondering when the people's face where going to stop melting.
It was around Chandler Rd exit.
It didn't get any better when I got up to Phoenix either. After a night here, I had spent the day with a sinus headache and with dried sinus, what did come out was really about ten pounds snot at a time, and my stomach was so tied up that it I threw up for about thirty minutes.
The toilet had about half a burger, a bratwurst, and a quarter of a 8 lbs. watermelon. Seedless watermelon, but that's a lie, there were was a lot of seeds when I looked down. Lots of seeds. SO many fucking seeds. Seedless watermelon. Yeah OK. Then again, they could have grown in my stomach.
While I was puking, and with a headache, I did noticed that the toilet was leaking. It was the float/value thing that was busted. so that had to be replaced. I can't this was something that I was thinking about while I was puking. That was fixed this morning.
So now everything is better. Except for the snot that I keep on spiting on out. Looks like Slimer from Ghostbusters took a dump in my head and I'm spitting out his shit.
Lucian is enjoying his two new movies, Lupin the 3rd Farewell to Nostradamus and Dead or Alive. He really liked the Farewell to Nostradamus movie. I liked that one more than the Dead or Alive movie. But they were for 2 for $10. So it was a good price. Lucian has always loved that character since the Castle and Caliostro movie.
I shaved my head. This is what it looked like yesterday. That's not the whole truth. It looked longer and well just a fucking mess.
So what does any average guy with pair of clippers and what he hopes is a steady hand do? He clips his own hair because he's tired of longer hair and wants something new, but not the same thing that last looked like a fuzzy lolli.
This is it now. Short, sweet and it suits me. I'm just glad I don't look as bad as I did the last time I did this back in 2001.
