Archive for July, 2008
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
I don’t often believe I’m entitled to getting my money back but after seeing Wanted with a friend a few hours I am reconsidering my position. And in case you think I’m just complaining over nothing let me assure you I have a reason why I didn’t like the movie. A great reason in fact. It sucked.
Truly it did. Lots of movies are bad, but this one was horrible. Let me give you a brief synopsis of this film. I know it might be hard to follow, but try to keep up. You’ll need this information before it is all said and done. Ready?
- Blood
- Special effects
- Cursing
There you have it, that was the totality of Wanted. What I wanted was an original idea. Barring that I was hoping for something that wasn’t a blatant rip-off. Matrix anyone? What I really wanted was to see a few of these assassins storm the gates of the clowns who made this movie and ply their trade on them.
What about the plot twist? Oh, you mean the one that you could see coming 10 minutes into the movie? Yeah great job! I’m tempted to tell you what it was but then that would totally ruin the movie. Not that it isn’t already totally ruined, but at least by me not telling you the movie will have something going for it for about 5 or 10 minutes. To give you an idea of how incredibly atrocious this movie is consider this sad fact. Even Morgan Freeman couldn’t save it.
But remember if the totality of your critical thinking when it comes to moves is blood, special effects, and cursing (heaping helpings of all three) then you’ll be perfectly content. As for me Wanted left me “wanting”…
My money and two hours of my life back. This movie was so bad I was even mad at the kid selling the popcorn.
Posted in Potpourri | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
This morning I was reading through my feed reader and came across an article called
The Power of RSS Subscriptions. What caught my attention wasn’t the article itself but a comment that NickyCakes left in reply to someone else.
“…it’s safe to say anyone with an internet connection is allowed to be an expert…” nickycakes
Link to entire comment
How’s that for a revelation? The internet has all but demolished our preconceived notions of what makes an expert. Anyone can be an expert on any topic. Throw a blog into the mix and not only can you become an expert at your topic of choice, but now the entire internet can benefit from your expert advice. That’s a hard concept to beat. In the past people have paid tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars for specialized education and training just to have the honor of becoming an expert. Not anymore! Now you just spend a few hours reading the internet and gathering information.
- Is it really that easy to become an expert?
- On paper yes, in reality no. Anyone can throw up a blog and talk at length about literally any subject in the world. We can write thousands of articles and be read by millions of people talking about whatever topic we like and that’s great, but it doesn’t make you an expert.
The primary reason why is that the internet doesn’t spread information based on accuracy. It is spread based on popularity. Some times people assume that their is a natural vetting process in which bad information is culled and removed from the public eye simply because it is bad. Unfortunately in a world where everyone is looking to go viral bad information if presented skillfully will easily outlive accurate information.
To illustrate suppose I setup a blog extolling the virtues of eating grass. Day after day after day I post articles about eating grass. How it makes your eyes glimmer, and your teeth shimmer. How it all but eliminates the free radicals that are wreaking havoc with your body. I throw in some links to various sites about the benefits of juicing grass (yes people actually do this search for “juicing grass” on your favorite search engine), and participate in various forums about it. But most importantly of all I work the proper keywords and get myself ranked high in the search results article after article. Suddenly I’m everywhere and suddenly I appear to be an expert. Because everyone sees what I have to say.
The problem is I haven’t a clue about grass. I don’t know the first thing about it other than what I’ve read on various blogs and websites by the people who were smart enough to work certain keywords and rank before I came along and took over. So if the people I learned from were giving bad information then it naturally follows that my information will be bad.
- How can you protect yourself?
- Just use some good old fashioned common sense. Before you buy that lame ebook that guarantees to teach you how to make money online think for just a minute. There are umpteen zillion ebooks promising the exact same thing. All written by umpteen zillion different people. Guess what?! 99.99999% of those people who wrote an ebook and spent time, energy, and money to market it were banking on the “expert” advice of another ebook writer. And guess what that advice was? That’s right it went something like this “I’ll teach you how to write an ebook and start making hundreds of dollars a day so you’ll never have to work again!!”
Sounds good until you realize that the guy/gal who said they were going to teach you how to write an ebook so you don’t have to write again is not only still working, but still writing ebooks because apparently teaching someone how to make hundreds of dollars a day doesn’t pay as well as one might expect it to.
Like I said common sense is the way you protect yourself. Anytime anyone online claims to be an expert at anything be suspicious. Run like hell if they claim to be an expert and can’t (or won’t) show you the fruits of their labors.
In the end you need to decide if what you come across online is expert advice or not. On my other blog I talk about snakes and in the about us section I personally try to make it clear that I’m not an expert and am just learning about snakes and passing on what I learn. In fact after having written this article went back in and made it even clearer over there. Lots of people are like that, but most of them fail to mention that they are “learning and passing it on” instead they just keep their mouths shut a let people assume they are experts.
Posted in Potpourri | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
Generally I’m not a huge fan of movies, but I horror/slasher movies I find to be very entertaining. So without further ado here’s my favorite horror movie “monsters”/slasher
- Jason Voorhees - Friday the 13th
- Don’t ask me why because I don’t know, but there’s something down right chilling about this guy. In fact Jason was my first introduction to slashers on the movie screen. I was about 7 years old sitting in a motel room in Ontario Oregon waiting for my dad to get back from the bar. I ended up watching Friday the 13th part 2 and I’ve never forgotten the scene where Jason snares the guy and slices his throat while he’s hanging there upside down. Not generally considered his “baddest” kill but it spoke to me.
Mostly because at the time I lived in the woods with my family and to even go to the bathroom was about a 30 yard walk to an outhouse. No lights, no electricity and a sudden urge to use to pot in the middle of the night… after watching Friday the 13th. You do the math.
- Pinhead - Hellraiser
- Not a lot needs to be said about this character. From the incredibly twisted mind of Clive Barker. Pinhead is the head Centobite (demonic race) and was first introduced to the world via Barker’s The Hellbound Heart novella about a tool for summoning evil called the Lament Configuration. I highly recommend Hellraiser 1 and sorta recommend Hellraiser 2, but skip the rest.
- Vengeance Demon - Pumpkinhead
- I’ll let the trailer do the speaking about the film. One of my favorite horror movies of all time and highly underrated.
But what about Freddy? What about Micheal? What about Djinn from Wishmaster? What about them? This is my list, remember? If you want a list of your own, go for it!
Posted in Potpourri | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 7th, 2008
Lo, I am doing a new thing, now it springeth up - Isaiah 43:19
I was thinking today that it is so rare to see anything truly new anymore. Originally I was going to write this article to complain about the lack of “newness” among blogs. Sadly I’m not the only one who noticed this…
I could probably go on for a year citing other blogs and sources that have come to the same conclusion that there is nothing new in blogging. I’ll take it a step further. The lack of originality extends to the traditional media, especially op-ed pieces and so-called round table discussions. Why? Because bloggers have already ruined covered it 3 days before it happens. I suppose that doesn’t matter to someone who doesn’t read blogs, but is there such a person anymore? I mean even if someone didn’t actually read blogs you can rest assured they’ve hear them quoted day after day by various news sources.
When was the last time you sat down and said to yourself - Self, now THAT was truly original!
I just ask because either I’m right or I’m really missing something somewhere along the line. I mean how many get rich quick schemes “make money online” blogs can there be? Or how many insert blog topic here blogs can there be? Are any of them original anymore? It used to be that some were original because they were clearly first but anymore it’s hard to tell.
So my appeal to the masses is simply this, do something new. Write about something new (unlike this article), give us a new reason to read your blog. Make me want to add you to my feed reader because there’s something original to be found in there. I have 25 blogs in my feed reader at the moment and with the exception of 3 of them it’s all just a rehash of each others articles. I beg you dear blogger, end the madness! Write something original!
And those of you who frequently find yourself fodder for various blogs… You too have a responsibility in all of this. You too must do something new. Something worth gossiping about that is revolutionary.
Posted in Blogging, Potpourri | 2 Comments »
Saturday, July 5th, 2008
While watching TV this evening it occurred to me that I have no idea what the difference between a lawyer and an attorney is. So being adept at looking information up online I hit up
Google and asked.
I was immediately hit with a bunch of legal double speak which makes no sense to me whatsoever, but what I did gather from the information I saw was:
- An attorney is a licensed member of the legal professional
- A lawyer is a person who is trained in the legal field and provides advice on legal matters
- An attorney can represent a client in court in all matters while a lawyer is restricted
And there’s so many more difference between the two but I think we’ve all been confused enough as it is. So if you ever find yourself needing a lawyer think carefully because you might actually need an attorney… Unless it involves unrestricted matters that the lawyer is capable (or legally allowed to handle).
What’s really sad is I’m just as confused as when I first went to look up the information as to what makes a lawyer different from an attorney. But I suppose it could be worse. In Britain they are known as lawyers, attorneys, barristers, solicitor and esquires. And here I thought barristers made coffee but it turns out they’re lawyers (or maybe that would be attorneys) too.
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