It's been a while since I've posted and it took the internet on a plane to get me to do it.  I just had to tell someone as it's pretty good.  Apparently on Virgin America for the next month or so, the internet will be free.  Then starting in January, they will charge 13 bucks for it.  That seems a bit steap for a short flight to LA like I'm on now but I'd probably pay it for a cross-country flight. 

 

I really wish that airlines knew how to charge different prices depending on the length of the flight as that seems important. They don't for TV (at least Continental doesn't) although I guess they charge a single price per movie.

 

The one unfortunate part of this is that the free wireless is provided by google.  They demanded my email address which is definately a bit intrusive for asking for that but I'll live.  The UI on the Virgin flight for the TV isn't very good or responsive and the google map control for the flight map is also pretty bad.  Then again, since you are getting all of that at your seat, how much can you complain until someone does it better?

 

Anyway, I'll leave you with "I'm rocking up and down on a mother f-ing plane." which many of you may find funny.

At least once I day, I log into cnn.com and read through the stories of the day so I know what's going on. I don't bother with the videos or ireports because I find the videos to be light on content and the ireports to be...well...random people just ranting.

 

During this time, I usually end up reading a few political articles as well.  I know I shouldn't because it either annoys as to how stupid our politicians are or just wastes my time about something that the media is once again blowing out of porportions in order to get people to care.

 

Anyway, I have now identified the dumbest contributor to cnn.com (which is a pretty impressive feat given how any stupid ones are out there). I could give this to some random extreme one who may or not believe the crazy things they say but I'm giving it to one who clearly deserves it.

 

A year ago, I blogged about how stupid Ed Rollins was for talking about the Sarah Palin SNL skit and using that as an example of how great she was (what poise and what charisma and it wasn't even her).  This time around, he brought up SNL but about Obama.  In his article though, he brought up the Palin skit again and talked about how it started her downfall.  WTF?!?!  I'm sorry but you just did a 180 and you also give SNL credit for her downfall, seriously?  Could it have been her interview on prime time that fell flat or the constant attention of the news media on issues big and small?  Nope, it was the SNL skits.

 

He also says that SNL is responsible for Bush being seeing as the wacky goofball rather than the serious politician.  Once again, was it not the constant media coverage and clips played over and over again on all of the news stations that contributed to this image?

 

Now he's saying that the sketch of Obama on SNL last saturday is going to sink his presidency.  Sigh, this guy is seriously a moron and should not be allowed to talk anymore.

So I'm watching the premier of dollhouse this weekend and notice something weird.  During the first season, for all but the last commercial of the show, they will tell you "Dollhouse back in 60s" (or 90s).  All of the commercial breaks were 60 or 90 long except for the last one which was about 150-180 long.

 

During this premier, NONE of the commericals announced how long they would be.  I estimated and they were all about as long as the last commerical would be in the first season.  That means that instead of 4 1.5 minute commercials, we suddnely had 4 3 minute commercials.  I want my 6 minutes of show back, A-holes.

 

Commercials are the thing I put up with in order to get free tv.  Which reminds me, I pay comcast for my tv so why do I have to put up with commercials at all?  Oh wait, I fast forward through them anyway so you should stop bothering to try to sell me something and give me more plot back...

There are a couple of directors out there that like a particular style of Filmography (I'm not sure what to call it so I'm calling it that).  In some films it happens only during certain scenes and is fairly subtle.  In other films, it happens all of the time.

 

I may have blogged about this in the past wrt the later Bourne movies as this style was incredibly pronounced in those movies.  The affect is when the camera doing the filming shakes as if someone untrained is doing the filming.  I can only assume it was an attempt to make you feel like you were in the action (even though the style continued when the characters were chatting over dinner).  I actually don't know how they get this affect and whether it's built into cameras or you turn off the stabilizer and get the cameraman drunk or what...

 

I'm bringing this up now becuase we tried to watch Rachel Getting Married this past weekend and that movie had this very style.  Tammy actually got car sick watching the first 5 minutes and we had to return it.  The person at Blockbuster seemed to think we were pulling a fast one on her as she claimed that the movie either didn't have that affect or it wasn't that bad.  The thing is, we skipped from scene to scene and the affect was still there. While it was never very pronounced, it was there the whole time.

 

Why in a movie like that would we need that affect?  It's not to make you feel like you're in the action as there is none.  It's not to make you feel like you're in the scene itself because ones vision doesn't move like that in real life if you're calm or even if you're in the middle of a soccer game.  Yes, your vision is constantly adjusting but it does it much faster and in much smaller ways.  Combined with this affect, it can make the movie distracting and harder to watch as your eyes try to adjust to the bouncing and just can't do it.

 

Personally, I think any director who chooses that affect should be banned from releasing movies for multiple years to teach them a lesson.  It seems like some of them just use it to use it and have no justifiable reason for it and it's just annoying.  If I wanted to feel like I was watching a home movie, well, I would watch an old home movie...

No, not that sort of escort.  Get your mind out of the gutter.

 

Tuesday evening as I was leaving work and on the on ramp, a weird thing happened.  A police motorcycle pull out from the next on-ramp right in front of me and held out his hand.  I was like wtf?!?!  He just sat there for like 10 seconds with no indication as to what was going on and then 5 other police motorcycles pulled out from on-ramp he'd come from. They each went to a different lane to block off the road and then a big bus came by followed by a police SUV. 

 

At that point, I was even more confused and curious.  Once the bus was on the road, the police let us move and formed a protective shell around the bus.  Now, this is pretty unusual as it wasn't likely to be any of our executives cause it was a bus (wouldn't they be driving something nicer).  I asked around as I initially thought it might have been the interns as we've been known to show off like that for the interns.

 

It wasn't the interns as they had more busses and did that a few weeks ago.  They also had an escort which brings up the question of how much that cost and what the justification was but whatever.

 

My current guess at this point was that it was the FC Barcelona team that was visiting campus that day.  The timing fits and the fact that it was a single bus fits as well.  BTW, that team is really, really good.  I saw the Sounders game against them in person and a few times I had to count our players to just double check that we actually had a full team on the field (cause it didn't seem that way.

Apparently, 3 americans have been detained in Iran.  Given all the recent events, I was expecting to hear them listed as media members or some similar role in Iran.  I find out that they were hikers.  WTF?!?!  Is it possible to punish someone for being unbelievably stupid?  They were apparently hiking in Iraq (because I hear it's nice this time of year) and accidentally crossed the unmarked border...ooops.  You would think that they would have done enough research to know where they were before risking that but then again, they had gone to Iraq for the hiking.

 

Seriously, I just don't understand some people.

Well, I've tried to avoid talking about politics for a while since we were overloaded with it for so long so I'll try to keep this quick.

 

I stand by my statement in an earlier post saying that I don't care about politician's indiscretions as it doesn't affect how they govern.  Now, Sanford should not have flown off without telling anyone but now that that is all in the open, I don't think it's an issue at all for his ability to govern and he should not be asked to resign.  Of course, he should have taken the stimulus money because he forgot the first rule of politics; you never turn down free money.

 

As for Sara Palin, they must have changed the definitions for "quitter" and "fighter" as her words about her stepping down do not really match with what she actually did.  You can claim she had good reason to do it if you really believe that but you can't claim that she didn't actually quit as that's like rewriting the English dictionary.  You might as well claim that inflammable doesn't mean flammable.