Holy Mother of God

Al “I Invented the Internet” Gore has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, for his tireless work propagandiz… pardon me “educating the public” about the dangers of Global Warming.

I believe that this is mentioned in the Book of Revelations just before something about a guy on a pale horse.

All I can say is it’s about time to buy a new tee shirt.

Movie Madness

Well, happy birthday to me. Last night I watched two movies: Seeker: The Dark is Rising (at the cinema), and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I’ll reveal the older movie first.

Rise of the Silver Surfer was not as bad as I had been led to believe. The Army personnel were not in Army uniforms, but to be honest, given certain other details of the movie, I’m just as glad that they weren’t. Galactus as a big space-cloud actually worked for me; I think a giant with a big helmet would have been a little cheesy. I really could have done without all of the wedding preparation–I think the movie would have been much better starting with a crashed wedding and adding 30 minutes of action.
That’s a relatively minor gripe, though.
The big thing, and it is big, is that the U.S. Army is shown quite GLEEFULLY torturing a prisoner (“There are certain things I can’t do because they’re human rights violations. Luckily, you aren’t human.”) This, I suppose is what amounts to “non-partisan” in Hollywood: they won’t say that the military DOES torture prisoners–but we obviously WANT to. I mean, we’re the military, right? We’re all a bunch of slavering, inhuman rapists. Obviously, we spent our youths torturing small animals with hack-saws.
Did I mention that Marvel Comics killed off Captain America earlier this year? Anyway:

The Dark is Rising is one of my all-time favorite series of books. I probably read the entire pentalogy a dozen times in junior high school and high school. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, this isn’t it. I mean, it’s not Starship Troopers bad, or Brahm Stoker’s Dracula bad, or Earthsea bad… But it ain’t good.
As much as I have read the series, it has been many years since my last perusal–so I really can’t comment on how exactly the movie follows the book (although I can certainly estimate). For me watching, the worst part was the villain: although the split personality would have been interesting had there actually been a dichotomy between the Rider persona and the Doctor persona, there wasn’t: the Rider simply had no menace at all. His line delivery was completely bland, thus removing any potential tension from his scenes.

The Golden Compass

Apparently, a group called “The Catholic League” is leading a protest against a movie due out in December, called The Golden Compass. This movie is based on the first book in a trilogy called His Dark Materials by British author Philip Pullman.
The protest is due to the League’s idea that the movie will encourage children to leave the Christian Church and become atheists. My question is, rather than attempting to deny everyone the chance to see the movie (not that I’m a big of Hollywood of late), why not see it with their children, and use it to spark a dialogue on relgion? How insecure is the Catholic League in their own belief system?

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well, I finally fulfilled a dream I’ve had for several years now. I’ve been wanting to go out on the town for my birthday and just splurge–plunk down like, $1000.00 in one night. Of course, I was thinking of some a bit more entertaining… I just spent over a thousand dollars on CAR REPAIR, for my Kia Rio that cost $9,000.00 new and was totalled out in a hail storm last year.

Wheeeee! I can’t take the fun. 🙂

Is Catherine Herridge a Romulan?

I believe that I have finally found evidence of alien life. Below, you will observe a picture of Catherine Herridge, Fox News correspondent on the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Intelligence:

Now, compare it with this picture of Kim Catrall portraying Vulcan Valeris in Star Trek VI:

I’m considering e-mailing my findings to SETI.

Changing Insurgent Hearts

USMC Major General Doug Stone, who is in charge of detainees in Iraq, is trying something new. Through a combination of education, religious classes, vocational training and even sports, the General is gradually reforming the moderate Muslim population of Iraq.
Not only has the rate of re-capture (the percent of detainees released that make it back to the battlefield) dropped from 7% to 2%, but current detainees are even turning in extremists who try to infiltrate the re-education classes.

I applaud the General for his innovative and proactive use of the detainee facilities in Iraq.