THERE WILL BE BLOOD: A MOVIE REVIEW

RATING: 3.5-out-of-5 Thumbs Up (or 1.5-out-of-5 Thumbs Down).


Let's just say that there were soooo many good reviews for this movie and that people are nominating it in every possible category including "Best Craft Service" that I said to myself,
"Dammit! I gotta see this movie!" After all, it's got Daniel Day-Lewis who sky-rocketed to the top of my all-time favourite actors since that incredible performance as "Profion" in the epic fantasy Dungeons & Dragons. It was also adapted for the screen by the same man who brought you the incredible comedy Punch-Drunk Love, Philip Seymour Hoffman. Well, let me tell you something. I was torn asunder with this movie. I had no idea which way was up!?!

The director, Philip Seymour Hoffman

First off, for half of the movie, something kept nagging at me; a voice kept saying "something's not right. This is a terrible performance compared to that of Profion..." and I couldn't really concentrate on the movie and I hadn't really been paying that close attention to what was happening and the last time I asked the person next to me to fill me in as to who's who and what's happening I got called a retard so I kept stewing and stewing over and over like a run-on-sentence and that's when it hit me! It wasn't Day-Lewis in the cult-hit Dungeons and Dragons, but Jeremy Irons!

Sir Jeremy Irons gives everything he has as PROFION!

That's what's bothering me! I had made a HUGE gross mistake. What a drag! Sir Jeremy Irons is sooooo much a better thespian than Day-Lewis! Not only has my man Sir Irons done about 3 times the movies than Day-Lewis (so that's proof-in-the-pudding) but "Loser" Day-Lewis has NEVER been on a Dame Edna special (as Teen Wolf's Robert Bateman's character from Arrested Development, Gob would say, "COME ON!")

So now I've missed basically half the movie and the character that Day-Lewis was playing is now like an old man!? HUH? What the hell? I don't recall buying a ticket for Slaughterhouse 5!

Craig Vonnegut Jr.'s classic "The Slaughterhouse 5"

So instead of bugging the stranger beside me to ask what's going on, I decide to stick it out. I might as well watch the credits and see who the craft service person was (which by the way was Graham Sonnenberg, the person responsible for craft service in that ass-fest Grindhouse).
So while I'm watching this old man belittle people left-right-and-centre, I suddenly get one of those "EUREKA!" moments and realize that this old man looks just like Deaner from Fubar!

Paul Spence is giv'erin' it everything he has as DEANER!

What a complete rip-off! Not only did the director vagrantly plagiarize his script from an old book, but he had to steal his main character's look from an old movie!

Anyways, I don't know if it's worth watching or not. I found it disappointing for my own reasons. I highly recommend seeing it if you want to see what this movie's about.

two unknown actors from the movie that I saw

Click on the image below to enlarge this image.

BREW-HA-HA IN BETHLEHEM

In the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (where Jesus was(n't) born) a gaggle of Greek Orthodox priests got into a brawl with Armenian priests. Bats, brooms and fists were a-flying! I wish I could have been there to watch!! That would have been one of the best fights to ever witness. Click on the photo of the religious freaks below to get the straight dope.

Jesus would be rolling over in his grave...wait...he didn't really have a "grave"...wait...he didn't really exist.

Ed Grimley: The Fella Who Couldn't Wait For Christmas

HONKBARN! 4

The latest episode of Todd Ramsay's Honkbarn! is out and it's the best of them yet. I may be a bit biased though considering that my son Kai and I provided some of the idiotic voices. Kai, myself and my 1-year-old watched the episode about 34,000 times this morning. Thanks for making us waste the morning away, Todd.

WITNESSES SEE "WILD MEN" IN CHINA

Along a river road in Xiangfan (Hubei Province of China), two witnesses say they drove around a corner and saw two "giant" dark "wild men" standing behind some bushes. They say one was approx. 1.7 meters (5'6") and the other 1.4 meters (4'8") and were covered in black fur. Personally, I'm 5'8" and I am not in any way considered a "giant" so I don't know how these witnesses get away by saying these things were "giant."

Investigators have found a series of footprints, the larger prints being 30 centimeters (12").

Get the official story here!

1/2-SQUATCH'S '07 TOP 7+3

Well '07 is almost a wrap and I want to wish everyone a happy new year and a merry x-mas (I don't put the Christ in x-mas). 2007 was a big year for me personally and for this terrible, just re-god-damn-diculous blog of mine. There were a lot of posts (200ish) and a bunch of new readers so I thought I'd take a spin in my time-machine and share some of my favourite personal entries...so here they are in no particular order:

10) My first Halfsquatch interview with the creator of ROM: The Space Knight!9) Though not a personal entry, just a YouTube snatch-n-grab, this pilot episode of Lookwell, starring Adam West made me extremely cheerful.8) My insanely detailed review of the insanely detailed Rocky action figures!7) A ghastly discovery of crypt-master Eddie Van Halen6) My breakdown and explanation of some randomly picked Family Circus comic panels5) The Busey Squid! The photoshop job that I did was a super-rush job but it did the trick by removing gangs from my neighbourhood.4) My rocket-powered electric scooter that I use to commute to work with 3) Oh Snap! I found an "Oh Snap" flow-chart on-line and it directly related to a project that I had been working on where all the characters said "Oh snap!" out of context all the time. Read the comments!2) The Canucks-Bot and part two The Canucks-Bot Mimics Emotionand finally
1) How to make a god damn moose call out of an empty tube of Pringles.0) My "Desert Island" picks which dared to showcase my drawring "ability"...
Honourable mention goes to the Jacobs Creature entry where it sat in Google's coveted #1 link for the search for about 2 weeks (I'm sadly sitting in 2nd place like a turd-hopping fuckface). Thanks to that, my usual average of 45 hits-or-so / day SKY-ROCKETED to 4,500 hits in one day! That's well over 2-double dozens than normal!!

Best of luck to everyone in 2008: The Year of The Future of Tomorrow!

INTERGALACTIC WAR UPDATE!

Your pal Beadle just emailed his astronomer friend David Gasson (a programmer at the University of Arizona's National Optical Astronomy Observatory ) the link regarding this galactic-feud-of-the-centuries and just got a response!

yes this is legit. Here's the official NASA press-release: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/dec/HQ_07280_Death_Star_Black_Hole.html The Times of India put a rather, er, dramatic headline to it, didn't it ;-)? Most galaxies (including our own) have so-called supermassive black holes at their center, and these black holes can power a wide variety of interesting phenomenon including jets. These jets are streams of very high energy particles emitted by matter as it "rubs against itself" while falling into the black hole. The energies involved are absolutely titanic--some of the highest in the universe. It's also typical for galaxies to form in groups and therefore to be able to interact with each other (google "Antenna Galaxy" if you want to see a good example). So it stands to reason that somewhere, sometime, one of these galaxies with jets will cross the path of another galaxy. And that's what's happening here. The universe is a dangerous place. Google "supernova", "hypernova" or "gamma ray burst" if you want to learn more about the many ways we could die ;-). Isn't truth stranger than fiction? Cheers, David

There's a whole wack-load of groovy images and videos HERE!

REAL INTERGALACTIC WAR CAUGHT ON FILM!!

Not joking!! Just a mere 8.2 billion trillion miles away a giant black hole is pummeling a nearby galaxy with an onslaught of "deadly" radiation particles. Check out the article and another.

ALIEN SPACECRAFTS EXIST?

According to Japan's Chief Government Secretary they do! The BBC has more!

SKI-MOJO

British-made Ski-Mojo's are like shock-absorbers for your upper thighs, designed to alleviate stress on the legs allowing you to ski longer (and supposedly better). They cost around 600 clams (not sure if those are English clams). Personally, the little bum-scoop that cradles your butt looks a bit ridiculous but in a few years, I'm sure that this technology will be worked directly into pants. I assume (and hope) that they will work for snowboarding.

MY GREATEST DUNGEONS & DRAGONS STORY

A few years ago, a bunch of us from work would pile into a cold shack-like garage, gather around a billiards/ping-pong table and play Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, yes...nerrrrrrrrds, but who cares! We had a great Dungeon Master (Brett) who knew how to provide amazing and original adventures that went well beyond the usual hack-and-slash affairs. For the record, we weren't the kind players that would "speak in character." Just "I'm throwing an ax into the kobold's cock and balls!" "Okay, roll." "18! YES!" "The kobold's cock and balls are mashed in by your ax and he's down. Nice hit."

One of the characters, played by Kevin Gamble, was a wizard-like character who was more like an alchemist/scientist type character and for months, his character was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to use his special weapon: A primitive black-powder hand gun:

The weapon requires a lot of patience to use and needs three components. 1) The Gun 2) The bullets 3) the powder. Black-powder is needed and 1lb is required for one shot. The weapon takes 5 rounds to reload and the player must remain still whilst reloading. The user must have exotic weapon proficiency/firearms and there's a chance that the gun may not work or even explode. Needless to say, this weapon is rarely used and it's not uncommon for a Dungeon Master to outlaw them altogether from the game. But the weapon suited the character Kevin created so our DM allowed it and Kevin was ITCHING to use it but the opportunity to do so never arrived until months into the game.

So one one adventure, our party found ourselves needing to cross a rope & wood-plank bridge which spanned a fort's two towers. We had quickly disposed of the one tower's guards and now needed to cross over to another tower via this bridge. Our party met some resistance from the tower by way of some ranged weapons; crossbow bolts and arrows. Maybe some magic missiles? I can't really remember. We rolled for initiative (who gets to attack first) and I won. My fighter character (a Gnoll btw) wore magical "Wings of Flying" (what else are wings really good for?) so I quickly soared over the span and landed on the bridge just in front of the guards and began attacking. Kevin quickly pulled out his gun and began the long and tedious task of loading it. My team then started to fire their ranged weapons and I was in the cross-fire, being pelted heavily by friendly fire. I was quickly losing blood so I opted to drop off the bridge altogether and get out of harms way (I fell gently as I also wore a "Ring of Feather Fall! Sounds sissy but it saved my sissy flying ass many a time!). After 3 or 4 turns of loading this thing, Kevin's character was finally going to use this exotic weapon that his character had been bragging about from the beginning of the adventure and he was stoked! Kevin's character lifted the gun between the shoulders of two other party-members and excitedly yelled "SAY HELLO TO SCIENCE, BOYS!!!!" and pulled the trigger--which means, rolled the 20-sided die which turned out to be a "1." Which is a big miss. In our rules, a miss is a miss, and if you miss with a "1" it's a BIG miss and you have to roll again and the last thing you want is another "1" or something really bad is going to happen.
Kevin's second roll produced a "1." "FUUUUUCKKKK!!!!" Everyone erupted in laughter and Kevin's head sunk. The DM finally spoke, "Okay, Kevin, the gun backfires and explodes in your face dishing out 30 hit points worth of damage to your character. Andrew and Jason, your characters both get hit by the explosion causing 25 damage and 27 respectively. Andrew and Jason, you're going to both need saving throws against your dexterity or you'll fall off the bridge..." Both Andrew and Jason miss their saving throws and are launched off the bridge, falling 30 feet and lose more hit points. Kevin basically killed himself and two others all in the name of this science that he kept yappin' about.

THE MISFITS

I need to get this out: The Misfits suck royal cock and balls.

O'NEILL NAVJACKET

Check out this hi-tech jacket O'Neill is releasing in the Fall/Winter 08/09 season. O'Neill teamed up with GPS specialists MyGuide to create this awesome wearable technology which boasts an integrated navigational display on the sleeve and audio instructions in the hood. The display doesn't just give you a map of the slopes but can also display your speed, weather forecasts, 3D views of the resort, distances etc. The site doesn't say anything about an avalanche retriever beacon but I wouldn't see it being a hard thing to incorporate.

NATURE MILL'S AUTOMATIC INDOOR COMPOSTER

As you may or may not know, I am a compost junky. Not the kind of junky that shoots compost into his veins for a fix, but the kind of guy who gets some satisfaction in removing really rich soil from the bottom of the compost. Every two days or so, I throw a couple of buckets worth of vegetable trimmings and bread and coffee grounds into the compost in my backyard and every time I do so, I think "I can't believe how many people actually throw this stuff into the garbage!" I know that I'm fortunate enough to have a backyard in which I can do this and that for those living in apartments or condos, they may not have the means of doing so...until now! Check out Nature Mill's Automatic Indoor Composter!!!

Be sure to watch the video demonstration on their site. A friend at work said that it was a great idea and the only thing he'd change is that if it came without AC power so that it was a hand-cranking wind system--30 seconds of winding = 2 hours worth of mixing. Not a bad idea.


So maybe in the new year I'll have a Roomba, the anus-spraying butt-cleaning toilet seat
and one of these so I can just sit back and do absolutely nothing but watch my robotic house do stuff---like living in the year 4888!

THE ART OF DANIEL SIMON

Car designer, Daniel Simon has just released a great book full of sketches and digital renderings of some of his sci-fi vehicle concepts called Cosmic Motors. There is a great interview with him on CG Channel as well.

Yeti Footprints? Presenter Tells Of Amazing Find

(POSSIBLE) YETI PRINTS DISCOVERED

My cousin in Ireland directed me to a BBC article about a team of explorers who found what could be Yeti footprints near Everest. Click here for the BBC article.

RIP EVEL KNIEVEL - THE LAST OF THE GLADIATORS