especially since I know that all my friends would take these gifts in stride. The revenge war would be awesome.
http://dvice.com/archives/2009/11/8-offensive-gad.php

I’m also thankful for the usual stuff, family, health, job, friends, even though with me the distinction between friends and family is really small. That said, I’m really thankful that Brian thinks the sun rises and sets on me–literally since it’s just after dawn when I usually get home. I could’ve gotten a daytime position making slightly less but the hours would’ve been better but Brian didn’t want me to because he’d miss me at the bus stop, and who would he stick his tongue out at THEN?

I’m almost just as thankful to have not seen the House of the Dead movie on a Netflix DVD. Just saw it on FearNet. It’s not the cinema’ crapite’ that people say, but the game shots were a bit confusing.

Also, I’m eternally thankful for George Washington Carver. Not nearly as wooden a personality as he was made out to be.

Went to the movies last night with Brian P, my best friend who’s not blood. No, we didn’t see 2012 or as I termed it Roland Emmerich’s Latest Evidence That He Really Wanted To Be In Demolitions. No, instead we took in The Fourth Kind.

First, some background. Look behind you. That’s the background.

Now, some explanation. I have been reading about aliens and abductions since I was in third grade. From Betty and Barney Hill to Linda Cortile to all of the late John Mack’s anonymous subjects, I’ve read them. Any documentary from the exceedingly cheesy to the well done that I can get my eyes on I’ve seen. I’m familiar with the patterns. This movie had some of the patterns. It plays like a documentary. It’s NOT, even though it claims to have actual footage and recordings.  These are likewise put together pretty convincingly, although they all show things that I”ve never read about or heard about.  Does that mean it COULDN’T happen like that?  No.  There are enough weird things in the real stories that could have more of an effect than what they showed.   Still, it’s put together pretty well. There are enough gotcha moments to make it cool. There are a couple hints that it’s not true for the observant.  I’m not going to go into them since I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, or the fun of finding them.  Some are really obvious, some less so. 

It had the danger of being like The Possession of Emily Rose, which couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a paranormal movie or a courtroom movie and failed at being either. I’d give this eight and a half out of ten for being entertaining.  As something to forward the cause of ufology, on the other hand….

Unlike most Trek fans, I publicly proclaim that I like the Next Gen movies. Are they the epitome of great movie making? No. Are the stories good? Yes. Had they been series episodes rather than features, I think they’d rate up with the top episodes.

Yesterday was our tenth anniversary. Or since it’s the tin anniversary, it was our aluminiversary. So, we stuck my sister with Cloneboy, went and had a marvy Mexican dinner and then saw Paranormal Activity. Exceedingly creepy movie. Definite owner when the DVD comes out. Stace isn’t happy because she’s home alone with Brian right now and every little noise that comes up she thinks is a ghost. BOO! And I’m not talking Brian!

Haven’t gotten to see The Fourth Kind yet. Probably going to later this week. Every cool thing that scared Stace in Paranormal Activity will probably scare me in this movie since abductions scare the crap out of me.

All right, this is what’s on my writing schedule currently:
1. The Shadow War
2. Triangle
3. Everybody Loves A Hero
4.Perception–there WILL be more!
5.Lion Division-The Rescue
6.Town-The Adventures of the Fiddler –this is SO a temporary title.
7. The George Washington’s descendent thing

I need either way more time or a freakin’ laptop. Although, the Lion Division thing is a comic book. I also need to stop sleeping.

Your regularly scheduled beating is ready!

Check this out—
http://trekweb.com/stbbs/showThread.php?bid=FldwoPP0qETo2&tid=4aeec14339d69&cid=4aeec1433a922&viewby=&sort=&order=#4aeec1433a922–and then wonder why Trek fans get the rep we do. We were WARNED!!! OOOOOOOH!!! And guess what? They still made a movie!! Have they no foresight, no thought for others?

I have a headache now.

Watching V: The Series on SyFy.  Julie Parrish is hauling massive amounts of secret data on a 5.25 disk.  You know, because they have such an expansive memory capacity.  Especially when you write really really small…

Tonight’s fight–AMAZOOOOOOOOOOOON vs.  EBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA(cough, cough)AAAAAAAYYYY!

Where eBay has a stranglehold around odd things, Amazon is much better because YOU DON’T GET FREAKIN’ OUTBID!!  Case in point–last week or so I’ve been watching an After Effects 5.5 upgrade for twenty bucks.  I bid on it, it all looked good until yesterday when I was outbid.  I bid a little higher.  Automatically outbid.  A little higher, automatically—you get the idea.  So, just to REALLY depress/anger myself, I throw After Effects 5.5 into Amazon to see what comes up. 

Ten bucks.

A thousand dollar program originally….

for ten bucks.

In the cart, waiting to be paid for. 

Amazon wins this round.

Brian wants to be Venom for Halloween.  He’s apparently no longer scared.  Everywhere on the internet, Venom masks are at least thirty and kinda scary looking.  Our friends at Amazon?  A very basic cloth Venom mask with smallish teeth. 

Nine bucks.

Scooby/Dynomutt the whole series?

Thirty bucks.  (Thought I was going for eight, didn’t ya?)

Amazon wins.  Temporarily, at least.

Star Trek the Experience leaves the Franklin Institute tomorrow.  It had been there since May,  so of COURSE today was the first time I found time to get down there.  I wanted to take Stace, since her favorite is TNG, but we didn’t have the money and she’d be just as happy to be home by herself for a couple hours.   So, Brian and I get up early and drive into Philadelphia.

Side note–every time we go into Philly, Brian declares it to be the most amazing, most beautiful city he’s ever seen.  Everything he sees is fascinating to him on the way.

So, we find the Franklin, no problem.  Finding the GARAGE at the Franklin, that’s a little problem.  The entrance to the garage is on Race Street.  Race street is a one way street.  So, after twenty minutes of looking for a way to get in, we get in.  We go upstairs, see the Ben Franklin statue which kinda creeps my son out since it’s so big, then get our tickets.  On the way to Geek Central, which I’m certain is going to bore him to tears, he sees an area with all sorts of machines set up, including a crane.  He loves to build, so I tell him we’ll check out the Trek stuff and then we’ll check out everything else. 

At the top of the ramp, there was a photographer with a green screen.  He explained he could take our picture and they’d superimpose us onto a transporter room background.  Didn’t wanna do that, since I could actually do that at home and be in uniform at the time.  We go into the exhibit, and the first thing I see is a movie radiation suit.  I’ve had the patch from one of those for years, but seeing the whole suit was nifty.  Montalban’s movie costume was in the next display.  Along the back row were display cases with Enterprise models from the carriers up to the Enterprise-E.  There were also display cases with various props, including one with several phasers.  Brian thought it was pretty cool since we had the same ones in a box at home.  I didn’t point out that ours lit up and made noise and that ours cost way less. 

Against another green-screen wall was the center seat from the original series.  Or a mock up of the center seat.  I sat down and found it surprisingly comfortable and  natural feeling.  That’s right, I was born to be a captain, or at least that’s what it felt like while I sat there.  Right next to me was one of the movie burgundy jacket uniforms, one of the few I don’t have at home.  (Told ya I’m a geek.)  Then, I look across and there’s a full mock-up of a Galaxy-class bridge.  Brian and I OF COURSE go in there next.  He goes right for the center seat.  I of course check out Tactical and the Science stations.  I don’t know if the rail was the original from the series, but it did have all the initials of the cast and production staff on the controls.  We looked around some more.  Brian sat at Ops.  There was a woman walking around in an original series uniform with a phaser toy from the movie.  Brian pointed out that he had one at home.  That’s when I noticed that there were a LOT of people in costume of one sort or another, and they didn’t work there.   I felt both underdressed and a little afraid. 

We kept exploring.  More costumes, more props.  In plastic cases were the different alien head make-ups that I think scared Brian some since they looked like heads in boxes.  There was a simulator that you could sit in, but apparently I was too big and they wouldn’t let Brian do it alone.  He was actually fine with that, since he’d seen it go upside down and wasn’t too keen on the idea.  Right next to the simulator was a fifteen foot model of the Enterprise-D saucer.  I told Brian that once we get our house that was going into the living room. 

We checked out the rest of the museum.   We went through the human heart three times, and he did it once alone.  I explained some of the heart parts as we went.  There was a projector that showed blue blood cells being oxygenated back into red blood cells.  I explained that, but Brian looked nauseated.  We checked out the x-ray/mri/gamma scan machine.  He thought that was really cool.  There was a display of what color blood different animals have.  Interesting note:Octopi have blue blood. 

After that we checked out Foucault’s pendulum.  Brian was actually pretty fascinated by that for a good while.  Right next to that was a model of Galileo’s telescope.  We went into the Space exhibit where Brian and I flew a simulated ship to Mars.  He was the navigator and I was the comm officer.  We did all right until our power ran out.  Right past that was the flight exhibits.  There’s the T-33 jet to sit in, got Brian’s picture in both seats.  He didn’t want to do the sit-in simulator again.  He thought the 1911 Wright Brothers plane was good, and he really liked the simulator for that.  He was, however, disappointed that he couldn’t hit Wilbur in the head. 

We played with the crane for the third time.  He was starting to get tired, and I had to work tonight, so we decided to call it a day.

I really like their stuff. It cracks me up.

SPLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!!!

Okay, now that THAT’s out of my system…

Brian is no longer terrified of the dentist. This is a good thing, since he had to get a filling yesterday. The night before he had us up crying all night because of the pain. Took him over to his dentist’s office yesterday, they have a new guy. He was fantastic. Told Brian everything they were going to do, told him what was wrong, it was perfect. We took him to an endodontist’s office, Dr. Walters looked at the tooth, said he didn’t need a root canal since it was a baby tooth, put the temporary filling on, we all slept last night. It was a glorious thing.

Some shows about the paranormal irritate the living crap out of me. Saw one yesterday where they tried to recreate the Thomas Mantell incident. Okay, great. Unfortunately, it happened on the east coast, not in California where they tried to recreate it. Second, they trotted out the tired weather balloon explanation. Third, rather than you know, launching a balloon, they digitally created a balloon, inserted it into the film of the recreation, and declared this is what he saw. A)NO ONE knows what Mantell saw. B)If you’re going to go through all the trouble to get a plane to simulate it, wouldn’t it be a good idea to wait until the anniversary of the crash and GET A BALLOON? C) Wouldn’t you want to do it near Where it HAPPENED?

Some people that might occasionally come by here might be wondering what I thought of the movie. Well–here it is.

First–NOT what I would have written. I’ve written GI Joe books, a bunch of them that may never see the light of day. Still, a really good movie. I wasn’t crazy about some of the changes they made, like Duke’s rank and the background for Snake Eyes. Still going over the COBRA Commander mask and the reason for it. (Don’t wanna spoil anything in case somebody hasn’t seen it.) I know why they changed it, and the character backgrounds work. I personally would’ve left the commander’s background mysterious, but hey, whatever.

The Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow scenes deliver other than the background. Zartan, again, while not what I’ve written, was subtle and understated. Just what a master of disguise needs. I liked the Neo-Vipers and how they’re used. Would’ve liked to see more Mindbender, but not every story can have Laughtrack telling him not to move or Medicare’ll drop him.

The fact that the Joes are international I thought was a nifty element. The Pit was nicely put together and I like the new SHARCs. Breaker’s gum was beautiful. Liked that some characters died. Kinda cracked me up that Dennis Quaid was Hawk. A certain person used to say that I looked like him and she was the one that got me writing Joe books again.

All in all? Three and a quarter Lions out of four.