Joss Whedon Does It Again

Being a huge Buffy and Angel fan, I was a little leery of Whedon's latest creation, Dollhouse... especially after hearing the concept. Questions like "Can this really work without being corny?", "Will enough people 'get it' to carry the series?", and "Why am I talking to myself while sitting alone in my underwear?" ran through my mind before I took the plunge and watched the first two episodes back-to-back.

Well, I can tell you this... it isn't corny. It's smartly written, action-packed and compelling to watch. I really hope enough people get it so that it sticks around for awhile. I do, however, need to start wearing pants more often.

Who are we kidding? It's a good show, which means by the end of this season Fox will have moved its timeslot around three times and cancelled it before the season finale.

It's Never a Good Idea

Usher's wife Tameka Foster almost died over the weekend, due to complications with the liposuction procedure she was receiving... in freakin' Brazil.

Look people, I've said it before... what kind of lunatic goes to South America for medical care? I'd rather let an American veterinarian operate on me before I'd take an aspirin in Brazil.

Begun, The Clone Wars Have...

An unemployed single mother of six. still living unmarried with her mother recently gave birth to octuplets, and apparently not everyone seems to think this is a good idea.

What I want to know is this: How does this woman, in this economy and with no visible means of support, afford the fertility treatments necessary for her to accomplish this dubious feat?

Here's what I suspect... Jon and Kate Plus 8 is the top-rated show on TLC. It's basically a documentary of the lives of parents Jon and Kate and their eight children—a set of fraternal twin girls and a set of sextuplets (three girls and three boys). The show follows the family through their daily lives, focusing on the challenges of raising multiple children.

Somewhere there is a low-level television executive that figured $10,000 was a small price to pay to generate his own cash cow, and is now sweating bullets hoping no-one discovers his tie to this media fiasco. Someone needs to pay for turning this woman's vagina into a clown car.

Breaking News: Men Are Lazy Pigs!

A scientific study was recently released, discovering that male college students like to play violent video games and download porn.

Let me get this straight... hard-earned taxpayer money was given to researchers at Brigham Young University and this is the best they could come up with? Hell... they could've given ME that grant money and I could've told them that...

What mysteries are these wacky Mormon researchers going to plumb next? Expect to see some ground breaking work done in the field of "Is water wet?" soon...

Too Much of a Good Thing

A 28 year old Texas woman has finished her ninth surgery to become the proud possessor of the world's largest breast augmentation. She had to travel to Brazil in order to enlarge her FFF cups to a KKK cup (naw, too easy... make your own joke), because apparently Texas physicians refused to perform the procedure for fear her breasts would explode.

Now, the last time you were shopping around for a place to have major invasive surgery, did South America enter your thought process at all? The only things that comes to mind when I think of South America are guinea pigs and rainforests... neither of which I suspect are very sanitary...

Forget Typhoid Mary. Here's Malaria Bill

Apparently, while speaking at the Technology Entertainment and Design conference in California a couple of days ago, Bill Gates unleashed a swarm of mosquitos into the crowd to raise malaria awareness, stating, "Not only poor people should experience this.."

First of all, This is some serious super-villiany shit. The fact that if everyone in the room sued him for this he could pay the damages out of pocket is kind of scary. If Bill ever gives a lecture on sewage treatment, I would recommend not attending.

Secondly, this has to be the most bugs ever released by Mr. Gates since Windows ME...

Okay... It's Been a While

I know, I know... I haven't updated in quite a while. Hopefully that will change now that I have some extra time on my hands. 

As I predicted, Iron Man turned out to be a brilliant movie... Lego Batman came out a lot sooner than 2011, though... probably to tie into the Dark Knight movie...

If you're just now stumbling onto this blog, welcome! I will be posting at least three times a day from now on... that's triple the chances of offending you!

I've Got Every Digit Crossed

Seems some of the major news outlets are reporting (with a cautious optimism) that the Writer's Strike currently depriving me of all that is good in life, not to mention a billion dollars worth of revenue for the industry, may be drawing to a close. Apparently the studios and the writers have both indicated a willingness to compromise on some of the issues at the root of the situation.

All I know is, the sooner these people get back to work, the sooner I can finally get my Heroes fix... the shakes are starting to get worse and I've started to see that weird symbol in my sleep...

Somewhere a Stoner is Weeping

Pizza Hut's latest promotion, the "Crunchy Cheesy Crust" pizza, certainly LOOKED very tasty in the commercials and advertisements I had recently seen. "Self," I said, being prone to grandiose and slightly deranged conversations with myself, "You should try out this delicious looking new take on what is a beloved staple in your limited diet..." (I tend to be verbose when carrying on pompous dialogues with my self.)

Order it I did, and eagerly popped open the box to devour my fresh pizza... only to unveil a rather sad looking, flat pepperoni pie with what appeared to be burnt parmesan webbed across the crust. Biting into the first slice confirmed the dismal quality of the meal before me... bland, cardboard-like crust supported the most meager of cheese and pepperoni portions, regardless of my having indicated my preference for extra cheese during the ordering process. Reaching the crust, I found my initial assessment of the "crunchy cheesy" aspect of the crust to be proven... practically inedible.

Now I like Pizza Hut generally.... a good pan pizza from them will kill the munchies everytime... but this is one new idea that should have stayed in the corporate office drawing board.

We Need To Draw The Line Somewhere

Hayden Panetierre (Claire the indestructible cheeleader on Heroes for those of you who are, in fact, tragically unhip) has partnered with Dooney and Bourke to promote a leather handbag she designed. That's cool for her and all, but her handbag is made of real leather... from real dead cows slaughtered for that purpose. While this doesn't bother me in the least since my opinion of cows is rather low, it SHOULD be a big deal to Miss Panetierre, who has made several public statements concerning the plight of whales overseas... even going so far as to participate in a whale saving protest that resulted in a warrant for her arrest being issued in Japan.

So what I want to know is, where is the line? Whales are cute and make little chirruping noises that sound almost like language, so they're automatically more important on the list than cows? Are cows not worth saving because they happened to evolve into a rather tasty animal?

Pay Attention, Alanis

Rain on your wedding day? Not ironic.

Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife? Also not ironic. Unfortunate, perhaps... but not ironic.

But now when a man who happens to be the 91st richest man in the United States due to his multi billion dollar roofing business just happens to die falling off his own roof?

Well now, that's some delicious delicious irony right there, kids!

Pigs are Tasty, Part Two!!

A grocery store in Manhattan (who shall remain nameless for legal purposes) was advertising hams as being "delicious for Chanukah" earlier today... at least until someone pointed out to the clerks that, however delicious the ham may be, nobody who celebrates Chanukah would be even slightly interested...

It's a damn shame, though... with modern government inspection and cleanliness standards in place, surely it's time to relax some of those strict Jewish dietary laws. The pigs the rest of us are wolfing down by the ribload are most certainly a lot cleaner than the swine from Biblical times, right?

Besides, "Hanukkah Ham" has a nice ring to it...

I Dig The Zoolights

Zoolights starts tonight at the Denver Zoo, featuring 38-plus acres of lights including over 150 animated animal sculptures. I've been a couple times before and heartily recommend it for everyone with children or for people like me who are just kids at heart.

I will say this, though... go now before the snow comes. The displays are beautiful and the walk is refreshing, but only if you aren't slogging through a foot of the cold nasty wet stuff...

The Teachers in Brighton are Perverts

As news of a third teacher-student sex scandal rocks the small Colorado town of Brighton this morning, it makes me wonder: Was this sort of thing going on when I was in high school 18 years ago and just not as widely reported, or have the criteria by which teachers are selected become much more lax? Does anyone even bother to investigate the backgrounds of the people hired to teach the next crop of American youth, or can any old sex offender wander into a school and start teaching History 101?

Additionally, if this sort of thing WAS going when I was in high school, why did none of my teachers look like Debra LaFave?

The Gulf Didn't Just Fix Itself Overnight

I watched the new Dinner: Impossible on my DVR last night... Chef Robert Irvine (a personal hero of mine, even before this episode) cooked a thank-you dinner for over 1000 Hands On volunteers in Biloxi, Mississippi; despite kitchen and supply problems, he managed to pull it off.

He then purchased furniture for a woman who had been rendered homeless by Hurrican Katrina for the last 2 years and presented her with the key to her brand new house, completely built by the volunteers. It really made me realize that the problems Katrina left in the Gulf Coast haven't gone away, and they really still need help from people like us.

Florida Poised To Drop 30 IQ Points

Apparently the next front in the battle to turn America into a nation full of gullible idiots will be fought in Florida, where a group of educators and politicians have decided to pander to the religious right by attempting to overthrow the standards set for science education.

Florida state Board of Education member Donna Callaway states that evolution "should not be taught to the exclusion of other theories of the origin of life," and has proclaimed that she will vote against the standards.

Ms. Callaway has an extensive educational pedigree, which makes me a little upset that she doesn't understand the difference in definitions of the word "theory" when used by scientists as opposed to your typical man on the street.... differences that anyone who was paying attention in science class in junior high is aware of.

America is already slipping behind other countries in education (most notable the Asian countries who refuse to allow religion to dictate their government). This whole country is literally a generation or two away from becoming a Third World nation.

At Least She Made It Home Safely

I've been following this story about the British school teacher in Sudan pretty closely, and thankfully it recently had a happy ending. One thing really stood out to me, however... if this is the way people behave in a society predominated by a patriarchal fundamentalist belief system, why are Americans so eager to allow fundamentalist Christians to have such unfettered access to OUR government? Is this kind of narrow-minded reactionary persecution really what the American people want in their own country?

Take a good look, folks... each step we take to abolish the line between church and state brings us closer to this kind of society.

Can't See the Forest for the Phone Books

As I tripped over the phone books my local communications company had thoughtfully placed directly on my front doorstep, I was struck with the utter uselessness of said weighty tomes. In this day and age of Internet saturation, do we really need to kill the trees necessary to provide not one, but TWO giant books full of information that is readily available with literally a couple of button pushes on our cell phones?