Archive for March 7th, 2008

“In the Mouth of Madness” Review

Friday, March 7th, 2008

Sam Neill and Charlton Heston in a John Carpenter horror movie with Loftcraftian themes. Sounds like a pretty good start.

Neill plays an insurance investigator that goes after fraudulent claims. He ends up working for the head of a publishing company that has managed to lose their premiere horror writer just before the completion of his most highly anticipated novel. Problem is that readers of these particular horror tales tend to go just a little bit nuts.

The entire movie is set up as a flashback as Neill explains to a psychologist in the looney bin how he has come to be in a straitjacket with crazy googly eyes. As all tales told in the nuthouse do, this tale begins when everything is perfectly normal. Things progress to kind of strange, and then drop off the map into crazy town. Neill and a female sidekick from the publishing company travel to a fictional New Hampshire town where they encounter the writer and hordes of mutated, unspeakable horrors.

The sad part is that this seems like a concept that should work but throughout the entire movie just comes off as exceedingly lame. I absolutely love Carpenter’s “The Thing”, enjoy “Halloween”, and kind of like “They Live”. But “In the Mouth of Madness” just doesn’t live up to the promise of the premise. It’s not as bad as “The Fog”, but it could be much, much better.

If it ever is remade, the basic skeleton is okay. Improve the dialogue, acting, setting, costume, and makeup designs. Make the scary set pieces scarier and the unspeakable horrors more horrifying. But most of all, make sure that the author has a reason for doing everything. His books became so popular that he has gained power from all of his believers. The power drives him mad along with all of his readers, but he never seems to have any plan or goal or anything for our heroes to fight against. Neill has nothing to fight against. He goes from not knowing what’s going on to running away. It just left me feeling like the story was a little directionless.

Good luck on the remake, Hollywood. I know you’ll get to it eventually.

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Save money on vacations

Friday, March 7th, 2008

Everybody’s into saving money these days. Gas prices jumping and house values falling leaves everyone pinching pennies. Now that your tax refunds are on the way and summer is fast approaching, look into ways to spend that refund on your summer luxury vacations and save some cash.

Many sites have deals on airfare or hotels. This site can save you 40% or more on your entire vacation, as a package. Even if you’re looking to escape at the last minute, check out the deals and see what you can save.

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Party Politics

Friday, March 7th, 2008

In a weird twist of events, CNN is reporting that neither Obama nor Clinton can win the Democratic nomination unless Florida and Michigan get their delegates counted.  Some are calling for a redo of the primary or caucus (whichever it was they held) so that the rules set by the DNC will no longer have been broken.

If they do so, I think it indicates that Clinton will win since she won both of those races when they were held the first time.  Then again, Obama wasn’t on the ballot at the time.   Then again, there’s no reason to believe that he would have win.  Then again, we don’t even know if there will be a redo.

Ok I guess we just wait and see.  Why, oh why can’t these people make decisions before the end of a news cycle so I can find out what’s going on?

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Backgammon Considerations

Friday, March 7th, 2008

Last year my husband got very addicted to backgammon. He would play against the computer over and over again and he got pretty good at it. I couldn’t get into it because the easy setting made really annoying errors and I didn’t like the idea of winning because the computer was throwing the game. By this time, my husband was too advanced for me and I didn’t know anyone else who wanted to play. Come to find, the world lives online and I can play against real people with different levels of experience.

There are so many different sites on the net that provide a great place to play backgammon that it can be hard to decide which one you want to spend your time at. It makes sense to see what extras each site provides for you.

Is it popular enough that there will always be someone to play with or will you be sitting and waiting for a partner for a long time? This can be very inconvenient if you’re just looking for a little practice during your lunch break so you’ll want to find a well visited site.

Does it offer a variety of people to play with? BackgammonMasters.com has people from all over the world playing because their site is offered in 14 different languages and they are constantly adding more.

Can you play for fun or play for money or must it be just one or the other? As a beginner I wouldn’t want to play for money but as I improve, it may be something that appeals to me. A site with both options doesn’t require me to acclimate myself to a new gaming environment if I change my mind.

Does it offer other games to learn and play? Maybe you want to learn other games as well or polish your skills at one you’ve already leaned. Backgammon might be just the starting point of gaming for you and, once again, you don’t want to have to relearn the environment when you change games.

There are many things to consider but once you do, you will find the right gaming site for you.

Posted in Board Games, Web | Comments Off

Who Has It Worse?

Friday, March 7th, 2008

Oil hits a new high. Wait, didn’t I just say that a couple days ago? It’s at $106/barrel and with a possible interest rate cut that will further undermine the value of a dollar, the cost could go higher still. We’ve passed the point where inflation adjusted prices hit in the 80′s energy crunch so we can officially start whining.

Yes mom and dad, I have it worse off than you did. It kinda makes me happy that I tried the wrong password so often on my IRA access – now I can’t see how badly it’s doing.

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Planning Time

Friday, March 7th, 2008

A couple of times, I have tried shopping on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) and each time I’ve found at least one thing at an excellent price that fits perfectly into my gift giving plans.  However, for the past few years it seems like stores are opening earlier and earlier and I’m getting older and older – I just can’t do it anymore.  The hustle and bustle still hold it’s charm for me, but the idea of getting in one of those long lines lost its appeal ages ago.  Especially since, more often than not, I’m sporting a child or two while waiting in that long line.

So how can a person overcome this problem?  Shop online.   If last Christmas was too crazy for your taste with the last minute shopping and spending more than you meant to, start planning now.  You don’t need to come up with a firm list, or even buy gifts that you will hide and forget for several years, but DO start looking at things in a “Jane Doe would really like that” sort of light.  Then you can jot down your idea and use it when the 2008 Thanksgiving specials come out.  If you get on the mailing list at BlackFriday.com (a site that has online black Friday ads from places like WalMart, KMart and Kohls, you can get notification of when these places have their ads up and then you can shop from home.

Think of the glory of it!  You won’t have to stand in long lines.  You won’t have to get up early.  You won’t have to deal with driving from store to store to see if ANYPLACE has that special toy for your niece.  You can still go out and look upon those who did not know they could live their lives with such ease and pity them, if you want.

Posted in Shopping, Web | Comments Off

Conspiracy Theory

Friday, March 7th, 2008

A bomb goes off in New York and a person on a bike is seen hastily riding away.  Letters arrive in Congress with pictures of a person standing in front of the bombed building (before it was bombed) with a sign saying “We Did It”.  We are told that the two are unrelated and given a plausible story for how this could be so.

The conspiracy theorists are going to love this one.  I’m even tempted to come up with something.

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Pen-vertising

Friday, March 7th, 2008

Back in the day when I had a regular job, the item I had to order most often from the office supply store was pens.  We were constantly losing them – usually to the customers.  Oh sure, they always said they’d bring it back but they rarely did.  Just kidding.  It was usually an absentminded thing for them to do.

Usually we saw it as a less than thrilling part of doing business (though one manager tried to tie the pens to the registers somehow).  What we should have been doing was putting our name on those bic pens so that we could make our name known to them.  It’s a bit surprising how few people know what chain they’re going to when they see a movie and we could have tried to build some customer loyalty by letting them take our pens – imprinted with our web address of course!

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