Thursday, July 20, 2006

Blog Question Of The Day:

Can anyone explain to me who would be STUPID enough to fill out a mortgage application that came to you in an unsolicited email that linked to a Geocities webpage?

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

World of Warcraft News

Anything Elite sucks.
I bought gas today.

Why aren't we rising up in protest about this? I spent $82 to fill my tank today. Granted it was almost empty but that kind of bill seems like a touch much. Isn't this the type of thing that other people around the world would riot about? Why is there no mass assemblage in the streets about how we are being systematically sodomized at the pumps?

I'd pay $1.159 a liter for gas if I was getting something for my money. If I knew I was going to drive on perfect roads, because I was paying this much for gas, then okay. I drive around this province and its damn near required that you have the ground clearance of a 4x4. If my tank was being filled with gasoline compiled half of ethanol, then I'd be okay with the price. If it was the cost of progress, and the move from a non-renewable, to a renewable resource then okay, I'll pay the luxury tax.

But one dollar and sixteen cents per LITER so some Arab, or Albertan producer, or worse and American processor, can get fat and lazy because he has a a precious commodity, that just sticks in my throat. Or more well said, I would like it to get stuck in my pocketbook. Canada is one of the world's leading producers of petroleum, and I still wait nine months for surgery, watch our military helicopters crash into the ocean, and pay more per capita for income tax than anyone short of Holland. And at least they have legal drugs and prostitution.

At $1.159 a liter, I want to know, what's in it for me?

Sunday, July 16, 2006

I am going to CLERKS II on opening weekend.

Who's with me!?!?!?!
I just noticed something.

There is a direct parallel between the two Quentin Tarantino films, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. (I group both Kill Bill films together because they are, in essence, one film) One of the heroes in each film, who are actually villians, if you stopped to think about it, have a revelation, and recant their ways. At one specific, precise moment in time, their lives change, and they trade their villianous ways for a path that is more virtuous.

In Pulp Fiction, Jules and Vincent are shot at by a crazy kid with a hand cannon. He fires off every round he has, from close range, and doesn't hit them a single time. After this event, Jules decides to abandon his so-called evil ways, and walk the earth. This is in apparent reference to the David Carradine TV show, Kung Fu. David Carradine is one of the stars of . . .

Kill Bill, where the heroine of the movie, Beatrix Kiddo has her own epiphany, 7/8 of the way through the second movie, where she realizes she is pregnant. As she later explains in the flashback that presents this event, this was the moment that she realized that she couldn't be a killer, and a mother, in the same breath. So, like Jules, she abandons her evil ways. She doesn't go back to Bill, let him think she is dead, and tries to start a new life as someone's wife, and a mother, and a simple music store clerk. And if you've seen the movie, you know how that works out.

Its also curious that in both movies, the reformed villian, has a moment where they are tested in their resolve on this new path. In Pulp Fiction Jules has to talk Ringo and Funny Bunny out of pushing him to kill them. Guns are in people's faces, and its very tense, but he manages to escape the situation without busting a cap in their asses, as he so succinctly puts it. Likewise, in Kill Bill, Beatrix has to talk another assassin out of making her kill her, at the moment of her revelation. Beatrix could easily have dispatched her so-called dispatcher. But instead she finds a way out of the situation that does not involve bloodshed.

Now I don't know if these parallels were intended, or they just kind of happened. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note them. Or maybe it just seems so because its 1:30 in the morning.