09:44 – If you needed any more evidence that cats are evil, go read this. Yes, it’s true. Cats are responsible for most of the evils in the world. They carry a hideous infection that is almost impossible to treat and severely affects the functioning of the brains of people who are infected with it. (Most liberals suffer from toxoplasmosis. I am entirely serious about this. If they weren’t infected, they probably wouldn’t be liberals. If you’ve ever wondered how liberals can be so clueless, now you know.)
This is why I won’t let Colin catch cats. If you see a cat, do the world a favor. Shoot it and burn the corpse. Seriously. And don’t let your dog catch one, unless you want your dog to vote for Obama.
The Greek Kabuki theatre continues. Everyone, including Greece, knows that the EU, which is to say Germany, has already written off Greece as unsalvageable. Germany’s only concern right now is to minimize the cost of this mess for Germany. At this point, Germany and the rest of the EU are pretty confident that they have in place what’s necessary to prevent a Greek default from toppling the rest of the southern tier eurozone nations. (They’re wrong, as they’re about to find out.) So, smart money is now betting that Germany will allow Greece to collapse on 20 March, confident that the collapse can be contained to Greece. The only reason this may not happen is that Germany may still decide to buy a little more time to shore up its defenses, although the cost of doing so is extremely high. Greece, of course, is doing what it’s done all along; promising anything to get more loans, with no intention of even attempting to meet its commitments. Germany, of course, knows that Greece will promise anything to get more loans, but has no intention of even trying to comply with the loan conditions.
A year or so ago, I compared Greece to the sheriff in Blazing Saddles, putting his own gun to his head and threatening to shoot himself if everyone didn’t back off. That’s exactly what Greece has been doing for the last year, threatening to commit suicide and drag the rest of the eurozone down with it. But Germany has finally had enough. Merkel’s message to Greece is now, “Go ahead and pull the trigger. We’re better off without you anyway.”
I think I’m going to go ahead and sign up for Amazon Prime. For $79/year, it’s just about a no-brainer. Not only do we buy a lot of stuff from Amazon that we could be getting free 2-day shipping on, but there’s that one free ebook a month and the streaming videos to sweeten the pot. I’ve been checking lately, and a lot of stuff that Netflix has only on DVD, Amazon has streaming.
Speaking of Netflix streaming, we just bagged MI-5 (originally Spooks). It was supposed to be excellent, but it’s actually crap. Bad writing, bad acting, bad everything. We suffered through 10 or so episodes, hoping that it would get better, but it was actually getting worse. We bagged it in the middle of an episode last night. The MI-5 crew was attempting to deal with a dirty bomb going off in London. Except that it wasn’t a dirty bomb; it was a nerve gas release. Sitting there listening to the pseudo-scientific crap finally did it for me. Were you aware, for example, that VX nerve gas takes 1 to 2 hours to disable the victim (actually, it’s more like 15 seconds to a minute before loss of consciousness)? Or that the antidote is atropine (true, in combination with 2-PAM and a sedative) injected directly into the heart(!)? Or that 10 kilograms of VX released in London was sufficient to kill everyone in southeast England (actually, if it was distributed as an aerosol it might kill everyone within a few hundred yards downwind, not that a terrorist bomb is likely to produce an aerosol effectively.) I could deal with the scientific bogosity, but that in combination with sloppy writing and the actors chewing the scenery was just too much to tolerate.
This helps explain a LOT of women.
And OFD, for that matter. 😀
I have Amazon Prime, and I was surprised when I looked back at my order history and saw how much stuff I have bought through Amazon. A lot of shipments arrive the next day, presumably because the warehouse is local. However, the last two times I’ve paid $3.99 for next day delivery, I haven’t gotten it the next day.
I used to say that a show or movie was so bad that only gratuitous nudity could have saved it. Then I saw Eyes Wide Shut, which was so unspeakably wretched that not even gratuitous nudity and sex could save it.
I kinda liked Eyes Wide Shut, even without the gratuitous nudity, which was merely the icing on the cake… 🙂
(Yes, the cat thing explains the various weird behaviours of my feline loving friends. I think there should be a bounty on cats, and the death penalty imposed for breeding and/or selling them.)
I also have Prime. I live in Vegas. If I order something stocked by Amazon, I usually get it the next day if I order in the am. I also order for my local relatives and they pay me. Is that screwing Amazon? lol
I’ve had Amazon.com Prime since they introduced it in 2005 and it has paid for itself many times over. I do wish they had some sort of category for loyal customers. My Amazon.com order history goes back to 1998 and I shudder to think how many thousands I’ve spent there. I love it. 🙂
I’ve never gone with Prime, though we shop at Amazon a lot. I make sure I pick items marked eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25, and save up my order until hit hits the limit. I commonly get stuff in 2 days, maybe 3.
Bill wrote:
“This helps explain a LOT of women.
And OFD, for that matter. :D”
Are you suggesting that Dave’s had a cut and tuck job? 🙂
I dunno. Amazon Prime is too much like a Costco membership to me. I cannot justify that, as–living by myself–I do not need the extra large industrial size of anything, and I can easily find gas for less than the Costco I pass regularly in Indy. I know several folks here have found electronics at Costco cheaper, but I have not. We recently needed a large-screen TV for a video project, but the unit had to have RGB connectors. They had units with HDMI-only that were cheaper than competitors, but we finally bought an RGB unit from HH Gregg for considerably less than Costco wanted for the same unit.
Speed of delivery is never an issue for me. In fact, I often have to delay delivery to a day I will be home, when signatures are required (just happened last week). Nevertheless, there is a warehouse in nearby Whiteland, IN, and I often get next day delivery, even when I choose the cheapest 7 to 14 day option. I have a list of things I want, so whenever I need something, I can always get the total price up to the free delivery level. Many of the non-Amazon sellers now include shipping in the price, and do not charge anything additional for shipping (I am presuming this is because they can get shipping down to the actual cost, rather than the tier step Amazon uses). I just bought several sets of measuring scoops through Amazon from an Ace Hardware outlet, that was cheaper than I could buy them from my local Ace store. I like to leave certain size scoops IN the canisters of various baking needs, and these particular ones have short stubby handles that make them perfect for such use. Don’t know who makes these ones I like, but they are sold in Ace stores under the name Pyrex and Sunbeam.
I do buy a lot of stuff from Amazon–we were big Amazon shoppers in Berlin, too,–but would feel obligated to buy even more if I paid for Prime. Just cannot justify it.
This is interesting. I was in the post office to get postage for a mailing to Europe. The line was about 10 minutes long so I had a conversation with the person in front of me, who told me that they had dumped their landline about 3 or 4 years ago in favor of cell phones only. But she said that the cost of cell phones has gone up so much during the interim, that they were going back to a landline, and cutting their cell phones way back to basically urgent calls only. Right after she explained, the person in front of her, whom she knew, said they were doing exactly the same thing.
Wonder if this is a developing trend, like cutting out cable TV?
Greg wrote:
Not at all, I was referring to his bizarre preference for the felines.
I only rarely use my landline for phone calls, most of the calls I receive on it are marketing (judging by the fact that the callers rarely leave messages.) Since I swapped cell phone providers three years ago I’ve never exceeded the included time on my cell plan ($30/month), so I use it exclusively for outgoing calls. I can’t/won’t give up the landline because it’s a required part of my cable Internet package (I gave up the limited television component years ago) and because I want a backup system in case the cell phone stops working.
My previous cell phone provider charged so much for calls that I almost always went over the monthly cap. And they used a stick approach on payments – pay automatically by credit card or we’ll charge even more, whereas the new outfit use the carrot approach – pay automatically by credit card and we’ll give you a discount.
A few years ago I’d heard that Finns had largely abandoned landlines, don’t know if that’s still true.
Bill wrote:
“Not at all, I was referring to his bizarre preference for the felines.”
Which is why I was wondering if he’d been to the surgeon… Most guys I know like dogs and hate cats, but women are the other way around.
Cell phones in the US have definitely increased in cost and cut back on service. I was always able to text my kids in the US on their cell phones from Berlin, for the regular texting rates. But just a month or so before I came back, US cell phone companies stopped the receiving and sending of international text messages unless you purchased a special plan, which was prohibitively expensive for people who only send/receive a few text messages a month, like my kids. In spite of the change in the US, I was still able to text anybody in Europe, and German friends told me they could still text family in Asia and China, the same as always — so the change was solely in the US.
My rates have increased twice since I returned, and last summer, texting rates went up to equal that of a 1 minute phone call. And even in spite of all these increased rates, the technical quality of cell phone service in the US positively PALES to that of Germany. I get dropped calls 2 or 3 times a week, and often cannot hear or understand the person on the other end of the call. I NEVER lost a single call in Germany during nearly 10 years there with a cell phone. And call quality was like landlines used to be in the US — both people could talk at once, and neither was cut off, like the only-one-person-talking-at-a-time system in the US.
SteveF says:
sloppy writing and the actors chewing the scenery
I used to say that a show or movie was so bad that only gratuitous nudity could have saved it. Then I saw Eyes Wide Shut, which was so unspeakably wretched that not even gratuitous nudity and sex could save it.
Couple of things about that movie.
One, if you did not see it in a theater, on the big screen, then the impact is not the same. I have seen it both ways, and to me, the movie has essentially no impact on the TV screen. For me, the impression from the big screen was not any kind of moral questioning–which is what most critics shaped their essays around,–but instead, a rather scary ‘what have I gotten myself into?’ fear. All the darkness in the theater around me, and the darkness of the scenes, along with things happening that were clearly not what was promised to the Tom Cruise character, made it seem like a nightmare turned real.
I loved Kubrick’s movies–perhaps more than all other movie-makers, except Cameron Crowe–but Kubrick’s subject matter has been mostly reprehensible (or “wretched” as you note) to me. Kubrick actually accomplished, IMO, what Bergman only tried–unsuccessfully–to do: and that is to explore location settings in a way that it actually comes alive. Again, it takes the big screen to communicate that; it just does not work when tinier than life. Bergman just panned a still life picture (even though it may have been an actual real-life location), but Kubrick animated them and took you on an exploration through them, and consequently, they jumped out as quite real–none more prolifically explored than in “The Shining”. The images of Kubrick’s movies have stuck with me for my whole life. Who cannot visualize the dancing planets, viewed from space or the obelisk in the final scene of “2001: A Space Odyssey”? The pan of the entrance to the council flats in “A Clockwork Orange” with wind blowing trash around was not only a thing of beauty, but very true to life, if you ever spent much time in England during that period. And I don’t know how anyone could get the candlelit scene in “Barry Lyndon” out of their memory.
Second, remember that “Eyes Wide Shut” was not completely finished when Kubrick died. He intended (according to some accounts) to create a movie with nudity that was so elemental to the story, that no one would think anything about the nudity. To create a movie with nudity that would be mainstream with no objections, and not be considered pornography. Some have said his intent was to create a mainstream pornographic movie, but I personally just don’t believe that was his intent at all.
But the fact is that he was racing to complete the movie when he died. My understanding is that he was not happy with the cut that was just released to friends and the stars. It lacked the story impact he was aiming for. There is a lot written about how the intent of the movie was to encourage fidelity in marriage and warn of the dangers of devolving, uninspired marriage relationships, but that did not come across to me in the movie, and I have heard too much about his long-standing desire to do a movie in which nudity would be unremarkable.
We will never know what it could have been, but the movie had no significant impact on me–aside from the scariness of being in a situation that has gotten out-of-control. I really should read the novel it was based on, Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle, set in 1900 Vienna.
But your word “wretched” is the one I would use to describe the content of nearly all of Kubrick’s movies. Brilliantly made, but wretched.
I really liked Eyes Wide Shut, although I’m not sure if I can explain why. I hadn’t thought of the “what have I gotten myself into” angle, but now that you mention it…
I can’t explain why I like a lot of movies, books and artworks. When people ask my why I like something like that I just shrug and say, “I dunno, I just do.”
My favourite Kubrick movie is Dr Strangelove, and I see so many of the people from this forum as characters in it. Slim/Stu is the B-52 pilot, Major T. J. Kong, (Slim Pickens), our host is General Jack D. Ripper and I’m Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, who tries, unsuccessfully, to talk sense into Ripper.
“US cell phone companies stopped the receiving and sending of international text messages unless you purchased a special plan”
That must be it! We just had visitors here from the US. When they arrived at the airport, they were going to text us and tell us what train they were taking (we were to pick them up at the train station). However, their text messages just disappeared. They got no error report, so they thought the message had gone through. We got no message. Really great.
In the remake of Dr. Strangelove, can I be the guy who tells you you’re gonna be in big trouble with the Coca-Cola company?
I was trying to figure out who on this forum would be Colonel “Bat” Guano. It seems we have a volunteer.
I just loves me the idea of defending the honor of such a fine company!
Where is Slim these days, anyway? And Jeff/Geoff is missing and so is Paul.
Bill wrote:
“In the remake of Dr. Strangelove, can I be the guy who tells you you’re gonna be in big trouble with the Coca-Cola company?”
Bat Guano? Sure. I thought of you in that role but it seemed diplomatic not to say it. Perhaps OFD could fight you for the role… 🙂
The guy from Alexandria, Steven from Colorado (“anti liberal filtering enabled”) and Ron Morse are all AWOL although Ron seems still to be active in the HardwareGuys board. Sarah was probably driven off by all the godless atheists here.
I’m not at all offended by portraying Bat. He was gung-ho and ready to defend the American way to the death, but was reasonable enough to help Mandrake break into a Coke machine. He was one of the more sane characters, actually.
I’m also a big Kubrick fan. I recently heard a podcast where they were discussing 3 of his films, Paths of Glory, Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon. In talking about Barry Lyndon, they mentioned an essay done by a group of art historians that list the paintings that inspired the composition of many of the shots in the film. My favorite summation of the film: Kubrick used 20th century equipment to make a 17th century film.
I saw Clockwork Orange in original release (X rating – got a shill to buy the tickets for a friend and I as we were underage) and in the slightly cut version and can’t see that it made a real change. My understanding is that it was only a few frames in two scenes.
I have my cell for calls only, and do not text, surf the web or watch movies on it. We have a landline for emergency use but we’re thinking of dumping it as not worth the exorbitant cost the phone company here charges. We will revisit the whole thing when we move in June, I reckon, and will probably just go with the fastest internet connection we can afford and stick to the cells. No broadcast or cable TV, and that last has just been reinforced today by reading an interview with Alan Parsons, who, among other possibly controversial statements, said that a lot of cable and broadcast and satellite stuff has the audio and video out of sync, sometimes way outta sync. He also said TV sound blows, as do the Jonas Bros., and that sounds about right to me.
I got an email earlier today from our cats, who just crossed the International Dateline and are headed directly to Oz to deal with certain malcontents and bigots Down Under and render them null and void. They will continue on across the vast Eurasian continent and the Atlantic and make quick stops along the way in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and also North Carolina. I believe they are packing serious heat that they may have purloined from our semi-secret artillery testing grounds up here.
Dogz are being used for practice along the way and then fed as chum to sharks and crabs.
My wife and I haven’t had landline in Albany NY area since forever, give or take. Nine years, maybe. We’ve had VOIP, MagicJack, and cell phones. When I was in Minnesota for a year I had a landline but that was only because it cost about $5 per month (including taxes and access charges and what-not) on top of my internet bill. And even that wasn’t old-style copper wire to the home, but fibreoptic cable magically converted to a telephone line in addition to DSL.
OFD, if you have two-way communication with your cats, see if they can’t emasculate the bigots and malcontents before killing them. They’d probably agree it’s a great idea – cats love to play with their prey before finishing it off, and this would give them something like a little mouse to bat around.
OFD wrote:
“I got an email earlier today from our cats, who just crossed the International Dateline and are headed directly to Oz to deal with certain malcontents and bigots Down Under and render them null and void.”
The schnauzers I mentioned are eagerly awaiting the arrival of some NE felines to play with/eat. One of them got out of the back yard yesterday and killed half a dozen of the neighborhood moggies before I recaptured her. I had to clean all the blood and gore off her face and teeth and told her that she wouldn’t get to “meet” the aforementioned Northern hemisphere moggies when they arrive if she did that again. I don’t care about the neighborhood felines, but I have to get on with their owners…
I’ve given the schnauzers strict instructions that they’re to call the local priest so that your moggies can be given the last rites before they’re dispatched. Not that it’ll do them any good.
We have had moggies here who caught prey, played with it a while and then just got bored and let it go, relatively unharmed. Female cat does the usual catching of rodents when she feels like it, and the big male only goes for flying prey, like bugs and birds, and I watched him once catch a bird in flight. So a couple of mangy doggies ought to know now that they won’t be able to get away; they will be chased down and eviscerated, slowly, before the cats move on to the biped bigots and malcontents.
Better moggies than doggies any old day, sez OFD.
The only good cat is a flat cat.
(I just Googled Santorum, he was born the exact same day as me, too bad I can’t vote for him…)
If he were running in a Democrat primary you could.
I took in a stray kitten who grew into a 12-pound tom. One day I watched him successfully stalk an American Robin in our yard, an impressive feat considering his size, his black-and-white coloring, and the short grass. The bird took off when the cat was six or eight feet away, at which point he launched himself diagonally up and intercepted the bird three or four feet off the ground. Impressive feat.
SteveF wrote:
” too bad I can’t vote for him…
If he were running in a Democrat primary you could.”
Yeah, I know
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-15/dead-people-still-on-us-election-list/3831116
brad says:
“US cell phone companies stopped the receiving and sending of international text messages unless you purchased a special plan”
That must be it! We just had visitors here from the US. When they arrived at the airport, they were going to text us and tell us what train they were taking (we were to pick them up at the train station). However, their text messages just disappeared. They got no error report, so they thought the message had gone through. We got no message. Really great.
Worst part is that my kids and I have used T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom since forever. You would think they would connect their two own companies! But no. And–as your friends found out–there is no warning that this is happening. I called T-Mobile when the kids and I found out texting was not reliable, and they told me that, yeah, we don’t do international calling or texting anymore unless you pay extra for it. Meanwhile, I had also called Vodafone in Germany, and they knew nothing about it, but basically said they used Deutsche Telekom to carry their calls. As far as they knew, texting (and calling) worked to anywhere in the world.
To me, this is the stuff that company presidents should be put up against a firing line for. Communication is often a matter of urgency and life-and-death. It should not be a plaything for CEO’s to diddle with, like a cat and mouse game.
My uncle was just reminding me that the Bell phone company building in downtown Indianapolis was moved 52 feet south and rotated 90 degrees back in the ’30’s — WITH NO INTERRUPTION OF SERVICE TO ANYONE!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Building_%28Indianapolis%29
You think anybody in management today even cares about interruption of service, let alone have the know-how to do that kind of thing? They sure as hell did when they were a tightly regulated monopoly!
I agree with Greg that I cannot tell you why I adore Kubrick’s movies so much, when the subject matter is often so repulsive. Even Lolita turned me off — the thought that a middle-aged man could possibly believe he could have a long-term relationship with a teenager is deranged, — but everything about that movie was brilliantly done. (The closest real-life marital situation I know of, was Ricky Nelson’s first true love, Lorrie Collins, who at 17, suddenly dumped Ricky to marry Johnny Cash’s manager, who was in his 40’s. Collins admits it was a horrible mistake, and Nelson’s friends have said he privately maintained she was the only woman in life that he really loved. Bottom line, the marriage to the much older man did not last.)
In fact, every time I went to see a Kubrick movie, my expectations were not high, but I left absolutely energized and thrilled. I felt that same way going to the Gardner museum in Boston. Expectations were low, but the experience was unexpectedly magical.
I was disappointed in “Eyes Wide Shut”. Jeri and I had seen “A Clockwork Orange” together in a revival theater not long after we were married — complete with teen attendees dressing up in costume, just like Rocky Horror revivals. She was horrified at Clockwork Orange and could never understand how I saw anything redeeming in it. To me, it was a thrilling 2 hour 16 minute work of art. And like Greg, I cannot explain it. So I had a lot of trouble getting her to attend Eyes with me, but she finally did — just because I talked about it so much, and she loved going to movies. She did not think much of it, but it was not so repulsive to her as Clockwork had been.
Kubrick was supposedly the ultimate family man — very close to his wife and daughters. I guess I have to conclude that the visual elements of “Eyes Wide Shut” did not disappoint, but a movie supposedly lauding the virtues of marital fidelity is not something I think was wretched enough to make it a Kubrick success. And that is not how the novella it was based on turned out.
That movie guy I worked with years ago, Roger in Chicago, maintains that taking out even a few frames of a movie is travesty and an affront to the artist. There just is no damned good reason to remove parts of a movie, which destroy the artwork of the movie-maker — especially when the changes are aimed only at selling a few more tickets. And with Kubrick it is even more egregious, because every frame had intent to him. Roger complained loudly about the cuts made in the US in Eyes. And apparently, — even today — it is not possible to obtain a DVD of the unmodified version in the US. Sad commentary on ‘the land of the free’.
The Gardner Museum is amazing, and has a great series of stories about it since it was built by Isabella Stewart Gardner. I went there on a school trip when I was in 8th grade and it blew me away. Took my wife there on one of our first dates and it blew HER away.
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/