Wait a minute.. only $24 Billion?

I have been loosely following the budget problems of California.  I have not really looked too deep into it’s politics because it is a local problem and most state problems I ignore,  except for the state I am living in.  Now it seems that they are saying that if California fails, the nation will fail and blah blah blah.  This doom and gloom shit is getting on my nerves,  things are bad, but face it, they have been worse in the past 100 years.

So let’s say that California “fails”.  Does this mean the whole economy there fails,  do the ports close?  Will I not be able to get a bottle of wine?  My guess is that no, they will still be accpeting imports and will still be exporting wine.  Industry there will not fail,  the government will fail.  The articles about this list spending cuts, like closing parks, which generate enough to keep themselves afloat from what I can tell,  or some police unit.  The acomplishments listed for this unit include finding the Peterson wife and baby and the Anna Nicole OD investigation.  If those are their claims to fame and the reason they exisit I think the state could do without them.

Here’s the deal though,  they only need to make up $24 billion in their budget.  This is somewhere around a fifith of what Bank of America has gotten in the bailout.  A bailout which so far has done nothing but prop up greedy corporations that are hording the money and did not deserve it in the first place.  $24 billion would allow the state to meet a budget, keep employees paid and keep business flowing.. notice I said a state, not a greedy corporation.

The current bailouts have been nothing but paybacks to the people that put politicans in office.  Huge corporations,  big education keeps chugging along,  and the Unions.. they own car companies now.  The bailouts continue to fuck over the middle class blue collar worker,  you know, the state government fucks that work for the DMV or state police or any other job.  A lack of a bailout for California proves that they don’t give a shit about these people.  I hope they get one.  I also hope the whole state falls into the ocean, minus the friends I have there.

I’ll take you all on

Melissa and I went to check out Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen yesterday.  I liked it better than the first,  the action was better,  the one liners were better and the overall experience was more rounded.  By more rounded I mean more shit blew up than last time and Megan Fox was seen running in slow motion more often.  I was looking forward to this movie since the credits of the first.  I was so geeky that when I saw Luxor in Vegas had a wrap going up on the Pyramid for it (Vegasrex had pics of a half completed wrap) that I requested updated pictures of it.  I am not a big fan of the wraps in Vegas but this one was cool:

Luxor Transformers Wrap

I went into the movie expecting a lot and I was happy that they exceeded my expectations.  Normally I am let down,  but they turned Prime into the badass motherfucking robot he has always meant to me.  He was a killing machine.  He had action star one liners.  The only thing missing was him whipping out a giant robot wang and going to town on robot whore.  I hear that is on the works for the next one.

Speaking of the next one I am wondering what they will do.  I am guessing we will get some Shockwave action,  maybe Unicron?  The world knows about the giant robots now so how about Autobot city?  They still need to do the Dinobots.  At this point I am almost willing to see a fully CGI cast Transformers movie,  tons of bots, few humans, all real locations.  I am not sure how long that would take to render (talk is 1 frame of Transformers 2 in Imax took a Day to render) but I think I could see that in my lifetime.  Of course I am sure this could be cut in half if you just drop 30% of the fake lens flare that seems all the rage these days

Find My iPhone works, and it is awesome.

via happywaffle.livejournal.com

I am still thinking about how I feel about this. Sure, it is a great feature to have, but I have to think all Tony Soprano here. If I can track it easily, then they can track it easily. The question to me is, does this feature run and I don’t know it?

Posted via web from Zombiechuck

The Hangover and a Questionable Cartoon

Melissa and I went to check out the “Hangover” yesterday.  We had been reading good reviews and got some good word of mouth from freinds, so we went.  It was a funny movie but for both of us, too much hype ruined it to some extent.  It fits into the “Dude, Where’s my Car?”  and “Harold and Kumar” category of comedy for me.  Slapstick, gross out, and absurdist humor mixed together in an R rated comedy.

The modern R rated comedy is starting to depend a bit too much on the shock of the joke.  I think there is a generation that grew up on movies like “Bachelor Party” and “Caddyshack” and the modern movie makers think they need to top those.  “Bachelor Party had a donkey show,  we need to top that!”  There is definately a forumula to this kind of movie and “Tha Hangover” followed it.

There was one joke in the movie I liked a lot.  It was not a big joke,  but for some reason I just liked it.  Someone could develop the idea into a movie on it’s own and I would watch it.  I will not spoil the joke, but it made to do a search on the internet which lead me to this jem.

I am not sure on the origins of this clip.  I am very familiar with Tiny Toons.  It is actually the reason for a great run of other Speilberg cartoons (Freakazoid and Animaniacs).  This seems to be a legit lost episode, but it does not fit the tone of the series as I remember it.  Either someone did a hell of a job reproducing tradational animation on a budget or this one somehow slipped past the producers to become fully realized.  All I know is there is no way in hell it would air on any corporate owned network during a children’s block.

Prick with a fork

via consumerist.com

Posted via web from Zombiechuck