Honorable Mentions

Honorable Mentions of the Last Decade errr, stuff what didn’t make the like/hate list…

Mike Richards: The funniest fuck in Canadian Radio. Mornings on the Fan960.

Crackdown: The first game in a long time I actually wanted to finish!

Buying a House: Something I never thought I would ever be able to do. Sure no cunt can raise your rent or boot your ass out on an overlooked loophole, but it sucks every fucking penny out of my bank account every two weeks.

The Rise of HDTV: Watching standard def fare now just does not cut it anymore. High-Definition is “da-bomb” as the kids say. It’s too bad we get raped by the cable corporations in Canada with mediocre service, less than half the HD channels offered by US cable companies, and ridonkulously high monthly bills to boot!

The Saga Concludes: with the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (or, as Julian would say: Revenge of the Two Guys) the Star Wars Saga ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. While the flick was better than the first two prequels in almost every way, it was nowhere near as good as Episodes IV-VI.

G4: My favourite digital cable channel makes it Canada bringing with it the greatest Newsfotainment (My word. Your welcome.) show of the twenty-first century: Attack of the Show! TV’s only source for all the stuff you care about.

20 Years @ the ‘Corn: December of 2009 marked the twentieth year I’ve been hanging out to drink, write, and be merry at Calgary’s Original Pub, The Unicorn.

Iron Man: Jon Favreau shows that it is possible to make a comic book flick that doesn’t completely suck grilled donkey balls.

Jean Chretien: What can you say about this guy, the most crafty, arrogant, and possibly evil Prime Minister since Trudeau is STILL shooting his mouth off for attention. This time berating Prime Minister Harper for NOT sucking up and kissing the ass of left wing, totalitarian communist China! I suppose I could list all the human rights violations and crimes the Communist Chinese Government has perpetrated against it’s people over the last fifty years, but we don’t have all day here. Look Jean, you are no longer der Furer of Canada soy how about you shut the fuck up because no one wants to hear your leftist clap-trap anymore.

The Left-Wing Media: It’s funny, but I’m old enough to remember when the media - wait for it – reported on the news with objectivity! Now all we have, on every channel it seems, is left-wing, socialist editorializing instead of news. Oh well.

Ten Years: Part Deux

10 Things I Hated About the Last Decade (again, in no particular order)

One million people, all with cars, all in front of me driving like fucking idiots.

The Calgary Flames not winning the ’04 Stanley Cup.

I didn’t manage to become rich and famous, to spite trying real hard.

Realizing I need my friends more than they need me.

Ernest Cline and Dan Pulick for ripping off my screenplay for “Cup Crazy” and making it into “Fanboys.” Bastards.

Where the fuck are my flying cars? It’s the 21st century ferchissakes! And what about a base on the moon, or mars? For that matter, where the hell are the aliens?

Peter Jackson winning the Oscar for Return of the King. Really Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences? Really? You give a guy the Oscar for the third, and weakest film in a trilogy? If your just giving these things away like candy at Halloween, why not just give one to George Lucas for Revenge of the Sith?

Al Gore for claiming to love the environment while at the same time flying around the world with an entourage of a hundred people in private jets. That’s right Al, I should give up my car, but you go right ahead and keep burning millions of gallons of environmentally unfriendly jet fuel every month.

The rise radical Islam, and the erosion of western values through the Liberal and Socialist policies of political correctness in North America and Great Britain.

Barack Hussein Obama bringing extreme left wing Socialism, high taxes, and big government to what was once the Greatest Country in the World.

Ten Years! Ten!

10 Things I Liked About the Last Decade (in no particular order)

Energy drinks becoming the new socially acceptable alternative to crack.

We are now officially ten years closer to the Zombie Apocalypse.

Watching the Calgary Flames in the ’04 Stanley Cup run.

Smoking Cuban cigars, and drinking rum on the back deck.

The sheer variety of delicious USAmerican microbrewery beers made available here in CanadaAmerica… mmmmm Anchor Steam...

Jason Statham becoming THE premiere Action Hero of the 21st Century.

David Letterman and Tiger Woods proving that no matter how rich or married you are it’s still okay to be all about the hootchies.

Tegan + Sara, and Metric getting me interested in music again. Nice of them, don’t you think?

The increase in the Parent/Child “buffer-zone.” Those who know will understand the stress this relieves!

Io Taraji. D’ya loik dags? I loik dags!

Flick Review

STAR TREK
Directed by JJ Abrams

To quote Monty Burns: “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I hate, and I don’t hate this.” Right off the bat let me say I’ve found JJ. Abrams’ previous work to be mediocre at best, Lost jumped the shark after the second episode, and while I do agree that when an alien monster does eventually rampage through Manhattan, the first images of it will indeed be shot with crappy phone cameras, and shaky digital video, when it came down to it I just didn’t care about the whiney, rich yuppie fucks fleeing the creature in Cloverfield. So even though I’m not one of the rabid fanboys currently drinking the Abrams Kool-Aid, as I was watching the flick I actually realized I was getting caught up in this shiny, new non-Shatner reboot of the Trek franchise.

In the 23rd century, The U.S.S. Kelvin is destroyed by a huge, technologically superior starship, killing George Kirk, but not before he rescues most of the crew, including his newborn son, Jim. Ten or so years later in Iowa, a young James Tiberius Kirk (Jimmy Bennett) is running from the law in his stepfather’s 1967 (clearly a tip of the hat to the first year of the original series) Corvette Stingray. He clearly has no use for the rules that govern society, as he is a total badass, even at this young age. Across the galaxy, on the planet Vulcan, the young Spock (Jacob Kogan) is hazed and abused by his fellow students for his half-Vulcan, half-Human heritage. Another ten years pass and we catch up with Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) at Starfleet Academy, and soon the two will find their destines entwined forever. Starfleet graduate and Commander Spock is totally pissed when Kirk “cheats” on the Kobayashi Maru test, but the hearing is cancelled when a distress call is received from Spock's home planet of Vulcan. Though Kirk is not assigned to a vessel, Dr. McCoy uses his position as a ranking medical officer aboard the Federation's flagship U.S.S. Enterprise to sneak his friend on-board. When Kirk learns that the phenomena appearing above Vulcan is the same “lightning storm in space” that preceded the destruction of his father’s starship the Kelvin, he convinces both Captain Pike and Commander Spock that the event may actually be a Romulan Trap. Kirk's instincts are correct, and the Romulan starship, Commanded by a nutcase named Nero (Eric Bana) reveals its true intentions, and a series of events that threatens the existence of the Federation and jeopardizing the destiny of Starfleet's best is thrown into motion.

The performances are for the most part strong, the fan service amusing, (Kirk fucks a green chick, a “red shirt” biting it, etc.) The visual effects are spectacular, and the story is half decent, even if they had to go back to the old “time travel” formula used so often in both the original series and movies.

The blu-ray boasts a ridonkulously beautiful 1080p transfer that just fucking pops. Blacks are inky good, colours vibrant, and detail is astoundingly sharp. The sound is every bit as good, Paramount’s Dolby True-HD sound track will beat your home theatre sound system to a pulp before taking names and doing all over again. The action sequences are stunning, and the dialog is as crisp and clear as you would expect. Defiantly one of the best audio tracks I’ve heard in a long time.

So while I don’t hate this flick, I still wish they could have found a way to get Shatner into the story, and I don’t really buy Abrams’ reason as to why he couldn’t be in it. Canon? Really? He couldn’t be in it because he dies in the future? And since when did trekkies care about continuity anyways? Star Trek continuity changed at the speed of plot if I recall…

Ah well.

Whatever.

It would seem that JJ Abrams succeeded in making a Star Trek flick that is accessible to both fans of the franchise, and non-trekkies alike and for that he should be applauded, and the flick is actually half-decent so I give it 4 sexy green chicks out of 5. The blu-ray extras are a different story altogether and only rate a 3 out of 5, as I really expected a lot more.

Climategate

Unlike the great Ian Malcolm, I love always being right. It has always been my opinion that something was terribly wrong with the Global Warming crowd. Maybe it was because they never wanted to debate the “science” behind it, or maybe it was because they treated sceptics like holocaust deniers, or maybe because most of them treated it more like a religion instead of the undecided science that it was. As it happens, Al Gore's Climageddon has been postponed. Like forever.

This week the New York Times, of all papers, broke the news that computer hackers broke into the files of one of the world's leading climate monitoring agencies at the U.K.'s University of East Anglia last week. What they uncovered has sent Liberal and Socialist Global Warming Nutbars screeching for an enquiry as to how the security breach occurred. They still don't want to admit they are wrong however...

For those that don’t know, the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit is the leading institution concerned with the study of anthropogenic climate change. The CRU was the main source of information Al Gore used for his hilarious work of fiction: An Inconvenient Truth.

Anyway, the hackers found thousands, yes THOUSANDS of e-mails, and documents pertaining to the powerful research unit’s stand on global warming. “So what?” you might well axe, “It’s their mandate, is it not to research and report truthfully on man made global warming?” Well, yes it is… and no. No because when their hypothesis (that evil mankind was killing the planet) didn’t mesh with their findings, so they decided to lie about what they discovered to prove their hypothesis. Which is, as everyone knows, the opposite of what scientists are supposed to do when researching.

Here are some examples of what was discovered by the hackers:

From Phil Jones To: Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University). July 8, 2004

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

For those that don’t know, the IPCC is the UN body charged with monitoring climate change. Apparently, Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth did not want it to consider studies that in any way challenge the view that global warming is real and caused by man.

In this next e-mail, Kevin Trenberth as good as admits there is no evidence of warming, yet…

From: Kevin Trenberth (US National Center for Atmospheric Research). To: Michael Mann. Oct 12, 2009
"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't... Our observing system is inadequate"

Here, they can’t even hide their distain for anyone who dares question their “reasearch.”


From: Michael Mann. To Phil Jones, Ray Bradley, Malcolm Hughes, S. Rutherford. Tue, 11 Mar 2003
The Soon & Baliunas paper couldn't have cleared a 'legitimate' peer review process anywhere. That leaves only one possibility—that the peer-review process at Climate Research has been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board. And it isn't just De Frietas, unfortunately I think this group also includes a member of my own department...
The skeptics appear to have staged a 'coup' at "Climate Research" (it was a mediocre journal to begin with, butits a mediocre journal with a definite 'purpose').
It is pretty clear that thee skeptics here have staged a bit of a coup, even in the presence of a number of reasonable folks on the editorial board (Whetton, Goodess, ...). My guess is that Von Storch is actually with them (frankly, he's an odd individual, and I'm not sure he isn't himself somewhat of a skeptic himself), and without Von Storch on their side, they would have a very forceful personality promoting their new vision.
There have been several papers by Pat Michaels, as well as the Soon & Baliunas paper, that couldn't get published in a reputable journal. This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the "peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal!

From: Michael Mann. To: Phil Jones and Gabi Hegerl (University of Edinburgh). Date: Aug 10, 2004
"Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future.”

There are about three thousand of these e-mails, many of which appear to be regarding the scientists trying to figure out ways to deny freedom of information requests to see their data, as well as exaggerating global warming data, illegally destroying information that contradicts their hypotheses, manipulating data to prove theories, and much, much more.

What else can one say? While Al Gore was ripping people off in Toronto, charging $500 a head to listen to his lies, the real news about so-called man-made climate change was breaking all over the world. We can only hope that the Liberal dominated mainstream media takes its collective head out of the sand and runs the story, but we all know how likely that is.

Crouching Tiger/ Drunken Moron

This is for me the “feel good” story of the week, quite possibly the year. Not only does it make me happy on a Monday, (no mean feat) but it also proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Darwin was right.

Some drunken dingle berry chose to break into the Calgary Zoo in the middle of the night and jump into the tiger cage, where a two-year-old Siberian Tiger mauled his arm so badly that it may have to be removed. Awesome.

Which leads me to axe this question: how many tinnies of Lucky Strong do you have to crush to make breaking into the zoo and crawling into the tiger paddock seem like a reasonably good idea? I’m betting eight, give or take one or three.

I mean really, you and a bud are hanging out having a few “pops” and at some point the two of you decide to move the party elsewhere. I’ve been there and done that, it happens, BUT almost (well, always) 100% of the time “elsewhere” ends up being a pub, or someone’s flat somewhere within walking distance. Never, and I mean not even one time did I ever say: “Hey McBain, what say you and I wander on over to the zoo and play pin the tail on the tiger for real.” Nor would I. Personally there is not enough booze on the planet to make that seem like a good idea.

The saddest thing about this story is that the drunken tool who was mauled survived the attack, living to possibly breed and spread his stupidity, and moronisizm (yep, I had to make up a new word for this idiot’s actions) onto the next generation and this my friends is the real tragedy.

Indian Summer??

So seeing how the last few days have brought us chilly weather more appropriate to the season, I feel I must think back to last Wednesday, the 23rd of September. On that day here in the Town of Cows, it got up to 93F (that’s 34C for all you metricentrics out there) which was apparently a new temperature record for that date in history… or at least since 1998 or something.

Everybody at the office, from the code monkeys hanging around the lunch room, to the choads in the lab were blathering on about the “Indian Summer” (or for the Politically Correct out there “Native American Indigenous Persons Summer”) which got me wondering; what exactly is an “Indian Summer” anyway?

I heard the term tossed around in my youth and had always been under the impression that it was something that that happened when the region experienced a full summer, followed by a few days, weeks, or maybe even a month of uncharacteristically warm early autumn weather.

I had to know the truth so I whipped it out. That’s right, I pulled out the old Webster’s Dictionary and found out that Indian Summer is described as 1. a period of warm or mild weather in late autumn or early winter.

Not only were the code monkeys, and the lab choads wrong but (gasp!) I was too!

There’s a first time for everything I suppose…