It seems that my Snakes on a Plane category is the number one search result on google.co.uk for the phrase “snakes on a plane sex bit.” Rather odd, since this person had Firefox’s safe search feature active.
While I was marvelling at my search ranking I checked out the next result, a movie review on a site called, “Kids in Mind.” It was pretty funny. This creepy web site’s review of Snakes on a Plane consisted of a list of the profanity, violence and sex in the movie, followed by descriptions of the movie scene where the profanity, violence or sex occurred.
PROFANITY 6 - 18 F-words and its derivatives, 13 sexual references, 17 scatological terms, 11 anatomical terms, 15 mild obscenities, name-calling (punk), 5 religious profanities, 12 religious exclamations.
Hmmm, I only counted 15 F-words. I’ll have to watch the DVD again.
I can just imagine some sex-obsessed freak watching Snakes on a Plane over and over to count the snake bites AND, incidentally, to see a woman’s actual naked breast in the uhhhh sex bit. Horrors! Anything to promote Family Values, eh? I find it rather sick to post a list like that on a site called “Kids in Mind.” Anyone looking for kids’ movies with their kids might stumble upon it. Sheesh.
Now you know why China frightens me…and why “I, Robot” may not be so far off…
It’s mind boggling — almost incomprehensible for me.
Hugs…
Mind-boggling? Robots? What is this fellow yammering about?
Technology isn’t the Latest Big Thing. Technology is what we have been using for millennia to enhance our senses and increase our capabilities. Technology is a fancy way of saying “tools.” Any sufficiently advanced human can distinguish technology from witchcraft. Witchcraft? Burn the Witch! (Damn, burning witches again… apologies to my Wiccan friends.)
Globalization happened already. It’s done, it’s over. We’re now in the phase where we carefully adjust Americans’ salaries to match Chinese and Indian salaries - and lifestyles. If they do it right - well, you know, like boiling a frog slowly from cold water. Maybe they’ll find new career paths for everyone whose job description is now outsourced to India. Maybe we’ll learn to downsize our lifestyles to accommodate our globalized pay rates. Maybe the U.S. economy won’t collapse. We have to get all this done before China gets into full production.
You can get off your high horse and join the rest of the world, or you can outfit your army with bibles, flags and guns and send them out to stop human evolution. I’m more afraid of one ignorant, neurologically stagnant American politician than I am of all of Asia.
The US is very backward technologically. To put new technologies in place requires the regulatory equivalent of an Act of God. The people themselves are psychologically and neurologically resistant to change, so much so that a large percentage of Americans deny that something as basic as evolution can occur. At the personal level, this means most Americans believe that self-improvement is a fallacy. Well, I don’t accept that adults can’t learn.
The recent movie “I, Robot” is an abomination, intended only to reinforce the average American’s fear of innovation. Please read the book by Isaac Asimov, a prolific writer of the 20th century. The hard-wired personalities of the robots in it started with three laws that prevented them from harming a human or even, through inaction, allowing us to be harmed. Any attempt to break those laws resulted in a mechanical breakdown. I wish humans were wired this way.
Innovation… in parts of Asia you can walk up to a vending machine and call its number on your cell phone to get a soda or an instant-heating boxed meal. I can’t even get cellphone service at my sister’s house on the Delmarva peninsula, much less dial up a soda.
China is going to need about 10 times the oil we need when they get up to speed. That’s 10 times the pollution, 10 times the greenhouse gases. No, more than 10 times the pollution, as they don’t have strict air quality standards. The cloud of pollution over China is clearly visible on NASA satellite photos. We’ve know about Global Warming since the ’50s.
As larger purchasers, India and China will shape what products are available in the entire world. An example of this economic inevitability, the state of Texas is the largest textbook purchaser in the U.S and for that reason Texas creationists influence public education by asking for textbooks promoting their point of view. Every bookseller wants Texas as a customer - you stock what your best customer wants. These are then made available to all American schools. You can find a number of links on this topic on Constitution.org. I hope y’all can use chopsticks.
Why do we ignore problems instead of dealing with them? I bet you’ve heard at least one person say, “Don’t bring that into my universe” or “ERASE ERASE ERASE” - with a cute little crossing and recrossing the arms - to avoid talking about Global issues. Like a little kid putting his hands over his ears so that he can’t hear you asking him to take out the trash.
The video mentioned new books - how many books have you read this month? Not magazines, not graphic novels, but real paper and ink books? How about this year? Were any of them non-fiction?
I’m interested in what you really thought about the video. I thought it was trite. It’s rather startling to me that any citizen of the world could respond with anything other than “tell me something I don’t already know.”
Does anyone remember Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, and his bizarre insistence that 29% of the registered voters constituted a mandate from the masses? Somehow The Lady of the Lake sketch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail came to mind. The 2000 and 2004 elections weren’t much better.
I am holding on to hope for the 2008 elections.
ARTHUR:
I am your king!
WOMAN:
Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR:
You don’t vote for kings.
WOMAN:
Well, how did you become King, then?
ARTHUR:
The Lady of the Lake,… [angels sing] …her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your king!
DENNIS:
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR:
Be quiet!
DENNIS:
Well, but you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR:
Shut up!
DENNIS:
I mean, if I went ’round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!
The children of Frank “200 Motels” Zappa and Jim “The Muppets” Henson are collaborating. It is likely to frag the underpinnings of civilization, if not the very fabric of the universe.
Were you as confused as I was as a child by the [tag]TV show[/tag] Fraggle Rock? It wasn’t much better than the truly horrific Banana Bunch but was marginally less traumatizing.
[tag]Ahmet Zappa[/tag] is getting together with [tag]Lisa and Brian Henson[/tag] to resurrect [tag]Fraggle Rock[/tag]. Why, I don’t know. Preliminary information is that they will be attempting to recreate the entire 98-episode Fraggledom in one Epic Film.
“It’s a complete ecosystem,” Zappa said of Henson’s idea to show children how living creatures need each other.
LaPuzza said that because of their astonishing sonar abilities, dolphins are excellent at patrolling for swimmers and divers. When a [tag]Navy dolphin[/tag] detects a person in the water, it drops a beacon. This tells a human interception team where to find the suspicious swimmer.
…
Sea lions can carry in their mouths special cuffs attached to long ropes. If the animal finds a rogue swimmer, it can clamp the cuff around the person’s leg. The individual can then be reeled in for questioning.
This gives new meaning to the name “Navy Seals.”
There was a truly pitiful movie out in the ’70s called “Day of the Dolphin.” In it, [tag]George C. Scott[/tag] plays a scientist who trains dolphins to talk and to place magnetic mines on ships’ hulls for the military. The high point of the movie was when the male, named Alpha, squeeked and whistled his love for the female dolphin, Beta. Oh, and there was a secondary plot in which the dolphins were being used to kill a politician.
Talking dolphins. The ’70s were a cultural and intellectual wasteland.
Netflix started rolling out their WatchNow instant video feature in January. If it hasn’t shown up in your account yet, try the link above to activate it.
Oh, but try it in Internet Exploder. It doesn’t work in Firefox.
Netflix WatchNow tests your connection speed to choose what video quality to stream. Other computers on your network can take away bandwidth, so if you plan to do any downloads or play interactive games online, well, don’t. Wait until the movie is over.
While looking at disturbing pictures^W^W^W^W doing some follow-up research one of of my previous entries, I revisited a fun article about [tag]Tom Cruise[/tag] on Foreign Dispatches. It’s called What’s Wrong With This Image? and puts forth an interesting theory as to why TC is what he is, whatever that may be.
To remind anyone who doesn’t like to click links from strangers, and rightly so! - holoprosencephaly (NIH link) results from failure of the forebrain to split and rotate in the early embryonic stage. There are genetic forms, however, it is often due psych meds such as lithium or to ethanol abuse. In the most severe cases, the baby has brain and facial deformities that are incompatible with life.
Some of the least severe cases are marked by a single front incisor and mild retardation.
Cruise’s dental oddity (along with his dyslexia, small stature and family history) is an indicator of holoprosencephaly, a genetic disorder which might explain why Nicole Kidman’s pregnancies during their marriage ended in stillbirths.
I suggest that the sensitive reader not google holoprosencephaly or click any links in this paragraph. Especially not this sweet kitten picture on Fox News (where else). I think it’s rather cute in a “there but for the grace of g*d go I” sort of way.
Hey, it’s science.
Update 2/5: In defense of TC, let me state that his odd dental configuration appears to be from having lost an incisor. When you aren’t googling holoprosencephaly, you won’t find pictures of what a single wide incisor looks like.
The newly-released “[tag]Snakes on a Plane[/tag]” DVD finally arrived yesterday. In case you didn’t see the movie in theaters, it is just exactly what you would expect: snakes, snakes, Samuel L. Jackson, and more snakes. There’s a hint of plot, some hot simulated sex, and a bit of dialog, but mostly it’s about the snakes.
The extra features alone were worth the price of the DVD. There’s a short feature on the snake stars of the movie called “Meet the Reptiles.” Jules Sylvester, the snake-handler for the movie, worked on the “Born Free” TV show in the ’60s. The snakes are named in the script - the 17-foot Burmese Python called “Kong” in the movie script is named “Kitty” in real life. You are what you eat, I suppose.
If you’re a hard-core “Snakes” fan, there’s even a puzzle book, “Snakes on a Sudoku.” If you’re a sudoku fan, you have to try these. Instead of squares, the puzzles have snake-shaped areas. You’ll love it.
They’ve done merchandizing out the wazoo. A music CD, a 2007 calendar. Hmmm, I haven’t bought a calendar yet. And don’t miss the official Snakes on a Plane Treo with the genuine snakeskin case.
There is a theory of relationships that states that any person on earth is separated from any other person on earth by at most six degrees of separation.
Say that I wanted to get a letter to a friend in Germany but I couldn’t remember her address, only the town she lived in. Obviously I couldn’t mail it to her. I could give it to someone who would pass it on to someone else until someone knew someone else in Germany, who knew someone in my friends town, and within six degrees the letter would have found its way to her. In practice, of course, I probably wouldn’t hand it to the right person immediately, so it might take more than six steps. I’d have to know *everything* about everybody and make a really intelligent - or lucky - guess as to who has the closest ties.
It sounds rather airy-fairy New Age, but a few years ago someone did a social experiment, handing out decks of postcards with a name and town on it and instructions to try to get it to that person through people they knew. To the best of my recollection everyone was able to accomplish the task within 12 postcards. Eh, I don’t remember where I read it. Omni magazine maybe? Well, there are a number of books about it if you’re interested in learning more.
This is where Social Networking is taking us, to a small blue planet where everyone is connected.
There’s even a parody of the concept, a game called “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” in which people trace their connections to the actor Kevin Bacon. *Everybody* is connected to Kevin Bacon.
I guess the caveat would be that the person has to have social contacts of some sort, people nearby who know their real name, etc. Cave-dwelling hermits are pretty much out of the game.
Oh, right, well, here’s the thing. There are people that you’d rather not be within six degrees of. Drug dealers, terrorists, radical fundamentalists, Tom Cruise. Oh, but you are, and that’s the problem.
At least one of the domestic surveillance programs being conducted by “No Such Agency” is intended to find not just terrorists, but their associates, sympathizers, and anyone who might know who the previous three are. As I hinted at above, you have to gather as much intelligence as you can about *everybody* until you have enough to see patterns and relationships.
Snakes on a Plane
Family Values
F-word
recycled canvas
Information age
technology
magic
Arthur C. Clarke
Globalization
China
I, Robot
tools
witchcraft
global economy
evolution
politician
Asia
self-improvement
Isaac Asimov
Innovation
Delmarva peninsula
Zero Population Growth
ZPG
One-child Policy
greenhouse gases
Global Warming
creationists
public education
came to mind. The 2000 and 2004 elections weren’t much better.
Strange+women
distributing+swords
ronald+reagan
the+lady+of+the+lake
monty+python
holy+grail
farcical+aquatic+ceremony
executive+power
watery+tart
