Monday, August 29, 2005

What I was reminded of this weekend.

Heat is a lame, overacted piece of jerkoffery.

Heat is a fantastic movie.


P.S. If I read one more thing about Michel Houellebecq I'm going to kill someone.
Oooh! He drinks a lot of coffee!
Wow! He smokes a lot of cigarettes!
Gee whiz! He drinks more than is recommended by doctors!
OMG! He says inappropriate things to people!

JHFC, that's a pretty good description of the Evil Doctor and A&LD doesn't blow him every week.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Little things cheer me up

So the Head household has been in a minor cash crunch due to some unforseen expenditures (stupid car repairs and a dog we were dogsitting destroying several things - eyeglasses etc.) so we've been conserving funds (I even cashed out some poker money). But last night we decide to splurge and get carry-out.
So last night we go to this sweet wings place for carry-out. This place has the best wings in the city although it is expensive for wings. But, despite what our bank account says, we're still high rollas. Dominos wings? Pshaw! Wing Stop? Fak no. Nope, we go to MacDougal's Chicken Coop biznatches!
So I get there and pay and am waiting for my wings. Then this guy (who turned out to be the owner) comes up and asks if I'm the guy waiting for carry-out. I say sure and he tells me that one of the waitresses accidentally took my wings to this big party in the back and they're making them now but do I want a beer on the house etc. while I was waiting? and they'll give me a gift certificate and refund my money.
I say don't worry about it, I don't mind waiting but 15 minutes later I had my order, $30, and a gift certificate. I asked him if the money would come out of anyone's pay and he said no so I took it.
It's nice to see someone go above and beyond.

Nothing much else today. Sent out a manuscript last night - finally. I have 3 more on the docket.
A few more of those and this crazy get-rich quick scheme of becoming a grown-up scientist might actually work.

P.S. These look delicious. I decree that all Chicago Head-ites go here and eat of them.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Fuck Nicholas Cage

I'm starting a semi-regular Fuck This Person post series.
This week will be Fuck Nicholas Cage. While he was awesome in Raising Arizona and followed that up with some crappy yet watchable movies and some crappy and unwatchable ones.
But...
Here's some movies coming up starring Cage that piss me off:

Remake of The Wicker Man. Are you fucking kidding me? That movie was great. Nicholas Cage will ruin this movie with his "acting"

An Untitled September 11 Oliver Stone project. Cage plays one of a pair of port authority workers trapped under the WTC. And did I mention Oliver Stone is doing it? I did? Well this movies not only going to suck but it will also be offensively sucky.

Amarillo Slim. Cage plays, well, Amarillo Slim Preston. The hokey gambler. Christ, Nicholas Cage's annoying mannerisms combined with Slim's monstrous contrived down-home jackassery is going to make my head explode.

National Treasure 2. Yeah. Read that one again. National. Treasure. Two.
Holy Balls!

He's got some that don't look as bad for his "skills" (Electric God, Ant Bully) and some that can win me back if he does a good job (Next, Ghost Rider) but still...

...Fuck Nicholas Cage.

And for all of you that think that this is a lazy, phoned-in excuse for a post - you're right.

Welcome back!


Much like the Fat Boys, The Ash-hole is coming back hard again.

Or, like Danny Boy, he's gotta' relocate and start all over, but watch it blow up like a supernova.

Feel free to kick me in the nutz.

And be sure and check out his new blog since he accidentally deleted his old one.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

You're a shitmonkey boy...



While waiting for Weeds to start I decided to watch The L Word.
WTF? It's a show about hot lesbians, with Jennifer Fucking Beals in it, and I was bored out of my fucking skull.
Let me summarize, hot lesbians - me bored.
Can you imagine the amount of effort it must of took to make a show about hot lesbians unwatchable?
What a bunch of jerks.

I fucking love Weeds though. It's one of the few shows where every character is great. Kinda King-of-the-Hill-esque in that regard.

Friday, August 19, 2005

More random crap

Sweet Baby Jesus, does Camille Paglia irritate me. Here's her latest narcissistic shitburger. Pretty long though. Via Tightly Wound.
I've always been amazed at shit like her stance that she never did any drugs but she has had the same experience because of her life and thoughts back then, how back then everyone at college sat around all day and night discussing and discovering the big, important truths out there - as opposed to today where it's all keg stands and date rape.
And I love the fact that she "wrote the book." Listing your favorite poems and why they're your favorites is not writing a book you self-important cunt.
And how is the fact that she was first shown "Mexican Guitar" by "a gay friend that died of AIDS" should be relevant as to why it should be there. Wow, O'Hara was gay and my friend was gay, so there. I could see if O'Hara died of disease or something but for Christ's sake he got run over by a friggin' dune buggy.
And, wow, you know who the Jane he's referring to is. Good for you!
And WTF is "Mexican Guitar" in there for? Christ, Frank O'Hara had a monstrous library of work, was an essential component to an entire school of poetry, and stupid Paglia puts one of his peoms that barely anyone has heard of and is open to interpretation.
Also, here's a quote of Frank's:
"Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry, bully for them."
Eat it Camille.
She also spent four years on this "book" of 43 poems and her stupid commentary.
And she "prophesied" that a newspaper would do a story on Vatican architecture after the pope died. Yep "prophesied."
She's all knowing.
And she compares herself to Andy Warhol.

Although I do agree with her anti-theory stuff and anti-shock art stance and some of her views on the left-right shit. In fact I agreed with her a lot in the second half of the article.
But she manages to fuck it up at the end with shit like:
'So people say, “What about the tsunami?” I say, “Just read Sexual Personae.” My people, one side of my family, lived near Vesuvius. So we have the same sense that the volcano could erupt any moment. Am I an optimist? I am a catastrophist.'

Still she does make some good points. Too bad she's such a self-centered, intellectually snobby hag or I might like her.

Moving on. What do you do when you finish playing cards at 1am and have to work out at 7:30? If you said have multiple brandies while watching King of the Hill and Batman, you're right.

Also - and this should be the subject of a longer post but I'm getting sick of typing - I'm not lazy and you're not lazy. We just have different priorities. I think that's a lot more profound than you think it is. Seriously, think about it.

Which reminds me, I heard a radio commercial for "Shot" (or maybe "Shock"?)coffee. It was ridiculous. Anyone else hear it? It's all "extreme" and mainly made up of dudes going "This babe is so into me! Give me another Shot mocha!" Yeah chicks love spazes with bad breath and yellow teeth. Their tagline is "Sleep is overrated." No, it's not.

The best part of Arthur is Hobson.

OK, more later.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Some people have way too much money

Gonna go all old man on you for a moment.

Who the fuck buys their kids this shit? They're fucking jeans. "Premium denim"???!!!?!?!
You might as well say "Premium refried beans"

P.S. I had to disallow anonymous comments since I got spammed. So I think this will only affect SEDA. So, SEDA, get an account. You don't have to post anything on it but this way you can comment on my brilliant postings.

Congratulations!


The Ash-hole is now DOCTOR Ash-hole. Seen here with DM.
Rip it.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Random Thoughts

OK. Been hitting it pretty good for the past few days and here's what I remember rambling about.

Hostage. This is a movie that was made in some kind of bizzaro world. Peep this, there's bad guys in a house with hostages, killing cops and doing other bad guy things. Well, Bruce Willis arrives on scene. Look out bad guys! Wait, what's he doing? What? Huh? He's talking to them. Yeah, not shooting them, not blowing them up, not punching them. Just a bunch of "We're gonna get through this." and "What can I do to help resolve this situation" and "No one's going to die today." shit. Up is down, black is white.
They threw some Bruce violence at the end but there wasn't much and it really seemed like an afterthought.

What else this movie reminded of was the other really shitty movie I watched. XXX: State of the Union. Wow. What a piece of shit. I hated the first XXX and was amazed that they were going to make a second one. But Ice Cube is in it and Samuel L. Jackson returns so I thought it might be one of those fun bad movies.

Nope.

If this one thing this and other movies like it (including Hostage) taught me was how SWAT or whatever elite teams with body armor and cool guns really get their ass kicked in every movie. Let's look at this one: Team of Navy SEALS with all the top equipment vs. a ragtag bunch of ghetto car thieves. Hmm. Yep, 'bangers take them down easily. Stupid military training. It's no match for growing up in the 'hood, biznatch. I keeps it reals.

Also, there was a tankjacking in it. Ludacris was talking to Ice Cube and he said "Shit, if it got wheels then we can jack it!" Umm, hey there scholar, um, yeah, tanks don't have wheels. Otherwise they'd be trucks. Sooo, they actually ran jacks under the tank, lifted it up and cut open the top hatch to steal it. While dudes were in it.

Bonus Head points to anyone who can tell me what item was used in both Assault on Precinct 13 (the remake) and Hostage to fuck up those pussy highly-trained assault teams.

Moving on, another thing I hate 99% of the questions asked at the end of a scientific talk. Man, I always think "What a complete douchebag."
The questions that irritate me the most usually fall into a couple of categories:

1) "Look how smart I am."
Usually a junior scientist (grad student or postdoc). In these cases, typically it's a talk somewhat related to a person's subfield so they feel the need to bring up a point that has made in the literature or use certain buzzwords that the speaker may not have used. It often has only a tangential relationship to the matter at hand. They're not really asking a question here, they're dazzling you with how brilliant they are because they managed to take a class or read a paper or two. The best ones in this category are the ones where it's obvious the person is asking the speaker a question they got from one of the speaker's papers about their research that has already been answered in the fucking paper the student already fucking read!

2) "Did you try..."
These are just what you would guess. At the end of a long, involved talk someone will ask "That's interesting, but did you try using X to test for Y in the presence of Z?" These questions really piss me off. I want to say "Yeah, I did but I didn't feel like fucking telling you... douchebag." Seriously I just told you about my entire project. I told you everything I did. You're an asshole.
These questions sometimes fall into the above category but they're so annoying that they deserve their own number. Typically these are from people that can't think of a good question but still feel the need to hear themselve talk. And usually it's an obvious "next step" of the project. Good job jerkoff! You've managed to figure out elementary experimental design. Your future is bright.

3) "Is there a reason you're omitting..."
Usually these are from senior scientists. Basically the talk is about something in their field and either opposes their view or doesn't take their obviously brilliant work into account enough so they feel the need to bring it up. For example, the other day I was at a fantastic talk that looked at processes in the cortex and midbrain. The guy said right at the beginning of the talk that he wanted to look at these two structures because of blah, blah, blah. At the end of the talk some guy asked "Is there a reason you've ommitted the thalamus?" and proceeded to rant on for about three inutes about how it's so important blah, blah, blah. He even cited some work. Can you guess what he worked on? Yep, thalamus. Can you guess who's work he cited? Yep, his own.
What an ass.

4) "I'm the host but..."
These are up there in pissing me off. This one is unique to senior scientists. Here, the host that brought the speaker in, or the people that will be interacting with the speaker do this. They usually share common scientific interests. So it's the end of the talk, I have to piss, and my back and brain hurts from sitting here listening to this shit for the past hour or so. Then all of a sudden these people get in a long ass discussion about the impact of the work, future directions, etc.
C'mon asshole, you've either had an hour meeting with him before the talk, are scheduled for a meeting after the talk, or are going to dinner with him later. Save it for then, fuckwad.

OK, that's about it.
Two last things. One, the second showing of It's always Sunny in Pliladelphia was pretty much as shitty as the first. Don't ever watch this show.
Second, Weeds on Showtime (I think) is a fucking awesome show. More on this later.

Friday, August 05, 2005

That time is upon us once again.


Break out the shakers, olives, and boring, repetetive stories that come out of left field and go nowhere.

Because it's MARTINI NIGHT!

All rejoice. Tonight I'm going to try Plymouth gin martinis with anchovy stuffed olives.
Details to follow. (maybe)

Also, we watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The previews made me think it was Scrubs-quality show set in a bar. And F/X has done a pretty good job with its series. What a disappointment. It sucked the big one. Lame, one dimensional characters and lame, telegraphing setups to lamer "jokes". I'd rank this show about even with King of Queens or even Fired Up in pure suckability (How the fuck did Leah Remini keep getting jobs? How is she #19 in Stuff magazine's 102 sexiest women in the world? Has the entire world gone crazy?!?!?!).

Anyhoo, if you're in the mood for terrible writing and terrible actors in an overall terrible show check it out next Thursday!

OK, it was the first show. I'll watch it again next week to be sure.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Why Kid Awesome deserves his name.

So Kid Awesome is now in Boise about to start grad school (about 5-6 years after I told him he should do this) and I just wanted to share a couple of quotes from him that shows his awesomeness.

"Man, I'm taking the biggest shit right now. God, that's why I love drinking beer."

"I got a shitty night's sleep last night because my bed deflated."

Carry on.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Yeah, when it comes to science I look to Dubya


Here's his take.

Christ, not this again. I'm so sick of hearing about ID. And it's not like it's because of an anti-religion thing (I'm Catholic). In science classes you teach science. In Sunday School you teach about religion. Doesn't seem very difficult to me.

You know who I blame for all this? People like Dawkins, Dennett, etc. (I would include the old guys like Huxley but I see that intense debate as more neccessary back then as a correction for the crazies). Yeah, brilliant minds when it comes to evolution (I love their books), but they can't help but getting all preachy about how evolution means that religion is for idiots. They just had to be assholes about it and rile up the crazies. They just kept giving them ammunition. If ID ever gets a strong place in textbooks/schools it's these assholes' fault.

Monday, August 01, 2005

You mean bitch.

Whew! Last night we had T-Bone, Erin, and David (from the liquor store) over for dinner. We really outdid ourselves. I began drinking gin, cointreau, and lime juice (I'm sure this is a drink - if not it's basically a gin margarita). Then we busted out some white wine (Yelcho Sauvignon Blanc) and Lady Head made a kick ass traditional caesar salad from scratch (anchovy filets, raw egg, and all). Then we started drinkning David's wine, which was friggin' wonderful and way too expensive for us to afford. The main course was leg of rabbit with a bourbon mustard glaze (I used two cups (!) of bourbon for the friggin glaze!) accompanied by oven-roasted rosemary potatoes. Then we had coffee and a marbled chocolate tart for dessert (my new favorite creation). Then we had some dessert wine (brought by T-Bone and Erin) that was kind of sauternes-like but wasn't a sauternes (was wonderful). Then we repaired to the back patio for some Williams pear brandy and many cigarettes.
The only snafu was when I took the rabbit out of the oven to check its doneness. When I put it back in I didn't notice the potholder stuck to the bottom. Flames, chaos, and much smokiness ensued.

Beyond that, Lady Head and I watched "SNL: The Best of Christopher Walken" and all I can say is WTF? How the fuck do you have this and not include "Stalker Talk"?

P.S. Note the return of Talula on the peeps list. Now we just get Kid Awesome back and we'll be in business.