Doug's Sounding Board

Nicole ended up talking to Kevin Smith and somehow ended up communicating that we were frustrated that we couldn’t talk directly to the presidential candidates. So he lent us his RV so we could drive around to the various campaign events, and having Kevin Smith’s RV would indicate to those in charge that we were allowed to talk to the candidates. It was a lot of fun; if only it were that simple.

My old scooter (the one that I was clobbered by the door while riding) had it’s batteries fade to unusable. The new scooter that was the replacement had a motor problem that took a year to get a new one and I didn’t think about the batteries going bad but they did. Today I finally pulled the 8 batteries (4 from each) and also brought along the two batteries from the UPS that died in December and headed to BatteriesPlus for replacements.

They took the old ones and they took my money in exchange for the replacements I desired. I managed to get the scooter re-assembled with only one mishap. The main power was off but half way though I heard a pop and  magic smoke started pouring out of the front end of the scooter. The otehr end of the batter lead I was attaching made momentary contact with the frame and fried something. When I got it all together everything still worked except for the headlight so I’m guessing that’s what got the bonus juice.

The UPS was trivial to re-assemble after that and it’s now happily charging.

Nicole was telling me about a product called Scargo which is a combination of oils to help scar tissue. My first thought was that the logo should be a snail, followed by the thought that it should come in a snail dispenser that you rub over your skin leaving a trail of the stuff for you to rub in.

On the Democrat side, Clinton , as the front runner, controlled the discourse. ‘Most electable’ and ‘not George Bush’ seemed to be the biggest messages, at least the ones that I received. I think the Clinton campaign must have been coasting after being ahead for so long (one of the dangers of everyone starting so early I suppose) because Obama’s campaign was able to turn the discourse to one they controlled and make it about change. Unless Clinton’s campaign can take back control it’s going to be a long and tough struggle for the nomination and to some extent there is success there with redirecting the change message by saying that it requires experience to make change. The most interesting part of the change to ‘Change’ is that it sucked in the Republicans too, as seen in the New Hampshire debates and since then, which I think gives a glimpse of how Obama would do in the general election.

Why is Hillary Clinton so often referred to as Hillary rather than Clinton or Hillary Clinton? It seems disrespectful to me and it’s not just in the media, but in everyday life. Was it started by Fox News as a disrespectful address? I doubt that she would be referred to as President Hillary or just plain Hillary if she is elected (except maybe by Fox News). Is it done by her campaign to appear more approachable? I think that’s only part of it or maybe an attempt to take back her first name; I think The Hillary I Know  is an attempt at that. Anyone?

After seeing Huckabee’s most recent appearance on the Colbert Report, where he again asked Colbert to be his running mate, and seeing his Chuck Norris video, I think Huckabee probably has the best sense of humor out of all the candidates. On the Colbert Report there were some jokes about Huckabee not believing in evolution and since people who do’t believe in evolution tend to be very serious on the subject and not prone to jokes I decided to read more about it. It’s true that he doesn’t believe in evolution but he doesn’t have a problem with it being taught in public schools and doesn’t expect creationism to be taught there since that’s the job of the parents, also that students should determine for themselves what they believe. I’m disappointed that any potential leader wouldn’t be going along with accepted science, but I am relieved that he’s not for forcing his views on everyone else. I’m still thinking that Huckabee will end up as a Vice Presidential running mate for McCain.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets – Like the first National Treasure movie, this one was a lot of fun though less realistic. Also you have to have seen the first one to appreciate the characters.

RoboCop – I re-watched this in HD recently. It’s nice to not have every movie with machines be man vs machine. A lot of the technology and fashion looks very dated, I guess those go together. It’s funny for such a gritty future to have all the uniforms always perfectly spotless, the story is worth it though!

Drive Thru – Slasher flick about a drive-thru clown offing people. It borrows heavily in styling, story, and even dialog from other movies to make a moderately entertaining movie. I found the microwave death scene pretty creative and out of character for this movie. I think they just wanted it in there as a personal favorite.

Jurassic Park & The Lost World: Jurassic Park – The effects on these still hold up, which is more surprising in the case of Jurassic Park. Continuity errors don’t detract from the fun dialog and dinosaur attacks. I’ll have to revisit these when I get a powered sub-woofer.

A Daily Show and Colbert Report – I’m glad these are back on the air. They make use of a lot of archived footage and are rambling more to fill time but it still works.

Were she not in stage 4 of her cancer I would have liked to have Elizabeth Edwards in the presidential race. I like what she says in her speeches, she’s a little more liberal, and she seems like a strong and forthright person.

First I have to say that I like having both the Democrat and Republican debates back to back. I also liked there being distinct discussion and direct question sections. All that said, watching four hours of debates is pretty tiring.

Republicans:

I  haven’t really kept up to date with the Repuiblican candidates except blurbs I hear in the news. I knew next to nothing about Huckabee, Romney, or Thompson. The biggest surpise of the night for me is that out of the Republican field I liked Huckabee the most. He seems the least like a follower of the Fox News platform and most sincere in his answers. McCain was my second favorite  overall  though I like the moderate  non-campaigning McCain a lot better than the campaigning McCain. I wish Rudy Giuliani would go away, fortunately I don’t think it’ll take too long. He seems to be a lot less important than early in the campaign season. Ron Paul was asking good questions and I’m glad he’s there for that. Hopefully he’ll get some other people to think about those things when making policy. Mitt Romney comes off to me as being too slick. Like he has the answer for everything already and nothing needs new thought.  Who cares about Fred Thompson? Well I guess he thought he was being clever by suggesting that Mitt Romney liked man dates.

Democrats:

I think Clinton was strong throughout and will probably get a boost from it. I think Obama held his own but who knows how it will affect his outcome. Edwards came across to me as wanting to be president but at the same time positioning himself to be a vice-presidential candidate. Richardson seemed to start out slowly but by the end he was able to list all his experience and explain how that will help his presidency. His list of experience is indeed impressive and he managed to help make Clinton’s point that having the experience will help create change.

I still have no idea how it’ll all turn out but the coming weeks should be interesting.

Yesterday morning there was about 5 minutes of wondering what was going to happen next. Nicole looked out to find her snowman (cloth) laying face-down in some water. She rescued it and pulled it inside to dry. I sat down to put on my shoes and there was a crash outside. Nicole looked and saw one of the pots with the horsetail was blown over. I finished with my shoes and laid the remains of the one pot and the still whole matching pot down. I was picking up the shards (noticed the trash can lid has been blown open) and Nicole can out to check on the damage. The wind gusted which blew down the door that leads to our attic space. It’s not a hinged door, just kind of in place. I went to go put that back in place to find that there were lightbulb shards behind it from a lightbulb that I forgot to throw away. Picking up the door to set it back in place showed me that some of the shards ended up on top of the door and were now dropping to the floor.Nicole found the pieces and I got the door back in place. Oh yeah, some time during the goings on the power went out as well.

Leaving the driveway we went towards the intersection with power on the way to work and quickly came across the freshly downed branch blocking both lane that took out the power line also blocking both lanes.  There’s the power outage. Luckily being in the same power block as Dominican Hospital meant that power was restored in a couple of hours. I need to replace the UPS battery that died in December. Without it when the power goes down access to 7thsign goes with it.

At work there was power and I got stuff done, but then the power went out for about 30 minutes. In the second wave of power I was almost able to complete what I went to work to work on but then the pwoer went out again and didn’t come back until about 7PM apparently. I gave up around 1:15PM, went home, and relaxed.

Grover had his final cancer check up this morning and is now declared to be free of cancer! We didn’t really expect anything to suddenly to pop up at this point but it’s still nice to have the official word. Now we just need to get the weight off of him and Sage.

Movies:
Protocols of Zion – A documentary about “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” and a look at who believes it to be true. Well mostly about who believes it to be true. If you know about the protocols then it’s mostly seeing how far and wide they have been taken up by people as what is going on.

Zone Troopers – A Full Moon video starring Tim Thomerson (Jack Deth in the Trancers movies) as a WWII sergeant helping his squad trapped behind enemy lines. Eventually the aliens help out. It’s not great, but I’ve seen less entertaining movies certainly.

Hitman – Another movie based on a game. I’ve never played this game, but these movie adaptations are getting better in general. It has some fun action and gun action, but if you really want a fun action/gun movie I think you should check out Shoot ‘Em Up.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry – A lot of stereotypes here but it’s still pretty funny and handled fairly well. It stops making much sense towards the end but there was enough laughing throughout so I didn’t care too much.

Atonement – WWII period piece with great costumes and sets. Why is this rated over 8/10 on IMDB? I think people are desperate for war stories or something. Yes it’s all well done but I’ve been better told stories.

Bad Santa – Finally this years I saw this movie, and I’ve seen it twice now. It genuinely is a good spirit of x-mas movie, though it takes awhile to see how it might get there. According to the IMDb the “badder” version has about 20% more swearing.

Juno – This one was just good from start to finish. See this one!

Poltergeist III – Hey, it was on. I saw it long ago and didn’t think it was that great then but now I see the best part about this movie is the mirror effects. The movie revolves around them so it should, but almost every time they are pulled off perfectly. Watch it to learn mirror effects.

Loser – Hey, this was on too! This movie isn’t inherently bad, but there is absolutely no chemistry between Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari. It seems like this should have been an easy one to get right but something fell apart along the way.

HD Notes:
The Wizard of Oz in HD doesn’t just give you better colors, you get to see things like the burlap texture on the scarecrow’s face!

Flash Gordon in HD let me see that the shiny costumes weren’t just shiny fabrics, many of them were multitudes of beads sewn on.