‘The Illusionist’, audio junk, ‘This Film Is Not Yet Rated’, snarky Verizon, jon boats, “Nine Lives” (posted from home)
(this post covers 20-27 January, 2007)
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Saturday, 27 January-
Today I participated in a blood drive at a local church. I had gotten into this by asking a simple question during my last physical. I asked my doctor whether my blood type was on record because I’d like to put it on a card in my wallet and on a sticker on my motorcycle helmet. He said blood typing was not part of the blood testing processes used for my physical and the easy way to get it would be to donate blood. A few days later he called to say his church would be doing their annual blood drive and he asked if I’d be interested. This was my first time giving blood and I had a small problem; I was very nauseous and nearly blacked out during the process. I had not been aware of how important it is to have a hearty meal 2-4 hours prior to giving blood and only had a small carb-poor breakfast about an hour before. I felt fine through most of the process but toward the end I suddenly felt very light-headed, my vision tunneled and the overhead lights appeared sparkly. I mentioned it to the nurse and she immediately lowered my head and raised my legs and gave me a Pepsi to sip. The problem was caused by low blood sugar. It took some ten minutes for the Pepsi to kick in and I was thinking “Boy, I’ll never to THIS again!”. As I was going through my little problem a young guy across the aisle (in the Bloodmobile) blacked out within a very short time of being hooked up. I couldn’t see him but heard the nurses trying to wake him up and failing until they used a smelling-salts capsule. He had made the same mistake—he’d only had two donuts this morning. In a bit my tummy settled down and I started regaining my color but it took a few minutes more before I was ready to stand up. I took their advice and went to the snack table and had some orange juice, snack crackers and nice, sugary fudge.
I then drove up to Bass Pro Shops to check out their boating equipment section. I spent a good two hours enjoying the process of looking for the ‘right’ stuff to outfit the boat. Afterwards I rumbled up (I’m driving my old beater van, Cherry Larry) to Starbucks for a coffee and Times. As I read, a young Dad approached the nearby restrooms with his little daughter, a cutie little knee-high whose hair bounced with each step. As they approached the Men’s Room door I was surprised and amused to hear her yell out, “Daddy, I can’t go in there, that’s the BOYS.” I’d guess this was a Dad-only-has-the-kid-some-weekends situation since this was apparently a new conundrum for them. I almost fell out of my chair laughing (but hid it behind my newspaper) when the little girl pointed toward the Ladies Room and said ‘Let’s go in there’ to which Dad blanched and said “Well, no, I can’t go in there!” Dad resolved the stalemate by saying, “Tell you what, we’ll go in there (the Men’s) but we’ll just be there a minute”. Sure enough, they came out within thirty seconds or so.
That evening we watched “Nine Lives”, a very interesting and well-written film giving us little glimpses of the lives of nine women. The film is unconventional in that it simply follows a ten-minute segment of a woman’s life (with no cuts or edits), then switches out to the next one. The only connection between segments is we occasionally and subtly see a character from an earlier segment again, still as the same person, but in another part of his/her life. RottenTomatoes gives it a 73% on their Tomatometer and that may be low for me. I’d be in the upper 80’s on this one, particularly for the low-key, dead-on dialogue and the use of suggestion and so-called ‘magical realism’.
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Friday, 26 January-
Today was a big day. I bought half a boat! My youngest brother and I put a deposit down on a 17-foot jon boat package. We feel very lucky to have found a 2005 leftover which had been discounted some $1300 yet its current value as a used boat (according to the NADA boat pricing website) is still at some $500 above what we’re paying for it. This one has a bass-fishing layout and side-console steering. The motor is a Honda 20 with power-tilt and we’re getting a galvanized trailer. The boat itself is very Spartan – no carpet, no seats, no live-well, no nav-lights (in fact no electrical wiring at all), nary a cleat in sight. But this is exactly what we want. The floor and side ribs are covered, it has acres of deck space and elevated fishing platforms both fore and aft with sockets for the fishing seats and there’s not a bit of wood on it. It has covered, yet easily accessed (and well-ventilated) storage for the gas tanks and battery and it’s built of the heaviest-duty marine aluminum. It could take a much larger engine but the 20 will be great for the lakes and rivers here and still handle an occasional Bay trip. The trailer should be in early next week and we may be able to pick it up as early as the following weekend. This is GREAT!!!
We took a break from movies tonight. Besides, I have WAY too many boat-outfitting projects to plan.
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Thursday, 25 January-
Today I spent the morning working on cell phone stuff. Upon my retirement I bought a pre-paid cell phone on Wal-mart’s Simple Freedom plan and my nephew gave us a Tracfone he no longer needed. We found them handy while traveling and for an occasional call locally but don’t really use them much. Eventually I realized they are like insurance—it’s a small price to pay to have the ability to call, even if you don’t actually make many calls. That point was driven home when we hit our first Wal-mart which didn’t allow us to overnight in their parking lot. It was getting late and the map showed a campground and another Wal-mart about an hour away. But we’d have to take 12 miles of back road to the campground or pass the turnoff to the campground to go on to the Wal-mart. The phone allowed us to settle it right there; the second Wal-mart did allow overnighting. We’ve since begun calling ahead when there’s any doubt.
Along the way, we’ve had a few disappointments with the Simple Freedom plan. It had been run by Alltel and they had been leasing lines from Verizon. One day we received a letter saying Alltel had bowed out and we were now Verizon customers—at a substantial rise in cost. But the worst part of the Simple Freedom plan is double-dialing. When you use it outside of city areas you get a message asking you to re-dial the number and there is no way to hit redial at that point. When I complained about this, Customer Service said it had to do with roaming at the edges of two different cells and was just how it works. But my Tracfone also used Verizon and it has always worked flawlessly. The other little trick I don’t like is Verizon cheats you out of days-of-service. If you buy another month of service before the expiration of the current month, they simply give you a month’s service from today instead of tacking on 30 days to the end. So if your service expires on the 30th and you pay for the next month on the 27th, your new expiration is the 27th. What a snarky move!
So bottom line is I’m paying $15 a month to those Verizon turkeys and have a phone I have to double-dial (when roaming) and I get cheated out of service-time. With Tracfone I’m paying $7.33 a month, still have unused minutes rolling over (because of my low usage) and have no double-dialing. And it works in Canada at the same rates.
So I’d like to switch Labashi to Tracfone but I’ve not quite found the right combination of phone-I-like and price-I-like. I did manage to lock in the $7.33 rate until April of 2008 for my phone but am hoping Tracfone brings back their refer-a-friend package soon (as promised) to sweeten the deal on her phone.
I spent the afternoon researching details of jon boat specs and prices. I’ve been looking for one since Thanksgiving and have finally found what may be the right boat but I’ve not yet found the right price for boat, motor, and trailer, at least not at the same place.
That evening we watched ‘Clerks II’. We had enjoyed ‘Clerks’ but this one is too vulgar. It had its moments but it’s just too vulgar and not particularly inventive. When you have to include donkey-sex in your film to make a buck, you’re not exactly an artist working at the height of his career.
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Wednesday, 24 January-
This morning I drove up to Harrisburg Seaplane Base and Big Bee boats to look at jon boats. Silly me, I thought I’d have a sales person all to myself since all the other customers would be at the Auto and Boat Show but I quickly learned both shops had left the secretaries alone and in charge and hadn’t even given them a price list. We slowly worked through that for a model or two but it became tiresome and I gave up.
That afternoon I jumped on the Concours and went to Rocky Ridge Park for a jog. This one felt like a grind so I was surprised to see I did it in 1:23. I had the Shuffle along but didn’t play the 129 beat-per-minute music I tried last time. Instead I listened to a favorite song (Way Out West’s “Don’t Forget Me”) over and over and over. About an hour in I just started listening to hiking podcasts from The Wildebeat. That seems to have worked pretty well. I’m not nearly so exhausted as the 1:21 of last week but I do have some knee stiffness from the cold. It was about 35 today and I was wearing ultra-light nylon wind-pants. Maybe I need something to keep my legs a little warmer.
That evening we watched the last half of the documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”. It’s reportedly an expose of the Motion Picture Producer’s Association film rating system. But I’m not sure I’m buying its argument. It argues the secret board of reviewers is censoring films and censorship affects the ability of the makers to show the film. The backers (and interviewees) of this film object to ever being assigned an NC-17 rating since large retailers like Wal-mart and many theater chains will not carry NC-17 films. But I’ve got to think those businesses have a right to avoid indecency suits and they need an independent ratings board for that. The movie also argues the board should not be secret—names should be public knowledge. Yeah, right. Talk about a formula for payola scandals. I do agree ratings for violence are more liberal than those for sex but I don’t see this as a reason to eliminate the review board. Perhaps the biggest flaw is the films offers no alternative; the producer/director only has a fun time showing off how smart he is in figuring out who the secret board members are and ‘exposing’ them.
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Tuesday, 23 January-
Today I drove Cherry Larry down to Gander Mountain and bought some shooting stuff. I’ve not been able to find the Barska 3-9 scope I wanted for the .22 so settled on the Bushnell version. I also bought a nice little metal spinner target called ‘The Qualifier’. It has three spinners of about four, two, and one inch in diameter. If the big one’s not a challenge for whatever you’re shooting, go for the smaller ones. That ought to be fun.
I then drove to Hanover and checked out a sporting goods shop, motorcycle shop and boating/ATV shop. I just saw the sporting goods shop in passing but I’ve been wanting to see the motorcycle shop after seeing their on-the-low-side prices in the Auto Locator. These guys specialize in Harleys and choppers and had a couple of interesting old bikes—like a Harley-Davidson Topper scooter with sidecar-sodapop-cooler. How many of those have you seen? They had a pre-WWII Harley, a 50’s or 60’s three-wheeler Harley, a late-60’s 175 or 250cc ling-ling (two-stroke) Harley and a long row of choppers. But the best bikes in the place were repros of turn-of-the-century bicycles with coaster brakes, two-stroke engines, and tiny little copper under-the-seat gas tanks. If I had an extra $1800, I’d have one of those (well, if I had a good place to ride it).
That afternoon I did a 5K walk on the cross-country course at Rudy Park. That evening we watched the first half of “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”.
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Monday, 22 January -
I spent most of today researching some tax questions for the upcoming tax season, then ran some errands. Fun, fun, fun.
No movie tonight.
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Sunday, 21 January –
Today we drove to Chambersburg and then went out for a late lunch at the Longhorn Steakhouse near Hagerstown. We had good food and the drinks were strong but very expensive; we won’t do that again.
That evening we watched the extras on the “Wordplay” DVD and then watched two episodes of Travel Channel’s “Living With the Kombai”
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Saturday, 20 January –
I blogged the morning away then shot some targets with the airsoft pistol. Later in the day I set up and tested the audio gear I had removed from the entertainment center earlier this week. I was trying to figure out which units I wanted to throw out and which I’d try to sell on Ebay. I thought the stereo would still be good and the cassette player/recorder seemed like it’s still nearly new. But I found the stereo’s FM tuner had gone bad and a cassette tape was welded in place in the cassette machine (which had a sticker on it dated 12/22/86!). The CD player had recently started refusing to play and I found I couldn’t fix that either so everything went out for garbage pickup. I guess the lesson there is ‘use it or lose it’.
That evening we watched ‘The Illusionist’ with Edward Norton. It was okay. When we had a Dishnet satellite receiver they’d rate the movies by stars. A four star was spectacular and rare, a three-star a good movie, and a two-and-a-half-star one you could watch but easily forget afterwards. And you don’t to even think about anything rated lower. This was a two-and-a-half-star movie.
(this post covers 20-27 January, 2007)
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Saturday, 27 January-
Today I participated in a blood drive at a local church. I had gotten into this by asking a simple question during my last physical. I asked my doctor whether my blood type was on record because I’d like to put it on a card in my wallet and on a sticker on my motorcycle helmet. He said blood typing was not part of the blood testing processes used for my physical and the easy way to get it would be to donate blood. A few days later he called to say his church would be doing their annual blood drive and he asked if I’d be interested. This was my first time giving blood and I had a small problem; I was very nauseous and nearly blacked out during the process. I had not been aware of how important it is to have a hearty meal 2-4 hours prior to giving blood and only had a small carb-poor breakfast about an hour before. I felt fine through most of the process but toward the end I suddenly felt very light-headed, my vision tunneled and the overhead lights appeared sparkly. I mentioned it to the nurse and she immediately lowered my head and raised my legs and gave me a Pepsi to sip. The problem was caused by low blood sugar. It took some ten minutes for the Pepsi to kick in and I was thinking “Boy, I’ll never to THIS again!”. As I was going through my little problem a young guy across the aisle (in the Bloodmobile) blacked out within a very short time of being hooked up. I couldn’t see him but heard the nurses trying to wake him up and failing until they used a smelling-salts capsule. He had made the same mistake—he’d only had two donuts this morning. In a bit my tummy settled down and I started regaining my color but it took a few minutes more before I was ready to stand up. I took their advice and went to the snack table and had some orange juice, snack crackers and nice, sugary fudge.
I then drove up to Bass Pro Shops to check out their boating equipment section. I spent a good two hours enjoying the process of looking for the ‘right’ stuff to outfit the boat. Afterwards I rumbled up (I’m driving my old beater van, Cherry Larry) to Starbucks for a coffee and Times. As I read, a young Dad approached the nearby restrooms with his little daughter, a cutie little knee-high whose hair bounced with each step. As they approached the Men’s Room door I was surprised and amused to hear her yell out, “Daddy, I can’t go in there, that’s the BOYS.” I’d guess this was a Dad-only-has-the-kid-some-weekends situation since this was apparently a new conundrum for them. I almost fell out of my chair laughing (but hid it behind my newspaper) when the little girl pointed toward the Ladies Room and said ‘Let’s go in there’ to which Dad blanched and said “Well, no, I can’t go in there!” Dad resolved the stalemate by saying, “Tell you what, we’ll go in there (the Men’s) but we’ll just be there a minute”. Sure enough, they came out within thirty seconds or so.
That evening we watched “Nine Lives”, a very interesting and well-written film giving us little glimpses of the lives of nine women. The film is unconventional in that it simply follows a ten-minute segment of a woman’s life (with no cuts or edits), then switches out to the next one. The only connection between segments is we occasionally and subtly see a character from an earlier segment again, still as the same person, but in another part of his/her life. RottenTomatoes gives it a 73% on their Tomatometer and that may be low for me. I’d be in the upper 80’s on this one, particularly for the low-key, dead-on dialogue and the use of suggestion and so-called ‘magical realism’.
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Friday, 26 January-
Today was a big day. I bought half a boat! My youngest brother and I put a deposit down on a 17-foot jon boat package. We feel very lucky to have found a 2005 leftover which had been discounted some $1300 yet its current value as a used boat (according to the NADA boat pricing website) is still at some $500 above what we’re paying for it. This one has a bass-fishing layout and side-console steering. The motor is a Honda 20 with power-tilt and we’re getting a galvanized trailer. The boat itself is very Spartan – no carpet, no seats, no live-well, no nav-lights (in fact no electrical wiring at all), nary a cleat in sight. But this is exactly what we want. The floor and side ribs are covered, it has acres of deck space and elevated fishing platforms both fore and aft with sockets for the fishing seats and there’s not a bit of wood on it. It has covered, yet easily accessed (and well-ventilated) storage for the gas tanks and battery and it’s built of the heaviest-duty marine aluminum. It could take a much larger engine but the 20 will be great for the lakes and rivers here and still handle an occasional Bay trip. The trailer should be in early next week and we may be able to pick it up as early as the following weekend. This is GREAT!!!
We took a break from movies tonight. Besides, I have WAY too many boat-outfitting projects to plan.
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Thursday, 25 January-
Today I spent the morning working on cell phone stuff. Upon my retirement I bought a pre-paid cell phone on Wal-mart’s Simple Freedom plan and my nephew gave us a Tracfone he no longer needed. We found them handy while traveling and for an occasional call locally but don’t really use them much. Eventually I realized they are like insurance—it’s a small price to pay to have the ability to call, even if you don’t actually make many calls. That point was driven home when we hit our first Wal-mart which didn’t allow us to overnight in their parking lot. It was getting late and the map showed a campground and another Wal-mart about an hour away. But we’d have to take 12 miles of back road to the campground or pass the turnoff to the campground to go on to the Wal-mart. The phone allowed us to settle it right there; the second Wal-mart did allow overnighting. We’ve since begun calling ahead when there’s any doubt.
Along the way, we’ve had a few disappointments with the Simple Freedom plan. It had been run by Alltel and they had been leasing lines from Verizon. One day we received a letter saying Alltel had bowed out and we were now Verizon customers—at a substantial rise in cost. But the worst part of the Simple Freedom plan is double-dialing. When you use it outside of city areas you get a message asking you to re-dial the number and there is no way to hit redial at that point. When I complained about this, Customer Service said it had to do with roaming at the edges of two different cells and was just how it works. But my Tracfone also used Verizon and it has always worked flawlessly. The other little trick I don’t like is Verizon cheats you out of days-of-service. If you buy another month of service before the expiration of the current month, they simply give you a month’s service from today instead of tacking on 30 days to the end. So if your service expires on the 30th and you pay for the next month on the 27th, your new expiration is the 27th. What a snarky move!
So bottom line is I’m paying $15 a month to those Verizon turkeys and have a phone I have to double-dial (when roaming) and I get cheated out of service-time. With Tracfone I’m paying $7.33 a month, still have unused minutes rolling over (because of my low usage) and have no double-dialing. And it works in Canada at the same rates.
So I’d like to switch Labashi to Tracfone but I’ve not quite found the right combination of phone-I-like and price-I-like. I did manage to lock in the $7.33 rate until April of 2008 for my phone but am hoping Tracfone brings back their refer-a-friend package soon (as promised) to sweeten the deal on her phone.
I spent the afternoon researching details of jon boat specs and prices. I’ve been looking for one since Thanksgiving and have finally found what may be the right boat but I’ve not yet found the right price for boat, motor, and trailer, at least not at the same place.
That evening we watched ‘Clerks II’. We had enjoyed ‘Clerks’ but this one is too vulgar. It had its moments but it’s just too vulgar and not particularly inventive. When you have to include donkey-sex in your film to make a buck, you’re not exactly an artist working at the height of his career.
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Wednesday, 24 January-
This morning I drove up to Harrisburg Seaplane Base and Big Bee boats to look at jon boats. Silly me, I thought I’d have a sales person all to myself since all the other customers would be at the Auto and Boat Show but I quickly learned both shops had left the secretaries alone and in charge and hadn’t even given them a price list. We slowly worked through that for a model or two but it became tiresome and I gave up.
That afternoon I jumped on the Concours and went to Rocky Ridge Park for a jog. This one felt like a grind so I was surprised to see I did it in 1:23. I had the Shuffle along but didn’t play the 129 beat-per-minute music I tried last time. Instead I listened to a favorite song (Way Out West’s “Don’t Forget Me”) over and over and over. About an hour in I just started listening to hiking podcasts from The Wildebeat. That seems to have worked pretty well. I’m not nearly so exhausted as the 1:21 of last week but I do have some knee stiffness from the cold. It was about 35 today and I was wearing ultra-light nylon wind-pants. Maybe I need something to keep my legs a little warmer.
That evening we watched the last half of the documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”. It’s reportedly an expose of the Motion Picture Producer’s Association film rating system. But I’m not sure I’m buying its argument. It argues the secret board of reviewers is censoring films and censorship affects the ability of the makers to show the film. The backers (and interviewees) of this film object to ever being assigned an NC-17 rating since large retailers like Wal-mart and many theater chains will not carry NC-17 films. But I’ve got to think those businesses have a right to avoid indecency suits and they need an independent ratings board for that. The movie also argues the board should not be secret—names should be public knowledge. Yeah, right. Talk about a formula for payola scandals. I do agree ratings for violence are more liberal than those for sex but I don’t see this as a reason to eliminate the review board. Perhaps the biggest flaw is the films offers no alternative; the producer/director only has a fun time showing off how smart he is in figuring out who the secret board members are and ‘exposing’ them.
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Tuesday, 23 January-
Today I drove Cherry Larry down to Gander Mountain and bought some shooting stuff. I’ve not been able to find the Barska 3-9 scope I wanted for the .22 so settled on the Bushnell version. I also bought a nice little metal spinner target called ‘The Qualifier’. It has three spinners of about four, two, and one inch in diameter. If the big one’s not a challenge for whatever you’re shooting, go for the smaller ones. That ought to be fun.
I then drove to Hanover and checked out a sporting goods shop, motorcycle shop and boating/ATV shop. I just saw the sporting goods shop in passing but I’ve been wanting to see the motorcycle shop after seeing their on-the-low-side prices in the Auto Locator. These guys specialize in Harleys and choppers and had a couple of interesting old bikes—like a Harley-Davidson Topper scooter with sidecar-sodapop-cooler. How many of those have you seen? They had a pre-WWII Harley, a 50’s or 60’s three-wheeler Harley, a late-60’s 175 or 250cc ling-ling (two-stroke) Harley and a long row of choppers. But the best bikes in the place were repros of turn-of-the-century bicycles with coaster brakes, two-stroke engines, and tiny little copper under-the-seat gas tanks. If I had an extra $1800, I’d have one of those (well, if I had a good place to ride it).
That afternoon I did a 5K walk on the cross-country course at Rudy Park. That evening we watched the first half of “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”.
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Monday, 22 January -
I spent most of today researching some tax questions for the upcoming tax season, then ran some errands. Fun, fun, fun.
No movie tonight.
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Sunday, 21 January –
Today we drove to Chambersburg and then went out for a late lunch at the Longhorn Steakhouse near Hagerstown. We had good food and the drinks were strong but very expensive; we won’t do that again.
That evening we watched the extras on the “Wordplay” DVD and then watched two episodes of Travel Channel’s “Living With the Kombai”
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Saturday, 20 January –
I blogged the morning away then shot some targets with the airsoft pistol. Later in the day I set up and tested the audio gear I had removed from the entertainment center earlier this week. I was trying to figure out which units I wanted to throw out and which I’d try to sell on Ebay. I thought the stereo would still be good and the cassette player/recorder seemed like it’s still nearly new. But I found the stereo’s FM tuner had gone bad and a cassette tape was welded in place in the cassette machine (which had a sticker on it dated 12/22/86!). The CD player had recently started refusing to play and I found I couldn’t fix that either so everything went out for garbage pickup. I guess the lesson there is ‘use it or lose it’.
That evening we watched ‘The Illusionist’ with Edward Norton. It was okay. When we had a Dishnet satellite receiver they’d rate the movies by stars. A four star was spectacular and rare, a three-star a good movie, and a two-and-a-half-star one you could watch but easily forget afterwards. And you don’t to even think about anything rated lower. This was a two-and-a-half-star movie.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:55
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