YakBoy.Net

Spoiler free. Not to worry.

I started reading it around noon, soon after it was delivered from Amazon, and finished a little after 5. Just let me say that it is a great read. It concludes the story arc in about as satisfying a way as I think could be done. I have to confess to mixed feelings though, much in the same way as I had about the final LoTR movie. Its something of a phenomenon that has now come to and end. (yes, I know there are still 2 movies to go, but its not the same). The Harry Potter books have been one of the few things that are a common cultural experience for a large chunk of our society which is something that I think we need more of.

Of course now the speculation will begin – what is J.K. Rowling going to do now? Much as I would like to see her write other books, a small part of me hopes that she will retire to some quiet place and just roll around in the enormous piles of money she has made off these books. She earned every penny in my opinion.

Completely unrelated – Two more reasons I would like to move to the U.K. –

The government there has officially stated that “intelligent design” is religion, not science and should in no way be taught as such in schools – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/25/id_not_science/

and

A scotish company has made a pretty much fully functional bionic hand – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/6901231.stm

…updated for the 21st century.

Today is our 12th wedding anniversary. This year also marked the milestone of us having been together as a couple for longer than the time in our lives before we met.

We don't have any really big plans, but I wanted to get Ravennshea something nice, something kind of unique and something she would remember. She'd been talking about another tattoo, so I decided to go to Slave to the Needle, a local tattoo shop with a very good reputation that just happens to be within walking distance of our place, and get her a gift certificate. I tried to be sneaky about this, I stopped by on the way home from work and hadn't even talked to her about what I was going to get her this year so I HOPED it would be something unexpected.

I got home yesterday and we decided to exchange gifts early.

Ravenshea got me a gift certificate from Slave to the Needle too.

For the exact same amount.

We've been together for a long time. ESP has set in.

As I'm sure anyone who is paying attention saw, there were two very interesting reports connected to the war in Iraq and the “war on terror” yesterday. One for the White House and one from the National Counterterrorism Center. Unless you are Joe Libermann or one of the 29-percenters both these reports show the complete and utter failure of the current policies.

The White House report showed that of the 18 benchmarks set out for the new Iraqi government, they have accomplished exactly zero of them. Thats zero. As in not even one. They haven't even made significant progress of 8 of them and on two the progress has been “mixed”.

The NCTC report says that Al-Qaeda is “considerably operationally stronger than a year ago”, has “regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001″ and that “they are showing greater and greater ability to plan attacks in Europe and the United States.”

So after the deaths of 3898 “coalition” troops and of uncounted numbers of Iraqis and Afghans we have failed to bring democracy to Iraq (not that bringing democracy to Iraq was EVER one of the stated goals when the war started. It was all about the “imminent” threat of WMDs, remember?) AND we have failed to make the US any safer from those who were ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE for the attacks on 9/11.

The good news is that Barbara Boxer has said that impeachment should be on the table. The bad news is I doubt anyone will do anything about it.

Just got back from watching Transformers. I wasn't planning on seeing it. I laughed at the previews and couldn't believe that the movie was even being made, but then I started reading reviews and hearing reports from a lot of people that said it was actually good. Then ed2ward and jbugcreations showed up, said that they were going to watch it and talked me in to joining them

Let me just say, and I cannot emphasize this strongly enough, it is

———————->FUCKING HORRIBLE<----------------------

Do NOT go and see this movie under any circumstances, there is no doubt to give it the benefit of. If anyone tells you that is is in any way enjoyable they are probably lying to you. This is like the old carnival trick of The Man Eating Chicken. They put up signs at the carnival hyping The Man Eating Chicken. "Pay your admission and see the horror of the Man Eating Chicken!" So you do, and what you get is not a man-eating chicken, it is just a man, eating chicken. You are pissed off, but the carnies say "now you don't want all your neighbors to know you got taken for a fool do you? Why don't you just send them in here as well and then you can all have a good laugh". That is the only explanation I can think of for why anyone would say that Transformers is a good movie. They wasted their time and money on it, and no one wants to feel like they were the only ones to be duped.

This movie is not so bad its good, it is just bad. No... not "just" bad. It is "crimes against humanity" bad. It is not funny, it is not dramatic and the action is not only surprisingly scarce for something that was hyped as an action movie, it is so badly shot and edited that it is almost unwatchable. I can't give any kind of rational critique of the plot because it is so fragmented that it hovers right on the edge of being completely incomprehensible. Characters appear and disappear with little or no explanation and plot elements are built up and then ignored. The parts that aren't total cliches are pointless or indecipherable. It is easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen and quite possibly one of the worst movies ever made and that is not hyperbole.

Within the first 45 minutes I was wondering how much longer this atrocity was going to go on (the answer is, unfortunately, another hour and forty-five minutes) and after an hour or so I was ready to start confessing that I had ties to al qaeda just to make it stop. This is one of those movies that completely baffles me. I can not understand how shit of this magnitude gets made. There had to have been SOMEONE involved in the process somewhere along the line that could have stood up and said "this is crap, we cannot inflict this on the world" and stopped it, but apparently no one had the guts to do it.

Do not go see it. Tell everyone you know. After watching it I not only want my money and time back, I want a personal apology from everyone involved in making it and an explanation of what the fuck they were thinking when they were making it.

I don't even want to think about it anymore. Redneck Vern's review nails it.

Still cranky about the Scooter Libby thing, but here is a pretty cool video of two robots engaged in what appears to be a mixed martial arts fight –

http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=483623141

and this is just madness.

Edit – okay, to be honest, THIS is just madness. The above is just some insane HTML haxxor

Well not really, but its close.

GW has commuted the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

From Bush's statement -

Others point out that a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable. They say that had Mr. Libby only told the truth, he would have never been indicted in the first place.

Both critics and defenders of this investigation have made important points. I have made my own evaluation. In preparing for the decision I am announcing today, I have carefully weighed these arguments and the circumstances surrounding this case.

Mr. Libby was sentenced to 30 months of prison, two years of probation and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.

I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison.

There will be no justice done in this case. The only hope of bringing this whole thing to light was the minute hope that Scooter would roll over and start talking about who gave him the order to leak Valery Plame's name. Without a heavy prison sentence hanging over him, even that small hope is gone. The $250,000 fine is nothing. If it isn't paid outright by the business interests and individuals that Bush works for it will be more than covered by a cushy “consulting” position with Halliburton, a book deal and talking head spot on Fox Noise or both.

The gall of GW is unbelievable. This is true privilege, in the original sense of the word – “private law”. There is one set of laws for us and one for them. Bush and his cronies have shown their absolute contempt for both the spirit and the letter of the law when it doesn't work in their favor. The have violated every standard of ethical behavior. I really don't see how anyone can still support Bush when it is clear that this is nothing more than a kleptocracy.

Just as an announcement, any and all are invited to a screening of Hot Fuzz at our place this coming Saturday.

let us know if Saturday is totally out of the question or if there is any particular time that works

As anyone who is familiar with our basement knows, it tends to get a bit damp. By “a bit damp” I mean that any time it rains hard there will be a puddle in our basement. It was not unusual then for Ravennshea to tell me a couple days ago that there was a small amount of water in the back corner of our basement. What WAS unusual about it was that it hasn't rained hard enough for water to collect.

A mystery.

No source of the water could be found.

We went about our lives for a few days after noticing the Mystery Water without really seeing it again, then Ravennshea did a load of laundry. When the washer was done she came up and said “There is more water on the floor, I think the washer has a leak”. We both investigated and, once again, found no source for the Mystery Water but since we just happen to have a spare washing machine in the basement we swapped machines and figured that would take care of the problem. The spare washer hadn't been used in a couple of years and smelled a bit musty so we decided to run it through a cycle with a little bleach in the water before we resumed the laundry. So we did. And after the cycle finished there was a good 3/4 of an inch of mildly bleachy water pooled on the floor near the washer and spreading out a startlingly large distance considering we had the washer set on “mini load”.

oh

shit

Further experimentation revealed that the source of the water was the floor drain in the basement. Any water that we put down any drain in the house would cheerfully back up out of the floor drain in the basement. This is not good. Of course this is all happening on a Sunday and to complicate things, in spite of leaving four rather frantic messages, we were unable to get in touch with our landlord. Clearly the situation needed to be fixed. We couldn't flush toilets, bathe, do dishes or drain water down the kitchen sink without making the problem worse. With this in the forefront of our minds we called Roto-rooter.

This is where things started getting better. Roto-rooter had a mans nearby so he turned up less than an hour after we called. After poking around the drain a little bit and flushing the toilet once he announced that the drain line between the house and the street was plugged, probably with tree roots. He busted out his industrial strength drain auger and after about an hour had the whole thing fixed. And their “come and rescue me after hours on a Sunday” fee was only 35 bucks. The whole bill was slightly over 300, but we get to send the invoice to our landlords along with next month's rent check

reason number (x+1) that I am actually kind of glad we don't own our house.

On a completely different note, apparently there is a small but growing trend of people who are too busy to maintain their personal online presence (facebook, Myspace, etc.) paying other people to do it for them. (BBC article). I found this both amusing and disturbing. I mean it really kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it? If I have a Myspace page and pay someone to keep it up for me, it isn't really MY space is it? Its more like Someguyspace.

Also just wanted to take a moment to sing the praises of what I'm sure will become one of our new favorite local businesses, the coffee shop that just opened on the block just off Market Street on 8th Avenue. Can't think of the name right now, but its the only one on the block so there shouldn't be too much confusion. Anyway, they just opened yesterday, the owner seems like a decent guy and makes a mean latte. Add to that the fact that its three blocks from our house and you have a recipe for a perpetual caffeine buzz. The only complaint I have is that they don't open until 6 am. The world would have been perfect if they opened at 4 so I could get coffee there on my way to work.

One of my latest musical addictions is Ed Solo a sort of reggae/dub influenced drum&bass artist. I picked up the “When I Was a Yout” single off iTunes and have been listening to it compulsively.

and finally –

When you see this post, quote from Doctor Who on your LJ.

One must always accept the unexpected.
The Doctor, in “The Leisure Hive”