Acoustic Rain

 
Been playing my 1985 Custom Ovation electric-acoustic guitar "Rose" lately, and getting into songs like Heart's, "Love Alive" and Men at Work's, "Overkill" which always reminded me of Space Command and my doings in it.  How can it not be?  I'll add some Dr.Strangelove in the solo background for Stratcom.

   I think I'll do versions of those in the near future while I wait for an upcoming progressive release from my on-again off-again band Resonance song, "Dance of Smoke and Mirrors" not unlike Dream Theater's, "Metropolis Part 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper". 
  The tone generated from Rose is sweet and Sylvan, and I'll probably introduce mandolin in the cover of Heart and I might be able to squeeze it into the solo of Men at Work and Resonance as well.  With "Love Alive" I can easily put it at the end as the intro to "Dream of the Archer" as "Sylvan Song" as is on the album, "Little Queen".


         
  I used to be strictly acoustic tones and no guitar pedals for years in my ancient days, attempting songs like The Beatles, "Norwegian Wood" and other such things (incidentally, a song about a jilted one-night-stand ending in burning down her apartment in spite that actually happened, the wood being "pine".. amusing-ish, if not villain-esque).
  My studio-grade triangle of triangle-summoning by TreeWorks came in, as well as my goat-skinned tambourine of satyr summoning and nymph entrapment and my Phil Collins sand-shaker of Phil Collins-ing gives a silky (shik-a shik-a shik!)  Should be for some summer-night enjoyment for all.  HA ha.. ha.. ohhh.

  Looking forward to recording!  Enjoy the night (as it apparently still belongs to Michelob until someone else claims it..)

An Inconvienient Lie

  Over the years, media arch-villains have attempted to melt the polar ice caps, causing flooding and worldwide disaster.  From Captain Planet cartoon to Lex Luthor, Dr. Evil, Dr. Doom, and Dr. Jamaica.  (ah, those doctors, see what a jerk a doctorate makes you?)  The idea is either mass-flooding or creating a reverse-greenhouse effect causing an ice-age.


                   
  Guess what, kids?  It's happened, and no one noticed a thing.  Yep.  The Arctic Ocean is completely thawed, and the mile thick ice sheets of Greenland are melted.  Is Denver under water?  Where's Kevin Costner's gills of evolution on newborns?  Nope.  Nothing.  Is it more humid?  Did the water evaporate into space?  Nope. 

  Thing is, most Democrats don't believe in using a scratch-sheet when solving math equations, similar to the Underpants Gnomes.  They see an issue, extrapolate it as far as possible, and without doing more than preliminary math, get a global-fearing end-result.  Pseudo-science for the non-scientists.  Most scientists aren't Democrats anyway so it's hard for the Party to get anyone to agree with them without waving some nice money for the scientists to work the numbers a bit.  You'll see politicians tout doom, but an actual scientist?  The one or two out of 20 million that "sell-out" change their name afterwards, move to another state, and take a long, long hot shower to wipe the filth away from their souls as they lied for money.

  So are the Democrats going to be all like, "Oh, um.. yeah, we were wrong."  Nope.  I doubt it.  It further invalidates them.

  It's a nice, warm summer this year, and the US has been going through a few weeks of a heat-wave to which a lot of the dumbos think is "Global Warming" as opposed to true meteorological science.  Democrats only  base it  on immediate, short-term, local, personal observation.  Thing of it is, mankind cannot affect stratospheric atmospheric conditions that easily except by way of 1) Launching a lot of rockets [creates the equivalent of 100 million car's exhaust, depending on the launch vehicle and its destination] or 2) Nuking a mountain, throwing 100 million tons of ash into the stratosphere.  Cars, trucks, and refineries only create a tropospheric change, and CO2 cannot go above that level as it's heavier than O2.  At best, it can displace it, but at that point, the gaseous sea of CO2 only would be 10 miles high, and we'd be all dead well before that.  If everyone put cars and lined them up on land and sea and ran them at idle for a week, bumper-to-bumper, we'd have about 9 to 12 feet of CO2 covering the Earth to which the cars would stall.  It'd be hard to breathe and we'd have to stand on our cars, until they stalled and the algae would breathe it all and flourish, replacing it with O2.

  Anyone remember when Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland exploded in 2010?  A few months later we had some Global Cooling.  This is because it's the equivalent of #2: Nuking a mountain.  The plume of gas exploded into the stratosphere.  Feel-good Democrats with liberal-arts degrees changed their tune, saying, "Oh, yeah.  That's what Global Warming does... things get, er, uh.. colder!!!"  Remember that statement?  I most definitely do.  You should to.  It was a huge statement by the Democratic Party as a whole and their lies.  Well, they were wrong again.  It was the freakin' volcano.  Caused Global Cooling by 0.5 degrees for 1 full year; happened right before Marapi in Indonesia also went off in November of that same year to perpetuate the cold.  Stratospheric change on a global scale.  Same thing happened in 1815 on Mount Tambora which became "The Year without a Summer" in 1816.  In 1991, Mount Pinatubo also created global cooling.  So, no, it's not what "Global Warming" does such that it gets cooler.  It's a stratospheric disturbance (in the Force) creating a veil of ash of some variety, be it sulphur dioxide or iron mist.

  So in the last 100 years, the average temperature of the Earth has risen 0.74 degrees F.  Not even a degree.  Currently we're in the peak of an 11-year solar cycle where the Sun get's rather naughty indeed and spits out a lot of solar flares, heating the Earth naturally and expands the atmosphere further out, causing more B-Star coefficient of drag on low-Earth orbit satellites and their debris causing them to burn-in at a faster rate.  Think of it as air-drag like when you put your hand out a car window.  On occasion, some satellite rocket-bodies that are flat get a little lift for a bit and actually extend their orbit, depending on spin rotation of it and other factors.  I did it at Cheyenne Mountain for 2 years, that and collision avoidance for the Space Shuttle, MIR (at the time, though I wasn't as adamant to protect the Russians, but I never fudged a number in-spite) and ISS.  On a global cycle, this is perfectly normal.  I validate myself by keeping everyone in space during those 2 years alive, and had then manuver as-needed.  No Democrat has ever done this because they don't understand math or science, just what feels good, like pot.

  Oh NO!  You see that HUGE ASS SPIKE on the RIGHT?!  Well, okay, look at the temperature scale on the left.  In the last 200 years it's gone up almost a FULL DEGREE!  YIKES!  Now let's consider something else.  In 1816 you see the huge drop in temps of about 0.5 degrees.  What about the Industrial Revolution from 1750 to 1850?  Actually a slight drop in temps EVEN THOUGH we had ALL that huge-ass amount of soot billowing from HUGE, uncontrolled,  coal-burning and oil-burning monstrosities.  Indeed, London was often blacked-out for weeks on-end, smoke-stacks towering black-tar death into the skies blotting out the sun utterly as a sign of progress. The level of output was dozens of times more than we do now.  Read some period pieces at the time and it's mentioned fully.  Oh, I'm sorry, you don't read?  You just trust what people tell you on your iPhone?  Awww.  Is history too scawy for woo?  Idiots.  Please stop breeding. 

  The Democratic Party never does its homework.  They do things that feel right without doing the math.  Let's look at Universal Health Care.  Well, it's a bit of a crock.  I have health-care and let me tell you, it's pathetic.  Hospitals over-charge 1000% so they can make a buck, and more often than not, the health insurance say they pay a large amount of the "bills" but it ends up that you pay all of it.  You see, the hospitals and health-care insurance companies know how to work it.  Say my most recent Influenza H1NA Virus visit: I went in and ended up paying $613 for just the diagnosis and prescription (not the actual medicine) for a visit and follow-up.  I HAVE Aetna Health Insurance.  Aetna said they paid $1000 but I strongly doubt it.  Are ENT doctors making $800/hour?  Most likely not.  Did the test they ran from my snot cost $1600?  Probably more like $16 to include postage.  It's over-inflated so the insurance companies actually never pay-out except in rare surgical instances.  Becky's surgery we ended-up paying out-of-pocket $28,000 after the insurance paid-out a supposed $640,000.  Being there the whole time, again, I doubt the whole thing cost more than the $28k we choked-up in monthly payments.  It's all a scam. 
  SO.. Obamacare as-it-were is NOT free health care.  It's mandatory purchase of health insurance.  Do you think the free health-insurance for the ultra-poor has the user pay NO money?  Ha ha ha ha ha!  Nope, it en-debts them for years.  Might pay 10% out of that 1000% inflated rate, and then the ultra-poor has to pay or have their credit hit rock-bottom as collectors hound them forever and all-eternity, even taking their WIC and Welfare stamps to pay it off.   So we're all required to buy health insurance that doesn't do jack-squat for you and you end-up paying a ton anyway.  It's NOT free.  Regardless, the game the health-insurance companies play will make it seem like a good deal, and the percentage the users actually are "covered" for will be extra taxes.  Not a good deal.
  Now, I'm not against free health care that's subsidized by taxes.  It'd have to raise our tax rate up an additional 20% or so all-around I warrant, and  you know what?  I'm fine with that.  Canada is more-or-less fine with that, though their health-care system is not all roses, and any kind of specialist they need, like for a broken leg or what have you has to be subsidized by EXTRA health insurance they HAVE to buy anyway or pay out-of-pocket.  I'd love a real free health care, but it's not happening with Obamacare, it's just an illusion like man-based global-warming.  It's cyclical and mankind is amazingly insignificant in that global aspect.
  Please pick up your trash though, it's unsightly.
         
Over and out.

Dead Puppets Society

  When did the puppeteers give up?  Does anyone remember the '80s when puppets were in just about everything from The Muppets to Child's Play and everything in between?  I think somehow along the way we lost that magic.  On every TV screen in the late '70s to '80s, puppets were everywhere.

 We had Alf and Madame on freakin' prime time TV, and we only had 3 channels back-then (well, a few more if you can remember UHF channels and the mind-evolving albeit alienating PBS).  Puppets had invaded every aspect of our lives, from Cabbage Patch dolls by Coleco (didn't save them from the video-game crash of 1983, caused by Atari suing Odyssey2 for KC Muchkin seeming too much like [and better than] Pac Man).  Everywhere, our beloved puppets.  In movies, we had Yoda from Empire Strikes Back and it was plausible and accepted by the entire world.

  Indeed, there was a huge amount of puppets in our lives.  I even myself embraced the concept with a few rather furry sock-puppets with googley eyes that got me through a few school presentation assignments! 

  Where are they now?  What shows have puppets?  Last show I can remember is Farscape that featured any sort of puppeteering.  Comedy has a few losers in the realm of vulgarity, to include Crank Yankers (now canceled), extreme-racist Jeff Dunham, and vulgarmaster Otto and George.  There's only a few of those evil puppets now, playing satire on race and on our own minds from our past.  It's sad, really. 

  Instead, we have (still) variations on Reality TV, so much in-fact there's an actual channel on it called TruTV on DirecTV now.  Kids, it's all scripted.  Even the talent-shows are scripted.  Everything on TV is freakin' scripted, kids!  Even sports to some degree, if enough money is involved, and there usually is.  You think MMA is all impromptu, not to take the fall at time X for big bucks?  I don't take MMA seriously in the same way I don't take WWE seriously because there are no blocks.  Martial Arts is 99% blocks.  Judo is all blocks.  A true Judo Grand Master would almost never be touched.  Ninjitsu is all-about evading combat altogether.   Most of all sports is pretty fake, depending on where the money sits, especially NFL and NBA.  Still, I guess it's entertaining for some who like to pretend.  I do.  I watch sci-fi, and I miss puppets!  E.T. anyone?

  So somewhere along the line, we gave 'em up, those puppets.  Why?  I don't know.  Ratings didn't line-up?  Alf was doing pretty well for several years.  1990 killed it all off.  There was a strong need for change, and the family shows were eliminated for something new, something un-fresh and rancid.  Gone were the shows like Punky Brewster and Happy Days for Ally McBeal and JAG.  Serious court-based shows.  No more kiddin' around now.  ER and Chicago Hope were (nearly) entirely devoid of puppets.  It's as if puppets weren't allowed to exist after 1990 except for a few horror-puppet sequels to collect the dough such as Seed of Chucky or Puppet Master 3.  All went digital after that.  Even George Lucas who loved Jim Henson's and Frank Oz's masterworks turned his back on it for some reason.

  Recently a Muppets movie by Brian Henson (Jim's son) came out that did remarkably well at 4x it's budget in takes, and a Fraggle Rock movie is in the works for next year.  Maybe there's hope, but I'm sad for the last 20 years, the Y Generation, and the current Generation Z which is almost completely soul-less, completely connected and yet so disconnected with themselves, with no style (except their iPhone and earbuds), no good music (Gen Z is trying at least, Gen Y has nothing but a little neo-punk), and both, sadly, have no Saturday Morning cartoons and .. no puppets.  I mean, has there been any good music in the last 20 years?  Earth shattering since 1993?  A few mild hits at-best.  Nothing memorable except older bands from the '70s and '80s continuing-on.  A few pop one-hit wonders.  I blame the lack of puppets!

  In the '80s, if you didn't know something, you'd go to sleep that night with a sense of wonder, not knowing, until you went to a physical library and looked it up, or asked a wise sage like Doc Brown (great Scott!).  Now, you click a button and get your answer and go back to chewing your cud.  You don't need to go on a quest and ask a puppet anything.  Lazy and empty.

  Maybe we can take XNA (Xeno Nucleic Acid) and create a race of puppets, who play sports that aren't faked.  BRING BACK THE PUPPETS, AMERICA!

The Almighty Thor

 

  So when Thor came out in late April of 2011, the SyFy Channel helped produce a Mockbuster film of similar origins, Almighty Thor.  It was released to video 2 days later.  That's not a good sign.  I immediately put it on my Netflix queue, let the horror begin!
  Often, film-makers of ill-repute will try to make a film of very similar themes based suspiciously on a film's hype, usually direct-to-video to try to ride upon the theatrical release.  This is called a "Mockbuster" to trick the user into buying a low-budget knockoff release.  The only people suckered into buying or renting or viewing it are the old and/or feeble-minded.  It's the same people that get the InterWebs and then start clicking the bouncing monkey Java-script-based icon to "shoot the monkey" game which then installs a gateway virus (in the same way AIDS is) which invites thousands upon thousands of other viruses to cry havok on their helpless non-updated Windows machines.  These fools then discredit Windows for being slow and buggy, and end-up buying an Apple because it only comprises of 8% of the home-market out there and there's not a lot of call to invade these guys yet... though it's started with a few dozen.  Apple doesn't have the army of anti-virus personnel in-place as Microsoft does and they'll die painfully once the ball gets rolling.
  Some examples of Mockbusters are: Terminator II (not "Terminator 2, Judgement Day"), Jaws 5, Transmorphers, Transmorphers II Fall of Man,  The DaVinci Treasure, Snakes on a Train, Halloween (night), AVH (Alien vs. Hunter), I am Omega, The Day the Earth Stopped,  and Titanic II.
  Some that get you when you're not looking is like Recon 2020: The Caprini Massacre.  It fooled me back in 2004 as being not created by seemingly a bunch of junior-high-school kids.  Considered by me as one of the worst sci-fi movies of all time, I give you the trailer...

Instert recon 2020 trailer

 

So what's up with Almighty Thor ?  Well, let's start with some issues.  First, it's low-budge to a scale of a Taco Bell student-wage salary of slightly under $200,000.  In this day and age of Hollywood, that's like mom buying the store-brand "cola" in 3 liters because, "the kids don't know the difference".  Guess what, mom, we know the difference.  Oh yes, we know.  Guess you couldn't spend the extra 8 cents for Pepsi, huh?  Ah, well.  So I took my notebook and wrote down some key interesting facts I had with the film.  I'm a bit of a Norse mythology fan, so here goes:

  The plot involves Loki showing up and killing Odin and a small city so he can get Odin's hammer (?) and make Ragnarok happen.  A very whiney Thor takes the hammer and fights Loki and nearly loses until a Valkyrie (actually listed in the film credits as a Jotunn but admits she's a Valkyrie in the film) comes and opens doorways to a training ground so Thor can train in hammer-use.  Loki sends hellhounds to get Thor so the Valkyrie opens a door to Los Angeles but Loki follows and beats them both up a lot and kills the Valkyrie and takes the hammer.  Thor goes to Hell to forge his very own hammer and battles Loki to victory.  LA suffers.

  The story is a boy-to-manhood story with the help of a female guide due to the untimely loss of a dad.  Pretty sad, really, and more whiney than Luke Skywalker's want to go to Tashi Station for more power-converters. 

The AV Club rates it as follows:

Almighty Thor received largely negative reviews from critics. Reviewing the film for the The A.V. Club, Phil Dyess-Nugent gave "Almighty Thor" a rating of "D-", taking issue with the film's low budget: "The film is so underpopulated that most of the awful deaths Loki inflicts go down off-camera; he points his stick or gives a command to his dogs, and then you hear somebody holler, "Argghhhh!!"". Dyess-Nugent also criticised the acting of the leads and took issue with the producer's decision to shoot the LA scenes in abandoned parking lots: "The comic high point is a fight between Thor and Loki, with the guys spinning around and waving their weapons at each other while keeping one eye peeled for cops who might demand to see their filming permit." The Blueprint website review of the film stated, "This brain numbing 80 minutes of constant noise, cheap effects, background music that never once stops and ropey acting will test the patience of even the most hardened B-movie aficionado...Almighty Thor was just one giant headache of a film."

  I myself found a few incorrect or unusual points:

• Valhalla is apparently an Austrian castle
• Asgard is surrounded by eucalyptus trees and looks a lot like Santa Maria, California
• Odin has tattoos on his forearm
• Odin's horse Slipnir is nowhere to be found (likely because a horse was too expensive to budget)
• Odin apparently has a Brigadoon-like stone hammer (?!) that appears once a month during the full moon, if not seized, disappears forever of which Thor must find and take.  This is assumed to be Mjolnir, though there are no texts that suggest Odin ever had a "hammer".  Odin never uses this hammer, it's kept away for some reason, though he holds on to his spear, Gugnir, though its powers are never used, even to save himself from death.
• Loki is not related to Thor or Odin in any way and has a New York accent
• Thor wears a red thong
• Valkyries are from Tijuana and are taught to fight by Borr (Odin's father).
• Thor never learned how to fight using a weapon and needs a girl to show him how
• Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, is a palm tree, not an ash.
• Loki doesn't know how to run
• The Norns (similar to the Greek's Three Fates of Moirai) are suspiciously not near Yggdrasil, but like the Greek-version in a cave (some producer didn't do their homework, tsk tsk)
• In Los Angeles, there's graffiti of the word, Loki just about everywhere, suspiciously, though Loki may have done this in his spare time, as he's very slow chasing the hero.
• Thor decides to build his very own Mjolnir (aka meow-meow) by punching lava in Hell with his bare hands. 
• Thor can wield Mjolnir without gloves
• There's a Christian Knight of Templar guarding Yggdrasil somehow, maybe he's lost?  None of the 4 stags, or the dragon, sparrow, etc.  Maybe he killed 'em all?
• A short-sword can defeat a hell-hound but a sparrow-missile from a USAF YF-23 cannot.
• Thor is not immune to Uzi weapon fire.  Loki is.

I strongly recommend this movie for folks that love horrible B-Movies


Enjoy the trailer:

Silver Surfing

 
  So I watched season 1 of The Silver Surfer on Netflix out of a bit of curiosity.  I knew vaguely about the character, and my dad liked it growing up.  Indeed, without any knowledge bought him Marvel's "Silver Surfer #1" comic back when I was in Lackland, TX in basic training in 1993 and mailed it to him for about $2.  I'm pretty sure there was a reboot of the series around then.

  Silver Surfer isn't shown much in Marvel movies.  His first and only appearance was in the 2005's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer which wasn't all that bad and doubled its money for production, but got mediocre reviews.  The end of the movie is pretty gosh-darn cool though, and the CGI is decent enough.  Interestingly, the movie Terminator 2 had a T1000 liquid-metal "robot" played by Robert Patrick that was originally a tech-demo for a Silver Surfer movie.  Some copies of the 2 minute demo are said to exist.

  So who's this Silver Surfer guy?  Seems cheesy, right?  I mean, a metal guy on a surf board?  What's up with that?  Who's this ... Galactus guy, and, what, wait?  Thanos?  Wait, wasn't he the last guy at the end of The Avengers?  Yep.  Silver Surfer's arch nemesis.. well, one of 'em anyway, in the same way The Joker is Batman's arch nemesis anyway.  Batman's got a few, to include Julie Newmar as Catwoman and also Victor Bouno as Prof. Bill McElroy. 

Victor Bouno as Professor William McElroy as Batman's amnesiac nemesis, King Tut

Julie Newmar as the quintessential Batman super-nemesis, Catwoman

    So wait a minute, enough with Batman, that's DC Comics anyway, what about Marvel's Silver Surfer and this whole Thanos backstory?  Well, it's quite interesting.  The streaming Netflix cartoon gives the Silver Surfer's origin as well as Thanos' which is very useful.  Furthermore, it's directed by none other than Stan Lee and Jack Kirby so it's legit.  What's bad is that it came out in 1998 on Fox and, in Fox's style, deleted it because it was cool, and not a reality-TV show, so it was eliminated.  Fox thought it was too heavy for kids to fathom.  I've watched it, and it's not cheesy whatsoever, unlike Fox Kids versions of X-Men and Spiderman which are, well, pretty darn horrible.  Fox Kids also created a few baby X-Men and baby Avengers crap ala Muppet Babies.  This is unacceptable.  Of course, Fox kills anything that isn't syrup-y fake and pathetic.

  To save you the 13 episode watch, which in the vein of Flash Gordon (1980) ends with "The End?"  (excellent).  Here's the scoop:

  Norrin Radd is from the Utopian planet Zenn-La, in the Deneb star system of the Milky Way galaxy.  Facing the destruction of his world by always searching, always hungry planet-consuming Galactus, Radd bargains with the cosmic being:  In return for the safety of Zenn-La and his lover, Shalla-Bal, Radd pledges to seek out planets for the world devourer to consume as his herald which will save Galactus some search time to quench his hunger much faster as a scout.  Galactus imbues him with a portion of the Power Cosmic, transforming him into the Silver Surfer so he can go faster to seek.  Radd had intended to lead Galactus to uninhabited planets, but Galactus removes his memory to prevent this.  Immediately, Silver Surfer points out the first planet to eat as Zenn-La, but surprisingly, Galactus keeps his promise, explaining he made a bargain with a noble man who sacrificed himself for humanity.

  Silver Surfer is known throughout the Universe as the harbinger of doom and hated everywhere.  Eventually, Galactus gets to Earth where Silver Surfer is overwhelmed by the weak but endless defenses and desperation.  He accidentally saves a young girl in California, bringing her to Galactus' ship and his memory comes back enough to remember he would only take Galactus to uninhabited worlds and sacrifices himself against Galactus' rays to stop him.  Galactus is moved and banishes Silver Surfer forever, but does not turn him back into Norrin Radd.  As further punishment, has Zenn-La become a sort of Krull-castle, teleporting from sun to sun for all eternity every day.  Galactus converts the girl into a herald "Nova" who has a mutant ability to find whatever she's looking for.  Nova's mind wasn't erased and makes sure Galactus eats only dead worlds.

SCTV's Count Floyd watching everything Silver Surfer I just mentioned in 3d

  Silver Surfer explores the Universe, hated by everyone for years because they still think he's Galactus' herald and is often attacked, and searches for Zenn-La as his memory starts coming back due to a surprise conflict with Thanos who enters his mind in search of Galactus to destroy.



Hulk cannot defeat Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet, nor Thor with inherited OdinForce


                      
  In the meantime, Thanos gains power with his ship, delighting in the destruction of all things, praying to the Cosmic embodiment of Chaos (female) aka Lady Death, winning her approval by devastating worlds.  He finds a source of unlimited power and attempts to destroy the Universe. 




Thanos blasts Galactus, the Devouerer of Worlds before he gets the Infinity Gauntlet


  The series is very dark and it goes on for a while and is quite entertaining.  Cosmic-level characters abound that were only before in comic books, such as The Beyonder, Eternity and Infinity, the living planet, "Ego" as well as Beta-Ray Bill and Adam Warlock.  Deep, heavy Marvel stuff, and makes The Avengers seem like a pathetic joke.  All of the characters are more powerful than them by-far. 
 
  The whole Silver Surfer series on Netflix kind of gives you a 301 course on Marvel, where movies like Spiderman and X-Men and Avengers seem self-important kid-stuff.   Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom are more of a more deep environ, spanning more galactic issues.  Silver Surfer is the depth of it, and gives everything more scope, making anything Spidey's doing seem nearly irrelevant and puny.  These are not one-off comics, but have been going on for decades.  Jack Kirby and Stan Lee are really into these epic-level stories, which is why there's a teaser of Thanos at the end of The Avengers.
  I myself am late into the game.  I knew about Thanos only because of X-Men: Children of the Atom arcade game.  Sad, really.  Still, watching this 13-part series of 18 minute-episodes really brings you to-speed with the essentials and follows the comics well, apparently, so again, it's legit.
  I needed to re-watch the video below to get up-to-speed with the most powerful Marvel characters out-there, and I find it's the best, least-biased explanation I've found and is worth the watch. 
  Here's the video of the top 50 most powerful Marvel Universe characters.

                         

Something Saucy

  Somethin' smells... saucy!

Quotable Quotes

  Don'tch'ya hate it when during a conversation someone quips up a semi-appropriate quote from a delicious source of media only to botch it, missing some key point entirely?  It irks me almost as much as bad grammar in online texts (ie. all lowercase, l33t (ie. hyper-unclever fat-lazy-bastard text [hey, if someone is texting you and it's in l33t, never talk to them again, because you'll be arrested for the general principal that they're mind is 8 years old]).
  One such example of bad quoting is the following vid:

                         
  

   At 7:00, the famous Beer and Board Games series (and if you haven't been following this, you're living under a rock, as it has over a combined total of 23 billion hits [which means that even Samatha Fox saw this 6 times already minimum] (for the one guy that hasn't watched both seasons, the makers of Chad Vader Seasons 1 thru 4 (and yes, you have to start at Ep.1 {world renowned, by the way with over 70 quadrillion mega hits that even Tim Curry has watched over 700 times, and George Lucas has approved as canonical and putting it in The Mandalarian Wars pre-prequel} they quip the following jingle impromptu in a drunken stupor:

Go to Casino

Spend all your money

Watch all your money

Disappear

  Yay, verily, no finer words have been spoken, no haiku so full of truth that the last samurai has committed supuku in it's golden beauty.  (sometimes Watch is substituted for Make in the early versions, as is Lose and Spend.. in excelsior).

  The quote is particularly amusing such that it is not "Go to the Casino" but simply, "Go to Casino".  Still, later in the series, so enraptured with the performance this planet Earth, that YouTube commenters quote it with glee, so moved, so beheld by its spell and charm.  Yet, alas, they quote it with the "the" in their quoting.  It'd be like quoting the Bible and putting the "days" in 40 days and 40 nights to be hours.  Though it would make for a more realistic text.

  People do this all the time.  The misquote things; things of value; things of import.  Heck, look at the Jehova's Witnesses.  They took quotes about Romans "blood-letting" the wrong way, thinking Ioshua (Jesus for the uneducated) was referring to WW-I style blood transfusions!!!  Seriously, they have killed thousands of children because they refuse to allow dying children this!  News flash: Romans in 30 some-odd AD were not adept at blood transfusions!  Was Dr. James Blundell considered a super-satan?!  Sad.  Just sad.  These misquotes cause WARS!

  Anyway, no one is more misquoted than Monty Python's Flying Circus.  Everyone's seen the work, and a majority have seen at least a few of their TV series episodes.  It's considered comedic bible.  Even Larry The Cable Guy mentions it in some of his routines, not completely losing the brain damaged audience that prefers his work (to his chagrin, he's actually dangerously intelligent, his character he always plays (like Bobcat Golthwait and Groucho Marx to name a few) always talks down to the audience to their level successfully without anyone getting it.. well-done sir). 

  Monty Python is often misquoted at renaissance festivals.  Luckily, it's getting a bit archaic now (40 years old now) and new generations aren't picking it up, the jokes not as relevant (such as the political intrigue of the conservative party's fall in Britain in the early 1970's, huge then, almost irrelevant now except to those such as myself mildly interested in foreign history, of which most Americans are too busy watching Who's Got Talent aka The Gong Show aka Ow, My Balls! to care about).  Because of this, it's being less painfully quoted.  One difficult one to get just right, inflection and all, is this historically probable serf countering a claimed King of England about politics and how the peasants most-likely viewed a potential monarchy.  The joke being the peasants have transcended a monarchy as pathetic (which, being a British show is dangerously blasphemous as they most certainly do not have freedom-of-speech which Americans take for-granted way too much) and the historically accuracy that no, the King of England most likely did not come around to the far outskirt reaches of His Kingdom to oversee the goings-on of peasantry, merely to send ruffian tax-collectors every 10 years or so (which more than likely could have been performed by well-clothed cut-purses within that 10 year cycle unbenknowest of the supposedly uneducated outskirts).  Indeed, civilization is noted that in this commentary would govern themselves in a more efficient manner given the chance with no taxation, no monarchy, no wars, etc.  All of this is a master-jab at the British Empire in-general, making everything England has done throughout all time a waste of lives!  Excellent, but hard to quote.

                                                     

  So be careful of your quotes.  Practice it.  Take time to learn it.  Remember when you'd practice something?  This generation has given up the idea of skill-by-practicing.  I blame the iPhone, Steve Jobs' master-plan to destroy America to fulfil his communistic ideals like some Apple-flavoured Manhattan Project.  Back 20 years ago, if you didn't know where Tom Petty was from, you wouldn't know.  You'd go to sleep, not knowing this factoid and have a longing for knowledge.  You'd get up in the morning, and you'd ask people you'd meet during the day.  Eventually, you'd go to a library and try to research the information.  Weeks would go by without the knowledge.  Finally, you'd meet a super-fan of Tom Petty and she'd say, "Oh, yeah.  He's from Florida." and your life would be changed forever, and you'd marry that girl for her gift of wisdom!  Today, we have that same question, a fatty would type it in Wikipedia on their phone and within 2 seconds go, "Oh yeah.." then go back to the drooling they were doing.  Pathetic.

                                   

Go to Casino, lose all your money.  Watch all your money, disappear.  Like.



Colorado Fire Dying

  So a good portion of the Colorado wildfires are out, thanks to hundreds of firefighters across the nation.  We can't let this happen!  Fire is a living thing and now it's endangered!  Only you can help to keep fires alive!  Does anyone remember the 1991 film, Backdraft ?  Decent film for its time.  It's explained there that fire is a living thing:  it eats, it grows, it reproduces by igniting other locations.  We need to preserve the right for fires to stay alive!  We could put them in zoos!  Forest fires replenish the aging soil and create jobs, something Obama can't seem to accomplish (at 4 years there's no way it's Bush's fault, eh ultra-liberals?  Stop drinking your Kool-Aid and look around.)  The jobs of.. FIREFIGHTERS!  Firefighters would get unemployed without forest fires!  For the love of humanity! 

                             

  Please help by donating to the Save the Colorado Wildfire / Casey Anthony / Jerry Sandusky / OJ Simpson / Obama fund I have set up on PayPal.  With a donation of only $1000 we can save a full acre of fires that can live and thrive on the homes of the rich and violently wealthy, extreme left-wing, tax-dodgers of Waldo Canyon, Colorado!  You betchya!  Those guys get off scott-free from taxes this year!  With a simple $1000 donation, you get a free Bic lighter!  For a generous $10,000 donation, you can get a Doctor Who scarf and a small acetylene torch!  For the most generous and understanding a donation of $100,000 you can receive the "Fire Founders" plaque, the scarf, the lighter, and a free trip to Colorado where you can start your very own burn-the-violently-wealthy-rich-guy-neighborhood tour de Force de Luxe!

  As Smokey the Bear says, "Only you can save forest fires!"  Save a forest fire today.

Cigarettes and Beer

  Sure could use a smoke...



  Apparently Busch comes with floories  roofies.

Thing Ring

  Got my Fantastic Four toy of Ben Grimm as The Thing today.  All guitarists have a toy or two on their rig.  On top of my gear set, I have Hanuman's incantation of see, hear, and speak no evil.  They sit in front of a sodium rock lamp which emits negative ions (supposedly, I haven't seen them, they may exist in the Astral Plane..)


See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. 
The incantations of Haunuman






   Now, as depicted below, The Thing embodies, to honor the name of my rig, The Thing Ring (as all my boutique pedals are dangerous and in the effects loop of my Digitech 2112).  A MIDI to USB cable comes in within a few days so I can hook the whole deal up to the Internet and save my programmed patches.  The TC Electronics Vortex Flanger already has a USB connection, however, and is suspiciously sentient with it's tri-flange ability.


Thing Ring, do your THING!



   In the picture, I have them all turned-on again.  All the pedals, the spirit of The Thing stands nicely within it all.  From a top-down perspective, he doesn't get in the way of my activating the Boss Chorus CE-2 pedal, though the Phaser PH-1r (which is insane) requires I move his shoulder to move him aside with my foot a tiny tiny bit.  You'd think I'd put The Thing in the upper-right section, but that's reserved for two more dangerous pedals:  The Ether Frantabit bitcrusher (makes your rig sound like an Atari 2600) and perhaps the Boss Dimension C, though I fear it, and might get the Dimension D or some other pedal.
  With all these pedals turned-on,  I suspect inclement weather within the day.  Yes, Derek, it's my fault (again).  To stop the Colorado wildfires (worst on record) I just kept The Thing Ring turned off.. until .. now.



         

A Lament to the Epicene

Macaronis or (dandies) discussing acquisition of tea.  Notice the effeminate legs.

  Back in the 1700s, meterosexuals existed in the name of, dandy or also, the Americanized slang version (at the time) was called a macaroni.  Yep, "stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni" is an insult at Yankee meterosexuals.  Adopting the French way of effeminate dressing and slenderizing, some colonials would full-on-gay-it-up, wearing women's clothes and the like.  Now, considering the state of affairs at the time, de-stinking yourself might not have been that bad an idea, as life was not unlike camping in a log cabin for the first 100 years or so.  The practice of bathing or showering was frowned-upon, and indoor plumbing was only a dream.  Initial indoor plumbing started around 1820, aside from the Greeks use, heck they invented everything, eh?, though destroyed in the Dark Ages). Indeed, the first showers didn't get reinvented until around 1820 or so.  Stinky.



You want me to paint your portrait, fag?   I dunno... Oh?  $1000?  Well then sir you have my interest!  What, you want me to paint you as a lady!?  Is that lipstick you're wearing?  Where's that other hand?
- Macaroni Dandy getting portrait painted -

 

   So the term, Yankee Doodle Dandy is broken-down into the following entomology:

• Yankee
• This word is questionable, as sources are varied.  Generally it means colonial in a derogatory sense, but most believe the origin comes from the Dutch meaning "cheese eater".  Americans do love our cheese now, don't we?  It is associated best with the Dutch due to the settling of New Amsterdam (now New York) because the Dutch settlers would make the best cheese in the colonies and British (not yet at war) would remark, "Oh, look.  Here comes John Cheese." in a derogatory manner, which, in Dutch was pronounced, (Yan-Kees).
• Doodle
• A fool, simpleton, or sucker to swindle.
• Dandy
• A faggoty McFaggy Pants, or a Macaroni.  A fancy, saucy, spank McFag.



The Macaroni Dandy McFaggy Pants McGee

  

  I'm amused kids still sing the song, I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Yankee Doodle do or die.  Nice.  Heck, we didn't know what we were singing, but maybe some of it subliminally sunk-in to my fellow classmates, because now there's a lot of freakin' "Yankee doodle dandies" out there, and here's why...

Notice the Creme Filled gays, owned by the Devil

  It started with the stinky girls.  They'd shave off their pubic hair, starting in the 1970s with the armpits as a possible source of stank.  This happened right around the time deodorant became a bit common.  Before 1975, it was pretty rare for anyone to wear deodorant.  My nose as a child remembers this vividly.  (Pretty cool of me making an olfactory reference through a visual term, eh?)  Yes it is.  I'm awesome.




Sniffer-Cat demands you go back to the shower and wash again, this time using SOAP!

   By the mid-1990s, it migrated the the coochy, first as a stripe, then full-off.  Not every girl did this, because they weren't dirty pirate hookers and didn't reek of pestilence.  Over a while, girls started talking, seeing each other in showers, being forced to watch adult films with their respective boyfriends, etc.  A few of the guys liked the practice and sold it to them.  A lot of girls now shave a good portion of their pubic hair, or at least trim it neatly.  Leg shaving became envogue in the 1940s to beautify nylon stockings which are now generally defunct, as almost no one wears skirts or nylons anymore (poor Leggs ), yet the odd practice remains, so the practical function of shaving legs is lost.  Society in America almost demands it, however, albeit for no reason except, "it looks better".  Personally, one way or the other it doesn't bother me.  My wife pleasantly adheres to the Americanized standards as all women seem to.

Dirty Pirate Hooker

   Strange forearm shaving is not common amongst women.  Doesn't that look better too?  You listening Alyssa Milano?  I guess that'll be next.  Alyssa shaved her notoriously hairy arms for her wedding fairly recently.

Alyssa Milano autographing during a March, 2009 event (notice forearms untamed)

Alyssa Milano wedding 5 months later in August, 2009 (notice forearms)

  I met a guy who had to baby-powder his nether region in 2005 because of the reek.  He was a very slutty guy.  He'd sleep with incredibly, slutty girls that shaved completely in their hopes they wouldn't stink so bad.  It didn't help, but I guess it made them feel more clean in some way.  She convinced him to perform the same practice.  In adult films, men started shaving their nethers.  It first started in body-building competitions to show definition.  Guys would seemingly dip themselves in vegetable oil after "exfoliating" all their chest hair.  Not all body-builders do this, even to this day, but it's pretty common practice.  It's functional to show definition in minute detail.  Body-building to that extreme is a bit creepy anyway, and might shorten your lifespan, depending on your path, but whatever.

Maybe too much?

  Ah, but now we're getting to the heart of the matter, and my musings and such.  It's a sad time that the women's practice of shaving nethers has migrated to men.  A movie (I forget which) announced, "Don't you know it makes your ding-dong look bigger if you shave?!"  Well, that alone sparked a rash (literally) of shavers.  More junk has been nicked and cut by errant razors in the last 10 years encouraged by their lady friends.  I'm certain the 2005-baby-powder guy mentioned above was the first to shave.  This whole thing is a shame and a scam.  Ballywick, I say!  Boulderdash!

You listening, Obama?

  There are several reasons why we should not do this practice.

1. It's generally dangerous. 
• Cutting yourself there can easily get infected.  Your ballz could fall-out and onto the floor and when you chase after it you could kick it into the dog's bowl who'd run off with it in some 1980s film-style Turner and Hooch like madness. 
• Having an open wound there makes STDs far more easy to get into your blood stream.
• Macaronis will be attracted to you.
• Shaving bumps there (ingrown hairs aka pseudofolliculitis barbae) cause infection.  You don't want your codpiece to drop off onto the floor (where the dog will run off with it like a bone).
2. It's generally gay.
• Undoubtedly the Macaronis and Dandies (same thing, really, though I'm sure they fought it out with pillows on the subtle differences and got hurt) shaved their nethers to gay-it-up.
• Women seem to have a latent lesbian fetish that is satisfied by this.  If your woman wants you to shave there, she probably really wishes you were a girl.  Do you want your woman to strip your manhood mane from you?  If so, you're a dandy macaroni.
• If your girl doesn't like your manly body hair, she's a lesbian in denial.
• It makes you look like an 11 year old boy, you Penn State coach, you.  Citizens-arrest yourself now.
• If you do, you're a faggot.
3. It's generally not going to help.
• If you're doing this for stank reasons, it's not going to help.  You have a real issue with bacteria if you stink.  Use more soap.  A LOT of soap.  Not that effeminate gay Soft Soap crap, but real bar soap like Irish Spring or Ivory or pumice.  No amount of shaving is going to change that.  The hair does not harbor more bacteria (well, not as much as you think).  Learn how to wash and clean yourself and be a grown-up.
• It doesn't look better (despite what your lesbian girlfriend says).
• Why waste your time on this?  You don't look better.  Get a nice haircut instead.

 

I got a nice haircut, man!

Now I'm not against trimming for those folks that look like a 1970s blacksploitation film where the hair stands-out afro-style about a good foot or so.  That can be a nuisance as it'll get caught in things and snag, and you probably have other problems as well, so I won't interfere.  Bushwack it down to an inch depth or so and I won't tell if you don't.  Same with all body hair.  If you're hairier than Robin Williams, well, it gets hot outside and you can trim it down as you would your sideburns.  I'm fine with that somewhat.  You shave your legs though and you get a boot to the head.

  The main idea is clean.  I'm a fan of clean.  As a man, you don't have to be though.  It's your manly right to stink and be hairy and a bit dirty.  Don't give up your right!  In the following film, Ron Burgandy approves of Brian Fantana's cologne, Sex Panther, indicating, "It's quite pungent!  It's a formidable scent!  STINGS the nostrils."   Ron says this approvingly.  It's every man's right to smell offensive and should.  It's a bold statement and being bold is a man's RIGHT! 

                                                                              

Please, kids.  Don't dandy yourself up to be a faggy McFaggy Pants.  Don't wear Skinny Jeans and shave your body hair so you look like a girl (unless you're gay, then go see a shrink, because you hated your mommy, and daddy wasn't there?  Awww..... idiot.)

 







Run To You Revived

Wife from the video Run to You by Bryan Adams (1984)
she discovers his other "lover" which is a guitar

    So a few months ago, YouTube decided my cover of Bryan Adams' Run To You was actually stolen, that I had taken the guitar tracks and karaoke'd over it.  This went into preliminary litigation as it was reviewed more crucially.  Yesterday, YouTube decided to settle out-of-court and allow the video to run, as I offered original tracks from my AudioBox Presonus Studio recording program individually to prove otherwise.
  Honestly, it's not that good a version.  It's obvious from a guitarists' point-of-view that the tracks are not a from 1969 Fender Stratocaster.  It has a distinctive Ibanez sound.  I love Ibanez's electrics.  They're so versatile!  I've had mine since 1993.  In my version of the song, I put strong emphasis on the solo portion, as when I was a kid in 1984 I thought it was so powerful and yet so simple a riff.  Like violinists, several sounding more huge in an orchestra than just one, I created that "Wall of Sound" using my "Thing Ring" guitar rig setup.  When viewed at 1080i on YouTube you get a feel for how "big" it is, starting at around 2:06 or so.  I emphasized it by dropping the volume out right before the riff, which I feel gives an explosive tidal wave, drenching the listener with my "Wall o' Sound" technique of 10 stereo tracks of the same guitar riff to create an "orchestra" of electric guitars.  Not particularly expert on the bass, I used a subsonic Octaver to drop-down the bass guitar to around 4 Hz so that subwoofers can appreciate the depth.  On a full-blown nice stereo system it'll sound killer (not so great on PC speakers, though some nice $500 headphones might equate it nicer).  I've played it on my mid-to-high grade Denon (2 down from their best unit) and some 1970's Kenwoods with a JBL subwoofer and it's punchy.  Quite proud of it, really.  Of course, most people focus on the singing.  I dirtied it up and made it gritty-sounding.  I used a live-mic for the recording (which it turns out is very dificult to do for studio recording I found out later, an e985 Sensodyne, I now have a CAP Equitek E300 which is killer).  I had keyboards heavy in the mix but I tamed them when I remastered the recording a few months later.
  I think it came out good, but, well, I'm more of a backup vocalist.  If you decide to listen, please consider the guitar-works.