A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That

"I'm gonna cwyyyyyy!" muses Zachary "I'm Out" "Sylar" "Dr. Crybaby-bitch" Quinto

  So firstly, everyone knows I'm a sci-fi fan and absolutely LOVE all movies, even bad ones such as Manos: Hands of Fate, and I watched Star Trek: Into Darkness which compared to what it was inspired by, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan and Star Trek: In Search of Spock, was a bit kiddy but still pretty fun and more "Buck Rogers" than "Star Trek" and... a little gay (why is every guy crying in this freakin' film?  Who does that?) 



Original Star Trek: Wrath of Khan was far superior in scope and acting.

 
 The originals were Shakespearean like "Othello" with the grandiose acting and drama while these are little more than Archie Digest Comics but, in this generation, which I call "Generation Twitchy-Gay" suits it just fine, and, honestly, it wasn't horrible, though I could have done without the 3D (actually, I did, because Abrams wanted to install LED flashlights constantly burning your retinas attached to the 3d-glasses for extra lens-flare.. what's up with that horrible, horrible starship-deck design by Apple Inc.?  Really?  Mercury-halide lamps aimed directly at your eyes ON the walls?) 



Abrams, demanding more lens flare from the mercury-halide 1000-watt wall-light fixtures!  "MORE LENS FLARE!" he bitches.

 Also, I watched Iron Man 3 which I prefer to call the film Tony Stark One as it focuses on just about everything but Iron Man, and it pretty much was the movie The Incredibles by Pixar if you think about it too much.  Still, decent if you like dialogue.  So few kids do these days in favor of blinky-lights.

Obama's administration makes people think that this is a good costume.  Children realize parental voting failure early.

  Can't wait till Avengers 2 comes out.. someday.  Joss Whedon's a fantastic director.  Everyone should watch the short-lived major-fanbased Firefly, as well as watch the motion-comic he did in a 4-part series, The Astonishing X-Men (but not until after Wolverine and the X-Men as it's chronological.)



Actual footage of Avengers 2 pre-release, 2015.

  Waiting for any other "blockbuster" to come out, such as The Wolverine or Superman (DC Comics trying to get back onboard while Marvel is doing fantastically) I went to see After Earth since Tom Cruise's Oblivion (not to be confused with Phantasm: OblIVion which I suspect will be better) is not quite out at the "Dollar Theater" at Citadel Crossing yet, nor is it on Netflix or Bluray yet either).  I was warned by Rotten Tomatoes that it was a real loser of a film, getting a 12% fresh rating; still, I went anyway.  So the movie premise is actually very Star Trek-ian in the sense that Will Smith (who I generally dislike due to his extremely brash goofiness and egocentricity in the same vein as Adam Sandler who also is the demigod-like hero in his films) plays as a Vulcan-like character by necessity because the alien enemy feeds off of pheromones for detection of humans.  Over generations, human soldiers begin to be able to control their pheromone production by having less and less emotions to survive, making the massive force of the alien empire (un-named and bug-like so you can't emote with them as does several horror-sci-fi films and books by way of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Ender's Game, Aliens, or any other giant-bug movie of the '50s, though failing miserably in reverse with Avatar [I hated those blue, giant, pagan, animal-enslaving, USB-tailed demons!]) not able to see them and losing ground on their (of course) onslaught against the human settlements.  Earth has been abandoned long ago and a soldier's son fails his "ranger" exam so when he comes home he takes him on a simple mission to transport one of the alien beasts (an "Ursa".. ahem.. bear?  Really?  Nice American-Indian coming-of-age angle there).  They unfortunately crash-land on (supposedly) Earth but the ready-to-retire expert-soldier-general "dad" has both his legs broken and half the ship is 100km away (62 miles).  The nose-end of the emergency beacon is destroyed in the crash and everyone but dad and the son are left so he sends the boy to get the beacon in the tail section. The atmosphere has evolved to minimal atmosphere so there's a gel pack that must be inhaled every 12 hours to coat the lungs to absorb more O2 and, of course, there's a limited quantity.. and the "Ursa" is likely free and dangerous.  It is said that every creature has evolved to kill humans on Earth now (for some reason, since humans have been now gone for hundreds of years) and the boy who emotes too much has a bit of a harsh journey ahead of him.  Honestly, not that cheesy and a hint of Adam West in Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) [which is a sci-fi must-see by-the-way, as is Forbidden Planet (1956) a sort of prequel to Star Trek in-spirit and you can see where ideas were achieved].



After Earth (2013)

  I also installed a Mild-to-Wild footswitch in "Rosie" today [my 2012 Centennial Edition Grand Sport Corvette] (which, as all car modifications [or motorcycle] requires an involuntary blood-sacrifice, and was not particularly as easy as the short instructions suggested, which involved drilling a hole and snaking some wires in a way humans are not supposed to be able to do) where on the "dead pedal" where one rests one foot aside from the clutch I put a toe-switch that turns-off the stealth-mode exhaust normally "on" when not romping on the accelerator pedal, making the car rumble all the time if chosen (and adding an additional 6 Hp).  It's rather impressive.  It simply disconnects a vacuum fuse for you.  I removed that 10 Amp fuse (which makes it rumble all the time) for a day or so to hear how it might sound and it was pretty impressive, but it does, like many aftermarket exhausts, drone a little on longer trips, making you crank-up the radio if you were to listen to music other than the exhaust note.  The burbling, etc., scares children and makes The Tall Man from Phantasm cringe in fear and makes the car far more aggressive sounding with the added bonus of more throttle response.  Still, though I could ditch the fuse and call it "a day" there are times when "stealth mode" (aka standard mode) is preferred, such as early morning commutes, etc.  The fuse controls a vacuum tube which opens two of the four exhaust valves like an electronic cut-out of the 1970's.  Normally, two are closed and the muffler routing goes around an internal bend so-to-speak.  When romped-on, the valves are pushed open by vacuum tubes attached to the engine (somewhere, I forget) and makes a pleasing VRRRORRRMMMM sound.  Why not all the time?  Well, again, you don't want to terrorize your small neighborhood at 4:30 am going to work and force small children (and sweet ladies) to have heart palpitations!  With my left-big-toe-switch, I have the option.  With great power comes.. yadda yadda.

  I also (a bit ago) sanded down some old, gnarly benches and re-stained them so they look nice and moved them around so they're more useful than under the vineyard (lots of grapes coming up it seems, time to learn how to harvest them properly for BOOZE-makin').  Yep, they're Cawtaba grapes, colonial ones for makin' BOOZE.  I think I did a good job with the "rotary" sander.  I did good.  I make good wit wood thing.  I did labor wood duh good!

  That's it.  Just a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.