Oh, right ON....

On Film:

The trailer for Blade: Trinity has just been viewed.

My naughty parts are all tingly. The kicker was the selection of music to accompany the trailer. Rob D's "Clubbed to Death". Oh, right ON...

On Weddings

I was called on the carpet tonight as to whether or not I would attend my former boss' Wedding. I don't do weddings. I've managed to stay away from all but two in my lifetime. I was not planning on attending this one, as it is in the evening on a Friday night. Trying to get out of work on time on a Friday evening is pure hell for me, so I pretty much wrote it off. Well, I misread the date of the ceremony, and it turns out it is far enough ahead for me to arrange a half day in order to attend. I committed to going. Now to dig out my powder blue, two tone Tuxedo for the ceremony.....

Anguished English

This is for FlippinFlipper . You want a funny commentary on malapropisms in our time? Purchase Richard Lederer's "Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults on Our Language". It is a hoot!

The Austrians have Invaded England

Holy Crap

Growing up, the neighborhood market was the Spar-Markt. Translated, 'Spar' means savings. I always thought it was indigenous to Germany. Where the U.S. has the 7-11, Spar went five steps further. Think of a convenience store about twice the size of the largest 7-11. In this store you have a full assortment of dry and canned goods, paper products, everything for daily life that needs to be bought on a daily basis. It doesn't have the selection of a full blown super market, but this store is designed for daily shopping, not weekly or monthly shopping. (for the uninitiated, German households usually prepare and store for the preparation of meals in one day windows. The fridge you had in college is about the same size as a fridge in a typical German household.) The big difference between a Spar Markt and a 7-11 is that Spar also had a full Metzgerei and Backerei, or butcher and bakery. So a typical Spar was like a Vons, Ralphs, Albertsons, or Kroger's, only miniaturized for daily shopping.

Where am I going with this?

I'll tell you. While viewing some ads on a website created to showcase the best of them ( LBG , I found Jeremy's Fed Ex Ad on Kontraband dot com.), I ran across a Heidi Klum ad for Spar. On a whim, I did a google search for Spar, hoping to read a bit more in the language I grew up with and also to punch my own nostalgia and home country button. Well, here are two shocking revelations:

Spar: The Axis of Commerce.

Spar is not a German Corporation. It is an Austrian one. Yeah, I know. That's like saying Wales was as much a separate sovereignty to England as Austria was to Germany.

This is the funny part: Spar has the largest and greatest revenue producing chain of markets of any grocery chain in Great Britain. The Austrians have invaded. In the world timeline and geopolitical structure, this just strikes me as hilairious. "Move along, nothing to see here." for those who aren't interested...

For those who are:

Spar UK

Spar Corporate Home

Sure do like those peaches, wanna pick your tree...

In a very bizarre occurance, a representative of a company that delivers, house to house, farmer's market produce was going from business to business today offering samples of their produce and selling sample baskets. The fruit was out of this freaking world, like sex for the mouth without any hair. I bought in on a sample basket and the guy went out to his van to get one. He comes back in and plunks down nearly forty pounds of fruit, squash, and sweet corn. Woah!

I'm going to be a fruit eating fool for a while. Peaches, four varieties of apples, melons, oranges. Man, oh, man.

Drawn In

Decisive Battles

On this morning's episode of the History Channel's series, the Roman General Crassus' invasion of Parsia is examined and reenacted using CGI. I'm completely sucked in...

Aaah....Sunday Morning

On USC Football:

USC 31 Stanford 28
USC really needs to stop being a second half football team, as my heart would rather do important things like, well, beat. Going into halftime, Stanford led 28-17. In the second half, the Men of Troy allowed only something like 16 yards total offense until six minutes left in the fourth quarter. Then a tremendous defensive stand by USC on a Stanford fourth down, and the game was no longer a contest...

On my Image:

Upon the initial meeting with me and subsequent interactions in the course of daily work periods, new employees would be terrified of me for weeks. I do not know why this happens, as I try as much as possible to hardly interact with a FNG at all, so they are hardly terrorized by me. I have been told this happens, nonetheless.

I must be softening in my age, as I received a phonecall at my home, which is not widely known at all, last evening from a guy who is only a month old with the company, inviting me out to the UTD campus to play soccer with he and his buddies. I could not attend, for I had a previous engagement with the Men of Troy as they contested bragging rights with the Stanford Cardinal on Stanford's own playing field while being televised in prime time, but I think I just might ramble out there next Saturday.

On Palo Alto, California:

I have been to Stanford Stadium only once, and not for a football game. My former barracks roomate(ah, the barracks, those were the days of freedom before the witch queen got me to get an apartment off base. The horror, the horror.) and I travelled to San Francisco to watch the U.S. National Soccer squad play Costa Rica in a World Cup Qualifier. After the match, he and I made our way to the parking lot. In the jumble of people herding along the pathways to the lot, I literally ran into and bounced off of, none other than, Bora Milatinovich, world famous soccer coach of squads such as the U.S., Mexico, and China National Teams...

On Film and Print:

I am a big baby. Nothing scares me more, besides girls, than a really scary film or book. This makes my selection of reading material, recently, all the more insane, as I have Bogarted my roomate's copy of Stephen King's Night Shift .

You want scary? Try these:

Ju-On Every hair on my manly body stood on end in a few scenes.

Saw Still pending release, and NO, I'm not going to see it in the theater. Other theater patrons would be annoyed by my constant outbursts of "Mommeeeeeeeeeee!"

White Noise This is a toss up. The concept creeps me out to the nth degree, but I'm not sure they could build a story around it.

On the remake:

I'm a traditionalist. Some have said that I was born in the wrong decade. I live with the values and ideals that Americans had in, lets say, the Ike years. Maybe not to that extreme, but I do live by a code set by the Duke(see Profile). You do something like, lets say, remake one of my hallowed films of old, and you get me fighting mad. (see: Ocean's Eleven, The Alamo) If ever Casablanca were remade, I would become the studio exec killer. Turner came close to having a stalker/killer when he colorized it.(I wasn't making the money I do now and couldn't afford a trip to Atlanta. Hey! I've got cash now! Road Trip!)

Okay I'm going off on an evil and twisted tangent, now. Back on track. When I saw the trailer listing for a remake of one of the films of Gen. Jimmy Stuart USAF (Ret), I damn near had a stroke. Then I watched the trailer. I am giving this one a chance. In fact, I am rather excited about it's release. It is the remake of Flight of the Phoenix , one of my favorite Jimmy Stuart films.

In Summary

In summary, Go Trojans, find me a girl who doesn't scare me more than the twisted films my roomate turns me onto, and may Gen Stuart rest with the knowledge that, hopefully, someone in Hollywood payed proper respect to his work....

In a Perfect World....

If I had Bruce-Almighty-like Power

If I were master of my universe, instead of a jackass commentor of it, two things would occur:

My Daily Routine:

On arising, preparing for, and travelling to work, I would have, just like the Starbucks commercial, the band Survivor play a running rendition of "Eye of the Tiger" specifically taylored to me.

As my day progresses, I would have my own soundtrack. NFL Films tracks. Every time I would complete a stack of Count Corrections, send off a packet of Purchase Orders and Bills of Lading to Accounts Receiveable, or sign off on a multitude of material receivings for keying into inventory, the Raiders Theme would start playing.

On My End of Days:

After giving up the ghost, if and when (They are going to burn my carcass and spread me out in one of the penalty areas on the soccer field of Betzenberg Stadion in Kaiserslautern, Germany. No planting of this kid. No way.) a euligy is given, it will be read by John Facenda, the voice of NFL Films. That guy could make Jeffrey Dahmer's life sound like a triumph.

Correction:

Did I say only two things? I meant three. Upon coming home every day, Catharine Bell/Diane Farr/Chiaki Kuryama/Jamie Luner/Eliza Dushku/Famke Janssen/Keira Knightley would be waiting to serve me a perfectly grilled 8oz filet, blanched asparagus, new potatos and a tossed salad.

Did that sound totally chauvanistic and politically incorrect? I meant she would be waiting all dressed up to go out to dinner to a place that served a perfectly grilled 8oz filet, blanched asparagus, new potatos and a tossed salad. And she would pick up the check....

A Favorite Read

Mighty Girl

This is a blog by a San Francisco-based Kerry campaign worker and freelance journalist and editor. Mighty Girl

I know what you are thinking, that a stone-skulled, knuckle dragging right-winger like Clime must be out of his gourd to promote a web journal maintained by such as this, but I assure you it is very interesting reading. She was one of the press-credential carrying bloggers invited to the DNC a couple of months ago. Her take on the DNC is worth going back in her archives to read, and her most recent post is a hoot...

Commander in Chief?

News Item

I found this item in my inbox today. It appears courtesy of Chief Warrant Officer Schoberg, USA.

Kerry threw out the first pitch last night in Boston during the Red Sox/Yankees ball game to Spec. Will Pumyea, 23, a military police officer in the Massachusetts National Guard from Woburn, Mass., who had just returned from Iraq and who also had previously served in Afghanistan.

Kerry then watched the game from the owners' box with his wife, his two daughters, Spec. Will Pumyea, former Sen. John Glenn of Ohio,Red Sox owners John Henry and Tom Werner, and Katie Couric, the co-anchor of NBC's "Today" show who is dating Werner. Glenn fought in Korea with Ted Williams, the legendary Red Sox slugger.

Now.... The story behind the pitch.

The Boston Red Sox had scheduled a returning solider from Iraq, Spec. Will Pumyea, to throw out the first pitch during their game with the New York Yankees last night and watch the game from the owners box, until Senator John Kerry decided to change his plans and appear at the game. Senator Kerry's people decided he would throw out the first pitch and Spec. Will Pumyea could catch the Senator's pitch.

Senator Kerry, from halfway between the pitchers mound and home plate, threw the ball, which bounced in the dirt and past the glove of Spec.Pumyea. Senator Kerry then proceeded to the owners box along with Spec. Pumyea and their wives. Spec. Pumyea, being honored at the game for all our soldiers, was allowed to stay in the owners box until the photo opportunities were completed.

At the end of one and a half innings, Spec. Pumyea and his wife were unceremoniously escorted from the owners box to the last row at the top of the stadium while Senator Kerry and his guest enjoyed the game in the owners box. I'm sure Spec. Pumyea felt honored.

What a sad way to honor our military.

In My Best Samuel L. Jackson: "English, MotherFucker! Do You Speak It?!!!!"

What is our language coming to?

I have been cruising the blogs just to see what other folks are putting out there. I've even added a few to my daily reads. There is a ton of original, witty, and biting commentary out there, as well as some of the strangest stuff. It is pure entertainment, as I love to read.

Here is an example of some of the pure crap out there, though:

"cant believe it my frenz actually made fun of my name....i juz cant be bothered for the first few times im ok wif it we do joke around but den if it continues den i dun tink its funny....its veri humiliating somehow....enough of these nonsense Anthony.........its not funny ok?"

This is word for word. I was going to paste a post with much of the same content, but with the author's original idea to alternate upper and lower case letters at random instead, but just seeing the text on my screen nearly created an embolism in my brain.

And this language is common all over the web! What in THE hell is our common speech and text coming to? This goes far beyond the common usage of on the fly acronymns for common phrases used in conversing via the web and text messaging. This is a trend of purposely trying to sound or read as being illiterate. I'm sorry. I didn't know that literacy wasn't cool. I'm so un-hip.

I guess I'll go power up tha stereo and turn tha crunk up till it's off tha hook...

Hmmmm. Interesting. The Anti-Iwo Jima Memorial.

Can O' Worms, thy name is Nelson

The city of Nelson, in British Columbia just over the border from Washington State, USA, has announced the creation of a festival and the commissioning of a monument to honor those who fled the United States to avoid prosecution for refusing to enter the Draft.

The Monument itself is to portray a Canadian helping two scared American men.

Subsequently, everyone is going apeshit over it. The VFW, American Legion etc. are letting out a unified Harrumph.

Clime's take on the matter

There were basically two categories of people who refused the Draft: "I don't wanna go." and "I don't wanna go, because:". You were either a coward or had conviction. I just can't feature the type who didn't want to enter the draft because it would mess up their plans for life, or was just too plain dangerous for them. The "I don't wanna go, because:" crowd are a different animal, although they made up a very small fraction of those who shirked and fled.

Why did they not accept the consequences of their refusal to enter the draft if they had genuine conviction against it? Unjust war, my god doesn't want me to take arms against another man, my political beliefs prevent me from participating(here's my note from mom)...maybe these are valid reasons, in fact, I'm sure they are, but law is law, and if you are going to fight it without open physical rebellion, isn't facing the legal consequences part of the process?

Martin Luther King had a valid beef with the U.S. Government. He fought it. Guess what? He went to jail on more than one occasion. Wow, his legacy was that his efforts triumphed.

Gee, that kinda nixes the validity of the "not fight for this government at any cost, even if it means having to leave this country" angle of protest. Guess that moves all those folks to the "Coward" category...

Is it bedtime yet?

The agony. The agony.

Boy, oh, boy am I in bad shape today. Today was one of my long days, where I spend the day at my real job, then drive straight over to retail hell for my customary two nights a week. This equates to a 15 hour day.

...A 15 hour day as stiff as a board. I've got muscles that are sore that I didn't even think I used yesterday. You know, like the morning after all night carnal monkey sex, and you try to figure out how you got bite marks on your elbow and why does your left big toe hurt on every fourth step. The weird thing was I felt like a champ yesterday. No problems running like a nut for three hours.

The only solace in my stiff and sore condition is the fact that kids fifteen years younger than me showed up for work barely able to walk straight or sit and stand up. This is where my mean streak kicks in. While putting out an Oscar caliber performance of hiding my own pain, I chime in constantly with "What are ya? on a break?" "lets go, come on, hustle!"

Now I need to find a 95lb malaysian chick to walk on my back....

Boy am I going to feel it in the morning...

The Company Picnic

I was approached the other day and asked if I would be attending the company picnic held today. I said I was going to pass, as Sunday is the only day of the week that is entirely my time. Then it was not-so-subtly brought to my attention that maybe my department's morale surveys have scored so low in the past two quarters because guys like me never showed up for social events and showed the newer employees we cared about them. Nice hit.

Needless to say I showed up to the company picnic. Not one to succumb without swinging, I did show up in my prized Vengeance Unlimited Tshirt with Michael Madsen giving the middle finger. Alrighty then. Comments were made.

The flyer for the picnic listed athletic activities such as basketball, football, and volleyball. Me knowing a bit about my own staff as well as the rest, I knew someone was going to have a soccer ball in their car... Da, da, daaaaaa. Lace those Sambas, get on out, off I go to kick it about....

When I got there, the grill was going and both a basketball and volleyball game were going on... Now, LBG and I are a great sand volleyball team, so you probably are thinking which game I'm going to go over to. WRONG!!!! Well , you're partially right. I went to the volleyball game, not because I play, but because three hot chicks were playing two guys. Of the two guys, one was married and the other was a brother to one of the chicks. Oh, yeah. Giggity, Giggity. I like my chances...

Well, two of the chicks were asian, and I'm thinking were ringers from a PAC-10 University volleyball squad. Man, oh, man they were good. I thought I was going to spend my evening on the volleyball court expending a minimum of sweat and just looking at three luscious pieces of eye candy in tied up Tshirts, low-rise pants, and short shorts jumping around... wrong. Fun was had, though.

Then the footy players showed up, including one of my guys who was born and raised in Ghana, west africa, but played football in England. It's showtime.

After a few games of ASS(for the uninitiated, thats a game where you juggle the ball until someone allows it to hit the ground. If they do this three times, they have to bend over against a wall while the others each try and blast the ball at......their ASS. See you're getting it...). After a few games of this it was 3 v. 3 time. I was astounded that I wasn't winded in the least, as I haven't touched the ball in about a year. Man I've forgotten how great it is to kick. Ole.....ole, ole, ole.....

Needless to say I DID have fun, saw what all the little hotties look like in summer clothes rather than business attire, and managed to walk in the door to the house tonight thoroughly sated by rich Soccer goodness.....

Better watch out, FlippinFlipper now it's my mission to get yer hubby and LBG out there on the pitch playing footy on a Co-ed indoor soccer squad...and I don't want to hear about your back, biker boy, you can always get a new one....

You want me to do WHAT?!

Clime: A man for the job.

One of the three main AC units for the facility went hard down yesterday, effectively making a third of the office space in the building unfit to work in. (My area of influence, material storage, fabrication, and transportation, is not conditioned, no problem for me and my guys.)

Instead of doing something crazy like getting the property owner to set up a work ticket with an AC repair company, or even calling one ourselves, the plant manager finds out that one of his sales guys has 15 years experience in AC, so he sends this guy 30 feet up on the roof to trouble shoot it. We find out that the AC unit's compressor, fan, and fan motor are shot. The plant manager then goes out to an AC company and buys the replacement parts. Guess who gets to go up there and install them?

Yep, he sends me, my counterpart the Ops Manager, and one of my guys up onto the roof. Sheesh. The roof is ledgless, 30 feet up, and over a hundred degrees. Yikes. Why did I say 'sure' to this?

So we go up, find the unit, tear it apart, and bolt the replacement stuff on ourselves, along with wiring in a new capacitor. The 'AC guy' took the rest of the day off, before the parts arrived. We accomplish this while cracking up the whole time. Now comes the fun part. Wiring.

It looked straight forward from the wiring schematic riveted to the cover panel, but here was the kibosh on the master plan to Do-It-Ourselves: the motor and compressor had wire harnesses containing ground, yellow, black and white stripe, and brown wires. The unit had brown, purple, orange, and pink. Uh-oh.

Now we are really cracking up. OK guys, we freestyle it using three marginal degrees of commonsense put together, then when it blows after we turn the power back on and sets the whole facility ablaze sending toxic plastic fumes rising over the entire city, we race back down the ladder, keep running and say we were never up there.

Fire Inspector: "Gee, the entire site is one big lump of concrete, steel, and fuzed melted plastic. Look at this AC unit on the ground. It's a disaster, but the compressor and fan motor look brand new!"

Josh, Jeff, and Clime: "Uh, they aged rather gracefully?"

OK, Pink to Yellow. It looked like the 3-phase one. Brown to Orange. Black to Purple. I think. There was a general consensus on this. We called the AC guy at home and he said it sounded about right. 'About'? Gee, great! We bolted everything back down and screwed all the covers back on. Fingers crossed, we flipped the power lever. Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Hot air out of the fan port, cool air off the condensers.

We are all that is 'Man'.

Nothing much going on.

It is possible to stretch a regular latex condom completely over an M16A2 service rifle to waterproof it.


Sorry, not much going on. I'm digging deep for material....

How to build a cult following

The power of the reference.

Quentin Tarantino has a cult following. Kevin Smith has a cult following. How do they do it? How do they create such a large loyal core of fans from an even larger group of casual fans? You know these fans. The ones who will buy every edition of every DVD of every movie the Director has made(See: Kevin Smith's "Drawing Flies"). They do it through the "Reference".

They tie in objects, dialogue, actions, and products through every movie. Example: In Kill Bill Vol. 2, I just saw The Bride, bound and buried alive in a coffin, cut her bonds by extracting a straight razor from one of her cowboy boots. The same straight razor that Mr. Blonde extracted from one of HIS cowboy boots to exact some torture on a bound cop in Reservoir Dogs. Kevin Smith has done this with Nails Cigarettes, like Tarantino's Red Apple Cigarettes, and using character references throughout his films.

Why is this done? To make the loyal fan feel like they "get it", where others do not. This makes the fan feel like they are "in on the joke", or really in tune to what the director wants to tell his audience, while the casual viewer is not.

Am I being critical of this clever ploy to solidify a loyal and cultish fan base? Absolutely not. I am a long time loyal fan of both. I "Get it". And love it.

I've had it...

Un-freaking-believable.

You remember the scene in "Billy Madison" where Steve Buscemi had a list of people to kill? Add ANY ABC network executive to my list. Let me set this one up for you:

It is 6:41 to go in the third quarter of the USC-CSU game at L.A. Coliseum. USC, my USC, is up 35-0. Capitalizing on a pair of red zone turnovers by CSU and a nothing but outright dominating offense by USC, the Trojans are rolling at this point, and I'm having a ball. At this time ABC comes in with "Now we'd like to take you to a closer game..." and switches over to Clemson-GT. CLEMSON-GT?!!! What the fuck? Oh, I'm sorry. ABC would rather have me turn off the station completely and not view any of their precious advertising rather than take a commercial crack at my shopping habits by allowing me to watch my USC game in it's entirety. And I just know that CSU is going to make a game of it in the 4th and I will have to read about it tomorrow on ESPN.com. ABC, come and take your pistol-whipping, you motherless ass clowns. I'm so freaking mad I could kick a golden retriever puppy or a democrat right now....

It's a good thing I bought Kill Bill Vol. 2 today....

Killing Mad, Really Effing Killing Mad...

Jason Kent-Guido
541 Cottonwood Pl.
Fairveiw, TX 75069

Why is Clime putting this guy's name and address out there for all the world-wide-web to see, you ask? I'll tell you...

I work a couple of evenings a week at a Big Buy located in Plano, TX. After working there for so long, it was hard to let go completely when I stumbled head-long into bigger and better things. I couldn't let go of working with some great people and great friends. I know. BULLSHIT. I couldn't let go of the purchase program which allows employees to purchase anything at cost. (See: LBG 's post on his brand new Harmony Remote.)

Anyway. I was working there this evening and while working noticed two P.P.D. cruisers pull up and see the two Officers come into the store. Very shortly I found out why. It seems that earlier that day a gentleman turned in a laptop PC for a complete file backup prior to having internal components replaced. The Gentleman who's name and address you see above. While performing this task of transferring and backing up the files, the tech stumbled onto something so hideous, so horrible, he could not continue and certainly could not keep it to himself. There was a file folder of images of child pornography. Not child nudity. Oh, no. Hardcore pornography. Not teenaged girls. Oh, no. Seven or Eight year old children. This little scrote was a child pornographer. If not that, he was a collector of child pornography. The tech notified one of the sales managers and the ball started rolling from there. This gentleman came in this evening to pick the unit up and had P.P.D. waiting for him.

This guy doesn't need to be castrated, imprisoned, or lashed. This little mutt needs to be put down. Put down hard. Short of that, as this guy will certainly be processed through the Texas Justice System and ultimately be tagged a sex offender, I thought I'd go ahead and "Register" him as one right now, right here. My conscience is clear...

The Filament has Snapped. Again

Non-Profit Nazis

I just read J and LBG's comments, rather well done I might add, on their company's BIG NATIONAL CHARITY drive. One of the companies I work for is going through the same thing. Not only is the drive an exercise in coercion and extortion, BIG NATIONAL CHARITY is a POLITICAL entity as well as a non-profit organization. When BIG NATIONAL CHARITY grants money to one non-profit organization and turns around and denies grants to another because of THAT organization's political and moral views, BIG NATIONAL CHARITY becomes a political action group, not a charity. Case in point: BIG NATIONAL CHARITY recently started denying funds to a young men's organization that starts with "B" and ends with "oy Scouts of America" because of changes in it's membership rules that now excludes Homosexuals from membership. That is a political action rather than an operational decision made by BIG NATIONAL CHARITY. That really pisses me off. I say fuck off and leave me alone BIG NATIONAL CHARITY. I give to the Marine Scholarship Fund directly. Look it up. It's a good one.

If you want to read more about this by better writers than myself go to:

www.lbgstuff.blogspot.com

www.texlex.blogspot.com