Diary of a Mighty Bastard

This was a dumb movie. Funny at times, in a gory over-the-top way. But stupid. Like on a 1 to 10 scale, a 4 for funny and an 11 for dumb...

SC serial killer blamed for 4 deaths in 6 days

Four deaths in six days? That's spree killing, not serial murder. Regardless, hope they catch the SOB.

Poll #1424639 OTP
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

My One True Pairing that should be totally canon is:

An image of a ruined mill, deep within a gorge in Sorrento, Italy. This shot took my breath away. Andrija the filmmaker wants to find an excuse to write a movie around this.

My daughter is seven months old! That is so crazy to me. :) Here is a glimpse into her life these days:

She is growing into the name "Addie". (Some people have been calling her that for awhile, but she is just seeming like an Addie to me lately.)

She just rolled over from back to stomach a couple days ago. It's not a huge deal, though, because she has been able but unwilling for a long time. She has all the muscle coordination and strength, and will often roll over 175 degrees to grab a toy... but she has no use for tummy time, so she immediately goes back to face-up. I was trying to show our friends James and Korey how she will do that, and that was the moment she decided to debut her first back-to-front roll. She only stayed on her tummy for about 10 seconds before rolling back over, though.

I am wondering if she will crawl at all, or just go to walking.

She has started her assisted walking stage. If she's held by the hands or under the arms, she will high-step her way across the room. It's super cute.

Still no teeth!

I think this is my favorite stage so far. She's very funny and interactive.
Happy 7 months, Addison!!

Managed to finish reading this week's haul this morning. And a fairly big haul it is. Starting with a new Knights of the Dinner Table where the fall-out from Heidi's new HackMaster edition continues and an explanation is given for Gary not being dead. Article wise more on the upcoming Hackmaster Basic and the regular pieces. And for some reason I bothered with Davenport's movie/gaming article. Where he "reviews" the X-Men franchise. And by reviews I mean gives something along the lines of a half-assed wikipedia article on them and then mentions some supers type RPGs...

Astro City: The Dark Age: Book Three has Pyramid continuing to plot against the Apollo 11, who we also get to learn more about, the Royal brothers confront their parent's killer and a return by the time traveling Silver Agent...

The Secret Six have a violent falling out over their new employer, who is trying to bring back slavery around the world...

Also got last week's Dynamo5, where the Dynamo kids take on The Brain Trust, their sibling Synergy steals a gun and F.L.A.G. begins putting together their anti-Dynamo5 team...

Savage Dragon has an over-sized 150th issue. With the return of Overlord, the details behind the destruction of the Chicago PD precinct house, more with Golden Age Daredevil and some extra-crazy from Dart II. Plus a reprint of the Dragon's origin story from the Image Anniversary book, the GA Daredevil's origin story (it involves pygmies) and some back-ups looking in on Vanguard, Mr. Glum and Thor. Also we learn why making mummy's from bacon doesn't work...

Angel's 23rd issue is an epilogue for After the Fall, checking in with the comatose Charles Gunn and his guardian angel, Illyria. Also George the telepathic giant Beta fish. I really like George...

A new issue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer leaves me feeling like I missed an issue or two. With the Slayers all on the run from Twilight's demonic allies. Which reading the letters page it seems I did, their being a two-issue mini by Joss online at the DHP MySpace page. Stupid Dark Horse. Stop putting stuff on MySpace! Online fine, just use a host I don't loathe. Anyways this story arc sets up a return of Oz and brings Faith and Giles back into the fold...

The Inhumans set forth to use an ultimate weapon to end the War of Kings. While with the assassination of Lilandra the Shi'ar Empire begins to fall into a civil war. Plus a set-up for a final throw down between Vulcan and Black Bolt...

And lastly in Agents of ATLAS a monkey wrench gets thrown into the nuptial plans of Namor and Namora, while former Agent Khanata accepts a job with ATLAS. Plus a back-up showing Mr. Lao the dragon fighting a djinn and revealing a connection between ATLAS and the former Sorceror Supreme known as the Ancient One...

A nonprofit organization that volunteers time and services for Sugarite Canyon State Park (that's the state park which is a 10-minute drive from Raton) is putting together what they call the Poor Man's Yacht Race, something that hasn't been held since 2001.

And with that, here's the story I wrote about the 2001 event.
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Excellent movie. Probably one of Depp's best roles. He is superb as Dillenger. As is the actor who plays Baby-Face Nelson. And Mann direction kept the whole film moving along at a perfect pace. Over two hours and it never dragged. The gun battles were actually filmed so that you could follow the action, even in one of the bigger ones at night...

I remember this song from Faraway, So Close! but I'm having trouble finding the soundtrack. I think that is the only place the song appears.

A happy first of the month birthday to mockingbirdq!

This week we head to Mars in the era of Victorian skyships. Just to be different we'll make a French adventurer in the British colonies, Pierre Dumois-Turenne. Space: 1889 has six character stats, Strength, Agility, Endurance, Intelligence, Charisma and Social Level. Of the three methods given I'll go with free purchase, spreading 21 points between the six stats. Looking ahead to the Careers I want (NCO Soldier and Explorer) I see I'll need a minimum Social of 2, Endurance of 5 and Strength of 2. So:

Str: 3 Int: 3
Agl: 4 Cha: 4
End: 5 Soc: 2

Skills have default values based on the associated stat. So Pierre's default Fisticuffs would be a 2 and his Swimming is a 4 for example. Certain skills also have cascade skills under them that default to 1/2 rounded down. So Pierre's default Marksmanship of 4 applies to his preferred weapon (rifles) and is 2 for pistols or bows. I'd already decided on taking 2 careers, which gives the skills listed under the career and 2 general skill points. Pierre was an NCO cavalry soldier, giving him a Close Combat 1, Wilderness Travel 1 (foraging), Marksmanship 1 (rifle), Leadership 1, Riding 2, Observation 1. For his second career of Explorer he gets Wilderness Travel 2, Fieldcraft 1, Marksmanship 1, Linguistics 2, Leadership 1, Swimming 1. For his last two skill points I'll add them to Close Combat (Edged Weapons).

So beyond his default skills Pierre has:

Close Combat: 5 (Edged weapons)
Wilderness Travel: 6 (Mapping), 4 (Foraging)
Marksmanship: 5 (Rifle)
Leadership: 3
Riding: 3 (Horse)
Observation: 3
Fieldcraft: 5
Linguistics: 5 (English, with a 2 for the Martian dialects of Koline, Umbran and Parhooni)
Swimming: 5

Starting money is fairly low, only 2d6x10 in pounds. So Pierre has 90# to begin.

As a general background, Pierre was a cavalry soldier in the French Martian colonies. He left the service after an arguement with an officer over a card dispute. He managed to survive for several years traveling between various Canal Martian clans, before arriving at the British controlled lands to seek his fortune. Pierre generally likes the Martian people, but he's driven to find some level of wealth that will let him retire back to Earth...

I am one of those fantasy football fans who does not believe in ranking kickers. The reason is that kickers seldom, if ever, make a difference in terms of putting together a fantasy football championship team. Additionally, the top-ranked fantasy kicker in recent years has often been a kicker that was never drafted.

In past seasons, Neil Rackers, Mason Crosby and Robbie Gould finished as the top fantasy kicker in terms of total points scored, based on Yahoo's default scoring. And those three were seldom drafted by anyone, if at all, prior to the years they finished on top.

Last season, some ranked Stephen Gostkowksi the top fantasy kicker and that is where he finished, based on Yahoo's default scoring. But that was the exception... the rule with fantasy kickers is that the top one often ends up being one nobody expected to be anywhere close to the top.

So rather than give you rankings, I give you four categories with four examples in each. There is a category for kickers who gets lots of PAT attempts given their high-scoring offenses, kickers who excel from long range, kickers that may not get drafted but have sleeper potential, and kickers who may be drafted based on certain factors but could easily turn into fantasy busts.
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So... I don't really do much with Facebook. Yes, yes, I do actually HAVE a Facebook account. If you're unaware of this fact, it's probably because A) as mentioned, I don't do much with it, and B) it's under my more-or-less legal name, which doesn't really come up in conversation much. Anyway, I digress. I don't do much with Facebook. Yet there it is, in all it's information saturated glory, sitting in my history, waiting for me to go back and troll through it. Which I do, on occaision. But I've got some significant problems with the idea.

Problem #1) Everybody and their third cousin that I have EVER met have since found me on Facebook. I'm only somewhat kidding about that. My life has spanned alot of geography, both on physical maps, maps of the mind, maps of the soul, the whole enchillada. I've been alot of people in that time, lived alot of places, done alot of things. And people from that entire spectrum have found me... on Facebook. People I went to Kindergarten with have found me on Facebook. People I went to church with have found me on Facebook. People I LARP with have found me on Facebook. Friends that I have and used to have have found me on Facebook. And I don't necessarily WANT to keep up with all of them, or have them keep up with me.

Problem #2) Information-overload-a-palooza. As far as I can tell, Facebook really breaks down to 60% quiz results, 20% Mafia/Vampire/Pirate/Ninja/Chartered Accountancy game blips, 15% Twitter-like "I'm at X now, doing Y, feeling Z about it." touchings of bases, 10% photo/status updates and 5% cross-postings from other sources. Yes, I realize that's 110%, but that's because it's 110% of the USRDA daily recommended information input ALL BY ITSELF. Add in Twitter, LJ and other news sources, and you quickly get Information Rickets. Or Scurvy. Or whatever a suitable "You're getting too much of a given nutrient" disorder applies. I dunno. ANYWAY, the point is... I just don't care. I try to, but I can't. I don't care what color soul belongs to someone I haven't seen since High School. I don't care what Disney Princess some guy I went to High School is. I don't care how well you know Rocky Horror trivia or which poker chips you need to "win" Mafia Wars or who turned who into a vampire. And while I appreciate the gift of this "generation's" flavor of Tamogochi, I ignored the last 15 I got and they are all languishing in the neoPet adoption center, making sad digital eyes while sad digital Sarah McLaughlin begs people to help them out. I don't care that you just got into the airport and are tired and ready to be home. I didn't know you left!

Problem #3) Cross-posts are becoming the bane of my daily information trawl. Most of the people I *DO* care about in the wide, digital universe are kind of a big digital deal. As such, they need maximum saturation of their message. I understand this. I've played the game of getting the word out on the web (mostly in my head, but still...) and that's just playing to win. However, in my day to day trawls of various journals, tweets and social networks, I have a kind of rule-of-thumb: "If I've seen this particular piece of information before, I am at the end of the new info. Move on." This gets particular frustrating on Facebook (although it's not limited there, but I'm talking about Facebook right now) when I start seeing cross-posts. Because I get to the blurb in Facebook that you crossposted from LJ and my brain clicks and says "Seen it. New information depleted. Move on." Only I haven't seen it *ON FACEBOOK* before. I saw it on LJ/Xanga/Twitter/Stuff-on-my-Cat about 3.26 seconds ago. There's actually a wealth of quizzes, wars, neoPets, "I'm home from the place you didn't know I left for"s and context-lacking song lyrics below that that I HAVEN'T YET SEEN! Several pages of them most likely.

I don't blame the cross-posters. I blame Facebook. Or rather, myself that I am an underling. But I prefer to take it out on Facebook. It's just easier.

So where does that leave me? I could drop the majority of people that have "befriended" me on the site that I just honestly don't care about, but that would alienate people who - with the best of intentions - wanted to keep tabs on how I was doing. And I hate feeling like a heel. But that would leave the people I *DO* care about, most of whom are major cross posters. I could drop the cross-posters as well (they would probably be MUCH more understanding about it), but that would still leave me swimming in a sea of non-content content that I don't much care about, albeit a smaller sea. Perhaps a lake. Or a very large pond. Plus, it would only leave me with about 4 people.

Of course, I could just DELETE my FB account, or just not check it... but then I might miss something important! And let's face it... that's really why we sign up for most of this stuff to begin with. S'true for me, atleast.

*le sigh*

The conundrums of modern technology.

When it comes to knowing what fantasy defense to add to your squad, it's important to remember that you are basing it on the unit as a whole. This means fantasy players should pay attention to what changes were made to the lineup, if the team is switching to a new scheme or if a new defensive coordinator is in place, as all of them can have an impact on how said defense does from one season to the next.

And while not all 2008 numbers can be relied upon, some can provide good indicators as to which units should be among the best to have, and which ones may not be elite but could prove useful.

As always, it's best not to draft a team defense too early... wait until the later rounds of your draft before making your selection.
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Richard Jenkins is a lonely widower and college professor Walter Vale. He goes to his apartment in New York and finds that an illegal immigrant couple, Tarek and Zainab, is living there. Jenkins befriends the couple and they help him regain some of the energy that had fallen out of his life. When Haaz Sleiman's Tarek is picked up by INS Walter forms a bond with the the Tarek's mother, played by Hiam Abbass. This movie is pretty much the definition of bittersweet. There is no happy ending, just one lost and lonely person finding something to live for in new friendships...

A "happy" birthday to wes_fantastic the pony hoarder!

It's been a while, but I have been writing a lot lately and that is where my focus has gone. But anyway...

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The Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen, letters by Chris Eliopoulos, Colors by Gregory Wright & Steve Oliff

A collection of the original mini-series that introduced Larsen's signature series. Waaaay back in '92 when Image started I was a High School junior and a Marvel fan-boy. Especially of the X-books. So when several of the creative teams behind those left Marvel I followed along to see what else they'd do. And I checked out a couple other people. McFarlane on Spawn and Larsen on Savage Dragon. I had a few random issues of various Spider-Man books by both and thought they were nice enough. Seventeen years later and I'm still a fan of Larsen and his fin-headed hero...

I've followed thru the silly cartoon, the numerous spin-offs, tragedies and triumphs in Larsen's life, delays and more feuds than you could shake an internet browser at. And the book has remained one of my favorites. From when he starts out as a Chicago cop to the creation of Freak Force to encounters with Gods, with other dimensions, being fired, with being the leader of a governement super-team, the destruction of the "original" Image Earth, overthrowing the tyrant leader of "new" Earth, getting married and to becoming a cop again I've kept up...

Its been seventeen years since that first mini-series and I've long since lost interest in the other Image founders and their creations. But I'll probably be a Fin-Addict for another seventeen...

Paul Newman and Robert Redford make for a hell of a cinematic team-up. And here, as a pair of grifters running a giant scam on a mob boss, they go above and beyond. There is something about a con that allows for making crime seem..well fun. Especially when the story makes the mark look like they so richly deserve it. I think I might actually like this better than Butch & Sundance. The romantic scenes in that one always seemed to drag a little too much for me. But here you've got a two hour movie that just flows easily along...