...adopted.

Not that there's anything wrong with being adopted (we adopted Aidan, in fact), but if I were, I wouldn't have this exceptional gene pool to draw from!  :)

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Get ready for Captchas!

Alright, I'm being forced to switch from simple comment moderation to forcing those of you who would like to comment on my posts to enter a CAPTCHA to actually post.  You know, the things where you have to read the letters/numbers in an image and type them in.  Simple comment moderation was working just fine up until this past week.  Then, out of nowhere, my email has been, quite irritatingly, flooded with comments from Anonymous which read not unlike the following:


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The entire reason I had any moderation set up in the first place was to avoid posts like this, but I didn't realize how annoying it would be to have my BlackBerry ding at me all day long with comments like this.  Thus, you must now prove to a machine that you are not, yourself, a machine, in order to make comments on my blog.


Sorry, but market-bots ruin it for everyone. :P

...being ignored.

Are you guys ignoring me?  :)  j/k

Anyway, I'm gonna keep going with this whole question thing, at least through Christmas.  I'm busy as hell, and I'm sure you all are, too.  But gimme some feedback on these.  I find them hilarious, maybe you don't.  Who knows.

"Let us assume there are two boxes on a table.  In one box, there is a relatively normal turtle; in the other, Adolf Hitler's skull.  You have to select one of these items for your home.  If you select the turtle, you can't give it away and you have to keep it alive for two years; if either of these parameters are not met, you will be find $999 by the state.  If you select Hitler's skull, you are required to display it in a semi-prominent location in your living room for the same amount of time, although you will be paid a stipend of $120 per month for doing so.  Display of the skull must be apolitical.

Which option do you select?"

...stubborn.

I've mentioned before how my family and friends are staunch Republicans who would never agree with anything some liberal socialist pig (my words, not theirs) said.  Every once in a great while I try to tell them how they're not paying attention and, periodically, if a liberal says the sky is blue, they might be telling the truth. Usually, it doesn't work. Healthcare and global warming are the two big points of contention that have been coming up recently, and I'm not going to lecture here on how I feel about either of them, because that's boring and I don't want to start political debate on my blog, because that's not why I'm here.

What I am going to do, however, is post a political cartoon I saw today that made me chuckle and explains my point of view on global warming perfectly.  So, thank you to USA Today and an artist named Joel Pett for this one.

...a horse.

Alright, we are continuing with the questions I've blatantly stolen from one Chuck Klosterman.  Nobody's answered the first one yet, but I'll let it slide because it's the holidays and, also, I don't need to worry myself over my (admittedly low) blog readership. :)  Anyway, here we go:

"Let us assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with a thick rope.  He is conscious and standing upright, but otherwise immobile.  And let us assume that - for some reason - every political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less than twenty minutes.  You are allowed to wear steel-toed boots.

Would you attempt to do this?"

...a magician.

I just finished reading an excellent book of essays on pop culture by Chuck Klosterman called Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. He talks about everything from Paradise City, a Guns N Roses cover band, to Zack Morris, to porn. It's really well written and very funny.

One of his little two or three page interludes between essays involves the 23 questions he asks someone to determine if he “can really love them.”

I intend to post these questions to you, dear reader, because I am interested in hearing your answers. Also, because I'm too lazy to come up with any of my own content around the holidays.

Here is the first:

"Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks - he can pull a rabbit out of a hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's doing these five tricks with real magic. It's not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope.

Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?"

Note: I wrote this post on my BlackBerry, so let's assume any grammatical errors are due to that and not my writing skills. :)

...homeless.

This gentleman is, but seriously, he's awesome. He goes by the name Mustard, and you can see him below rocking Radiohead's "Creep", which is one of my favorite songs ever.

Mustard sings Creep from Rex Kramer on Vimeo.

…haunted.

I watched a little film entitled Paranormal Activity yesterday.  It’s similar in style (in that it’s “found footage”) to The Blair Witch Project, except that it’s a thousand times better.  Normally I’d critique things like cinematography and score and whatnot, but those things are not present in this film.  There wasn’t even a real script, just a basic formula for each scene, with the actors improvising it. 

The movie follows a couple, Katie and Micah.  Micah brings home a video camera at the beginning of the film, and this is the camera through which we view the entire film.  He’s brought home a camera because Katie is experiencing weird things while she’s asleep.  The movie progresses through three weeks of daytime and nighttime footage, with most of the daytime footage being handheld and most nighttime being from a tripod in the bedroom.  This is the really interesting stuff.

The first night, all that happens in the recording is that the camera picks up a few creaking footsteps on the wood floors, followed by a rather loud running sound.  Nobody wakes up, and nothing else happens.  Night 2, like any other night with no new happenings, is not shown.  On night three, we once again hear the creaking footsteps, and we now see the bedroom door, which is kept open, swing shut a bit, stop, and swing back to the open position.

At this point, I was feeling a little let down.  I had heard this was one of the scariest movies I’d ever see, and a swinging door wasn’t cutting it.  But I stuck around, and if you’re feeling like I was, you should stick around as well.  By the end, I was covering my eyes and peeking through my fingers like I did as a child.  This is a truly frightening movie, and that fear hinges entirely on three things: the acting (which is superb), the effects (believe it or not, they are very important in this movie), and suspension of disbelief.

Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, who play the two leads, are 100% believable.  You’d think they were really a couple, rather than two strangers who found an audition on Craigslist.  Their joy, sadness, anger, and most importantly, fear come through the screen and seem to affect you directly, like you’re there with them, and a part of it.  The rest of the very small cast does a great job as well, but these two really shine.

You wouldn’t think that effects would matter that much in a found footage film.  Blair Witch didn’t have any real effects that I can think of, and it scared me pretty good.  The few effects that are present in PA, however, are very well done.  I’d love to go into it, but I really don’t want to ruin anything for you, and I can almost guarantee that it would.

Finally, as with almost any movie, but even more so here, you need to be willing to suspend disbelief.  Whether or not you believe that this kind of thing could potentially happen, allowing yourself to believe that this is really happening is an absolute must.  To help with this, watch the film in the dark, with the sound up, and DON’T DO ANYTHING ELSE WHILE THE MOVIE IS ON.  I do this all the time.  I do other stuff while I’m watching a movie.  It could be important (homework) or unimportant (just surfing).  But I heard this one was pretty good, so I turned everything else off.

And it scared the shit out of me.

...a musician.

Because, you see, if I got famous, I'd have people stealing my songs to post them on their blogs.  Or, if I was really good, I'd get covered, and the covers would be good enough to post on blogs.  This time the covers are not necessarily in a different genre, but they are simply covers I love.  And if you like the music you hear here, and it's available for sale somewhere (I'll try to provide you links, if possible), go out and buy it. :)


Anyway, per the usual, thoughts (and links) after the playlist (and the break).

...in a flying house.

First off, I've decided, as I've really only been posting once or twice a week lately, to try to do more frequent smaller posts.  There will probably be more music posts, as I love sharing music with people.

I'm running out of free time, see.  Being unemployed with no good prospects after ten months, I've decided that maybe I should try to start something up on my own.  I have some web design experience, so that's the direction I'm going.  I'm throwing together a website at the moment, as convincing others to pay me real money to design one for them would benefit greatly from having one of my own.  This has been taking up a considerable amount of my time, and I hope to have it up soon.  I'll link to it from here, of course.  Wish me luck.

I put in UP from Disney Pixar this morning, having never seen it before.  I figured my kid likes balloons and dogs, and from what I could tell from the trailers, that was essentially what the movie was about.  I come away from the experience with only one thing to say: If you have not yet watched this masterpiece of a film, go buy it right now and take the rest of the day off of work to watch it.  Not only is it far funnier than I expected, but surprisingly (for American-made animation), it made me tear up a bit. Watching Carl and his wife go through their lives (both ups and downs), silent but for a beautiful piece by composer Michael Giacchino, was quite easily the best part of the movie, but the entire thing is brilliantly put together.