XXX-treme.

Be Wary.

Confucius says be wary of any company offering you a job when a simple Google search of the company lists three sponsored results that offer websites offering a legitimization of the company itself.

These include:

World Voice News
EBand Search

Also be wary of job offers that get automatically sorted to your spam folder, which is a pretty good indication sometimes.

Much fun.

Having Fun, Part One.

Alright.

Alright, guys, I'll have to admit I enjoyed your band name when I first came across it.

Wow.

The headline for this story should have just been "Yeah, but..." and the subhead (absent on most online stories) should have read "New planet with possible temperatures supporting life found ... or maybe it doesn't support life ... well, it looks promising enough," and then the author of the story should have told me not to read it because it doesn't tell me any new information.

Oh yeah, and it lies.

And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

If it didn't rotate but did revolve, sunlight would slowly move across the planet's entire surface. In order for one side to remain constantly lit and the other constantly dark, it would have to rotate one full time every 13 days to match its revolutions.

Boo-yah! Take that, "AP Science Writer"! I didn't even have to take introductory astronomy to know that much -- I could have figured it out with a ball and a candle in a dark room.

Spaced out.

Right before I was going to sleep, I saw the tail end of a documentary about... well I didn't know what it was until someone said "Jonestown." I checked out the Wikipedia and ended up reading about a bunch of different crap, including...

Jonestown:
Two Peoples Temple members (Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby) made the first move for defection that night, and Gosney passed a note to an NBC journalist, reading "Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby. Please help us get out of Jonestown."

Heaven's Gate:
Applewhite convinced thirty-nine followers to commit suicide so that their souls could take a ride on a spaceship that they believed was hiding behind the comet carrying Jesus.

One member, Thomas Nichols, was the brother of Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols. Prior to the group's suicide, he and other members solicited her assistance in publicizing the cult's message.

The cult funded itself by offering professional website development for paying clients.

All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike tennis shoes, and armband patches reading "Heaven's gate away team".

Etc.

Oh yeah, and Mortal Kombat-Ultra.

Internship...?

I already heard back from a certain largest newspaper company in the U.S. that a certain sweet internship that a certain graduating senior applied to would not get it. That's less than two business days for a response to something hundreds of people probably applied for.

I guess my resume didn't turn out as well as I thought...

Oh well. This Thursday's newspaper issue, featuring a full-page spread on Grindhouse and Grindhouse-related materials should make up for it.

Grindhouse!

(Don't worry, no spoilers.)

This thing is just pretty much awesome. I mean, it doesn't entertain every single minute, but what it does it does great (and if you see it, you might get why it doesn't have to entertain every minute -- that's part of the point at times).

Out of the two, I preferred Rodriguez's Planet Terror, but that's not to say Death Proof disappointed. It was just, surprisingly, different in aim from Terror.

Both use shock and gore to discomfort the audience, so if you're weak of stomach or squeamish, I wouldn't recommend it to you. But Tarantino goes a bit further and alienates the audience with extended dialogue, and seems to try to get people bored at times. I'm pretty surprised that it's doing so well at Rotten Tomatoes, but I think Tarantino is a critical darling at this point, even if he just screws with audiences just for fun.

Terror was basically what I expected, but Proof surprised me for the most part. Some of the best stand alone moments, though, were most definitely from the fake trailers run before and between the two parts. Very very very very funny. VERY. I can't emphasize that enough.

During the movies (even Rodriguez's), keep a lookout for a couple of mainstays -- camera shots from a car trunk POV, foot shots, Red Apple cigarettes. There are also a couple new trends to notice, and a few surprises that are too good to give away.

Just go see it, man. It really is two full-length movies for the price of one, but it won't last you much longer than a Lord of the Rings, and it has ten times the violence, cursing, and humor of one of those, too.

Minimum charges suck.

Minimum charges suck. I will no longer yield to their demands. If you can't sell me an overpriced Gatorade for $2.19 on a sweltering spring day because "minimum debit, credit charge is $3.00," but then you allow me to add a can of Diet Coke to the deal, bringing the total to $2.99 ("That's okay"), then you don't need my business anymore.

Same goes for anything else. If you make me buy/pay more for anything because of some pre-established minimums (minima), I just won't buy/pay for it at all. I'm sure you'll have luck suckering other suckers into buying useless crap they don't need so that both you and they can have the ultra convenience of not having to carry around cash.

Enjoy your spaghetti -- you're very egotistical.