I heard a California State Senator on the radio this morning saying that he liked many things Arnold Schwarzenegger was doing as California's Governor but that he was disappointed with Arnold's capacity for backing off the hard line and compromising.  That's a career politician for you.

Jesus Christ, government needs MORE compromise, not less.  No project in the history of the world, political or otherwise, has ever been completed without compromise.  Compromise is how you get shit done.  It's very telling that politicians view compromise as weakness.  That's why they can't write a budget on time, stay under budget, pass useful legislation, nor generally fix problems.  They are more interested in sticking to their one and only idea than to compromise a bit and get shit done.

Have you seen the trailer for the upcoming Jamie Foxx movie Stealth?  If not, don't bother.  It looks like crap.  It's Top Gun meets Short Circuit meets WarGames.

Seriously, it looks like the crappiest crapfest I've seen in a while.  If you need proof, I looked it up on IMDB and discovered it was directed by Stupid McRetard, and written by Crapper Shitaton.

It's unbelievable to me that this film is being released in theatres, it reeks of straight to video.  In the year of 2005, when the blockbuster films are finally, um, busting blocks again (Sin City, Batman, but NOT War of the Worlds, hopefully The Island), Columbia Pictures pulls this monstrosity out of their ass.  Nice going.

Okay, I actually did look it up in IMDB this time, and ... shocker!  It was directed by Rob Cohen, king of the crappy action film (see The Fast and the Furious and Daylight).

Memo to the filmmakers of Stealth:

- One of the reasons Top Gun killed in theatres is because it featured real footage of real fighter jets.

- One of the reasons WarGames became an all-time classic is because it showed the way a real hacker might theoretically hack a real military computer.

- Sensing a theme here?  Realism, morons!  There's nothing real about Stealth that I can see.  Fake planes, fake visual effects, recycled storyline.  YAWN ...

Now, if you want to see a GOOD trailer.  If you want to see a kickass trailer with real stuntwork and an engaging story.  Then click here.

Cracking the case of the mainstreaming of outer space.
crocoPuffs Feature: Star Systems

Finally, someone is speaking my language!

There's a stigma of "lazy" attached to people who stay up late and sleep late.  They're unmotivated or whatever ... blah blah blah.  Truth is, I listen to my body.  If I don't feel tired, I don't go to sleep.  And I wake up when I wake up.  I hate the artificial wake up that alarm clocks force upon me, which is why I ignore them at every opportunity.

It's about time some light was shed on this topic.  I'm feeling very jealous about the program in Minnesota that moved the school start time back.  I wish I'd had that option in High School.

Prediction: No future American president will weather his/her administration without some sort of scandal.

One of the questions regular folk have been asking recently is along the lines of, "why did the media spend so much time covering the Michael Jackson trial, and so little time covering more important stories?"  And the answer appears to have been, "because that's the story that generated ratings."  Let us never forget that newspapers, television news shows, and radio shows are in the business of generating revenue.  They require viewership and readership to stay afloat.

What does that have to do with the president, you ask?  Americans love scandals, that's what.  The media spends countless time and money covering the ridiculously unimportant "Runaway bride" and Jacko stories because that's apparently what people want to see.  Legitimate media cover celebrity relationships almost as much as the tabloids.  Who is Lindsay Lohen dating this week?

This is why the country will never have another presidency pass without scandal.  Hell, we love scandal so much we even tried to dig one up on John Kerry, and he wasn't even president yet!  I suppose we needed to have all the bases covered, in case he won.  Clinton had Monica Lewinsky (no pun intended).  Bush has Iraq and the missing WMD's.  No matter how big or small, every president will be exposed from now on ... because gee whiz, what's more exciting than The President of the United States caught lying and cheating!?  This is also why someone like John Kerry could never really get elected: too boring.  The public couldn't smell scandal on him, he wasn't dynamic enough.

Politicians are celebrities now.  And they know it.  Which is how we arrive at Arnold Schwarzenegger elected as governor of California.  If you're a celebrity, you're in.  If you attract scandal, you're in.  If you simply want to put your head down and get to work, you're out.

People give a lot of lip service towards "hard work", but they don't really believe in it.  They don't practice it, and they don't reward it when it appears.  They'd rather sit on the couch and hear about the latest celebrity scandal.  The bigger the celebrity, or the bigger the scandal, the better.

To attract a mate, the Manakin moonwalks.  This sucker glides across the branch smooth as silk.  He dances better than you!  And he gets more bird hoo-hah than you get from humans, anyway.

A 7.2 earthquake hit 85 miles off the coast of Northern California this evening at 7:50 p.m.  A tsunami warning was issued for the west coast from Vancouver to the Mexican border.  Then the warning was promptly canceled ten minutes later.

In summary, there was no tsunami.  There was no threat of a tsunami, and there is no future tsunami.

Can you guess what the top 11pm news story was on 4 out of 4 bay area television channels?  Correct, the top story was that no tsunami occurred this evening.  Great, I needed an investigative reporter to tell me that?  All I need to do is look down at my feet and notice the lack of water coursing through my abode.

Look, it's not like we were in the middle of the tsunami warning, either.  By 11pm, we had known for 2 hours that there was no tsunami.  They chose to report a non-story.  And in other news, there were no hurricanes in Oregon today.

You know what this is about?  It's about fear.  It's geological experts fearing the next tsunami will come without a warning, just like last time.  It's news desks fearing they will miss a news story.  It's the general tradition of Americans not knowing what to do with themselves if they aren't fearing something.  That's why every bullshit oceanic earthquake is going to generate a tsunami bulletin of some kind for the rest of our lives.  It will walk down the aisle with the constant "elevated" terror level we live under.  It's CYA time fellas, because nobody wants to be blamed for not warning of the next disaster.

When the terrorists strike next, the government can say, "we warned you."  When the next tsunami or tornado hits, they can say, "we warned you."  Which is very nice, but what about all those days you warned us and nothing happened?  Remember when we were being advised to stock up on bottled water and to have plastic sheets and duct tape on hand to seal our homes?  Ever heard of the boy who cried wolf?

Fuck this.  Anybody who lives in fear, or makes decisions based on fear is a fucking pussy.

Last night on NBC's Hit Me Baby, One More Time, Vanilla Ice took the stage and, for the first time in history, actually did wax a few chumps like candles.  Vanilla (or "Vaniller", as the host insisted on pronouncing it) won last night's episode and sent some cash to the Make a Wish Foundation as his prize.  He beat out the likes of Tommy Tutone and Haddaway, who were so pathetic Vanilla probably could have won by default.  However, he orchestrated a rousing rendition of his classic Ice Ice Baby and deserved the win.

In other news, HBO's new series The Comeback, starring Lisa Kudrow, sucks mongoose balls.  It was torture to watch, and I immediately graded it 3 red thumbs down on TiVo.

All right, stop
Collaborate and listen
Ice is back, with a brand new invention
Something, grabs a hold of me tightly
Flows like a heartbeat, daily and nightly

Will it ever stop?
Yo, I don't know
Pick up the mic, and I flow
To the extreme, I rock the mic like a vandal
Light up the stage, waxing chumps like a candle

(from memory, thank you very much)\

A website called "I Am Bored" picked up my quiz.  I found the ensuing thread of comments to be hilarious.

Read the comments here.

This is an incredible story.  I think we all know creative material gets "borrowed" all the time, but two of the biggest sci-fi franchises?  Crazy.

This helps explain why only the first Matrix was any good.  The Wachowski bros. don't know how to write compelling sci-fi, they know how to steal it.

Click here to read all about it.