Tasty Fish, Tasty Fish...Poison Fish

Growing up in a small midwestern town where the norm was "meat and potatoes", exotic big city type dining experiences were not the norm for me as a youngin'. The closest I ever came to sushi was watching the Fugu episode of the Simpsons where Homer accidently ingests poisonous blowfish and thinks that he is going to die. Aside from the jokes about sushi (printing a map of the hospital on the back of the menu for instance)...I've found that sushi, when prepared correctly can be quite a good dining experience.

Given, that with any food, there is "faux sushi" and then the real thing. What is faux? well, if you can buy it in the deli aisle and it's touching a 15 day old ham sandwich, then I would classify it as faux. Just as a steak from Denny's would be...this kind of sushi is not good at all.

The kind that I speak of is the kind that is prepared right in front of you by a sushi chef, where they give you edamame as an appetizer and don't even offer you silverware. Sushi done correctly can be absolutely wonderful. Of course anyone that knows me would realize that my love of sushi that has crab and shrimp in it is logical. Being that it is Friday night it may be time to head out to the sushi bar, kick back a Sapporo, and enjoy cuisine that is fresh and exciting.

Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus...

The answer is $5032...(not 42 like you would expect). Ok, so this isn't the answer to the ultimate question or anything, but reading this article answers two of life's puzzles (or at least life's puzzles when you were 5), Santa REALLY lives in Denmark not the North Pole, and Rudolf is only worth a little over five grand.

According to the article, the Danish Airforce paid a man who claimed to be Santa Claus 31,175 Kroner ($5032 to us Americans) as compensation for the death of one of his reindeer due to fighter jets passing by his farm at low altitudes. According to "Mr. Claus", the death of his reindeer leaves him with only one to pull his sleigh on Christmas Eve. After diligently looking into the claim, the Danish Airforce happily paid the man saying "We're more than happy to pay if it means that children around the world will get their presents..."

Note to Mastercard...I see a special Christmas Marketing Campaign in the works.

Santa Suit rental from Costumes R Us...$125
Sleigh with extra large cargo hold...$35,000
2 Danish Reindeer...$10,064
Bringing toys to kids around the world at Christmas...Priceless!

So It's a Linkfest

For those of you that remember the "Subservient Chicken" website, here's a link to Subservient Stewie which takes the idea of the man in a chicken suit and applies it to the Family Guy's Little Guy...that's not "peter"... Some interesting commands you can tell Stewie to do...

Poop
Pee
Dance
Kill Lois (of course)

There is no end to terror.

Some of you, the loyal readers who click the links, will have seen this subject approached on Suppository in a strip from a few weeks back. Curiosity got the best of me and I watched this. I have come to realize that terrorism comes in many forms. This is one of the worst. If you swore you would kill yourself if you ever watched anything more horrible than that dancing cat video (I say sexy things to myself when I'm DANCIN'!) please don't click the link. I don't want you to kill yourself.

Haiku Friday

Unpeeled Maize

Foul conglomerate
A chimaera in the bowl
Filet style chunklet

"I'm not as am as you think I drunk!" - Tara Reid

Haiku Friday

Pushing Calm

Entombed and sallow
Warm fruit ripens slowly
A dark water birth

“The gravedigger puts on the forceps." -Samuel Beckett

Haiku Friday

Will of the Fist

light of day not seen
downward spiral barred too soon
broken form success

“you lack the will of a warrior” - Master Fnog

Bizarre...One Way To Describe This

Scanning late night TV last night I happened to come across George Clooney on one of the late shows and one of his anecdotes was absolutely bizarre. In it he spoke of an injury he incurred this year in which he had apparently torn the dura mater tissue around his spine which caused his spinal fluid to leak out of his back and be evacuated through his nose. I thought at first that it had to be a tall tale, but apparently he was telling the truth.

Allegedly he had gained some 30 pounds for a movie role, and the added stress to his body created the conditions that allowed for the injury. His treatment for the condition involves taking blood from his arm and injecting it into his spine on a frequent basis. He said the doctors equate it to "plugging holes in a boat".

Celebrities are as guilty of this as anyone, since they are always in the public eye. Losing too much weight too quickly can be just as bad. Drastic weight fluctuations are not healthy (regardless if you use the Weight Gain 4000 method, or conversely the Kate Moss Coke Diet). Mary-Kate Olsen and Lindsay Lohan should be taking notes.

How? Also..... Why?

I can't download and preview songs from the new DangerDoom album legally (not that I didn't anyway) even though I fully intend to purchase the album. That's considered me ripping them off. What if I were to repackage that album with the titles altered and say I made it? Is that even more of a rip off? Logically, it would be, right? But welcome to the here and now. Fuck logic. Forcibly hold down the wriggling tentacles of logic and whip out your dick and fuck it right in the middle where the beak would be if it hadn't been worn off trying to chew through the thick skulls of the American public and infect our collective mind. I want you to read this article. Take notice of the title of the book and its subject matter. CNN avoids mentioning HBO or Kim Catrell throughout the entire article but they do reference Mr. Big. They know they are peddling bullshit. They do it anyhow. Based on this article I have devised a plan to write a novel called Everyone's Loving Raymond about a cartoonist who lives across the street from his overbearing Jewish mother and his shell shocked, retired accountant father. He has 3 kids. The oldest two are fraternal twins. His wife is muslim from Pakistan and his brother is a firefighter. Sounds good, right? I got the idea all by myself. I was just sitting there watching Fox between 9 and 10 p.m. last night and inspiration hit.

Script Changes? How About a Total Rewrite

I keep reading all Summer how the movie industry is upset that their box office figures have been coming in at below expectations for the year, and they just can't seem to figure out why this is happening. For those highly paid industry executives that ponder this situation on a daily basis, let me just say that the answer is right under their nose, more obvious than the plot line in a B Movie slasher film. Here are my top five reasons why no one goes anymore...

1. Ticket Prices - Prices near 10 dollars a person requires a second mortgage to take the family out to see the latest box office bomber.
2. Concession Prices - In addition to the 10 dollar ticket, add another 8 bucks for a pintsized box of popcorn and two gulps of Coke.
3. Lack of Good Releases - It truly is sad when "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" tops the box office charts because everything else out is either older than the mummies at the natural history museum or a poor attempt at a plotline (awesome-0 comes to mind)...Adam Sandler...falls in love with...a giant panda...LAME
4. Lack of Original Scripts - Why is it that for every waiter or waitress in LA that has script ideas...nothing good can seem to be made? When in doubt, make a bad sequel...(Deuce Bigalo 2?) Original scripts are gone, everything else is ass with a side of ass sauce it seems.
5. Home Theaters - A DVD Player, a HD Television, and a 5.1 Surround Sound System can easily turn your home into a good theater experience, and unlike the real theater, you don't have to donate blood to go see a movie, AND you don't have the little 5 year old kid behind you kicking your seat every 10 minutes!

It doesn't take Stephen Hawking to figure out why no one goes to the movies anymore. To parallel the oil industry..."the time of easy box office money is gone..." Soon, the movie industry will finally learn that you can't take a crappy script, add some CGI and a marketing campaign and call it "good". Every industry has to adapt to changing market conditions, and they are no exception. In this case, change is necessary, or else they need to get use to trading their Porsche's in for Kia's.

The Thing-Longer Version 2.0

As if there isn't enough paranoia on this planet these days. According to this article University of California Researchers at Berkley have reported that the we should be worried about a new type of spying called "acoustic snooping". Apparently, a would be spy could essentially record the sounds of your typing and using a complex computer algorithm can filter out background noise and recognize accurately about 96% of all the recorded keystrokes.

I can see it now. In response to this finding the muffler keyboard will become the next thing to hit the market. I can just see the advertisements now...

...using the power of cotton to secure your computer from would be snoopers...we painstakingly attach cotton balls to every key using a high strength polymer glue to withstand years of use...

Or

...for ultimate security, Get our Gilbert Gottfried - Fran Drescher Keyboard. This model plays voice samples of Gilbert and Fran via a 200 watt Megaphone attached to your monitor every time you type a key. (earplugs not included)...

Keyboards so quiet you can hear a pin drop...or keyboards so loud that you are guaranteed to be deaf by next Tuesday! OK, maybe this is nothing to really worry about, but I guess it goes to prove that big brother is always watching. Between keystroke snooping, ATM machines that "capture" your PIN and account number, and all the high tech ways to have your privacy invaded, I think it may be time to go live like the Amish, living the simple life shoe'ing horses and making furniture...uhhhhhh....ok maybe not!

WTF Google? Where's the love.

Did you know that Google has a cable television network? It's called Current.tv or Google Current or just Current depending on where you look but it was recently added to my cable lineup as channel 204. It shows video "Pods" of various lengths. There are no hour long or half our long shows or movies. It's just a continuous barrage of Guerilla Filmaker style shorts about to many subjects to name. It's become a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. It seems that most of the pods are aimed at bringing penis obsessed frat boys into adulthood, or at least get them to watch long enough to set down the remote and sit through the Mountain Dew and Taco Bell commercials. Some of the pods are actually well produced and really show something worth watching. It's a bit like watching a marathon of MTV News (not the "another rock star died" shit but something more akin to an expose on binge drinking followed by a true life special about a high school girl who has finally convinced her parents she needs a boob job) only slightly more substantive. Why am I going on about this? I have no clue. What I really found odd is that when I went to Google and typed in "current" I didn't get a single return in the first page (I didn't look any deeper than that) for the station. Why the hell not? Google owns the station. Even searching for "Google tv" only returned news story links about the launch of the station but not a single link to the current.tv website. I don't understand. What the fuck is the point of a search engine, again? I know I forgot. I know someone who uses Google as a spell checker for words but if it is a commonly mispelled word and you type in the common mispelling you are likely to return a multitue of results and Google is unlikely to suggest the correct spelling to you (Did you mean to search for DonkeyPunchGrandma after you typed in DonkyPunchGrandma, etc. I haven't tried it but for some reason I don't think that donkey punchers are the most likely people on earth to spell donkey right). Do you ever search Google Images and marvel at the random nature of some of the results? No? Try searching Kelly Ripa (thanks Doordolt). What was I talking about? Who are you? Get away from me.

They Say Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery...

But why is it I feel like we've been blatently copied? This blog looks like ours, and shares the same name....but can't match the mind numbing content that the ORIGINAL Mental Fiber can provide.

The TV Critic in me

First of all, let me say that there was a false alarm to this blog post. When I first decided to blog about Fox's Sunday Lineup of season premiers, I did a search for "fox fall lineup", and this is what the first result was... I looked at the Sunday schedule and was almost ready to jump for JOY, Futurama, coming back to Fox? Why had I not heard of this? Then, I looked at the date...Fall Schedule 2001 Doh, why is this still up there on the web to tantilize and tease us Futurama Fans?

OK, so I watched the 2005 version of the Sunday lineup of shows on Fox, and here's my first glance reactions to the evening programming.

6:30 - the 'OT' show. My first reaction to this was very good, not because of the content (wrapup of the games around the NFL for the day), but because finally Fox has come to understand that Football is unpredictable as far as the length of a game. Fox use to just start their regular programming immediately following football, which would shift the programming schedule at odd intervals (not on the half hour)...making trying to TIVO or videotape a show pretty much impossible. Kudos to providing this buffer "show", and also for taking King of the Hill's spot.

7:00 - The Simpsons. I watch this show with hope that it will return as being fresh and funny like I remember it before it became uber popular. The problem with this show is due to it's own success...they have trouble with fresh ideas that don't cross plotlines on a previous show. In this particular episode, Homer betting on football games and Lisa being oblivious to the fact that she helped "daddy" bet on games in an earlier episode. Also, the return of Alec Baldwin AGAIN for another voice acting cameo, this time sans Kim Bassinger. (It would have been funny for them to reference the 'museum of Hollywood Jerks' in this episode.) Overall, not very funny, but still sort of promising.

7:30 - The War at Home. I watched this new offering hoping that it may be funny, unfortunately it wasn't. Michael Rappaport was miscast as the dad in this series in my opinion, although Whackly reminded me that maybe it's just the movies that I've seen him in that makes it hard for me to see him as a dad-type. The jokes in this pilot were uninspiring, and so was the plot. Overall, not funny at all. Don't think this will make it to mid-season replacements.

8:00 - Family Guy. This show made a return from the dead last season in May as it came back from cancellation land over the summer. Overall, this show was about what is to be expected from Family Guy, lots of flashback humor, some Peter Griffin being dumb humor. Overall, the funniest show of the night. Keeping this one fresh will be the challenge to the creators.

8:30 - American Dad. From the pilot episode last spring of this show my reaction was "Family Guy Part Deux", only way less funny. The humor was the same flavor as Family Guy, but the characters were not nearly entertaining. Personally, I find the Dad to be a real jerk-wad, and the talking fish is the only mildly entertaining character. Overall, I feel I just saw a better incarnation of this show at 8:00...I don't need a replay.

Overall, I would Rate the 2005 Version of Fox Sunday a solid C-. There are some promising shows, but nothing that is drop dead funny. They should bring Futurama back from cancelation to help fill out the lineup...of course the chances of me getting hit by lightning twice simultaneously while holdling the winning lottery ticket in my Ferrari while filling up my gas tank for 35 cents a gallon are better. Oh well, one can dream can't they???

Wiring 2.0

This is the AFTER picture. You can't even imagine what it looked like before. I also damaged one of my optical cables. There is still light coming through but the fiber has been cut or split because the signal has been scrambled and the receptor can't reach it. Optical cables are expensive and fragile. I tried to be careful but the broken cord is the one that feed through the wall from my desktop in the office to my optical switch (the silver thing on top of the multiplexor) so it must have been pulled too vigorously, a problem I've had before. The cords slung over the top of the cable box are those that connect to the HDTV. I was able to shorten some of the cords but for the most part I had to use the standard 4, 6, and 10 foot cables I already had. What I wouldn't give to have devices that were "All Optical" compatible. Even the Onkyo devices where everything can be connected with 1394 would be all right. So that was One Gamecube component cable, one Gamecube audio cable, one Xbox advanced A/V component video cable, an optical cable for the Xbox, one coaxial cable to the cable box, left and right rca from the cable box to the multiplexor, component cables from the cable box to the multiplexor, cables from the multiplexor to the stereo, one optical cable for the cable box, left and right rca for the DVD changer, one digital coax cable for the DVD changer, s-video backups, power cords, optical cable from the computer, optical cable from the switch to the stereo, 5 speaker wired, one digital coax for the subwoofer, and on and on.... I was mentally pooped after thinking all that through. Next weekend I go in with the twist ties and clean the bitch up.

Father, if possible, pass this cup before me. I like it strong. Lots of cream and sugar.

There is a church down the street from me that is trying, I think, to update its image and draw new members and attendees. In order to do this they have hung giant banners all along the building in bright colors with abstacts on them and words presumeably advertising what they have to offer (Faith, Joy, etc.). This isn't anything new. Churches do a lot of different things to reach out to the community so they can make more money. What's important, though, is that this church has a giant 25 foot brass backlit cross on the outside of the largest wall. Most churches that have this feature also have an identical cross on the inside right behind the altar. It's an important image as it expresses the very core of the the Christian ideal, with which I have no enmity. This church looked at that huge wall with the cross on it and saw, not a symbol of Christ's sacrifice, but an underutilized advertising space. Unfortunately the Christian ideal and the modern execution of Christianity are two completely different things, as evidenced by the fact that this church down the street has completely covered up the giant cross on the outside of the building with a huge pastel banner advertisement. Assholes. Anyway, as I was preparing to bitch about this I used Google Images, once again, to search for relevant material. The following are interesting pictures that came up when I used Google Images to search for "Jesus Christ."

Mental Floss... WTF?

www.mentalfloss.com

This is what we could be if we had a big budget and gave a shit. But we don't and we don't. If they hadn't come first I would have sworn that they ripped the name off from us.

"Genuine Class" News...

Back in the Summer of 1977 (although I was way too young to remember personally)...legions of moviegoers lined up to see the latest blockbuster phenomenom called "Star Wars". One of the pivotal scenes in the movie occurs when Obi-Wan Kenobi is struck down by Darth Vader and vanishes in thin air with only his lightsaber and empty cloak remaining after the mortal blow. This great movie moment had fans at the time wondering "where the hell did he go?" Almost 30 years later we know that he became part of the living force. But what about the famous cloak? Up until recently, it has been part of a stock of rental items at a fancy dress shop in England. Apparently, when the filmmakers were done with this famous piece of wardrobe they returned it to sender...as no one at the time could have predicted the success that Star Wars would have worldwide. The famous garment, just like Obi-Wan himself came back for Empire and Jedi, came back from the beyond to appear in other feature films such as part of an extra's wardrobe in The Mummy. So Obi-Wan's Cloak has been found. Now if they could just lose Jar Jar for all eternity....that would be something.

By the way, for those of you that can make sense of the title of this post...congratulations you are as much of a Simpsons Geek as me.

Attention male geeks!!!

Please click here to see Morgan Webb (former co-host of The Screen Savers and current host of X-Play) showing her boobies! Here's to vindictive ex-boyfriends and Bacardi!

1.21 Gigawatts at 88 MPH....Not Quite...But...

Why is it that in my perception time seemingly starts going faster and faster as the years go by? As I sit here staring at another Labor Day Weekend in the windshield of life it makes me wonder, where has the summer gone? I know logically, part of my time perception impairment comes from the fact that I no longer have the luxury of the lazy summer vacations that I use to have as a kid...before the burden of summer jobs and with seemingly no cares in the world. Three months of sitting around day after day doing whatever caught my fancy.

I remember waiting in anticipation of going to see Whackly and his family when my family took summer trips. I'm sure he remembers the week I spent with him at his Grandma's House playing Nintendo all day in the little town of about 100 people where she lived...or Swating mayflies at the cabin in the Lake of the Ozarks. So many good times...I wish I would have had the foresite back then to realize that those times would never happen again and to savor them.

But now, years later, we've all grown up. Now we all have jobs, and have grown up bills and responsibilities. Watching a program last night on the dragonfly I saw how the dragonfly morphs from a sea creature into the flying insect that we are so familiar with. The narrator exclaims "wow, how can one creature be so much different in the one lifetime?" After my ponderous post here on Mental Fiber I have to think, "Are we really that much different?"

Questions I have pndered but been too chicken to ask about...

Do television news field reporters turn into bats or wolves at night?

Do gay men ever think twice about eating chunky peanut butter?

Why do people stay glued to the television news for three days only to watch the same footage over and over confirming what they already know?

Why do famous child abusers always get away with it? (Judy Garland, Michael Jackson, Bing Crosby, etc.)

Does calling yourself differently abled instead of disabled help you get up the stairs?

If people aren't going to do the job right why do they take up a chair?

Why are people who are right always willing to question themselves and people that are wrong always so sure they aren't?

Why part of American culture trains us to ignore every single warning sign and then act surprised and indignant when something bad happens?

How big does your scrote have to be before you can complain about gas prices but still be unwilling to trade in your Ford Monstrosity and get a vehicle that doesn't use 3 gallons of gas and 3500 cubic feet of cargo space to haul you, a gallon of skim milk, two ostrich feathers, a digital camera and an underage trailer skank to the Sand Prairie Preserve out by the airport?

Am I the only one who remembers when gas was 87 cents per gallon under the Clinton administration?

If I wash my hands one more time will I stop thinking about the creepy crawlies on the bathroom door handle?

How loud can you bark and yell before your neighbors think you are scary?

Do my neighbors think I am scary because I bark, yell, and growl?

Why did Doordolt just tell me that Something Dirty said I smell like poopie?

Why did I forget all but one of the really good questions I had thought of last night?