Inhale Random

Saddam plays rock paper scissors (link)

classic: Lindsay Lohan does Harry Potter (video)

tip-top (java game)

the sage of blood ninja (link)

why your dog really goes outside (video)

captain chaos sailing game (flash game)

money wallet (link)

comedy baby pukes (video)

penga-pop (shockwave game)

ideal temperature to drink beer? (pic)

gene kelly body popping (video)

the ultimate fake band list (link)

budweiser's wardrobe malfunction (video)

Life without Stern isn't looking pretty (link)

So I went to Fry's Electronics to assist my friend in finding a PC for
him to buy.  Normally, I would tell people to either build their
own PC or have someone (like me) do it for them.  But he'd rather
go for the easy buy and get a pre-made desktop.  Honestly, I can't
argue with his logic, because it is cheaper and less time consuming
than doing one from the ground up. 

So we went to the desktop section of Fry's and looking at the deals
available.  All of a sudden, a Fry's employee asks us if we need
assistance.  I tell her that we'll be okay, but she goes on and
tells us about this desktop that we might be interested in.  I
decided that I may as well go with it and have her "assist" us. 

So this is how it went...
1) She shows me a desktop
2) I tell her if we can then get that, but with this other thing, and cheaper
3) She tells me that if we do that, it's going to be more expensive, and proceeds to show me another model
4) I go "howabout this one" and points to another one across the area
5) She says that it's not as good because it doesn't have this or that
6) I go "really? But it says on the tag that it does"
7) She goes "oh, that's right" and proceeds to ask us if we're getting it or not
From that point on, repeat steps 2 - 7, three more times.

After torturing *ahem* I mean... talking with her, I finally see a
desktop I thought would be really good for my friend, and at a really
fair price point.  She would have saved herself the time if she
offered that to us first. You'd think we were buying a car or something
with the way she trying to hype up the other desktops she wanted to
show us.  Not to mention her trying to convince us to get the
warranty...

On a follow up to my Best Buy post yesterday, I went back to my
favorite store to check on an item that I've been eyeing for quite
awhile.  Beforehand though, I found out that www.bestbuy.com had it on
sale for $20 cheaper.  I found out that the in store stock had it
on the regular retail price.  I asked a best buy rep if I could
get the item with their online price.  He told me "dot com prices
are different than in store," then turns and walks away. Yeah I know,
how rude, and who else says "DOT com prices" anyways? 

So I leave the store thinking that I'll just order it online and use
the option to "pick up at store." I go ahead and order it online, and
chose to pick it up at the same store I came from.  But I got a
confirmation e-mail saying that they apparently did not have it in
stock for online pick ups.  Those bastards!  I had to call
their customer service number to alter the order to either cancel, ask
for delivery, or have it picked up at another location.  I didn't want to
pay for shipping and wait, so I decided to go for another
location.  They told me that they can do that and to proceed for
the pickup.

I then go to the other location for the item, but for whatever reason,
the computer says that we are not authorized to pick it up yet. what
what what?!  But the lovely sales rep figured that she can just do
a price match with bestbuy.com, so that I can get the sale price. 
I also needed to call customer service to cancel the online purchase,
since it's now a totally different transaction than the price match
one.  So I proceed to do all that and am a happy camper. 

But here's the thing, if all she needed to do was do a price match,
then why the hell didn't the rep from the other best buy do that to
accomodate my need to get the online sales price?  Idiot.

One of my favorite stores is Best Buy. 
That's where I normally buy my DVDs, CDs, electronic products, and
computer accessories.  I visit it almost once a week
because of all the new releases in DVDs and CDs, as well as their
selection of back catalogs.  I don't know if you know this, but in
the first week of release for a DVD or CD, Best Buy usually has it on a
really good sale price.  It hikes up near regular retail price
after that first week, so it's usually best to get it then than
later. 

So I've been doing that method for the past two years now. 
Whenever there's a new DVD or CD that I know I want to keep in my
collection, I buy them in the first week of release.  That way in
the long run, I'll have saved more money.  The problem is that
there have been many many times when 5 DVDs or 3 CDs would be released
the same week.  Some of those DVDs tend to also be box-sets, which
prices range from $30 - $60.  In the short term, that can get
really really expensive. 

This year, another resolution for me would be to cap my weekly spending
when it comes to DVDs and CDs.  This week was the first real week
for me to follow that resolution as several box sets were recently
released.  Sadly, I only bought two DVDs (compared to the five
total that I wanted) and one CD.  I will have to buy the rest some
time in the future.  In some cases, I might be willing to wait a
whole year before I pick them up.  It's sad, because some of those
DVDs are like 25% off the retail price as it is. oohh, my wishlist is getting bigger by the week.

Just when I recently signed up with the Best Buy rewards cards, that gives you cash back for spending too.

Serena Williams / Maria Sharapova
2-6, 7-5, 8-6

Don't be sad Maria, there'll be a next time.


Random of Sharyn

Star Wars Episode III: Hot it begins (link)

Michelin Man denies paternity suit (pic)

dad used stun gun on his son (link)

banned Korean TV commercial (video)

online yellow pages like you've never seen before (link)

tree hugger (video)

animal-human hybrids spark controversy (link)

stackopolis (flash game)

social bookmarks (link)

3footninja (flash game)

gay DNA found (link)

an F-14 no bigger than a shetland pony (video)

revealing prom gowns (link)

a guy and a girl (flash)
 

Baby Spice, is that you now?!

Time for me to chime in on my reactions for the Oscar nominations...

Best Picture - Either Sideways, The Aviator, or Million Dollar Baby. I
predict that they'll give it to The Aviator. Eternal Sunshine would
have been nice, but it's too unconventional for the Academy.

Best Director - Either Scorcese or Eastwood. I predict Scorcese,
because he definitely deserves it more for The Aviator than Gangs of
New York. But if he wins this, there's a chance the best picture might go to Million
Dollar Baby or Sideways.

Best Actor - Either Foxx, Cheadle, or DiCaprio. I predict Foxx, because
he is simply favored to win. I want DiCaprio to win. I'm actually
surprised Eastwood got a nomination though.

Best Actress - Either Sandeno Moreno, Staunton, or Swank. I predict
Catalina Sandeno Moreno will get this one. I'm glad Winslet was
nominated for ESOTSM though, and I guess she'll be like the Joey Lauren
Adams (Chasing Amy) of this year. I'm disappointed that Uma Thurman
didn't get a nod.

Best Supporting Actor - Either Freeman, Haden Church or Owen. I'd go
with Morgan Freeman on this one. I'm disappointed that Carradine didn't
get a
nod.

Best Supporting Actress - Either Blanchett or Madsen. I predict
Blanchett here, because the Academy loves seeing stars playing other
stars.

Best Original Screenplay - All great strong choices there, but I
predict ESOTSM will nab this, even though The Aviator and Hotel Rwanda
are more Academy friendly.

Best Adapted Screenplay - Either Before Sunset, Million Dollar Baby, or
Sideways for this one. I predict Million Dollar Baby will get this over Sideways.

Best Foreign Language film - Not familiar with any of the nominations,
although I'm not surprised House of Flying Daggers did not make it,
because I personally thought that it wasn't up to the Academy's
standards. Hero ofcourse was a 2002 film, so scratch that.

Best Documentary - Out of the list, I would easily say Super Size Me
will get it. I'm surprised that critical acclaimed favorites like
Metallica:Some Kind of Monster and Control Room weren't nominated (but
then, the critics aren't part of the Academy). If Moore submitted
Fahrenheit 9/11, I'm sure that would have been a shoe in. I also think
Metallica:SKOM wasn't eligible due to a technicality with the band
actually funding the film.

Best Animated Film - The Incredibles will beat Shrek 2! Maybe
GITS:Innocense was snubbed because of the director's arrogant statement
about his film.

Best Art Direction - Either Lemony Snicket's, Phantom of the Opera, or
A Very Long Engagement. I predict Lemony Snicket's might just get this
one. HOFD and Sky Captain were sadly snubbed for this one.

Best Cinematography - For the most part, the nominees are on equal footing, but I'd give the win to the Aviator.

Best Costume Design - For the most part, the nominees are on equal footing, but I'd once again give the win to the Aviator.

Best Documentary Short Subject - dum dee dum dumm, don't know....

Film Editing - Either The Aviator, Collateral, or Million Dollar Baby.
I'd give it to Million Dollar Baby, but I wouldn't mind seeing
Collateral win. Kill Bill vol.2 was sadly snubbed for this one.

Best Makeup - Passion of the Christ probably for all that blood....

Best Musical Score - Judging musical scores is not my strong suit when
it comes to movies (I like them all for the most part), but I'd guess
The Village for the moodyness of it all.

Best Song - "Believe" for the Polar Express will get this. I got no
beef between all the songs actually, but while Accidentally in Love is
a good song, it isn't going to win for the Academy. The new song for
the Phantom isn't going to win any favors either, because it's easily
overshadowed by the established Phantom songs.

Best Short Film (animated / live-action) - dunno

Best Sound Editing - All good, but The Incredibles will get this one.

Best Sound Mixing - All fine and dandy, but I'm voting for Ray here.

Best Visual Effects - Either Spider-Man 2 or Harry Potter: TPOA. I'd go
for Harry Potter here. Why wasn't the Aviator, HOFD, and Sky Captain
nominated for this one? For that matter, Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind should be recognized for doing "CG looking effects" that
were done using simple camera / film editing tricks.

Obviously I believe that the Aviator will win big. But the caveat here
is that the Academy likes spreading their awards when there are too
many good films that needs to be recognized. You can probably easily
change some of my Aviator choices to other favorites like Million
Dollar Baby or Sideways.

To repeat what has already been said, Hero is not eligible at all. It
was indeed nominated for best foreign film of 2002, but it was beat by
"nowhere in africa."

IMHO, as much as it's a fan favorite, House of Flying Daggers seriously
did NOT deserve nominations for Best Picture, Best Foreign Film, Best
Director, or Best Actress (Ziyi Zhang). For those categories, I
seriously didn't think they were up to the Academy's standards. I think
that it should have gotten a nomination for Art Direction, since
it's great use of colors along with the forest theme should have been
enough to get one.

The fact that Paul Giamatti did not get a nomination for Best Actor
(Eastwood beat him there?!), would indicate that while the critics LOVE
Sideways, the Academy doesn't love it as much as they do. Minimal wins
at best and will get overshadowed by what appears to be Academy
favorites; The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby. Despite my predictions
ofcourse.

Finding Neverland will also be getting shafted even though the Academy
was able to nominate it in several categories. That goes the same with
Ray, which I believe is only really recognized for Foxx's work. It
would also be nice if Hotel Rwanda win at least one thing. Also, while
Owen and Portman are being recognized for their work in Closer, they
are not going to win despite their Golden Globe victories (I didn't
like Closer that much anyways).

Kill Bill vol.2, Eternal Sunshine, and Sky Captain (for visual reasons)
were sadly snubbed for the most part. Great grab by Winslet for ESOTSM
though.

My other big concern is that it seems that the majority of movie goers
prefer Shrek 2 over the much much better The Incredibles. I hope that
doesn't sway the Academy to let Shrek 2 win, because for the most part
they are quite ignorant about animated works. Brad Bird deserves that
win.

All in all, typical oscar nominations.

Now, I love the show 24 and all,
but I have to recognize that I have to really watch it with a strong
sense of disbelief. Enjoyable and exciting show, but it's not exactly
formula free.  Here are ten plot standards that accompanies this
show...

01) Jack breaks the rules to do what's right (because he is baaddaassess!)
02) Someone is an alias (mole, undercover, etc..)
03) First plotline only leads to a bigger "real" plotline
04) Someone significant will die
05) There will be a relationship betrayal somewhere
06) Somebody is an adversarial hard-ass to Jack
07) One of the female stars will be a damsel in distress
08) past legal indescretion will be ignored later on
09) last minute saves to the nth degree
10) every terrorist loves to attack California

Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

a top ten list of movie / tv / anime action cliches that I wished they would STOP doing...

10) Cars that explode because they can - by now people know that this
is the running joke in action movies.  For whatever reason, cars
are just these fragile things that blow up from the slightest impact
from anything. If this happens so easily, imagine the many car
accidents that happen in the world. boom! boom! boom!

09) Cars that survive from landing a really high jump - correct me if
I'm wrong, but can cars really survive after being really high up and
landing on solid ground? You'd figure an axel would break or something
and the action would just stop because they'd have to run the rest of
the chase on foot.

08) People who walk away from explosions - last time I checked, if
there was an explosion happening behind you, you will be blown away by
it's force. Even if you are able to withstand it, the debris from the
explosion would knock your head off since you'll be an easy target from standing up.

07) Shooting logic - That's right, bad guys can't shoot one good guy if
their lives depend on it, and the good guy always seem to make his mark
when shooting the bad guys. Also if you were in this line of dangerous
work, wouldn't you use kevlar armor?

06) People crashing into glass windows - There's a reason that they use
breakaway glass when they do these kinds of stunts, because it hurts!
If somebody jumps through a glass window, you should be knocked
unconscious from the impact.

05) Wire fu - Now that everybody has seen Jackie Chan in action, it
seems that they also learned how to fly around and do fancy martial
arts when they don't have a gun handy. Not only that, but whoever they
are fighting ALSO knows the wire-fu! 

04) Last second saves - It's too unbelievable when you stop a bomb with
only one second left.  It's too unbelievable when you catch a
falling person right before they hit the ground, and still be able to
stand.  It's too unbelievable when you are able to stop an enemy
right before the good guys implement their "we have to use this
powerful device that might also destroy our own land or kill our own
people because we got no choice" weapon.

03) Bullet time - Unless you are the Matrix, you better have a good reason to use this special effect!

02) Cars that catapult when hitting other cars - The last time I
checked, cars do not have ramps on their rear bumper.  So why
would cars fly up into the sky when they rear end the car in front of
them? I can understand if they flip over from the impact, but actually
fly over? hell no.

01) Happy song in a tragic moment- ooohhh somebody is going to
tragically get their brains blown out, or some family is about to be
burned alive, or somebody could have been saved if the hero did
something else.... so let's play a nice happy song like "what a
wonderful world" because it's sooo ironic to play a song like that when
it should be sooo inappropriate.  Pulls on our heart strings?
Nope, more like a finger down my throat.

 

When Random Falls

popcorn fork? (link)

Florida Monster Hog (link)

women battle men's obsession with videogames (link)

the malibu 9 (flash game)

that's some Zelda tatoo (link)

journey through a jet engine (flash)

Tropical Islands Resort (link)

paintball game (flash game)

the comic book universe battles (link)

the Beastles (sound)

bunny suicides (pics)

corgishoe (link)

...she wanted to be a "cool mom" (link)

stanford students strip for tsunami charity (link)

So I finally finished watching all the Dragon Ball series (original, Z,
GT), after a span of watching it on and off again since 1993. 
I've got to admit that I got a little sad at the end, it was a good
sad, but sad nonetheless.  I know that this particular anime isn't
exactly considered really good, because it really isn't.  The
animation is not that great, the stories are a bit ridiculous, and the
fight scenes last much longer than they really should. 

The best version of the series is the original, because of the well
paced story lines and characters in it.  Dragon Ball Z got overly
excited in the fighting, the powering up, and the talking smack
part.  Dragon Ball GT on the other hand is more or less a
combination of the original and Z, but it's hampered by the direction a
lot of the characters went through. It also didn't help DBGT that the
original creator (Akira Toriyama) had nothing to do with that
series.  For many fans, GT isn't considered canon, although I
personally enjoyed it.

One of the things that I've always loved about the Dragon Ball series,
is the sense of growth with the characters.  I watched three
generations of characters in the span of the series, and the sense of
family becomes a strong theme throughout.  With the end of the
series, I felt like I was separating from a family that I grew a decade
with.  DBGT even ended in that same note where only one remaining
character is alive out of the whole cast, and I couldn't help but
emphathize how lonely it must feel.  Sure there's that fourth (or
is it fifth, sixth) generation of characters to carry the torch, but it's never
the same.  That's a feeling that I didn't get with the DBZ ending
that just leaves you hanging, so I'm glad they created DBGT.

The series ofcourse wouldn't be where it's at if it wasn't for the lead
character, Goku. Out of all the bad creative decisions that they made
throughout the whole history, one thing they got right is the character
of Son Goku!  He will be missed.

Recently I went out and bought two albums that I figured I would not buy, The Killers - "Hot Fuss" and Maroon 5 - "Songs About Jane." 
I'm glad I did buy them though, because they're definitely not bad at
all.  It's been a whole week that I've been listening to these two
albums, so I thought I'd write my .05 cents on the matter.

I got the Killer's debut ("Hot Fuss")
on the strength of their singles ("somebody told me" and
"mr.brightside"), which made me nostalgic to the sound of the
'80s.  Guitar punk mixed with synthesizers for a new wave
sound.  For the most part, the album isn't bad at all, but about
half of the songs don't stand out as much as they probably
should.  For modern new wave synth rock album, I believe Duran Duran - Astronaut,
did a better job. There's still some good material with "Hot Fuss"
though and it's not difficult to enjoy the album as a whole.  It
just easily ends up becoming "background music" fodder, which coincidentally IS like a lot of the new wave '80s albums.
My current choices right now would be...
02 - Mr.Brightside
03 - Smile Like You Mean It
04 - Somebody Told Me
08 - Change Your Mind
10 - Midnight Show

As for Maroon 5's debut album (Songs About Jane), I'm surprised I took this long to purchase it.  I first noticed this band when I got hooked by their very first single "Harder to Breate"
back in the fall of 2002 (yeah it's been that long ago).  I didn't
buy the album then, because I feared the rest of the album wouldn't be
any good at all.  A year later they release a second single "This Love" and it was catchy as hell, but it still didn't do it for me.  By Spring 2004, they released their super popular "She Will Be Loved"
which actually turned me off.  Wait, that's a little misleading
because I actually like the song, but I HATE the music video for
it.  The video was too melodramatic, pretentious, and evil,
because how could he go for the mom when her daughter is definitely
hotter, plus he looks like some evil bastard playing with the two women
(rant mode off).  By the fourth easy listening yet groovy single "Sunday Morning"
I decided that I will get their album one of these days. About three
months later, here I am writing this.  It's a GOOD album, fueled
with an R&B, Funk, Rock, and Pop mentality.  It's one of those
albums that is very easy to listen to over and over again (and I've
done that too). The singles aren't the only good songs to listen to, as
the rest of the albums have strong tracks as well. 
Besides the singles, my choice songs right now are...
05 - Tangled
06 - The Sun
07 - Must Get Out
10 - Through With You
12 - Sweetest Goodbye

Franz Ferdinand and Modest Mouse are two other bands that are still in my "should I buy or not" list.  Who can tell if I will or not.