thwartedefforts

The bag of Lime and Chile Fritos says “Artifically Flavored” right on it. The bag of Bar-B-Q Fritos says “Bar-B-Q flavored corn chips”. My reasoning for that is because Bar-B-Q isn’t a natural flavor anyway, they don’t pump it out of the ground or pick it off trees — Bar-B-Q is an unnatural flavor, and anything that tastes like Bar-B-Q has been flavored so as to taste like that. In fact, the ingredients lists things like onion, tomato, paprika and garlic. So your experiences with Bar-B-Q flavored things actually contain more natural individual flavors than these other flavors which just taste (or are susposed to taste) like natural flavors. On the other hand, the Lime and Chile chips contain fewer ingredients, but does contain odd things like “Vinegar solids” and “Lime juice powder” and no preservatives, while the Bar-B-Q ones contain MSG. I suspect that vinegar may be a natural preservative.

This was a week or so ago. My company is moving offices and it is my job to configure the network. In my dream, we kept leaving things at the old office, but the old office was like a church, and it was being partitioned off into different sections for use by various choir practices and group sessions. Everyone was wearing choir gowns that were either purple or white. I kept having to back to the “church” to get printer cables and keyboards and other computer odds-and-ends. On the last trip, I ended up in this area of the “church” that had a stage, and I was moving around backstage to leave and go back to the new office, and I nearly tripped over the head of Timothy Stack and his partner, who were about to go on stage. It was like we were old friends, and we used to do stand-up comedy, and we were trading insults. He and his partner were just heads, nothing below the neck, and I was looking down at him and I said things like “I never thought you’d get a head in this business after I left” and he answered, rolling his eyes, “Haha funny. My partner are just rolling along in this business.” Then he said he had to go on that we’ll have to get together sometime, and he and his partner, who was trying to look under the curtain, pulled themselves out on stage with their lips.

“My Kung-fu is pretty good.”

“You may be ugly, but you’re no virgin.”

“I’ll show you my ‘Nothing Special.’”

This movie fucking rocked. None of the hokey seriousness of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to get in the way of the fighting, and none of the serious fighting to get in the way of the hokey story. (As mentioned on IMDB) it’s a far east version of Robin Hood. It has all the classic kung-fu movie fighting aspects: stupid chatter before a fight, an initial butt-kicking, assume the stance, cue the gong letting the audience know that the shit is gonna hit the fan. The story is coherent and complete and the movie is relatively short (1 hour and 27 minutes). I thought it was going to end at a certain point, but I’m glad it didn’t.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any goofier, it does. And then, it gets even goofier. Watching Iron Monkey is like watching someone play a video game. Some people would say Mortal Kombat, but since that already has its own movie, and it is hardly only like Mortal Kombat, its like Super Mario or Quake. First, some good guy has to fight some bad guys, and he kicks their ass. Then a bigger, badder bad guy shows up and kicks the shit outta the good guy. Then a bigger badder good guy shows up to fight the bigger badder bad guy. And this goes on for a few rounds, then the plot progresses. Eventually, the Ultra Boss shows up. And nearly everyone has some “super power”, “special weapon”, or “specific strength” (and, in good video game and kung-fu movie fashion, the Ultra Boss has all three) they always use.

I can not remember the last time I laughed through an entire movie. If you have not seen Iron Monkey previously, or even if you have already, go and see this. It is a lot of fun.

Paid $8. Worth $10.

OH MY FREAKING GOD! Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen have a (as far as I’m concerned) new show. They couldn’t pull themselves away from their busy schedule staring in Made-for-the-Mary-Kate-and-Ashley-Olsen-channel-FX shows, so this one is animated. The brainchild of some Disney executive, most likely, it shows on ABC on Saturday mornings at 10 (central). They star as secret agents in classic James Bond fashion (with Q, M, and Moneypenny-esque characters), with a sidekick robotic scottish terrier who could get them out of jams, but needs to “reboot” when his memory banks are scrambled. They travel the world in an airplane (”I still can’t believe you girls can pilot a plane and you’re not old enough to drive.”) and arrive at their destination via sky diving. They are known internationally due to the “international villian web site”.

Thankfully, this show is dripping with lessons to be learned. I learned that suntans may look healthy, but they aren’t. I also learned that solar eclipses don’t just happen randomly. The girls used what they learned by doing their astronomy homework to get out of hedge maze the villian had left them in (after knocking them out with his bad breath, but I’m getting ahead of myself). They also felt a need to tell us that the villian in this episode (whose name escapes me) is so bent on world domination and his plans, that sometimes he forgets to brush his teeth (and bath — YUCK!) — but I have a feeling that in the middle of writing this episode, a rewrite happened and they changed the odd waves of odor coming out of the villian’s mouth into the affect of eating cheese (his teeth were distintly white the entire show). This is good, because without cheese, the girls would have been unable to stop the villian from launching his rocket in which he was going to go into space to finish his sun force field — which blocked out the sun and made everyone pasty white (quote from the villian: “This will teach you to make fun of my pasty white skin — now no one will be able to get a tan!”). How did they use cheese to stop the villian, you ask? Well, the robot dog ended up in the basement rocket launcher room of the villian, and started eating the cheese the villian stored there. This gave the girls an idea. They stuffed the exhaust nozzels of the rocket with cheese, so it couldn’t blast off.

I know all that sounds like a dream I had, but I swear, I was awake the whole time.

Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen IN ACTION (the name of the show) was immediately followed by The Weekenders, which is about some junior high kids who do things on the weekends — fantastic role models for your kids, who should be out doing things rather than sitting in front of the television. Fortunately, these shows are relatively wholesome and are the kinds of things _should_ be watching, most likely, but the lessons are laid on so thick, the kids won’t be able to swallow it. Best lines from this (animated show produced by Disney!) were:

Carver: I wanna be CARP. Cool And Radically Popular.
Other kid: Too bad you don’t wanna be Cool Rich And Popular.

Mother: Group hug!
(kids mumble excuses and leave)
Mother: Jeez, I havn’t cleared a room of your friends since I showed that video of your birth.

monksp on LambdaMOO was looking for FileIO and I realized that it was never made available after I canceled my old accounts. So there it is now, at http://thwartedefforts.org/software/fileio/.