Nothing Much

6hrs drive isn’t far enough.  Time to start researching foreign countries.  Iceland’s pretty……

I worked retail (in one form or another) for 15 years.  I hate traditional Christmas music.  Which always kinda annoyed me cause when I was kid I LOVED Christmas music, but after listening to it for 8 hours (or more) a day, 5 days a week, for at least two months straight every year I hate it.

So after a few years of that I went looking for NON-traditional Christmas music to listen too, in the process I ran across Twisted Sister’s Twisted Christmas album.  I don’t normally go for heavy metal, but it quickly turned into my favoritest ever Christmas album, and even now, after 3 years OUT of retail its still my favorite.

Twisted Sister’s take on the 12 Days of Christmas:

Among other Christmas albums that I’ll listen too are Tran-Siberian Orchestera, Enya, Jars of Clay, Keith Harling’s Santa’s Got a Semi, and Sugerland.

Disclaimer: all music mentioned I bought for myself.  All links go to Amazon via their associates program, if you buy something via one of these links I might earn a penny or two.

Bolded I’ve seen (or at least part of I’ve seen)

2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick, 1968
Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988
Angel of Vengeance, Abel Ferrara, 1981
Bad Taste, Peter Jackson, 1987
Baise-moi, Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi, 2000
Begotten, E. Elias Merhige, 1991
Behind the Green Door, Artie Mitchell, Jim Mitchell, 1972
La belle et la bête, Jean Cocteau, 1946
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Russ Meyer, 1970
The Big Lebowski, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1998
Blade Runner, Ridley Scott, 1982
Blue Sunshine, Jeff Lieberman, 1978
Brazil, Terry Gilliam, 1985
Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale, 1935
The Brood, David Cronenberg, 1979
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920
Café Flesh, Stephen Sayadian, 1982
Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato, 1979
Casablanca, Michael Curtiz, 1942
Un chien andalou, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí,1928
Coffy, Jack Hill, 1973
Daughters of Darkness, Harry Kümel, 1971
Dawn of the Dead, George A. Romero, 1978
Deadly Weapons, Doris Wishman, 1974
Debbie Does Dallas, Jim Clark, 1978
Deep Red, Dario Argento, 1975
Dirty Dancing, Emile Ardolino, 1987
Django, Sergio Corbucci, 1966
Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly, 2001
Don’t Torture a Duckling, Lucio Fulci, 1972
Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton, 1990
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Aristide Massaccesi, 1977
Emmanuelle, Just Jaeckin, 1974
Enter the Dragon, Robert Clouse, 1973
Eraserhead, David Lynch, 1977
The Evil Dead, Sam Raimi, 1981
Fight Club, David Fincher, 1999
Flaming Creatures, Jack Smith, 1963
Freak Orlando, Ulrike Ottinger, 1981
Freaks, Tod Browning, 1932
Ginger Snaps, John Fawcett, 2000
The Gods Must Be Crazy, Jamie Uys, 1981
Godzilla, Ishirô Honda, 1954
The Harder They Come, Perry Henzell, 1972
Harold and Maude, Hal Ashby, 1971
Häxan, Benjamin Christensen, 1922
Hellraiser, Clive Barker, 1987
The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973
The House with the Laughing Windows, Pupi Avati, 1976
I Walked with a Zombie, Jacques Tourneur, 1943
Ichi the Killer, Takashi Miike, 2001
In Bruges, Martin McDonagh, 2008
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Don Siegel, 1956
Invocation of My Demon Brother, Kenneth Anger, 1969
It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra, 1946
The Killer, John Woo, 1989
Lady Terminator, H. Tjut Djalil, 1988
The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson, 2001–3
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, George Miller, 1981
Man Bites Dog, Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde, 1992
Manos, the Hands of Fate, Harold P. Warren, 1966
The Masque of the Red Death, Roger Corman, 1964
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, 1975
Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow, 1987
Nekromantik, Jörg Buttgereit, 1987
Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero, 1968
Pink Flamingos, John Waters, 1972
Piranha, Joe Dante, 1978
Plan 9 from Outer Space, Ed Wood, Jr, 1959
Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon, 1985
Reefer Madness, Louis Gasnier, 1936
Repo Man, Alex Cox, 1984
Ringu, Hideo Nakata, 1998
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Jim Sharman, 1975
Rome Armed to the Teeth, Umberto Lenzi, 1976
The Room, Tommy Wiseau, 2003
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975
She Killed in Ecstasy, Jesús Franco, 1971
Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven, 1995
Soul Vengeance, Jamaa Fanaka, 1975
The Sound of Music, Robert Wise, 1965
Star Wars, George Lucas, 1977–2005
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Todd Haynes, 1988
Suspiria, Dario Argento, 1977
Tank Girl, Rachel Talalay, 1995
Tetsuo, Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper, 1974
This Is Spınal Tap, Rob Reiner, 1984
Thriller: A Cruel Picture, Bo Arne Vibenius, 1974
Thundercrack!, Curt McDowell, 1975
El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970
The Toxic Avenger, Michael Herz, Lloyd Kaufman, 1984
Two-Lane Blacktop, Monte Hellman, 1971
Two Thousand Maniacs!, Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1964
The Vanishing, George Sluizer, 1988
Videodrome, David Cronenberg, 1983
The Warriors, Walter Hill, 1979
Witchfinder General, Michael Reeves, 1968
Withnail & I, Bruce Robinson, 1987
The Wizard of Oz, Victor Fleming, 1939

7 total, thats pretty bad actually.  I blame it on my parents, we weren’t allowed to watch many movies when I was a kid and so I never got into the habit of sitting and watching.

Waiting for a game to load on the Xbox

Person1: Oh, do you know why they put that seizure warning on all these things now??

Me: cause someone had a seizure and so now they all do it so they won’t get sued.

Person1: No!  Because some kid in Japan  had a seizure back when these things first came out and so now they do it cause no-one wants to get sued!

Me: sigh.

(…actually this was a couple months ago, the constant reports about the Twilight movies causing seizures reminded me…..)

Teacher tells 2nd graders there is no Santa.

I posted on a similar story a couple days ago, husband had missed that one, but was rather horrified when he saw this one, on a slightly amusing note however he was horrified for the exact opposite reason I was upset.  He was brought up to believe in Santa, and though he admits to being rather upset once he finally figured it out, he firmly believes that Santa is something all children should have.  He wasn’t amused when I pointed out that by lying to their children parents are setting themselves up for children who are more likely to not believe them later on possibly more important things. “I didn’t have that problem!”  Well no, but then you were raised right, these days ALOT of kids aren’t being taught any responsibility or how to work for what they want (an observation he’s made several times), and in those cases “Santa” just makes it worse.  He really wasn’t amused with me.

I guess its a good thing we don’t plan to have kids……

Not up here in central NY state, but really, can we have a proper freeze please?  I’m really tired of all the mud…..

And is promptly told she is the most evil person ever.

I have to admit that I’ve never understood the whole “Santa” thing.  I’m sure part of that is the fact that my parents never “did”  Santa.  Infact I think it was kindergarten, when I came home one day and wanted to know who this “Santa” person was that everyone was talking about.  My mother told me he was made up and not real.  I promptly returned to school and proceeded to tell everyone Santa was a lie and they shouldn’t believe in him.  Something tells me I wasn’t very popular with the other kids’ parents that year….

But really, I don’t get Santa.  A large majority of the people I know who DID believe in Santa when they were little, say they were very upset when they realized there wasn’t any Santa.  That their parents had lied to them.  And yet, they proceed to tell their children that its Santa who’s bringing the gifts.  My inlaws do this, their eldest grand-child is 8yrs old, and still believes in Santa, because the whole family is expected to go out of their way to assist in the foolery (I have so far avoided having to be involved, without having to argue the fact).  Having gotten to know the child over the last few years I can firmly state that she is going to be PISSED once she finally figures out that they were lying to her.  Screaming temper-tantrum mad.

I don’t get it.

And if thats news to you have a bridge to sell you…..

Seriously, I got a smart phone with every expectation that Verizon was going to go to the legal limit (and possibly push that limit as hard as possible) to get information on what I do with it and when.  That doesn’t make it RIGHT, but I KNEW that it would happen.  Therefor when the recent announcement hit that many phones, sold by many carriers, contain software that can keylog and send back that information I wasn’t surprised.  Now according to the linked article my phone, sold by my carrier, does not contain this particular piece of software.  However I fully expect it contains something very similar that no-one’s found yet.  That concept will eventually piss me off to the point of rooting the phone and fixing the issue, till then I understand that everything I do on that phone is potentially being sent off to someone.  After all, this is Verizon we’re talking about.

Seriously.  When I first got my Droid2 I was rather disgusted by the amount of bloatware that came pre-installed, and even more so when I discovered that the only way to get rid of it was to root the phone.  But I was outright PISSED when, a week after getting the phone, I discovered that one of those pieces of bloatware was an app (*cough* City ID *cough*) that was sending all my incoming call information off to a 3rd party, without my permission, no way to opt out, and no way to turn it off till the “FREE NO COMMITMENT TRIAL!!!!111!!!!” ended and I could finally tell them to go to hell.  It wasn’t even a useful piece of software, it was supposed to tell you the city and state that the person was calling from, in reality all it did was ID the city/state where the PHONE NUMBER originated from, so if you got your cell phone in NY state, and kept your number when you moved out of state, City ID would still ID the call as from AnyCity NY.  I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one complaining since when Husband upgraded his Droid to a Droid3 City ID didn’t come preinstalled.

So yah, if you were really under the illusion that everything you did on your smart phone was private you need to get a life…….

Edited to add: this doesn’t mean that I think we SHOULDN’T take apart any company who breaks the law in this manor, just that I’m totally unsurprised that it happened.

……arg…….

For those of you not already familer with Despair.com I highly recommend their products. But I’ve always extra enjoyed their Christmas tshirts, and this year’s is especially good.

(while you’re there check out their TSA tshirts.)