General Lordisimo’s Apocalypse

I’ve meant to post this since Meg and Evan gave it to me over a week ago.  I guess it is appropriate for Halloween though.  Here you go beer and zombie lovers.

Awesome!

Happy Halloween All!  Yay it is that wonderful time of year again.  I love Halloween for a number of reasons but here are a few of my favorite.

• Excuse to dress up in costumes and you have no fear of being judged for doing such.
• Eating lots of candy (something I have thus far failed to achieve).
• Watching lots of good horror movies.

I choose to focus on the last point here.  I am a pretty big horror movie fan and so have taken the time to watch several so far this week (and intend to watch some more tonight).  The movies I have watched so far this week are as follows.

On Monday night Mad and I watched “The Messengers” which was a somewhat creepy movie.  I think it came out about a year or so ago.  Not bad, had some genuinely scary moments, but not all around the best horror movie I have ever seen.  I’ll give it credit for not being altogether overly cheesy (which is a major flaw in a vast number of horror movies) but it still didn’t quite hit the nail on the head for me.  I’d give it a general grade of B.

Tuesday night I watched “Night of the Living Dead,” the original one from 1968, not the 1990 remake.  What can I say, I could write a whole huge post on this movie alone and how it is absolutely fantastic.  If you know me or have read several of my posts you probably have a pretty good idea by now that I am a pretty big zombie fan.  Well “Night of the Living Dead” is really where our modern interpretation of zombies come from.  This is the first George A. Romero (who to some, myself included, is a living legend) zombie movie and probably his best, though his original “Dawn of the Dead” is really very good too.  By today’s standards “Night of the Living Dead” probably would not strike very many people as an extremely scary movie (except maybe the scene when the little girl zombie kills her mum, that part always freaks me out).  But even without getting people absolutely horrified it is still an amazingly well done film that transcends its genre to become a successful social commentary.  Essentially it is a story of “us vs. them” but the dynamic is not just us the “living” vs them the “dead” but also based on race and class and demand for available resources.  Not only did “Night of the Living Dead” introduce us to the modern perception of zombies (even though in the movie they are never called zombies, they are referred to as ghouls) but it also made the zombie movie and archetype through which to comment on conditions in the world.  Amazing film.  It has been several years since I last watched it and it was wonderful to see it again.  If you have never seen “Night of the Living Dead” check it out on Hulu. 

Wednesday night i watched another older horror movie that i haven’t seen for several years, that being Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser.”  I remember the first time I watched it back in high school thinking that “Hellraiser” was one of the most gruesome movies I’d ever watched and, watching it the other night, even though it is over twenty years old (it originally came out in 1987) I still feel that it is pretty bloody and gross.  Sure, it is a bit dated, and probably not as extreme as some of the more recent horror flicks, but it is still bad ass.  The Cenobites, especially Pinhead, are some creepy mother fuckers.  Again, not too scary but definitely worth the watch.  I really like Clive Barker’s ability to create a genuinely creepy story.  I’ve heard some rumor that there may be a remake of the original “Hellraiser” in the works, which would be awesome if it is well done.

Those are all that I have watched so far.  I have “Shadow of the Vampire” sitting on my desk and might try and watch it tonight.  It is a great twist on “Nosferatu” which itself is still probably one of, if not, the greatest vampire flicks of all time, even considering that it is a silent movie.

Hope everyone has an enjoyable Halloween.

I’ve had my new computer for a couple of months now and have thus gotten relatively used to using Windows Vista.  While there are a few features that I wish would work a little better or differently (which I imagine is pretty standard for any OS) all around I don’t mind Vista that much.  Really I don’t get what the huge complaint is.  I’ll admit that I am not a tech savvy genius and thus might be overlooking some aspects that really blow, but for general functionality I have had very few qualms so far.

That being said I would like to share possibly one of my favorite little tools included with Vista.  This is, as the title of this post says, the Snipping Tool.  I discovered tis tool shortly after purchasing my computer and have used it very regularly since.  I employ its services a lot when I am pursuing company logos or other images to put up on GSATC or just when I feel something is worth grabbing.  The tool is wonderfully simple and perfectly functional.  At work my computer has a screen capturing program called SnagIt which does essentially the same thing as the Snipping Tool but then brings the captured images to an editing software kind of like a stripped down version of Photoshop (I use SnagIt to grab images for the different manuals that I help make).

All and all the Snipping Tool is nothing fancy (though it is certainly better than “alt-prt sc” and having to crop from there).  I just enjoy it and want to thank Microsoft for providing it.

Okay, so I’ve had the blog name Books Are Good registered on WordPress.com for a few months now but have not really bothered to announce it.  The main reason is because there wasn’t really any content on the blog for quite a while.  In fact my blogging in general has been down significantly since I got my new job back in July (which I guess isn’t that new any more because I got it back in July).  Anyway, I now have some posts up on Books Are Good (the title of course is based on my mantra of “I like books, books are good.”) so feel free to check it out.  My idea for this blog is for it to be very specifically centered on things dealing with books and literature, whereas I Wish I Was a Scientist is focused on, you guessed it, science, and here, General Lordisimo’s Apocalypse, is for whatever the fuck else I feel is worth writing about.

Okay, that is all, just some shameless self promotion.  Deal with it.

Walking out of work through the Training Lab today I couldn’t help but notice that a bunch of the chairs had been left in complete disarray from the class that occurred earlier in the day.  WTF?  How hard is it to push in a chair when you leave?  I just don’t get it.

Now I like to think that I usually take the time to politely push my chair in whenever I leave somewhere but I am sure I sometimes leave them un-pushed in.  I apologize for those times.  The thing that I guess really frustrates me is that it is our job to keep the Lab looking neat and so when the chairs are all over the place either me or my coworkers have to take the time to neaten things up.  Again, I ask, how hard is it to push in your chair when you leave?  

Probably I could devise an experiment that figures the amount of energy expended in the act of chair pushing, but that sounds long and complicated and likely expensive, so instead I am just going to ask that people take the whole two extra seconds and push in their chairs when they leave a table.  You get stuff out of the way for others and probably save somebody some time.  Isn’t that nice?  Yes, yes it is.

CNET provides us with a nice little slide show of airships.  I hope to someday take a ride on a dirigible myself.

Last night, at the bar (specifically Sassafras), a couple of us discussed the use of -ish at the end of a time.  We were inconclusive as to the proper use of -ish added to a time and as such I have set out to lay down some basic -ish ground rules.  Here they are.

1. Any time supplemented with -ish denotes a ten (10) minute buffer zone in which one can arrive at a designated location and be within the time-ish.  Example:  If you say you will meet your friend at the park at 6:00-ish then you have between 5:50 and 6:10 to make good on your time-ish commitment.
2. The use of a time-ish should be reserved for purely casual occasions and avoided in any event that may be considered formal and/or professional.  The reason for this is because the use of the -ish denotes a lack of commitment or decisiveness.  It is okay to tell your friend Jerry that you will be at the bar around 8:00-ish.  On the other hand it is inappropriate to tell a business client that you would like to schedule a meeting for 2:30-ish.  In the latter case be specific and state an actually time (2:30).  Further a time-ish scheduling should be avoided in all cases where you and a significant other plan to go out and do something (aka a date) because, as stated above, the use of -ish can be taken to represent a lack of commitment.
3. Over -ishers are fair game for an intervention.  The use of -ish, not just in it’s time related sense, is somewhat like a drug and unfortunately some individuals are unable to use in moderation.  A person who over -ishs needs help.  Watch for the signs.  Do they repeatedly schedule events at a time-ish?  Have they referred to food as having a flavor-ish quality?  Is -ish being added in completely nonsense ways, like “That man-ish has a nice cat?”  Is -ish being used more than once in a sentence (this is a real serious sign, you may need to slap the individual to bring them back to reality at this point)?

I am a big fan of The New York Times (specifically the online version, in fact I cannot remember the last time I picked up a physical newspaper).  Interestingly The New York Times is one of the few websites that I have not subscribed to receive RSS feeds from (which considering the number of feeds in my Goolge Reader is quite impressive), the main reason of which is because I just really enjoy visiting the site.  I’ve been reading The New York Times almost daily now for about the past five years.  I first started reading it in college while I was working at the circulation desk in the library.  At this point in my life it has actually become a part of my daily morning routine, accompanied by my drinking of coffee.  On weekends I always try and stop by at some point to see if anything interesting has been reported.  Granted I don’t read every single article but I do tend to find several every day that I take an interest to.

While reading one article earlier today (which I wrote about in this blog post) I discovered a feature that I had never noticed before, that being if I highlight a word on the online New York Times I am provided with a little “?”  If I click on the “?” I will be promptly provided with the definition of the highlighted word (or if it is a well known personal or place a brief description of them will be given).  I think this is awesome.  Considering how often I visit The New York Times I have to assume that this is a relatively new feature (or I am forced with the possible reality that I am just not that perceptive).  All and all a cool little feature that can potentially help a reader out.  I am of the type who likes to know what a word means if I don’t know it and this saves me time from having to navigate or open a tab for another page like Dictionary.com or the OED.

A great interview with Tina Fey explaining her Sarah Palin impressions.

The sheer genius of the “Zombies in Plain English” almost blows my mind (which, coincidentally, would likely prevent me from becoming a zombie).

Head to a Costco!  It is so simple.  Only a few easily defended entrances and all the supplies you could need for long term survival.  And if you are lucky there might even be a Home Depot or Lowe’s not far down the street for short expeditions to get new axes and chainsaws.