Zomgee

Over the past few days, I’ve been keeping on eye on the developments in Pakistan with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of that country (1988-1990 and 1993-1996). Both times the president fired her for allegations of corruption.

Eventually, she exiled herself from the country for 8 years, and in October, returned. Her entrance back into the country, however, was met with an assassination attempt, killing 136 people in the process, but, miraculously, she was spared.

Since then, she has blamed the current sitting president, Pervez Musharraf, for not doing enough to ensure her security. On Wednesday, after leaving a rally, shots were fired at her vehicle and a bomb on a nearby motorcycle exploded. Today, however, more information was released as to how she died.

It wasn’t the gunshots (all 3 missed her). It wasn’t the bomb (directly, at least). Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto killed herself when she ducked back inside the sunroof she was standing through and hit her head on one of the latches for the sunroof. Apparently, the force of hitting that latch was enough to fracture her skull.

Man knows not his time- nor the means.

May everyone have a safe and joyful Christmas.

Let me first start off by saying: “Wow.” I don’t even know where to begin with this movie.

Will Smith. Who knew he could match or beat his performance in The Pursuit of Happyness. This is by far his best movie to date. He is naturally funny in all his movies and in the movie previously mentioned, he shows a softer, more genuine side. This is … quite departure from, or rather, an extension of those previous roles. He makes you laugh, he makes you cry, he makes you feel like Chuck Norris needs to watch his back.

If you’ve been totally oblivious to the overall plot of this movie, that’s ok. If you’d like to keep it that way, stop reading. I won’t spoil, however.

It’s a few years into the future and a cure-for-cancer-turned-zomgee-creating virus has done its job. Granted, nobody could have foreseen it, but it happened nonetheless. Robert Neville (Smith) spends his time living in a post-apocalyptic New York City, similar to a thawed-out NYC from The Day After Tomorrow; London from Reign of Fire, substituting zomgees for dragons; or a non-raised-eyebrow version of Planet of the Apes. There’s something oddly thrilling about imagining life alone and having free reign of the world’s largest city. The flashbacks you see in the previews are actually spread out through the entire movie. They are quite predictable but provide a … completeness as to why Neville chose to stay behind. Thankfully, the writer’s don’t go overboard with Neville taking on the zomgees or trying to find their source and eliminating them. No, instead he hides away, avoiding contact while trying to find a cure.Technically, it was a good movie. I don’t recommend buying the soundtrack, as you’ll get about 5 minutes of audio and 4 of those minutes are from a Bob Marley record. Some people have criticized the CG effects, but a) compared to even 3 years ago, they are amazing, and b) when almost 100% of your landscape is CG, you sacrifice quality for quantity. The quality, however, was not distracting in any way. The acting was incredible, there’s really nothing more to say about that. I am slow, but willing, to say that he bested Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Besides, dog > volleyball any day.To summarize, it was a uncomplicated movie that was epically thrilling (more thrilling than Signs, less epic than LotR) with an amazing acting job by Will Smith in an environment that’s strangely … cool.

In Top Gear fashion, I present my board of best movies of 2007 so far:

1. I Am Legend (95)
2. Transformers (92*)
3. Live Free or Die Hard (88*)
4. Bourne Ultimatum (86*)
5. Spider-Man 3 (84*)
6. 3:10 to Yuma (80*)
7. Pirates 3 (78*)

* denotes a relatively scaled system since I don’t have a per-item scale for them

We’ve been in the midst of Presidential election campaigning for nigh unto a year now, and frankly, I’m getting sick of it all. I’m tired of the double speak from journalists and writers saying that we shouldn’t vote for a president who holds religious beliefs because religion shouldn’t play into this election (isn’t that letting religion play into the election?) or who advocate electing a woman/black man almost solely for those qualities (and speak out against sexism/racism with the next breath).

For your benefit, I’ve thrown together a list of things I’m putting into practice until November 08.

• Ignore the media. It’s a good thing. I’m going to do myself a favor this year and research the candidates on my own- from unbiased and biased sources alike.
• Avoid brainwashing. I will not accept the mindless, zombie-like groups’ opinion as fact *cough college campuses cough*
• Beware of those zombie mobs. I will remember that they can be violent if opposition to Colbert or Ron Paul is heard.
• Resist the temptation to follow the crowd. I know that everyone at school seems to support one person, but not only are my beliefs and opinions my own (hence my candidate), limiting my view to only my peers limits my “big-picture view” to one demographic and doesn’t accurately show the real big picture.
• Weigh your choice against their real-world success. I will not support a candidate with no chance at all of winning. This will potentially make a viable and desirable 2nd choice candidate lose their chance as well.
• Identify with a candidate. When the field narrows and I have a clear winner in my mind, I’ll support them proudly and try to convince others as well.
• Get to know the candidates. Looking like an ignorant fool (while common in my case) is not an option when it comes to supporting a candidate.
• Don’t be a poor loser. You don’t have to make a million websites if your candidate loses- Deal with it. And for crying out loud, scrape the loser’s sticker off of your bumper

That being said, there are a few good resources out there to help you decide what candidate you really like.

• http://www.2decide.com/table.htm – A quick-reference chart of sorts matching cadidates to their stances on issues.
• http://www.selectsmart.com/president/2008.html – A simple questionnaire that matches you to a candidate (don’t rely too much on this, as it only showed me a 55% match with “my” candidate even though we are identical on issues, although it portrayed my 2nd and 3rd choices accurately)
• http://apps.facebook.com/elections/ – A Facebook app to tell the world who you support
• http://apps.facebook.com/fakeelection/ – Show who you really support

A few weeks ago, I found myself yet again at Tom’s apartment tinkering with games and wondering how we could get our birds to .. well.. poop. Now before you start to question our sanity- or the healthy atmosphere of Tom’s apartment, let me explain.

We’ve tried to get a sub-game of Garry’s Mod to work countless times now. Quite simply, its a game where a bird tries to land “one” on a human character. At the same time, that human character is using a shotgun to blow that bird out of the sky. Its such a profound concept that we just had to give it a try. Unfortunately, nothing we did could coax our little bird friends to let loose.

Towards the end of the stage where we began giving up, I remembered a web site that offered a pretty cool sounding service. Answers. To anything. Via text message. You know what is even better? It’s free! (minus the cost of the text messages if you don’t have a text plan)

Here’s how it works. You sign up with Mosio, fill out a form with some of your information (including your cell number) and they send a confirmation text to your phone. You reply to that and you’re in business.

Using your cell you can text ask@mosio.com and within a short while, not only will the question be posted online, but you should receive an answer from up to 4 people.

Now I don’t know about you, but asking the question, “How do you fire bird poo in garrys mod 9 bird poo game” seems like something maybe 1 or 2 people in the entire world would know how to answer.

It seems like that 1 person is on mosio.com, because here is what I got back, both in my profile on Mosio and on my cell phone.

So the next time you find yourself away from a computer and are in dire need of some information (and have registered with Mosio), just remember that the answer is only a text away.