News Archive - June 2005

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6-30-2005

Net Enigma.  Smells like a strip club.

Today I'm happy to announce that while the war in Iraq is going sideways, Social Security is no closer to being fixed and the world hates us, our government is giving themselves a raise.

I wish I worked for a company where I could decide when and if I should get a raise. 

War

War of the Worlds, Spielberg's latest movie, is an upgrade of H.G. Wells' 1895 novel and stars Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, who seems to be the only female actress under 15 in Hollywood.  Tim Robbins makes a creepy appearance as a basement-dwelling survivor of the invasion by aliens.

Now, this story has no huge surprise to it, the aliens lose in the end.  Done in by everyday germs, proving that your nasty toilet could possibly have its use as a chemical warfare factory in case of attack.

Cruise, in the lead, as Ray Ferrier is a divorced father of two, Fanning and Justin Chatwin's Robbie, who doesn't have a very good relationship with either of them or his ex-wife played by Miranda Otto.  Just after the kids get dropped off for a weekend with dear old dad, a lightening storm crashes down on the NYC and the invasion begins.  Manning tripod vehicles that have been buried on Earth for a long time, the aliens aren't interested in taking names.  Killing and big-budget special effects ensue.

There's some father-son, father-daughter subplot going on but, who cares.  It's Spielberg at his best; big explosions, monsters and flaming trains.  Working towards Boston to reunite with mom, Ray and family are confronted with disaster after disaster until they run into Robbins and hide out in a basement.  That overlong sequence does provide us with two things, a glimpse at the aliens themselves and what their goal is:  kill everything and rebuild the planet into a place they'd like to hang out.

I think Chris, one of the guys I saw the movie with, summed it up best; there didn't seem to be a good climax to the movie.  There was a lot of lead-up to....nothing.  A happy ending?  Maybe, but the movie just sort of ended. 

It may almost sound like I didn't like the movie, but I did.  There was some good action and "oh, shit," moments and it moved along pretty well until the Tim Robbins part.  It bogged down a little there before working up to the closing battles with the aliens and the discovery that they were dying and we were going to win. 

Tom Cruise was good in the film and he played kind of an asshole dad, not a role we've really seen him in before.  The action and F/X were top-notch, it had okay pacing and made a fun ride.  I'll slice it up 2 out of 4 wheels of cheddar.

6-28-2005

Net Enigma.  You should see this behemoth.

It's Wednesday.  The world still hates us.  This week it's because of our evil weather control device.  No word if the President's speech last night will improve relations.

Advertising

London man stands next to "Girlfriend Wanted" banner and gets 93 phone numbers.

No word yet if man next to "Blowjob Wanted" banner got any offers.
 

6-28-2005

Net Enigma.  That was a risk? How come nobody told me that was a risk?

T. Boone Pickens is a fuckin' genius.  He's predicting $3 a gallon gas prices.  Gee, I guess nobody else thought of that before.

6-24-2005

Net Enigma.  Spontaneous person with a gun. Good combination.

It's official, the world hates us.  China, the foremost leader in human rights violations, has outscored the US in favorability polls.  First the Red Sox win the World Series and now this. I mean, how many horsemen does it take to usher in the Apocalypse?

And I'm not even going to make this a Democrat vs. Republican thing, this is a Bush thing.  Bush is an egomaniac running wild with nobody to check him.  The next presidential election can not come fast enough.

Newsflash

Chicago man to change his name to Steve Austin, marry Jaime Sommers, live happily ever after.

Survival of the fittest

Man vs. Nature is a timeless tale of survival and perseverance.  This past week a Utah Scout got lost in the mountains for 4 days and lived to tell about it.  Good story, but suddenly that doesn't seem like such a big deal.

Customer Service

Credit companies getting hacked, losing computers and exposing customer data on the Internet?  Who needs to worry about waiting for those mistakes and crimes when all you have to do to rip off someone's identity is call your helpdesk?

Censorship

The City Council of Yelm, Washington has banned the word "Wal-Mart" and the phrase "big-box stores" from it's meetings.  They also enacted a moratorium on the word "moratorium."

No word yet if the Council will ban the phrases "douche bags," "asshats" or "tools" from it's meetings.   

Unfucking Believable

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a local government can seize private property if doing so would benefit the local economy in some way. 

In Communist Russia, the land owns you.

6-20-2005

Net Enigma.  Bow before me and weep encryption gods

The CIA has a large sculpture in front of one of their buildings.  On it, the sculptor encrypted several messages, at least one of which hasn't been decrypted during the 15 year history of the sculpture.

This makes me happy in that special way that only having my tax money pissed away can.  Not only can the supposed top intelligence agency in the world not decrypt this message put there by an artist, but the general public that paid for said sculpture can't even go and see it in person.

Granted, there are a lot of things that my tax money pays for that I'm not allowed to see, but a piece of artwork?  Why should the CIA get a piece of artwork.  They should get a nondescript building in an industrial park somewhere.  Their "art" should be information on North Korea's nuclear missile capability or the whereabouts of bin Laden.

Maybe the encoded message on the "Kryptos" sculpture contains the location of those missing weapons of mass destruction.  If not, it's just a mass destruction of more of your taxpayer money.

Brits gone wild

The chief official for Wimbledon wants to put an end to the grunting noises made by female tennis players, saying that it is distracting.

In other news; every other man in the world would love to have the worst grunting offender, Maria Sharapova, come over and, well, grunt.

6-16-2005

Net Enigma.  They should make pills for this.

History Lesson

Okay, now in NY over the last several years we have had a few land claims where Indian Tribes are looking to regain ownership of ancestral land or asking for back "rent."  The newest is the Shinnecock tribe asking for, probably, billions of dollars for rent in the Hamptons.

Here's where the lesson comes in.  Now, trying to think back to high school where we learned a lot of this stuff, I seem to recall that a lot of the tribes didn't claim "ownership" of land because they didn't believe that they could own a part of nature. 

So, traditionally if the tribes didn't own the land, how can they come back now and make claims on it?  I may be wrong on this whole thing or that no ownership thing might be specific to tribes that originated in the plains or whatever.  So, if anyone has more info, or can point me to some research, .

Holy Crap!

Here's a good one for all you geeks and nerds to wrap your brain around.  Remember in school all the jocks used to take their pot-shots at you?  Maybe you played D&D and took shit for it.  Maybe you just liked to study...and took shit for it.

How would you like to know that one of the biggest geeks out there playing Everquest with you now is also a World Series ring bearer?  No shit.  Curt Shilling: Everquest II Geek.

This just in

The French don't like the French either. 

Seems that the French people put the kibosh on the new EU constitution because, as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing put it, "It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text".  That comment came after President Chirac made the entire 448 article document available to the entire voting public.

Gee, I guess something as important as your countries constitution shouldn't be let out there for the public to know about.

Half a brain

That's all that Terri Schiavo had left.  She was blind, brain dead and incapable of ever recovering.  She also was NOT the recipient of abuse which had been mentioned as a possible cause for her condition. 

In other news, "half" appears to be all the Republicans are using of their brain anyway.  Once again, they are unable to just say "my bad" and move on, cause, you know, they never make a mistake. 

I still want my tax money back for the fuel used on the emergency Bush flight when he just had to sign a law giving Federal jurisdiction in the case.

Fahrfenexplodin

Seems that the Germans, in another brilliant feat of engineering, may have discovered the solution to car bombs around the world.  Now with video.

6-14-2005

Net Enigma.  I don't want to get into a semantics debate with you because you don't know what that is.

Breaking News!!

Paris Hilton is going to retire in 2 years.  This news came as a shock to everyone seeing as "retiring" usually implies that you actually had a job at some point in your life.

Also in the headlines

Michael Jackson isn't going to jail but will probably have to clean up his act and stop having sleepovers with teenage boys.

Disaffected alter boys will now have to find a new place to crash after leaving the rectumry...er, rectory.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled missing white woman.

6-13-2005

Net Enigma.  So this just didn't go away on it's own?

The NBA is complaining because their championship series this year has no "big" names, not on the level of Shaq or Kobe or whoever.  I guess it's causing their viewing numbers to be off, along with overall sales of NBA jerseys and such.

Maybe it's not because there are no big names in the finals but the fact that the NBA sucks?  When I grew up there were classy players like Bird, Johnson and Kareem.  Now we have Kobe, Artest and Sprewell...just the kind of guys I want to watch on TV.

In other sports

Mike Tyson is done boxing.  America is shocked he was out of jail long enough for a comeback attempt in the first place.

Heat

I hate the heat.  It's been over 80 degrees Fahrenheit in my apartment for the last 10 days and it's really starting to suck.  Supposedly there's some cool weather coming this week.  Can't wait.

6-3-2005

Net Enigma.  There's a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known

Today in Geek

Yesterday a 13 year old kid from California won the national spelling bee by spelling the word appoggiatura.  In an ironic twist, nobody at NetEnigma could correctly spell the Indian kid's name. 

America's youth surrender.

Pissing away Money

How about $428,000?  That's what Cornell was just granted to study coyotes in NY to make sure that they don't start attacking people.

Try this;

I expect my fat research check in the mail next week.  Thank you.

I'm out

Long weekend coming up. I'll be in Philly till Sunday night.  Back with an update Monday.

6-2-2005

Net Enigma.  You have a lot of unanswered questions...that must be very frustrating.

I finally got around to watching the season finale of "Lost" last week and all I have to say is;

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Wedding

My friends Melissa and Bill got married in a nice ceremony this past weekend.  I was very happy that they invited me to be a part of their celebration.  They're great people and I wish them all the best.

Unsafe

California.  The entire state.  I'm pretty sure of that now.  They had another mudslide that took out a bunch of expensive houses.  Again, I ask, why would you live there? Earthquakes, summer fires, mudslides, Schwarzenegger...

Look at all that bad stuff.  Why don't they move to NY, all we have here is... Um... Erm... Hmm... Hilary Clinton? 

See, I can't even come up with something.  Man that state is fucked up.

Good News!

You will now be able to find all of your porn much easier, with the new .XXX domain suffix!  I just wish it weren't so damn expensive to register a domain, $60 American.  That's about twice what I pay.  But how cool would it be to have NetEnigma.xxx? 

Fuckin' right!  NetEnigma Triple-X, bitches!  I'm all about it.

Freaks and Geeks

This new reality show from the twisted mind of Ashton "I'm banging Demi and you're not" Kutcher called "Beauty and the Geek" premiered last night on The WB.  Not your typical "dating" show, this is about expanding the horizons of socially inept geeks and a bunch of hotties that have a collective IQ hovering somewhere around room temperature...In Canada...In November.  I should also mention that they're shallow like a mud puddle in the Sahara.

When the girls were talking about what they look for a guy they all kept saying that he should be "trustworthy."  Well, yeah, that's what they want because all the pretty-boy players they've been dating spend half their day in the mirror and the other half screwing every piece of tail they can get their hands on.  But, remember that IQ thing...I'm sure that's never occurred to any of these women.

But, I digress.  Seven guys and seven girls started out the show but, like any reality series, there were eliminations.  In the first episode the guys had to teach the girls some standard 5th grade level stuff like spelling, geography and politics.  The girls had to teach the guys to dance and about Pop Culture (break out "People Magazine" and "US Weekly").

The girls then had a spelling bee-style trivia contest where wrong answers eliminated them.  The winner got to pick 1 couple to enter the "elimination room."  The guys danced and the one voted best dancer also got to pick a couple.  Those couples went head-to-head in another trivia round with the loser going home.

Okay, I have to admit, it's kind of original, it was funny as hell to watch and the girls are definitely hot but man are they really dumb.  The guys (at least 2 of them are Mensa members) are hard-core geek material with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions.  One of the guys is such a caricature of what a "geek" is it's embarrassing to watch him.

Since it's summer, I think I'll tune in next week to see how else these guys can be put through the social wringer...and to see just how dumb some of these girls are.