News Archive - December 2005

   

12-23-2005

Merry Christmas, bitches!

I'm out for the weekend to visit family, score some cool swag and eat a lot of food.  But, fear not, the Advent Calendar of Porn will count down the final two glorious days for you.

12-21-2005

And Boston wept.

Again.

That's right boys and girls, Johnny Damon is now a New York Yankee!  Hahahaha!!!

The Yanks are going to get a good center fielder and a pretty solid and consistent hitter...something they lacked this year.  Let's hope Damon turns into another Babe Ruth!

12-15-2005

Don't make me take away your masturbation privileges.

So I screwed up and forgot to unwrap yesterday's girl on the Calendar but she's there now along with today's fabulous girl, Veronica Zemanova.  Pound away, boys.

Cast your vote

Today is election day in Iraq, a country where they really will hang a Chad given half a chance.  Bush is all happy that they've gotten to this point in their journey to becoming a Democratic nation.

As long as they don't elect some idiot like we did maybe they'll be fine.

IT Jobs coming in 2010

If you want a job in the IT industry you may only have to wait 4 more years.  That's when India will realize a shortfall of 500,000 qualified workers for tech support jobs.  Somehow I can't seem to feel bad for them.

Lost and Found

It seems that Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros aren't the only "Lost" stars that have gotten pulled over by the Hawaiian police. 

Josh Holloway (Sawyer), Dominic Monaghan (Charlie), Naveen Andrews (Sayid), Ian Somerhalder (Boone) and Harold Perrineau Jr. (Michael) have all been flagged for speeding or other infractions this year.

But the winner for the most trouble is Rodriguez with 4 stops, including the DWI arrest.  The others:

Man, speeding?  I never would have seen that coming.

In other news

Hawaiian cops, having solved all other crime, dedicated to pulling over speeders.

12-12-2005

I am Peter Gibbons.

If I had a million dollars I'd do nothing.  Okay, maybe I'm more like Lawrence's cousin, broke and don't do shit.  Anyway, last week I was on vacation and I found that not doing anything was everything I thought it would be and more.

Let's hope I hit the Lotto one of these weeks.

He's back, bitches

Sort of.  Looks like Comedy Central has announced season 3 of "Chappelle's Show."  The confirmation came last night during "Comedy Central's Last Laugh '05" show when they showed a sneek peak at season 3 and spoofed Chappelle's problems earlier this year.

Word is, though, that they're just going to show 2 hours worth of the sketches that he filmed before taking off last spring.  There probably won't be any audience introductions like in the first two seasons.

But still, fresh new Chappelle isn't a bad thing.

12-6-2005

And there's a different approach.

Check out this article from IMDB;

Iger Says Disney May Battle Theater Owners Alone

Disney CEO Robert Iger appears to be bracing himself for a war with theater owners over his determination to eliminate the delay between the time a film is released in theaters and the time it is released on DVD. In an interview with today's (Monday) Walt Street Journal, Iger said that he had hoped that other studio chiefs would side with him, but he said, "No movie studio really wants to be first because it's like going over the hill first in battle. They don't want to take the most bullets." He said that theater chains have threatened to reduce the number of screens his movies are shown in if he attempts to narrow the gap between their theatrical and DVD release. "We'll have a conversation with theater owners to see whether we can move them more peacefully," he told the Journal. "But I think in the end, it's going to have to be more by force than through negotiation or diplomacy." Iger indicated that he recently proposed to the theater owners that they sell Chicken Little DVDs in their lobbies and share the profits from the sales. "But there's so much fear now about change that no one wants to sit down and have a frank discussion." In the same interview, Iger also indicated that Disney plans a substantial cutback in its feature output in the coming year, remarking, "I don't think the talent pool has expanded enough to feed the number of movies being made. ... At Miramax, we're using the opportunity of ending the relationship with Harvey and Bob Weinstein to cut back our investment in that business by hundreds of millions of dollars."

I think it makes sense.  Release the DVD so that we can watch it in the comfort of our own home.  At nearly $9 a seat at the local theater, buying a DVD on release at $15 (most new releases at Target) is a way better deal.  Not only do you get the ability to watch the film from your own, comfortable couch, you get all the bonus material.

There are still a few films that I like to go to a theater for but for the price of a DVD you can watch it twice, lend it to a friend and then still sell it on eBay or trade it in locally for maybe $5.  What's the incentive to go to the theater anymore? 

More studios should get on board with Disney.  The whole theater and movie rental model of seeing a film is about to become very antiquated.  With high speed Internet to the home becoming more widely available, digital HDTV and DVR's, it's not going to be very long before you'll be able to order any movie or TV show any time you want and watch it.

The FCC is already looking at the cable companies and thinking of ruling in favor of making them offer cable channels a la carte.  Instead of buying a crappy package for $50 a month that includes channels you may not want like Food Network, CSPAN or Univision, you'll be able to order up, say, only the 15 channels you ever watch.  And that's all you pay for.  You could, depending on cost, end up with a cable bill that's 1/4 of what you're paying now.  And don't believe the cable companies for a second, it's not more expensive for them to offer service this way.  It'll just force them to step into the 21st century and start using the modern technology that's available.

And honestly, I'm happy it if comes to that.  Buy the cable channels you want, order any show or movie any time you want, buy DVD's on release...it's brilliant.  And the movie theater? Make it a special event like it once was. 

With directors like Lucas and Rodriguez (Spielberg and  Cameron soon to follow?) going with digital filming, eventually the theaters will have to start switching to digital projection.  The public will demand it.  Maybe then we'll see theaters with one or two huge screens with stadium seating showing decent movies with one, maybe two showings a night instead of 14 tiny screens with crappy seating showing a dozen films every night. 

I would definitely be more willing to go to a theater and shell out $10 and be comfortable while watching a big blockbuster movie than frequently shelling out $9 for small comedies, genre Sci-Fi or the fourth sequel to a franchise that's lost its luster.  By making that trip to the theater an event again, smaller, more comfortable theaters could still exist.

It's a huge change though and we all know how American's, as much as they like to think they're forward thinking and open to change, hate anything different than what they're used to.

Dumb move of the week

Michelle Rodriguez, who you may know from The Fast and the Furious, Resident Evil or S.W.A.T., has recently been added to the cast of "Lost."  Getting a prominent role on one of the top 5 shows on TV is a big move. 

But, she may have fucked it up this weekend by getting pulled over by Police in Hawaii for suspicion of drunk driving.  Something I didn't know, though, is that she was already on probation for the same charge back in L.A.  But, that's brilliant.  You just get a shot at becoming a household name and you take a chance at pissing it away with this.  If L.A. decides to revoke her probation because of these new charges she could get a few months in jail.

Good job.

12-3-2005

See, you're talking to me all wrong.

Hate those damn voice response units you get when you try to get to tech services at some company?  Yeah, me too.  And the worst is these new, shitty ones that make you talk to them.  Instead of hitting buttons you can now sound like an idiot speaking to some fucking soulless machine...and I don't mean Anathakrishnan. 

But, no more!  Use the Paul English IVR Cheat Sheet to beat the VRU and get to an actual human being!  Sadly, there is no Hindi to English cheat sheet.

Technology and Government...

Name two things that will never, ever work together.

This is one of the things that pisses me off about our government.  ICANN wants to establish the new .xxx domain name but is getting resistance.  The idea, put all porn sites on the .xxx domain so that they are grouped and easier to find.

Conversely, that'll make it easier for filtering software, pop-up blockers, firewalls and other parental controls to weed out stuff that people don't want to see.  Barring any laws being passed that somehow regulate the web sites running .xxx domains, it's a GREAT idea.

Remember the infamous whitehouse.com web site that was porn while whitehouse.gov was the president?  That sort of mistake wouldn't be made anymore.  However, our shitty government feels that adding a .xxx domain will legitimize the porn industry.

Hello?

The porn industry brings in about $12 billion a year.  That's the GNP of Panama or Yugoslavia.  I think that's pretty fuckin' legitimate, wouldn't you?  By the way, that's also more than the total GNP of the bottom 42 nations in the world combined...as of 2003.

But that CNN article has it right, the US just killed the plan to take ICANN and have it controlled by the UN and now we're trying to limit what ICANN can do for the rest of the world.  A world, mind you, where there are some countries that don't have problems with naked women.

And, speaking of naked women, check out the new broad for today in the Advent Calendar.  She's hot.

12-1-2005

Oh! Aren't you cute?!

Welcome to December.  And once again Net Enigma brings you the Advent Calendar of Porn.  You know the drill.