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When the Cowboys lose,
Brian always says, "You're fault!"
What did I do wrong?The Metroplex continues to struggle through the week after my favorite Jedi played like dog poop Saturday night.
Of course, it could be worse. At least the team's owner wasn't caught picking his nose on national TV.
Oops ... never mind.
Until next time,
The Jim
Over a month ago, I decided to rent a couple of movies. Bear in mind we have an enormous backlog of unwatched DVDs, as well as a ton of stuff on the DVR; however, I just felt like picking up something new.
Film #1 - Green Lantern: First Flight For those of you above the age of 5, you may not know that DC Comics has recently started making straight-to-DVD animated films. I guess since Super Friends is no longer out there, they want to make sure their primary characters and stories get out to a new market so that their blockbuster Warner Brothers movies continue to do well.
Some, such as New Frontier, have been pretty solid. This, however ...
I love me some Green Lantern. He's probably only second to Flash in my personal pantheon of superheroes. I like the idea of the interstellar police force with crazy aliens all with the same superhero name and kick-ass ring.
Mrs. The Jim knows I'm a fan, and as this was an origin story of a hero unknown to the general masses, it was a chance for her to better understand the character.
Except it was AWFUL!! Green Lantern: First Flight was boring, poorly written, and voice acting that sounded like a bad drama club read-through. She stopped watching after Minute #1, and I still wonder why I struggled through the rest of it.
It's not worth it to recap the character, story, plot, any of it ... just avoid this dreck at all costs.
Film #2 - Hot Fuzz Fortunately for our sanity, I picked up two (2) films, and left Hot Fuzz for last. For those of you that don't recall, Hot Fuzz was made by Simon Pegg and his group after the success with Shaun of the Dead. (This is not to be confused with Super Fuzz, which is a brilliant piece of cinema in its own right.) In this one, Pegg plays the best cop in all of London, Nicholas Angel. He's so good, in fact, that he's drastically affecting crime statistics and, in the process, making all of the other cops and districts look bad by comparison.
The solution, of course: send the Super Cop out to the country, where there's nothing of interest.
Inspector Angel discovers the new town is boring & his coworkers are inept. Strangely, though, there seems to be an ongoing series of suspicious deaths. As our intrepid hero investigates, he's not sure if he's going crazy due to the boredom, or uncovering some sort of crazy plot. All the while, he has to deal with a moronic partner who is obsessed with every cop flick ever made. Part of the movie actually revolves around the two of them watching Point Break and Bad Boys II. That's right ... you actually sit and watch people watching a movie.
The film eventually devolves into an insanely violent and funny shoot-out between the cops and the friendliest murder cult you've ever seen. It really gets good, as I just couldn't stop laughing for about the last 20 minutes.
For me, the reason Hot Fuzz (and, for that matter, Shaun of the Dead) is so good is because these guys treat their comedy seriously. Every shoot out with a florist or smackdown with a zombie is treated completely straight. They don't tell jokes or make snide satire about these genres. Rather, they just do funny things, and assume the audience is smart enough to understand that it's funny. It's really brilliant work.
Until next time,
The Jim
At an interview
Don't wear just a thong, unless
You're in superb shape!I have my first interview tomorrow. I'm hoping this process isn't too drawn out, and I can find something worthwhile. Of course, I'm sure I'll have plenty of wacky tales afterwards that I'll be sure to share.
I'm trying a rare double today, as I'll also be putting up an actual column soon.
Until next time,
The Jim
It's Wednesday today.
Birds sing and flit gracefully.
Time to write haikus.I have 2 distinct mental images after throwing this together. The first is me strolling around in a "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah"-type montage as birds are singing to and/or with me.
The second is me slaving away to keep up with this demanding haiku schedule ... almost like the "Time to Make the Donuts" guy.
I am a very odd individual.
Until next time,
The Jim
So, I took off about a month from writing on The Machine. It's been a ridiculous month, and it's been shamefully difficult to find time to keep my miniscule audience up to date on all my latest dealings.
First of all, Mrs. The Jim started school, but we had difficulty securing funding. Apparently, the stupid fools who kept buying houses they couldn't afford managed to not only destroy the housing market and the economy in general. No, the devastation has trickled down to the student loan market, as we couldn't find sufficient loans. It took us a while to figure out how to pay for her education, but we eventually pieced something together. Strangely enough, we managed to secure a loan after the fact, but that whole little drama took up a week of my attention.
Then, I spent over a week dealing with my pain-in-the-butt computer problems. After several completely failed attempts at saving my machine, I determined that it was a lost cause and would need to be formatted. Unfortunately, this was a computer I received from my dad, and I didn't really have licensed copies of Windows or much of my other software. After I did a little research, the amount I'd have to spend on software exceeded the cost of a basic, run-of-the-mill laptop. So ... that's what I did. I went out, bought a new laptop, set it up, and made sure both of our machines were completely protected and backed up. That little escapade took up another 1.5 weeks.
Over the past 2 weeks, I've had a ton of work to do at the office. Our branch doesn't have a bunch of projects (well, to be honest, there's not a ton of projects at the company's HQ either). Anyway, I've been putting in a lot of busy work from the other office, just to make sure we looked billable and valuable. The busy work, however, completely ate into my free time.
Just recently, my boss came over from the company HQ. He took my co-worker and me to lunch and told us about the long-term plans for the office. Just to sum up ... those long-term plans didn't exactly fill me with confidence. Apparently, the home office may or may not decide to get rid of my branch. Even if they don't, it may take years before this place is generating a bunch of work, and no one can seem to figure out how to go out and generate work in a new market.
Honestly, I've been ready to move on to something else for months now. My job search, however, had been relatively passive. I had talked to recruiters (a complete waste of time), and I had applied to some on-line postings that ended up going away. Of course, the current economy hasn't exactly made job hunting all too easy. My lunch meeting, however, emphasized a need to take a more proactive approach.
Of late, I've been doing a ton of research and trying to contact people at local firms who may be able to help. As you can imagine, this effort managed to occupy the rest of my time of late. I've managed to develop quite a few promising leads, but nothing concrete to date.
I'm happy to report, though, that my time has started to become less congested. My job search is now more systematic and less time consuming. The busy work for the office has dried up, so I don't have that over my head either. For the first time in a long while, I finally feel like I have enough free time available to begin my regular on-line blather again.
As you can imagine, there are a few things I've wanted to chronicle recently, but they've been stuck on the back burner. I still want to detail some of my thoughts from our San Antonio trip. I also have some cool pictures from the wedding we recently attended, and I had some more movie reviews. I've worked out a tentative schedule for my upcoming trip to ACL and my college football team finally won a game. Of course, I'll need to keep everyone posted as the job search progresses. Most importantly, though, it's about time America's favorite weekly poetry output gets back into gear.
So, faithful reader, we begin again. Next time, I'll put on my Siskel-and-Ebert hat, and give you the kind of hard-hitting film criticism you've come to expect.
Until next time,
The Jim
Still busy & tired.
Spent most of the weekend trying to get incredibly nasty Trojan off my computer (to no avail).
Learned that AVG Antivirus sucks monkey balls!
Probably going to have to start from scratch on my machine.
Went to a party with my wife's friends on Saturday and got a mild case of alcohol poisoning.
Realized that I'm too old to ... well, I'm just too old to do anything, really.
Posting will continue to be infrequent until my software tragedy is eliminated.
Still need to complete begin Crappy Artwork.
This site is going downhill fast.
Until next time,
The Jim
Hey, everyone! I know I owe you a haiku, but I'm still in the midst of my summer hiatus. (That is to say, I'm far more busy & stressed than I care to admit.) So rather than just put something out there, I'll have to skip this week.
I plan to be back on schedule, or better, something around the end of the week.
However, I hate to leave you empty-handed. So, in celebration of the fact that NFL training camps are underway, here's a picture of some dude who sat next to me at a Cowboys game last year. Bear in mind, we were in the 3rd to last row, so it's not like he was going to be on TV or anything. Apparently he just thought this was a good look.
Until next time,
The Jim
