I rarely blog from my my soap box...

But this issue is something I feel strongly about.

Lt. Col Victor Fehrenbach is from right here in Dayton, and he's a decorated officer. He's being discharged from the military because he's gay. According to the article below, he was outed by an acquaintance against his wishes.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/gay-local-air-force-officer-plans-to-fight-discharge-from-service-136024.html

It is OUTRAGEOUS to me that a person who has served for 18 years with a distinguished career is now being discharged solely for the fact that he's gay.

I want you to do a few things.

First, join this Facebook Group and leave him words of support:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lt-Col-Victor-Fehrenbach/177540825023?ref=nf

Two, sign this petition:
http://www.sldn.org/page/s/fehrenbach

Three, tell President Obama to keep his promise:
http://www.sldn.org/page/speakout/obamaaction

Four, tell Congress the time to repeal is NOW:
http://www.sldn.org/page/speakout/congressaction

Thanks!

Some people play fantasy football with fantasy drafting…

Geeks pick perfect actors for fantasy casting in fantasy movies. Just had a discussion with Et_Tu_Babe about casting choices for the Song of Ice & Fire HBO pilot. My choice for Catelyn Stark: Joan Allen circa 1994. Peter Dinklage as Tyrion was just a given. He's an amazing actor, but he's the ONLY amazing actor who fits the bill. Not a lot of competition there.

Some of my other choices:
Jamie - Simon Baker
Tywin - Charles Dance
Cersei - Polly Walker or Melinda Clark, not sure how she'd look as a blonde though
The Hound - Ray Stevenson (or he could play The Mountain, but I'd rather he have a bigger role.)
The Mountain - Marek Vasut
Petyr - Eddie Marsan

Ned - Kevin McKidd, though you'd have to darken him up a bit
Sansa - Claire Foy (or she could play Margaery easily)
Oberyn Martell - James Purefoy

You'll have to IMDB some of my choices, unless you watch a lot of British films/TV. The younger roles can be played by nobodies with ease.

And to the guy who suggested Corbin Bernsen as Tywin, are you smoking crack? And Tricia Helfer as Cersei? PUH-LEEEEZ. She doesn't have the acting chops for it. She would ruin it with her huffy, pensive acting.

Who are YOUR choices?

Consider a turtle as a pet...

http://champagnehercules.blogspot.com/2009/03/you-should-reconsider-turtle-as-pet.html

What? I'm lovemaking!

If you love the absolutely brilliant Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade as much as I do, the following is a must watch...

AD/BC: A Rock Opera

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Weekend in review...

I was doing trailer checks on Underworld 3 yesterday, and I thought, "I'll just sit and watch 45 minutes of this till the next showing I have to check." Yeah, I ended up watching the whole movie and having to come back an hour later to finish the job. heh

I really enjoyed it. U1 was okay. U2 sucked. U3 is everything I wanted either of those films to be. Totally worth matinee price, even though I didn't pay it...

Also saw Taken this weekend. Who doesn't love Liam Neeson? Suckers, that's who. He KICKS ASS in that movie.
Spoilers:
There is more throat-chopping, wife-shooting, electrocuting, ass-beating goodness in this movie than you can shake an electrified baton at.

And we watched Transporter 3. Blah. I love the first one. Still. I can watch and enjoy it. The second one, not so much. We laughed ourselves to tears when he did the 360 revolution to scrape the bomb off the underside of his car. The third one is just painful.

Oh, and I saw an AWESOME trailer:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/9/

Random tangents

I spent the last week printing my guts out. Seriously. Over 4100 cardstock copies that had to be printed on one side and then sent through again to print on the other. I wanted to scream. It only took me six days.

Now I get to play catch up with my million other projects it took me away from. It's difficult to get anything done when you can only concentrate in bursts of seven minutes. Then you have to jump out of your chair, run to the printer, and fill the stack bypass with another stack of 50 sheets for it to slooooooooooooooooooooooowly spit out.

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I'm itching to go roller skating. My ankle is finally to the point where I don't think it would be a problem. I was also planning to join Leah for martial arts goodness this January, but my wrist is still giving me problems. I don't think I could do any push-ups or blocks right now, so what's the point of starting? My doc says it'll likely hurt for a couple more months. Yay. So maybe this spring I'll give it a try. In the meantime, I'll work on getting back into shape a bit. I haven't been able to do anything since the accident in early November.


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I've recently read a number of opinions of people who bitch about other people who blog. Mainly, they don't want to read our boring shit, so we shouldn't write it. My response:

Dear stuck-up cockfaces,

Nobody cares what you think. You believe you are so much better than everyone else for NOT jumping on the blog train, but many of us use it as a means to keep up with our friends and family. If you don't like it, turn off your intertubes and go die in a fire. No one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to read this blog, or any other blog, you arrogant ass-eating jerk. I don't want you here. Go away.

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As further proof of my randomness:
Angel Dances

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And on another note. I've been thinking a lot about the past, which I hate. Nostalgia is generally unpleasant and a waste of time, as far as I'm concerned. But one of my coworkers found out her husband has advanced, aggressive, fast-growing lung cancer. Without chemo, they give him two months, tops. On the upside, this type of cancer responds well to chemo, so he could be successfully treated. I guess we'll see. I feel for her.

It's made me think of the time HWCBN's mom told him she had tumors in her urinary tract. He was a wreck. I had no comprehension of what he was going through, and at one point he YELLED at me, "I'm about to lose my last parent, and you just don't GET IT." No, I didn't get it. How could I possibly get it?

But what HE didn't get is that she didn't have tumors at all. She told me some time later that she really had an ectopic pregnancy by her then-boyfriend. Why that crazy bitch thought telling HWCBN that she had cancer, AGAIN, was going to be less stressful to him than saying, "Ooops, I thought I was menopausal and couldn't get pregnant but was wrong," is beyond me. She put him through absolute hell, and she had no idea how deeply he suffered worrying about it…for months. And in turn, I suffered for it.

She made me swear not to tell him, and I never did…along with various other things of that nature she made me swear to never tell him. I have a load of secrets that would blow his mind, including that his crazy aunt that he hated is really his grandma. Awesome.

Why am I sharing these charming examples of excellent parenting now? Well, I'm tired of carrying it around. I feel burdened by it, even 10 years later, and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of that period of my life having any control over my life now. So here I am, vomiting it out for the rest of you. Enjoy!

Watchmen: Fox and WB settle, finally

Warners, Fox settle over 'Watchmen'
Under the agreement, Fox will not be co-distributor

By Matthew Belloni and Borys Kit

Jan 15, 2009, 08:25 PM ET

"Watchmen" Geeks can rejoice.

Warner Bros. and Fox have resolved their dispute over "Watchmen," with the studios scheduled to present a settlement to Judge Gary Feess this morning and request that the case be dismissed.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but the deal is said to involve a sizable cash payment to Fox and a percentage of the film's boxoffice grosses; Fox will not be a co-distributor on the film, nor will it co-own the "Watchmen" property, but it will share in revenue derived from it. The studios released a joint statement last night.

"Warner Bros. acknowledges that Fox acted in good faith in bringing its claims, which were asserted prior to the start of principal photography," the statement read. "Fox acknowledges that Warner Bros. acted in good faith defending against those claims."

Fox sued Warners in February, claiming copyright infringement based on agreements the studio had with producer Larry Gordon. Feess ruled Dec. 24 that Gordon did not secure proper rights to "Watchmen" from Fox before shopping the project and setting it up at Warners.

Feess' decision prompted settlement talks to heat up because Warners faced the prospect of an injunction stopping its March 6 release of the $130 million comic book adaptation.

Gordon is not a party to the case, but Warners is said to be after the producer and his attorneys to reimburse the studio for costs of the settlement. During the litigation, Gordon's then-attorney admitted that he negotiated the producer's 1994 separation from Fox without knowing about a 1991 agreement on which Fox based its lawsuit.

The showdown between studios became particularly nasty during recent weeks, with Gordon and the film's other producer, Lloyd Levin, lashing out at Fox for making a claim on the film.

But with the dispute settled, the statement took a positive tone: "Warner Bros. and Fox, like all 'Watchmen' fans, look forward with great anticipation to this film's March 6 release in theaters."