Just when I have few days off and think I can fiddle around, I have to go to work the next couple of days and leave the new header as it is. I don't think it's too terrible, but it could use a little tweaking. Well, it will have to wait. I really just wanted to see if I could whip something up. Maybe a couple more elements, a little darkening here and there. I like the whole abstract feel of it, I wasn't really going for anything all that concrete, so maybe it is good the way it is. Can always change it later.

The first attempt wasn't quite the right size, but I may go back to something like that, or maybe not. Too tired to think about it now.

The Valkyrie at my side is shouting and laughing with the pure, hateful, bloodthirsty joy of the slaughter... and so am I. -Dwight

When Tron was filmed in black and white and color was layered on top, it was a pretty cool effect. Steven Spielberg used color to add to the horror of the black and white Schindler's List. Frank Miller uses color in the black and white Sin City like someone who just started to play around with Photoshop and After Effects and said-Cool, look what I can do!

The color elements in Sin City only serve to distract from the bizzaro world story of a city where everyone murders everyone else and that's OK. The bad guys and the good guys are the same guys. Graphic violence spills all over the screen in gushes of comic book style blood and gore. Heads and limbs are chopped off willy nilly and none of it seems to matter much at all.

Frank Miller loves the art of comic books, which at it's finest is a pretty cool art form. The trick to making comics great is the frozen moment, that split second where Spiderman is swinging from a thread or Superman is lifting a car off an innocent bystander. What makes it hard to put a comic book on film is that movie move. Frank Miller gets around this by having frozen time moments scattered through out Sin City. Impossible lighting and ridiculously long shadows make regular appearances. Characters that are impervious to such trivial events as being run over by cars and shake off a jolt from the electric chair are common place in Sin City.

This is film noir taken all the way to film totally black. The hokey voice overs and constant shadows are reminiscent of the good old days of The Maltese Falcon or Citizen Kane. The half naked women with machine guns and the hyper violence are a bit more recent, but still fit into this mixed up mess well enough. The occasional splashes of cartoonism are a bit annoying, it's one of those films where I wish they would have made up their minds as to what they wanted to do. Make a live action film or make a cartoon film, I really don't like the way Sin City flips back and forth. Who Framed Roger Rabbit managed to get it right, just about everything else has got it wrong.

This was not my kind of film. Too grim, too pointless, too many questions that are never addressed, let along answered. I might have gone along with all the nonsense until the villain from the beginning of the film shows up again later, only he is no longer human, he is an orange Ferengi. Not that the story made any sense up to that point, that was just where it totally lost my interest. If you liked the comic book, I guess you liked Sin City the movie.

If your not going to have a story that makes any sense, I would like to see more sex and less violence-but maybe that's just me.

Dave Freeman, co-author of "100 Things to Do Before You Die," has died. What makes the story shocking is that he was only 47 year old. But at least he had gotten most of the stuff on his list taken care of first. It seems that he died after falling at home and hitting his head. He should have gone out while doing something wild and crazy from 100 Things to Do Before You Die.

I take a lot of portraits of old people, the definition of 'Old' changing over the years, but often being a pretty steady anyone 15 or more years older than me. But lately I have been working with really old people, well past their sell by dates and ready to set sail on an iceberg and have done with it. If these old folks had a list of 100 Things to Do Before You Die, I'm sure they finished it off, or gave up on it, long ago. These crippled and bent old folks are in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond. I'm sure some of them have made a TV appearance with Willard Scott and a jar of Smuckers Jelly. These are not, by and large, pretty people.

But life goes on, and while your alive, you want to remain alive-odd as it seems to the beautiful young looking at the horrid old. Like most American Males of my age, I am a major league wimp when it comes to any kind discomfort whatsoever. If the water pump goes out in my car in 105 degree weather and I know running the A/C will cause major damage to the car's engine-I will still run the A/C. Spending three thousand dollars to repair the car is preferable to sweating in the heat of an un-air conditioned car.

So when I see these old people, whose bodies have started to decompose while still in use, I wonder how they can stand it. The idea of living in pain all the time frightens me. My plan at the moment is to rent a room on the highest floor of a Las Vegas hotel on my 65th birthday and jump out the window at the stoke of midnight.

Well, maybe not.

I'm 45 years old, about halfway down the stretch according to the life expectancy calculators and still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. If I start to fall down one of two things will happen-1) I'll recover my balance and be fine, or 2) I'll fall down and get back up a bit embarrassed. The very idea of there being a 3) I'll hit my head and die-doesn't enter my line of reasoning. But maybe it should. Everyday I get a little closer to being like the old folks I see, who would shatter like a Ming Vase if they hit the floor, only a good deal messier.

It strikes me once in a while that I am now three years older than Elvis Presley was when he had a heart attack and died on his toilet. When you gotta go, you gotta go. But until such time, we all like to pretend that death happens, just not to us.

As for 100 Things to Do, there are now entire shelves filled with numbers to do. So maybe Dave Freeman died a bit too soon, but he did leave us with a whole new section of books to look at and sit aside with a little-Maybe One Day.

I keep starting this post, but never finishing-hoping that I brush up against someone a bit more famous than the handful of people I have met. But it seems less and less likely as time goes by and I become less and less interesting. I used to go out and do things-this makes it a lot easier to met famous people than sitting around the house blogging-where the only famous person I have encounter was Perez Hilton in my blog stats one day.

No, real famous people are Out There, and I spend too much of my time In Here.

But I have a few small fame stories to share. When I was a kid there was a Tv Show called Peppermint Place-this was Dallas's answer to Captain Kangaroo. The star was a skinny man who wore a red and white striped suit and a straw hat-seems like he had a peppermint stick cane as well. One day I met Mr Peppermint at a shopping center-I told him that I like Captain Kangaroo better.

When I was in High School a friend of mine was really into comics-so we went to a comic book signing for a fellow I'd never heard of named Frank Miller. I was not alone in having never heard of Frank Miller as the shop was empty except for maybe five people. This was when The Dark Knight Returns came out-Best Graphic Novel Ever. We bought copies and got them signed. One of the other fans had at least a hundred comics Frank Miller had worked on that he wanted signed. I looked at the stack and told Frank Miller-Wow, you really crank this stuff out don't you? He looked at me with blank disdain and said-I don't like to think of it as cranking it out. But it was hard for him put on his Big Star act at an empty signing.

The Wife won a costume contest and one of the prizes was having dinner with William Shatner. Captain Janeway, Captain Sisko, and Commander Riker were there as well-Patrick Stewart was already too big a star to be bothered with Star Trek events. We had heard all kinds of bad things about Bill Shatner, but he was really nice-for the fifteen minutes he sat at the table with us. We even got an autograph-we were supposed to get all of their autographs as part of the prize but the only we got was Shatner's. I didn't have anything mean to say to William Shatner.

I met Tom Cruise during the filming of Born on The 4th of July and at about the same time I met Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen. I was working security at a film production company at the time and I was greatly impressed by these movie stars. I even got to be one of the faceless minions in the crowd scene in Born On The 4th of July. My only regret about leaving the life of a Rent-a-Cop behind is that I might have met other cool people and found some other way to make money in the movies. It was fun seeing real movies being made and reading the scripts so that I knew how the story would end before it hit the theaters.

And that is about that. I have met a few local radio personalities and authors, but none of them are exactly in the same league with Tom Cruise and Mr Peppermint. I also met H.R.PuffnStuff when I was a kid and was greatly disappointed that it wasn't the real PuffnStuff, but just a guy in a costume. Childhood is filled with so many disappointments.

Starting a blog usually mean having something to say. So it is a bit surprising how quickly those blog ideas become hard to find. So here's a short list of places to find blog post ideas, blog post topics, blog post subjects, or whatever else you might want to call the body of a blog post.


1. Google Trends, Yahoo Buzz, and MSN A-List-what are people searching the Internet for? The idea here is to go and see what the current hot topic is and then whip out a quick post about it. Landing on the Blog section of Google Trends has always gotten me a good bit of quick traffic. Once or twice I have been ahead of the curve and written a post about something that showed up later on Google Trends. Then I was one of the only blogs talking about the topic so I got the Google Trends hits. These are really good for bloggers who like to live in the moment.

2. Helium and Associated Content-these two site are places to sell your writing, but I have not found myself writing for them much. While I like to think of myself as a pretty good writer, I always feel a bit out of my depth competing on these sites. But I have found a few ideas while looking at the article topics they want. If someone is willing to pay $40 dollars for an article, they are likely paying good money for Adsense Ads as well. So whipping up a post on one of these topics should get you some Adsense Clicks, and maybe you could still sell it to Helium or Associated Content later.

3. Preplinks and Danoday.com-collection of news links. I like the Odd News and Entertainment News drop downs myself, but there are plenty of News Sources here to fill just about any need. These are sort of like the wire services of the good old days, where newspaper men in black and white movies stood over a clattering machine with baited breath. There is a bit of overlap on these two sites, but they both have pretty good links. And their free. These are mainly for radio and podcasters, but will work just as well for bloggers. Amazing how much stuff happens everyday, isn't it?

4. 24-7 Press Release and PR Newswire-these are people who want you to blog about them, well, actually they want you to copy and paste their content into your blog. But copying and pasting is bad blogging for a number of reasons to do with Search Engine Optimization. That and the fact that you blog readers will be reading the same thing in a few dozen other places. If I find a Press Release I like I copy and paste a few bits, but give my own opinion on what the press release is about. If it's about a new Website, I go to the website and see what I think of it-and then write a blog post about that.

5. Google Suggest-doodle away with a few random letters and see what pops up. There are topics to be found that you would never think up on your own. (I just found a site about The Man in Seat Sixty-One using Google Suggest seat-I never heard of this and it has 32 million results.) Find a topic with the highest results and write a blog post about it. Then when those millions are searching, some of them will be finding your blog.

6. YouTube-just not too much. I have seen some blogs that were once all text and deep thought turn into mini MTVs and America's Funniest Home Videos rather than keep writing. I like YouTube and some of the stuff is dead funny and great fun to watch. Again, the idea here is to find stuff to blog about, not just plop a video in and call that a blog post. I posted Leave Britney Alone, but also wrote a blog post to go with it. Googlebots like words, so I got a lot of hits while this silly bit of hysteria was making it's make around the blogshere-more hits than people who just posted the video by itself.

7. Morning Shows-The Today Show, GMA, The Daily Buzz, The Early Show, and CBS Sunday Morning-they all cover the same basic topics and even have the same exact guests from time to time. But there are times when something from one of the Morning Shows takes off and if you write it, you can take off too. The Morning Shows also cover as broad a range of topics as they can, so the odds are good that something might pop that piques your interest and make you want to write a blog post about it.

8. Your Blog Stats-Google Analytics, Shiny Stats, eXTReMe Tracking, and many others. How do people find there way to your blog? Is there one post that always gets hits? Can you write another post on that topic? What's next on the list? What keywords top your list? Sorting the data in your stats is fun and often baffling-the oddest searches can lead people to your blog, and there are bloggers who make strange search terms a regular part of their blogs. It's also nice to see where your post ranks when people are searching and there is that feeling of accomplishment that comes from getting the Number 1 spot on a Google Search.

9. Book, Movie, and TV Reviews-I tend to talk about everything I watch or read, but you might want to be a bit more on topic than I am. Whatever your blog is about, the odds are good there's a couple of books, TV Shows or movies about it. And if there aren't, there probably will be one soon. So talk about books and movies that relate to your blog topic, or just talk about the latest movie and book that you liked. Or talk about how TV has ruined an entire generation of writers and what is to become of us?

10. Lists-The List Universe and Forbes Lists-Lists are great all around blog topics, they can be any length and cover any topic. You can get lists from respected sources or un-respected sources or you can make up your own lists on the spot. Lists are also good from an SEO stand point as lists are often the kind of blog post that people like to bookmark and refer back to from time to time. The Social Networks are fond of lists as well, especially if they have an odd slant to them.

All bloggers have different ways of finding blog post ideas and these are just the ones that work best for me. Your blog posts may be written a month in advance and you may never have need of blog inspiration, but I need all the help I can get. Just keep looking and you'll find plenty of blog post ideas. Or at least you'll have fun looking.

Armageddon's Children by Terry Brooks is a prequel to the Sword of Shannara and the many other Shannara books.

Once your a successful writer, like Terry Brooks, you don't have to bother with stuff like plot logic and story structure and character development-you can if you want to, but why bother? I read The Sword of Shannara when I was right out of High School, and I wasn't that crazy about it then. Terry Brooks is one of those writers who inspires non-writers to take up the craft of fiction writing. If this guy got published, so can I. So it is possible that Terry Brooks is personally responsible for most of the up and coming writers of the past twenty-five years or so.

I found Armageddon's Children in audio book form at my local library and thought I would give it a try. I had passed it up a number of other times, but having worked my way through most of the books I wanted to read, there was little left. The writing is dead and dreadful. The reader, Dick Hill, does what he can with the lifeless prose, tossing in the occasional odd accent and actually singing when song is called for-but it doesn't really help much.

There are at least four story lines running through Armageddon's Children, none of which seem to matter much, not to the characters living out the events, not to author dragging his feet before making anything happens, not the reader looking for some reason to keep reading. There are a few loose threads connecting the tales and there is every expectation that they will all met up at some point and something will happen.

After listening to Terry Brooks Armageddon's Children for twelve hours-the story comes to a jarring non-ending with a cheerful-We Hope You Enjoyed This Book. I'm assuming there is another book, or two, or three. I seldom read new Science Fiction and Fantasy as I once did because everything is a ten volume chronicles with four or five sequels. I like the good old days when every book was a new world to explore and you didn't need years worth of reading to know what is going on. Terry Pratchett's Disc World books do a brilliant job of standing on their own with only the briefest of acquaintances with the basic structure of that universe.

Armageddon's Children left me baffled and pissed off. Something finally starts to happen in the last couple of chapters, and then it is over. I should have known better than to listen to anything by Terry Brooks-and I will not be tempted to ever try again. Terry Brooks must have a lot of fans out there, or there wouldn't be so many of his books published. He is not my kind of writer. Find some Heinlein or Asimov to listen to instead.

"The Banana Splits is a classic that has been entertaining kids for years," said Stuart Snyder, president of Turner Animation.

Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky are to star in new comedy shorts and music videos on the Cartoon Network. I always have mixed feelings about beloved childhood shows being remade. I never liked those feel good Tom and Jerrys where they were pals. But I did like the cartoon version of Star Trek. Of course, I'm an old guy now and not exactly the target audience for a new Banana Splits show.

You know, I don't remember The Banana Splits looking this bad when I was a kid. But then, kids don't seem to notice bad effects and costumes. The Wife's favorite kid show was Land of The Lost, which was filled with bad stop action animation and hissing Sleestaks. She is very unhappy that Will Farrell is to star in a Land of The Lost movie. Where are Sid and Marty Krofft when you need them?

I mainly remember the opening sequence with the happy Tra La La Song, part of which was filmed at Six Flags Over Texas. Back when Six Flags was still just one amusement park and based in Texas. I remember sliding down the Giant Slide The Banana Splits slide down. Back in those days Six Flags Over Texas was a family amusement park with shows and rides that didn't make you want to throw up. So there was this kind of cool connection to The Banana Splits-I had been to Six Flags and the Banana Splits seemed to live at Six Flags Over Texas.

So move over Sponge Bob, The Banana Splits are back.

A messy desk is the sign of a sick mind.-common knowledge.

The Container Store is one of those places that breeds the illusion that anyone can have a clean and organized workspace. I like to wander around the container shop, marveling at the countless storage containers of every imaginable sort. The Wife has always been a big fan of underbed storage, plastic storage bins, and sweater storage-even though we don't have that many sweaters.

The container store.com has boxes and shelves and drawer organizers and dorm ideas and all kinds of odds and ends. Holiday storage, such as wrapping paper storage and wreath storage, are another favorite of the Wife. The container store online is not quite as much fun as visiting a real world container store because you can't wander around looking all this storage stuff. The container store elfa looks so much better in person. The container store com does give you ability to zip through all kinds of plastic food containers, as well as whole room ideas. They even offer tips in how to get organized.

But once I leave the Container Store, well, the dream of being organized ends. No matter how many shipping containers or shoe storage boxes we buy at a storage container store-it doesn't change the fact that we have too much stuff. We don't need scrapbooking storage or toy storage but we do need kitchen storage and craft storage. The container stores are sort of like Martha Stewart in that they tell you the problem isn't really you-it's you sup-par storage containers. No matter how many organizing stores I visit, I will never be organized. No matter how often I visit the container store, I will never have enough containers.

And that's how the container stores stay in business. We all think that we just need a few more storage containers, a few more plastic boxes, and few more elfa shelves. But all the Container Stores in California and all the Container Stores in New York can't make a slob into a neat freak. No matter how many times we think, this is the time when we will get it all sorted and put into it's own little container. Well, maybe just a few more under the bed boxes. . .

"It's our goal to be as relevant as possible to as many people as we can," Hallmark spokeswoman Sarah Gronberg Kolell said.

There was a cute cartoon after one of the legalized Gay Marriage stories in which a man was celebrating the announcement. His friend ask him why he was so happy, he wasn't gay, he was a cold heartless divorce lawyer-the divorce lawyer just smiled.

The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates that more than 85,000 same-sex couples in the United States have entered into a legal relationship since 1997, when Hawaii started offering some legal benefits to same-sex partners.

It's estimated nearly 120,000 more couples will marry in California during the next three years—and that means millions of potential dollars for all sorts of wedding-industry businesses. As always, it's all about the Benjamin.

Gay Greeting Cards seem just as silly to me as regular Greeting Cards. Care Bears and Star Wars and Cute Animals to the max. I'm more of an email kind of guy, and not even that crazy about the way cool little e-cards that you can send. I've taken portraits of gay couples over the years and most of them have been buyers-and that's always the bottom line. So why not have a Hallmark Gay Marriage Card? Just have the courage to call them Wedding Cards, not Social Union Cards or Commitment Cards-which do sound a bit like being locked away for a while.

"Yes, I work out and take care of myself, but I also like a cold beer once in a while."
Jessica Simpson said

After bringing all that luck to the Dallas Cowboys, Jessica Simpson is trying her hand at selling beer. Jessica Simpson has signed on as spokeswoman for Stampede Light Plus, made by Dallas' Stampede Brewing Co.

Jessica Simpson is infamous in the Dallas area for her famous curse on boyfriend Tony Romo-though it seems that the Dallas Cowboys make their own bad luck to me. So I have to wonder how successful a beer promoted by Jessica Simpson will be.

Jessica Simpson will appear in ads in stores for the beer and is taking a 15% stake in the brewer. The Dallas Morning News says terms were not disclosed. Jessica Simpson has always struck me as a shrewd business woman. I mean, that dumb blond bit has to be an act, doesn't it?

"Some consumers are looking for a better-for-you beer alternative -far beyond lights," Beverage World Magazine reports. "Vitamin-enhanced, organic and functional beers speak to a specific consumer seeking to satisfy a particular need without compromising flavor. Stampede Light, a beer infused with B vitamins, folic acid, and folate, broadens the category for better-for-you beers." Healthful beers, maybe that's how Jessica Simpson got so smart.

Not content with just being a highly overpaid performer, Jessica Simpson has her own fashion line, recently launched her own fragrance, and has a range of hair extensions and a bath&body collection. What better addition to her red neck girl image than a healthy choice beer? Like most modern day celebrities, Jessica Simpson believes in diversification-"As an entrepreneur, I am always looking for ways to diversify my portfolio with good ideas and good people."

A man performing a human suspension act at a tattoo convention fell and broke a leg-this is a guy that was hanging from the ceiling by hooks pierced through his skin. These people really seem to like their pain, so maybe a broken leg just adds a new element to the act. Performer Jimmy Pinango was listed in critical condition at North Broward Medical Center late Sunday night, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The fall occurred at the Deerfield Beach Hilton, where the 13th annual South Florida Tattoo Expo drew about 7,000 people over three days. I have always found tattoos to be sort of interesting, and I do find women with piercings kind of interesting-but most other body modifications have left me a bit cold. Tattoo designs can be little works of art, any idiot can put fish hooks through their back and hang from the ceiling.

On Saturday night, Pinango, who weighs about 300 pounds, was suspended from six metal hooks clamped to the skin of his shoulders about 35 feet in the air, performance organizers said. In the first minute of his act he was dipping down when he fell to the ground from about 12 feet. There seems to be a kind of yo-yo effect with this type of suspension and he was a little too heavy to the gear. Maybe I should have said any idiot who doesn't weight too much can hang from the ceiling by hooks in their back.

The rich and famous have helped to coin the term celebrity tattoos-as opposed to white trash tattoos? These celebrities often like to design their own tattoo, well, they are artistic types after all. I remember Pink wore some really large fake tattoos at an award show one time.

But a fake tattoo lacks the slightly insane dedication to the art that real tattoos give. Like the people on LA Ink and Miami Ink, many of whom would have felt at home in an old school side show. But then, old school tattoos of flags and battleship and MOM were not as shocking or complete in coverage as their modern tattoo counterparts tend to be.

And that is at least part of the fun of tattoos, freaking out the normals. Spider tattoos and eyebrow piercings and ear lobs with coke bottle stuck in them all garner stares and comments. Tattooing is still kind of a fringe activity, still a mark of being out there, at least a little bit. In some minds tattoos will always be a sign of a low life, a criminal, a bad person. But as any tattoo artist might point, all kinds of people get tattoos and piercings these days.

Theatrical suspension performance began developing into an industry about 15 years ago. A performer's skin is pierced with large metal hooks, and the person is lifted into the air. Many groups across the country perform the acts-which they say are no more painful or barbaric than boxing or extreme sports. So I guess the occasional broken leg is no more barbaric than an afternoon of NFL football either.

Suspension.org has a large gallery of suspension images. I was not a big fan of pierced and tattooed women when the movement really got started a few years ago. But I kind of like the look of it now. This stuff is a little out there though.

Vending machines have temporary tattoos with cutesy designs for kids. Lower back tats are still all the rage. Cartoon charter tattoos and tribal tattoos show no sign of slowing down. But I have to think that it will be a while before we see Johnny Depp hanging from the a set of bungee cords with large hooks poked through his skin. Of course, I wouldn't put it past Tim Burton, it sounds like his kind of thing.

Twilight's U.S. release was to be 12 December but is now 21 November. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been pushed back to July 2009. Why is a mystery to me.

Twilight is a vampire movie based on the bestselling vampire book by Stephenie Meyer. She's one of those people who sat down one day, banged out a book in three months and found a publisher three months after that. Hard not to be jealous of that.

Stephenie Meyer is not a fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Angel either, though she does like a lot of reality TV. Twilight is a more realistic vampire story, well, as realistic as a story about a vampire is likely to be. She does like The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, so she isn't all bad. Of course, that's how you can crank out a book in three month-you don't what's already been done so you steam right ahead.

Twilight is the story of eternal teen angst and is not to be confused with cute little Twilight Turtles that help babies get to sleep. Well, maybe they could make a special Vampire Twilight Turtle for scary little babies.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is one of those rare vampire books that I have not read. So I will wait until I see the movie this time and hope for a few small surprises. As with most books that have a large base of fans who love them, new readers to Twilight seem to be disappointed with it. It's impossible for any book to live up to the hype of being something so great and wonderful, no matter how great and wonderful it really it.

Twilight, after all, is just a book. Interview with a Vampire was a shockingly good book because it gave the twist of the Vampires being the heroes, if not exactly the good guys. The twist in Twilight is that its a Young Adult book instead of an adult horror book. So the movie Twilight might not be the standard Vampire movie either. I hope it will be better.

Four new character posters from JJ Abrams‘ Star Trek were revealed at VegasCon 08. Clockwise we have John Cho as Sulu, Simon Pegg as Scotty, Anton Yelchin as Chekov and Karl Urban as McCoy. It's nice to see a bit of color here, as one of my main complaints about Star Trek Enterprise was that everything was gray-it should have had a tagline-Not in Color.

Judging from the bits of uniform I can see here these are going to be more of the same kind of outfits they used in Star Trek Enterprise. I know that the blinding colors of the Original Series
Uniforms are not likely to be making a come back-but its a movie about The Original Series!

Back in the good old days, the Star Trek logo was the Starship Enterprise logo and each of the 12 ships had their own odd little insignia. The catch lights in the eyes of the new cast is shaped like the Star Trek logo, which is a cute touch.

I've been a Star Trek fan for a long time, though I don't really think of myself as a Trekkie. I don't own a Star Fleet Uniform or any other Star Trek Uniform for that matter. I used to go to Star Trek Conventions, but that was a long time ago. I would like to see a movie that is more like the Star Trek the Old Series and less like Star Trek Enterprise. You know, plot and character driven, instead of Special Effect and CGI driven. But since I saw JJ Abram's CGI-o-rama Cloverfield, my hopes for this being a great film are not really all that high.

Of course, it's Star Trek so I will go and watch it. Besides, its got to be better than the last one-whichever one that was.

It took the dreadful Star Trek Enterprise to kill, at least for the time being, the zombie that is Star Trek. Fans of the Original Star Trek Series and TNG are already lining up to hate JJ Abrams new Star Trek movie. Sci Fi fans are an odd lot.

The new Star Wars movie, set between II and III and destine to be pretty pointless-just like I, II, and III. The real money has not been in the Star Wars Movies for sometime-like back with The Empire Strikes Back. It's all about Lego Star Wars, Star Wars Action Figures, Star Wars Posters, Star Wars Toys, and maybe a bit of talk about the Star Wars Saga, as if it a story of biblical proportions.

I was one of those people that drug my feet about seeing Star Wars-that is Star Wars, not a new hope-and I didn't see it until it had been theaters for a year or so. Star Wars was a long and dull movie which didn't make much sense to me. The Empire Strikes Back was ten times better, and still has my vote as the Best Star Wars Movie. Of course, it was with The Empire Strikes Back that Lucas started all this nonsense about Star Wars V, which made most of us wonder if we had missed a couple of star wars movies somehow.

Star Wars Clone Wars is George Lucas's dream come true, a movie made completely with computers. Star Wars Battlefront is the latest game from Lucas Arts, which had a small run of pretty cool games when they started out all those years ago. A dream come true, a video game that looks like a movie. Just one more place were the Star Wars Universe is flexing its muscle. Star Wars games where you can choose sides and weapons are pretty cool. I'm just not as much into games as I used to be.

I'm one of those Star Wars fans that hated the new movies, but fully expected Lucas to make three more. I still think it's possible that Lucas with whip out another Star Wars Trilogy one of these days. You have to keep hitting the new generations with new movies to sell more Star Wars Toys, Star Wars Lightsabers, and all the other Star Wars Jedi stuff. I believe all those rumors I have heard for twenty years about there being nine movies, or even eleven in George Lucas's Master Plan.

I was one of those people who had a million of the tiny Star Wars Figures and the Star Wars spaceships scaled to fit them. Star Wars Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker zipping around the Star Wars Galaxies. It was always a shock getting up in the morning and stepping on one of these little star wars monsters.

George Lucas now maintains that he never planned on making more than six Star Wars movies. Then he goes and cranks out Star Wars Clone Wars-which is not a real movie and like the books, will be ignored by most real Star Wars fans. But then, just as I watched Star Trek Enterprise and hated it, it was the only new Star Trek to be had. So until George gets around to that next star wars trilogy-I'll have to settle for the cartoons.

The Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers is a very good book, the only thing keeping it from being a great book is the fact that 90 percent of the portraits are of single subjects. This is fine if your core business is High School Seniors or Composites of some sort, but maybe not so great for family or group photographers. The lighting styles are fun and some are a bit new and different. Many of the Lighting Patterns here are the old stand-bys of Butterfly and Rembrandt and the like, but these are classics that have to be covered in any book on portrait lighting.

For me the most interesting bit of info is about Christopher Grey's Reverse Cookie, which is a light modifier made by placing broken mirror shards onto a three by four piece of plywood and them bouncing light off of it onto a background. The patterns are random and organic, but you need a more powerful background light than the one I have to make it work. Many of the lightening techniques call for several lights of one sort or another that I don't have laying around. Of course, being a photographer, I am always looking for an excuse to buy one more piece of equipment I may never use.

The copy of Master Lighting Guide that I bought has the pages jumbled out of order, which is a bit of a bother when reading about how to adjust the f-stop and the next page is twenty pages away. Its still a good book, just a bit more work to use than it should be. Maybe mine was the only misprinted edition, or maybe not.

In addition to the Reverse Cookie author Christopher Grey is also fond of using 8x4 foot white foamcore taped along one edge and used to bounce light around. These Bookends are cheap and easy to use, especially when compared to comparable sized reflectors and stands that would do the same job.

Many of the lighting effects at first glance look like lighting mistakes. Overexposure, lens flare, harsh shadows, hot spots, and just weird patterns on faces. But if used sparingly, and not solely for a sitting, they make for a dramatic change from the normal flat lighting most people are used to it assembly line portrait studios.

The Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers is a well done book, each lighting effect is accompanied by a lighting diagram which shows exactly how to recreate the effect in your own studio. The text gives details on how each shot was taken and what the photographer was thinking as he moved from standard lighting to more experimental lighting. One of the books weak points is where there are pages filled with the same basic lighting, with only minor adjustments made. To me at least, many of these adjustments were so minor as to not warrant mentioning.

As with all such books, I like reading them and looking at the picture, but I am a creature of habit and tend to fall right back into my normal routine once I have a subject in front of my camera. This is good book, and if I can work a few of the lighting effects into my settings, they should help my sales.

One of my favorite places to look for ideas is Google Trends. Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but there are a lot of results today for lotteries of one sort or another. Seems the Powerball had three winners of $800,000-not a bad return on an invest of a dollar or two.

According to MarketWatch Powerball players spent $16,281,896 in Powerball and Power Play tickets between Sunday and Wednesday night. Which means that somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 million people didn't win $800,000.

The desire to get something for nothing is a pretty strong one. Gambling has always attracted the poor and the desperate, and has helped to make people poor and desperate as well. While it is easy to think about places like Las Vegas as being Sin City, Lotteries are run by The Government. These are supposed to be the good guys, though in all honesty I have never thought of the Government as all that good.

My retire plan pretty much involves winning the lottery. I've always been a fan of that whole Law of Attraction kind of thing-Know what one desires and ask the universe for it. Focus one's thought upon the thing desired with great feeling such as enthusiasm or gratitude. Feel and behave as if the object of one's desire is already acquired. Be open to receiving it. Unfortunately, I have never been able to use the Law of Attraction to win the lotto. Though I have found it easier to get good parking spaces.

So is winning the lotto your big dream? I'd like to think I'll be a best selling author one day, but it seems a little less likely than winning the lottery. I could always write that novel after winning the lotto-in Paris or London or maybe Rome.

I have seen many wonders and marvels as I have traveled the country, among them The World's Largest Lighthouse-collectibles store, The World's Largest Chair-there are several of these, and the Giant Ball of String, not to be confused with the Giant Ball of Yarn, or The Giant Ball of Twine. But there is a little spot off Route 66 in a northern corner of Oklahoma which has The World's Tallest Totem Pole-there are several World's Tallest Totem Poles as well, but this is the only one I have seen in person.

Now I thought the World's Largest Totem Pole should be in Alaska, or Washington, or maybe even one of the many fine specimens that are resting comfortably in The British Museum-but no, this one is a slightly different kind of Totem Pole. This one is made of concrete and was constructed in the 1940s by one Ed Galloway.

Route 66 has a lot of odd little wonders scattered along its once great coast to coast length. And this was a designed Tourist Attraction, though from the looks of the surrounding area it didn't do to much to bring people to beautiful Foyil-near Tulsa, OK.

There are a number of odd sculptures, for lack of a better term, with loud paint jobs and odd animals and Indians painted upon them. The World's Largest Totem Pole rests on the back of a giant turtle and towers into the sky some 60 feet. It can been seen from a ways down the road, if you are keeping an eye out for it.

Inside the Gift Shop-another wonderfully weird and ornate structure, can be found a large number of violins made by the same artist/madman who make the Totem Poles. At a casual glance these do not like they would playable, but then, they are more works of art than musical instruments. Many of them have cool scenes and images on their backs, but there is something kind of sad about violins that will never make music.

Is it worth a trip to middle of nowhere Oklahoma to see the World's Tallest Totem Pole? No, it's not. But if you happen to be in the area for some reason, its not too bad of a side trip.

Directions: I-44 exit 255. Route 20 west into Claremore, then right on Route 66. 11 miles north to Foyil. Right on Route 28A, then 3.5 miles east; on south side. The little gift shop is open Monday-Saturday 11-3, Sunday 12:30-4

"I think people are trying to create more drama than there really was," said Amanda Beard.

PETA has taken something dull and silly like the Olympics and made it more interesting by have Olympic Swimmer Amanda Beard naked in their latest Don't Wear Fur poster. Amanda Beard demonstrated on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals outside the Athletes Village by unveiling the centerfold-like poster.

The nude Amanda Beard demonstration was first scheduled for a location near the Water Cube. However, Chinese officials objected. There are laws in China against what the Chinese define as pornography.

PETA's investigation claims to have found that before being skinned alive, animals are pulled from their cages and bludgeoned with metal rods or slammed on hard surfaces - which does not always result in immediate death.

A nude Amanda Beard joins a bevy of other nude celebrities, including a recent poster of Jenna Jameson pretending she's Bob Barker. Be sure to have your pet spayed or neutered.

The I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur ads have been very popular, lots of very pretty and very famous people have done these ads. The PETA posters are sexy and fun and remind me of the good old days of Pin-Ups. I like seeing a naked Amanda Beard and a naked Jenna Jameson.
But naked photos of celebrities don't make me want to protest for animal rights.

When I was in Edinburgh a few years ago there was a Vegetation restaurant right across the street from our hostel. They sold baked potatoes covered in baked beans-great stuff. The walls of the restaurant were covered with animal rights posters-these were images of animals being tortured and abused and slaughtered-the normal life of an animal raised for food. Nothing cute or pretty here-stomach turning stuff in fact. These were people serious about their cause. But no one would want to see a PETA poster of a sweet little chinchilla having it's skin ripped off.

So PETA will keep finding pretty people, mostly women, willing to get naked for their posters-and I will keep wondering if this is best use of PETA's time.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessel is a challenging book. The story of a Father and Daughter who move around the country a lot and have the richest, fullest intellectual lives this side of Professor Higgins chatting away with a second, younger, female Professor Higgins with side commentary provided by Sherlock Holmes. If I had not listened to Emily Janice Card's brilliant audio book version, I doubt that I could have plowed through this baffling and brazen bit of business.

I used to read a lot of books on writing. Mainly on writing Science Fiction. I whipped out a couple of dreadful novels in high school and have even tried my hand at Nanowrimo. One of the these books talked about the Great Science Fiction Books-among them were Solairis and Wild Seed. I read both books on the author's advice and both were pretty amazing-though of course, completely different.

In listening to Special Topics on Calamity Physics I have found it to be an amazing book as well. It reminds me of Solaris is a number of ways. First of all, the world of Solaris is hyper detailed, books and magazines and references of every imaginable type are quoted at length, sometimes for entire chapters. Special Topics on Calamity Physics has footnotes-every other sentence. It's as if the author knew she had to do all this research and it seemed a real waste not to use it-ALL of it- for something.

So it is an endless litany of quotes, titles, copyright dates and pocket reviews. Not that this is really a bad thing. I can almost see this as the standard form of the book of the future. I can see this as an Amazon Kindle title with all the quoted titles embedded and linked to their website. But the desire to explore these other worlds would be so tempting that you would never finish a book so festooned with external links. All those reference books, if there are any real reference books quoted, would be far more interesting than anything the original author could come up with. As I listen to the rambling, nearly incoherent, often baffling story, I find myself wondering about the references mentioned and the statics spouted like the Moby Dick-Herman Melville, Dec 31, 2002, Penguin Classic.

Of course, the whole point of an audio book is that you can listen to it while you are driving, which is what I most often do. This makes the desire to fire up the web browser and search for some obscure book a bit more difficult to pursue. And the story is surprisingly griping, filled with twists and turns and Wow, didn't see that comings.

Oddly there is one point where the Mandarin Oriental is mentioned as being a very expensive flower, at least I think it was the Mandarin Oriental-without any mention as to what, exactly a Mandarin Oriental is. For a book stuffed to the gills with useless information it would have been nice to know that it was a Lily. It is mentioned much later in the book that it is a Mandarin Oriental Lily, but this still tells the reader, such as myself, who is not an expert on flowers much of anything. It seems to be a very rare flower with a very common look. I am still not sure what flower it was.

I'm one of those annoying people who watches a movie and predicts, usually accurately, what is going to happen. And maybe if this was a movie, I would have seen it all. But in the long drawn out and filled with distractions audio book, I have been genuinely surprised a number of time. Of course, by the time the books reaches it shocking ending and amazing revelations, you are ready for anything. UFOs landing in the back yard, Nessy doing the backstroke in the family bath tub, Houdini sending a messages that yes, by God, there is an afterlife.

Still, when the shocks first start coming, they are fun and unexpected. At least, I wasn't expecting them. Though the fact that the first sentence of chapter one of Special Topics on Calamity Physics is Before I tell you about Hannah Schneider’s death, I’ll tell you about my mother’s-should have given me a hint of things to come. The events of the first part of the book are so dull and filled with mundane events that the endless footnotes seem the perfect addition to a perfectly tiresome tale.

It does get better, a lot better.

Like Moby Dick, Ulysses, and The Name of The Rose, I'm sure someone will make a horrible movie out of this great book. Some books are meant to be read, or at the very least, listened to-not watched. It takes time for the myriad details and seeming minutia to sink into the mind and for that Aha! moment to arrive in shocked and splendid glory.
Special Topics on Calamity Physics suffers a little with Marisha Pessel's desire to do something shocking every ten sentences as the book draws to a close, but it is still fun. The ending is a bit of a let down, but there is every possible that Blue Van Meer will ride again.

FoundMoney.com is the largest Internet search engine for unclaimed money. Found Money opened its database to the public in 1995 with 1,000,000 unclaimed accounts. Today, Found Money has over 30,000,000 unclaimed accounts and continues to add accounts every day. -Foundmoney.com

I used to go the Texas State Fair every year, and one of the things we would always do was a search for unclaimed money. This was just silliness for us, and if there was found money to be had, it was not our found money. It's be a lot more likely for me to find Debts I have forgotten than it is to find Money I have forgotten.

So I went to Found Money and entered my name and half a dozen returns for the search popped up-most had the wrong middle initial or spelled something wrong. Clicking on the one name that looked like my own took me to a page that said for only $19.95 I could have a 60 day membership and claim my money.

This type of stuff used to show up on talk shows a lot. Unclaimed money, found money you never knew you had, find lost money, and so on. I guess this kind of thing happens to people who have a lot of money. I've always been one of those paycheck to credit card to paycheck kind of guys. The only found money I am likely to run across is if I find someone's wallet in the street. In order to find unclaimed money you have to have had claimed money at some point.

I remember one of the last times I watched Oprah. It was about how to have a budget and manage your money and stuff like that. The first family sat chatting with Oprah about how hard it was to get by and how they didn't know what they were going to do. The Money Manager came out and the first thing he suggested was that they sell The Vacation House. WTF? Sell the vacation house? They way these people were talking I thought they were one step away from welfare! That was pretty much it for me and Oprah.

I'm sure if they had done a search for unclaimed funds, they would have found money, likely a lot of money. If I ever find money, it will not be enough to fill a change jar.