I want to apologize in advance for this entry. It’s just not very good. I was hoping I could expand the kind of content I covered at Wadearmstrong.com, but this particular expansion has clearly not worked — the last two entries, both written with the same approach, were crap. So, no more of that. Next week, I promise something not awful.
Culottes?!
This site’s namesake is pretty darned cute. Here’s Junior playing, set to the soundtrack of the audio from “Most Shocking”:http://www.courttv.com/onair/shows/most_shocking/, which I might not choose to have on for the next one of these super-cute clips. Also, I think I need to work on the lighting. But this time I edited it for length and to maximize the interesting content per minute!
Thank you for carrying out your personal cell phone conversation in your car. I really appreciated how, instead of — like many people — talking loudly in public, you spoke, instead, in a private place. However, it would’ve been an even more private place if you’d closed your sunroof.
That said, it was enjoyable to hear a little bit of your life. You certainly have a fiery relationship with your male friends! I understand that he “wanted your pussy,” that you “hadn’t used your pussy in a while,” and that you were shocked that he thought that, as you said, “I’d let you in my tight pussy just because you help me out sometimes and there isn’t anyone up in there right now.” Your outrage at this particular assumption was clear. And, you were right, since, as you said “I don’t just go giving my pussy to all my friends!” Yes, everyone for several blocks understood your perspective.
That said, I didn’t expect to hear this conversation from a woman in her late ’50s. Good for you, staying young!
There’s nothing like getting out of town for a wedding. I’ve been to some “pretty”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/002711.html “exotic”:http://juniorbird.com/archive/000113.html places for weddings in the last few years, but last weekend’s getaway to Pasadena was a pretty darned satisfying getaway. Two of the Actual Irish Girlfriend’s[1] friends were getting married, and I was lucky enough to tag along.
The AIG was in the wedding (and working hard at it!):
!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/137593215-M.jpg!
It was an emotional affair:
!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/137594505-M.jpg!
Of course, it was happy too:
!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/137597694-M.jpg!
Everyone had fun:
!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/137598280-M.jpg!
They even let me go out on my own a little later and take some shots of Pasadena:
!http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/photos/137592011-M.jpg!
(Although somehow we managed to spend a lot of time in the hotel room too.)
It was actually a lovely ceremony, at a nice place, and even at a good time of day. I learned a lot about what I’d want in my wedding — including that, for my guests’ convenience, I’ll put an 18% gray card somewhere near the altar. Sorry about the blacks above. “More pics here”:http://juniorbird.smugmug.com/gallery/2608416#137590515.
fn1. I think it’s time to give her an actual name, and I think this one works pretty well. Long-time readers may know that the aforementioned “Wonderful Girlfriend’s”:http://juniorbird.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?sourceid=Mozilla-search&IncludeBlogs=2%2C1&search=wonderful+girlfriend name was misleadingly Irish, and of course we don’t want to use such normative descriptors in case this new one should give me the boot, as I so richly deserve, like the WG did, as I so richly deserved. No, at this rate I’d run out of superlatives in no time; so it’s descriptive descriptors instead.
I’ve been drinking a lot more wine lately — about a bottle a week. I’ve always enjoyed wine, and it was finally time to learn about it, which means trying a lot. I have little storage room, so there’s not much space for me to keep around bottles that I don’t plan to drink soon; but there are two bottles that have been taking up precious wine rack space for a while now.
The first is actually the reason “I joined wine site Cork’d”:http://corkd.com/people/juniorbird/. Somehow, I thought this red — which is practically undrinkable — was spiffy enough that I bought three bottles in three different places at three different times before I realized I’d already had it. Now, of course, one bottle just sits there, and I have no idea how I’ll ever manage to drink it. That level of tannin requires some real fortitude to brave.
The other has been around much longer — since 2003, I think. In January of that year the “Wonderful Girlfriend”:http://juniorbird.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=2%2C1&search=wonderful+girlfriend and I went to Santa Barbara to kick off our new relationship. Now, in retrospect, although she was significantly W, I might have chosen a different nickname for this individual, because I don’t mean to imply that other Gs can’t be W too; but at the time it seemed like a good idea. It also seemed like a good idea to take home a bottle of wine with us. We didn’t buy a good bottle of wine, but we had been wine tasting all day long and it was sort of the end of the day and a good time to buy the bottle; and besides, who cares? It wasn’t the wine, it was the two of us buying it.
Then the bottle came home, and I didn’t open it for us to drink because, frankly, I didn’t remember it being any good. Then I didn’t open it because it had been around for long enough that I should save it for a special occasion. Then I didn’t open it because we were having trouble, as they say in the relationship business, and I wanted to save it for a happy time. Then I didn’t open it because she was gone.
And so it sat, unopened, reminding me every time I looked at my wine selection. After a while, I hoped for a special enough moment with someone else to open it. But, this weekend, two things occurred to me:
* If I open me and the WG’s wine at me and someone else’s special time, well, there’s a third person in the room
* I get 10% off if I buy 6 bottles of wine and I don’t have enough space for 6 unless I drink that bottle
So I opened the cork, and I poured myself a glass. Thanks to one of those vacuum-pump stoppers, the bottle will last all week. And you know what? It’s a perfectly fine bottle of wine.
The Internet is a good place to air your bile towards a product that has disappointed you, but perhaps it’s underused as a platform to talk about the things you like, the things that help you get work done every day. Since starting my company late last year, I’ve done my research and been lucky enough to buy some equipment and tools that have really helped me be pr. Since I’m in a good mood these days, I’m going to review them all here, starting with the Canon PIXMA MP530 multifunction printer and the GBC ProClick binding system.
A lot of words have been spent talking about the quality, or lack thereof, of _300_, the new movie based on a Frank Miller graphic novel. I’m probably not going to add to the overall value or quality of all of that here. However, if King Leonidas and his Spartans didn’t mind dying for nothing, then I can’t see why I should mind blogging for nothing.
_300_ is the adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name, by Frank Miller of _Sin City_ fame, about the battle of Thermopylae,[1] at which the Spartans fought the invading Persians. I leave it up to your fourth-grade history teacher to bring you up-to-date on what happened in that battle. _300_ is probably a generally more-or-less accurate description of this battle. _300_ is also a very accurate adaptation of the graphic novel — like _Sin City_, the movie is shot scene-for-scene to duplicate the art in the graphic novel, and a limited color palette, incorporating extensive digital imagery.
_300_ is also a pretty good movie. It’s got everything you expect from an adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel, including:
* Great colors
* Minimal but expressive scenes
* Substantial blood & gore
* Archetypical, almost pulp-y characters, executed with a Dashiell Hammett-like edge
* Boobies
That’s really what it comes down to — _300_ makes a specific promise, in its concept and its trailers, and it delivers on that completely. _300_ is not the greatest movie you’ll ever see. It’s not the most positive towards women, and it’s definitely not the most positive towards non-Western people.[2] It’s fun. It’s violent — you’d better like flying limbs and great gouts of blood shooting all over[3] (in fact, the closing credits are all about the animated gouts of blood).
_300_ is hypermasculine, too; you know how very manly things from the ’50s are now perceived as super-gay? Well all of the perfect six-packs and bulging pecs and sweaty, bare arms and leather bikini-style outfits in this movie will probably come off as super-gay at some time in the future too. At least, I hope that they are perceived as gay, because, as a straight guy, I can say I will never have a body that good, and I hope nobody ever expects it of me.
But, to get away from my own insecurities and back to _300_: it was a pretty film for more than just pretty men. A lot has been said about _300_’s unique look, and I have to say I’m all for it. Movies have, for years, used scenes with limited color palettes to set a mood, or to make certain things stand out; with digital technology, directors don’t have to accept whatever color the grass where they choose to shoot. In some cases, this is a good thing.[4] I’m sure it can also be used for evil. But the look of the movie added greatly to how it worked, and digital animation allowed a lot of scenes and levels of violence to exist that otherwise could not have. Overall, I have to say, _300_ reminded me of a play — very few grand vistas, very few locations, much more focus on the players than the scenery. It worked.
And that’s what it comes down to: it worked. _300_ simply delivered exactly what should have been expected of it, and that’s rare these days. Too many movies claim to be the big action thriller of the summer, or the cute romance, but fall down on script or acting or overall execution; _300_ makes a simple, limited promise, and delivers well. If this movie’s previews aren’t appealing, if you don’t think you’d like that look or that amount of violence or whatever, then skip it. If you think all the above sounds like a fun ride to you, then go for it.
fn1. It’s actually handy if you know this beforehand
fn2. Although, overall, there is little enough character development in the non-Spartan characters for them to be more than a crude stereotype of some form anyway. I’ll be honest that, from a race point of view, I was more disturbed by the large number of blue-eyed Ancient Greeks in this movie; if we’re representing people as they are, then Greeks should be dark-eyed and swarthy, for starters.
fn3. To be an apologist again, if you hack off a limb, I would imagine said severance is followed by at least a brief fountain of blood from the busily-pumping arteries. As I’ve managed to miss de-limbings so far, I wouldn’t know for sure.
fn4. However, were I cast in this movie, I’d be pissed that I spent my whole time in a soundstage rather than in Greece.
A few weeks ago, I suggested that the recording and movie industries outsource their challenge to create a new business model. By having VCs and entrepreneurs attempt to implement industry group-approved business plans, it seemed to me that these industries could shift all of the risk of figuring out what was next onto other individuals while reaping all of the rewards from emerging distribution channels. The recording industry, at least, has made it clear that they have no intention of doing any such thing. They asked, and got, an increase in the royalties paid to artists by online radio stations, an increase to a level that will probably drive all of these radio stations — this entire emerging distribution channel — out of business.
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