1) If you got the joke in this blog post’s title, 500 movie geek points to you.
2) Working at home is not all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve been snowed in at least three times in as many weeks and I don’t care for it. I stay productive, yet I somehow feel like a huge slacked by simple virtue of the fact I’m not in my office.
3) I’ll be covering another hearing this week on some proposed regulations for onshore wind turbine development. I am not looking forward to listening to the exact same people air the exact same grievances yet again — especially since they so rarely address the merits of the proposal. Roy Richardson, if you’re listening: keep these people on-topic and give some new voices a chance to be heard, huh?
4) On Sheriff Cummings’ decision to hire Jeff Perry: Jeff does have solid credentials for the job, absolutely, but it has at the very least a distinct air of patronage, particularly after the sheriff lamented his funding woes. Perry needs to prove his worth, fast and in a big way, or the critics will be proven right.
5) Why are people still clinging to the “Obama wasn’t really born in this county” foolishness? Oh, right: because they’re frickin’ idiots who can’t deal with even the idea of two more years of Obama. Hey, guys, I sucked up eight years of George W., so man up.
6) I was angry when I learned that “Snooki” from “The Jersey Shore” scored a publishing deal. I was delighted to learn that her book “A Shore Thing” (get it? Isn’t that clever?) has sold fewer than 10,000 copies nationally.
7) Vampires are overdone and zombies are fast heading that way. Well, at least the fast-moving zombies are. The shamblers might take longer to achieve overexposure.
8 ) I am amazed how some ambitious filmmakers can — armed with a decent concept, good actors, minimal equipment, and almost no money — turn out really cool movies like “Monsters” or “Paranormal Entity,” yet others can only produce pieces of crap so smelly pigs wouldn’t wallow in it (i.e., 90 percent of the horror flicks you’ve never heard of available through Netflix).
9) “Bioshock: Infinite” cannot come out soon enough.
10) It’s been a couple of weeks since the Arizona tragedy. Have we forgotten about being civil and not riling up people by instilling them with a baseless fear of “the other”? Oh, right, we had Steve Cohen making Nazi references not too long ago. Way to bounce back, hyperbole-prone elected officials!
11) Sci-fi and alternate history fans, check out the work of Cherie Priest. “Boneshaker” was awesome, and “Dreadnought,” which I’m now reading, is well on its way to awesomeness.
12) If you see a guy near the Shining Sea Bike Path this spring trying to cut stuff in half with a bullwhip, that’d be me. Don’t freak out.
13) Most common comment thrown my way lately: “Why is there so much negative press about [insert topic here]? Why can’t you write any good news about [topic]?” My response: “Because that’s all you’re giving me, and you’re not giving me a reason to, respectively.”
14) Hey, you. The guy who’s stretching out his earlobes until I can pass a billiard ball through them. Your earlobes won’t reboot to normal size when you grow up and realize how stupid they look and try to take the rings out.
15) Random point of superficial pride: I know lots of hot women. Many of them know how to swordfight.
16) Political unrest in the rest of the world = violent, destructive riots. Political unrest in the US = poorly spelled protest signs and angry blog posts.
17) Fascinating Wikipedia find of the month: the entry on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, wherein people cannot grasp how ignorant they are in a given skill or field of knowledge, which leads to a false sense of superiority (think “American Idol” auditions). I know lots of people suffering from this.
18) Fascinating Boston Globe article that explains the “birthers” (see item #5) and people of their ilk: How Facts Backfire.
19) COMMENTERS ON BLOG POSTS WHO TYPE LIKE THIS NEED TO BE DELETED ON PRINCIPLE. THIS IS REALLY ANNOYING.
20) Mispronouncing or misspelling a word is not excusable with, “Well, that’s the way I say/spell it.”
21) Fame is an absurd goal. People have gotten famous for being extremely stupid, unlucky, or evil. Try aiming for happiness or success.
22) Unless you are an elderly British gentleman, calling a woman “dear” or “darling” or “sweetheart” is, as a rule, not endearing. It’s patronizing and, in some cases, kinda skeevy.
23) If you can be a vegetarian who doesn’t like to eat meat, I can be a carnivore who doesn’t like to eat vegetables.
24) Samuel Adams new beer, Revolutionary Rye Ale, is interesting. Don’t think I love it, but it’s a Sam Adams brew so it’s instantly ten times better than Budweiser (or Miller or Coors or Schlitz or Michelob or…)
25) Anyone who believes the media hype about “the end of the Fantastic Four” because one of the main characters is getting killed off has obviously never actually read a comic book.
26) “Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World” is awesome. If you missed it in the theaters, get it on DVD and prepare to go into sensory overload.
27) Why are more and more people deciding that it’s a good idea to stop their car in the middle of the road so they can hold a conversation with someone on the sidewalk? Or worse, that it’s smart to get out of your car at a stop light so you can chat with the person in the next car? Addendum: where do they get off acting indignant when another motorist tells them to move so traffic can get by?
28) Dear everyone involved with “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”: the cosmos is doing it’s damnedest to tell you this is a terrible idea. This is something the rest of us realized a long time ago, but how much more convincing do you need?
29) Little Steven’s Underground Garage — listen to it, love it, make it part of your life.
30) My bulldog Beatrix is well-known in South Station, models dog coats on Etsy, is currently appearing in a print ad for Clip Clocks, has appeared on the cover of a pet supplement in last year’s Enterprise, and has been rendered in balloons by renowned balloon artist Royal Sorrell and as a lawn ornament. In other words, my dog has a more fascinating public life than I do.
31) Whatever happened to those neat trucks that took snow and melted it down and flushed it into municipal drainage systems? They were all over the news a few years ago and were touted as a great way to dispose of mountains of snow. We could sure use a few of them now.
32) Sarah Palin: still a doofus.
