Saved! vs. Juno

Maybe it’s my Catholic upbringing, maybe it’s the fact that Susan Sarandon’s daughter Eva Amurri is so blindingly hot, maybe it’s how cute Jena Malone and Patrick Fugit are together, or maybe it’s the completely unnecessary way Diablo Cody turned the Jason Bateman character into a villain when the movie didn’t need a villain, but after watching the movie Saved! again the other day, I realized I much prefer that movie to Juno.

I mean, I liked Juno, but if I had to choose one teenage pregnancy comedy to watch right now, I’d have to go with Saved!.

United Breaks Guitars

As seen on Boing Boing and your friend's facebook pages, here's the new internet song sensation "United Breaks Guitars" by Sons of Maxwell. A creative way to deal with bad customer service, and another example of why United is and has been one of my least favorite airlines since 1997.

Really Goode? Seriously?

(photo credit)

I don’t know how many of you have been following the Murphy-Goode Winery’s ‘A Really Goode Job’ search. I have, in passing, because a friend of mine was in the running. He made the initial cut down to 50, but failed to make the final 10.

The thing that surprised me the most about the final 10, after I got over my initial disappointment that my friend hadn’t been included, was that their wasn’t a single Bay Area resident on the list. After all, the Bay Area is the center of the tech industry and the center of the U.S. wine industry. I don’t believe for a second there isn’t at least one local person (even if not my friend) worthy of being in the top 10. The only explanation I can think of must be some sort of bias in favor of out-of-town applicants.

Shame on you Murphy-Goode.

I can maybe understand some preference for a non-local to actually get the job, in order to keep the rest of the world interested in this person once they have it, but to not have a single Northern Californian in the top 10 seems unconscionable, and quite frankly a slap in the face (especially with 3 Southern Californians on the list). Just because your contest got the world’s attention, Murphy Goode, doesn’t mean you had to look outside your own backyard for the winner.

I am clearly not a phsycic

Well, the midpoint of the season is somewhere around now. Here are my completely incorrect predictions for the rest of the season:

By September 1, the Mets will somehow have a comfortable first place lead in the NL East, Central, West, and Wildcard and be on the verge of advancing directly to the World Series. Then they’ll collapse and not make the postseason.

No team will win the NL Central.

As a result, the Dodgers will have to play both the Giants and the Phillies in the first round of the playoffs in spring-training-like split squad games. They’ll beat Philly but lose to the Giants, but then beat the Giants in the NLCS.

After losing the AL East to the Red Sox and the Wildcard to the Blue Jays, somehow the Yankees will win the AL West. The rest of the league will whine about how the Yankees always get their way, while secretly wishing they could play the Yankees 162 times a season for the added attendance bump.

After losing 3 games to the Tigers, Steinbrener will yell “best 4 out of 7” and make them play another game. When they lose that one too, he’ll insist that they’re not out of it until they’ve lost all 7. Upon losing each of those, Bud Selig will invoke his “best interest of the game” powers to declare the Yankees the AL Champions, but still require the Red Sox to play a meaningless 7 game ALCS. The Red Sox will win all 7.

The Steroid Series between A-Rod and the Yankees and Manny and the Dodgers will surpass everyone’s expectations. The highlight will be the two superstars running arm-in-arm along a syringe strewn beach at sunset before falling into each others arms in a passionate kiss as the waves crash against their heaving bodies.

Dark House Revised

I've finished a second draft of my Halloween story Dark House. You can read it here.

Nothing Comes for Free

I’m sorry, but these people are idiots. Unfortunately they’re a microcosm of the state of California as a whole, but it points out a number of things:

1. The more rural conservative parts of this state take advantage of the liberal leaning urban areas. They pay less taxes, but get more tax dollars per capita, living off the extra money the liberal areas are willing to pay.
2. Nothing comes for free people! If you want government and social services you have to pay for them.
3. I don’t particularly care if it costs more money to provide social services to remote rural parts of the state. If the area can’t support itself, or isn’t providing something vital the rest of the state can’t live without, people shouldn’t live there.

Humans have developed a misguided sense of entitlement to their lifestyle and the places they live. Just because it’s how you want to live, just because it’s the place you love, or the place you grew up in, or the place your ancestors grew up in, doesn’t mean the world owes it to you to keep living there. If you can’t afford it or can’t sustain it, you move to somewhere you can. You change your lifestyle to survive. That’s humanity people. That’s what humans have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years. If not, we’d either all still be living in Africa or have gone extinct a very long time ago.

Yes Virginia, There Really is a Bakery

The Virginia Bakery near my house, where I have partaken of many a cookie since moving to Berkeley, made it into Cake Wrecks Sunday Sweets post this weekend! (Sunday Sweets is Cake Wrecks weekly posting of good cakes.) Here's the stunning fondant free cake they made:



We're going to look at wedding cakes there.