The Edge

1: Army of Darkness - Sam Raimi - Bruce Campbell

Never, ever gets old. It's chock full of cheese that only gets better with age.

2: Spaceballs - Mel Brooks - Bill Pullman, Rick Moranis, John Candy, Daphne Zuniga

Quite possibly the funniest sci-fi spoof ever, that manages to be a decent movie in its own right. Also full of fine cheese. With the prequel trilogy in the can, has the time ever been more ripe for Mel Brooks to actually make a fucking sequel for once?

3: Transformers: The Movie - Nelson Shin - Judd Nelson, Peter Cullen, Richard Nimoy, Frank Welker, Orson Welles

The most subjectively ranked movie in the list. It stands out for the nostalgia it evokes, of a seven year old watching in awe as a living planet floated across the silver screen.

4: Clue! - Jonathon Lynn - Tim Curry, Lesley Ann Warren, Christopher Lloyd, Madeline Kahn

One of Tim Curry's finest performances and one of the funniest movies ever made. The anti-depressant of movies, I always feel like getting up and dancing when the credits roll to the tune of "Shake, Rattle & Roll".

5: The Princess Bride - Rob Reiner - Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Andre the Giant, Wallace Shawn

The story is classic fairy tale, and the jokes are always funny. As a wrestling fan, seeing Andre perform is also a pleasure.

6: Aliens - James Cameron - Michael Biehn, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein

The definitive sci-fi action movie, it should  have made Michael Biehn an A-list star. What happened? Regardless, one Alien was scary, a whole hive was epic, and the timeless props, which predicted future trends in military equipment very accurately and look not the least bit dated twenty years later... it all adds up to a timeless movie.

7: The Fifth Element - Luc Besson - Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Milla Jovovich, Chris Tucker, Tiny Lister

Managing to tell a serious story without ever taking itself seriously, The Fifth Element strikes a fine balance between tension and laughs that few movies can pull off, much less so gracefully. The fact that it is a sci-fi film makes it that much more notable.

8: Ghostbusters - Ivan Reitman - Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis

Who ya gonna call?

9: The Blues Brothers - John Landis - Dan Akroyd, John Belushi

They're on a mission from gawdt, and nothing will stop them... not drunken rednecks, not Illinois Nazis, nor even the entire uniformed law enforcement contingent of an entire state.

10: Clerks - Kevin Smith - Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes

A documentary masquerading as an independent film, Clerks is filled with both laughs and ample doses of truth.

11: The Secret of NIMH - Don Bluth - Elizabeth Hartman, Dom DeLuise, Peter Strauss, Wil Wheaton

Elizabeth Hartman's voice made me furry.

...probably know that I've spent the past six months in a hell of my own creation. I've been fighting loneliness and depression with varying degrees of success for the past thirteen years, and on December 27th of last year, I lost that war. I lost hope.
I spent the next four months suffering and trying to drag my friends down with me, and I probably succeeded to some degree. I added another bullet hole to my house at some point when I had to decide between shooting myself and shooting the bedroom door; no way around it, that bullet was going somewhere. I did all manner of stupid and desperate things, some of which helped, most of which succeeded only in pissing me off, thanks to their rank futility.
One of those stupid, desperate things that turned out -not- to be futile was when, two months ago, I said to hell with my Road Star and bought a 2006 Yamaha FZ-1. Beyond a shadow of a doubt the most potent vehicle I've ever been priveleged to control. Priss, as I ended up calling her, did a lot to bring me out of my hole. That and a few other little things, that I don't want to talk about here.
That was all well and good... for a time.
Now here I find myself again, back in the hell of my own mind with only a couple of motorcycles, a puppy, and a delusion to keep me company.
And for all that I accomplished while trying to survive the past half year, for all the progress I might have supposedly made...
I still don't have one goddamn clue what to do about it.

I want to go home.

Morbid curiosity compelled me to watch the first episode of Powerpuff Girls Z this morning.

I don't know what to say. I feel... I feel... dirty. And not in a particularly good way, nor a particularly bad one. I just feel STAINED somehow.

I mean, first, let's get past the obvious. The show is patently IN. SANE. Just insane doesn't cut it, you simply have to give it the Tom-Arnold-in-True-Lies "I've got two words for you, pal, IN. SANE." What little cognitive structure the Cartoon Network original had is right out the window, which isn't saying a damn thing and doesn't begin to convey just how IN. SANE. this shit really is. I can't even describe how bloody IN. SANE. it really is. It's like a pastel-shaded nuclear mushroom cloud of sheer irrationality. Hyperbole isn't even adequate.

There's a robot dog, Professor Utonium has an assistant who calls him Papa and looks like the kid from Gigantor, Chemical X becomes Chemical Z when it gets a donut dropped in it, Professor Utonium isn't a vaguely scary lolicon who was trying to quote "CREATE THE PERFECT LITTLE GIRLS", Mojo looks like SD Gorilla Grodd, Buttercup is butch-er than Trinity, Bubbles is a LITTLE WHORE, Blossom is a HUGE WHORE, Miss Bellum has tits the size of Texas, the Mayor is almost normal, THE KID SHOOTS AN ICEBERG WITH CHEMICAL Z CANNONS, the girls have HENSHINS... I could go on.

Probably the only redeeming thing I said in that mini-rant was "Professor Utonium isn't a vaguely scary lolicon who was trying to quote "CREATE THE PERFECT LITTLE GIRLS"", but that's OK. Because the vaguely scary lolicon is now THE AUDIENCE. The girls' Henshin sequences are close to 30 seconds, during which time they spend the largest portion of it skirtless in a hi-cut one piece bathing suit. They conjure their little vest things by caressing their nipples in a disturbingly sexual manner, all the while dancing erotically, winking and licking their lips at the camera, and they tend to conduct themselves in a seductive, suggestive manner all throughout the entire show. God only knows why I find this so damned disturbing because What are you, dense? Are you RETARDED or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I'm the goddamn Pedobear!

There is something VERY fundamentally wrong with Powerpuff Girls Z, and I am most assuredly -NOT- going to watch it long enough to figure out what it is, because that knowledge would surely drive me to drooling, Lovecraftian lunacy.

http://proteinwisdom.com/index.php?/weblog/entry/20677/

At that link, find what is wrong with the world.

Call the authorities? Protect your family?

IT'S A DYKE WITH A BLOG. YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF GODDAMNED PUSSIES.

So I'm bouncing down the unpaved shithole of a road that a friend of mine lives down, headed home, and suddenly Amber (my '69 Plymouth Satellite, for the uninitated that might stumble in here) starts to run like shit after I klutz hard into a particularly violent sinkhole. Despite my general mechanical aptitude I'm bewildered and clueless but I figure she can tough it out since she settles down when she gets up to 35 or 40. We limp over to Jess's house and he points out that it's probably a broke motor mount. A few minutes later the diagnosis is confirmed, and so begins a story of pain in the butt.

Small block B-body motor mounts consist of the engine plate and the frame dampener. The latter has one simple through bolt and the threads are incorporated into its construction; the bolt is easily reached from underneath the car, it requires no holding wrench, and its reasonably well shielded from grime that would freeze the bolt. The former, though, is mounted by three through bolts with nuts, tucked away rather neatly between the exhaust manifold, the steering box, and the power steering pump. The rear bolt is nigh unreachable, and the front two demand the power steering pump be moved out of the way.

After untangling that jigsaw puzzle, it was a relief that the two pieces were held together by a large, clean nut, that came off readily and went on the replacement mount just as readily. It was also a plus that the replacement mounts only cost $7.00 a piece, a massive shock give their mass, construction, and lifetime warranty.

It was not a relief to find that BOTH mounts were broken, and the passenger side one promises to be even more of a job. See, Mopar engines are slightly offset in the engine compartment, to make room for the steering, battery tray, starter, and what not, all of which is clustered on the driver side. So what little room I had to work with on the driver's side I no longer have... meaning I not only have to take loose the mount, with the alternator standing in for the power steering pump this time around, I no longer have any side clearance from the fender to work with... meaning I have to remove the exhaust manifold.

Shit.

On the up it's good exercise, I guess. I could do without the burning ache in my forearms. It's been too long since I spun wrenches with any passion behind it... the guns have made me lazy. For all that your average mechanic would look upon a pistol as if it were an alien artifact if asked to work on it, the mechanic should realize he has the trickier job and the trickier machine and ought not to fear it so.

I sometimes have odd insights late at night when I'm trying to kill time while psyching myself up to do something constructive. I usually want to share them, but I often don't, and it happens less these days, as my mind is far more muddled than it was in the comparative peace of the late '90s, nevermind how incredibly clear I was in my youth. I sometimes feel it coming back, when I'm staring at a problem gun, or come up with an ingenious work around or mechanical diagnosis. But that's another rant.

The thought I had tonight came from flipping through my MP3 folders and stumbling upon the title screen theme of Metroid III, more commonly known as Super Metroid. As it played, I thought back to 1994, and the first time I saw the Super Metroid opening.

Nintendo was fully aware that the console's first (and, as it turned out, only) Metroid game was an event. Metroid was a legendary NES game, back in those days when the first batch of games for a new generation of gaming hardware were often the legends of the generation. Take, for example, Metroid itself, Super Mario Brothers, or the SNES's Super Mario World. Time marched on and first gen software for newgen systems quickly degenerated into tech demos. That, too, is another rant. Anyway, Nintendo knew they had a big event on their hands. The title screen reflected it. Eerie, ticking chords opened the title as it announced the year, 1994, and continued as NINTENDO was typed on the screen, in between close-in shots of the ruined lab on the space station. They grew in intensity as it declared this was METROID 3, and then built to a climax as the camera pulled back to reveal the corpses of scientists, illuminated only by the unsettling glow of the computer monitors hooked up to the Last Metroid, and the theme became recognizable as the classic Metroid theme and the game's official title, SUPER METROID was splashed. I suppose one could get yet another rant out of Nintendo's tendency to call everything SUPER during the SNES days, but they tended to get away with it since a lot of the games really were. Anyway. I knew then and there I was looking at something special, a game that I would play until I knew every last secret and had seen every last sight. I had played Metroid and Metroid II in the past, I had even beaten Metroid II, so I knew that the tiny Metroid was indeed the last. That helped, but it was at that point, at that title screen, that I actually became a fan of Metroid, in spite of its heroine's silence and the general ambiguity of the universe.

Actually playing Super Metroid cemented this fandom; to this day it is the best Metroid game, its only real competition being Metroid Prime. I played Super Metroid regularly in emulation as soon as the SNES emulators matured enough to play it properly, a good six years after the game's release, and it has held on so well that even now amateur programmers seek to stretch the engine. Even now I am making my way through a fiendishly difficult remake that has easily quintupled the size of an already impressive game. Its engine is still the most flexible of all the Metroid games, and there is a minor internet subculture built around playing the game either for speed or handicap. The No-Boss Runs, though the game cannot be completed, are perhaps the most entertaining type, involving as they do great feats of acrobatics that in the dark days of 1995 I had not the first clue were even possible. It is only now, 12 years later that I know of the magic of bomb-flight and mockballing, to name only a few.

The seed Super Metroid planted has waxed and waned from obsession to academic interest, but never withered. I have played and beaten every Metroid game except Hunters, and largely enjoyed every minute of it, except for my go at the original Metroid, which I set out to beat merely for historical completionism, and the rather sad, linear Metroid Fusion. I lacked faith in Metroid's transistion to 3D, but even Prime turned out to be not only a top notch FPS, but a worthy Metroid game, able to be cheated and sequence broken and low percented in the grand tradition, a feat that Retro Studios is to be commended for. The Prime Scan Visor was also, at long last, a source for the flavor and depth the Metroid universe has so lacked. What Prime 2 lacked in innovation it made up for in sheer size and the rock solid foundation its engine constituted. If Metroid Prime 3 is as far removed from its two predecessors as Metroid III was from its, it alone will justify the purchase price of the Wii, and even go a long way toward making us forget that "Wii" is a silly ass name for a game console.

It's not secret I hate Wilson Combat. I've seen their sloppy gunsmithing, shot their sloppy, overpriced pistols, laughed at their goofy AR scope mount (gone now, apparently the ambrassment was too much), and weeped for the demise of Scattergun Technologies. The only thing I buy from them is their magazines if I can help it, and I wouldn't buy those if they weren't the only option on the market. Much as I hate to say it, everything Wilson says about the magazines he sells is true; they are the best available, and until I've shot as many thousands of rounds through Virgil Tripp's Cobramags as I have the Wilson 47D, they will remain so. As an aside, though, I find it... aesthetically pleasing that the "Wilson" mags were actually designed by Bill -Rogers-. But anyway.

We know Wilson Combat sucks. From their ludicrous $6000 BBQ gun to their stupid bolt on Picatinny that they're putting on the CQB now, they're lame. (They move away from the Caspian Recon frame to THAT? And the excuse they make is that it can be upgraded if we use a different light mount?? The pistol is a 1911, it'll be a hundred in 5 more years, and they expect us to believe the Weaver rail is going somewhere? HA!) What you may not know is that I have almost as big a grudge with Ed Brown and Chip McCormick as well.

Why Ed Brown? Well, let's review. First and foremost, Ed is a goddamned old bastard from hell. We're talking 100% asshole. Doesn't have a civil word to say to anybody. Secondly, his thumb safeties break. That's a long story I'll not get into. Finally, his guns are just like Bill's: overpriced, overrated, and derivative.

As for Chip, well... I really WANT to like Chip. I really do. Maybe if he ever stops hawking that MIM garbage he calls 1911 custom parts I will. Other than that his company is a pleasure to deal with, with good customer service and some good ideas. His magazines are the other option besides Wilsons, if your gun will slidelock with them... he never did get that kink ironed out of the follower he swiped from poor Charlie Kelsey.

The whole situation makes it a little hard to get parts for a build without fighting my conscience. Thank the powers for EGW, SVI, and Caspian.

NOTICE:

From this point on I will no longer make any attempt to use this LJ as a 'blog. Instead it will be rantspace.

NOTICE 2:

Yes, I was a Two-tailed Nazi SS fox-man in a previous life.

Ganked from laudre because it amuses me.

1. The first character I first fell in love with
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't
4. The character I love that everyone else hates
5. The character I used to love but don't any longer
6. The character I would shag anytime
7. The character I'd want to be like
8. The character I'd slap
9. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I despise

It wasn't made apparent in before, but apparently the rules are name the show/fandom in the comments and I go. So go.

DAMN. IT.

Looking like it's going to be up around SIXTY and sunshiney ALL WEEKEND and I am too loaded down with shit to haul around to do it on two wheels. I want my bike *sob sob*

It's the title of the song I'm listening to, and it's what I feel like I'm down to. I mustn't get overwhelmed and space out, I can't afford it anymore.

Do or die.

Rock and roll, dammit.

Damn few of us left.

Obviously I haven't posted for awhile. I just haven't felt like writing, being down on the Xmas Holiday and all. But, I need to share a little to get some things out, so here I am.

Alltel is STILL in my ass, so I've finally gotten off my ass and gotten digital phone. I will get my new number to the people who deserve it once it is installed. In the meantime, if anyone would like to volunteer for the SS Raid on Alltel Corporate, RSVP to me in person.

C.T. Brian has finished my Kimber. The line to drool on her forms to the right. I should have her by Wednesday. Be still, my beating heart. Need ammo...

Hell has frozen over and my gunsmith career is looking up. Details are confidential. See why I never post?

Garo rules. Transformers Galaxy Force after a stumble has returned to ruling. Sazer X is retarded but amusing. Stargate comes back in a couple weeks and NCIS still owns me. Working on a fic for NCIS, but like everything I write it will never be done and no one will ever read it.

I HATE XMAS.

I also hate cold weather, I want to ride my motorcycle. I haven't been able to roll for weeks. If I was stubborn I -could- but I don't feel like suffering right now.

I've been reading Col. Dave Grossman's book On Killing for awhile, and I frankly don't know what to make of it. It goes from being utterly fascinating and thought provoking to disturbing and angering from moment to moment. He's a fan of the Desensitization via Media theories on volence in society and a good bit of the last third of the book is devoted to harping on this. I can't really argue... his research supports his conclusions and is based in fairly solid psychology (at least as solid as that quackery gets). However, the error as I see it is in CARING. It's simply the price we pay for the times we live in. Perhaps it is merely a balancing mechanism in human nature, that some elements would become violent in response to the increasingly pacifistic nature of First World Society at large.

I bought a Beretta PX4 Storm pistol the other day. It's a nice piece. 17+1 rounds, decent controls, and good ergonomics. It's basically a Glock that fucked a 92F with the Cougar's rotating barrel locking added for good measure. It holds better than the G17 or 92F either one and is generally sleek and sci-fi. Trigger isn't too bad as its breed goes, either. My only complaint is the usual... where'd the safety? I need my condition 1, damn it. They make a 12 shot .45 on this frame without fucking up the grip entirely I wouldn't feel poorly armed at all with a Storm.

Ace Combat 4 and 5 have been eating up my gaming hours lately. I used to shun Ace Combat and it's arcade bullshit, but it had been so long since I simmed I felt like renting AC5 the other day. It's dumb fun, but I stayed for the storyline and cinematic flair of some of the missions. Nothing is quite like doing 900 knots down a tunnel.

Going to an Xmas party this weekend, so don't expect me to be sober or cognizant for several days afterward.

That covers it for the moment, I guess.

...arrange nutsack so that you're NOT sitting on your testicles while riding around Greensboro. Preferably, do this BEFORE getting on the bike.

Well, boys and girls, I just picked up Annika about two hours ago, and let me tell you. She is a right sexy little lady, especially to be pushing 80. Pat did an excellent JORB on the finish. I'm not even going to try to describe what she looks like, since I want Icchan to DROOL until the very last second when I send him pictures. I'll be taking those about five or five-thirty, then I'll pass them around on AIM when I get home, and probably post to 1911forum tonight after I black out her serial number in t3h G1/\/\P. For now, suffice it to say she's not perfect... but only a perfectionist would notice. For my first shot at the whole shebang? I'll take her. I do need to tweak the trigger some more, especially now that the finishing has ever so slightly changed the dimensions, and I need to knock the sights around a little bit to get her shooting back on center, but apart from those little details, my first self-built custom .45 is finally, well and truly, without caveat, DONE.

...can be a relaxing, fun way to pass time when you're doing something you want to do or everything goes just right, or both.

When it's something that pisses you off or every damn thing possible goes wrong... well.

When it's both those, you learn new cuss words real quick. The last few nights I've called my truck every kind of motherfucker, shit piss drinking, cocksucking, asshole, nigger son of a bitch in the book. First one of the bolts in the water pump was seized, and I ended up stripping the bolt head. So to get the water pump off, I had to cut the bolt head off... which didn't work because it's a funky stud-bolt thing that I'm too tired to describe in the kind of detail a layman would need to visualize it. Suffice it to say I ended up ruining the (aluminum) timing cover getting the water pump off. So now I need to get the timing cover off, and in the process of getting the upper radiator hose's gooseneck off, one of the bolts holding it was seized too, and the head of it wrung off.

So two things to bitch about here. One, what jackoff fuckwit put the timing cover bolts into aluminum threads without antisieze compound? And two, what fuckwit slathered so much miak and silicone crap over the thermostat bolts that it literally got GLUED in so hard I wrung the top of it off? It's one thing if I do something silly like this but that truck's never been touched by me before now, outside of changing the oil or the brake pads. Professional mechanics did this stupid shit and I don't fucking appreciate it.

I just got one for pharmaceuticals that opened with the dubious salutation, "Greetings, white man! :)"

BIKE GET!!!

I'm pulling down a torrent right now at a speed that is roughly equivalent to my cable modem's hardware limit. 132 MB in 4 minutes and 55 seconds. First time for everything, I guess. Even better, since it's something I want to watch rather muchly.

Crimson Trace has tooled up their Compact, Officer's model grips to use the front activation switch. I like the front activation switch, and nicely located and a lot easier to use than their old model. That's not why I'm excited over the LG-404, though. I'm excited because look where the switch actually sits and look at the bare frontstrap it leaves below it! With a pair of those, I might be able to get away with lying out my ass, and saying I did the checkering on my compact frame the way I did on purpose. Not to mention it gives me an excuse to put tacticool LaserGrips on the thing. Maybe I should shorten a Dawson rail to match it and run an Insight XML too. Then I'd have a Chibi-Tactical. Actually, there's a better excuse for doing that. A Dawson rail would cover up the UGLY "API-PAHRUMP NV TWIN PINES-PHILS." rollmark on the bottom of the dustcover.