Cam’s World 30 April, 2007

While I was working out today I watched “Land Of The Dead“, George Romero’s 2005 4th zombie flick, starring Aussie actor Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento and John Leguizamo. What a great way to pass a couple of hours of otherwise-boring exercise.

Two things I loved in particular with the “Making Of” doco.

1. Romero talking about how Hopper decided he wanted to play the part of the bad guy, Kaufman, as Donald Rumsfeld and the way Romero yells “Exactly! This is about the Bush administration!” Too many directors are oh-so-politically correct (even now!), but not George, oh no. He tells it like it is!

2. The other thing I loved was George’s glasses:

George Romero has the coolest old man glasses

When I saw the Ocean’s 13 trailer, with Elliott Gould wearing the same glasses, George Burns glasses, I said “I’ve got to have some!”

Elliott Gould does too

Anyone know where I can get some? Without real lenses of course. I have 20/20 vision (not like the rest of you geeks out there… how come I’ve read more books than the rest of you put together, I sit in front of a PC all day, and I *still* have 20/20?).

******

Kevin Rudd is pitching himself at the ALP conference as “Mr 21st Century”. Yet, at the same time, he is content to wear his Anglican Christianity on his sleeve. I find it impossible to take anyone seriously who tries to position themselves as 21st century yet clings openly to a 2000 year-old mythology about a miracle worker who could fly.

That said, I admire his cojones in commissioning an Australian version of the Stern report. Do we really *need* another Stern report though? Isn’t one Stern enough Stern? Let’s face it – we call know not doing anything about climate change will be BAD. REALLY BAD. And those that continue to dispute that issue, aren’t going to be convinced by one more report, any more that Rudd will drop his Christianity by one more book pointing out that there is no evidence to support his mystery faith. It’s a waste of money.

******

I see Dom Carosa’s been busy launching yet ANOTHER new site – NICE SHORTS. I stumbled on this (yes, using Stumble Upon) last night and watched a great clip by up-and-coming Aussie filmmaker Gabriel Dowrick.
His short film, “The Lord Is My Shotgun” is very impressive. I’ve got Gabe coming on G’Day World later in the week for a chat. I think he’s about 21 and has made something like 20 short films as well as a recent straight-to-dvd zombie slasher horror feature called “Nailed”.

******

Did TWO – count ’em – TWO workouts today. 45 minutes on the xtrainer at 9am and then another 30 minutes at 5pm. Don’t want to be a fatblogger. I cannot for the life of me get interested in working out at 6am, so I tend to wake up, do email for a few hours, take the kids to school, and THEN get on the machine. And watch zombie flicks. I can pretend I’m running away from the flesh-eating zombies. SPEAKING of which… am I the only person who is surprised that with those rotten teeth they all seem to have, the zombies still manage to rip huge chunks of flesh, tendon and bone out of their victims? Shouldn’t their teeth just fall out when they try? Now there’s an idea for a postmodern zombie flick – the zombie’s attack, their teeth fall out, and everyone falls over laughing while the zombies spend the rest of the film trying to gum people to death….

******

It isn’t just Leftie’s that think invading Iraq was a mistake

Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom said today:

“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place,” he said.

“He [Bush] lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies.”


According to Wikipedia
, Odom is “a former U.S. Army 3-star general, and was Director of the NSA under President Ronald Reagan” and has called the illegal invasion of Iraq “the worst strategic blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy”.

I just thought these are a good couple of quotes for folks like Mike who seem to still have this idea of the USA being Mr All-White-Guy John Wayne on a white horse wearing a white hat protecting the nice white lady from the terrible injuns.

Even at least one US 3-star general thinks is was a really, REALLY bad idea.

Who Pays Alan Jones?

Scienta makes a good point that I hadn’t considered: should we hold 2GB responsible for keep Alan Jones on the air or should the companies that continue to support his show with their advertising dollars be held just as responsible?

According to Scienta’s research, the following companies buy advertising on 2GB:

Addbuild Additions, Blue Haven Pools, Dedes Restaurant, Doors Plus, Dyldam, Flying Fish, Health & Image, MBT Centre, Heart Check Medical Clinic, L.J. Hooker, Nature Bee, Nick’s Seafood Restaurant, Nimbo Fork Luxury Fly Fishing Lodge, Officespace Australia Wide, P&O Cruises, Park Trent Properties Group, Premier Cabs Pty Limited, Sam the Paving Man, Switzer Financial Services, The Eye Institute, The Gazebo and Woolooware Shores Lifestyle Village.

I wonder if any of these companies considered pulling their advertising support from 2GB in the wake of ACMA’s finding that Jones and 2GB breached the Commercial Radio Code of Practice in 2006, with their broadcasts on the Cronulla riots.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to contact each of these companies and ask them? There are only 22 companies listed and their phone numbers are all here on 2GB’s website. I guess we could call them and ask? Who wants to lend a hand?

I guess I won’t be taking H&T to the footy

I had a rare fatherly moment today and realized that as my sons are growing up in Melbourne I should take them to the footy, just once, so they can realize why they will never want to go again. So I jumped onto Ticketmaster to see how much tickets are. $33 for an adult! $5.30 for a kid! Add train tickets or parking into the equation, and it’s a $60 day out, not including beer and hotdogs (for them, I would never touch the stuff).

I’m not spending $60 taking my kids to something I’d never go to myself. Ridiculous. $60 to watch a bunch of men in tight shorts run around chasing a little leather ball for two hours? I could buy the kids a new DS game for that. They’ll get MUCH more entertainment out of that than two hours.

And they won’t get drunk or have to cuss at an umpire to boot.

Shutdown, Restart, Run, Hibernate all missing

I’ve got some serious virus action happening on Vista. Last night I noticed I couldn’t run Task Manager. It had been greyed out. I also don’t have Shutdown, Restart, Run, Hibernate – they are all missing from the ORB. I’ve spent a bit of time today investigating and it seems to be either virus or scumware related. So I’ve run a bunch of things today – Windows Defender, AVG AV, Lavasoft AdAware – and they found a bunch of crap which I deleted, so at least I got Task Manager back – but still no ShutDown etc.

So I don’t know what to do from here. Bloody annoying.

Oh and the first person who says “Buy A Mac” gets slapped with a fish.