kapgar

Devilman, devilman...

From time to time, I find myself amused by the images that Google News chooses to use to accompany news stories. I know it's probably some complex algorithm that picks the image based on metadata incorporated into the image, blah blah.

If that's the case, explain to me what the hell metadata was embedded into this image to make it algorithmically associated to an article about Microsoft's Bing search engine?

Click image to excite it

I can only guess (and shudder) at what the "5 Turning Points" are based on the image.

I went back into Google News five hours later and found this...

Again, click the image to give it a thrill

Seriously, is Google trying to create a mental image of Microsoft as a bunch of crotch-grabbing child molesters? I knew Windows was evil, but this?

I was on Goodreads last night and I entered a bunch of contests for free books. It had been a while since I entered any, so why not?

One of the books was a comedy about a road trip (I think), another about a woman trying to bring to light in America the problems in Darfur, a third was about a female photojournalist in Vietnam. The fourth I entered -- just for kicks -- is about a woman's voyage of self-discovery... in the world of BDSM.

Guess which one I'm probably gonna win?

Oy.

Danger on the tracks...

Happy Snippet Wednesday to you.
Happy Snippet Wednesday to you.
Happy Snippet Wednesday, dear reader.
Happy Snippet Wednesday to you.

How sad is it that when typing that, I accidentally keyed "dead reader" at first? That's truly not how I think of you all. Honestly!

Sales
Already I'm loving the holiday sales season even if I truly believe it's blasphemy to be thinking about the holiday season this early. I almost violated my own Christmas list by purchasing the complete series of Life on Mars (US) yesterday when I saw it for $17.49 at Best Buy. It's a $40 set. Same original price for season four of The Closer, which I actually did buy for Katie yesterday at Target for $12.99. How do you pass that shit up?

Santa
Speaking of holidays, I had flipped on some news broadcast last night and they were reporting that the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas is pushing that their employees be given higher priority on H1N1 vaccine shots. While I laughed at first, it does make perfect sense. They are exposed to a ridiculously high number of children on a daily basis, many of whom are probably sicker than dogs and still go to see Santa anyway because their parents won't deny them this childhood privilege even if they are hacking their lungs out all over the floor. And a lot of the guys playing Santa (the real-bearded ones, anyway) are older and some quite overweight. Yeah, give them the vaccine. Last thing we need is a class-action lawsuit against a Santa who infected a few hundred kids. But I do still laugh at the idea that Santas are unionized.

Trains
The reason I have no idea what channel this newscast was on is because it was whatever channel was left on the TV before switching over to my DVD player last night and watching one of the better thriller movies I've seen in a while, Transsiberian. In a nutshell, it's about a couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) who take a train trip across Siberia to Moscow after completing volunteer work in China. While on board, they meet up with another couple (Kate Mara and Eduardo Noriega) who may or may not be drug mules. Murder, intrigue, and police investigating ensue. It also stars Ben Kingsley as a Russian narcotics detective. Is there any nationality that dude doesn't play? Offhand, I've got German, Jewish, American, British, Indian, Russian... Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised considering its low-budget and low-distribution nature. Very enjoyable. Oh, and it was directed by Brad Anderson, the guy behind the disturbing The Machinist starring Christian Bale in what I consider one of his finest performances.

Mojo
Just when I think I can have all my snippets related, I throw in one that's not. Well, pretend it is. Let's just say I was reading this before watching Transsiberian, okay? I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Mojo magazine. It's basically another music mag with reviews and interviews and the like, much akin to Rolling Stone but without the political leanings. And, as a bonus, it comes packaged with a CD of music related to the theme of that month's issue. Sure this makes the mag cost $9.99 per issue, but I don't buy it often. This is actually the first issue in a few years and I had to do it because the CD is all electronic music including M83, LCD Soundsystem, Tangerine Dream, OMD, and an exclusive track from Kraftwerk, along with 10 more. Yes! I like electronic music, okay?

Ken
Must. Break. Addiction. To. KenKen. Puzzles. But. It's. Too. Much. Fun. Help.

I'm gonna set you free...

Um, yeah, so it's Snippet Wednesday. Sorry, I got nothing more original. I need to make a couple lunches before I head out for work.

Fall
While I'm upset that we here in Chicago still never seem to have much of a fall in terms of nice autumn weather, we did get some beautiful leaves for the first time in about two or three years. Lately, the odd times during which we've had rain have made the leaves go from green to brown with no color variations in between. Something worked this year and we got some magnificent colors. Thank God.

I'll upload some more pictures soon.

Victims
Talk about death and decay, police in Cleveland have discovered the bodies of 10 victims in or near the house and yard of a suspected serial murderer. The kicker is that people have been complaining about strange odors emanating from his house for years. One person went so far as to describe it as the smell of a dead body. And it took Cleveland cops how long to investigate? There's something severely wrong with this story.

Superman
Funny thing about this particular Dilbert strip is that I could see this sort of thing as an outtake in the original Superman. How funny would that have been?

 

Swell
I was totally stoked the other day when I discovered that The Swell Season (featuring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of the movie Once) had a new album out. Cooler yet was that there was an iTunes code in it for an additional free song. But they had two codes, one for the US store and one for the Canadian store. So, if there are any Canadian fans of The Swell Season, drop me a note in the comments and the code for this song is yours. I'm not sure if it cancels out after I redeem the US code, but it's worth a shot. First come/first served.

Married?
Archie is marrying Veronica? Not Betty? Six-part comic arc? WTF? This is so not cool.

Time for lunch making. With a tear in my eye on Betty's behalf.

Mother, tell your children not to walk my way...

I knew I wanted to use that lyric for this post but I wanted to get it right so I Googled it. I was so damn convinced it was The Cult. But it's Danzig. How the hell did I mix that one up? Oh well, on with Snippet Wednesday, anywho.

Foo
Ack! New Foo Fighters!! NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!! NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!!!

(iTunes | Amazon)

Did I get the idea across that I'm excited? Really? You didn't feel it? Lemme try again...

NEW FOO FIGHTERS!!!

No, I won't go so far as blinking text. Not even for the Foo Fighters. Sorry.

Malfunkshun
The other day, while shopping for decade-related costumes for Katie to wear to school in their weeklong celebration of the school's 50th anniversary, we came across a Mother Love Bone T-shirt. Of course we bought it and she wore it on Monday. But it got me a bit wistful for the band and I've subsequently been going a bit nuts listening to their music as well as reading about them and their late lead singer, Andrew Wood. I discovered that there was a documentary made about his life called Malfunkshun, after the name of the band he fronted prior to MLB, and I tried to find it on Netflix. They clearly didn't have it as this mixed bag of search results would indicate.

But seriously, a cult horror film followed by an NC17-rated steamy, dark, cerebral romance about a kid's forbidden desire for his mom, and then... Mulan? A Disney flick. Family animation. I can just see some kid putting Ma Mere in their queue as a mother's day tribute.

Music
I'm sure all of you already think I'm a music addict ("whore" might be more appropriate). But just to confirm the theory, my iTunes account is now showing that I have...

Yes, 10,794 songs that clock in at 29 days, 12 hours, 51 minutes, and 13 seconds (including the copy of Danzig's "Mother" that I just picked up because I felt so guilty). I can listen for nearly a month without hearing the same song twice (unless you're talking February; I so rock that month, even on leap years). Yeah, my name is kapgar and I'm a music junkie.

60
Katie and I are actually going to try watching The Amazing Race again after giving it up for about two or three years. We kinda miss it. But the problem is that CBS, the network that airs TAR, always seems to have something programmed during the day on Sundays that bumps the start time of everything else after it, including TAR. So I get severely annoyed having to open my TiVo viewing of something we want to watch by seeing snippets of crap we don't want to watch in the form of 60 Minutes, a show that I feel has absolutely no newsworthiness or cultural significance at all. Why is that show still on the air? Somebody please pull the plug already.

Rogue
Why is part of me morbidly fascinated about the pending release of Sarah Palin's memoirs, Going Rogue: An American Life? Am I doomed to damnation if I read it? Could my damnation be any worse than it already is having forced myself to read an Ann Coulter book as I did a few years back?

Funny thing... I couldn't remember Coulter's name for whatever reason. So I Googled "conservative freakshow blonde pundit" and, lo and behold, a link to a CBS news page about her shows up first in the results. 

I'm off too work. Enjoy!

Help... not just anybody...

I found this ad on Facebook today.

It disturbs me for a few reasons.

One, why is it that only dads can take advantage of this debt-relief program? No moms? No childless guys? What exactly is involved here? Will they be selling their kids into child slavery behind their wives' backs?

Two, I could be wrong, but in that image I see long blonde hair, a pregnant belly, and boobies. How does this image depict dads in debt? Or is it meant to imply that all men are in debt because of women and pregnancy? Are they claiming women are the root of all evil including excessive levels of debt? That's a bold statement.

Three, what exactly is this woman doing in the picture? It would appear she is sitting/standing in the glow of a TV, but otherwise, what is this image depicting? Looks like her hands are doing an Al Bundy with the waistband of her pants. Is there porn involved in this deal?

So many questions...

Once in a while, I love scrolling through the Chicago Tribune's "Mugs in the News" section. You find a great random sampling of life there.

For example, here's a guy who was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery. Well if you were near a dude looking this sullen who was wearing a shirt that says "Most of the people that drive me nuts are in my family" and you didn't treat it a sign of things to come, well, you probably deserved it anyway...

This girl is actually pretty cute and looks happy to be there getting her mugshot taken. Prison fetish, I'd suspect.

I was going to ask why this guy looks so damn happy after being arrested and booked, but I think we all know why, don't we?

I have no words.

And oh so many more!

He's the world's biggest...

Fasten your seat belt, if you can (more on that later), 'tis Snippet Wednesday!

Disclaimer
For any of you reading this or any of my posts in the Notes section of Facebook, you might have noticed how I talk about photo albums or videos that don't seem to be there. This is a quirk of the Notes application. It imports text with some degree of efficacy (minus some formatting) and the occasional embedded image. But photo galleries or videos? Nuh uh. I recommend you all just click on over here to www.kapgar.com to view these posts in all their gory glory.

Photos
Here are some pictures I took recently in and around Union Station in Chicago for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Signature
The reason I was downtown and able to take those pictures last week was because I was going to that showing of Million Dollar Quartet where I was going to get my copy of The Last Starfighter signed by Johnny Cash/Lance Guest. Well, here's what my cover looked like prior to the signing...

Wanna know what it looks like now? Exactly the same. Turns out after going all gaga for the showing, Lance Guest wasn't in the cast that night. Actually, he's out of town for a few weeks and they expect him to rejoin, they just don't know when. 

Damn you, Alex Rogan! You owe me a signature!

Toner
I can honestly say, there are few things in life I hate buying more than replacement cartridges for our printer. I dread this deed simply because they cost so damn much and rarely last long at all. I'd go to those refill places, but the one or two times I've tried refilled cartridges, they didn't work well at all and did a number on my printer. This may have changed in recent years, though. Any experiences positive or negative?

Belted
As I was driving out to pick up the printer cartridges last night at OfficeMax, I discovered that the button on my seat belt buckle was coming loose. The seat belt still works, but it sometimes takes a little fiddling. Thank you to the guy at Advance Auto Parts, though, who told me about a local junkyard that has what effectively amounts to a freeform Saturday. I just drive in, find what I need, grab it, and pay about half price off the normal junkyard costs. He told me he redid the entire interior of an SUV for about $50. Guess where I'll be on Saturday?

Jackass
Am I the only person who applauds President Obama for calling Kanye West a jackass? Regardless of whether it was off record or not and whether it was appropriate or not, it needed to be said and by someone from whom the message would actually bear some weight. Hey, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and steals the spotlight from a VMA winner like a duck...

Well, time for work. Adieu.

Here come the story of the hurricane...

I feel like the floor of a taxicab. Hmm, must be Snippet Wednesday!

Bose
I finaly got my new earbuds and I did wind up getting the Bose in-ear buds again. Turns out those of you, including Katie, who said to talk to Bose were absolutely right. They actually do have a replacement program. Turn in your old ones and get a new pair for half price. Sure, this half price is still more than I was looking to spend, but Katie even said I use them religiously and we know we like them, so I might as well. Can I tell you how nice it is to have bass again in my music?

Crowes
And what better to listen to with my new earbuds than the new double album, Before the Frost... Until the Freeze, by one of my longtime faves, The Black Crowes. Glad to see they came back from their hiatus. I only hope the Foo Fighters do the same.

Parents
Not only can I see parents doing this, it's really not a half-bad idea. Funny though it may be. And when The Onion, in an attempt at lampooning morning "news" shows, does a better job than the shows themselves, you know something is wrong. Or maybe it's right. Hmmm...

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Poll
The idea that somebody would pick Spider-Man 2 over Superman in a head-to-head superhero poll just floors me. Please avert this travesty of superheroic injustice by visiting Cinematical and changing things before it's too late! (I agree with all the other results so far, though).

Kevin
Yeah bitches! I'm a hurricane this year and I'm bearing down on Mexico! Rock on!

Check that. I've been downgraded to a tropical depression. I guess I pussed out. Talk about depression. I was so excited when I saw the name "Hurricane Kevin" on the Google Earth hurricane tracker. This blows, but apparently not enough.

Fetch
Somehow I don't see that a subject line of "Jerry plays fetch with himself" on a spam e-mail message is really going to make me want to open it. Just so many things about that I'm much better off not knowing.

And it's time to head on out into the void.

I got a devil's haircut in my mind...

Welcome to Snippet Wednesday, where we take three parts debonair, four parts sexy, five parts awesome, and... completely disregard it all in the name of blog tripe! Wooo hooo!!!

Fiber
If you read this on a product, would you ever eat it? "NEW USERS: Increase your fiber intake gradually. Gastrointestinal discomfort may occur until your body adjusts." This warning is on the wrapper of the new Kellogg's Fiber Plus bars. I'm thinking the original warning "You will have gas the likes of which have not been seen since Vesuvius" was nixed at the last second. C'mon, be honest with us here, okay? TRUTH IN ADVERTISING, DAMMIT!!

Porn!
If you're under 18 and having, er, urges, you might want to take a hop across the pond to get your fix...

Rampage
Fatal cow attacks in Britain? Well, duh, they obviously want their porn, too, before the three-week grace period is up!

Jet
Holy crap! I had no idea Jet was even still around and now they've got a new CD. I was way more addicted to Get Born than I should ever admit. But I will say it anyway. And their new album, Shaka Rock, is only $3.99 on Amazon for a limited time. Or pay full price on iTunes once the promo period runs out. Gotta say I'm loving the Amazon store more and more every day.

Faces
One of the things I always loved about Sports Illustrated was the "Faces in the Crowd" section where they give little sentence blurbs plus a photo highlight to regular people who have made some major athletic accomplishment. I always hoped I would see someone I knew in there. To the best of my knowledge, this has not yet happened. Have you ever known anyone in the "Faces in the Crowd"? Oh too funny, while searching for "Faces" on their Web site, I found that the swimsuit edition is on Twitter. I'm shocked there aren't more followers. 

Targettunes
I'm curious... for at least the last several years, Target has had an online affiliation with Amazon. Amazon is in direct competition with iTunes in digital music sales. So how come Target is now aligning itself with iTunes for exclusive online music sales starting with Pearl Jam's new album Backspacer? What am I missing? It's an online menage-a-trois of pain ("I hear you have to pay extra for that kind of action, Cotton"). Clearly I need to be hired as their proofreader, though. Found two errors in that tiny little paragraph below.

Time for work!

You were a vampire...

Today we will talk to a 12-year-old girl who was impregnated by her seven-year-old half cousin who summarily left her for his 52-year-old social studies teacher. Now she's working as a greeter at a local Wal-Mart while living in a mobile home that she shares with a family of dogs that sought refuge after escaping from Michael Vick's, er, kennel and traveled halfway across the country with a bunch of crack-addicted carnies. All this and more, today on Snippet Wednesday!

Talkies
Something like that might actually get me to tune into Maury or Tyra or Oprah or whomever. Alas...

Coraline
Instead, I watch movies like Coraline, which, in all honesty, completely underwhelmed me. And I was a fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas. A big fan. But Coraline? Meh. The animation was pretty cool, but the story just didn't flow well for me. It felt too forced and no fun.

True
The good thing is now that I'm sending back Coraline to Netflix, I will finally be starting up on HBO's True Blood, season one. My only complaint about this is that each disc of the set only has two or three episodes on it. I've become so accustomed to four or five episodes per disc (House does five per disc from season three on) that this is just not gonna be enough to whet my appetite. I know it's all about the timing. Network shows are shorter because of commercials. But HBO shows aren't that much longer. They still have commercials, just at the ends of the episodes. Most episodes of Deadwood still clocked in at only about 45 minutes each and that was HBO as well. Stinks of a plot to upcharge for the DVD set, if you ask me.

NFL10
It was time to renew my subscription to Sports Illustrated and I saw that they had a new offer... subscribe for a half year and get a free copy of EA Sports Madden NFL 10 on whatever gaming platform you want. So I checked, and they do have it for the Wii. I'm not a huge fan of the Madden games. They just get too damn complex for me. But on a Wii? This could be fun. And Katie wants to play it with me. We can be terrible together (I was going to say "we can suck together" but I know how you perverts think). 

Lebanon
Is it wrong that I saw the headline to this article -- "Arlen Specter Faces Angry Lebanon Crowd on Health Care" -- and all I could think was "what the hell is Marie doing now?" Of course this time, they actually are talking about Lebanon, Pennsylvania, not the country that Marie is currently visiting. My bad.

Lego
I'm a fan of nearly all things Lego (except maybe for Bionicle). I love these little bricks and have since I was about five years old. I still get excited when new sets get released and I love going in Lego stores. It's just too much fun. But this announcement of a combination live action/animation film featuring Legos? I dunno. I can't say I'm looking forward to it at all. Please, just nix it before it goes too far.

Don't you forget about me...

If you were raised at all in the 80s or into the early 90s, you were dealt a bit of a blow today with the sudden passing of John Hughes at the age of 59 from a heart attack.

Yeah, I know that everybody in the world is talking about this already. It's been Twittified to the ends of the Earth and back. But I don't care. I'm talking about it anyway. And if you don't want to read it, then move on. Nobody's forcing you to stay.

For those of you still with me... thanks.

John Hughes was a big deal to a great number of us. He wrote, produced, and directed some of seminal films of our life. Just to name a few of the ones that might help set the stage: The Breakfast Club; Sixteen Candles; Weird Science; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Home Alone; Some Kind of Wonderful; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; National Lampoon's Vacation (and the European and Christmas varietals as well); Uncle Buck; The Great Outdoors; Pretty in Pink...

You get the picture?

And that list only scratches the surface.

The man told stories from the heart. They were funny, they were painful, they were silly, they left you heartbroken. But, most importantly, they were real. Sure, you might look at that list and think, "what the hell are you talking about, Kevin?" But look beyond the surface. There was somebody or some event in each and every one of those films that you related to, that defined who you were and who you are.

And what made John Hughes so great was that, despite how you viewed yourself or what similar situations you found yourself in, he let you know it was okay. You could be the jock, the nerd, the wastoid, the punk, the princess, the slacker, the overachiever. It didn't matter. To John, everyone had some kind of redeeming value and that's why he took such care in crafting his characters.

Those of us who grew up watching his films learned about love and hate and pain and fear and joy and sorrow and, well, life. 

Sure, you won't see any of John's films on the AFI100 lists. But his legacy is much greater. He made us human. And his films will be with many of us in our hearts forever. What greater legacy could you ask for?

Even you naysayers cannot deny the impact he had on our generation.

To John Hughes, rest in peace.

On a side note, I'd like to personally thank you for Mary Stuart Masterson in fringed, fingerless gloves playing the drums. *sigh*

Oh, and if some dude named Avitable comes asking for an interview, run.

I gotta thank Rory for this little montage he shared on Google Reader. It's good times.