Search continues for Lochness Monster, Chupacabra.

Startling details of a NASA photograph bloggers recently uncovered seem to indicate the existence, and possible origin of, Bigfoot.

As is common in all government coverups, NASA officials have attempted to discredit the 2004 image taken by its own Spirit rover, saying that it is just a pebble less than two inches tall.

This is obviously official flack because it is generally agreed that a sasquatch, bigfoot, or yetti is approximately 7 feet tall. The pressing question now is, how did Bigfoot get on Mars? Or more importantly, is this perhaps evidence that a race of extraterrestrial apelike beings, possibly Wookies, roams our solar system, and that the creature we call Bigfoot may not actually be indigenous to earth? If this is indeed the case, then we can infer that Star Wars creator George Lucas has had special knowledge of this race for years.

Alternatively, one can’t help but wonder about the startling similarities between the Mars Bigfoot image and the first boss from Altered Beast. Even more startling is that LucasArts was at one time a third party publisher for Sega Dreamcast. Sega, you’ll recall, was the company that published Altered Beast.

As plots and theories twist and writhe like a pile of oiled-up snakes, it’s a good bet that Lucas will continue to lay low.

It’s also a good bet that Tom Cruise will comment publicly and embarrasingly about the Mars photo. Count on some unintelligible mumblings about Xenu and a wall of fire. As relevant and blurry as Bigfoot’s Mars vacation pictures.

“Okay Rach, this is your area…”

Category: Stuff  

Welcome to the land of darkness where all is cold and wet. Where the dried up remains of Autumn never blew away in windswept ecstasy but stayed behind to form a sad, soggy carpet. Where sounds are muted and often the music of the night is reduced to a single drip, drip, drip of one wetness migrating to some other wetness.

Welcome to January in Snug Harbor. Where it can become so dull and dreary that you almost welcome the rabble of coyotes that occasionally ranges down off the ridge to howl and squabble and remind you that the world is not completely tame, that civilization is a tenuous myth, a faerie story began around your ancestors’ campfire to calm the nerves, and that in some circles you are still considered food.

The sun seems lost, indifferent, it’s warmth just a memory that up until now was suitably drowned out by the modulation and cadence of Christmas. But now it comes back to haunt the silence and you’re forced to feel the hurt. No circuses. No distractions. Just cold stark grayness. So you wait. Wrap your arms around yourself, hold onto your soul, and wait for Spring.

Or … figure out ways to get better SEO results for you Amazon affiliate sites.

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Category: Stuff  

“This glass stovetop is made of the same material that we use on our rocket ships,” says the Circuit City salesman.

“Rocket ships?” I stare blankly back at him. He reminds me of Carl Showalter from Fargo, but with greasier hair and a vest with bulging pockets. For a second I stare at the pockets wondering what on earth he could be carrying around in them. Tape measure? Human fingers?

He replies, “Yeah, like the ones we use to go to other planets.”

I don’t know if he really believes this and is desperate that I believe it too, or if he is just really bad at doing a snow-job. In either case, I manage to say, “I’ll think about it,” and walk out of the store.

It was about that same time that Circuit City dropped appliances from their product line and went strictly with consumer electronics. This move probably improved their bottom line since I’m sure that it was expensive to warehouse all that rocket ship material.

What didn’t improve at the electronics giant ten years later is Carl’s anti-equivalent, the bored 19 year-old “customer service associate”. He’s not paid on commission, so he has zero motivation to do anything but the bare minimum while he texts his friends to boast about how clever he is surfing myspace profiles on the clock using Google as a proxie server. He couldn’t care less if you buy a monitor, a laptop, or a package of CDRs, and he won’t bother to tell you if we did actually use them to go to other planets.

At least Carl was trying. He had some character. He gave you the opportunity to shake your head, smile, and say, “I think I’ll keep looking, thanks.”

Meanwhile Circuit City’s earnings are in free-fall. Same store sales were down 12% for the month of December in 2007, to which Chief Executive Philip J. Schoonover recently responded, “Our sales performance, while disappointing, was in line with our expectations.”

Genius. The ship is sinking, but that’s okay because it’s what we were expecting. Carl would know what to do. He would clean up the stores that have gone feral – those that are dark and dirty and upon walking through the door gag you with the smell of TAG body spray instead of the distinct plastic-y aroma of new electronics.

Anyway, mixed feelings about Carl aside, later that day I went to HH Gregg to purchase my glass-top stove. It was delivered the next day without incident and it worked fine. But I’ll never forget the Circuit City sales guy who tried to sell me on a stove whose exotic, easy-to-clean surface properties were of a status unmatched by other terrestrial glass-top stoves.

Way to go, Carl.

Category: Stuff  

Your friendly neighborhood Spook has never really been much of a movie hound, but over the holiday season Mrs. Spookyblue and I filled a typical yearly quota by seeing three movies in one month. In order, they were Walk Hard, I am Legend, and National Treasure 2.

If you go to see the Will Smith movie, prepare to cry. Set aside no less than three days to hold onto something or someone you love and repeat to yourself that they were only actors. Only actors. Especially the puppy dogs.

It is unclear whether there are more jerks sitting in movie theaters now than in the past, or that my lifetime cinema attendance record is simply too small to be considered a valid sample. Whatever the case, I had always assumed that the stereoptypical annoyances I’d heard about were overblown and didn’t really happen often. However, one trip to the Great Escape on New Year’s Day dramatically changed all that.

Are you in line?
I left the lovely Mrs. Spookyblue to save our seats for National Treasure while I ventured back to the snackbar for $8.50 worth of popcorn and soda. Three clerks were all occupied, and one person was ahead of me. A man appeared behind me and asked, “are you in line?” I replied that I was. The person ahead of me was now being served and another clerk became available. “Who’s next, please?” This man walked around me and began to order.

In the best of circumstances I’m generally a happy guy, and I can usually keep it together when life zigs while I’m zagging. In other words, I’m not the kind who automatically wings a hammer through the wall when things go wrong. That’s not to say it’s never happened, but I at least work up to it first with a paint can or a tire jack. But there weren’t any of those handy.

The man must have seen the look on the clerk’s face as he stared, eyes wide, at me because his head began to withdraw slowly into his body like a turtle’s.

“Sssirrrr,” I growled, stepping close behind him. Late afternoon sun pouring through the big windows painted my shadow like Darth Vader’s. “That wasn’t an invitation for you to cut in front of me in line,” I said. But you could hear the menacing subvocalization, “your lack of manners disturbs me.”

His neckless head pivoted a quarter-turn and replied, “No. You were in that line.”

What?! What the flying #*!&@! The snack bar works like the bank. You queue up until you’re at the front and one of the clerks says, “can I help you?” Pretending otherwise is just a dangerous game.

I seethed like Ralphie’s father clutching the shattered remains of his major award. If the back of his neck was sweating now, you couldn’t tell because his shoulders were shrugged so high. Angry as I was, I didn’t want to melt little ears waiting to see Alvin and the Chipmunks (and get thrown out of the place), so the best I could manage without releasing the cuss monster was, “what you just did is called being a jerk.”

The roar in my ears subsided a little as I replayed the previous second back for analysis. I scored myself a 6 out of 10.

By all means ignore the screaming infant
Thirty minutes later Mrs. Spookyblue and I were watching Nicolas Cage go to incredible (and I mean not-credible) lengths to find the Lost City of Gold – in the exact same way he found the lost treasure of the Stone Cutters back in Ep. 1. They were the exact same movie just mail-merged with a different data source.

What was that noise? It sounded like a car alarm for a full 10 seconds before I identified it as a screaming infant. Somewhere below us and to the left wailed either a devil child or a coyote intent on a tasty defenseless bunny. Nicolas Cage held his screen-dad’s shoulders and told him earnestly that he loved him, and the baby howled. Diane Kruger collected a paycheck for showing up to the set looking hot and not doing much else, and the baby screeched.

Honestly, the movie wasn’t that bad.

After three or four of these episodes throughout the course of the movie during which the mother did nothing, the child finally passed out or was carried off by wolves.

Hey, guy! We just landed!
If you don’t know who Kenny Tarmac is, then I’ll try and describe the next piece of human debris who had no idea how close he came to being part of a headline that would have read, “Local man jailed for force feeding annoying cell-phone-talking jerk his own phone.”

— Transcript —
(Annoying ringtone)
“oom sst oom sst oom sst oom sst”
(Readneck behind us in a loud voice)
“Hello? Hello! Hell-? Yeah! Well, I’m sitting here watchin’ a movie!”
(Mrs. Spookyblue)
“You have got to be kidding me!”
(Redneck) “Yeah. Awright. Yeah. … … … Yeah. I dunno. … … Yeah. I’ll call ya later. Okay. Yeah. … … Yeah. Baw.”

Then the redneck muttered in our direction, “better just mind yer own f***ing business.”

It wasn’t until much later, long after I came back from that same foggy place where Michael Douglas said in the movie Falling Down, “I think we have a critic here! I don’t think she likes the special sauce, Rick,” that I registered my surroundings again.

My wife has to, from time to time, get our sheepdog to stop chewing on, chomping, or otherwise bothering some things. It might be a sock, a cat, or even a screwdriver, but the command and tone is always the same. “Leave it!” Evidently this works on husbands too.

The redneck and his son disappeared into the crowd filing out after the movie while Mrs. Spookyblue and I discussed how long it would take for National Treasure 3 to come out. (It’s coming. Bet on it.) In truth, I’m a little surprised the redneck wasn’t in the next theater over watching Walk Hard. He seemed to have more in common with the Dewey Cox story. Slow. Mostly annoying with a few amusing bits. Count on seeing both at Walmart real soon.

Looking forward to Cloverfield.
Welcome to 2008!

Category: Movie Reviews, Stuff