Day: September 24, 2009

MasterChugs Theater: So very speedy and angry

Trilogy is the current theme du jour of Hollywood these past 10 years or so. Understandable: by keeping a movie series in three, you can insure that an interested audience will come back to see the sequel, you can allow sequels to be open enough for new patrons and a skilled director can usually pare down the bad from the good, thus preventing the series from needing to run over and over into obscurity.

Hit the jump and allow me to educate you on the movie series that is both fast and furious. And yes, I can sum up all four movies in one review. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: So very speedy and angry

Ted Kennedy would have wanted it this way

Does your state have an official sandwich? No? Well maybe your state just doesn’t care about you like Massachusetts. There, state legislators are trying to get the Fluffernutter named the sandwich of the state.

One would imagine they got to talking about this around the table comparing Ninja Turtles lunch boxes and swinging their feet in their tall chairs.

Hate your job?

So, you hate your job? Today a bad day? Want to quit, but too afraid of the job market right now? Here’s your afternoon pick-me-up:

“A vaccine to prevent HIV infection, the virus that leads to AIDS, has shown modest results for the first time.”

Oo, awesome news!

“Previous vaccine trials failed to prevent infection. And during one trial, the vaccine seemed to boost the chance of being infected, which ended testing early.”

Uh, but that’s not the case now, right?

“The new study was conducted in Thailand, with more than 16,000 people between ages 18 and 30 participating. They were all HIV negative at the beginning of the trial.”

… And?

“Nearly 8,200 received a placebo and a similar number received a combination of six vaccines over six months. All were followed for three years.”

“A placebo,” you say?

“Researchers found that those who received the vaccine combination were 31 percent less likely to contract HIV compared with those on a placebo.”

Really? Placebos don’t prevent HIV infection?

“Fifty-one people in the vaccine group eventually contracted HIV, compared with 74 in the placebo group.”

F#%k. They hired people to get AIDS. Did they inject them in the research lab, or just follow them around the streets of Bangcock while they had unprotected sex with shared needles?

But, that’s not all:

“[Colonel Jerome Kim, U.S. Army,] cautioned that a lot more research was necessary, because the vaccine did not prevent everyone from being infected.”

So, they’re still hiring! Time to quit that job and move to Thailand!

Nerd dreams come true

Despite the past few years of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs running our lives, the “geek culture” takeover has been grossly overestimated. Virgins still go to college, LARPers keep their cloaks in their backpacks and nobody plays Mario Party until they’re drunk and inhibitions are down.

But, that doesn’t mean you’ll always be a loser, you geek. Your moment to shine is out there waiting for you, and Terry Herbert (who, as an Englishman, may or may not be a hobbit) is living proof.

While indulging in his metal detecting hobby out in a rural English farm field, he uncovered the world’s largest trove of Anglo-Saxon gold. The pieces are mostly military armor parts and bear Christian symbols and Biblical passages.

Herbert will split the monetary value of the find with the farmer, but his real reward is that he finally has an awesome response when hecklers ask if he’s found anything with his metal detector yet.

Foie gras? Double 0-heck no!

It turns out one of Her Majesty’s secret agents lived the high life only in the movies. The James Bond of the 1970s, Roger Moore, won’t eat foie gras, and he won’t speak to friends who do either.

“I refuse to speak to old friends who, even when they know how it is produced, are prepared to overlook the suffering for self-gratification,” he writes. “My wife Christina feels just the same. No creature deserves to be treated as these birds are for our delectation.”

Moore joined forces with the terrorist organization known as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals three years ago to narrate a video about foie gras production. Some people would say that this would be where his career slipped. We would agree. Moore contends the birds are force-fed the human equivalent of 45 pounds of pasta a day to fatten their livers. Frankly, that sounds like a delicious way to die.

Leave the store you must

We all know the Jedi from the Star Wars movies and that kid from high school who smelled funny. We saw the noble Jedi do battle with the evil Sith, and lost miserably because Yoda and Obi-Wan screwed it up for everyone. But the Sith aren’t the only enemy of the Jedi, they also must fight discrimination.

Unable to use their fabled mind tricks on Earth for some reason, the Jedi are harassed by mere humans. Recently, Daniel Jones, the founder of the International Church of Jediism (not to be confused with Judaism) was thrown out of an English grocery store because he would not remove his hood, which he says is part of his religion.

It seems the Evil English Empire has no tolerance for those who do not belong here and now, but a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Luckily Jedi lawsuit powers still work on this planet.