The other night, Kiefer Sutherland won an Emmy for Best Actor In A Drama Series. Kudos to him! However, I think there was a major over-sight by the academy in the category of Best Supporting Actor In A Drama Series…Jack Bauer’s Satchel Of Doom.

Where would Jack be if it wasn’t for his Bag Of Death? It’s always with him, at the ready, able to spew forth many forms fo gadgetry and weapons.

No matter how bad Jack’s day has gone, no matter how many terroists he’s killed, no matter how many family members have gotten amnesia, Jack always has time for his Satchel of Doom.

The best part? The SOD works both in day and night settings, so Jack can go straight from work to a night on the town!

And when the chips are down, when the entire country of China wants you dead, when your goverment has forsaken you, Jack always knows who his REAL friend is!

I had originally planned for this entry to be my bringing to everyone’s attention the glory of this accessory, but as I searched the web for pictures, I discovered many people had already done this. I had taken to calling it the Bag Of Death, but I found it is more commonly known by Satchel Of Doom. However you slice it, it’s a magical bag that always has JUST what Jack needs at any given time to save the United States once again.

I know this entry makes no sense to anyone who has never watched 24, but if you have, you are sure to have noticed the SOD. The first time I clearly remember it standing out to me was when Jack held up the convenience store in season 4. (He was trying to delay a terrorist…it made sense at the time!) It seems lots of people also noticed it though and it now has it’s own MySpace page, articles about what the SOD contains, and whole pieces dedicated to how Jack should design laptop bags. So, while this drifted, I am glad to know I am not the only one who shares in the love of the SOD.

Hopefully the Emmy’s will soon include a category for Best Inanimate Object In A Drama Series, because we all know who’s going to win!

Yep…more Transformer’s whining, I can’t stop myself. This time, it’s a close-up of Bumblebee’s face.

I get that they are trying to make them look more like robots, but can’t we be at least a little less “Messed-up-drug-dream-face-of-a-guy-wearing-a-gas-mask”?

Spotted this over at Engadget today, and they in turn got it from the Daily Mail. So, the idea is you store your car in the belly of your RV on a sliding tray. I don’t even want to think of how much this costs.

I did love Engadget’s suggestion though:

All it needs is a green paint job, a big number “2″ on both sides and you’ve set up every Thunderbirds fan in the country for a month of restless nights: this pointlessly excessive system definitely makes it the Tracy family’s day tripper of choice.

Probably only funny to people who know of The Thunderbirds, but man I would be tempted. Anyway, start saving your pennies for this one kids, I am sure it will top many Christmas wishlists this year.

Amazing it’s already been 1 year since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans. The thing that kills me, is:

1) Ray Nagin is still a moron, and somehow got re-elected. The man can’t seem to open his mouth without pissing someone off. (The Chocolate City speech and the Ground Zero/hole-in-the-ground comment come to mind) This guy is just a disaster as a mayor, but somehow he just keeps chugging along.

2) The media is DYING for another Katrina to happen.If a strong wind comes along, they are quick to jump to “Could this build in to the next Katrina?” They couldn’t have reminded the public any more if they tried that the current storm, Ernesto, was coming to life around the same time as Katrina. I wouldn’t mind so much if they didn’t sound so much like they were drooling for a bad storm. It wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t seem to be rooting for it to happen.

To all those effected though, my heart still goes out to you.

I really didn’t want to comment on this whole thing, but now I can’t resist…did anyone really think John Mark Karr killed JonBenét Ramsey? Yes, he is a sick bastard. Yes, he does not belong on the streets. Yes, I am happy he is in jail. No, I never thought for a second he was actually guilty of this murder.

The problem? Feeding this guys dellusional state has made it next to impossible to ever convict anyone for the murder of JonBenét.

Defense Attorny: “So let me see if I have this correct. You believe my client killed JonBenét? Just like you once thought her parents did it? Just like you questioned the other Ramsey children? Just like you thought that John Mark Karr did it? Really, aren’t you just grasping at anyone you remotely think might have been in the general vicinity?”

That’s all it’ll take to plant resonable doubt in the jurys mind. Case closed, and possible real killer gets away with it.

This case has been botched since day one (fun side fact, Deputy Chief Jim Hughes, who resigned over his part in the handelling of the case, is now the Chief of Police in my town…lucky me), and the media is as much to blame as the Boulder police. They were so anxious to be first out with a story, they jumped on any inkling of a suspect, and this time, Karr really filled the bill. A history of being arrested for child pornography, a seeming obsession with the JonBenét case, and his confession when confronted with the allegations. He did everything he could to cooperate with the authorities, making it seem just a bit too easy. It seemed everyone could see it was a bit odd, except for the media. They were too excited by the propsect of dragging out this story again for the ratings and the sales of newspapers and amagazines. All the whle, all they were really doing was feeding his dillusion and harming any chance of capturing and convicting the real murderer. Not that I really thought they had a chance after 10 years.

Everyone is to blame for this massive mess-up though. The Boulder, CO prosecutors for making a huge spectacle out of this process. The media everywhere for rushing to convict this man in the court of public opinion before they did their own investigative reporting. The Boulder police (again) for not doing thier own investigating, which, it seems, wasn’t too difficult to do if they had bothered to look in to where Karr was that Christmas. Never mind the fact the amount of money the Boulder,CO officials spent flying him back from Thailand in business class, and then in a state-owned pivate plane from California to Colorado.

So, kudos to you all, way to go on getting your 5 minutes of tv time on the back of a tragic murder and the mentally deranged man who sought attention. Guess you all won.

This weeks 30 Days placed pro-choice Jennifer, a 29 year old woman with a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology that works in a women’s health clinic, in a Christian, pro-life maternity home named His Nesting Place. During her 30 days there, she is supposed to follow the house rules, work in the pregnancy crisis center and take part in their pro-life activities.

Again, this episode fell on it’s face, but not for the usual lack of time, but more from neither side really being that engaged in the give-and-take of the format. Upon Jennifer’s arrival, she was asked by one of the head workers if she worked in a place that “sells abortions”. Oh yeah, this is going to go well. During the time Jennifer spent at their pro-life activities, she insisted on not standing with them and wearing a pro-choice shirt.

I am all for people standing by their convictions, but the whole point of 30 Days is to learn from each other. This season seems to be suffering from people who are either too attached their beliefs to listen (such as this episode) or they are too willing to give in (the New Age episode). Last season you had true immersions, like the Off-The-Grid episode, but this season it seems to be breaking their own rules left and right. I’m afraid the format of this show may be broken now, and I’m not really sure there’s a way to fix it.

If the site keeps randomly changing looks on you, it’s because I’m playing with some new layouts. You aren’t losing your mind….or are you??

Ok folks, I think this is going to be the final choice. I’ll be tweaking it some, but I was getting tired of the old one, but if you really hate this one, leave me a comment.

Why do they keep doing this to me?

This is the Megatron I grew up with. He turned in to a gun. He was cool.

Later on, in Generation 2, he became a tank, still cool and I could live with it.

Both heads were pretty similar though.

So, leave it to the movie folks to mess up even more. Here’s Megatron’s head from the movie.

And also, he turns in to some sort of weird alien jet.

Why are they doing this? Are they trying to anger the fans? They can’t even throw us a lousy bone? No, they have to keep pissing us off by changing EVERYTHING about the original we loved so. Instead they almost seem to be intentionally annoying us by trying to see how much they can get away with and still have us go to the movie. Part of me wants to boycott it, part of me still thinks “It’s the Transformers, you have to go!” Damn you Hollywood…damn you.

Do you all remember Debra Lafave? I wrote about her here. She was the teacher in Florida who slept with a 14 year old student, but got out of jail time on the “I’m too pretty for jail” defense. Yeah, you all remember her. Anyway, part of her sentance was to serve 3 years of house arrest, but it seems you can get out of that if Matt Lauer wants to interview you at a hotel.

I have no real problem with the interview, the state didn’t object as she’s not being paid for it, but I have a problem with her going to the hotel. Why couldn’t NBC film the interview at her house? Even if it was in the backyard? If she lives in an apartment, remove some furniture during the interview and move it back when you leave. There was NO reason for her to be allowed out of the house for a television interview!

This makes no sense to me at all. I’m angry at the judge, the prosecuters, and NBC equally. It would seem “house arrest” no longer means anything if you’re “pretty”.

If, like me, you have had an impossible time getting to the site during the day, things should be better now as I’ve had my host, DreamHost, move me to a different server. This is one of the drawbacks to using a shared host. Sure, they may be cheap, but if one of your “neighbors” on the server is a resource hog, then it slows down your site also. So if someone is running a faulty script? It causes the server to bog down.

I have no clue who else was on our old server, but during the daytime, this site would move like a snail, while my company web sites were running smooth as can be. So after a lot of debate, I had DreamHost move this site to be on the server as my company websites. Everything appears to be running smoothly, but do drop me a line if you find anything broken.

Well, I am sure most of you have heard the news by now, but Pluto is no longer a planet, but a new classification, a “dwarf planet“. From the amazingly quickly created Wikipedia article:

The resolution describes a dwarf planet as an object that:

* is in orbit around the Sun,
* has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape,
* has not “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit,
* is not a satellite of a planet, or other nonstellar body.

This definition demotes Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet because it has not cleared the neighborhood of its orbit (the Kuiper Belt).

This decesion was reached by a vote taken by the International Astronomical Union who were meeting in Prague. As late as last week it thought 3 more bodies were going to be named to planet-status, but instead we lost a “planet”, taking the population of our solar system down to 8.

Science is an ever changing field of study, but it seems, I don’t know, sad, that we lost Pluto! It was a planet from it’s discovery in 1930 until now, and now it just seems weird now it’s just some hunk of rock out there.

See? Poor little guy! Oh well. Have fun replacing all those models, charts, and text books in schools now that teach the system has 9 planets!

Last year, I wrote up an entry on a fun pair of fraternal twin, blonde sisters named Lynx & Lamb who perform under the name Prussian Blue. Yes, those sweet little, Hitler-lovin’ girls are back! ABC Primtime decided to do an update story on them this week. Basically not much has changed except they moved out of Bakersfield,CA so they could find some place “more white”. Other fun things we learned:

- Lynx and Lamb think the Holocaust is over exaggerated because they aren’t sure there were even 6 million Jews alive at that time.

- David Duke, former leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, thinks they are a wonderful example for other children.

- They released a second album…music lovers everywhere openly weep upon hearing it. (say what you will of their politics..they can’t sing!)

- They tried to do their part for Hurricane Katrina relief by sending a box of supplies down to New Orleans. Sadly, their box ended up at a surplus store when no one was real eager to take a box makred as to be distributed to whites only.

- Their father, a former drug user, tried to win custody back from their mother and failed. He claims he doesn’t share their racist views, but who knows.

- The Gaede family ranch (owned by their grandfather on their mother’s side) brand is a Nazi swastika. Picture here since they make it very clear all pictures are copyrighted.

As I was wandering around, reading up on these beacons of brotherly love again, I found this delightful entry on their blog. They have released a Germany-only CD entitled “For the Fatherland” which “contains the songs from the girl’s cds that have not yet been declared illegal by the oppressive German government.” Gee, do you ever think it might be because they have no desire to hear a song the glorifies Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party? Everyone needs to remember that the Germany of today is still very sensitive to what happened during World War II.

Really, what else can be said about these girls, their family or any of their ilk? Not a whole lot that hasn’t already been said. They will continue to sit around and declare how people that don’t agree with them are complacent in the destruction of their race and/or their country. I call it loving my fellow man no matter how they appear, or what they believe. Yes, that means even Lynx & Lamb fall in to that category, no matter how disgusting I may find their beliefs, I hold no ill-will towards them, if anything, I feel pity for them.