I thought it would be fun to look back at last year’s resolutions and see how I did.

* Be more serious in my blogging. Longer entries, more serious matters and more of a direction for the blog overall.

Eh…so-so. Still a lot of one line entries. And there was NO direction.

* Lose even more weight. I slacked off towards the end of the year due to sinus problems, but I plan on hitting it hard again.

Again I slacked off at the end, but I lost a lot of weight and went down several pants sizes!

* Work on getting the bulletin board some more traffic.

HA! I’m probably going to just delete it soon.

* Try to increase business for my original company while balancing the new one more.

Yes and no. MunkiZ finally had some success while AnimeUSA got a complete face-lift and did see a slight uptick in sales.

So, for this year:

* Lose even more weight!

* Keep blogging at least once a day!

* Work on optimizing the sites for better search engine indexing!

* Work on a couple of projects I will announce at a later date.

* Blog more heavily on the store blog (it bores me)!

(can you tell I’m trying to hype myself up for all these projects?)

Happy New Year to everyone…man I hope 2007 goes smoother than 2006!

Ok, it started annoying *ME*, so it’s been turned off. No more Snap Preview. It is safe to hover your mouse anywhere on the page again.

Is it just me, or are their other people that find it odd that Donald Trump is suddenly on this kick to clean up the Miss USA pageant winners? Not to mention his verbal sparring match with Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, you don’t think this might have something to do with his floundering reality series, The Apprentice, debuting a sixth season on January 7th do you?

I mean…why the sudden concern about the current Miss USA’s supposed partying? Those pictures of Miss Nevada just SUDDENLY showed up? And then Rosie O’Donnell makes a few joking comments about his financial situation int he 1980′ and he feels that’s reason enough to insult her physical appearance? What a class act. And never mind Rosie was right in mentioning Trump’s affairs are widely known, so he is not a shining example of being a moral beacon to young girls.

All in all, I think Trump really has finally gone off the deep end, and after watching the previous five seasons, I won’t be tuning in to season 6. I have no desire to watch crazy old rich men fire people any more.

Today was just long, annoying, and I am so glad it was my last official day of 2006 at work. I have work to do this weekend, but for the most part I am going to chill with DVDs and do work from home.

And may I say how annoyed I am there are no more major holidays until May? Stupid long span of no holidays!

I’ve talked about it for ages, but as of next week, I will no longer have normal phones at home and I will be serviced by Packet 8 VoIP service. Shall be interesting to finally have it in my house, and I am sure I will post lots about it.

The National Film Preservation Board has announced this years inductees to the The National Film Registry.

1) Applause (1929)
2) The Big Trail (1930)
3) Blazing Saddles (1974)
4) The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916-17)
5) Daughter of Shanghai (1937)
6) Drums of Winter (1988)
7) Early Abstractions #1-5,7,10 (1939-56)
8) Fargo (1996)
9) Flesh and the Devil (1927)
10) Groundhog Day (1993)
11) Halloween (1978)
12) In the Street (1948/52)
13) The Last Command (1928)
14) Notorious (1946)
15) Red Dust (1932)
16) Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971-72)
17) Rocky (1976)
18) Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989)
19) Siege (1940)
20) St. Louis Blues (1929)
21) The T.A.M.I. Show (1964)
22) Tess of the Storm Country (1914)
23) Think of Me First as a Person (1960-75)
24) A Time Out of War (1954)
25) Traffic in Souls (1913)

I think every year there are going to be some additions that I “don’t get”, and this year it has to be Groundhog Day. It’s a cute film, I own it on DVD, but is it something that really needs to be preserved for future generations? The criteria is supposed to be an important film either in the way of film or reflecting the times it was made in. All I can think of it that it has come to mean any story where time repeats itself. Who knows. Very odd.

The rest of the list I can pretty much agree with, especially Fargo, one of my all time favorite movies.

Well, I’m not one for posting pictures of myself…and I still won’t! HA! I did want to tell the saga of my hair though. I suffer from extremely curly hair. When it gets humid, or it grows too long, it gets wildly out of control. In this instance I have not had a haircut since July and it was just getting impossible to control, and I was running my fingers through it every other minute.

Well, I did something i have threatened to do for years…I shaved it down to about a 1/2″. Not the best idea in December, but I am already happier! The way I look at it, I could never get in to my normal place for a hair cut, even when I could find time in her schedule, I had no time and add in the fact I was tired of paying $16 to get my hair cut…yay shaver!

Jo tagged me…so not surprised :-p

I have to list three things I want for Christmas and three things I do not want for Christmas.

Want

1. A relatively computer hiccup free year.

2. More time for watching DVDs

3. A more responsible media

Don’t Want

1. To go to work Tuesday

2. To be so blasted angry all the time

3. To hear any more silly news stories about beauty queens and egotistical “billionaires”

I’ll tag people later.

You’ll find a pop-up window now shows up when you hover on my links in blog entries. This is a preview of where you would be going if you clicked on the links. If I get a lot of complaints, I’ll remove it, but I like the general concept. Sign up at Snap and then you can get the plugin here after you sign up (you need the code sign up provides you).

Do you know who I love ALMOST as much as the American Family Association? The Parents Television Council, that’s who! I am sure most of you are familiar by now with the new viral hit to come out of Saturday Night Live, “Dick In A Box” (link takes you to the uncensored version). Well, it seems the PTC is no longer satisfied with being a watchdog of TV, if a TV shows posts to the web, that makes it fair game also.

In a recent press release, the PTC is crying complaining about the fact NBC used the internet to show the uncensored version of the video. The press release really is a piece of work, and as press releases can be copied in full, let’s have some fun dissecting the silliness of it!

LOS ANGELES (December 21, 2006) – The Parents Television Council™ is calling on NBC to explain its decision to post the uncensored version of a “Saturday Night Live” skit on YouTube and NBC.com. The skit featured Justin Timberlake singing a holiday song about a part of the male anatomy that was bleeped 16 times when it aired on television.

It’s called “viral marketing”. Look it up, it’s all the rage.

According to PTC President L. Brent Bozell, “This is a new low for NBC. Clearly, the network will stop at nothing to find loopholes for its indecent programming to reach the public. Moving objectionable content that would not meet FCC standards directly to the Internet is blatantly irresponsible and unacceptable.”

Um…how is it “irresponsible and unacceptable”? They did not find a “loophole” to FCC standards, the FCC has no say in the internet, so moving the video from one medium to another has nothing to do with the FCC, it is merely maximizing their costs and exposure.

Parents Television Council Executive Director, Tim Winter, added, “This very week the networks were in Federal Court decrying the so-called chilling effect of commonsense decency regulations which are intended to protect children. Not only does this Internet distribution reveal the hollowness of their claim, it also illustrates their seeming delight in providing children with an end-run on parents.”

Ok, first off, the word “dick” being bleeped or not, it was pretty damn obvious what this video was about. So in this “indecent” version, kids hear the word “dick”…oh no…the horrors. Plus, if parents are concerned about their Children’s exposure to such things on the internet, they can either A)install filtering software or B)keep the computer in a common area of the house so they can monitor what their child views. But see, we can’t count on parents to take these responsible steps, so it’s best just for the offending items to exist!

The Parents Television Council is calling on NBC to reconsider using the Internet to bypass FCC decency laws and will continue to monitor the broadcast-to-Web trend in general.

Good, then you may want to educate yourselves on the fact this is not a “bypass” but a totally separate medium. It’s lie an “unrated” version of a movie coming out on DVD, does that constitute a bypass of the MPAA rules? No, because the MPAA has no say in home video.

To date, the “Saturday Night Live” skit has been viewed nearly 3 million times on YouTube, further indicating the seriousness of this issue.

How does it indicate any form of seriousness? So what if it’s been viewed 3 million times? Do you know for a fact that an unusual amount of those viewings were by people under the age of 18? Never mind the fact that the only thing indecent about the video is the use of a slang term for male genitals, this is not some earth-shattering incident.

Again, just like all the times I slam on the AFA, this is a case of a bunch of busy bodies trying to impose THEIR morals on the entire country, and where the internet is involved, the world. They shroud themselves in religion to try to make it seemingly more difficult to say anything bad about them, they are, after all, doing if for your own good. Just as I say about TV, YOU have the ultimate power, you have the power of choice.

These people feel that no one, including consenting adults, should see what is essentially a harmless comedy video because it includes a “naughty word”…get over it! There are 1,000’s of worse things going on in this world than the word “dick” being used 16 times in a video! These people would be frightening if they would pour their seemingly unending energies into a truly worthwhile cause such as fighting child molesters. Instead they need to protect you from a word…a simple, four letter word.

I’ll sleep better tonight knowing they are people out there fighting to control a word.

In case you didn’t know, the mighty N.O.R.A.D. spends valuable resources (which oddly doesn’t bother me for once, I find it funny) every year tracking Santa Claus on his world wide trip. You can follow along here.

I was never a big fan of the “Seinfeld” series. I never understood why people were so crazy for it, I thought it was just “ok”. That’s not to say I didn’t find the occasional episode particularly funny though, and one of them was, of course, “The Strike”. There was some plotline about Kramer and a strike, but no one cares about that, it was all about the Festivus storyline. I could explain Festivus to those people out there who have no idea what it is, but it is far easier if you just go read the Wikipedia entry I linked.

I don’t celebrate Festivus, I don’t have a Festivus Pole in the living room if you were wondering, and I don’t have Feats of Strength, I would love to have an annual Airing of Grievances! Course…I kinda do that daily with this blog.

So, in short, Happy Festivus everyone! A Festivus, for the rest of us!

You all know I love movies. If you don’t know that, you don’t pay very close attention! You’ve also picked up on is I like my movies to make sense, have logical conclusions, and not to insult the audience. There is one time I will excuse all these criteria though, and that’s when the film makers are passionate about their subject matter. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino are two of those film makers. Their films don’t always make sense, they aren’t high art, and are quite often silly, but every frame of their films drip with the obvious enthusiasm for film.

That being said, their latest collaboration is…different to say the least. The project is called “Grindhouse“, but that is an overall umbrella name for the two separate films they’ve made. Grindhouse is a term for movie theaters that specialize in showing 1970’s exploitation films. If you don’t know what that means, it would take too long to explain, just think lousy 1970’s movies.

Rodriguez came up with “Planet Terror” about zombies, and Tarantino’s half is called “Death Proof” about a crazy man with a car, killing pretty women. Sound like schlock? Good! This is supposed to harken you back to those awful B movies of the 1970’s!

So why am I writing about this? It seems not many people know about this project yet, and the first trailer just came out today, go check it out! I am very excited about this project, but I like the odder projects to come out of Hollywood.

I hate ebay question time at work. This is the time of the day I set aside to answer all of our “Ask Seller A Question” emails we get. This one….there are no words.

I am looking for a viper, is this what I am bidding on? I dont want any other item.

Here is the auction. Could you please all go take a look at this auction and tell me am I wrong? It says “Viper” in the title…it says “Viper” in the body of the auction…it shows a picture of a Viper toy…

WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK THE AUCTION IS FOR?!?

*pants* *takes a deep breath*

Idiots.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

eh

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince didn’t do much for me either though, title-wise.

Well, since some people *coughROYcough* are emailing me to make sure I am aware the Transformers trailer has hit online, I guess I should give my thoughts on it. And….not a total train wreck, but I will admit the Transformers look better in motion. Although I never questioned the special effects would be good, but I do still question:

- Vehicle changes

- Name changes

- Paint job changes

- Michael Bay being anywhere near this project

So, yes, the trailer gave me a little hope, but then I saw the obvious “human love story” sub-plot, that made me cringe. Transformers is about giant robots that turn int o vehicles and fight, NOT about teenagers in love. Oh well, guess the girlfriends in the theater need to be appeased also. Although, I do know one woman who is probably more rabid about Transformers than I am…(yes Angela…I mean you)

Another short post, but it is the Christmas shipping season and boy are we feeling it. People are panicked, they’re getting short with me because they waited too long to order, and it just serves to kill my Christmas spirit.

Something major happened today, but I won’t discuss it until it’s resolved, hopefully tomorrow. Short version, someone tried to pull a scam on my Grandmother…not a wise move on their part.

Most days is a battle. “What to blog about? WHAT TO BLOG ABOUT?!?” But…then, then the American Family Association goes and annoys me again and there ya go…blog entry written!

In their latest “ActionAlert” they are upset over Two And A Half Men. As they put it “CBS, Charlie Sheen bash Christ, Christmas and Christians”. It seems in the December 11th episode, Charlie Sheen’s character changed the lyrics to the “Joy To The World” into a song about “getting laid tonight”. So, of course the AFA has taken this as some sort of direct attack on Christianity.

CBS and actor Charlie Sheen have used the Christmas season to ridicule and mock Christ, Christmas and Christians. CBS approved actor Charlie Sheen’s vulgar adaptation of a favorite Christian Christmas carol. On the December 11 program, the network included in their Two and a Half Men an episode featuring Sheen singing about his sexual activity to the tune of the traditional Christmas hymn “Joy to the World.”

As I have said endlessly, I have no problem with devout Christians, knock yourselves out, but come on, it’s a parody! GET OVER IT! Just because someone change the words to “Joy to the World” does not mean it was a direct attack on your religion. Who HASN’T changed the words to a seasonal song? To write in about this is just silly. If these people had their way, the world would be a very boring, sanitized place to live, and I, for one, would rather skip that.

This is the seventh time I’ve written about the AFA, and you know what? I doubt I’ll ever stop.

You know…I found an odd side-effect of my weekend marathon of Amazon shopping. It’s mildly disturbing how many less people I’m buying gifts for. 2006 was not a good year for me in the way of “people pruning”.

When you work in retail yourself, Christmas shopping NEVER goes the way you plan…ever. I thought for sure I was going to get my shopping done early this year, but as of December 14th, I had a grand total of 1 gift bought. Go me.

While this Christmas season has been fairly lackluster for us, it has been just the right amount to keep me busy and to keep me from getting other things accomplished. I’ve started now though, and I had just a couple of very random thoughts about it:

- A couple of years ago, my mom asked if I could find her a specific candy from her childhood called Cup-O-Gold. Well, I found it, and in the process found an amazing online candy shop called SweetNostalgia.com. They have all sorts of amazing regional candies and ones you may have thought were out of production. I have never had a moments trouble with this company, and I highly recommend them.

- I don’t know what I would do without Amazon. It seems like 95% of my Christmas shopping is done there, either from people’s wishlists or from my own hunting around. Something odd has started to happen though. I have an Amazon Prime subscription, and as I understood it, that only applies to orders shipped to my house. Well, I had two gifts to ship to people in other states, and when I went to check out, it offered me “free” 2 day shipping via my Prime account. Um…wow. So my gifts I thought I was buying too late will be to the people on Wednesday at no extra cost! How kick ass is that? So, yes, Prime costs $79 a year, but Christmas time alone, I use $79 worth of shipping!

So, tonight I got 3 people done, only…oh 5 more to go I can think of off the top of my head…yay.