Michael Bay continues to bring pain to the masses disguised as Transformers movies, and the next dose is on its way … with a really stupid title.

With the second Transformers film we started getting saddled with stupid tag lines.  Lets face it, Revenge of the Fallen wasn’t exactly an alternate title that made you go, “Wow, I really need to get to the theater and see this!”  And once you did see it … well … the Fallen  tried for “revenge”, but he never quite lived up to that word.

Here we are at the third film and we get “Dark of the Moon”?  Really?  I understand that the film has something to do with learning that the Transformers helped the human race with getting to the moon in the 1960′s, so that part makes sense, but the taglines on these sequels just seem suprfulous in general.  How about just calling it Transformers 3 and leaving it at that?

And the worst bit?  You already think Michael Bay films are a tad bit style over substance, so what will you do when the craziness of a Transformer’s fight is coming at you in 3D?  Yep, we’ll have to deal with the robots we can’t sort out in a fight already and make it even more confusing by showing it to us in 3D.  If any movie ever needed to not be in three dimensions, it was this one.

Way to go, Mr. Bay.  Way to make me dislike a series of movies even more when I should be loving them.

You can also click on the image up there to see a much larger version of the logo so you can see it in all its “glory” …

A total of 41 published this week.

FunJug.com

• a boy in watermelon
• Fox 4 DFW Roast of Social Media
• My Imaginary Friend is Fabio
• Unbelievable Cheerleader Accidents
• BEN KENOBI: PRIVATE JEDEYE
• Realistic Superhero Funeral
• Saturday Shorts: Are You Popular?

RememberingChristmas.com

• Remember Ladder Safety When Putting Up Your Outdoor Decorations

SeanPAune.com

• Miss Parent Teacher Conferences, Go To Jail
• Becoming A Professional Blogger: Part 5 – Getting Noticed
• No Ordinary Family Receives Full Season Order
• The Rocky Horror Glee Show … Was A Total Disaster
• Batman 3 Becomes The Dark Knight Rises
• Scattercast Episode #119: NO!  Not … TRANS FATS!
• Put Down The Trans Fat And No One Gets Hurt!

SpookieBits.com

• Halloween Safety Tips
• 2010 Halloween TV Specials and Movies

TechnoBuffalo.com

• Netflix Testing Streaming Only Subscription In The United States
• Is Gingerbread Actually Android 2.3?
• Sony Brings An End To Cassette Walkmans In Japan
• PBS Launches iPad App And Overhauls Its Site
• Skype Tells Nimbuzz To Cut Off Support By Oct. 31st
• Samsung Galaxy Tab Unboxing
• Borders Drops Select E-Readers To $99 For A Limited Time
• Video: Samsung Galaxy Tab Powered Up And Toured
• Facebook Looking To Overtake Orkut
• Daft Punk Tron Legacy Music Video For “Derezzed”
• iPhone Security Hole Allows You Access To Many Features Without Entering Passcode
• Halo: Reach – Noble Map Pack Caught On Video
• Barnes & Noble Launches NOOKcolor
• White iPhone 4 Delayed Until Spring; Why Bother?
• North Carolina Loses Fight To Force Amazon To Turn Over Customer Records
• Rumor: Apple Looking To Bypass The Carriers For iPhone Sales
• Microsoft Reports Record First Quarter Earnings
• The Most Desired Item This Christmas By Kids?  Apple Gadgets
• Credit Cards Getting New Technology
• Gowalla Looking For Ways To Monetize Itself
• Flashback Friday: A Time Traveler Caught On Film In 1928?
• Redbox Looking To Expand To Online Streaming In 2011
• Twitter Releases New Logos, Sets Rules For Spelling and Screencaps
• Microsoft Acquires 3D Tech Company Canesta

There is nothing wrong with warning your citizens of potential health issues with foods, but acting as a nanny state that will tell me what I can eat is a whole lot stupidity.

This past Sept. Baltimore passed a law that no trans fats may exceed .5 percent in any non-prepackaged food. If a business is found violating the new law once they receive a warning. If they are found a second time they can receive a citation for a fine of $100. If they are found doing it a third time the business could be shut down.

According to WBAL, a take-away restaurant called Healthy Choice (oh no, no trademark infringement there) inside Lexington Market was the first establishment to receive the citation back on Oct. 21st.  On the first visit back in July they were found to be using a margarine that had three percent trans fats, and on this newest visit they were found to be using one with two percent.  They have now switched to a zero trans fat margarine.

Here’s my issue (and I talked about this on Scattercast this week), and that is I have no problem with a health department inspecting for cleanliness and the such, something customers have no say in, but deciding what I can eat?  That is something that should be left up to he consumer and not the government.

There is also the issue of the fact that over 100 businesses have received the first warning, but only one has gone to the $100 fine, so how much has Baltimore spent on this?  There is no better way the city could spend this money?  In 2008 Baltimore was the leading city in the nation for homicides, possibly you might want to spend some of this money on your police force?

Then there is the idea this could lead to businesses being shut down.  Oh, yes, because putting more people out of work is always a good idea.

Yes, people are saying tans fats are bad for you, and so is high fructose corn syrup, but, funny, I don’t see any bans on that yet.  Oh, I get it, those are packaged foods, so lets just ignore it’s one of the leading causes of diabetes, a health issue that is getting worse by the year.  Yep, lets spend local money going after local businesses.  Good idea, Baltimore.

Thanks to Jo for sharing this story on Google Reader.

It’s episode #119 of Scattercast and I’m ready for this election to be over.

News about The Dark Knight Rises.

News about the two upcoming Hobbit movies.

A whole bunch of thoughts on the election being held next week.

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subscribe to Scattercast via iTunes.

The third Batman film has a title now, and at least we know who won’t be the villain.

Series director Christopher Nolan is finally opening up a bit about his third, and presumably last, Batman film. The biggest news is that the title will be The Dark Knight Rises, which, considering where The Dark Knight left off, makes a lot of sense.  Also, all three films have been envisioned as a trilogy, and as is par for the course for these types of “heroes journey” style stories, the titular hero must rise to his ultimate form by the end.

The other big news is that Mr. Nolan has confirmed that The Riddler is not the villain for this film.  This rumor has been floating around for ages, so I’m glad to see it finally squashed as he just doesn’t fit in with the entire feel of these movies.  What we don’t know is who we’re facing off against.  There have been some hints dropped about old characters and new ones, which immediately thinks of Ra’s al Ghul coming back, but add in rumors of females being auditioned for a lead role, and I wonder if Talia al Ghul (the daughter of Ra’s, and a Batman love interest in the books) may be entering the scene.

Of course, the other possibility is that the female will be Catwoman, yet another love interest for our Caped Crusader.

As for anyone else returning, Mr. Nolan has sworn he won’t recast The Joker after the tragic death of Heath Ledger, Two-Face is dead, The Scarecrow is somewhat played out and so that only leaves us with Ra’s al Ghul as a possible returning bad guy.  In the comics this would make perfect sense as he dunks himself in the Lazarus Pits which gives him immortality, but that totally doesn’t fit with Nolan’s world he has set up which leans towards realism.

And in the realm of really good news … Nolan has said “no” to 3D!  THANK YOU!  He told The Los Angeles Times, “We want the look and feel of the film to be faithful to what has come before in the films. There was a large canvas and operatic sweep to The Dark Knight and we want to make a film that will carry on with that look and feel.”

Whatever the set up of this film is, there is no question it will do well, it’s just the wait that is going to kill us.

You know, I have no clue why TV shows feel they have to do Halloween episodes because they rarely work, but sometimes you do one that is just so bad that you aren’t even sure it was about the holiday … or anything for that matter.

I have not watched Glee before, but I couldn’t resist tuning for an episode of a TV show that was billed as an homage to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And, yeah, I shouldn’t have bothered.

As for Glee itself, I’m not even going to bother commenting as I had no clue what was going on with the characters, although I can say with the amount of story progression I saw it must take you an entire season to get through any sort of character arc.  Speaking to The Rocky Horror Picture Show aspects, if this is any indication of what the remake that series creator Ryan Murphy wants to make … please don’t.

First off, I have heard great things about these actors as singers.  Please stop fooling yourselves.  They’re passable at best with way too much emphasis on song trickery to show off their supposed skills.  They are suited for Broadway-style deliveries for sure, but when you’re singing songs that are so well known, you should at least be remotely close.

While I understand that the delivery of songs is open to interpretation, the wholesale changing of the lyrics was just an abomination.  Yes, yes, I’m sure the censors would have reacted to some things negatively, especially in “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch-Me”, some of it just made no sense.  As for the changes to “Sweet Transvestite” … okay, you changed the character to a woman to begin with, which was bad enough, but the lyric changes made the song make no sense, and I’m sorry, but Amber Riley just had no clue how to deliver that song without it sounding like some top 40 Beyonce rip-off.

If you’re going to do an episode that is going to garner obvious media attention, and bring in new viewers, you would think they might have tried to make it at least somewhat engaging.  Instead, I walk away from it wondering why in the hell it seems everyone and their sister seems to adore this show.  And judging from the comments I was getting on Twitter as the episode aired, even regular fans of the show thought it was pretty bad.

Good job, Fox.

Once again proving that TV is just mindless junk, ABC has picked up enough episodes of No Ordinary Family to give it a full season.

It is not unusual for a television network to pick up only 13 episodes of a new series initially, and then after a few weeks they will orders what known as “the back nine”, bringing the total order to 22, or a full season of U.S. television.  Yesterday ABC placed the order for the final nine episodes needed for No Ordinary Family which just tells me that no one has any sense any more when watching TV or producing it.

This past weekend I watched the first four episodes as they were on my TiVo from my dad recording them.  I’d watched everything else, and even though I had planned to skip this show, I gave it a try out of boredom.

… I wish I had remained bored.

Things on this show just … happen.  It wouldn’t be so bad if the writers weren’t obviously aware of this, but they instead insult the viewers by acknowledging it, and almost mocking it.  A primary example of this is as Stephanie Powell (Julia Benz) is testing out her recently acquired super speed by having her lab assistant use a speed gun on her.  As she runs around a horse track at crazy speeds, the assistant keeps shouting out, “How are your clothes not burning off?  Are you generating some-random-word force field around you that protects them?”  She finally dismisses her own questions and just decides to accept it.

Well, isn’t that just handy?  They acknowledge that in theory her clothes should burn off, but obviously that isn’t going to happen since it’s a network show.  Instead of just ignoring it and letting viewers wonder, they instead decide to point it out and essentially go, “Don’t ask, we don’t know.”  Thanks for the insult.

This is just one example of the show doing this, but they’ve done it again and again.  And don’t even get me started on the assistant district attorney who seems to have a bottomless well of money that he can just keep buying all sorts of tech equipment to help the family out.  Because, as we all know, city government employees are rolling in cash.

So, yes, a full season of drivel has been ordered … and people wonder why people look down on the television medium.

You’ve hunted for the job, you’ve applied for it and you’ve learned how to keep it, but this week we’re taking a step backwards.  Do you know how to get yourself noticed?

I know this seems somewhat out of order, but a readerdropped me a note asking about how to get himself noticed so he could land a job.  There are tons of people out there who want to become bloggers, and just because you have a dazzling resume, someone else probably does also.  This is where the extra little things will help you get a leg up.

Take Any Job As Your First One

There are a lot of blogs out there that will pay you for your articles, but there are also some that will pay you next to nothing, and sometimes nothing is exactly what you’ll get.  Yes, you may want to make some nice money from blogging, but when you don’t have any experience and/or any articles to show a perspective employer, you have to build them up somewhere.

The first blogging job I took was … less than ideal, and I don’t even include it on my resume at this point.  The pay was okay, but they had no clue how to manage writers.  It was pretty much a miserable experience, but it gave me some articles to show to other sites that I was interested in working with.

You can also pursue the route of being an intern.  It will be just what you think an internship will be like with no pay, but it gets you familiar with blogging platforms, deadlines and you can show off some published articles to other sites.

Start Your Own Blog

Running your own blog won’t impress people nearly as much as professional work, but it certainly doesn’t hurt you.  One of the first blogs I worked for was concerned by my lack of professional posts, but the fact that I had blogged on my personal site for 2 and a half years at that point impressed them because they said it showed that I was “tenacious”, and that I obviously didn’t give up on things.

If you do start a blog, always write with the idea a potential employer will look a it, something I didn’t do that in the early days, and that was because I had no clue I was going to go into this.  I survived it, but you would be better off to start with that in mind.

Increase Your Digital Footprint

One of the most overlooked aspects of being a blogger is making sure you understand the environment you are going to be working in.  Some people easily ignore the digital world around them because they feel it doesn’t apply to them, but if you are going to be working on the Internet, even if its for a knitting blog, you need to understand the keys to promotion.

Some employers will ask you in advance if you understand social promotion, and a few them will even look you up without you knowing it, so it is best to be out there in advance.  Not only do you need to just have accounts on sites, but you need to have built up some history and be familiar with how the systems work.

Sites you should most definitely have accounts on:

• Digg
• Facebook
• StumbleUpon
• Twitter

Again, you may think this would only apply to technology focused blogs, but it applies to all blogs as you work in a technical medium.  Also, remember that anything you say online can be found, so be mindful of what you post on Facebook and similar sites if you are trying to get noticed.

Going Forward

Right now I don’t have any further parts of this series planned, but if there is anything specific you would like addressed, please feel free to email me or leave a comment about it.

You know what will make kids doing poorly in school perform better? Send their parents to jail for three days.

Wayne County, MI prosecutor Kym Worthy is proposing a new measure that would see parents of poorly performing students who don’t attend at least one teacher-parent conference per school year go to jail for three days. Because, you know, nothing resonates with poorly performing students than seeing their parents hauled off to jail.

While I fully agree that parents should be more involved with the lives of their children, there is a whole lot that isn’t being taken into account her.  What if it’s a single parent who works two to three jobs and doesn’t meet the exemptions, and still can’t make it?  You take that parent off to jail and since that is the sole caregiver that would mean the child going into the child care system.  Yeah, that would so help the kid get on the straight and narrow.

And the Wayne County jails have room for these parents?  Good to know the crime rate in that area is so low.

Detroit City Council Pro Tem Gary Brown told CNN that they agreed with the idea, “It’s child abuse when your child is failing in school and you’re not involved, because you are strapping that child to a life of poverty.”  On the flip-side, Daniel Lessard, a Livonia Public Schools board member, told The Detroit News that it was “the dumbest idea [he has] ever heard in [his] life.” He went on to add, “You can’t legislate parental involvement,” he said. “If the law forces parents to go, what will it do other than fill up a room with parents who don’t want to be there?”

There is no sign that this is going to pass into law, but it is just ridiculous in my opinion.  Locking up parents for three days isn’t going to do anything to help anyone but making them more resentful towards the system.  It is also yet another intrusion into or lives by the government.  In other words, it’s just a bad idea all around.

Ms. Worthy, I think your heart is in the right place, but I have no clue where your brain is.

A total of 38 published this week.

FunJug.com

• Japanese McDonald’s Ad
• TWEET IT – iPads vs iPhones
• Completely Honest First Date
• The Rent Is Too Damn High Party’s Jimmy McMillan at the NY Governor Debate
• Chad After Dentist (David After Dentist Spoof)
• A Renter’s Revolution
• Saturday Shorts: What Makes a Good Party

RememberingChristmas.com

• Donny & Marie Osmond Come To Broadway For Christmas

SeanPAune.com

• $#*! My Dad Says Is Just Awful
• Becoming A Professional Blogger: Part 4 – Keeping The Job
• Three New York City Teachers Released Over Inappropriate Facebook Friendships
• Glee Creator May Remake The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• PTC Criticizes Glee Over GQ Photo Shoot
• Scattercast Episode #118: Where Are The Parents?
• Syfy Gives Greenlight Second Battlestar Galactica Spinoff

SpookieBits.com

• How To Carve A Pumpkin
• Where To Find Free Pumpkin Carving Templates

TechnoBuffalo.com

• News Corp Crosses The Line In Pricing Fight With Cablevision
• New MacBook Air Rumors Continue To Trickle In
• South Korea Aiming For Nation-wide Gigabit Internet By 2012
• World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Opening Cinematic Released
• Facebook Apps Sharing Private Info With Third-Parties
• Apple Reports Record Breaking $20 Billion Quarter
• Kinect Launch Games Officially Announced
• HP Announces Palm Pre 2 And webOS 2.0
• What Has Happened To iPod Sales?
• Does The History Of Mac OS X Names Suggest 10.7 Will Be The Last?
• Apple Introduces Two New MacBook Air Models
• Verizon Announces Galaxy Tab Pricing And Date
• Mark My Words, Lion Is The End Of OS X
• Netflix Looking To Expand To More Countries, Offer Streaming Only Memberships
• Google Rolling Out First Test Of Its Fiber Network
• Rumor: Hulu Considering Lower Price For Hulu Plus
• Networks Blocking Google TV From Viewing Full TV Episodes
• Flashback Friday: Present Like Steve Jobs
• Samsung Galaxy Player 50 Is The iPod Touch Of Android Devices
• E-Readers Stepping Up Their Games For The Holidays
• Google Android Gingerbread Release Imminent

Oh you have got to be kidding me, Syfy. Can you not move on to something totally new?

Syfy was sorry to see Battlestar Galactica go as it was a huge hit for them, so the network greenlit the spinoff Caprica.  The second series tells the story of the Cylons being created some 60 years prior to the original series and deals with all sorts of politics, religion and morality questions.  These are all things the original series dealt with … but a heck of a lot better.

Caprica has been struggling in the ratings and took a very extended mid-season break which has led to speculation that there may not be a second season.

Well, it seems Syfy doesn’t want to give up the ghost yet, and while no decision has been made on the current show, the channel has decided to move forward with a script for a two-hour movie that could launch another series.   Entitled Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome will tell a story 20 years after Caprica, and 40 years before Battlestar Galactica (or ten years into the first Cylon war).

The series will focus around a young William Adama when he was just a Viper pilot, a story touched on during the original series, and show us a newly commissioned Galactica.  It will be much more action driven than Caprica, but still focus on the central questions the other series have dealt with.

Here’s an idea, Syfy … just move on.

While I am in the minority of people who did not hate the ending of Battlestar Galactica, I have had no interest whatsoever in Caprica.  When the first series ended, I was done with the story.  I really didn’t need anything filled in for me, and I feel like you would be better served by finding some fresh material to deal with.  All good things must come to an end, and flogging this franchise any more is just going to be painful and make fans resent you for it.  We’re done, move on.

And, Blood & Chrome?  Really?  Taking your cues from Spartacus: Blood & Sand?  You couldn’t have gone with something like “The War Years”, “The First War”, “Bill Adama’s Kick-Ass Viper Skills”?

Thanks, Syfy for beating a dead horse.

It’s episode #118 of Scattercast and I’m already tired of fall.

How did parents miss this going on?

What was Apple thinking with the new MacBook Air?

And a bunch of random little things.

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subscribe to Scattercast via iTunes.