lifebsideben

Now I’m pissed. This is the book I’d write, if I could write. Or at least wish I would write. Now it’s written. I’m going to go jump off something large and precarious.

Go buy John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise, See, I even included a non-affiliated Amazon link right there for you to click. It’s that good. Funny as all get out. It’s like the Book of the Subgenius, but with truer lies. If you like your humor weird, and your facts with extra falsity, you’ll love it. Truly strange stuff, this guy has a great imagination. I want to befriend him. To usurp some of his wit. To dine on his brain and make his thoughts my ow–wait, forget that last bit.

I use my credit card to pay for just about everything, in large part because it earns me miles on the airline I use to go home and see the parents, but also because it’s convenient to reconcile spending at the end of the month. I’ve noticed I almost never get asked for ID anymore during the transaction. I was writing this off to the fact that I’m in my 30s now and look vaguely respectable, and I suppose don’t normally buy stuff high on the “fraud” list (the stuff like that I do buy, like DVDs and electronics, I tend to buy online.) Recently I became curious about this and searched around on the net a bit, and realized, you actually aren’t required to show ID. In fact, you’re wise NOT to show ID. Why not? Apparently, as long as the card is signed, that’s proof enough; whomever possesses the card, and signs the invoice, the merchant is supposed to check the signature against the back of the card, period. (Whether they actually DO check the signature is a different issue.) That’s why the card isn’t valid for transactions until signed. If you present an unsigned card, the merchant is supposed to require you to sign it, or deny the transaction. They cannot, however, require identification; the signature IS primary identification, to Visa. This apparently reduces the possibility of ID theft to some extent (if the merchant never sees your ID, they can’t copy your birthdate and other information down, for example.) I believe it probably also protects Visa from some amount of fraud as well, but whatever the rationale, they can’t ask.

Since I discovered this a few months ago, I’ve not given my ID to anyone when charging items.

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Actually went to a movie yesterday, which is wildly unusual now that we’ve got the wee one. Saw King Kong with my dad at the Metreon in SF. The nice thing about going to the 10:40am show is you can sit wherever you want! The bad part is, at the Metreon, there’s no matinee price break. $8/person, and after a 3hr move, $11 in parking at the 4th & Mission garage. Over $30 for two people to see a movie (including the 5oz bag of peanut m&ms: $3.80) seems pretty steep, but hey, it’s King Kong! Gotta see it on the big screen.

And see it we did. All of it. All 3 hours. Every little detail Peter Jackson could possibly dream up. Seriously, get a better editor. It never quite got boring, but certainly there was a lot of languishing on scenes, extra shots, that really didn’t add anything, but did draw it all out. Some of the stuff (the rescued kid on the steamer, the brontosaurus stampede, shooting the giant roaches off a person) even detracted, in my opinion. Still, there was a lot of neat stuff to see, the T-Rex vs. Kong part was entertaining if ridiculous, and the ending was really well done. I don’t remember much from the original, but I think the spirit of it was probably pretty accurately carried forward–adventurous, over-the-top, etc. I didn’t mind that we didn’t see Kong until the 1hr mark (except that if it were edited properly that would have been the 35 minute mark). Some of the effects were cheesier than I had expected (especially the stampede stuff), but that’s in part because I expect them to be perfect these days. Overall I’d give it a B-/C+. Mostly entertaining, but too long and not “perfect” effects. Not worth $8 to me personally, but some folks probably would think it is. I do believe it’s not going to be the box office savior a lot of folks are hoping for.

Tags: movies, review, Sony

Warning: spoiler alert!

Oh man, this season’s Nip/Tuck ending was pretty lame. It was like something an 11-year old made up on the spot to stay out of trouble. “I don’t have a penis, so it can’t be me”… “but we saw you getting a blowjob!”… “she was drunk, I paid her $100 to pretend so I could be like one of the boys.” Areyoufuckingkiddingme?

Seriously, I think the writers decided they had to come up with something clever, and whatever the first draft, or even second draft, had as the Carver, wasn’t “good” enough, so they concocted this at the last minute (I’d say about 1.5 episodes prior, tops) and slapped it together. Jeez. And what’s with Kit, if she was in on the whole damn thing, why did she bother with trying to frame those other folks? That couldn’t possibly work. If it was her brother, then what, she thought locking up the main doc wouldn’t cause him to go off on a spree? WTF? What was the point of drawing blood? It was a show for the other cops? Stooopid.

Ah well, at least the Matt character is coming back to a positive arc. He was getting really trite as the neo-Nazi-wannabe. Still woulda been cool if he was the Carver. Or ideally if the guy who ended up being it, was actually the transexual chick from last season that Matt fell in love with–she had returned after more surgery to look different, and took revenge. That would have rocked. FX, man, you let me down. Nip/Tuck is one of the best trash tv shows on, but this reveal was laaaaame.