Fucking and Death

When you get to see a strapping young sweaty young man pounding the hell out of his young thing, and you know that later in that same hour, someone’s getting brutally knifed, on while recovering from the knifing, confesses they had poisoned their lover’s wife only to have that lover choke the knifing victim to death… You’re watching HBO’s ROME.

And in between all that, there’s Anthony and Cleopatra smoking dope together, slapping each other around and doing the horizontal mombo vertically against a wall while Anthony’s mother-in-law (who’s actually his mistress) and his wife wait outside in the heat. (They were never let inside and had to turn around and travel from Egypt back to Rome without seeing Anthony)

Yes, I realize that there’s a few tidbits of fact being manipulated for dramatic sense, but this IS a fun show to watch.

I do wish this whole thing could have been stretched out over a third season, but this is satisfying all the same.

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I quit watching Sci-Fi’s Battlestar Gallactica quite a while back, so this year’s two part season ender elicits a huge yawn from me.

I did read all the spoilers, and thought it hilarious that as the good guys approach Earth, at least four of them are hearing music in their heads.

Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower”

Apparently, the big reveal is finding out who’s a secret Cylon.

Yes, that seems to be the primary goal of the show. That’s pretty much it. They’re a traitor to humanity, but funny thing… they’ve never known it or apparently acted upon it. The ultimate sleeper.

Secret Cylon. I’m guessing NOT much like a Secret Santa.

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Money Palace

Late last week, the Mexican authorities raided a pricey mansion in the heart of one of the rich sections of Mexico City (most likely on a tip) and found the place stuffed to the gills with cash.

American cash. $205 million in American $100 bills. The header pic is photoshopped from one of the pictures after the police pulled the money from the various cabinets and lined up all the stacks in one room.

It came from the profits of selling Meth (speed).

Even before the Americans made us normal folks show 15 forms of identification to get Sudofed, the Mexican drug folks were importing the stuff by the ton and converting it into illegal speed. Now that many of the trailer trash meth operations in Iowa and other rural locales have had a dent made in their cottage industry of choice, Mexico has really turned into the primary source for meth in the US.

$205 million. You can imagine that the drug lords are stinging over this one. I don’t know how many folks would die over a missing $1 million for a Mexican mobster… how many dead bodies will turn up over this $205 million??

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1.7 million paid tickets over a little over two weeks. 70,000 people a night into a large stadium to watch rodeo? Well, rodeo and some favorite music artists.

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is over, and millions for financial scholarships have been generated once again.

ZZ Top wrapped up the final show last night. It’s like a bizarre state fair: You get to hear a live version of “Sharp Dressed Man” while you can still smell the cow shit.

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The reason why oil companies are considered evil is because they look to make a profit by … well, you know, finding oil.

When an entire country takes on the job, the state gets all the revenue, but there’s a problem with continued investment and the bold chance taking that it sometimes takes.

This is why Mexico, who nationalized it’s oil economy has an oil industry in a critical state [Chron.com]

They’ll eventually ask for help, and the people helping will ask for money in return.

Point here is, if a company is given the incentive to produce, yes, the company makes money, but the state has more oil to sell to its own people. Instead of importing it, which is what’s happening in Mexico.

It’s not always about making the most amount of money, it’s about finding what you’ve got and developing that the best you can. Holds true for many areas…

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Neil Stephenson on why the people like 300 better than the critics did. [NYTimes]

Imagine Bush as Xerxes… yes. Neil went there.

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The RITA Awards are given to the best romance every year, and
They either mean something or they don’t.

I know how they’re judged. They don’t. The RITA Award Judging process isn’t fair, and while some decent books actually get awarded a RITA, not every RITA is truly the best in their respective category.

Candy at SmartBitches has more.

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How prevalent is the file sharing of illegal files?

Well, one guy that made a decent living off of pirating software and selling the CDs tells his story here

It’s hard out there to be a pimp.

– — –

AOL? Goodbye!

Remember when it was AOL that was the determining factor in buying out Time Warner? How all the factors were coming together for some giant be-all do-all conglomerate?

Eh… not so much.

As many guessed years ago, AOL was a paper tiger, supported by people who didn’t know how to say goodbye to AOL subscription rates. They finally learned.

Rumors are floating about that TimeWarner will now SELL or spinoff AOL[NYTimes Blog]

AOL made some great purchases, but they never managed to DO anything with them.

And AOL will continue to diminish. They lived by the stupid user and they’re dying by the stupid user.

– — –

via Digg, Here’s a link to the top 10 Worst TV spinoff shows of modern time.

I had completely forgotten about the THE SANFORD ARMS (Sanford and Son without Sanford… or Son) [shudder]

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Looking at the stats from Romancing The Blog, one of the more popular websites our hosting company hosts, I can see that a lot of the oldest computers were retired over the Christmas holidays. How do I know this? Browser resolution, primarily. Before Christmas, 10% of the readers used a 800×600 monitor to view the web. Now, that number is hovering around 3%.

7% of the RTB readers had to have updated their old computers over the past Christmas holiday to new versions with bigger monitors and spyware free hard drives…

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And finally, a list of words/phrases. Where did they come from?

Most if not all of them are in the common lexicon.

Meh (indifference)
Yoink (to steal)
Embiggen (to make larger)
Kwyjibo (A big, dumb, balding North American ape… with no chin — not used much)
Our New … Overlords (as in welcoming your new master)

They all originated somewhere. It’s pretty easy to guess, but I’ll leave that an open question for the comments.