There was a movie back in the 80′s or early 90′s, I believe it was called Bliss. It was an Australian movie, about a fellow who at one point was a busy workaholic kind of guy, but all that changed after he had a heart attack.

Surviving the heart attack, he spent time at home, recovering. There, he was able to really observe his family for the first time, and he became convinced that he may have actually died from the heart attack, and that he was now in hell. There was his unfaithful wife, his neo-nazi son, crack-whore daughter…

From there, things sort of went downhill for the unlucky protagonist. The film had its funny moments (I think it was supposed to be a comedy, actually) but mostly I would call it poignant.

However, Harry Joy did get to die happy in the end.

And we all learned some important things about honey.

Time for another rant about what ticks me off with technology.

They keep changing the accessories.

On what seems like a regular basis, suddenly all your accessories aren’t compatible with the newest gizmo. I’ve been through this with the cellphone companies, both Nokia and Sony/Ericsson have rendered all their A/C adaptors and car adaptors obsolete by changing the specs. There’s no reason for this. Other than, they’ve decided it’s time to sell more adaptors. Seriously – the sub-mini phono jack is a fine standard for headsets and the coaxial DC jack is fine for power. All your stupid annoying proprietary molded plastic plugs just earn you more hate – and a deeper level in hell every time you change them on us!

However, my specific ire today is not for cellphone companies – although they, and virtually every other tech company is guilty of this at one time or another. No, today I am ranting again about Apple.

So last night I decided I wanted to watch a certain movie on my tv in my bedroom. I bought & downloaded the movie a month or two ago from the iTunes store, and have watched it on my computer once or twice, but now I want to see it on an actual TV. So I poked around and checked and found that indeed, you cannot burn purchased movies to a DVD. (You can burn purchased music to CDs, so I had hoped maybe movies would work the same.)

Oh well – there’s always another way. I have an “Apple universal dock” on which I spend about $50 and it has an AV port on it. So I unplugged that from my computer and dug up an AV cable and hooked it all up to my TV, after first transfering the movie to my iPhone. Figuring I’ll just run the movie on the iPhone and play it to the TV. The iPhone has TV-out and it was all set up right.

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Ok, this should be the last silly song for a while.  Probably.  No promises.

Are You a Pirate?

He is here to save us from…inferior sauces? Yes. And they call him… Kikko-Man.

Kikko-Man - here to save us from inferior sauces.

I got this idea from a post in a thread on a forum about swords and armour. I sorely wanted to post it as a reply there, but it would be so far off topic… Here’s the gist of the post:

for example, in the icelandic saga of gunnlaug, we have Hrafn and Gunnlaug intent on dueling each other to the death. They try to fight in Iceland, only to have the ruling council there tell them no – no dueling here. illegal upon pain of death to duel here. so they agree to sail to norway to settle their differences but again, the earl there tells them no – no dueling here. so they wind up walking into sweden just so that they could come to blows. that is a heck of a long way to travel just to find a jurisdiction where they would be free to fight.

So here’s the angle – the movie version of Hrafn and Gunnlaug’s Saga: You’ve got two guys, strong, athletic, but also kind of cute and loveable in their fighting-and-pillaging kind of way. They get in a squabble about some perceived injustice, something kind of small and ridiculous, but it gets out of hand. Hrafn steps on Gunnlaug’s foot, or Gunnlaug crashes his cart through Hrafn’s fence or something. So, there are some insults, some bravado, one thing leads to another and swords are drawn. They’re gonna duel it out. But wait! No, not here. The ruling council forbids it. Well, these two get drinking and talking and finally they both put their foots down – their gonna do it. The fourth cousin of a friend of a guy Hrafn once drank with heard that there was dueling in Norway. So they’re gonna go to Norway and fight it out. To save cost and make sure neither back out, they’re gonna go together – on the same boat! Now you’ve got Hrafn and Gunnlaug, road tripping, getting into some wacky adventures – they end up having to save each other from the occasional predicament, because neither wants the other one to get dead before he can get a chance to have the darn duel! Finally, they reach Norway. Ready to Get It On! But no. The Earl forbids it. So they’re having a drink, telling the story to the innkeeper, and he says Oh – My wife’s no-good cousin had a friend who got killed in a duel in Sweden – you can duel there. So off they go, Hrafn and Gunnlaug, walking to Sweden. More whacky adventures ensue.

In the movie version, neither Hrafn or Gunnlaug actually die. They do get to have their duel, but it ends up in a draw – they battle it out for a full 5 or 10 minutes, first one then the other losing or breaking his sword, they resort to fists, and so forth. Finally, exhausted, the two are laying muddy and bruised in a ditch, panting.

Hrafn (panting): “Gunnlaug… I think I won..you yield?”
Gunnlaug (panting): “Yield…not a chance…I won’t forgive… uh..”
Hrafn : “No…it is I who cannot forgive…ah…”
Gunnlaug (hesitant>: “Hrafn…I no longer remember, what we were fighting about.”
Hrafn : “Nor I. Let’s go home.”

In the director’s cut — or after the credits roll — the final scene will be Hrafn and Gunnlaug, back in their home village, where Gunnlaug buys drinks, but accidentally knocks one of the mugs over, pouring meade all over Hrafn. Hrafn jumps up in anger, going for his sword, saying something untoward about Gunnlaug’s mother. Gunnlaug goes for his sword too, demanding justice.
The end…