Enemy of the State (1998) . . .

Okay, now this is funny! Follow the link below then scroll down to the bottom to see the comments that people have left for this sale item on Amazon.com.

Link to Item: Security Check Point

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Yellow Submarine (1968) . . .

A web site took submissions and ranked the best "pun stores", that is, business establishments with a pun-in-the-name. Some are rather witty.

Link to punny puns: There was a sign on the lawn at a drug re-hab center that said 'Keep off the Grass'.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) . . .

Yeah, okay, I'm the weird guy who really likes Brad Pitt. I've liked most of the movies he's done. I like that he can be charasmatic. I like that he takes chances with his roles. I like that he can play suave and debonaire in something like Ocean's 11. I like that he can play batsh!t insane in movies like 12 Monkies and Snatch. I like that he can play straight-stiff in movies like Seven and Meet Joe Black. I like his ability to slip into action like Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Fight Club. Sure, he's had some missteps such as Troy and The Devil's Own. But it is his willingness to step outside of what he does well that makes him so appealing to me. Heck, I even like his political activism.

Now, I have to admit that his ditching Jennifer Anniston to hook up with Angelina Jolie didn't sit well with me at the time, but he and Jolie seem to be in their own groove and oblivious to the rest of the world. They don't match up as a couple in my mind but they seem to fit together and they actually seem to try to use their celebrity to do good things in the world so I'm even starting to come around on that front a bit.

Anyway, to the point of this post, Pitt's next release will be The Curious Case of Benjamin Button this Christmas. And this film looks beautiful. I just hope that the obvious makeup and effects that are required to pull of the film do not pull me out of it. The story is about a man "born under unusual circumstances". That is, he is born as an ancient, shriveled little man and ages in reverse. Michelle, I particularly think you may enjoy this one. It is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald written in 1922.

Link to trailer: My name is Benjamin Button

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Rescue Dawn (2006) . . .

I don't think I have ever mentioned it before, but my Father-in-Law is astoundingly amazing. I'm not certain that there is a thing I could come up with that he is incapable of figuring out. He did graduate high school, but was disinterested in the affair. He worked for some number of years as a machinist at various chemical plants. He was always interested in computers and sort of dabbled with them off and on, teaching himself and then his daughters to write basic programs back when the first home computers were released. When his union was on a protracted strike, he self-taught himself how to repair computers. As his knowledge grew, he took on bigger and bigger projects for various entities (friends, family, church). He eventually ended up getting a job with the parish school board and is now a network administrator. This is a person who self-taught himself, without the benefit of having computers when he was in school and with no formal training prior to getting this job.

When Kristy mentioned my USB Drive incident, he told her to bring it to him. He disassembled the case, looked at the internal components for a few minutes from various angles. Then he said something to the effect of:

Okay, let's see. The device reads as present when plugged in but the drive is unavailable. So somewhere the connection is broken. It could be that this is burnt out and I could replace that. Oh, I see, this circuit is bent and it isn't connecting so there is no power flowing over it. I just have to solder it back down and it should be good to go.

A USB drive is about 2 1/2 to 3 inches long, 3/4 of an inch wide and a quarter of an inch thick. He pulled it apart and looked at very small chips and circuits and found the problem. He soldered it, plugged it in, and it worked just long enough for him to copy all of the information onto another drive before it finally died.

WTF? Who can do stuff like that? Without formal training? He is simply an incredible individual. And I'm once again indebted to him as no one else. I've been absolutely sick over losing all of that information for the past almost week now.

Of course, this past week has been particularly bad. I broke the USB drive on Thursday. When I got home that night I mowed the lawn. As I was removing the mower from our outside storage, I was backing it out between the two cars. I was carefully watching the wheels to make sure that I was dead center between the cars so that I didn't hit either one. When I was almost to the back I noticed that the pull chord juts out beyond the wheels on the right side and the metal bracket that holds the chord in place had dug a scratch halfway down the side of the new vehicle. Then as I was mowing some unseen insect stung me on the leg and I kind of lost feeling in it for a while. Then over the weekend Kristy asked me to go into the attic to get down newborn clothes and some maternity clothes that we had stored up there. While I was picking up some boxes, I sort of lost my balance and fell to one side. My foot fell between the rafters and down into the insulation. I wondered why I hadn't broken through the ceiling below but assumed there must be some reinforcement above the sheetrock. Last night Kristy noticed that there is a huge circle of cracks in Ander's ceiling. Lovely.

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I will not go so far as to say that Pixar can do no wrong . . . hrmph, cough, Ratatouille. But, when they knock one out of the ball park, well, if you knock it out of the atmosphere it flies forever.

Link to newest trailer: Wall*E

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