I don't remember where I found this spiderman thing but his dancing is pretty fruity looking if you ask me. The background of the site where I found it was probably white. It looks pretty crappy against my dark background.
One of my favorite TV shows Dr. Katz has made it to DVD. So far only the first season is out. It's a mere 6 episodes but later seasons have more episodes to them and I presume their release on DVD is forthcoming. I used to watch this show all the time when I was in college. When I spotted the DVD on the rack at Best Buy I knew immediately I wasn't leaving the store without one in my bag. The animation style used in Dr. Katz is called squigglevision. Basically even thought the characters are stationary their outlines are constantly undulating and wiggling around. I think I'm going to go watch an episode right now. If I remember right I had a cartoon crush on Laura the receptionist. 
Some Dr. Katz related places on the internet I found interesting:
The Many Faces of Dr. Katz - fan site
A list of Dr. Katz's patients from Jonathan Katz's official site
My third horror movie rental was Hostel (official site here). It was without any doubt the bloodiest of the my 3 rentals. It had more scenes that were disturbing and uncomfortable to watch than my previous 2 horror rentals combined. The plot wasn't great or even very unpredictable but I didn't care about that. The setup is that some traveling backpackers decide to visit a hostel in Slovakia with the intent of satisfying their hedonistic desires. The 3 friends find what they are looking for but also end up getting separated from each other one by one. Where they end up and what happens to them is essentially what makes this a "horror" movie. There are some tense moments but they are mostly brief. The filmmakers always delivered some sort of disturbing outcome.
The most disturbing moment for me was the scene where the girl had her eye hanging out. The main character manages to rescue her from her captor and her torturous death but decides it's best to snip off her eye which was dangling from its' socket by the nerves or something. This was pretty sick stuff. Overall I'd give this movie 3 stars on a five scale. It probably deserves more than that but I watched this a while ago now. It's not fresh in my mind anymore so I've already forgotten a lot about it.
The same night I rented Saw II, I also got Wolf Creek (official site here). Blockbuster had the unrated version which is what I got. I don't even know if they had any other version but it wouldn't have mattered as I would've gotten the unrated one either way. I liked this one much better than Saw II. It wasn't particularly gory I didn't think. More so than in most movies the first third of the movie stood in contrast to the horror that followed it. There was some character development and some events that allowed you to become familiar with the general surroundings. In this movie the location (the Australian outback) played as important a role in the movie as any character. The vast open spaces created an atmosphere of isolation. As I watched the movie develop I knew it was only the setup and that things would inevitably take a turn for the worse. It was a longer setup than probably most movies of this variety. You almost get into a comfortable spot before things turn bad, but when they do, they really do. It's a horror movie and it was pretty horrific. Again, as a whole it wasn't particularly gory I didn't think. The most intense part I thought was when this girl got her fingers cut off. Still I backed it up and watched it a few times. I thought it was a scene that needed some extra attention and a few extra viewings to fully appreciate the gravity of her situation. It wasn't especially graphic the way the showed it. They didn't show it at all really. She was knocked down on the ground and on her back when the guy pulls out a knife (like first photo below). She had her hand up to defend herself I guess and then the next thing you see is some fingers hitting the ground. Then of course there was the aftermath (second photo). She reacted like someone who just had some fingers violently cut off. If that's not horrific I don't know what is. I sat in the comfort of my living room imagining what that would be like to be in her situation. Her life was still very much at stake but yet losing fingers is pretty shocking. How does a person get past that moment where you see your fingers tumbling to the ground, then get up off the ground, get your legs moving and get away from whoever cut them off? Do you pick up your fingers or just run for your life without them?
The terrifying part of the movie wasn't so much blood/guts visuals as it was the surroundings and the events happening to the characters...discovering where they were, who they were with and what he was capable of. The sounds of screams and pleading from that girl being tortured in the shed was amazing. It sounded like such real, genuine and almost unimaginable terror. To watch such movies puts me in an uncomfortable space in my own mind. It's not for everyone I suppose but I like to have that type of experience once in a while...only while sitting "comfortably" in my living room of course. I give Wolf Creek 3-1/2 stars.
I like a good horror movie on occasion. I don't know why but sometimes movies that are mentally or visually disturbing and uncomfortable to watch interest me. The last 3 movies I rented would fall in this category. Probably none of them will go down in history as horror greats but they were definitely disturbing and uncomfortable viewing to varying degrees. The first one and my least favorite of the 3 was Saw II (official site here). The tagline from the trailer was great. "Oh yes, there will be blood". I had higher hopes for it and I was somewhat disappointed overall. The opening scene was great. This guy was led to believe by his captor that he had a key implanted behind his eyeball which would free him from his trap. It's too bad nothing else that happened after that was on a level as disturbing to watch as that was. The guy had a scalpel, a mirror, and a limited amount of time to get the key out from behind his eyeball and unlock himself from his trap before the contraption would slam shut on his head and kill him.
I also use bt.etree.org but not as much so far. If I do this much more I'm going to need another drive to fit all this stuff onto. My 20GB drive has 8 GB free left and my 120GB drive has about 31GB free space. My first computer I ever had, had a hard drive with a capacity of 1-1/2 Gigs. That was about as big as they came on home computers back in '96. It also had 32MB of RAM which was an upgrade I chose from the standard 16MB offering. That's weird to think about. Now I'm downloading torrents that are more than 4GB in size and I have 512MB of RAM. My drives now are mostly filled with tracks I rip from my CDs in order to burn them on mix CDs I make for myself. I've ripped some of the tracks to lossless formats (wav or flac files) and that takes up a lot of space. I think I'm going to start shopping around for a couple of external drives for expansion and for backups. I'm thinking probably 2 drives might be the way to go. I'd probably mirror them and then if one dies the other is a backup. I haven't had a drive crash and burn on me yet but if I can avoid it I'd rather not lose a bunch of files if it ever does happen to me.
I think the birds get confused when they are building them because each slot has a little bit of nest in it. Eventually they manage to finish a complete nest and live in one of them. I'm not sure exactly who built what and when but out of 6 slots 5 have at least part of a nest built into them. Two of these nests look fairly complete. I haven't paid very close attention lately but I figured the new nests were built by sparrows again. Earlier today I think I saw the barn swallows again. I couldn't be sure because the glass on my patio doors was dirty. Whatever they were they were not sparrows. I cleaned the glass now and I plan to keep an eye on them to see what they are. This is a barn swallow.
