Stovecat

Slo-Mo Slap

A compilation of slow things.

Man vs Wild

Bear Grylls is the man in Man vs. Wild. I watched this episode not long ago that was a series of clips of him eating different things. The episode was called "Bear Eats".

• Palm Weevil Grubs 1:00
• Crucifix Spider 2:00
• Long Horn Beetle 3:00
• Sand Beetle 4:40
• Camel Spider 5:25
• (Dead) sheep eyeball (boiled in thermal pool) 6:45

• Freshwater trout
• Land Crab 2:30
• Water Snake 3:30
• Urine drinking 4:15
• Fluid from Elephant dung 5:30
• Everglades swamp water 6:00
• (Unspecified) lizard 7:45
• Everglades tree frog 8:20

• Sand Fish
• Fat tail scorpion 1:55
• (Dead) Zebra 3:15
• Goat testicles 4:50
• (Dead) Camel fat 5:35

• Termites
• Snails 0:30
• Grasshopper 1:15
• Cooter turtle 3:15
• Piranha 5:00
• Horned Viper Snake 7:20

• Fluid from camel stomach
• Palm tree dates 2:45
• Sugar pine cone nuts 4:00
• Eskimo Potato 5:00
• Berries 6:00
  
  

Skins a deer carcase and sleeps in it.

Sopranos Series Finale

This is what the end looks like.
I know it just looks like a black empty screen and it is. That's how it ends. The screen just goes black in the middle of a scene where Tony, Carmela, and Anthony Jr. are eating onion rings at a restaurant. The last scene is the topic of much debate as I found once I was finally free to venture out on the Internet without fear of reading or seeing something I didn't want to know prior to seeing it myself.

I'd have to say at first I was bit disappointed but after some thought and after watching it again a few times I've decided I'm fine with it. It's ambiguous what happens to Tony in the end. I went back and forth in my mind for days after I saw it and I read all sorts of things on the web. I think I've decided that Tony is definitely dead. That was my first reaction and I think it's correct. Here's a brief recap of the final scene as I see it.

Tony picks out "Don't Stop Believing" from the Jukebox on the table. This plays quite loudly throughout the entire final scene. I'll never be able to hear this song again without thinking of this scene. The song itself I think means nothing.

Suspicious looking guy in members only jacket walks into the restaurant ahead of Anthony Jr. and sits down at the counter. There are many cut shots over to other people in the restaurant as Tony converses with Carmela and then later Anthony when he arrives. Meadow is outside struggling to parallel park.Shots of other people in the restaurant continue but the most suspicious looking guy other than the trucker is this guy in the jacket at the counter who looks over at Tony's table a couple of times. I think this is the guy. The only reason I could think of that he wouldn't be the guy is that when he arrives at the restaurant he walks in before Anthony Jr. and not behind him. Maybe that's nothing but it seems unnatural to me if he's there to do what I think he did.
Members only jacket guy walks to the restroom just off to Tony's right.

Meadow finally gets parked and the shot below is the 2nd to last thing we see before the screen goes blank and everything goes silent. This I think is key. This shot is looking at Tony's table from the short hall to the restroom where members only jacket guy would be coming from.
After this shot you see Tony glance up to see (presumably) Meadow coming in the restaurant door, then suddenly NOTHING! Completely black screen and total silence.

I think what we witnessed was Tony's death. What we did was experience it as the final scene. The members only jacket guy shot him in the head. I don't suspect if you were shot in the head you'd hear it. You'd be dead instantly and it would be sudden.

Huh?

Reminds me of Stuart Little or that book The Mouse and the Motorcyle that I read when I was little. Only this is a frog and not a mouse. The caption says this:

Oui the frog sits on a miniature motorcycle in the eastern beach town of Pattaya January 10, 2008. Oui's owner says Oui loves playing with human toys and posing for photographs.REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang (THAILAND)

Netflix

I joined Netflix last November. So far I like it a lot. I've been through a ton of movies in a real short time. I get about one DVD per week now. It's super easy. I just set up online in my Netflix account a list of DVDs I want to see, they mail the top one on my list to me, and I mail it back in the postpaid envelope whenever I want the next one. Blockbuster will probably never see me again. Sweet! I should have done this a long time ago
This is what I've seen since last November in chronological order.

• Sopranos Season Six: Part 2 (Discs 1-4)
• The Prestige
• Blood Diamond
• The Illusionist
• True Romance
• Gangs of New York
• The Bourne Ultimatum
• Stranger Than Fiction
• Fantastic 4

Fantastic 4 was pretty bad. I expected it to be. Ever since I signed on to this, even though my credit card gets charged every month it sort of feels like it's free somehow. I feel more liberty to rent some items that I never would have considered before. Some throw-aways. Best on my list above is probably Blood Diamond. I had to start with the Sopranos when Ifirst joined since the series ended and I haven't purchased the DVD set yet.

I'm Omnivorous

This Hamnation is from 6 months ago or so maybe. I haven't had any venison in a long time but I used to eat it all the time when I was growing up.

Chelsea

This photo of Chelsea is begging for a caption but I'm just not thinking of one at the moment. The Clintons seem to be out of favor with the press lately. Posting these unflattering photos on my blog is really a terrible thing to do. I don't agree with the Clintons politically but that shouldn't give me any reason to go doing this. Except that it's fun. Just to be fair I tried to find some photos of the Bush twins. I can't find anything terrible. It's not really very easy to find many photos of them at all for some reason. I think I like Barbara. In fact I think I'm going to start a list of dream dates.

1. Mary Katherine Ham
2. Barbara Bush
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?
10. ?
    

Hillary

Paperless

Citi planted a tree on my behalf. How special. I didn't know that was part of the deal until after I signed up. My motivation was to eliminate my credit card number from my mailbox. I get a copy of my statements online anyway and I pay by bank transfer so there was no function that the paper copy served anyway.

Video of the Year

Video of the Year
Hamnation: Sopranos DC Edition

If you've never seen the Sopranos this won't make a lot of sense. I've seen every episode on DVD through season 5 twice over. I'm currently watching the final season and I have just 5 episodes left. I figure I've seen the intro about a hundred times. The recreation in the hamnation video is excellent. I found the real Sopranos intro on YouTube for comparison's sake.

McRib is back!

I just had 2 of these McRib sandwiches for dinner tonight. I got the combo meal and an extra sandwich. I thought I remembered McRibs being better than the ones I ate tonight. I thought these were rather bland. I got them plain without the onions and pickles which is the way I've always had them. Maybe if I wouldn't have skipped the onions that would have given them more of a flavor.

My cashier at McDonald's wasn't too bright. My total was $6.39 so I handed over a 20 dollar bill and 2 singles. She looked at it for a moment and then gave me the 2 singles back as if I had made some mistake. Then she gave me $13.61 in change.

Hillary "Exhibit A" Follow Up

It's looking like this is getting a good amount of attention. It's campaign advertisement material already. This ad is from John Edwards. I love the split screens. Nicely done.

I saw Dick Morris on Fox the other night and he put it well when he said something to the effect that, "Hillary can't say what she really believes because if she does then no one would ever vote for her". I'm paraphrasing that.
I saw this clip from MSNBC on townhall.com (5 minutes)

A couple of outrageous moments...

1:35 - "Digging into the far right playbook..." Huh?

2:00 - Huffington Post loony Taylor Marsh claims it wasn't a "yes/no" question

Is this the whole segment? Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter gets to speak for all of about 10 seconds and she had to interrupt just to get that much in. At least the host challenges the position Taylor Marsh takes. If you break it down her position is basically that the problem was the questions and not Hillary. The debate moderators' questions were sexist and out of line and it's not fair. Cry me a river. You don't get to pick your own questions at a debate. Deal with it. I think that when your positions are dictated by the polls any question where your response will reveal an unpopular position is going to be a difficult question to answer directly.

In the days following the debate Hillary should have been out there clarifying her position instead of taking issue with the debate questions. In my view she shows that she doesn't have any respect for the debate platform or the American people who follow the process. The American people deserve to know who their candidates are and where they stand. I do think it's legitimate to make certain judgments about the performance of the moderators but I also think any clear thinking individual could see that the question she got was fair. I hope that after this fiasco people will start to see exactly who Hillary Clinton is. Her popularity is mind boggling.

More directly with regard to the issue of giving licenses to illegal immigrants, an idea which Hillary apparently supports. Democrats will never admit to this but they support this idea primarily because many places require an ID to register to vote and all it takes is a drivers license. If illegals can register to vote Democrats stand to gain the most votes. Democrats seem to have no limit to what they'll do to obtain power. Even if it is supporting a hair brained idea like this that puts America's security at risk.

But now back to the topic of debate questions...

Is there life in outer space? That sounds like a good idea for a future post for me on this blog. Here's Guliani fielding a similar question from a youngster. He clearly wasn't prepared to be asked about this.

Wolff-Parkinson White

I happened to see this news article today. It's about a guy who collapsed 5 1/2 miles into a marathon race for the Olympic trials and then later died at the hospital. I suppose it's true that there are different ways to push your body to it's limits. Some people eat a lot like this guy while other people exercise. I imagine collapsing and dieing of heart failure during exercise is pretty rare for someone his age. This is an example of, "anything can happen". Everyone should realize by now that one of the risks of leading a sedentary lifestyle and having a poor diet is heart failure. What this story reminds me of is that even if you eat right and exercise you can still die of heart failure. We're all gonna eventually die no matter what we do.

I don't worry about it because it's not a serious heart condition but I found out when I was still in high school that I have Wolff-Parkinson White Syndrome. It sounds serious when you put "syndrome" at the end but it's not, and it's not all that uncommon. It's easily under control in my instance with a 50mg tablet of a beta blocker every day. The iVillage site and Wikipedia have pretty in-depth descriptions of WPW but basically it's this...there is an extra electrical pathway in my heart which at times can bypass the normal one and can cause my heart to beat at an abnormally high rate. A high rate for me would be maybe 120 or so but it's noticeable because it occurs in the absence of any physical activity. It has never happened to me, but heart rates can go up much higher and people can even pass out or get dizzy spells from this.

I can pretty much take a pill everyday for the rest of my life or they can open up my chest and go in there and fry out this extra electrical pathway. My doc says it's not really worth all that trouble as long as the medication keeps my heart rate under control, which it has.

I found this video showing the electrical pathway of the heart. The extra pathway I have they call the bundles of Kent which I think has a nice ring to it.
According to Wikipedia Meat Loaf, Marilyn Manson, LaMarcus Aldridge from the NBA (article here) and some other WWE wrestler I never heard of also have this WPW Syndrome.

Happy Halloween!

Tonight I went to the book store at the mall. After that I went over to the food court. My treat to myself was Rocky Rococco's pizza and a cinnabun. My cashier at Cinnabun was wearing a bee costume. I think I saw a spider too but spiders don't have wings so I'm really not sure what I saw.

Yes or No

This is all over the blogs aready but I just couldn't pass up posting about this myself anyway.

I didn't watch the entire debate but just by chance I happened to tune it in just at this was happening. I thought that was awesome that Tim Russert threw her a tough question. As you can see here she simply would not answer it directly, instead choosing to throw in a slam on the current administration and dance around the issue on both sides. The last 45 seconds are golden. I was yelling at my TV, "It's a yes or no question!"

I can't help but smile inside when I see stuff like this. Hillary's out of her element if she's not taking softball questions from those that don't or won't ever challenge her answers. Put her on her heals and you end up with results like these. If a candidate can't answer tough questions and take a clear position how are we to support that candidate? Tim Russert tried to pin her down to a position. She clearly resisted being pinned down.

I've often thought that too much is made of candidates who change their positions. The so called flip-flop. Certainly I agree that a person can change their opinions and positions over time. I know I have held to positions in the past which I no longer agree with. What I can't understand is taking opposing positions within weeks or months of each other or expressing different opinions depending upon who the audience is or what the polls are saying. That either means your pandering or it means you don't have a core value system with which you base your beliefs upon. In either instance it's not a characteristic of a leader. While some issues can be nuanced, this issue of giving licenses to illegal aliens is anything but. The answer to the question as it was presented was "yes or no", not "yes and no".

Hotair calls this Exhibit A in the case against Hillary for President.

Can I Afford It?

A while back I was surfing channels and I got sucked into watching part of a Suze Orman show. Ordinarily I cruise right on by when I see her annoying presence on television but I stopped anyway. In the same way I can't stand Keith Olberman on MSNBC I still can't help but stop at it now and then. Maybe to remind myself how repugnant he is I don't know. Anyhow as annoying as Suze Orman can be (and mind you it's not anywhere near being in the same league or flavor as Olberman) I got sucked into it watching this segment called "Can I Afford it?". It was actually rather interesting because people call in with all these ideas in mind for things that they want to buy. Then they say what their income is, what their savings are, and how much debt they have if any. Suze then reviews the situation and gives them her approval or a denial. Most of the time she denies people and most of the time it's pretty obvious why. I felt better about my financial position in life after I watched this. A lot of people out there have a lot of debt and not enough savings. This one guy wanted to buy a horse for 6 grand I think and she denied him. If I remember all this right I think he was 58, he had 7K/mos income and debt-wise I think a mortgage. Then he says that he has $2000 in stocks and didn't mention any retirement savings. What the heck? Your 58 dude! Your in serious trouble if you want to retire anytime soon and now you want to buy a horse that cost more money than you have saved?

In don't need Suze Orman to tell me if I can afford stuff or not. I could buy everything on my wish list tomorrow if I wanted to but it wouldn't be a very responsible thing to do. I labeled it "materialistic" for a reason. I'm going to buy the stuff I can afford and save for the rest or maybe just forget about buying those items altogether in the short term. It's called priorities and thankfully I have mine straight.

Materialistic wish list

#1 Cell phone - I sometimes think I'm the last person in America that doesn't own a cell phone. My plan right now is to get rid of my land line and use only a cell phone with hopefully an inexpensive service plan.

#2 Bike - I don't really NEED a new bike but I can easily see that the bike I have isn't particularly suited to the longer distance rides I've been doing. This one and #1 will be knocked off the wish list first as they are both long overdue purchases.

#3 ipod - I'll probably get just this basic ipod shuffle. I use headphones at the gym all the time and my current one is sooooooo 20th century. I mean I actually have to put the mp3 files onto a CD and carry the bulky thing around with me. With one of these I could just load it up and all I have to do is clip the thing onto my clothes or slip it in my pocket.
#4 Mattress - When I went to Disney this last January I slept on the most comfortable mattress I have ever slept on in my entire life. The tag said Sealy Posturpedic Encore 720 Plush. I've done some research and that specific model name is only distributed to hotels but equivalent models are sold all over the place. I'd like to get a new bed frame and a queen size mattress. I really don't need the queen size but one never knows what the future holds. #5 LCD television - along with a new entertainment center to put it in. My folks just got a new 32" Samsung and it looks great. Darn if I don't want one of those High Def TVs too. This one is a bit further out of reach when I consider what I allow myself to spend with respect to my disposable income. #6 Laptop - I really could use one when I travel. I like to write down my thoughts in a notebook whenever I travel and keep track of everything I did and where I went and all of that. I think a laptop would be more convenient and on top of that I could access the Internet and keep up with email and the news and my portfolio and so on. Plus I could also unload all of my photos onto it and look at them in full size at the end of the day rather than on that tiny screen on my camera. I take a lot of pictures when I travel. The only thing is I only travel about once a year so for 50 weeks out of the year it would probably sit around and collect dust. #7 CD player for my car - I only drive my car 5 months out of the year and during that time I have it out of storage I drive it maybe 25% of the time I go anywhere. My Trans Am is a luxury of sorts already but I only have a cassette deck in it. I put it in there when the factory stereo quit. It was at a time before CDs were something you could burn at home. I used to dub mix tapes for myself from my CDs so it was logical at the time to get a just a cassette deck. Now things are different and I'm stuck listening to tapes whenever I drive my car. I always seem to have the same couple of tapes and I'm getting real sick of them.

Easy Money

Nothing like makin money without lifting a finger. A bit of research is necessary but a stock like FCX which has clearly been a winner for me wasn't that hard to find. Sunpower I can't claim as my own find, but it has been totally rockin just the same.

My cost basis in Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold is $71.82. The resistance point on this stock is around $120 now. This one's going even higher short and long term. I have no doubt about it.

My cost basis in SPWR is $38.18 and it has recently been on a breakout up over $100. It could easily pull back a bit and even when it does, the stock has still more than doubled for me since I bought last November anyway. Sweet!

So what's the plan? As long as I continue to have stocks like this...and believe me they aren't all this great...to counterbalance some of the not so hot ones I'll retire from work as early as possible. I'll do some traveling and I'll drink wine and eat steaks and shrimp, chocolate cake and ice cream until my arteries can't take it anymore and I die of heart failure.

Or maybe not exactly that but I'm sure I'll come up with something good to do. Right now I'm spending more time learing the ropes of investing than I am planning out an endgame. The name of the game now is invest, reinvest the gains, then reinvest those gains and so on.

Huh?