God is anyone else getting mildly (or grossly) annoyed by the next latest greatest fad in phishing e-mails?  The 'welcome to my site' ones that want you to click on some link to verify your signup info that you supposedly submitted?  Man, if I could find one of these boneheads and lock myself in a room with them....

...only one of us would be coming out, and you only get one guess as to who it is.  I'm getting dozens if not hundreds of these things, and I guess spamassassin isn't able to flag them... bah.

Hey, yeah I'm still here.  Remember back when I said I'd come into possession of some old papers and such?  Well, I've gone and started an entire project around some of them.  Enter: The Youth's Companion Project.

The Youth's Companion was a magazine that was published from the 1820's up through the 1920's.  I came into a few partial issues, and two complete ones.  Since they (should be) are in the public domain by now, and from what I have read the original archives no longer exist... this will be an attempt to recreate the archives.  Ambitious? I dunno. Depends on how much support I can get to carry the thing out.

So if you're interested in reading what kids of the 20's and before were reading instead of watching Pokemon and playing video games... check it out.  There's lots of cool and some just weird ads in there as well....  Like 'get your own steam engine!' and 'every boy should learn to shoot!'

And if you happen to have some issues of this lying around, and you can get them scanned in, send em my way... contact info is on the site.

The Youth's Companion

Technorati Tags: youths companion, vintage, history, project, public domain, advertising, literature

Woo! I was able to snag ripp.us from the drop list thanks to GoDaddy's backordering.

So what? Well, nothing really, just thought I'd brag about that for a sec.  So if you enter ripp.us into a browser you'll just get redirected back to here

Bruce Willis returns for the fourth installment of the Die Hard series! Rock!

Or Not.

Man what a let down.  Sure there's lots of hokey gunplay and explosion and dodging flying cars and completely outrageous situations... but its DIE HARD! The franchise invented this sort of film, and for that you have to give them a wide berth to continue this sort of thing...

...but at least act like it matters!  This movie is just, well, uninteresting on so many planes it isn't funny.  And that's the other knife to the gut for this film.  Unlike its predecessors, it just isn't funny.  The humor that is there is just lame and contrived.

The plot can be summarized like this:  A group of cyber terrorists led by a disgruntled ex-government agent cripples the network infrastructure of the US, and thereby cripples most of the country in an attempt to steal billions in electronic assets from the Treasury department.  Our hero, John McClane goes to arrest one of the unknowing accomplices in this global hack, and gets caught up in it all, eventually having to save his daughter from the terrorist leader.

And that's the real problem here.  The plot of the film has little if any personal connection to McClane.  In each of the previous three Die Hards there was an urgent and immediate personal threat to McClane or his family.  Yeah sure eventually his daughter is kidnapped and he has to rescue her, but you spend most of the film wondering WTF any of this has to do with him!!  Until finally she re-appears near the end.

Back to the humor.  Part of the charm of the Die Hard franchise is the wit and humor, most notably in parts one and three, which is sorely lacking here.  Not until near the end does it start to get remotely funny, but by that time you're just tired of watching.

And as for Willis, dude, could you at least pretend to be interested in this role?  I got the feeling he was just there to pay the rent on this one.  A flat performance would be an understatement.  And as for the wayward hacker Matt Farrell (Justin "I'm a Mac" Long) his shtick gets tired equally fast.

And as for the action that made Die Hard famous? Yeah its there, in droves.  Lots of gunplay and bullet-dodging, high-speed car vs. semi vs. delivery truck chases, a bit of helicopter crashing action.  But the death knell for the film comes as McClane jumps on the back of an impossibly maneuverable F-22, and jumps off just before it crashes.  That entire sequence was entirely over the top, even for Die Hard.

I wouldn't recommend dropping the coin to visit a theater for this one.  Save your pennies and go see Transformers or Harry Potter instead.  I was sorely disappointed, and hopefully they either retire the franchise after this or are able to resurrect its former glory!

Links: Live Free or Die Hard at IMDB.  Live Free or Die Hard at Amazon.com

Technorati Tags: live free or die hard, 2007, bruce willis, john mcclane, matt farrell, justin long, movie review

So we went back home to Wisconsin for the 4th to visit family.  Practically all of one side of the family made it back up there from all parts of the country (Florida, Kansas, the Oklahoma gang, Indiana) and we had a great time visiting everybody.  Always fun to get all the kids together and see who looks like who(!)

Picked up about 4.5 cases of Leinie's at good cheep WI prices (hey for $13 a case who can pass it up! Especially considering OK's backwards liquor laws...)

Went to the big (cough) Mineral Point parade on the 4th.  Actually it was bigger than I remember, but then again I only remember marching in the band, so I guess my perspective was a bit skewed!  Point is looking a bit dead these days, lots of vacant fronts on High Street and a lot of property for sale.  These things happen from time to time.

Also brought home a bunch of old newspapers and readers that my folks found in the house, from the late '20s and early '30s.  I will be trying to digitize these and post them up in pieces.  I took some photos of the pages they kept and will try to re-assemble those in the coming days.  I have to figure out a good way to do this though as they're bigger than my scanner and I don't have a good copy-board setup.

(I really need some better categories on this site, too...)

Well, I finally got around to re-theming my War Movie Reviews and News site, WarMovieBlog. I'm up to 72 posts now, most of those are reviews with a few news and new-release bits thrown in.

I've been pumping out lolz for LOLOST at a furious rate, and have like two weeks worth stacked up.

Unfortunately, I've been neglecting Planet LOST lately, mainly because there's just been no bloody LOST news to speak of!!! ARgh!!!

Other than that I've been painting the built-in bookcases I uh, built in upstairs, and getting those loaded up so I can do the other wall, and I've been working on the Pontiac (this one!) taking her to car shows. I have to get some photos up here of that. I got a trophy at the local Pontiac/Oakland show back in May, which was cool, considering some of the competition!

Well, I will try to keep up with what's going on more. I sometimes forget this site is here!

I saw this driving home from work the other day and had to snap a pic. Sorry for the cruddy quality, but thats how the cellphone cameras roll.

I'm wondering at what point this sounds like a good idea as a career. "Hey, I think I'll pick up dogshit for a living!"

I'll bet the guy's making a freaking killing, though. Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work?

So I was on the net the other day, finding out about the wonderfulnez of LOLcats and LOLtrek and all the other assorted LOLjunk.... and it came to me.  JUMP ON THE BANDWAGON!!  No!! That's not it.  Well, maybe sorta.  Kinda.

I just wrapped up my recap of and comments on of LOST's season finale, and LOLOST was born.

Yeah its goofy, and it may be a flop and a pain, but I figure since no new LOST episodes will be around until FEBRUARY why the hell not?!  Have to do something!

In the two weeks (about) its been up, I've already gotten one submission (thanks!) and traffic continues on the rise, slowly but surely. At least according to Google Analytics.  Probably thanks mostly to the widgetbox in the sidebar, both on LOLOST and PlanetLOST (trading links back to each other.)

So if you want, send me your LOLOSTs to lol@lolost.com, and I will most likely use them.  Really!