Beyond Bumbledome

Ok, I take back what I said last week about this having any potential for entertainment at all.  At this point, at least for me, this has crashed to the ground like so much blue ice from an airline toilet.  Splat.  Nothing to look at, folks, time to go home.  The whole point of something like this is to retain the influence of the author, and the show's director and writers have gone completely in the opposite direction, effectively creating a brand new story of their own.  And it SUCKS.  I don't know if I'm in the majority or the minority on this, but I wanted to see a STEPHEN KING story.  If I wanted to watch a stupid show with a stupid story by some nobody writers I've never heard of, there are a lot of other options out there.  I spent a year looking forward to STEPHEN KING.  I don't get even the slightest hint of King in what I'm seeing.  Tell you what, as soon as one of these weak ass, unknown shit-gurgitators who call themselves writers writes an 1,100 page bestseller, I MIGHT consider their right to stand in the presence of someone like Stephen King.  I'll never acknowledge their right to REPLACE him.  In conclusion, all I can say is that the network must have King over a very painful barrel for him to be a producer of the show and allow this to happen.  If he's actually involved in the direction this farce is taking, it may be all over.

After I posted this, I found a little note from The Big Guy himself regarding the monstrous changes between the book and the tv adaptation.  Here's the link... Read Stephen King's letter about all the changes here... Basically it states that he fully supports the changes, citing some gibberish about the book still being there on the shelf, unchanged, if you ever want to read it so no harm, no foul.  In a nutshell, he said that pretty much everything about the book has been changed for the tv series, including the cause of the whole mess and that it's going to be months long instead of a week.  He did admit that his one concern was that they keep the concept of a DOME alive in this new version.  Way to go, Steve, for drawing a line SOMEWHERE.

Blunder The Dome

There really isn't much to say except WHY???  Under The Dome is probably going to be a decent mini-series, unfortunately it's basically a completely new story which bears almost no resemblance to the story in what I considered to be an excellent book.  We waited, for almost a year from the time it was announced, barely able to contain our excitement.  I read the book again, for the third time, and raced to finish it right before the TV version started.  I certainly don't expect the mini-series to be a word for word repetition of the book, I've been good with slight variances in other TV productions, especially Stephen King's.  This one, however, seems determined to change absolutely everything about the book from character personalities, character names, characters inside/outside the dome, communication through the dome, who's on the good side/bad side, the plot in general, I could keep going on about what's different and there have only been two episodes so far!  I was looking forward to seeing a movie quality version of the events I read, not a completely different story.  I'm sure it's going to be worth watching, since King himself is involved (at least credited as a producer of the show) and the die-hard purists are eventually going to get used to it.  I just keep coming back to WHY? 

Horror...

The killer awoke before dawn.  He put his boots on.

Father?
Yes, son?
I want to kill you.

Well, I guess this topic is worthy of my input at this point.  The short version is that the weapons that exist today aren't the problem, it's the people we've become.  Evolution has brought us through a lot of different stages in our development, and through them all there have been some among us capable of massive destruction of the rest of us.  We've just gotten a little sicker these days.  It's the human mind that's the deadliest weapon we have to consider.  There's no stopping our evolution, and no re-directing it either.  Restrict all the guns you want, it'll just make them more expensive.  If someone is bent on killing a lot of people, they'll find a way to do it.

This recent tragedy in Connecticut had a surprise twist, one I found interesting.  This is just how I heard the story develop through the media, so of course feel free to do your own research before you make your own judgment.  (A little legal disclaimer so I can't be hanged for inciting anarchy.)  The first reports said that the gunman used two pistols, a Glock and a Sig-Sauer.  There was a rifle found in his car.  Now, the first thing I said to myself when I heard that was "Wow, something this big is going to almost REQUIRE some action on gun control, but how are they going to manage that when he used pistols?"  I found that out the next day.  The medical examiner says that all were killed with an assault rifle.  I just shook my head and laughed.  Ok, I thought, this is how it happens, and nobody can say anything to change it now.  How they made the original mistakes is beyond me, maybe someone saw a vacuum cleaner in the guys car and thought it was a rifle, maybe whoever saw the Glock and Sig just saw the light reflecting off the assault rifle funny.   I understand that in the aftermath of something like this something needs to be done... regardless of how futile I think it is.  The story of him using two pistols doesn't serve the purpose of enacting more restrictions on assault weapons, so the Feds tell all the parents, relatives, first responders and medical examiners "Ok, we need to have some good come from these children's deaths, and the teachers, so the story now is, wink wink, the gunman used an assault rifle to do all this.  Got it?"  Everyone is in agreement, and the story gets changed.  It's just odd seeing it actually happen.  What I keep coming back to is that this was most likely done with pistols, and probably will be again and again in the future unfortunately.  Will planting assault rifles become standard operating procedure at events like this?

Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror.  Horror and mortal terror are your friends.  If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.  They are truly enemies.

Worst Victoria's Secret EVER...

It took some creative thinking by some seriously fucked up minds, but they actually managed to make this year's holiday tradition of tits, asses and wings completely SUCK.  And not the good suck either.  For those of you with short attention spans, if you haven't seen it yet, do one thing.  Pick something different to listen to and turn the volume down on your tv.  I could recommend not watching it at all, but that would be "letting them win."

So here's the problem.  Evidently the nimrods who plan this event have lost sight of their main demographic, which is of course adult males.  That's pretty basic.  Although I haven't done an official survey, I think next in line would be adult women and adolescent boys.  I can't be positive, but I think probably dead last on the list would be nine year old girls.  So then somebody needs to explain THIS...

Yes, someone PLEASE explain why fucknuts here was featured as a guest on this once proud and honorable tradition.  I swear it took ten years off my life seeing this manufactured pseudo-star involved in this show which is clearly meant for people who've taken the training wheels off their bikes.  What makes matters worse is that there seems to be no sense of actual artistic skill this year either.  Bruno Mars came closest to actual music in this year's show, but not by much.  I know I've heard Rihanna produce reasonable music before, but her segments this year sounded like what you'd hear emanating from the baboon pavilion at the zoo.  Bieber made a mockery of the word "talent" by needing an accompanying guitarist for his dopey little love song, which by the way took another, bonus five years off my life.  This greasy little shithead needs to take a few of the millions of dollars he's making for being "adorable" and take some fucking guitar lessons.  The "sitting there singing" thing didn't work for Art Garfunkel, and he had the benefit of harmonizing with his accompanying guitarist.  Then again, Bieber's fans are most likely too stupid to realize how goofy he looks needing accompaniment and they're definitely too young to remember when musicians used to play their own guitar while they sang.  Whatever, I think the musical choices this year were beyond horrible.  When Bieber was halfway through his first segment I had the stereo on, rockin' Joe's Garage.  Catholic girls and all that.  It went well with the show.  I turned up the sound a couple times just so I would know exactly how bad it was, and I was never disappointed.  It was truly terrible.  The horror... the horror...

The good part, yes there is one, believe it or not, is that the girls were beyond beautiful as always, and the Victoria's Secret Holiday Fashion Show will NEVER, NEVER, EVER be as bad as it was this year.  And that's a really good thing.

  
 

Yahoo Zombie Update

Yeah, Daryl!  That's what I'm talking about.  That goes out directly to Yahoo and whatever else is causing this problem.  Here's an update on what I've seen posted by other disgruntled zombie slayers out there.  Apparently Yahoo has "lost their Amazon server" (whatever that means) and is working to fix the problem.  (COME ON ALREADY!!!)  It's affected more games than just Zombie Pandemic, and there are a LOT of people, a LOT of paying customers, who are currently waiting on a fix.  Here's a snap of a response from Yahoo I found from someone who contacted customer service.  (I haven't bothered doing that.)

Click on the image to see it bigger.

Nothing much more to add, it's just good to see that the problem is big enough that there should be a resolution, and due to the number of games involved and people affected it should be a priority for them to address.  Our safehouses will be overrun and filled with Zeds when we get back but I know our clan has plenty of ammo, and we'll be ripe for some major carnage.   I predict that there will be a shortage of body bags.  I'll close this post with a snap of Schlongulus' recent achievement, top zombie slayer just a few weeks ago.  More info when I get it.