Hootie and Burger King

I just saw this new Burger King commercial with Darius Rucker, the lead singer from Hootie & the Blowfish, singing “Bacon Cheddar Ranch”. The song is to the tune of “Big Rock Candy Mountain”, one of my favorite folk songs.

I don’t know how to feel about this. I know that Hootie & the Blowfish are still touring and just aren’t as mainstream as they used to be but was this the right move for Rucker? I understand that everyone needs to make money but with this he is kind of selling himself short. The guy has a great voice and has written some great music and why he chose to do the commercial I’ll never know, I guess they were looking at as satirical kind of thing.

Google Movies

The word is out and spreading that Google now offers a movie time functionality in their search engine. If you go to Google and in the search type “movie: name of movie” you will get a list of movie times in your area (at the local theaters). If your zip code has not yet been set Google prompts you to set one so that they can find the best possible movie times.

It’s a pretty interesting feature and we may soon see the disappearance of sites like Rotten Tomatoes. Google is slowly inching its way into a lot of the markets with Froogle, Google Maps, and Google Local. What will they decide to do next? I’d like to see a calendar application (kind of like what Jeremy envisions).

I would love to see some real strong RSS support and maybe even a feed reader. But I guess only time will tell.

The Simpsons; Getting Worse Every Episode?

I watched The Simpsons yesterday because they were going to announce a character coming out of the closet, which, is a big deal if you’re a Simpsons nerd like me. Well, the episode was a huge disapppointment. Besides the few witty remarks about different subjects the episode was like a lot of others this season, bland and somewhat boring.

Patty, Marge’s sister, was the character to come out of the closet, which if you watch the show is not much of a surprise.

Back on topic, I have felt that the Simpsons has gone down hill ever since Conan O’Brien left the show as a writer. In my opinion he is a lot of the reason the Simpsons was so successful. I have noticed that since he left Homer’s character does not have the “funny spark” that he used to. He lacks the sarcasm that made him great in seasons 5,6, and 7.

I just feel that the writers could do a lot better job of creating content for the show. The way things are going now I can imagine the show being taken off the air on Sundays after this season or next. And maybe that’s what Matt Groening wants so that he can pursue the full length motion picture about the Simpsons.

Curing Cancer with…. HIV?

According to a story on Wired scientists at UCLA have altered HIV to hunt down cancer cells and kill them. The tests have so far been successful in mice but they are going to refine the method more before any tests on humans are done.

I am not sure how I feel about this. The idea of a cure for cancer is amazing but to inject someone with HIV is a little worrisome. Would you feel comfortable having a virus that has killed an estimated 3.1 million people in 2004? I really don’t know how’d I react.

New Puppy

I acquired a new puppy named Jackson from a woman who wanted to get rid of him. He’s a mutt according to the vet but he’s very playful and likes to sit around in your lap.

He’s a little shy but the vet thinks it’s because he was either abused or neglected but said he should completely come out of it.

Sarah and I with Jackson

He’s camera shy…

Worn out from all the attention.

Jackson and I.

What to do about North Korea

With North Korea dropping out of talks and saying that it has nuclear weapons and will continue to produce them how does the world and the U.S. proceed?

From a logistical point of view we can conclude that North Korea has the ability to launch nuclear weapons at the United States from the mere fact that they have launched things into space. Would they attack the United States? More than likely not. There are still skirmishes along the 38th Parallel and because of this I think that North Korea would first go after South Korea for the simple fact that it wants the land. The populations of both countries are growing extremely fast and the territory that is covered is only the size of Pennsylvania and New York.

Should we take an aggressive stand against North Korea or do we sit back and let another Cold War unfold or even worse do we let North Korea use its weight to take over South Korea? Are we still preserving democracy over communism there or has it simply become a symbol of peace? Technically the United States is still at war with North Korea and the scary thought is that they could use that as an excuse to attack the U.S. or the troops stationed in South Korea.

I think the best plan for President Bush is to stand back and look at the situation for a while and let things unfold a little more over there. See if the Japanese or the Russians can get the North Koreans back to the discussion table and talk some sense into them. If we jump into this too quickly we may run into more problems than we expected.

I am not saying go to war with North Korea, by no means. We are right now overdrawn on troops in Iraq and we cannot afford to pull troops from Iraq and put them in South Korea, nor does this country need a draft. I think we just need to take it slow and explore our options.