Star Trek List Wrap-up

Judson's Top Ten Surprises In The New "Star Trek" Movie:

10. JJ Abrams proves once again that good action, digital special effects, and an all star cast dishing one liners and inside jokes as fast as they can render a plot wholly unnecessary.
9. An eleven year old ginger Chekov? WTF, man?
8. Kirk's dad a kamakazi pilot. Who knew?
7. Kirk repeatedly beaten like a bitch. WTF, man?
6. Drunken Scotty fights off zombie attack in engineering.
5. Spock gets the girl and Kirk hides under a bed? WTF, man?
4. Steve Jobs gets set design credit for Enterprise's iBridge. Rest of the ship except for the one hall they run up and down in all the time looks like a Russian toxic waste processing facility.
3. Sulu and Kumar busted for smoking pot in turbolift 7 and sent to the dilithium mines on Rura Penthe.
2. Interracial interspecies turbolift makeout scene. HAWT.
1. Hot Spock on Spock action. Also HAWT.

Judson's List Of Star Trek Movies In Order Of Coolness:

1. The Wrath Of Khan
2. The Motion Picture
3. The Undiscovered Country
4. First Contact
5. Star Trek
6. The Search For Spock
7. Generations

At this point, we run into problems. I like "The Voyage Home" - it's a comedy with some Star Trek around the edges. And while I wouldn't put it on my list of "favorite" Star Trek movies, it does not deserve a place on the next list:

Judson's List Of Star Trek Movies In Order Of Shittiness:

1. Nemesis. Bad.
2. The Final Frontier. Worse, much worse.
3. Insurrection. I stood up, shouted "THIS MOVIE IS SHIT!" and walked out. People applauded. How DARE you cast Patrick Stewart and F. Murray Abraham and not give them at least one scene with great dialog a la Patrick Stewart/Malcolm McDowell or Patrick Stewart/Alfre Woodard. Whoever wrote this one should be beaten and then shot.

Unanticipated Technological Consequences: Google Runs Down Bambi, Busts Dopers

In my newest topic, a Google double whammy:

Apparently, the Google Street View camera truck hit a deer at some point, and the photographic evidence of this tragic encounter actually made it into their production systems for a while:
Meanwhile, halfway around the world, some pot farmers got popped when the cops ran across their magic acre on Google Earth.

I'm pretty sure that killing deer and busting pot farmers was not discussed in the Sergey Brin/Larry Page brainstorming sessions that eventually became Google.

Don't even TRY and tell me that they didn't come up with the very NAME Google by sitting around tokin' up some fat spliffs.

UPDATE: Also in the news today - Apple's iPhoto 2009 facial recognition product works on CATS.

Super Bowl Cuisine

(promoted from the comments section)

A reader writes in:

"Sir, this is important. I need your thoughts on the Super Bowl. Not the game itself, but what sorts of food should be served if I'm in a group environment to watch the game. And please don't read this to mean that I am hosting a party. Oh no no no. I am attending someone else's party, and I'd like your thoughts so that I can judge this person's spread accordingly."

-- A Reader in Austin

Dear A Reader In Austin,

Well, my thoughts on the Super Bowl are as follows:

First, sport is the opiate of the masses. We're not going to get the Glorious Revolution off the ground if everyone's watching Rod Stewart's duet with a digitally reconstructed Ethel Merman during the State hyped propaganda intermission in the crypto-fascist ground-acquisition hostilities you call entertainment, you brainwashed bourgeois oppressor.

Second, the Boston Celtics will probably beat Real Madrid by at least two wickets; both will occur in the final inning. Despite recent concerns about the quality of the ice at this time of year, I'm expecting Kjetil-Andre Aamodt to put some big numbers on the board.

As to the cuisine: I imagine you'll be looking at the same chips, dips, wings and things that the proletariat traditionally indulges in for this kind of shindig. In short, hog slop - the kind of food that causes riots if you wait in line for six hours for it. If you're going to clog your neo-aristocratic arteries, and spare us the trouble of putting you up against the wall (not to mention the ammunition costs) when the Revolution comes, you might as well do it with some style.

I recall once seeing a television special with Emeril wherein some sort of tailhitching or trailerparking pre-match football ritual was taking place in some Sportplast parking lot - I do clearly recall that he literally stuffed a chicken with shredded bacon cheeseburgers - hearty fare, but logistically difficult to prepare and serve.

I'm a fan of the basics, in this situation: Pork ribs can never go wrong, unless you have white burbur carpet. Fried chicken is always welcome, and is enjoyable hot or cold. A simple cheese board takes like two minutes to make and will work well, but a good cheese fondue takes the same ingredients plus beer or wine (which I'm certain you or your bourgeois host will have around), takes about thirteen minutes longer than the cheese board to make, is more fun to eat, and the little forks double as easily concealed stabbing weapons when riots break out during labor strikes.

While I'm sick to death of that artichoke slop everyone seems to make these days, I do still like hot dips - a good hot dip with lots of bready dipping stuff is easy to make, will fill up entire Planning Committees or proletariat sport related gatherings, and gives everyone something to soak up copious quantities of beer or potato vodka, another method of ensuring the safety of the aforemetnioned burbur carpet.

Enjoy your decadent Western pasttime while you can, capitalist pig oppressor!

Vive La Revolucion!

Ode To Filet O' Fish

Filet O' Fish, how do I love thee.. Let me count the ways:

1) You are covered in tartar sauce
2) You are deep fried
3) You taste like pussy
4) Only crispy, and with cheese.

Desert Bus For Hope Strikes Back

While I am currently troubled and unhappy (see photo) - the second annual "Desert Bus for Hope" charity simulcast has managed to free a smile from my careworn face.

For the uninitiated: Desert Bus, created by no less than Penn & Teller, is the single most boring, mindless videogame ever created, wherein the player drives a bus across a featureless desert from Tuscon to Las Vegas at a speed no greater than 45 miles per hour. The bus has a slight lean to the left, and you cannot pause the game - meaning that a single run takes roughly eight hours to complete in real time. If you run off the road, you have to wait for a tow truck to come from Tuscon and tow you back - again, in real time. Should you accomplish a run between the two cities, you are awarded an incredible one point and the glorious opportunity to make the return run to Tuscon for another point, and so on and so on, ad nauseam.

Desert Bus for Hope is an annual fundraiser for Child's Play, a charity that gives fun toys to hospitalized kids, undertaken by an interwebs sketch comedy group called 'LoadingReadyRun' - you might have seen some of their stuff on the Youtubes, if you're a huge nerd or are ever bored or ever click on funny things your friends send you.

The way it works is this: the more you donate, the longer they play. They sit around and drive the bus back and forth until people stop paying them to play.

In short, you can help kids by imprisoning these guys you don't know in an interminable hell of their own making - laced with snacks, and some girls, and the occasional head and/or beard shaving.

Get over there. GIVE. Then go watch the suffering, smug in the knowledge that you've done it for a good cause.

Y'cant miss.

Cooking. With semen.

Drive-thru guy: "My homeboy Pookie put a little something extra in the special sauce. I'll give you a hint: it's SEMEN."

Yes, everyone, that's right - there is an honest to god SEMEN COOKBOOK. What, you don't believe me? You don't think that anyone would dare make flan from man gravy? WRONG.

I thought I was daring in the kitchen. I see now that I'm not. And that's really okay with me.

Despite this, I think that this cookbook might just be the comedy read of the season:

"whisk in 1/3rd cup warm human semen..."

(shouts out to RLR for bringing this whacktacular item to my attention)