Amentep

I've always considered If Footman Tire You, What Will Horses Do? more pro-Christian propaganda than specifically cold war as its the work of Baptist Minister Estus Pirkle who was also behind THE BURNING HELL but I guess it does have a strong anti-communism theme to it.

^Doubt Bethesda would sell, there's no long term incentive for it.

(Done as an advertising stunt for the Carrie film remake. The reactions are amusing, but I'm not 100% convinved all of the "pranked" people aren't actually actors). Still I laughed (and I don't usually "get" prank video stuff).

Yeah Paul Le Mat is only in the first one, but there are ten - big money maker for Charles Band's Full Moon production (although I think 3-4 of the later films have no new Puppet footage, its all reused because the guy producing the stop motion, David Allen, passed away). The last one, last years Puppet Master X: Axis Rising, has Toulon's Killer Puppets vs Nazi made Puppets! Warning: Some Bad Language http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtUDRhibKp4

You mean third time out of North America, surely? Canada - 1984 UK - 1988 UK - 1997 Canada - 2001 Canada - 2008 Canada - 2012 UK - 2013

Yeah the villain is known as, Graviton, in Marvel U (so we get our first super-villain origin, potentially). In the marvel comics universe, they have things called Life Model Decoys, its possible they'll introduce it here (but I think its lame in the comics, so...). Another going theory is they copied Phil's brainwave pattern and put it in an android (ala the Vision in comics).

Puppetmaster III (do you spot a trend this week?). Magic killer puppets vs Nazis. If that premise alone doesn't spark excitement, maybe Richard Lynch as the villain will? Or perhaps Sarah Douglas, Ian Abercrombie and Walter Goetell in supporting roles? But really they had me at killer puppets vs Nazis. Its 1941 (again a busy, busy year for Toulon apparently) and this time, Toulon and his wife are producing puppet shows in Germany. Toulon's wife gets killed because the Nazis want his secrets and he proceeds to take revenge (a la The Abominable Dr. Phibes or Theater of Blood). Its a solid film in this regard, setting up a series of confrontations logically and playing well to the strengths of the killer puppets. Continuity is still wonky - might be best not to think about it too hard, but the production is definitely at an all time high. And the puppets are allowed more to do here capturing more of their personalities making them more interesting (to be fair to Puppetmaster II they were all weakened, so being a bit mopey and lethargic made sense, but it didn't give them much else to do). Probably my favorite of the series so far.

Sleepy Hollow - more backstory, a bigger part of the "founding father conspiracy" angle is shown, and a lot of backstory development of Lieutenant Mills and her sister (I'm surprised how much of a backseat Crane took). I enjoyed it.

Puppetmaster II - Its interesting how a sequel can be so at odds with the original film continuity wise. Toulon's death date is wrong, they imply he made the Jester puppet prior to the opening of the first film when we see him making it in the opening of the first film, they retcon the end of the first film somewhat (its *possible* the intention is the incidents described happen after the first film, but that doesn't completely fit either). Continuity aside, it uses the hoary horror cliche of crazed mystic trying to capture the "reincarnation" of his lost love. The puppets seem to have less personality here and the lead actor and actress come off flat compare to some of the supporting cast.

No they're not; if the teachers and college records already changed the grade, then "history" from an academic perspective is the new grades, not the academic termination that the ASC is trying to hold onto. In other words, if he gets a transcript, he's not going to meet the academic termination criteria of the college, so why should it still be on his transcript. Its insanity.

I've worked at colleges for all my adult life and that makes no sense to me. If the grades changed and your GPA recalculated it means the academic record and academic history has already changed. The LAS ASC aren't changing anything - the faculty and records staff already did! Take it up the chain, for sure. Their stance doesn't make any sense.

Six feet is 1.83 meters, so a kilometre is 546.45 Monte Carlos.

If driving on the left is right, then which side of the road are you on...?

Its ketchup here in the Southern US despite Wikipedia's claims to the contrary (we though it was a Northern thing). Seems everyone knows someone else who says catsup but never says it themselves... Its because "sked" sounds cooler than "shed".

I know its for fun and all, but... Aluminum was coined by English chemist Humphrey Davy in his 1812 book CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY; an anonymous author in that same year's QUARTLY REVIEW (and who was presumably from the UK) argued for the Aluminium spelling and (thus) pronunciation. So...both of these are actually English in origin. Sorry pet peeve, move along...nothing to see here.

I find it weird that this even got to a legal state; as I recall you'd mentioned that your grades were wrong on the transcript which should easily be sorted out by the teachers involved. And if they're not available the dept. chair or dean. IIRC schools are obligated to require their teachers - for accreditation - to have 7 years (or is it 5) of grade books in case disputes arise.

The real question is whether Dune has entered public domain yet. When did Frank Herbert die? Copyright term is 75 years after the death of the creator I think. Herbert died in 86. So 70 years (under current copyright law) would be 2056. US copyright is a bit different, though; Dune was published in 1960 IIRC so had an initial copyright of 28 years with another renewable 28 years to be filed for in 1987; but after the update in 1978 it would have been automatically renewed so should have a 95 year copyright period (2076) Even if the book became public domain, I'm sure some holding company has trademarks out for some of the central concepts (like Tarzan does) ensuring derivative works have to be substantially changed.

Weird Dream: I leave a classroom in a futuristic school, travel down several corridors (white walls with a blue light strip along the middle) to my next class. I pass a bunch of students who I don't really know. Once I get to class I don't really recognize anyone else, but its the start of the term so I don't think much of it. I sit at my desk and listen to the teacher for awhile when I start feeling sick; I get up and make a right as down the hallway a short distance on the left is the bathroom. I enter only to find the bathroom has been re-modeled so that it is a student lounge with toilet stalls ringing the walls. This strikes me as strange as who wants to study under such environments? I look at one of the nearby stalls and realize that while they look like classic bathroom stalls, they're actually high tech cubicles with an energy field on them - no sounds or smells emanate. Even the stall image is a simulation. Inside, they have a sink, a mirror and a toilet in each one. I start to look around at the rest of the room and notice a coffee bar amid all of the study tables when... I wake up in my apartment room. I slide out of my large double bed. Enough light comes in from under the door where I can make out my wooden dresser near the door. I get up and leave my bedroom. It is situated at the end of a long hall. Light from the city is coming in, as I'm on a top floor apartment. A little light is coming in to the room at the opposite end of the hallway, enough to spot some dining room furniture. I think a bit about how the dining room at the end of the hall leads around to opens into a larger room on the other side of the hallway wall. The configuration always struck me as a little odd, but the apartment's price was right. I dart into the bathroom and use the facilities, then go back to bed and fall asleep. Back in the futuristic school's study room / bathroom combo, I no longer feel sick, so I decide to go back to class, but exit the wrong side and end up in the wrong part of the building. After trying to get back to my part of the building, but being overwhelmed by a mass of students and an unfamiliar environment, I accidentally go through a door that puts me on the outside of the school. We're in an ice cave and the school is attached to a giant machine that takes it to the surface or deep underground. An alarm signals and I realize they're taking the school to the surface and I'm outside and I start screaming and pounding on the door to get back in... I wake up in my apartment room, small and full of junk. My mattress rests on the floor and I use a nearby bookshelf to pull myself up. I wasn't thinking when I do so as the shelf was broken and I knock over several books. The nightmare I'd had had shook me and as I exit my bedroom I'm stumped on why I was afraid of the surface. What could have been up there? I stand in the darkened hall outside of my bedroom. To the left at the end of the hall is a room I can't see anything in. To the right is the bathroom. Straight ahead is a room with a little light in the windows but not enough to make anything out but just enough to see the general outline of where I am going in the hallway. I go into the bathroom and splash some water on my face to try and recover from the nightmare. When I leave the bathroom, the door to the room opposite mine has been partially closed and a light turned on. I start to push open the door - what I can see is the room has been trashed - junk and debris scattered everywhere. Graffiti is everywhere but on one wall something is written, large and prominent. Before I read it, I notice a nameplate on the door holding a hand written card. The card has a series of names on it, mine included. I can't figure out why my name is on this door when my room is across from it. At that point I become scared and start backing away from the door towards the bathroom trying my best not to read what is written on the wall as the door swings further open... When I wake up I'm in my nice spacious bedroom. I scoot to the edge of my bed and stare at the wooden dresser for a moment. I get back up, two nightmares back to back have shaken me, and open the door. The hallway is still well lit from city lights but I wished the dining room beyond wasn't so shadowy. I entered the bathroom and get a cup of water. I realize I picked up my toothbrush absentmindedly when I got the water and put it back. I look at my face in the mirrors - instead of one mirror there are several small and midsized ones giving different angles. I realize immediately the face isn't mine, and yet it is too; as I move and make faces it follows suit, when I raise my hands to my face the mirror image follows suit. It must be my face. I think the weird dreams have gotten me all out of sorts and figure I'll laugh about it when I get up in the morning. I leave the bathroom, glance back towards that dark room at the end of the hallway before heading back to bed and drifting to sleep. Where I wake up a few minutes before my alarm goes off in my real bedroom in my house. If I wake up again, I probably won't be posting about that here, I'm afraid.

PUPPETMASTER - the Full Moon film about killer puppets. Fun film, great catchy opening - you can see why they ended up making 9 films - but the sex psychics seem to have wandered in from a porno film. A really bad one at that, and they take center stage for far too long. And yet I did think the film overall "worked" for a low-budget, direct to video 80s film. APOLLO 18 - found footage horror film; the idea of using a secret moon landing makes the "found footage" work - NASA is filming the mission and all the cameras for a moon walk make sense. And there a lot of nice creepy touches up until about halfway through when the monster is more or less revealed. And then the film devolves a good bit; the motivations of the creatures doesn't match up with what they're doing and the two astronauts don't actually act very intelligently. Lot of potential but not as much payoff. IRON MAN 3 - I still enjoyed the film. The dodge on the Mandarin works well, Pierce is a good villain and I think the thing holds together well with the other two making a complete sort of statement about Stark as a character. AGENT CARTER - the Marvel One-Shot Short, Hayley Atwell returns from Captain America. Its one year later and she's nominally a field agent but chained to her desk by a superior. Until working alone at night, she gets a call for a mission that gives her an opportunit...fun film, probably one of the better Marvel shorts if you liked Carter from the Cap film. Domnick Cooper shows up again as Howard Stark too (and an even funnier cameo by Neal McDonough as Dum Dum Dugan).

They probably only really need 4-5 to cut syndication deals...

Yeah its not an American Horror Story, I'm enjoying Sleepy Hollow but I'll be pleasantly surprised if it makes it past season 1 So far Sleepy Hollow has had good ratings - only being beaten by THE VOICE's second hour (putting it past ABC's Dancing with the Stars, CBS's 9:00 comedies or whatever the CW is showing). Unless it plummets in the next few months, I'd think its looking good for renewal.

I waited 30 minutes in the rain for a bus in a covered bus stop. Unfortunately there was a puddle formed right in front of the bus stop so that every car splashed a wall of water into the bus stop. Luckily I had my umbrella pointed towards the street and only got partially soaked. I also was standing on the seat and trying to protect the poor woman with me who had no umbrellas. Moral of the Story: I don't miss public transportation where I live.

RE:SHIELD and Coulson

Yeah I enjoyed SHIELD. Glad they got the team building out of the way.

Read this initially as "Ate a sandwich nude..."