CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

The proposed site of the so-called 'Ground Zero Mosque'

I blog this morning feeling quite thoroughly American.  I have taken paid time off from my stressful but cushy job where I work from home for a corporation halfway across the country.  Engineerboy is manning the homestead while some electricians work their electron magic on our old 1940′s-wired cottage.  I’ve taken refuge at a local coffee shop, chilling in the air conditioning with an espresso drink, a blueberry muffin, and Wi-Fi.  I’m humming along to the Garbage song that’s softly playing in the background.  Baby Bootsie is snugly snoozing and strapped to me in the that marvel of upper middle class parenthood engineering, the Baby Bjorn Synergy.  The only other patron of the coffee shop is a retired grandfather who chats with the coffee shop owner

• Leave a comment... (1)

Don't lose your cool...

We recently replaced two of our old, crappy window unit air-conditioners with newer models.  The new units were from Home Depot and the installation was do-it-yourself, and when I was done I realized that I had two undisposable hunks of junk to deal with.  You can’t just throw away a system loaded with refrigerant, so I figured all I had to do was figure out how everybody else did it, then do that.

My first strategy was to ask at the local recycling center here in Brenham.  They said I could probably take them to the collection station (dump), so the next time I went to the dump I asked at the office if they would take window unit air-conditioners.  They said they would, as long as all the coolant had been recovered by an

• Leave a comment... (2)

Did Disney at least buy you dinner, IMDb?

I started visiting the IMDb site way back in the day, even before they were bought by Amazon.com.  Back then, IMDb was a site for film lovers and film scholars, an encyclopedic collection of information and opinions about film (and, later, television).

However, once Amazon.com purchased IMDb they have slowly but inexorably worked to “monetize” the traffic on the site.  They added a fee-service called IMDb Pro, which provides deeper and newer information, and they have also blithely accepted saturation advertising for any and every piece of crap excreted by Hollywood, as long as the budgets were big enough.

For example, the screen shot to the right is of the home page today, and as you can see it is *plastered* with advertising for and editorial references to Disney’s “Prince of Persia”.  By

• Leave a comment... (1)

You probably wouldn't remember, I probably couldn't forget

Today I was sitting in the car in the car wash listening to tunes, and I heard an old favorite – “Jungle Love” by The Steve Miller Band, from 1977.  The song sounds kind of pop-y and like a confection, but the lyrics have, to me, always been more poetic and abstract than the tune and the refrain.  Here are the lyrics, as best as I can decode them (leaving out the refrains):

I met you on somebody’s island
You thought you had known me before
I brought you a crate of papaya
They waited all night by your door
You probably wouldn’t remember
I probably couldn’t forget
Jungle love in the surf in the pouring rain
Everything’s better when wet

But lately you live in the jungle
I never see you alone
But we need some

• Leave a comment... (0)

"If you could make God bleed, people will cease to believe in Him."

Iron Man 2 is a not-disappointing sequel, however it’s also not as entertaining as the original.  But, there have been only a very few sequels that equaled or surpassed their predescessors, so that’s not surprising. 

What was surprising, for me, was the understated performance by Mickey Roarke as Ivan Vanko (right), Iron Man’s nemesis with a family grudge in this installment.  Calling his performance “understated” is an…well…understatement, because Vanko is of course a larger-than-life comic book villain.  However, within that context, Roarke’s performance is carefully restrained and excellently realized.

Also well cast and well characterized are Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, head of a competing defense contracting firm, and Garry Shandling (Garry Shandling?!??!?) as Senator Stern, Iron Man’s foe in the Senate who is looking to have the

• Leave a comment... (0)

Dogs eat it, flies swarm to it

I thought I’d try to be a little more gentle on the environment and use an ‘organic’ fertilizer for our yard.  I found Scotts® Organic Choice® Lawn Food at the local Home Depot and decided to give it a try.  I just spread it this weekend so I can’t speak to its greening or healthifying effects on the lawn, but I can state, unequivocally, that my three dogs and every fly in the general area *love* it.

I first spread it on the front lawn, without any drama, and the only slight warning sign was the very…er…’organic’ smell of the stuff.  However, it smelled like it could be a rich source of nutrients, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Then I spread it in the back yard, where our

• Leave a comment... (7)

Nobody puts crazy in a corner...

Marie and I decided to play multiplex roulette today, where we spontaneously stop at the movie theater and watch the most appealing next show.  There aren’t a lot of rules to Theater Roulette, but we reserve the right to veto and play again another day if nothing seems worthwhile.

Today’s winner was The Crazies, a remake of the George Romero film from the 1970′s with the same name and storyline.  Neither of us knew anything about the film, other than I recalled a vaguely non-terrible mention of it from somewhere, but not even a full-fledged review.

I’ve never seen the original, so can’t compare them, but the current version is an interesting twist on the zombieless zombie film.  The basic storyline is that a government plane carrying biological weapons has crashed

• Leave a comment... (0)

"I'm sorry, Dave, that's prior art..."

"Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device..."

The first picture is of Apple’s new (unfortunately named) iPad, the second picture is from the film 2001:A Space Odyssey, showing a remarkably similar device being used by astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole as they eat their delicious, extruded paste meals.

I wonder if Apple and/or Steven Jobs have thought about throwing Arthur C. Clarke and/or Stanley Kubrick some scratch for finally bringing their design to market?  There is precedent for “new” inventions being denied patents based on prior description in science fiction works (e.g. waterbeds described by Robert Heinlein).

Even if not legally required, I think it would be a public relations coup for Apple to at least

• Leave a comment... (6)

The Crotch Bomb

The Christmas Day Crotchbomber was simply the latest in a long, long string of airline terror attacks, including the Shoebomber, Lockerbie, 9/11, etc…the list goes on and on.  There is now talk of using full body scans as part of our increasingly intrusive and futile airport security procedures.

So the TSA makes us throw out our shampoo, but that does nothing to prevent continue threats to air travel.  Even full body scans won’t do much, particularly if the terrorists know about them.  What’s next, full body x-rays, CAT scans, and MRIs to look for ingested, explosive-filled balloons?

The issue is that, given the nature and purpose of air travel, we simply do not have a technical solution to preventing airline terror attacks.  There are no security screens, scanners, sniffers, or profilers that

• Leave a comment... (0)

Bound by Logic

We walked into Sherlock Holmes with the baseline hope of being entertained, and we were not disappointed.  Director Guy Ritchie has created a period/action/mystery film, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson.  We could not recall a single other Guy Ritchie film that we’ve actually watched all the way through, as we typically find ourselves overwhelmed by the style but underwhelmed by the story, however in this case the film delivers on both counts.

The story revolves around a plot to return England to her glory days as the Empire, including re-absorbing the United States, weakened by the Civil War.  A secret society uses advanced (for the times) technologies in an attempt to give the appearance of supernatural powers, and to then rule by fear.  In a parallel thread, Watson is

• Leave a comment... (0)