12 Years.

Today, Nikki and I celebrate a milestone anniversary, 12 years of being together as a couple (3 years of being married); two six-packs of years behind us. One more and we get a baker's dozen.

12 years may not seem like a lot, but let me put it in perspective... 12 years ago, the first Mortal Kombat game in the arcades was just three weeks old and already causing outrage in parents. Capcom released--get this--the first update to the wild hit Street Fighter II, titled Championship Edition. And the only X-Men arcade game ever released was put out by Konami.

If you had big money, then you might have been lucky enough to have a 486-DX2 computer, capable of running at speeds of up to 50MHz, and if you really splurged, it would have 8MB of ram and over 120 megabytes of hard drive space.

The biggest news was Hurricane Andrew, which had just kicked the crap out of the southeastern coast, including Louisiana, where Nikki lived.

Bill Clinton was running for president--for the first time. (Trivia Bit of the day: he won.)

If these facts don't remind you of all that changes in 12 years, nothing will. But some things don't change. Like me and her, and her and me.

My Family vs. John Kerry

If you've followed the news or watched television lately--or even if you haven't--you might be aware of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth commercial which questions John Kerry's Viet Nam record.

As one of those freaky coincidences, one of the speakers in the commercial, who states Kerry's account was false, is Jack Chenoweth, who shares my last name, which comes from my father's side. Another powerful speaker, George Elliott, also claims Kerry has lied (after stating much differently while standing beside Kerry 8 years ago), and he shares my grandmother's name--also on my father's side.

It's like watching members of my bloodline tell me not to vote for John Kerry. Not that I intend on listening, mind you. What happened 35 years ago, happened, well, 35 years ago. Even if these allegations are true, which is doubtful given the conflicting reports, it's not like he raped or murdered someone, both of which are things that actually took place in Viet Nam. And unlike some other presidential candidates, he served in Viet Nam.

The saddest part is seeing some Chenoweths out there cheer on the commercial, as if our great relative Jack appearing in this is giving us some sort of positive publicity. Because a dubious mudslinging attack against a presidential candidate is just what you want to bring your family name into notice.

Six degrees of Roger Corman.

As I prepared to turn off NPR and jam out to my iPod, they announced a feature that was sure to astound and amaze, an interview with Roger Corman, director of dozens of B-Movies and of my favorite MST3k (depending on which day you ask me), The Undead.

The interview itself? Eh. He sounded far too intelligent for the guy who directed these movies. But what intrigued in that strange way was two previously unknown connections:

Roger Corman directed the predecessor to Easy Rider, which was the Wild Angels. I knew nothing about this movie, but they played a clip featuring Peter Fonda in one of his first roles. Apparently, the scene was one of a Hell's Angels funeral, and a priest asks Peter Fonda's character just what he wants to do, and the character responds among other things, that they wanna have a good time. The clip sounded familiar to me, I knew I'd heard it somewhere before. After a few seconds of thinking, I remembered: this scene is sampled on the awesome Tempest 2000 soundtrack, track 7: Future Tense. Reminded of this, I chose to play that soundtrack on my iPod when the interview was over. As I got to track 7, I realized the scary thought: I'm embellishing Roger Corman's legacy every time I listen to this track.

The other, weaker connection is that Corman directed "Pirhana," which was playing on television way, way back when I was a wee tyke and drew my first ever piece of video game-related art (it was Ms. Pac-Man chasing a ghost, done with the help of a circular glass coaster.)

The good part about all this is, reading this post here, you're now only two degrees away from a Roger Corman film. Since the only way to top this is to actually watch a Roger Corman film--or, even more closely, be one--this is about as close as one can safely get.

Newsbits.

Today's quick bites of odd news, courtesy of NPR:

Queen has become the first rock band to be approved in Tehran, Iran. An album of their greatest hits (minus some songs which were not approved) has been selling very well. Prior to hearing about this, I didn't know that Freddy Mercury was of Iranian descent. You can thank Blogger's refusal to link to anything that doesn't end in .htm or .html for me not including a link here.

Right on target to hit the Super Soldier Serum 100 years after the invention of Captain America, scientists have genetically engineered mice who have amazing stamina, retarded aging, and do not get fat or lose muscle regardless of what they eat or lack of exercise. I support the concept of genetic engineering for people and the possibilities of this down the road even frighten me a little...

Evolution.

Watching the Olympics over the last few days, I've come to the conclusion that unless things change soon and for the better, the Olympics themselves might become a thing of the past. We've seen indications of some flagging interest during the course of the games already--stadiums with low amounts of people buying tickets--during more than just preliminaries--and a fair bit of not-positive crowd feedback.

The first step in saving the Olympics is removing some of the commercial aspect. I don't mean television commercials. I mean the fact that the Olympics, at least on the American front, are more about money than about athletes competing. NBC paid $750 million in order to obtain the mostly-exclusive broadcast rights in America. Every major athlete carries the logo of an athletics company, some more than one. Events shouldn't be put off broadcasting until prime-time just to rake in more dollars. And while there's probably a better reason for it, it seems like the complicated tie-breaking rules are just based on a cheap desire to not have to possibly give two medals for the same position in the same event. Really, there are times when two people are merely equals.

The second task, also aimed at the American front, is to return to an international view of the Olympics. Problem with this is, it's tied into the first problem. NBC shows the best events at prime time to attract the most money, but in order to increase the appeal for American viewers, everything has a pro-American slant. Athletes who compete poorly have excuses made for them. The little "phone in for your favorite Olympic moment" is predominantly American (even in the face of dramatic events like Radcliffe dropping out of the women's marathon, or the 5+ minute crowd uproar at the scoring of Neimov's routine.) And where are the heartwarming documentary-stories of athletes from outside of the U.S.? I thought we used to see those in the past. While the ones we have now are interesting, they're only for the people from one county. Now more than ever, the Olympics, is an international affair.

Last but not least, here's a hint: When interest in the Olympics seems to be waning, it's not time to add more sports to the roster, it's time to spruce up the ones you have. Adding badminton, beach volleyball and trampolining (although the last actually shows a surprising degree of skill, and should be part of gymnastics, IMO) is not the answer. Don't throw more parts into the machine, fix the ones that are broken. I fear for the 2008 or 2012 games where we have skateboarding, dirt-biking and yo-yo as events... ("The judges require at least a three-second duration on that walk the dog, that's going to be at least a tenth deduction.")

It's just chicken!

McDonald's has announced with much fanfare their new premium chicken strips. The commercials for these strips show people defending their hard-bought chicken strips against imaginary foes out to take their food. From this, I can deduce that the chicken strips are laced with hallucinogenic drugs. Because I bought a five-pack of these things, and I can wholeheartedly say that they are not worth suspecting your coworkers and family of thievery. The ones I had were sort of dry and not overly flavorful. They were kind of like long, thin chicken nuggets, actually... Oh, except not that tasty and made from whole strips of chicken instead of mulched up chicken parts.

If the selling point of your new product is that it's formed from whole premium chicken parts while you're still selling a lesser quality item composed of chopped up chicken bits that could be feet, beak, or even soybeans, you're pretty dumb in my book.

And if you're going to go the "Prepare to Defend Your Chicken" route, then have people defending their chicken. Some Matrix-style fight scenes where someone rips a signpost out of the ground and beats assailants to death would be far more convincing than a housewife threatening with a Tai Chi pose against her vase. Make me an unstoppable ninja master, not a paranoid freak.

Trojan Horse Commercial

I previously mentioned this commercial in my blog. For those interested, I located a copy of it online (and it's the full version, which I've only spotted once during the games.) It's worth a chuckle if you haven't seen it already.

For those eschewing Quicktime, Mpeg version available here.

OPB-NPR (OMGWTFBBQ?)

A coworker who departed the company yesterday left me his battered radio, almost certainly after offering it to everyone else unsuccessfully. It's dusty and has a couple of banking-related stickers on it, but hey, the power cord and antenna still work, although in order to improve reception, I strung an impressive array of connected paperclips from the antenna.

In any event, thanks to having forgotten to charge my iPod, I've taken to listening to National Public Radio. Although the news segments they have can be repetitive, they appear truly unbiased--heck, the reporters don't even show any emotion, much less inclination toward one side of the story or the other--and some of their variety type programs are entertaining. I heard a documentary tonight about the guy who is the translator for basketball star Yao Ming. And if I tell you that it was interesting, well, you probably would think that's more due to my not having a life. But it genuinely was.

Only time will tell how long my interest in this new source of sound lasts. When it dims, well, hey, at least the radio plays cassette tapes too... Uh, if I had any of those...

Reality defeats Olympics, takes gold.

The Olympics are a great time to see new commercials, as companies pour their advertising dollar into time slots sure to be seen by millions of people. Although the clear winner for me in these commercials has been the AT&T "Trojan Horse" commercial, other companies have also landed some impressive stuff. Pretty far down on the bottom of the list is DHL, who got only a mild chuckle out of me when they showed a pole-vaulter landing on a couple feet of bubble wrap padding and asking for more.

I never had any experiences with DHL prior to their commercials on the Olympics, until today at work when we faced a documentation crisis. A customer needing to make an escrow payment, sent in their loan documents for overnight delivery via DHL. That was on the 14th. As of this morning, those documents had been checked in at DHL's shipping dock, but had not been sent out for delivery yet. The elected course of action has been to contact DHL, have them find the documents if they can, get them returned and then sent out again via Fedex.

The lesson here? Sometimes you only get one chance. Now I know that if I need fifty cubic feet of styrofoam peanuts to long-jump into, DHL is the company for me, but if I need to get that critical $500,000 loan processed, it's Fedex.

In other news, Nikki has contracted mononucleosis, as can be seen in
her blog. And as I slug through my work day, I feel strangely drained of energy. This could turn out bad, especially if it's coming on now, with me taking a week off for 12th Anniversary celebrations at the end of the month...

This and That.

I used to watch a show called Starcade. No, not the crappy WCW Wrestling event, but the first television show to feature people playing arcade games for prizes. If you're one of those people saying to yourself, "Why would people want to watch other people play games? They could just play games themselves," well, you should have asked me about 20 years ago when I was a wee tyke.

Sadly, I just recently found out that this show was airing on the gaming network, G4. This information comes about 12 months after they stopped showing it on that network. However, it's 18-month run increases the chances that someone out there will have videotapes of it and that I can eventually make that return to my youth...

In other news, Hurricane Charley is giving Florida a right pounding at the moment, something which, while not good in and of itself, was cause for a nice reminesce between Nikki and I as we
thought back to how Andrew was doing similar and worse things, and how she had gone without power and phone and I had worried about her in 1992, the summer before we officially became a couple... Ah, memories. :)

Return of Strange Dreams.

I dreamt last night that I was a contestant on Jeopardy!. Standing alongside me was a fellow coworker, who was apparently filming during his lunch break and kept looking at his watch. Either the show was filming in our area or he had caught a really fast flight to California...

In the premiere show of the new season, we were to face off against that guy who's earned over a million dollars with something like 36 consecutive wins. Nervous much? The returning champ chose a $200 answer in the "Links & Jinx" category, and the answer, read by Alex Trebek, took up 16 monitor screens and required like a minute and a half for him to get through, something like "It was who the Beatles referred to when they wrote a song about Vinnie Barbarino, whose character was based on..." Not even the returning champ had a clue. The resulting question itself took up two monitor screens, as if you had to give the answer in the form of a question by Encyclopedia Britannica. It ended up being a Final Fantasy character, but not one I'd ever heard of or can remember, which made me feel dumb in spite of the insane question and answer.

I pretty much realized I was in over my head at that point. The champ picked a $400 question in another category, and it was about someone who got caught with 400 copied DVDs obtained from what webpage. I misheard the question, thought it said what game system, and knew I had it, buzzed in quickly (since I'd read that's the secret to defeating the guy), and realized I didn't have it at all. I meekly tendered "What is www.dvdburner.com?" in response, went into the negative and woke up probably through sheer force of shame. I better just stick to the occasional Trivial Pursuit we have during some of our meetings at work.

Attack of the Longhorns.

No, it's not a western about chainsaw-wielding cowboys, it's actually worse. I watched a segment on Jon Stewart this morning regarding Asian Longhorn Beetles having destroyed 3,000 trees in New York, which doesn't sound like a lot compared to the 5 million or so trees it reportedly has, but is nevertheless a significant number.

From years I spent collecting insects, I recall that these can be some heavy-hitting creatures. Unlike the grubs of many beetles like Stag Beetles that prefer dead and rotting wood to live stuff, the longhorn grubs will go after live plants voraciously. According to what I read online, they've spread from New York to New Jersey, Illinois and Canada in the past few years. We could be looking at the inception of another great migratory-permeation of insects, much like the movements of killer bees and many species of ants that have been inadvertently imported...

Without a proliferation of natural predators in the Northeast, it will be interesting to see over the next several years how this creature devastates the inner-city tree environments...

Evil < Really Evil

A coworker and I were discussing great gaming moments earlier today, and, inevitably, mowing down everything in GTA3 using a Rhino Tank came up. One of our other coworkers, somewhat more of the religious persuasion, was compelled to remark, "Games like that feed the flesh too much. You should take care to feed the spirit too."

She didn't mean anything harmful by it, and I know that she's not a bible-basher. That's why I didn't turn around and tell her in detail about the bit in the game where you can make out with a prostitute in a stolen car, run her over afterwards to take back the money you paid, and then use a rocket launcher to blow up the ambulance that arrives to try and save her. Now, if I wasn't such a nice guy...

When to give up.

I normally don't follow politics all that much. I know who I like, who I don't like, and who I'm going to vote for. But a snippet I caught in the newspaper today did indeed surprise me. It was detailing Ralph Nader's attempts to get on the presidential ballot in various states, and how he was having some difficulties. I quote:

"Nader lost one chance at the California ballot on Sunday when the California Peace and Freedom Party members opted instead to nominate jailed Native American activist Leonard Peltier ... ... who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan., for the June 1975 slayings of FBI agents Ron Williams and Jack Coler on the Pine Ridge reservation."

Dude. When the "Peace and Freedom Party" would rather nominate a convicted murderer who won't ever get out of prison than you? Just throw in the towel and call it a day...

Jem and more.

Over the weekend, I dug out some old VHS tapes that Nikki had recorded TV shows on--I'm glad she did so, because I never had the foresight to do that when I was a kid. There were various old things from the 80s on there (sometimes with commercials, even) but the main event was Jem. Jem is her name, no one else is the same, Jem is her name.

For Nikki's own take on this, check her blog entries. Highlights of the mini-marathon included Kimber and Stormer forging a very special relationship, several LSD-induced images of a fifty-foot Pizzazz scooping up the entire universe in her hands, and an endless supply of evidence that Jem is the center of creation itself, that all is Jem and that anyone who insinuates otherwise shall perish in the flames of her cosmic wrath.

While working to add more avatars to the site, I discovered the very odd Ninja Baseball Batman. No, it's not Bruce Wayne in a Gi carrying an implement of the great American pasttime, it's actual ninjas (and maybe robots) wielding baseball bats fighting a variety of baseball-inspired enemies in what appears to be a quest to recover a golden statue of Babe Ruth. It was released by the normally level-headed Irem, who, much like Konami with the Simpsons score points for making themselves very different from the standard Final Fight clone...