Well the Academy proved to me that night that it had no morals to stand on. Hollywood does love its non-extradited child rapists.

I also love how it's always emphasized that it was "statutory" rape. As if she was some young temptress that seduced him and he was some noble victim that got birthdates wrong. Read the Smoking Gun archives on this perv. He isolated his victim, plied her with drugs and alcohol and then victimized her. And this is only the incident that was made public. Roman's got good PR people and lots of lawyers...

Pervs like him don't do this only once. You gotta wonder how many young French girls fall victim to his "charms." But the French are so much more mature in the ways of love, mais oui?

Oh, and he's the victim because he's not allowed on U.S. soil to accept his stupid award. And now the British courts are granting him a "special exception." If I were Vanity Fair I'd fight this tooth and nail and make him show up in court.

And why is it that I believe completely Vanity Fair's assertion that he was propositioning another woman on the way to his murdered wife's funeral?

Bastard.

Remodelling Hell

...to add space for the comments spammer that keeps sticking links to hardcore sites in old postings.

There should be special tortures for the authors of these spambots, like having to listen to endless speakers talking about the "miracle of Amway" for 9 eternities.

This is worst than email spam.

Sin City is dying

I've read all the inevitable jokes about Roy of Siegfried and Roy getting mauled by the tiger: I wonder how the writer of that Simpson's episode where Mr. Burns opens a casino and a Siegfried and Roy type act gets mauled by a pissed off tiger feels right now. I mean it was an obvious joke, and the odds of something happening with big nasty cats over the long haul for them was probably getting close to 1:1, but nobody wants to predict anything like that do they?

They're talking about the economic spillover effects now: all the dancers and performers fired, the ticket revenue lost, the trips cancelled - who knew that Siegfried and Roy were that big a draw? But why else would one want to go for Vegas if not for the spectacle of acts such as these?

You can gamble almost everywhere else on the continent. In Ontario alone there are three (soon to be four) big commercial casinos, six "charity" casinos, and 15 (soon to be 18) slots-at racetracks facilities. There are plenty of local places to lose money hand-over-fist at.

Vegas used to have an air of danger about it. People would look at you with suspicion if you frequented Vegas. You might be dangerous.

Now Vegas is the playpen of Celine Dion's spoiled little brat. The marketers have succeeded in making Vegas a "family destination." Ugh.

Sigfried and Roy, laugh if you will, were part of the dangers of Old Vegas. Unless they get newer, hotter acts to have extended stays in Vegas it will be harder to convince the pigeons (ie. tourists) to flock to the slot machines.

It's just as easy to plug quarters into a machine at home...

Is this the real me?

First Step

...in planning our big move out west.

Don't get cocky and get yourself fired for telling someone off (no matter how much they DESERVE it!)

Fear is the Mind Killer...

Darling wife Rue told me last week that some guy had rang our doorbell asking if our house was for sale. Seems his grandparents had owned the house before the characters we purchased Kraut Manor from and he was feeling nostalgic.

Instead of being happy about this development (one guy knocking probably means 2 or 3 silently watching and waiting) I felt fear and panic grip me. I didn't want to know, I didn't want to think, I didn't want to consider.

Didn't want to consider the fun task of moving: packing, lifting, breaking, unpacking, living in boxes for the next 2 years. Didn't want to consider the cross-country haul: if we sell the house, we might as well move to where we want to live long-term and the west is certainly beckoning me, and probably by association, my wife has expressed a desire to live in B.C. as well.

And it's not like the last time: At that time it was just 24 year old me, half a two-bedroom apartments' worth of stuff and no baggage of the metaphysical kind. Now it's 33 year old me, a two-bedroom house's worth of stuff, a wife two kids and a dog. And a big-time inferiority-complex monster stalking me...

The stakes are bigger. The price of Fuck-Ups are greater.

And I never quite understood how much I now fear unemployment after the year I spent unemployed after September 2001. Until now. Curse of the bread-winner, I guess. Why rock the boat and bite off more than I can chew? Why tempt fate again? I barely recovered the first time, and now I'm contemplating a move to an economically-challenged (relatively) area of the country. Who am I kidding?

---

And then...

Calm.

A realization that I almost let that fucker break me. "That fucker" being the asshole at the back of my subconscious that keeps telling me that I'm doomed to fail. That any good thing that I've ever accomplished has been by luck and not talent. That I deserve to suffer because I'm just not good enough.

Maybe you've met him.

I loathe him.

---

People move every day. Why the hell am I so scared of it? It's not like when I moved to Ontario in '94. I had no idea what Ontario was like. I love some things about this province I never thought I would. I hate some of the very things that brought me here in the first place. But all of those were unknowns when I got on the plane that cold November day.

I know what awaits me in British Columbia.

And maybe that's what scares me.

Settling into a nice comfortable part of the country with a not-too challenging subsistence job waiting for the icy cold hands of death to wrap its bony little fingers round my windpipe after an average number of comfortable years as an also-ran rather than a winner...

---

See how he sneaks up on you when you're jabbering away to the general public? He's maniacal that one.



But what if the abyss is in your way? What if the abyss is hiding that which you need to find? Shouldn't you take a deep breath and jump with both feet? Fuckin' abyss thinking it can strike terror into the hearts and minds and stop me from doing what is best...

First thing I need to do is find out how much that pigeon gentleman is willing to pay to relive his childhood memories...

Next thing I need to do is see what my resume gets me in the town we want to go to...

Any readers from the town of Kelowna, British Columbia who need a good great accounting/financial analyst who's not afraid of a little rolled-up-sleeve dirty work? Will work at quite reasonable rates...

The changing face of the profane

:::Warning: foul language alert. If you're easily offended, maybe select an earlier, less offensive article. Raging Kraut is usually a PG-rated blog. But it being sweeps week we all know what sells: tawdry sex and a whole lotta potty-mouth. Regular programming will resume soon. Maybe.

Inconceivable!

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

via Classical Values

Ha! I knew it!

I'd thought in this entry in June that Clive Owen would make a great Bond. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so.

DOUBLE OWEN SEVEN

The Daily Record reports that Clive Owen will take over the franchise in Bond 22 to be released in 2007.

It was previously stated in the IMDB that Owen had said some nasty things about the franchise as I wrote in this entry (also from June.) Thankfully that seems to be something a so-called "friend" was shooting his mouth off about.



Interesting to see the other choices the producers are considering as well:



Jack Davenport (of BBC's Coupling, not the crappy NBC remake. Check it out in it's original British!) is too much the funnyman. I saw him in the British mini-series "Ultraviolet" as a vampire-hunting cop. The show's only weakness, excellent as it was for fans of the genre, was that I couldn't buy Davenport in the serious role. Maybe it's because he was so great in Coupling. NBC should've just bought the English show and ran it as is instead of remaking it with inferior actors. No one's accent in the original was that bad...

Orlando Bloom is too pretty. Without the elven super-powers I can't see him as tough guy.

I still think the series needs something else to make it "pop" more: maybe make it more episodic, with a recurring uber-villain for a couple of movies that's written as more than a "villain of the week" characterisation that seems to be happening in the last couple of films...I don't know. We'll see if they give Pierce Brosnan a good farewell.

via Wizbang!