Ok I just had the lady upstairs in the apartment above me come knock on my door and complain. Know what her complaint was? My ceiling fan (which every apartment has here) is too loud (!) and she told me I have to turn it off every evening after 8pm so she can sleep. She actually brought someone from the complex staff with her too. What in the fuck?

Told them to kiss my ass and fix every fan in the complex. Maybe if she had been halfway polite though.. Feh.

I don't think I've done one of these updates in awhile for some reason, but it's back with a vengeance. Last night's selection was Traffic, starring Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, and Benicio Del Toro. It's a movie of interweaving storylines all about drug trafficking from Mexico. Michael Douglas plays the conflicted US Drug Czar whose family problems are a nice microcosm for the problems he has to face with his new job. Catherine Zeta-Jones is the wife of a man on trial for drug trafficking having to find a way to protect her baby and her lifestyle. Don Cheadle's a DEA agent survailing her and protecting a trial witness. Finally, Benicio Del Toro is a Mexican police officer fighting the good fight from Mexico, trying to make his town safe.

All in all, in my opinion it was an absolutely wonderful movie. However, only half of us thought that. The other half thought it was boring and/or terrible. It is admittedly a slow movie, but if you're looking for a great story about real people dealing with situations that they don't know how to control, I highly recommend this. If you're looking for a lot of shooting or action, I suggest looking elsewhere.

Ah yes, we need a good old fashion debate around here huh? Well check this story out. (Thanks PC). Dr David Kessler of the US Food and Drug Administration has called for the American tobacco industry to be dismantled. He details a 5 year investigation into the tobacco industry conducted by the FDA which lead him to this conclusion.

... calling for cigarettes to only be sold to those who are already addicted to them. [...] Dr David Kessler says that as a business, the American tobacco industry should be dismantled and operate only as a strictly supervised supplier to "cigarette addicts".

Since there's like no game news today and I'm here at Steve's place in Seattle, I figured I'd post a movie time for you guys since it's Friday and all. The movie for this week it The Emperor's New Groove. I actually saw this about a week ago, but forgot to post about it. This movie is absolutely hilarious. It really goes against the grain of your standard Disney formula movie. Instead of concentrating on a retelling of old stories with talking animal (or kitchen appliance) sidekicks, it's instead a pretty straight-ahead comedy. David Spade plays Kuzco, the emporer and fits the part absolutely perfectly. The highlight character of the movie though is Kronk, voiced by Patrick Warburton (Puddy from Seinfeld, upcoming star of the Tick live action series). Just about every line out of this guy's mouth is funny, mostly from the delivery. Plus, the movie goes out of its way to poke fun at the standard Disney formula throughout. I highly recommend it.

Steve just woke up.

Since I was grabbing some pictures off the old camera to send to the family for Christmas, I figured what the hell may as well share with the world just how incredibly goofy looking I am in case there was any doubt. Oh yeah, and my moms parking abilities.

I'm a retard: [shot1] [shot2]
My mom's incredible parking [shot1] and she forced me to take this picture later that day [shot2]
I got 3 pairs of underwear this Christmas! [shot1]
I'm a fanboy even on Christmas [shot1]

So, being as that it is the day before Christmas, everyone is supposed to do silly things with your family or friends or something and smile at grandma telling her what a blast you are having babysitting your puking and pooping nephew. As you sit there waiting that extra hour for the rest of the family and happen to load up the page, why not share the joy (anguish) of past Christmas excursions?

I think my favorite one is when I was a young teenager, we drove 7hrs to some amusement park, and got a flat tire about 90 minutes away from the place. We spent the night in a hotel (car places were all closed) and I woke up with a roach on my arm. That sucked a lot.

Must..finish..Christmas...shopping...first....ugh.

Good morning everybody. Hexagon is busy this morning (those special brownies + wooden shoes = not a good thing), so he asked me to bring you guys a little first post/werd cheer.

I saw "Dude, Where's My Car?" last night. If you go see this movie, remember these things: 1) Yes, it is as dumb as it looks. It may even be dumber. 2) Go see it with a lot of people - It helps when you share the idiocy. 3) Go to the matinee; It's not worth full price. 4) Watch it in an altered state (drugs, alochol, pop tarts). Don't go in expecting Citizen Kane and you'll be just fine.

On another note - Since Rosewood wants some amusement, I'm going to rant for a bit. We got this woman at work who drives me nuts. She talks about her 2 kids incessantly. I mean, take how much you watch porn and multiply by 50. Seriously. She is mid 40's, overweight, and insists on wearing short skirts with hose that has HUGE runs in it. She likes to come visit you while you're working and stick her fingers all over your monitor, leaving a greasy mess in her wake. (This is a pet peeve of mine). This morning she comes in with all her hair chopped off (in an attempt to preserve her youth, but too late! you lost it 20 years ago along with your figure!) and walks around showing it to everybody. I, in my typical tactless fashion ask "Hey, where's your hair?" and she gets mad and says "You're supposed to say 'Oh, your hair looks great!' and make some compliments!" Right. Ok, rant off, post your stories of annoying workmates and classmates right here.

Image of the Day is now back up. Bad Kermit, bad! Everybody email Rosewood and thank him.

Wow. Normally Friday is a Retro movie night, but nobody could really decide on anything. I just went to dinner with my chicky while a couple people braved Vertical Limit. Before dinner though, some of us played the Q3TA demo last night when I discovered a little sound that I'm sure most of you have. Apparently when you kill someone with your flag like a foot away from their flag, the announcer totally goes "Holy Shit!" Well, I got two of those yesterday in a 35 minute epic match my team ended up winning! Woo hoo!

Enough of my mindless chatter. Did any of you see anything decent in the theatre? Last thing I saw was Unbreakable, which was a decent (albeit slow) outing, so I guess I recommend that if you haven't seen it yet.

Looks like someone found a way to make CDs more useful for advertisers, by making them five times thinner. They can be wrapper around soda cans now and such.

Looks like my little country is making international headlines again. After tolerated drug use, legal prostituation our government has now decided they are going to legalize euthanasia. The Netherlands will be the first country in the world with a law for this. Some honor. All kinds of organizations are already making links to Nazi Germany.

``The same line of reasoning is being used as in Germany in 1935...In the Netherlands, your life is no longer safe,'' said Bert Dorenbos of the Scream for Life group.

Now if you will excuse me, I have some people to kill. Seriously though, the regulations are still pretty strict and it's not like a doctor can terminate anyone's life now. Just is stupid we have to get in the news over controversial things like this.

Enjoying your weekend? No? Why not? Oh wait.. because that damned Evening / Afternoon or whatever the hell its called Reading article hasnt shown up yet. Put down the knife! Its not worth it! Here just read this and remain calm...:

- Neeto! I'm pretty sure after all this TonyHawk2 playing my left thumb has developed this stuff, immortal flesh guys.
- Woah.. freaky. Some British kid has a natural magnetic aura, he sets off security alarms and stuff. Doh. Thanks S.I.W.
- Damn, looks like you cant even put goldfish in a blender anymore, at least not when the Danish authorities are around. Thanks Bryon Feller
- Just because we love it, here's some more of that Napster news.

Lastly, if you're an oldschool Nintendo fan you are obligated to check this out. Thanks Klerck.

I haven't done this in awhile, partially out of laziness and partially because cnn.com moved their Fringe section to the other side of their page. But since run of the mill game news is about as funny as a stroke and Steve's apparently away running for president, I decided I should try to show some of the wackier stories I could find in two minutes:

Scientists ask: Do penguins really fall over? - That English value added tax at work. And this story would have been infinitely more entertaining if they had video to accompany this...

No Beard, No Service, Citizens Told - Well I guess Maarten's just shit out of luck.

Stuck SUV Window Leads to Drug Find - ... and speaking of Maarten...

And for you shack readers not in the know, Maarten is from Holland and thus has a wicked drug habit that Steve and I mock all the time, though it just kills Maarten on the inside. Poor guy!

Been wanting to post this story for a few hours now but the website was down. A teenager in California was elected Homecoming King as is to be expected at the homecoming football game. However Patrick Griffith refused the honor. Intending to make a statement against the 'popularity contests' that are being sanctioned by schools around the nation. Here comes the shocker:

Griffiths was suspended from the Manhattan Beach school after he declined the king's crown at Friday's homecoming football game.

Why is this here? Because its interesting. :)

The moment you've all been waiting for, the results of the Stupid Shack Contest #2 (Create a gaming card). Like the first Shack contest we had a lot of entries, here is the winner and the rest of the top 10

1st, annoying teammate, and 2nd through 10: steve4, doomcrate, leet, ash, twins, babe_rate, x0r, jackgod, card_m_jeffk

The creator for the annoying teammate card (don't have his name right now, it's somewhere between my 1400 emails that I got when I was on vacation) gets to write the "werd" post. Thanks for all of you who entered, and of course those of you who voted.

Its the end of the world as we know it. According to beta testers of the new Mac OSX OS, Apple is caving in and finally going to the 2 button mouse. I've always been quite irritated by that whole 1 button thing myself. I enjoy Macs (Special lady friend is playing Diablo2 on one right now) but argh! Here's the bit:

To its devotees, the one-button mouse represents elegant simplicity. To detractors, Apple is the only computing platform among dozens still clinging stubbornly to an archaic tradition. [...] The upshot: "There's no specific date but they are adding it to Mac OS X," he said.

Woah! Afternoon Reading? During the afternoon? How does that happen? Is that legal? Is she legal? Did you meet her parents yet? Does Wieder know? Ok here's the goods:

- Hrm.. this seems to be a recurring problem in the US. It must be the water or something. Thanks sweat.
- Oh what a surprise, a Sega fan page is calling the Playstation2 a dissapointment. At least the guy has half a clue to back his claims though.
- Here is a cute toy to play with to check out your reflex times. Thanks Ant
- Those presidential candidate dudes are wrapping up their campaigns.

Lastly, according to this report on Joystick.fr (You need to translate it) Ion Storm is currently testing a multiplayer mode for Deus Ex. Thanks Stomped

4pm update: We are in the throws of the final debugging of the DTHREAD code. If you are using IE5.0 or IE5.5 check out this link and click on some of the threaded replies. Please post if you get any errors and the exact error you get. (Double click on the error box at the bottom of your browser to see it)

7pm update: Ok we are aware of the 'access denied' bug, seems to affect about 2-5% of the IE users. Anyone run into any other problems?

I promised a movie time and here it is. On Friday, our film posse went out to see Best In Show. It hasn't gotten that much mainstream buzz, but a lot of us had heard good things and we decided to try it out. The movie was absolutely hilarious. It is basically a fake documentary (mockumentary?) about dog shows and their owners preparing and competing in the Mayflower dog show. It shows a bit of their lives before the show and at the show. You'll recognize people and the general style from This is Spinal Tap because Christopher Guest (Nigel) co-wrote and directed this movie. Eugene Levy (the other writer) turned in his funniest performance in years - it was so nice to see him back in his game

What's funny about this movie is that everyone in it are complete freaks in one way or another. The movie completely avoids using the dogs for gross-out type comedy - Not one dog poos, pees, or throws up for a laugh. Instead the movie is about the people behind the dogs and is almost perfectly executed. I can't think of one scene or one set of people that I got tired of in the movie. It really is that good. Every person in our group of eight enjoyed it. See it.

Today marks the deadline for the Stupid Shack Contest #2. Everyone has until midnight tonight (CST) to submit their super cool gods of gaming playing cards. Here is a list of the rules you can read and I've slapped a couple of my favorites below to check out:

I havent updated the entry database for about 24 hours so if your entry isnt in there dont panic. Hopefully this contest has been as stupid as what originally inspired it.

... or something like that. Anyway, just a late night friendly reminder to set your clocks for Daylight Savings Time at 2am for those of you readers who observe it.

The page might look a little screwy on the right until someone updates later this morning. Please don't bitch out Steve. Also, you can expect a Movie Time later today! I bet you can't wait! And it looks like Steve flew in his favorite stripper.