Dave Mancuso dot Com

‘Cause here’s the new trailer, in full downloadable glory.

It’s worth the download–looks like a good time for all this summer with this flick!

This guy has plans for a $14 Steadicam. A Steadicam is a device you harness to yourself and mount a camera on. Then you film as you’re walking, but the shots come out smooth because the Steadicam absorbs the jerks, dips, and bounces from walking.

If you got a DVX100 (the new videocamera that records at film shutter speed) and had this Steadicam, you’re well on your way to making film-quality movies.

Well, apart from lighting, dollies, sound, and talent, that is. Still, pretty cool.

My opinion about witch hunts over 9/11 notwithstanding, this doesn’t look too good for the White House (despite the fact that this website is anti-conservative, the webpage is well-documented):

Claim vs. Fact: Condoleezza Rice’s Opening Statement

What a shame–everyone loses in this thing, the world’s people most of all.

I wish McCain were running this year.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you:

The Subservient Chicken

Feel the power you can have over pseudo-living virtual chickens…yes, endless hours of good, clean fun.

I haven’t had time to try this, but heck–how hard can balancing the federal budget be, anyway?

😉

I mean, my own personal finances are more complex than the budgets of many leading nations already.

Try it out at this site.

Of interest is the “Do Budget Deficits Matter?” link. I’m reformulating my opinions about budget deficits, since I’m realizing more and more that our economy is based on mass psychology anyway (or mob psychology, some might say). Seriously–the gold standard was effectively eliminated in 1933 by FDR–we have only a few drops of gold even in Fort Knox! Our money’s value is based solely on faith in the credit of the United States government. Add that to the fact that our banks lend our ten times the money they actually own (no lie–you’ve never heard of the ten percent law in banking?) and the economy really takes on new meanings.

No wonder the dollar dips in foreign markets when Greenspan gets a cold.

I think that the grammar test in the previous post executes scripts that put spyware on your computer. Kevin called and let me know that three things were installed on his computer after he visited the site (Lycos search bar was one, I think–I forget the other two). Nasty nasty. Kevin said that one clue might have been when several pop-up windows appeared as he submitted the quiz for scoring. I’d never have known, because I was using Safari on a Mac.

Of course, I probably wouldn’t have known on my PC either, because I use Firefox and turn off pop-up windows.

Oh well–a word to the wise, anyway. And if you have a PC, you might want to download a good spyware killer like Spybot.

I caught The Ataris cover of The Boys of Summer today on the new “Cool Pop” 106.7 station around here. You know, speeding up a song and thrashing it around does not mean that you’ve made a cool, inventive cover. And what is up with the “saw a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac” crap? Way to ruin a great lyric, guys.

At least they seemed competent with their instruments.

This is what happens when people take the pagan elements of a holiday too seriously and try to “apply” Christian values to them.

Isn’t there another way?

Although Brad is the true paragon of grammar virtue.

Check it out. [Link remove for our own safety–see subsequent post. –The Author]

Check out the Salon article on Clarke’s reaction to Rice’s testimony. Or listen to it on All Things Considered.

Pitiful.

The White House is scrambling to deny everything and make everyone else look bad. Clarke is trying to take responsibility and cast it off at the same time. Congress is trying to find a “smoking gun.” Everyone is running around trying to find the blame and pin it on someone. It’s pathetic.

In the end, it’s all Monday morning quarterbacking. NOTHING could have stopped 9/11. The very freedom we enjoyed (note past tense in recognition of the Patriot Act) enabled 9/11 to happen. The White House cheapens itself by discrediting Clarke, but given the environment surrounding the inquiry, they’re just playing the game as best they can.

Clarke is a mixed bag. He blames everyone and himself for 9/11, yet states that nothing he recommended would have stopped it. His testimony is a wash, and at this point it would probably have been better if he’d just kept his mouth shut.

The panel of inquiry is an exercise in futility. If a terrible, terrible accident happened to your loved ones, you would certainly spend agonizing time thinking about the ways in which you could have prevented your tragedy, but such thoughts are ultimately useless. Hindsight is meant to learn, not to assign blame to the guiderails of life for not being strong enough. I’m not sure what crystal ball we were supposed to have, but it probably would have shown a public relations witch hunt in the making.

Maybe this time would be better spent looking at the real perpetrators of 9/11 and understanding the tragic culture that made it their aim to kill Americans. Then perhaps we could address the cause of this horror instead of the symptom.

What a waste.