New Feature: Video!!!

You would never believe that these are the final moments of a gruelling 3h36m race; we are flying:

And then here we are a couple of hours later post-shower and change and all that:

This is what we look like when we're lost in Italy:

And this is what we do after races. I.e., pet little dogs, stand around looking weird, and then go drink coffee and beer at the same time...

Movie of Shit, I mean Man of Steel

I would say that Man of Steel isn't as bad as Panic Room, but that would be a lie. Maybe it's not as bad as Mission to Mars but I think they're pretty close to each other. I'd even venture to believe that The Hangover Part III will turn out to be better than this monstrosity. Why oh why oh why did I waste those precious moments of my life? Of course I probably would never have independently chosen to go see the latest super hero movie reboot, but when things are suggested in a group there's peer pressure involved and off I went to see this humiliation to Hollywood, film, comics, and really all of art. Man of Steel is an abomination of a film. Rotten Tomatoes sensibly rates it as "rotten" but still it managed to receive a passing grade of 56% critic approval. This is likely because they seem to include any yahoo with the ability to get their viewpoint on the Internet a critic. The plot is entirely nonsensical and I would maybe accept this 2 1/2 hours of heinous staining of humankind's history as competent creators of art as a satire on Hollywood mega blockbusters but I don't think that's what they were going for. This movie has worse dialogue than The Da Vinci Code or even Speed ("There will come a time, boy, when you'll wish we never met ... Mr., I'm already there!"). Take this beauty from that catastrophe of a movie (if you can call it that) that I subjected myself to last night:

- [Lois Lane and Superman kiss]
- LL: "They say it's all downhill after the first kiss"
- SM: "I think that only applies if you're kissing a human"

Seriously. That happened in the movie. And then (when it really should have spared us and just ended) there was about another hour of things blowing up.

Besides the sheer awfulness of the movie, I also couldn't believe how stolen nearly everything in the movie was. The Superman learning to fly scene is exactly the same as the Ironman learning to fly in his suit scene. The alien ships shooting a beam straight down into the middle of Manhattan is exactly the one from Independence Day. The crazy alien/machine tentacles are basically shot-for-shot from The Matrix. And then pick just about any scene that was done really well in The Dark Knight or Batman Begins and make it really really really shitty and embarrassing to watch and replace Batman with Superman. Just ludicrous that this repulsive blemish of absurdity exists as a thing.

In conclusion, I rate it 2 stars out of 10.

Just kidding... minus one million!!!

It's not cold anymore

60th Blog Post Anniversary

Pemulis (oh no!) woke up to a seventy-third consecutive day of non-stop rain. This was less than ideal because so much rain had fallen -- and was continuing to fall -- that, although it was mid-May in what is essentially southern France, and with no sun to help dry the rain away, Grenoble (and as Pemulis understood it, most of Europe) was transformed into almost a Waterworld-like fantasy land not all that unlike Disneyland Paris (but with more people around). While Pemulis had not gone to the extremes that some of his French neighbors had gone, which included purchasing cold-water SCUBA gear to navigate the newly formed Venice-like world of Grenoble with its (also Dutch-like) canals replacing the former cobblestoned and dog shit-ridden streets, or reverted to a 17th century dialect of French spoken by the classic French pirates such as Pierre le Grand (who cut a hole in his own boat to inspire his fellow pirates to fight all the harder as if they did not capture the attacked ship they would have no means of retreat or survival) or Bernard Desjean, the Baron of Pointis: "Parsambleu! T'as du doublon pour un pot de pétun?" ([meaningless pirate exclamation]!; do you have any money for some tobacco?). He had, however -- due to necessity -- begun taking the Bateaux Mouches to get to work (imported from Paris) but could no longer read during his morning and evening commutes due to the excessive noise and commotion caused by his fellow passengers who for some inexplicable reason had all become heavy rum drinkers which in turn led to even more old time French pirate talk and at least several scuffles that broke out daily. Most of these tussles seemed to grow from disputes that seemed to centre principally around where one could find proper lumber for constructing first-rate peg legs.

Eventually, on a certain morning that coincided with the seventy-third consecutive day of non-stop rain, Pemulis found himself on the Bateau Mouche on his way to visit his friend Gately who thus far had not been suffering the pirate-like delirium effects of most of the other citizens. As Pemulis kept his head down throughout another (rather intense) fight between two groups of youths who were arguing about the proper pronunciation of "Tijuana" (one side wanted "Tiajuana"), and a flying bottle of Captain Morgan's rum (the only kind that anyone seemed to drink) nearly hit him in the head, he decided that enough was enough.

Pemulis gave up on his original plan to visit Gately, and instead got off at the government communications office stop (the only location left where phone calls could be made). He put in a call to other major cities throughout the world to try to find out the local situations. He tried Istanbul but understood that things were even worse there. He then tried Toronto. He then quickly tried a random city in his haste to hang up with Toronto. Finally he tried Munich and they said that no one there was speaking like a 17th century pirate, people only drank beer (there was only one store where rum could be found and it was only open on sundays), and the sun was shining. So Pemulis swam home, found Joelle at the neighbors (where all in attendance were training the old lady on the 4th floor's new parrot), chose a few choice items (the Syntia and his bike that had been in storage since the great flood outbreak, for example), and took the next gondola towards Germany.