I know this opinion isn't going to be popular, but can't we take a vote on euthanizing Courtney Love?

Does anybody really need Courtney Love? Isn't she really the world's most famous junkie? Has anybody ever bought a Hole record? Aren't you kind of ashamed you did? And there's that whole possibility that she maybe might have killed her husband to ensure eternal fame and fortune. And there's the very real possibility she should not be allowed within a kilometer of her own child.

Anyway, just an idea. Discuss.

Will anyone listen to The League? Probably not.

But for your viewing pleasure, PBS is airing it's own reality programming in the form of "Colonial House".

Like Manor House, Frontier House, 1900 House, 1940's House and, I think, a few before it... Colonial House is an experiment to see how a mix of modern folks do when placed into a recreation of past ways of living. Training is provided, and the participants are not asked to pretend that they're actually in the preceeding time-frame. They are asked to dress, eat, and work as if they were in the sampled time frame.

The show is run by historians and other experts, and it appears this series will take the same format as "Frontier House" and place three households into the mix.

Nobody can win. This is not a competition against each other, but rather a competition against modern expectations versus past expectations.

If the previous series are any indication, it should be well worth tuning in for. Tonight's episode is 2 hours, so it might be worth recording.

Margot Kidder rocks out...

For the official site, go here.

This weekend the marketing media blitz began for Shrek 2 (the movie) as well as all of the Shrek cross-promotional tie-ins. From video games to soap to Sierra Mist to who know's what else, Shrek is busily hawking a multitude of products using either the real voices of the actors or some very qualified sound-alikes (this is done quite a bit. In fact, Tom Hanks' brother makes some money as Tom's sound alike for things like Toy STory video games, etc...).

I wasn't a huge fan of the original Shrek. We saw it late in the game (maybe a month after it came out), and NOTHING could have lived up to the media hype and the word of mouth hype we went through before seeing the movie. I'm not saying the movie was bad... I just wasn't as blown away as the rest of the world wanted me to be.

Well, there's nothing like whoring yourself to ensure a profit, and it's something much easier to do in the animated world than actually getting, say, DeNiro to sell potato chips. At any rate, given I'm seeing actual commercials for the movie and ads for the cross-promotion once a commercial break EVERY commercial break, I have already been overly saturated in Shrekness. Which is okay. It could have been Garfield.

I have a question regarding our situation in Iraq... and it's not politically charged... I just want to know:

Where are the Iraqis getting all of those guns?

Seriously.

In all of these pictures, the Iraqis are armed, and not just with little hunting rifles and pistols. These guys have RPG's and shoulder mounted rocket launchers and other things you can't even find in Texas. And if these guys always had these weapons, why didn't they use them before to shoot at Saddam?

What's the story?

If anyone has any answers, please fill me in.

I now know nobody reads this blog. Or at least the folks who read it can't do math any better than people who write it.

600/12 = 50. Not 5.

So caught up in proving Van Helsing was a stupid movie was I, that my math was off by a factor of 10. Yes, I have two college degrees. Shut up.

At any rate:
1 victim per month
12 months in a year
12 victims per year
5 years
60 victims in 5 years

or, as they said, 1 or 2 people
1.5 victims per month
12 months per year
18 victims per year
5 years
90 victims in 5 years

that's still a hell of a lot of people, especially if my actual estimate of the number of residents (150) is closer than the number I suggested it might be. Enough to make me begin considering listing my house with Century 21.

"Selling the house, are you, Ivan?"
"Yeah, me and Dolores put her up yesterday."
"Gettin' a wee bit scared of the vampires?"
"No... no... just part of the charm of your cold, frigid valley with no visible means of support."
"You like the castles?"
"Well, yes, but only that incredibly good looking girl in the tight trousers lives there, and nobody else ever gets to go in."
"Ah, well, we'll miss you digging for turnips with us."
"Best of luck."
"Yeah, well, plant some garlic, too, for God's sake."
"Oh, right... good idea."

At any rate, those aren't good numbers either way. Especially when you figure it's 19th century Eastern-Europe where life expectancy was probably around 40 or so.

Maybe the Transylvanians just breed like rabbits.

I forgot the biggest dumb thing about Van Helsing.

I was going to say it's a spoiler, but it's not.

Van Helsing is more or less there to save a village of people from being plagued by Dracula. Okay, maybe not exactly (you can judge for yourself for a mere $5.50 at matinee), but if he kills Dracula, that's it, right? The people can be happy again...

Except these incredibly stupid people live in a narrow valley tucked between mountains which is prone to attacks by Vampires. Flying vampires.

So, okay... you don't want to leave your homeland even after 400+ years of vampire attacks (I think I could learn to be flexible and go somewhere with just, say, El Chubacabra). Even in Transylvania, you can still move to a more advantageous position, like, up on a hill. Or underground. Or build, say, a roof over the town. I'm not positive, but I am betting that you would start dreaming up anti-vampire defenses pretty quickly.

Keep in mind, not a clove of garlic or a crucifix is ever really seen in this town.

And the population of the town appeared to be maybe 600 people on the outside. And I think I'm being nice here, because, really, it looked liek the village had maybe 150 extras in it... tops. The villagers state that Dracula and his ladies pluck off 1 or 2 people a month, and that's acceptable. People, I know I'm no PhD in math, but those are NOT good numbers. Your village would be wiped out in 5 years with 600 people at one a month.

And who the hell wants to be the last dude standing around as the target?

Anyway, not necessarily a plot point, but it kind of was... and it made the movie all the dumber.