And the cleaning continues...

So last week I got rid of four boxes of books, but that was just a prelude to something bigger, something I (just decided to) call...The Cleaninging.

Which is just an overly dramatic way of saying that I'm clearing out my bedroom closet. Yeah. EXCITING.

Actually, the closet is an odd bird. This house was built back in the '50s by someone who obviously had more manpower than sense when it came to building houses because he put the closet right up against roof. The result is that the back wall and ceiling forms an obtuse angle and makes it impossible to hang clothes in the small room that's supposed to hold them. It's not too big of deal because I've long since found alternatives and the closet is still useful for storage.

Unfortunately, it's filled to the gills with junk and could probably be flagged as a fucking fire hazard, thus, The Cleaninging. The plan is to dump anything I don't want at a thrift store and trash everything that isn't worth donating. I'll end up keeping a few bits and bobs, but I know for a fact that the vast majority of it isn't worth keeping.

After I clear it out, I'm refilling it with boxes of books that I'm keeping but don't have room on my bookcases for, along with other stuff and things because honestly, folks, my bedroom almost looks like an episode of Hoarders because they start cleaning it out and finding the mummified cats. Yikes.

Aww yiss, a navy jacket

I've long wanted a military jacket and over the weekend I got the chance to buy one at a thrift store for $5.

 I like the olive drab style more than the generic camo style you see everywhere.

The Seabees are the U.S. Navy's combat engineers. They became famous during WWII when they would build airfields on Pacific islands, some times while the area was still being contested between the U.S. Marines and Japanese soldiers. Having their logo on the pocket makes the jacket all the more cooler, in my opinion and sealed the deal on me buying it. My plan is to personalize it by adding patches to it. I was a bit stuck on that because I don't own an iron and my sewing skills are questionable, but fortunately a pal clued me into this stuff called liquid stitch, so I shouldn't have any problem with putting them on.

Provided, of course, that I can actually find some patches or even decide on which ones.

Amazon Key: Bringing murderers and rapists and their potential victims together

So Amazon announced what might very well be one of the dumbest inventions in the history of mankind: Amazon Key. It's a lock you put on your front door so that anybody with the special key to unlock your door, like say delivery drivers, housekeeping services, murderers, rapists, thieves, dog walkers, etc. What could possibly go wrong? Everything.

This had to be the brain fart brainchild of a guy, right? Because there's just no way in gosh golly hell that a woman would come up with this and be like "yeah, this is a great idea with absolutely no problems whatsoever." And yeah, there's a camera to it, but the last time I checked, cameras don't prevent 100% of crimes from happening and never will.

Another thing is how long until somebody figures out how to hack Key to allow any Tom, Dick and Harry to bypass it and how long until that information spreads across the internet? And that's exactly what's going to happen. Amazon and others might try to deny or downplay the risk, but it's an eventuality that even a myopic non-tech person such as myself can see coming from a mile away.

But in my honest opinion, I think Amazon Key was a failed product before it was even announced. I think it'll putter around for a couple of years before Amazon quietly ditches it. Hopefully we won't have any movies or documentaries about the Amazon Key Murders in the aftermath.

So anyways, First Blood had the lowest bodycount of any action movie ever

I've always been surprised by that factoid because as violent as the first Rambo movie is, you would expect the death toll to be high. Not Commando high, but still up there. But no, actually, in the entire course of that movie only one person dies and that's when Deputy Dumbass Galt falls to his death from a helicopter while shooting at Rambo.



Rambo claims it's not his fault, but if he hadn't thrown the rock, then the guy wouldn't have died. But then again, if Galt hadn't been shooting at Rambo (in defiance of orders not to), then there wouldn't have been any need for a rock thrown, so really, they're both the blame.

So anyways, only one death. Well, human death. If you include the animals, then the death toll ratchets up a little bit. During the course of the movie, Rambo kills two (or is it three?) dogs, a wild boar, and several rats. Even then, the body count is still remarkably low for an '80s action movie.

I guess the polar opposite of First Blood would have to be like what, John Wick or its sequel? I mean, those movies had people dying every two seconds in some places.

But wait, because it actually gets hilarious if you include non-action movies, in which case The Lion King has a higher body count than First Blood. Amazing.

But what of those who don't like dessert?

I saw a post on HeroPress tonight about a new blog that's stepping in to try and fill the void of cheesecake and whatnot that's been left by Al Bruno's shift away from it and towards his original fiction and such (and I wish Bruno all the luck and success in the world in his endeavors). It got me thinking and ruminating. I really want more than anything to increase my focus on Nerd Trash and it's become more than crystal clear that employing any kind of regimented posting schedule or features is never going to work for the very simple fact that I can't abide by them. What I'm dwelling on is whether or not to broaden things a bit and start posting cheesecake and other risque content?

I'm not talking porn, let's make that abundantly clear right now. Scantily-clad? Yes. Pin-ups? Yup. Nude, but without any of the naughty bits visible? Yeah. Those same bits and bobs in plain view? Nope. I never intended for Nerd Trash to be a PG-esque blog but for the most part, it has been. There have been exceptions, especially when it came to those Jamie Lee Curtis posts, but generally it's been a clean blog.

Now, if I did decide to do this, it wouldn't be as constant as Al Bruno or any likewise bloggers. Women are visually appealing, especially the half-naked variety, but I'm not spending an entire day everyday trawling Google or Tumblr for them.

Really, my goal is to get my head back into the space it was at when I used to post more frequently and posted whatever I felt like. Long posts, short posts, and medium posts. Geeking out and ranting over some BS I've come across.

So what do you think? Should I do it?

THERE.ARE.FOUR.BOXES.¹

I've been busy the past couple of days in a purge of my way too big already book collection. I've got a bad habit of buying used books that at the time I assure myself that I'm absolutely positively going to read and of course, never do. The fact that I managed to fill four boxes with them stands as a testament to that fact.

I really need to vacuum...

Yikes and yowza. It's a hodgepodge of sci-fi, fantasy, classic lit, modern stuff, etc. and all of it collecting dust and taking up valuable space, so out it goes to a thrift store later this week.

On the flipside of this coin is that I'm planning on buying more books tomorrow and this Saturday at the local library's twice annual book sale. I'm aiming to be a bit more conservative with how many I buy, but who knows.

¹One slip of gold-pressed latinum for the reference.

About that Justice League trailer

In my previous post, I called the trailer for the upcoming Justice League movie "lackluster". Tim Knight from HeroPress left a comment that summed up my thoughts fairly well.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Post-Wonder Woman's box office success the trailers and marketing have re-positioned her front and centre, but it can't make up for the fact - even with the increased humour (in the trailers, at least) - this looks like a retread of BvS with a faceless mass of CGI 'parademons' for our heroes to smash. I strongly suspect this will tank critically and its strong opening weekend will drop off dramatically once word-of-mouth gets around!

Exactly. The reason why I think the trailer is lackluster is because it's little more than a confusing mass of random scenes strung together with little to no coherence. You get no real information about the movie's plot and you don't even see Steppenwolf, the antagonist. Somebody put this trailer together and decided that including a shot or two of the antagonist was a "bad" idea. Wow.

Just to drive my point home, here's the trailers for Justice League and another movie that's coming out next month, too - Thor: Ragnarok.





The difference is startling. With Thor, we know who all of the major characters are, including the antagonist, Hela. We have know what the plot is and a very nice sampling of what's going to happen in the movie, with some nice smashy bits added for flavor.

What makes it even worse is that this isn't a movie that's coming out six months down the line. Justice League hits theaters next month. And this is the best that Warner Bros.'s marketing department has to offer to convince people to fork over like eight or nine or how many dollars to watch this movie? Amazing. Absolutely amazing. I have to agree with Tim's prediction on Justice League's box office earnings. It'll debut near or at the top of the box office, then slip down once the reviews start coming in. Some people might deride websites like Rotten Tomatoes and movie critics in general for "hating" on DC's movies, but there's going to be a lot more who will heed their words and buy a ticket for something else.

And maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe what DC and WB need to motivate them towards fixing their malfunctioning cinematic universe is for Justice League to bomb. They're already making changes to "fix" the problems, but its all for nought unless they're willing to break the DCEU down and start fixing from the inside out.

My hot take on the Justice League movie

First, here's the lackluster new trailer.



Second, will Justice League be a success? Well, it depends on how you measure success. Box office, I would be genuinely surprised if it didn't make a ton of money. I'm sure Warner Bros. has set a too high bar of a billion dollars for the movie which it might not reach. Certainly, it'll get close, probably half a billion at the lowest and over three quarters of a billion at the high-end, but otherwise, it would be a shocker if it actually broke a billion dollars. Still, it will more than pay for itself.

Critical reception, on the other hand, is a completely different matter. Thus so far, only one movie in the DC Extended Universe has had both financial and critical success and that is Wonder Woman. Man of Steel is a distant second and both Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad don't even get participation trophies. Justice League might get a boost from Wonder Woman, but don't expect it to be much. Man of Steel garnered a 55% and a 55 at Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, respectively, so the best WB can hope for is Justice League getting at least that high. Certainly, it's not getting the 94% and 76 of Wonder Woman, and it would have to be total trash to get the mid-twenty percents and mid-forties of Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad.

In fact, if this movie somehow scores that low, the effect would be bad for the DCEU. Very bad. I on't think even a hefty box office would be that much of a balm for the cinematic universe's ills. I do know that Warner Bros. is trying to right the ship by putting Geoff Johns and others at the helm and de-emphasizing the interconnectivity of each movie. If Justice League does fail, then I think it will set off a major crisis and WB will kneejerk and maybe do away with the DCEU altogether in favor of a return to the old standalone model. What they should do is disassemble the whole thing and find and fix all of its broken bits, starting with the "grim and gritty" tone that someone decided was a great idea. When I think grim and gritty, I don't think DC Comics or its movies at all.

Hey look, a new Star Wars: The Last Jedi poster

(via Star Wars Twitter)

Spiffy.

The Mysterious Disappearances of Ellie Walker and Warren Ferguson

During the first season of The Andy Griffith Show, Sheriff Andy Taylor was paired with Mayberry's pharmacist, Ellie Walker. Twelve episodes later, she was gone with no on-screen explanation. The two real life explanations given have the lack of chemistry between the actress, Elinor Donahue, and Andy Griffith. Donahue claims that she asked for a release in order to deal with personal issues.

via Mayberry Wiki

I'm a longtime fan of The Andy Griffith Show since I was a lad and I've never been a fan of the pairing because of the difference in age between Griffith and Donahue. Griffith was around 34, while Donahue was about 23. While eleven years isn't a huge deal, Griffith looked much older than his years, so it always seemed to me as if he were a middle-aged man rocking the cradle. But, eh, that's just me. I always thought him and Helen Crump were a much better pairing since they were closer in age, presumably.

Now, what's hilarious is that one apparent fan theory is that Ellie ditched both Andy and Mayberry to become of all things...a groupie. It's based on the sole fact that Ellie's last appearance on the show was an episode called "The Guitar Player Returns" wherein a guitar player reunites with his manager and band. The guitar player never appears on the show again. And neither does Ellie. The idea is that the town is sooo scandalized by her running off, that they decide as one never to mention her again.

[Overly dramatic zoom in]

Or maybe it was something more...sinister. What if Andy caught Ellie two-timing with the guitar player and the Sheriff Without a Gun became a Man with a Gun and a dead body. Could Ellie Walker be lying at the bottom of Myer's Lake, waiting for some hapless fisherman to accidentally reel her in? Is that why Andy abruptly moved out of state at the end of the eighth season?

[Cue X-Files music]

[Zoom out]

Or you know, not.

I don't know about you, but I would certainly buy this man's books

via Reddit.

If I were Stephen King, I would use that as my author's photo forever.