Milo, one of our dogs, loves to party and rock out. He's even got mad moves.

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Late Thursday night, House Republicans managed to wrangle enough votes to kill a bill that would have provided $7.4 billion dollars worth of medical care to 9/11 first responders because they 'disagreed' with the implementation. Pretty disgusting stuff. Thankfully, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) wasn't about to have any of that bullpucky. Watch as Weiner totally destroys everyone in the room, and proves he's the most awesome man in the House.

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I think the fine art of the 'End' title cards is a lost art. To help prove this, one intrepid Flickr user created a beautiful slide show of 'The End' cards. Click here now and check it out.

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So a woman awoke this morning to find a strange man in bed next to her. Obviously a break-in and attempted rape, but the criminal fled, and police weren't able to find him. The woman and her brother took to the local news to plead her case, and there things got... a little more over-the-top.

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So the EELS are coming in concert in October, and I was totally thinking I might go. But then I remembered why live music in Salt Lake City sucks, so I made a flowchart to demonstrate.

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Brief follow-up to my earlier blog post:

Went out to my car this morning to discover that the junk we had put on the curb by our massive leaf pile was gone. At some point between midnight and 7 AM, somebody had come by and taken literally all of our gross, broken stuff, including my broken, moldy old shower door that had been sitting down the side of the house for a couple months. I can't say I'm surprised, but the idea that there was a roaming band of people taking broken, gross stuff out of a garbage pile outside my house was intriguing.

Who were these masked bandits who roamed the night, taking crap? For what purpose? Were they going to try and sell the metal bits for scrap, or were they going to try and fix it up?

Anonymous shower bandit, if you're out there, reveal yourself! I have so many questions.

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Forget the actual DC Universe game (well, OK, maybe don't do that). This trailer for the game is better than 90%  other superhero materials put out, and looks suitably epic.

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Thursday, July 29th, is a day that lives in infamy around the Hudson house. The reason why? Thursday, July 29th is Dumpster Day in our area of Holladay.

Those of you who haven't ever lived in Salt Lake might not have Dumpster Day in your area, and you may be unfamiliar with this grim spectacle. Let me fill you in. One day a year, the city drops off a free dumpster in front of every other house on a certain street. And on that day, you can go ahead and put anything you need to throw away in that dumpster, assuming your neighbors don't beat you to filling it up. That last part is the catch -- your neighbors also race to put their crap in a dumpster, and once the dumpster's full, you're basically screwed. It's like a slightly more mean-spirited Christmas; you're racing to do stuff before your stupid neighbors do it. It's fierce, tell you what.

So anyway, tomorrow is Dumpster Day for our street, and Kathy decided that she needed to go insane. In preparation for this, Kathy has been cutting down branches on the trees in our yard; even when it looks fine, she cuts them down, because she says stuff about 'balancing the light' and other totally nonsensical stuff. When she assured me there was just 'a couple' branches outside, and then went out to cut some more, I realized exactly what I was in for.

And what I was in for was this:

Those are the branches. From the back yard only.

Kathy had this rocket science idea that we could just set them on a tarp and drag them to the front yard. Never mind that we'd have to pass through two gates that are about three feet wide... there aren't that many branches, right?

The answer is that there's a ton of branches, holy crap.

After about forty-five minutes of picking them up and moving them to the pile, the time of the dragging came. Kathy turned and looked at me expectantly.

"Go ahead," she said.

Ho ho! I'm a strong guy, but come on now! So I said, "Grab that end and we'll fold it into a taco". This was apparently a difficult idea, because it then took twenty minutes of flailing to get the massive bundle to the front yard. Much shouting and gnashing of teeth occurred. Meanwhile, the dogs (who I love dearly) flailed around in the dirt and filth and just generally got in the way. Oy. Kira came home in time to see us struggling, and go inside and eat a bowl of cereal while watching. Good work, Kira!

So we drag the bundle to the front and set it out on the street. Already the neighbors across the street have set a pile of junk on the side of the road in a Cold War style display of escalation. Luckily, Kathy wasn't about to let that stand, no sir! She also had a ridiculous amount of branches in the front to add to the huge pile. Anyway, we flail around for a while, and get them to the street. Yippie skippy.

Luckily, Kathy didn't ask me to move the dog house. The dog house is a running joke around the house; every time Kathy wants to get rid of it, it turns into a debacle. First, the dog house is about five feet by four feet by five feet. So it's big. Next, it's made from thick wood, tar, shingles... so it's freakin' heavy. Last, the plan usually turns into 'Hey Austin lift that!' Last year, when it was time to move it, we discovered that a swarm of bees (?!?!) had settled inside, so we bug bombed it, and left it there. Besides, it's not like I could move it anyway. Kathy says she's going to ask her brother and a couple other guys to do it... power to them, I guess.

She did have another ridiculous item to move, however. Dragging me back to the backyard, she points at the bane of my backyard existence -- THE MASSIVE BRANCH.

Let's have another pointless divergence and talk about THE MASSIVE BRANCH. THE MASSIVE BRANCH (the name really needs to be capitalized to properly convey the branch's awful size) is the bottom fourth of a massive old tree. I'm not kidding when I say that THE BRANCH is probably twenty feet long, fifteen feet wide, and currently suspended ten feet off the ground. Further, it branches in the middle, and half is branched on top of our roof and on our power lines while the other half dangles in the air. The only reason it hasn't fallen is because A) it's supported by our roof, and B) it's supported by another branch of the enormous tree. Really, THE MASSIVE BRANCH is something that yard care professionals (or somebody with a chainsaw, twenty foot ladder, and four guys) should take care of.

Back to the story -- Kathy walks back to THE MASSIVE BRANCH and points at it indignantly.

"We need to take that down," she says.

'We' is an interesting word around the house when it comes to heavy stuff. When something weighs over 50 pounds, 'we' means 'Austin'. I proceeded to make this face:

 So I look upward, and immediately say, "We need a chainsaw or we can't do it." This, of course, makes Kathy put her hands angrily on her hips and glare. "No really, Mom, I don't think we can do this."

Men will understand when I say this: Kathy took my acceptance of reality as a challenge. Maybe it's this awful 'Girl Pow-ah!' thing, but when I say 'No that's impossible really' Kathy takes it as 'My name is Austin and I'm a big lazy bum so sisters are going to have to do it for themselves'. So she marches right over with her tiny hedge clippers, and starts gnawing at the massive branch.

Keep this in mind, the main body of the branch is about as thick as my forearm. It's THICK. So Kathy idly chomping at it with small little shears doesn't do anything. So she takes a step back, looks up, and says, "I'm going to knock it down".

WOOOOOAH NELLY. Remember when I said it was stuck over power lines?! Yeah... and Kathy's jiggling it up and down as the wires bend and pull. So I give a shout and say, "Hey, you're gonna knock out the power," which causes her to stop. Kathy takes a step back. I suggested that we call the power company and ask them to trim around the power line, so we're gonna do that instead. It's a lot better than trying to pull down a massive 200 pound branch by hand.

Anyway, the 'thirty minute diversion' turned into an hour-and-a-half sweatfest. I eagerly await tomorrow when some fool (read: not me) is going to have to move all this stuff into the dumpster itself while fighting Joe Boringwhite across the street to get it into the dumpster.

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Remember awesome color cycling in old 8-bit games? It was back when you were pretty limited by what you could and couldn't do in video games, so in order to save space and memory, developers had you shift between color palates to create different visual effects?

Well, looks like that's now an integrated part of HTML5. Check out this article, and tell me you aren't wicked impressed. Make sure to click the 'Launch With Sound' button and be totally blown away by the fantastic possible future implementations.

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So the awesome folks at Criterion have announced they're releasing the classic and virtually unknown Japanese horror film 'Hausu' (a.k.a. 'House'). It's gonna be awesome. I had a chance to see a bootleg of this a few years ago, and it's basically absolutely insane. We need to snag the Blu-Ray when it's out and have a watching party! Until then, feast on this trailer. I once read it described as 'If Tim and Eric made 'Evil Dead 2'', and yeah, that's pretty accurate.

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The hit feel-good movie of the summer is here, folks.

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Who needs a Swiss Army Knife when you have the Pontiac Stinger? And really, who needs a Pontiac Stinger when you have a small house that basically does the same thing minus driving?

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A question -- when did the term 'weird' get co-opted by teenage girls? Or, similarly, when did the term 'random' get stolen too?

Let's take a step back.

Over the last few days, I've been following the internet thrashing of an eleven year old girl by some cyber-bullies. That's not particularly funny, but what is funny is that eventually her dad got involved, and posted a YouTube video with a couple intensely memorable phrases. I'll let you watch that but, warning, there's some strong language.


Anyway, that's not the point. The whole drama with this teenage girl started over an internet rumor, and an incredibly obnoxious and self-involved YouTube video response she made back to it. In the video (which I'm not going to link, because it is probably the easiest way to ensure you never want children ever again), the teenage girl drops a pretty common phrase nowadays:

"I know, I'm weird..."

She says it with this sort of smile, as if there's an understated message there. And I think there is. I think the word 'weird' has been stolen by teenagers, and changed into something else entirely.

Back in the day, nobody wanted to be called 'weird'. Being weird was bad; hell, it was basically a social death sentence. The weird kid was the one in the Iron Maiden shirt, who smelled like pot and read fantasy novels at lunch. But somewhere along the line (and I'm not sure where), 'weird' got picked up as a synonym for 'interesting'.

More precisely, I think 'weird' got changed to short-hand for 'I think I'm a rare, special butterfly who sometimes does WAAAACKY stuff and lol aren't I so creative'. Evidence of this is everywhere; go on Twitter and search for 'I'm Weird', and see how many results you get. All from teenage girls. Even on my Facebook, I'll see status updates from teenage girls who are very clearly popular, but who are sure to alert the world: "lol I know I'm so weird".

(Fun Tip: Want to die inside? Search 'I'm Weird' basically anywhere.)

I think 'weird', and 'random', are basically dead. 'Weird', because it no longer actually describes weirdness, but is instead attached to any cookie-cutter teenage girl looking to differentiate herself from the rest of the masses. 'Random' is dead for a similar reason; any search of Twitter or Facebook or MySpace or anywhere where people socially network indicates that 'random' is the new 'LOL I CHEWED A WHOLE PACK OF GUM TODAY AREN'T I SO ORIGINAL AND CRAZY?!'

I'm not necessarily saying that 'weird' and 'random' losing meaning is a bad thing. Language changes, and it's nice to have words typically used as negative descriptors being used as 'positive' labels by younger groups. I just think it's disingenuous. Going to the mall and buying ice cream cones with your friends doesn't make you 'weird'. You're not 'random' because you suddenly started singing in the middle of the grocery store.

Maybe I'm just crotchety in regards to teenagers. Maybe the co-opting of 'weird' hits home in an unusual way because, throughout my younger years, I was sometimes called 'weird' and it wasn't endearing and it didn't make me popular. But 'weird' isn't your word. 'Weird' doesn't belong to the peroxide-blonde masses.

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Look, I loved 'Firefly' as much as the next nerd. But the opening credits were just... OK. Which is why these much more awesome opening credits rule!

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Another Friday has come and... well, I guess stuck around. It didn't really come and go, it's definitely more 'hanging out, dragging it's feet, asking what you guys are going to do after the party'. One of those days.

• This whole week's been a series of 'Is it the weekend yet?' moments. I don't know if it was because we had Monday off, but this week has dragged like a bad prom dress. But the weekend is close enough to taste at this point...

• On Wednesday, we had our first official round of Spencer's new Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The twist at the end was interesting... sounds like the brave men and women of The Fightin' Mongooses may have entered an exciting arena challenge, complete with entertaining the crowd in order to score higher points on rolls. This won't be a problem for my Elvish Ranger, the fortunately named Percivail Handsomas. If I thought I could have gotten away with it, I would have named him after the renowned Darkmagic clan, but that might have been too obvious. 

• Most the rooms of our house have now changed color. Well, the ones that were colorful have. My orange bathroom, which was a blinding Harley-Davidson orange since well before my dad died, is in the process of being painted a pleasant pale green. Turns out Utah home buyers hate colorful rooms. 

• Note to home buyers, or anyone else who turns down a house because of wall colors: paint is one of the easiest things to do. Even a monkey could learn to paint a room. Not buying a house just because the walls are the wrong color means that you're an idiot. I'll give you $50 myself, buy a damn can of paint, and take a Saturday and paint the room. Big babies. 

• Had a nice curry for lunch today. Feeling fat. What else is new. 

• We've all been looking at condos and townhouses in preparation of the inevitable move. I've been looking at moving out on my own, actually, but after doing my finances last night, I'd be riiiiight on the edge of just barely having enough each month. A single medical emergency would kill me. So I could look at renting, or I could wait it out for another couple years, save up some more money, pay off my student loans, buy more awesome guitars. Don't know yet, it's actually sorta a tough choice. 

• It's still not 5 PM. What the heck, today?

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Keeping with the trend of posting clips from 'Exterminator City', we've got this action packed thrill bonanza! It contains all the elements that make a great fight scene, including sword fighting, witty comments, interpersonal drama...

It's a shame they assemble them so poorly.

On the plus side, at least they have excellent foley work courtesy of Foley, Foley and Foley Foley Co., your leaders in overselling foley work since 1962.

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Hell is repetition. Why is probably why the filmmakers here wanted to give us a sort of existentialist pathos for this action scene.

Note to young filmmakers: when you think nobody's going to notice you're cutting corners, they're totally gonna notice.

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I can't think of the last time (ever?) I was this jazzed about something. Maybe if it was a giant butterfly whose every wing flap covered the land with a fine, beautiful glitter... yeah, that'd be nice.

Wait, what were we talking about?

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So this holiday weekend, I've been plowing through TED talks, and enjoying myself thoroughly. This one, from psychologist Barry Schwartz, was interesting because it hit on something that we studied in a few of my undergraduate classes: namely, that we as Americans in a first-world country have too many choices, which we find crippling. Check it out:

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If there's one thing Hollywood is really good at, it's creating new intellectual properties crafting thrillers preventing intellectual property theft remaking movies from other countries, but in English, with good, hard working Americans.

In that spirit, the co-creator of 'Felicity' (omg why did she cut her hair nooooo -_-') has written and directed an American remake of 'Let The Right One In', changing the title to 'Let Me In' and recasting it with some American kids and none of those boring old subtitles that we 'mericans hate to read while we inhale popcorn and high fructose corn syrup.

Surprisingly, it doesn't look terrible! At least, from the trailer, it seems like they really hit the tone of the original. I'm not sure why they felt the movie needed to be remade (it didn't) or if they're going to cop out on some of the weirdness from the original (they will), but maybe it'll give American audiences a chance to see a movie that they otherwise would have missed. I mean heck, we're the country that walked out of 'Pan's Labyrinth' en masse because it had subtitles, so maybe we need it...

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Somewhere, Patton Oswald just finished a showing of 'Death Bed: The Bed That Eats', and is getting ready to tackle this bad boy...

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