just hangin out in the bathroom. having a very normal time!

Originally posted at MOCKWORTHY...

Get your fix: Justin, Mike and special guest commentator, Mollye, do their best to make it through two hours of Schumacher's 'Batman Forever' [34.8 MBs, 2:01:40, mp3 format] or play in iTunes.

After thoughts: I'm almost speechless after sitting through this film - it would be too easy and borderline lazy for me to assume that Schumacher is simply a no-talent jackass who got lucky with one of Hollywood's biggest comic-franchises and ran it straight into the ground. Because I've seen the films: 'Falling Down'... 'A Time to Kill'... and 'Phone Booth', and whether or not you enjoyed these as much as myself - it's not difficult to argue that he at least knows better.

Details on 'said' film: Tagline: Courage now, truth always Directed by: Joel Schumacher Writing credits: Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler, Akiva Goldsman Genre: Action, Crime, Fantasy, Thriller Plot summary: Batman must battle Two-Face and The Riddler with help of an amourous psychologist and a young circus acrobat who becomes his sidekick, Robin. (more) Cast overview: Val Kilmer as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face/Harvey Dent, Jim Carrey as Riddler/Edward Nygma, Nicole Kidman as Dr. Chase Meridian, Chris O'Donnell as Robin/Dick Grayson

I've got a small mono-mic clipped onto the collar of my t-shirt for testing purposes... for Mockworthy; we've been using QuickTime to record our mock-commentaries... and then afterwards I would pull the audio file into GarageBand and clean up any unwanted noise.

But the problem was, GarageBand (GB) only let me pull in about an hour of audio, apparently there is a tempo limit up to 999, ... which means as much to me as it does to you, probably even less. The pain-in-the-ass was I had to chop the 2 hour long file into 2 halves, and then after GB, paste them back together again.

But a forum I found in a Google search told me to turn the tempo down to "40" bps... which is suppose to allow for 175 minutes. Long and boring story short: I'm double-testing the whole "40" suggestion before we use GB for an entire commentary... bypassing QuickTime all together.

That was entirely too boring. Moving on.


Last night I bought a brand-spanking-new HDR-HC1 off eBay for a cool 1,300. Almost $700 cheaper than Sony's website. It's been far, far too long since I've had a working camcorder with-in arm's reach.

Plus, I've been anxious, to say the least, to get started on an idea I had for a video podcast. I don't want to go into details just yet... but I will say that the project involves my researching the '50s. I hope to have a rough pilot ready by the middle of April.

Originally posted at MOCKWORTHY...

As Justin mentioned in the last post - we were on "short hiatus" due to lack of recording options. But today, I opened to front door to find a package in the stairway, and as I was hoping, it was our new Griffin iMic, a hi-resolution USB audio device.

So you can expect a new commentary very, very soon - we're 90% sure we are going to do Batman Forever... but I suppose since I just announced it, we're kinda' stuck with it now. So, again, if you have anything to say about Batman Forever, good or bad, you can send it to us by mail, via comments or an audio clip that we'll play during the commentary.

It started yesterday - I woke up to find that I had finished off all the oatmeal in the apartment. Which is terrible, if I have no cinnamon-apple oatmeal, how in the world am I suppose to: wake up, get the latest 'Majority Report' podcast, eat my oatmeal, stretch, and then run? I can't.

So, instead, I ate a bowl of cereal... in it's defense, it was a healthy cereal, but still - after waiting an hour and a half to run, it still sloshed around in my stomach. Where as after eating oatmeal, I can go for a run two minutes later and be fine.

On top of the "sloshing", my iPod's battery took a crap 10 minutes down the street. And I'm just not in good enough shape, especially my lungs, to go running with out some form of distraction - it's sad.

I still have no oatmeal today... which means: dry toast and scrabbled eggs.


On an unrelated side-note: It's Justin's birthday today, drop by his blog, Jeans Pants, and wish him a happy 27th birthday.

Granted, this was almost five months ago, but I meant to post some of the footage I took when Amanda and I went to Jill's cabin for my 24th birthday... and I guess it's better late then never.

I tried for 20-some minutes to find a song that worked better - but I came up with nothing, so I just picked a song I've been listening to a lot lately: 'fuck this shit' by Belle & Sabastian. Enjoy...

Note: I used quicktime's H.264 to export this - which is fancy-speak for larger-resolution-at-half-the-MBs. So if you don't have it already, download it for free here.

For a while my phone wasn't sending pictures, which meant the last 40 or so pictures were just sitting on my waiting... (in a deep, scratchy movie-trailer voice) "until now":



If this picture wasn't taken with a camera-phone that has a max resolution of 600 pixels, this might be a more interesting photo... if you can't tell though, that me and amanda on the carousel.


Mollye just straight freaking out...


In line for "Star Tours"... get it, it's a play on words - and a stone age crap-fest of a ride.




Why does Justin look like he's prepping himself for a head-butt? That's Mollye's mom on the right with the camera.


We happened to be sitting directly behind the engine during our train ride around the park - this is when it let off a giant cloud of musty-smelling steam... and we got covered.




Probably my favorite picture from Disney... isn't that just adorable.




It took Amanda about three hours to get ride of this thing, of course the giant chunk I accidently bit off after taking this picture helped.


Getting a nickel & dime fortune... it just reminds me of 'Big'.




According to this meter-thingy: Amanda's kisses are "devastating"... it's science.




A creepy shot of two birds in the Tiki room... Mollye's favorite part of Disney.


Amanda twenty minutes into deciding what she wants for breakfast.




That's me shaking my head at Amanda... which is code for: don't even take a picture of me.






The strawberries & bananas on this pancake were deep-fried... I have been craving more since.


It's a mini-Golden Gate Bridge.


It only sprinkled for about five minutes in the morning... and not even enough to really warrant a rain coat / garbage bag... as you tell, almost no one else is wearing anything to take cover from the rain. We mostly just wanted to look cool.




I love that the guy with the umbrella isn't even coming close to keeping any rain off Mr. & Mrs. Incredible.




This was my favorite part of the store outside of the Tower of Terror, this was one of two drawing stations that had pages and pages suspended in the air. This picture doesn't do it much justice.






Here is a very washed out picture of a picture on a tv screen of Mollye, Amanda and myself on the Tower of Terror... which by the way: is awesome.




A view from the ferris wheel that made me sick for the rest of the day.




An almost full-scale pirate ship with 40-some people fighting and swinging around on ropes... and if you look real close you can see Peter Pan and Captain Hook at the top.




This just makes me laugh... I'm not entirely sure Justin is faking the horrified expression on his face here (because he's not a big fan of roller coasters) but either way... it's hilarious.


I loved these girls' hats... I made Amanda stand in-front of them so I fake that I was taking a picture of her... even though it was obvious they could have cared less.




The moral of this post: I need an actual digital camera.

I'm still speechless from this - but I need to write it down and tell someone what just happened... okay... I'll start where it gets interesting.

I was finishing up my run, I turned right onto my street with a block to go, a man in his early 30's was to my left getting into his jeep. I had my ipod on and was listening to yesterday's 'Majority Report'. It was only 6:30'ish at night, but it was especially dark because of heavy clouds... it actually had just stopped sprinkling half-way through my run.

So... I had just passed the guy getting into his jeep, I was only five feet in-front of him when the entire sky, starting from a concentrated point deep behind the dark clouds - I'm not even sure what word to use - it almost seemed to visually "hum" a bright, very bright, blue. It quickly lit up the entire sky, everything I could see was awash in a fire-like blue, it lasted long enough for me to stop dead in my tracks and pull out my ear-buds. It faded away and then came back a dark green, again, coming mostly from that one spot behind the clouds, then covering everything evenly. Then it came back as a bright red.

It wasn't lighting, I knew that as soon as the blue came, I've seen enough storms while living in Michigan to know it wasn't a storm. The colors went away, and I was standing stunned in the dark again, I turned back to the guy to my left and we just stared at each-other with blank expressions. I finally said, "what in the hell was that?", we both looked back at the sky and watched. But nothing happened... no more colors... and more frighteningly; no thunder.

Like I said, I knew it wasn't lighting immediately, but thunder would have helped me accept the only possibility of what me and some stranger had just seen.

Up in the window of an apartment complex behind me I saw two people, faces against the glass, waiting for more. Actually, if I had been alone, the lights were so amazing and strange that I don't think I would have trusted my eyes... they just don't make any sense. And no amount of man-made light could have lit up the sky like that... both me and the stranger agreed on that. I ran the rest of the way home hoping it would thunder, but two minutes later, and it was still silent.

If you can't tell: I'm a bit freaked.

I just wanted to drop a quick line and let people know that the boxes above that say, "based on a true story" & "c-a-l-i-b-l-o-g" are more than just fun to run your mouse over. Each one is a link to a different post. "Based on a true story", for example, takes you back to the very begining.

There are still five boxes that simple link back to caliblog.com, but we're hoping that some of our readers will send us their favorite post - and we'll pick as many of the submissions as we can to use as the links.

I told myself that tonight I would write a post that talked only about my day - no political views, no news stories, etc... just what I spent today doing. So here we go:

I woke up around 10, when Amanda gave me a kiss on her way to baby-sitting. I jumped out of bed, feeling rather stiff in the legs from working out the day before. I got on my computer to sync my iPod with my iTunes... making sure my 'majority report' was all ready for my morning run. Went into the kitchen and made myself some oatmeal... decided I was feeling too lazy for a grapefruit.

Took my breakfast into the bedroom and checked my email... noticed none of the sites had any new comments ("bummer"), checked on my rss feeds and found that no one new was subscribing, except for mockworthy's feed ("yay for mockworthy"). Took a look at a website I've been designing for Amanda and her dog-walking biz'. Then I finished up with a clip of Al Fraken on the Colbert Report... it was funny, but not as funny as Al on Letterman.

My morning run felt great, I started dragging a bit near the end, and considering I only ran 20-some minutes... I'm obviously out of shape. But that's to be expected since I've been running two days... I've been sitting around on my ass for far too long wishing I had the extra money to afford a membership for YMCA in Burbank, I've had the unbearable urge to start swimming every-other day for last four months... it's like an itch I'm choosing not to scratch that is just getting worse and worse. The only thing that helps is running.


After the run I sat down and did some push-ups & sit-ups... wrote the last post... then Amanda got back from baby-sitting and we both left for work. Not much else happened after that, I "slaved away for the man" for eight long hours... realizing work is unusually annoying lately, I need a new job. I applied for a job at iFilm, and a friend has put in a good word with the vice-president, so hopefully I'll get that job.

Aside from that, it's 1 in the morning, I'm eating some noodles and getting ready to watch a re-run of the Daily Show, which means it's time for me to go. Goodnight, and I wish my day was more exciting for this post's sake.

Well - I will say this first, it's been a long and difficult road, but we've "stayed the course" and now the fruits of our labor have finally paid off. Many people said it couldn't be done, but we knew better, we never let that deter us in our efforts.

Now those same nay-sayers are, to their dismay and probably embarrassment, finding it more and more difficult to hide from the truth. It's in the papers, the media, it's shouted from the tops of apartment complexes and parking garages, it's everywhere.

What am I talking about you say? Why this, of course:

Sea ice in the Arctic has failed to re-form for the second consecutive winter, raising fears that global warming may have tipped the polar regions in to irreversible climate change far sooner than predicted. Cont'd...

Good job, team. Let's keep up the good work.

A lot of people still don't know what RSS is, a lot of people still don't use it... and that's not to say that I'm not new to it... I'm still learning just how much you can do with it. But recently, in the last three days, I've found out that I can subscribe to people's flickr photos with my iPhoto - meaning that my Mom's pictures, my sister's pictures, my brother's, Amanda's, etc, are all automatically downloaded (at their highest resolution) straight to my computer... no more clicking through each page and saving the pictures by hand.

Another favorite of mine is my RSS feed for last.fm, where anyone can click here to see the last 10 songs I've listened to (you can also get to this by click on my name to the right). It's a great way to find new music...

And really that's it. I didn't have much else to say about it - now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to the Majority Report and wash the dishes.

If you want to see some more pictures from Disney Land - go over to "Jeans Pants" and read this post. I'll be uploading more pictures, like I said, to my flickr account... I just have to save the ones on there now to my computer first.

A few post back, my Mom left a comment reading: "And it will be tough to get him impeached as a matter of fact...don't see it happening at all." My knee-jerk emotional reflex to that was 'nothing worth doing is ever easy'... but logically, she's right, but isn't not as simple as it might sound.

For the first 200-some years in this country - neither political party needed a majority to have the power to force a sitting president or his immediate staff to testify - under oath - to the senate. Now this balance of power is very, very important to keep in mind - because it doesn't exist anymore.

One of the first things Reagan did when elected - besides doing away with the Equal time rule for news media - was destroy the power for the minority party to have any checks & balance over the president. Why would Reagan do this? Well, maybe we'll never know, but now here we are - a country that would only be recognizable to it's founders at first glance. A country that tortures... a country that imprisons people, even it's own people, without reason or notice to their family for years and years... a country that spies on civilian to civilian phone-calls and emails, and then has the nerve to lie about the spying to our faces... a country that has violated the War Crimes Act 0f '96... a country out of control in it's spending, borrowing, literally, 1.9 billion each day just to keep the government going and the economy looking like it's afloat... on and on and on...


But there's a finer point here - republicans are already talking about their next presidential candidate... which is unusually early. And for good reason - the 2006 elections are coming up, and as I said above, Bush can fail as much as his heart desires without almost any consequence... aside from his poll ratings... unless, and it's a very big "unless", he looses majority in the house. If democrats get the needed number of seats than Bush knows he is done for - hell, already his own party has been mentioned impeachment in the media. So how can Bush hurt himself to save himself? A political gift from the Gods: The failed port deal.

Despite democrats being some of the first to voice their opposition to the deal, republicans have gotten all of the spotlight in their "defeat" of the deal. Making the president look weak on defense... but not the republican party. Which on one hand, separates them from the president and his 37% approval rating - no one wants to be guilty by association during an election year. So Bush has symbolically "taken one for the team", but really, he just saved his own ass... assuming that this move was enough the help republicans win seats and keep a majority in the house.


We have to win back the house - and we have to impeach Bush, it's one of the only ways we can send a message to the world that he and his actions do not represent us.

A country is not only what it does - it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates.
- Kurt Tucholsky

Cola & Pepsi will be the cigarettes of the future. Both just another drug in pretty packaging.

The title of this post if just some friendly advise from Mickey & the gang. Of course, you can't just say, "dream an amazing dream", you have to sing it at the top of your lungs while fireworks go off and a giant life-sized pirate ship sails by with 50+ people fighting and swinging on ropes... it has more "umpf" that way.

Disney Land was a lot of fun - both days, I especially liked the second time we rode the Indiana Jones ride... we sat in the second row, behind a mom and dad with a (5 or 6 year old) kid between them. The dad sat behind the steering wheel... just incase people reading this post have never been on the ride, I'll explain:

The Indiana Jones ride is this giant jeep with 30-some seats in it, and it's sitting on-top of all these hydraulics... when to you turn hard right, the whole jeep banks left... when you speed up suddenly, the back of the jeep drops and fish tails a bit.

So, right, the dad is behind the steering wheel, and the whole time he is acting like he is doing all the driving, and the kid is shouting, "that way, dad!", "look out, dad!". It must have been the greatest day of that kid's life.

We also went on the Buzz Lightyear ride four times... I was hoping we would go more like 20... but it didn't work out that way. But I found something out about Amanda that I didn't know before during Buzz Lightyear: she's an amazing shot. I keep getting ahead of myself, again for those who have never been:

Buzz Lightyear is a really simple ride - it's a lot like Haunted Mansion, two people per seat, a.k.a. "space ship", and each space ship has two blasters. You fly - slowly - through several rooms, each is decked out with Zurg (or is it Zerg?) and different space martians... there are targets everywhere and the whole point is to shot the targets and get the highest score.

Our first time through Amanda beat everyone's score by a lot... I think mine was in the 45,000 range... and her's was around 140,000. The funniest part of getting our asses kicked were the pics afterwards, because Amanda was spaced out (no pun intended), she had a completely blank expression on her face. And everyone was obviously trying their hardest.





Ahh, she's cute. I'm also a big fan of her gangsta' face in this pic I took while waiting for the train:



We have a TON of pictures, a lot of them are already on flickr (click here for Amanda's and click here for mine), but there are more coming soon... as soon as I figure out why my phone keeps not sending picture messages. Damn you, Verizon. And damn me also - because I lost Amanda's phone while at Disney, but we didn't realize it until we were home. But no need to worry, Disney's lost & found rocks and they called the next day and are mailing it to us monday.

We also have about 160 pictures from Justin and Mollye's camera that I have to figure out to post.

PS - I just added an RSS feed for caliblog, and I set up a little drop down menu at the foot of each post, please check it out and please subsribe through one of the feeds. It helps us keep track of our traffic better. Thanks.

Tomorrow and Friday Amanda and I are going to Disney Land with Justin and his girl, Mollye. I've only been to Disney World when I was young... but be sure to check in during the day for updates in Amanda and I's flickr accounts. I'm sure we'll be posting pic's all day while waiting in line.

hola everyone. what's up. i've just spent the last hour or more updating my flickr page. it's slow and boring but at least it's done and the best part is now i can erase all of those pics off of my camera cell phone.

i promised mike that i would post today... so hopefully he's happy now. i've been meaning to for some time now. i swear. it's been on my to do list. along with a million other things. i get the list thing from my mother. i wonder how good she is at actually getting the stuff on them done. i'm actually not bad, but certain things seem to stay on the list longer than others. actually they usually end up going from one list to another... and another.

anyway... let's see... what's new. it's saturday and i'm home. i had the day off as i do all saturdays now. it's my only day off. the only day i don't have to babysit or go to ikea. although i have cut down my schedule at ikea. i now only work 3 days a week there. i did it because my uncle got was cast in a play and had rehearsal all day, 5 days a week, so they needed me to babysit basically all day. so that was cool. i made a lot of money and got to work at ikea less. now the play rehearsals are over but i'm still now going back to ikea... the reason for this? Well... I'm glad you asked. I'm actually going to be starting a dog walking/sitting service. I'm really excited about it. The thought of working with dogs and being outside everyday getting exercise is so appealing to me. it's like a dream come true... that is if i can pull it off. my hope is that i'll be able to bring in enough money that I can babysat and dog walk enough to completely quit Ikea. and yeah... ikea pretty much sucks. one of the girls who mike works with (who has always been super nice to me) called me a fat ass behind my back and now he won't even talk to her. and a couple weeks ago some customer started yelling and swearing at me out of no where and called me a bitch. my manager said "i'll handle this amanda, you just go in the back" and as soon as I turned the corner the flood gates just opened. I'm too sensitive for this shit, man.

I spent last Saturday cleaning... How fun. I scrubbed the crap out of the bath tub and all of the tile. It sparkels now :) then I got online and signed onto myspace, which was like the first time in a month. so I saw that my old best friend, kasey, had a myspace account and I wrote to her. and she wrote back! I was so excited! she was like my best friend ever, in the 6th grade, and then we just drifted in high school like so many people do, and then she moved away. I'm so excited that I found her finally. she lives in AZ and has a husband and 3 beautiful kids. so i've been meaning to write her a big long catch-up letter ever since last Saturday... yes, that's one of those things on "the list". I'm hoping to get to it when I'm done with this.

tomorrow is oscar day here in LA, and we are all very excited. amber, is coming over to watch them with mike and I. which reminds me, I have to do the dishes and clean the bathroom before then too. geez, a woman's work is never done. anyway... I'm looking forward to it. I hope brokeback wins some shit. I love that movie. anwyay.... amber and I also got some memberships to the 24hr fitness center. about a month ago. we've only actually worked out with eachother twice but i've gone a bunch by myself. It sucks... that we just can't work out our schedules. I thought I could go in the mornings but now that my babysitting schedule has changed it's kind of hard. but I really like the gym. i'd say, in the mornings, 75% of the people there are over 30 which is nice. I don't like being surrounded by models while I work my fat ass off.

hmmm... some other stuff..... mike and I are going to disney land with our friends, justin and mollye. we're going for 2 days next week. i've never been there before. I hope we have fun. also... I am going to miami again to visit my sister, emily. The beginning of april. my cousins, natalie and hilarie, are going too. it's kind of a thing we want to start where we get together once or twice a year for a weekend or something. we were so close when we were growing up and now we've all moved away and gotten married and are starting families (at least they are). so it's been hard not seeing them. when I went home for christmas it was the first time in 2 years I was seeing them and nat and I came up with the idea. I think we'll have a lot of fun.

I'm going to miss mike while I'm gone, as always. we had a nice valentine's day. I just want to say that I really love him. we've discovered the farmers markets. I like them. Especially the all organic market in Santa monica. we've been trying to get out and do more stuff lately. see what LA has to offer.

the really big news in my life lately has been my new computer. I got an apple ibook G4. and it's awesome. my dad co-signed on a loan for me. which was even better than just loaning me the money himself, like I asked, because this way I'm improving my credit as well. so it's pretty damn cool. I love it. I got a desk and everything. I now pay all of our bills online. it's so great :) my very first computer. no more sharing with mike.

i've also opened a savings account. I have a set amount deposited into it every month when I get paid. and I also deposited my entire tax return into it. so, yay for me. my mom is so proud.

too bad I spent $700 trying to get my car to stop shaking and it didn't work. stupid firestone. urggh! that sucks.

hmmm. I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting. and also stuff I'm thinking of but it's a bit personal... I'm sure mike would prefer that I don't spill it all over the internet.

Okay, I promise I won't do this every-time - even though I do it quite often for 'Pedal' - but since Mockworthy is brand-spanking-new and seeing how our stats tell us that we only have 6 subscribers through iTunes, Feedblitz and Odeo, I'm going to post our commentary and it's entire post here - if you're one of the few who have already subscribed, than thank you, and if you aren't then what are you waiting for? It's free.

Friday the 13th (part 1)

Get your fix: Justin & Mike mock Friday the 13th (part 1) [54.3 MBs, 95 minutes, mp3 format] or play in iTunes.

After thoughts: How exciting - our first podcast for MOCKWORTHY, don't you find it extremely beneficial for Apple that audio-casting coined a term starting with "pod", as to imply an iPod... which you don't necessarily need to listen to podcast. Interesting.

Moving on - we happen to choose one hell of a terrible film for our first. Looking back on the commentary track, I only regret not ordering in pizza half way through the snoozefest of a movie... Justin got very hungry, and when Justin gets hungry, he just can't concentrate on inspiring cinema.

Aside from lack-of-food issues, I think it will be some time before we come back to any Friday the 13th films... because, wow, they are all bad. How this movie ever spawned a "successful" string of movies has to be one of Hollywood's biggest mysteries.

Side-note: In this first commentary, Justin and I make several references to "No Comment", which was later replaced by the much more appropriate: Mockworthy.

Details on 'said' film: Tagline: You'll wish it were only a nightmare... Directed by: Sean S. Cunningham Writing credits: Victor Miller, Ron Kurz Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller Plot summary: Many years after two summer camp councilers are killed at Camp Crystal Lake, the owner decides to reopen, which sparks a series of grisly murders. (more) Cast overview: Betsy Palmer as Mrs. Pamela Voorhees, Adrienne King as Alice Hardy, Harry Crosby as Bill, Laurie Bartram as Brenda (as Laurie Bartham), Jeannine Taylor as Marcie Cunningham, Kevin Bacon as Jack Burrell Awards: 1981, Nominated, Razzie Award, Worst Picture Sean S. Cunningham, Worst Supporting Actress Betsy Palme

Sorry I've been missing in action for the past week. I've been meaning to sit down and write about how the hosting switch went, give an update on how 'pedal' is doing, just talk about how my week has been going... but... this morning, I went for a very nice walk around the neighborhood, it's a beautiful day outside, the sky is clear, people are out walking their dogs, the sun is shining.

While walking I put on my ipod to listen to the Al Fraken show, which is being covered this week by Sam Seder from the Majority Report.

And I actually cut my walk short this morning, I still got in a good twenty minutes, but this morning's podcast left me... I'm not even sure what word best describes it. Please read what I'm about to write... and please leave a comment, or write an email, and it doesn't have to be, "yeah, that sucks"... it could be encouraging, an uplifting comment would actually be nice right now. But don't say nothing... it just makes me feel more hopeless.


What is this all about? Well, someone apparently had a crisis of conscious and decided to leak, to the AP, over six days of transcripts and video of the days leading up to and directly after Katrina (or Carina if your Laura Bush), one particularly damaging video is a direct conference line on Sunday (19 hours before the hurricane hit the coast) between FEMA, the National Weather service and Bush at his ranch while on vacation.

In the video everyone at FEMA and the National Weather service is telling Bush about their worries over the levees, about the disaster within a disaster for the Superdome, etc... in this video conference Bush doesn't ask a single question. Not one.

Of course it was only four days later when Bush said in an interview that "no one could have anticipated the breach of the levees...". Now anyone that actually gave the situation two seconds of thought, knew that Bush was lying through his teeth in that ABC interview, but now there is video proof for those who wanted to believe their president was/is there to protect them, to look out for their better interest, to guide this country and it's government in an inspiring direction.

So how should I feel? Should I be upset over this particular lie? Or should I focus on a pattern of incompetence? Bush has told us, "no one could have imagined terrorist would fly planes into the Twin Towers", "no one could have anticipated the breach of the levees", "no one could have imagined we wouldn't be greeted as liberators", "I have the right to illegally spy on every day Americans with telling anyone", "America doesn't torture", on and on and on. In every case, time would tell, the opposite was true.

So maybe focusing on the pattern isn't the right concern either. How about why is Bush president... what personal ambitions moved him to become president? If it's not to represent the people... if it's not to protect the people or our interest... if it's not to be a force for good... than why?

I think the answer is obvious: look at Exxon, reporting the largest profits for any company in the world. Look at the pharmaceutical industry with their $180 billion slush fund from the medicaid bill. Look at the mining industry who is making huge profits at the expense of their workers' safety. Look at the food industry, now that congress has said it will crush any state pushing for higher safety standards for food. Look at the energy companies who are forcing states to allow for more carbon monoxide emissions to enter the atmosphere because of a federal regulation roll-back. Look at the sale of our port security to UAE, despite the report that Al Qaeda in 2002 had infiltrated the UAE government. I could go on all day.

But I think the real question is, the one that matters the most, the one that is hardest to answer, the question that can't be answered with "money", is this: what is it going to take before we say enough is enough? That's the one I can never understand...

I've been working on the website for 'mockworthy', but seeing as how it's not up yet, I'd thought I would post our first commentary here on caliblog and just get the ball rolling. See how people react to it.

Well, I guess I'm getting ahead of myself, first I should explain what mockworthy is - because I've never even mentioned it before. A few months ago, Justin suggested doing a mock commentary for a random shitty movie. This idea snowballed into a once-a-month project... Justin and I will sit down, with a shitty movie in front of us, and preferable we'll bring on guest-commentators for the following, and that's it, that's 'mockworthy'.

How it works is simple, when you hit play on the 'said' movie, you also hit play on the audio file we'll be pod-casting and taa-da, you can listen to us discuss and bash the film and others like it. I'm hoping people really get involved in the project - I'd like to post the titles of upcoming commentaries so that people could send in little audio-comments that we can play to really make things interesting and audience-involved.

Okay, sorry this post is so terrible, but I'm about to run out the door for work - so it's a bit rushed. Here is your audio file [MP3 / 01:34;54 / 54.3 MBs] for the terrible movie 'Friday the 13th' part one. Enjoy...

Update: MOCKWORTHY is up and running. Click here to listen to our first podcast in iTunes!