Courtesy of Mike Smith:

Work done by Jim Lowe of Montclair VA.  As David Kantrowitz said in the previous post, there is just something about the 625 that makes you want to shoot a monster in the face. (he has one in his books too).

So this last week the Whitehouse declared war on FOX News.  Apparently because only 95% of the media outlets give Obama a free pass, if he could just reign in that last 5%, and get them to toe the party line, then everything would be just peachy.

The Whitehouse wants to control all of the media.  

Think about that for just a second. I know that I have people who read this blog who are Democrats.  A sitting president of the US wants to destroy the single dissenting news agency. Doesn’t that scare the crap out of you?

If George Bush’s top people had started having public meetings with Republican leadership about how to hurt CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, the New York Times, and the Huffington Post, can you imagine the massive institutional freak out that would have caused?  And rightly so.

And yes, Bush sucked too. We know. (and that never gets old as an argument, really) but moving on, gentle Democrat readers, doesn’t the idea of having the Whitehouse stomping on dissenting opinions unnerve you?

On a related note, I’ve heard a lot recently about how it is somehow unfair that FOX’s ratings are so much better than their competitors.  Give me a friggin’ break.  Out of all those highly educated journalists, there wasn’t one person that sat through a business class?  If your market is the American public, and we live in a country that is split roughly down the middle as far as personal beliefs go, and there are, say 20 big media companies… Only 1 company competes for the right 50% while 19 companies compete for the left 50%… What part of that 1 company on the right side getting larger market share comes as a shock exactly? 

Oh, except I forgot that all 20 companies claim that they’re not right or left. They’re all in the middle and totally unbiased… Ha Ha Ha! Man, that’s some funny stuff right there.

The traditional media is losing its viewers and readers by the ton.  Everybody except for FOX is hemorrhaging money. Yet, they’re still too ideologically driven to focus on reality. They’re losing viewers because we’re smarter than they think we are. We’re pretty good at knowing when we are being lied to.  When I can get more realistic reporting from the Onion than from the New York Times, there may be a problem afoot.

Media is a giant joke. The American people know it. Everybody but the media seems to know it. When ACORN was caught on video breaking hundreds of laws in five different cities, the regular news wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. Even though this is an organization that was getting billions of dollars of tax money (and will be again at the end of October, but you didn’t hear that on the regular news either) because it didn’t fit with the ideological prism, then it didn’t get reported.  Thank God for the internet, talk radio, and people still having the ability to talk freely.  Hell, even John Stewart was offended that the media missed this one.

Once again, I’m ahead of the cultural curve. I’ve distrusted and hated the news for a really long time.  As somebody who started out as a child gun nut, it didn’t take too long for me to realize that EVERY SINGLE report or article involving guns was riddled with factual errors, outright lies, mistakes, misstatements, made up stats, and quotes from morons.  I was probably about fourteen years old when I came to the conclusion that if the news got this much stuff wrong about a subject I actually knew about, how much were they screwing up on the topics that I wasn’t familiar with?  (well, now that I’m older, I realize that the answer is ALL.)

Aerial photos showed that there were more people at the big DC tea party than there was at inauguration.   Somehow that was a record crowd of about 1.5 million for Obama’s historic event, but it was like “tens of thousands” of angry right wing crack pots who are too ignorant to want socialized healthcare.  But the media still doesn’t get why we don’t believe them when they say they’re unbiased.

Don’t worry though, when the traditional media finally goes bankrupt, then the government can just bail them out.  I’m positive that nothing bad could possibly come from having a state run media, especially since Obama has packed the Whitehouse staff with communists and people who really look up to Mao.

I got some bad news today. Because of some problems with Dave Farland’s scheduling, the San Francisco trip at the end of October has been cancelled.  I’ll still be going to LA and San Diego soon after, but right now, northern California is getting bumped back to a future date.

I spent the last week in Texas. I got home late Sunday, and am just starting to get caught up.  If you’ve sent me a book to get signed, or you ordered any signed books or patches, those are done, and will be going out in the mail tomorrow.

I know a bunch of folks in Texas, and some of you contacted me via e-mail, sorry I didn’t get back to you while I was there, but I was swamped pretty much the entire time.  I was there for training relating to my day job – Finance guy for a government contractor – and I was busy learning all of the various ways that different agencies of the government can give you conflicting orders, all while the other agency is penalizing you, and yet another government agency’s representatives want you to disobey laws set down by yet another different agency… but don’t worry, Obama said that when the government takes over healthcare, it will be more efficient, because they don’t have so much overhead, like profit… Ha Ha Ha!

But again, if you’re in Texas, and you contacted me last week about hooking up, I apologize for not getting back to you.  By Saturday night when I had some free time, I was totally fried, watched a movie, and then ate a hotel pizza and went to sleep.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311361/

As an admitted B movie nerd, I’ve seen a lot of low budget flicks.  I review some of them on the blog, and from what I’ve gathered, a couple people actually read these.  I ran into Julie at the Sugerhouse book signing.  I met her last year at MountainCon.  She gave me a DVD, and assured me that it was one of the most amazingly awesome bad movies ever made, and that I absolutely had to review it here on MHN. 

So last night I finally had a chance to pop Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter, into my player, and Mrs. Correia and I enjoyed a night of the savior using kung-fu to fight vampire lesbians and militant atheists with the help of a masked luchadore on the mean streets of Ottawa…

Wow. I don’t even know where to start.  That description alone should tell you a lot.  Julie was right. For people like me who have that negative gene that makes us crave shaky cam, low budgets, and actors who were paid in beer, this is a must see. In this case, the beer is Canadian, and the giant cast was obviously grabbed from whoever was available, including in the director’s mom.  (no literally, I went back and listened to the commentary).  

The basic plot is that vampires are killing people, so the church calls in their ultimate butt kicker.  Jesus appears to be about 5’2” and has no problem busting out teeth or musical numbers. After getting a hair cut, shave, and his ears pierced, he takes it to the vampires, Canadian style, with lots of badly choreographed fight scenes, dirt bikes, pool cue stabbings, and random bits of awesome.

The main bad guys are the guy who wrote the movie, and a mad scientist who looks vaguely like a young Glenn Beck. His nefarious scheme had something to do with skinning lesbians, so that they could graft the skin onto vampires so they could go out into the sun. (everyone knows lesbians are at least SPF 50). 

Jesus is joined by a few staunch allies, most of who are killed the first time they try to help.  Mary Magnum wears a red velour body suit, for some indecipherable reason, but her kung fu is weak, and she gets bitten quickly.   (on that note, when Mary was getting bitten by the vampire, my wife said “Boy, they’re big on cleavage and straddling.”  My response was “Well, who isn’t?”)

 A couple of priests, including Johnny Nukem from Guitar Hero, get similarly dispatched. Only Santos, the masked wrestler, (a fat guy in a Destro mask) is able to stay the course, kill vampires with tooth picks, and score himself a chunky girl.  God himself also makes a cameo as a bowl of cherry ice cream.

Yes.  As you may have guessed, this is slightly blasphemous.   But in the movie’s defense, it was in good silly fun, instead of that obnoxious self-righteous way movies usually treat Christianity.  (isn’t it ironic that the most holier-than-thou people I’ve ever met have been atheists?)   Anyway, if you judge your religion based on a B movie, or even worse, you get super offended when somebody makes jokes about your beliefs, you’ve got some serious issues.  (You drew a cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb? For that we must blow up your city!!!)  Just enjoy the kung-fu, skateboarding musical numbers, and get on with life.

JCVH had heart. Apparently this movie was made for about nothing, over a two year period, filming on weekends whenever they could get all their friends together. The acting varies from atrocious to okay, but you can tell that they had a lot of fun making this bad boy.  It is cheese, but it is enjoyable cheese.   

Thanks for the DVD. This one rocked.

Engraved by Jim Lowe of Montclaire VA.   The owner will send more pics when it is on the gun. Very cool.