When I went to see Return of the King last weekend, I saw my first poster for Alien vs. Predator. There's an official site and a release date too. (August 6, '04)

You can watch an interview with the director that unfortunately does not inspire a lot of confidence in me.

Why did they have to go do something silly like put Bishop in the movie again. (I assume he's going to be playing a scientist doing android research or something like that...)

Other projects under Paul Anderon's directing belt before AvP:

Resident Evil
Event Horizon
Mortal Kombat

I'll reserve judgement for another eight months.

Well, well, well. Arkansas had a nice start to their football season knocking of then #5 Texas. Things went a little downhill from there, but they still got a bowl bid. (Then again, I think the little league team who practices in the cemetary near my place got invited to a bowl too...)

Regardless, they are playing in the Independance Bowl in Shreeveport, LA tomorrow evening. They're playing the Missouri Tigers, one corner of the local three way rivalry. (KU and K State are the other two...)

As it happens, I'll be spending New Year's Eve in Columbia, MO, home of the Tigers. (I'll be there catching Big Smith's New Year's show.) I should be in town in time for the game, though.

Hmmm... How best to show my disdain for the Tigers while still maintaining festive dress for the show? That will require some thought.

Unemployed Dot-Commers: Thanks a lot for ruining my backup career too.

Why don't you all just take jobs as truckers while you're at it and ruin my tertiary fallback career...

You know what's good? Wasabi Peas.

They're good.

Damn! Damn! Damn! Did you see that?

Going into this weekend there were so damn many ways that Green Bay could make it into the playoffs that I was fairly confident. Our first opportunity came on Saturday when the Seahawks played the 49ers in San Francisco. The Seahawks haven't been great on the road, so I figured they could drop one. No such luck.

Then Sunday morning, Green Bay had another chance to get in if Dallas could beat the 'Aints. Again, no such luck. Then there was the ugly strength of victory tiebreaker. I never heard it broken down, but we knew by the 3:00 game that it did not fall in Green Bay's favor. Green Bay had to win their game, and...

The Vikings had to lose to Arizona. This is not a scenario that warms the cockles of a Packer Fan's heart. Now don't get me wrong, I really hadn't yet given up hope. The Vikings are a team full of primadonnas who don't feel like they need to show up to beat teams that they should be able to beat on paper. I had full confidence that they would half-assed walk through the game, expecting to come up with an easy win. I still thought they'd be able to pick up the win.

Things looked good through the first half. I was watching the Packers, so I only kept up with the game by obsessively refreshing the score on my phone, probably spending more time watching the screen on my phone than the Green Bay game, which was quickly in hand. Arizona didn't manage to score a TD, but they kept Minnesota scoreless and went into halftime leading 6-0. Looked good, but certainly not what I was hoping for.

Halftime ended, and things started to look worse. Minnesota scored in the third quarter (Moe Williams, riding my fantasy bench for the first time all season) In the fourth quarter, they opened the score up more with another touchdown and a field goal. Things then got rather confusing to me. The score/current drive screen on my phone is screwy. After a punt, it shows the team that just punted as still having possession at the spot where the returner went down. It kept making me think that Minnesota had the ball in excellent field position when it was actually the start of an Arizona drive.

It became somewhat moot since at this point the announcers of the Green Bay game stopped paying attention to the game that they were covering and more or less doing radio play by play of the Minnesota Arizona game. Arizona scores a touchdown, bringing the score to within six. They line up for an onsides kick. THEY RECOVER! Excellent field position. They drive. Time is running down. There's a pass in the endzone, and it's ruled a touchdown, but the booth is reviewing possession.

We waited for a moment, then the call came down. The receiver had possession and was pushed out of bounds. Arizona wins the game! The Packers are in the playoffs!

Damn.

The Vikings suck.

Baby Pictures!

Congratulations again, Raj...

For those of you interested, Packers.com breaks down the details of Green Bay's playoff hopes. The meat:

Some games to watch:

Buffalo at New England (Sat., Dec. 27 - 12:30 CT): A Buffalo win helps Dallas' strength of victory over Seattle, which is beneficial to the Packers in the event of a three-way tie.

Seattle at San Francisco (Sat., Dec. 27 - 4 p.m. CT): A San Francisco win clinches a Wild Card berth for the Packers regardless of their game against the Broncos. A Seattle win forces a Packers win against the Broncos.

Philadelphia at Washington (Sat., Dec. 27 - 4 p.m. CT): A Washington win helps Dallas' strength of victory and potentially gives Dallas extra incentive to win at New Orleans as the NFC East title would be up for grabs.

Dallas at New Orleans (Sun., Dec. 28 - Noon CT): A Dallas win eliminates the potential for a three-way tie with Seattle and Green Bay that could eliminate the Packers from playoff contention.

Minnesota at Arizona (Sun., Dec. 28 - 3 p.m. CT): The Packers only hope of winning the NFC North requires an Arizona win.

And, oh yeah...

Denver at Green Bay (Sun, Dec. 28 - 3:15 p.m. CT): To reach the playoffs, the Packers will be in a must-win situation unless Seattle loses to San Francisco.

Not going anywhere, but Merry Christmas to everybody. Travel safe if you're heading out of town, and have fun wherever it is you're spending the holidays.

Congratulations to The Great and Powerful Raj, the new father of future five time Jeopardy! champion:

Rose Jacqueline Choudhary

Born 12/22/2003, 4:24PM

Vital Stats TBD

Congrats, Raj.

Wow, now that's the Brett Favre I remember. Of course, our thoughts are with Brett on the loss of his father. That was an excellent performance on his part, particularly considering the circumstances.

Playoff scenarios are very convoluted. Since Kansas City couldn't hook us up with a win over Minnesota, we need to count on the Cardinals to beat Minnesota in order to take the division with a Green Bay win over Denver. (And Denver is no Oakland... That'll be a tough game...)

Assuming that Green Bay can get past Denver, they will make the playoffs with a Dallas win over New Orleans. Even if Green Bay loses, they can still sneak in if Seattle loses to San Francisco, which certainly could happen. We'll even know about that early since that's the afternoon game on Saturday.

Go Pack! One week left, then it's on to the playoffs.

Brett Favre is back again next season...

We plan on having an auction style fantasy football draft in one league next year, and one of my pals has already promised to drive the bidding on Favre up to astronimical levels, since he knows I'm always a sucker for drafting Favre.

This may be worse than "Attack of the Clones". Brian Herbert has announced the title for Dune 7. It's actually going to be two books. The first is titled Hunters of Dune, which I guess is not terrible.

The big finale?

Sandworms of Dune

Bah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Bah ha ha ha ha ha ha haha...

Ha...

Just still busy. I took the girlfriend's daughter Christmas shopping yesterday. We went to one crappy mall near my place, then to the bigger mall a bit further south, then to Best Buy. We got to Best Buy at 7:45, and saw a sign in the front of the store saying "Dante Hall will appear at this location December 16, 7:00 - 8:00 PM". We poked around for a bit, and sure enough he was in back by the speakers signing photos. By the time we got over there, he was about done, and thoroughly mobbed, so we didn't get a chance to get an autograph.

Apparently the deal was that he was going to play a game of some X-Box football game against one shopper, and if the shopper won he would win an X-Box. Anyway, Dante is not as big as I thought he would be.

I'm still not done with my Christmas shopping.

Wow, I wonder if I could grow a beard that long in nine months...

Has anybody heard from PG lately? He hasn't emailed in a while, and I was expecting he'd be back from vacation by now...

His next movie is "The Brothers Grimm", and it looks like they've just about finished shooting...

Now I know some of you conservatives out there don't like Colin Powell too much. I guess I've never really agreed, but now I guess I'm coming around to your side.

Colin Powell has just appointed James Brown "Secretary of Soul and Foreign Minister of Funk". This is an outrage. The position clearly belongs to George Clinton. I call on Congress to hold up Brown's nomination by any means necessary until Clinton can be installed in his rightful place.

Well there's nothing lamer than weather-blogging, so of course I'm on it. We got our first real snowstorm last night. The gf talked me into staying at her house last night after the dart tournament, and that turned out to be a terrible idea. When I woke up in the morning I tried to put my contacts in and lost the right one. My left eye is worse than my right, but they're both pretty bad. After searching for a bit, I gave up and decided to drive home with one good eye.

Not right away of course, I had to spend the next half hour chipping ice off my car. (Hers too, I'm such a nice guy...) Then it was a drive home that wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. My neighborhood never gets plowed, so that part was bad, but I finally did get home and eventually headed in to work.

But I'm not spending another night at the gf's place during a winter storm. I have a nice garage at my place that can save me half an hour of ice scraping time if I would just utilize it.

I just got my first natural gas bill that I could consider a Winter bill. Ugh. I heard that gas was going to be higher this year, and they weren't lying. I used about 8% more gas in November than I did in November of '02, but the bill is about 62% higher than last year's bill.

There's nothing but acronyms on the boxes on the bill so I can't exactly figure out what's what, but it looks like the per-unit cost of gas is 6.7968 this year compared to 4.2952 last year. That's just no good.

Who do we need to go to war with for lower Gas prices? I think I'll probably be adjusting the thermostat when I get home this evening...

Which is my favorite Achewood strip, you ask? Why, it's this one, part of the "Téodor's Party" storyline that started here.

I only mention this because Africa is playing on my radio station right now.

I think I need a new coffee mug...

More Lego Sculpture for your Thursday...

At The Brick Apple, you'll find New York inspired Lego sculpture such as The Empire State Building, various vehicles, and a sweet Homer Simpson.

My web design skills are rudimentary at best. I shouldn't be the one having to give advice on usability in web design, butI keep seeing this over and over.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

CONTRAST, PEOPLE!!!

You should not have to select any of the text on a web page in order to read it. Light on dark, or dark on light. Doesn't matter to me, just please not light on light or dark on dark.

Hey lawyer buddies, can I file like a reverse class-action suit against people who put up low contrast websites and sue them for vision correction and punitive damages? It'll be just like in The Jerk. When I get done with them, they won't have anything. Nothing at all. Except that ashtray. The ashtray and the paddle game.

Hey, did you know that there was a made for TV sequel to The Jerk made in 1984 called The Jerk, Too?

I've given up pretending, and now just admit that I'm old. I listen to 80's music at work. The worst part is hearing old Michael Jackson songs... The station I listen to plays quite a few. Damn, those were some good songs. What in the hell happened to that guy?

Dang, a full week without a post and this is all I have?

A while back Achewood ran a strip involving a Rabbit Ambulance (it employs the principles of hopping instead of rolling). They've since released a cool shirt, which I promptly ordered (and still haven't received).

Well, Lego artist Nathan Sawaya has created his very own Rabbit Ambulance. (You can also check out The Death Star, Han in Carbonite, and Curious George.)