MichaelRunyon.com – All Things Geek

I was looking today on the Rotten Tomatoes website (where I frequently go to get a barometric reading on the movies that I am thinking about seeing) and saw the total box office earnings. I noticed that “Meet the Spartans”, a horrifically bad spoof movie made by the same group that did Epic Movie and others. It has a 3% on Rotten Tomatoes (which means that 3% of people had a positive view of the movie). It has earned $31 million. Unbelievable….

To contrast my point, 3 of the movies that are likely to produce the Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Picture awards this year (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Michael Clayton) have earned $61 million, $31m, and $36m,respectively. Only Juno, the possible other exception for Best Picture, has earned more ($125 million), and that’s due mostly to its youthful leanings and stature as an indie film. Sometimes, I do not understand the inverse relationship between critical success and box office failure. That’s not to say that the critics don’t speak for the people, because they often do not, but that a film that is nearly universally understood to be utter trash can out-produce such high quality films speaks well of the degradation of the film industry.

For those of you who may have missed it, there was the last lunar eclipse for 3 years on the North American continent last night. They were not sure if the weather was going to cooperate or not, and many suggested that the only good viewing location was in the Midwest. Thankfully, it stayed clear long enough to enter into full totality uninterrupted, but about 10 minutes after total eclipse, the sky was totally in cloud cover, and the eclipse was to be seen no more.

I setup the telescope that Leah got me for Christmas, a pretty nice little Meade 70mm. It worked pretty well, though I set it up in a hurry and didn’t even calibrate the viewfinder all that well. You could a great amount of detail on the eclipse due to the telescope’s greater light collecting faculties, even all the way up to full eclipse. The view of the moon in near-total eclipse was my favorite, with just a sliver of light left on the North-East slope, and a amber hue growing over the rest. The umbra of the Earth was distoring the light from the Sun and coloring the moon with the longer, colder rays of the visible spectrum.

I wanted to get a couple pictures from the telescope and get them online, but sadly, it was beyond freezing last night. It was only about 9 degrees during the time of the eclipse, so I kept going in and out of the house. My long johns enabled me to stay out for a while, but even then, it was just too cold to do much, and my point and shoot digital doesn’t do well in low-light whatsoever. I did take a few pictures where you can nearly tell what we are viewing, but none that are worth posting. Maybe I can find a link to someone who got some better shots.

Leah and I have been watching this new show on AMC lately called “Breaking Bad”. It’s this kind of po-mo show about this high school chemistry teacher who finds out that he has cancer and not long to live, at the same time as his wife is expecting an accidental child. He decides to completely break out of his mold and cook some meth with one of his former students. As you can imagine, it gets wild and wooly from there, with many laughs and travails along the way.

The show is definitely a breath of fresh air, and gives a humorous yet straight-forward look into someone’s life in motion. The dialogue and plot planning is good, and the storyline thus far has been enough to hold my attention without getting ridiculous. The irony and black humor are rife throughout the show, and I find myself waiting for the next week’s episode and what surprise twist it will bring.

Prop’s to Gene for turning us on to this one. He mentioned it to us during the Super Bowl and we caught back up with a marathon a week later or so. If you have cable, give it a try sometime. Great for filling in the gap for quality TV with all of the shows missing for a few months.

This weekend went by quickly. I didn’t know how much was going to be done this weekend, as I only slept about 3 hours each night on Thursday and Friday, and then had meetings all day on Friday, so when Friday night rolled around, I was exhausted. Leah and I had paid to attend a benefit dinner put on PetsConnect, an organization that Leah’s co-worker(and friend) volunteers for. They rescue animals from the area shelters that are about to be put down for lack of space and provide foster homes for them until they are adopted. Her friend and her sister have fostered several animals, including a pretty large boxer in their pretty small house. But he was finally adopted, after 4 months, just like nearly all of the pets that they foster are. On their flyer at the benefit dinner, they claimed that they put 400 animals into homes this year (including a chicken!). That’s pretty impressive for a pretty small organization. Leah and I are thinking about possibly fostering a few cats, as we think Niobe might like a couple playmates, and we already have an infrastructure ready for cats. We shall see where that path takes us.

They had a silent auction at the benefit as well, and I was trying to get some tickets to the ND-Pitt basketball game later this month. I don’t get that excited for basketball games, but ND is good this year, and the seats were really good. Oh well…PetsConnect got more money from someone else than I was willing to spend, and that’s what really counts anyway. Leah’s mom, of course, came away with many purchases, some of them arguably frivolous. But, it’s a charity dinner, right? What can you do. I will probably post a few pictures of us dressed up later to Picasa.

Saturday, I slept for nearly 12 hours trying to catch up from the previous night’s lack of, and then went grocery shopping, and cleaned up the house some. Then, dinner at Mom and Dad’s.

Sunday, Leah had her sister and father’s family over for lunch. We finished cleaning up that morning and then after they left, got in another nap. It’s tough to catch up on sleep, or impossible, really. Getting back into a good schedule is extremely hard. I laid awake for a long time last night, even though I went to bed at 12. I normally go to bed around 1, 1:30. But I am trying to get into a more responsible, normal bed time.

Bethany and I have been playing phone tag for the longest time now, and she finally caught me for a few minutes at Mom and Dad’s. She was sitting outside of Cloverfield, waiting for Preston to get out, as she got way too motion sick from the intentionally amateur-like camera angles. She was a little embarassed. I suggested that she start playing DDR in the lobby, as that would likely expedite Preston’s departure from the theater upon receiving that knowledge. I know that I won’t be taking Leah to see Cloverfield; she barely made it through The Bourne Supremacy, and that was really only a technique versus a motif.

Well, today/tonight is the day that most of the media pundits have all been waiting for. Super-Duper Tuesday. This tuesday is generally called Super Tuesday, due to a large number of primaries happening on the same day, but this year is beyond belief in how many have joined up together to vote on the same day. Unless trends dictate otherwise, most pundits will have a pretty good guess about where the presidential nomination for each party is going to fall, though I am sure that they have been throwing their respective opinions about the subject around in convincing fashion the near entirety of the weeks leading up to this day/night.

As noted in an earlier post, I’ve gathered my support, as well as the support of my friends and co-workers in the presidential hopes of Ron Paul. While the media paints him as a long-shot candidate, movements on the Internet have shown that there is strong support for him all across the nation. Whether it’s the sheer number of mentions and stories featuring his name and his policies or the record setting amount of money that he has raised, the idea is getting out there. I see bumper stickers and rallies for Ron Paul all the time. I have never seen a bumper sticker or rally for any other candidate, of any party, in the South Bend area.

The problem is that this action doesn’t always turn into real votes. The system is still controlled by the majority, who will likely have never heard of Ron Paul, and won’t take time to research the issues regarding what they believe. These are the problems that occur when the nation is controlled by the mediaocracy. The word needs to get out, but to do so means playing by their rules, rules that are set by the rich and powerful, who don’t want the truth to get out.

CNN.com and other sites show Ron Paul polling about 2-6% in most states, which is a respectable showing, especially for primaries, where the only people who are allowed to vote in some cases are registered voters from the previous election. This means that none of the Ron Paul converts have a voice in deciding the nomination, and despite the need otherwise, the likelihood of real victory without the Republican nomination is going to be very, very difficult. There will have to be a massive campaign following the nomination of another if he is to have a shot at all, and that is banking on the possibility of him running as an Independent without the nomination. The media has been hounding him about this all along, and though he’d like to have a shot at the nomination, I think that the only true chance for change lies in his third-party candidacy.

Now we’ll just have to sit back and watch the results come streaming in. Hopefully they are not tempered with the possibility of tampering or fraud, though results from previous elections have certainly shown that to be a very real possibility.

I don’t discuss politics in the family or casual setting too often, mostly because I am so vehemently anti-confrontational. Politics seems to bring out the worst sides of the people that I like to be around, and because of this, and the lack of an easy way to talk about things, I just avoid the situation altogether. Some may call this apathy, and they may be right, but I like to think that I am leaving the table open for all other discussions of interest.

To this end, however, I would like to talk briefly about the candidate for 2008 presidency that I think suits the interests of the country best. His name is Dr. Ron Paul. Because the mainstream media refuses to report much about him (since he doesn’t fit into their profile of presidential material), most people haven’t heard about him, except through the blogosphere and word of mouth. The man is brilliantly honest and dependable, however, and I think that most would agree with me if they took some time to gather the facts about the candidates that they are supporting for Presidential consideration.

Ron Paul has been representing Texas as a House congressman for almost 20 years, and has been an extremely prolific member, putting forth to vote and legislation many smart ideas and plans. Ron Paul once ran for President in 1988 on the Libertarian platform, before joining the Republican party as a congressman shortly thereafter. He ran, as he does now, on the basic premise of returning the country to the design of the framers of the Constitution, and reinstating Liberty, Privacy, and other such basic principles. For those of you who often base your vote on the abortion issue, Ron Paul opposes abortion, but does not support a national abolishment. Like most of his views, he supports the Constitutional idea that nearly all issues should be location dependent, and that the constituent states of the US should be making most of their own decisions on what they want their people to have rights to do and not do.

Ron Paul is not nearly as well funded as some of the other candidates who rely on their personal wealth and corporate connections to propel them into the eye of the public. Especially with a near vacuum of media coverage, Ron Paul has been relying on the vivacity of his followers on the Internet and other such open mediums to plug his campaign and try to get the word out about his excellent positions and ideas for change.

I donated to Ron Paul’s campaign, and I support him for both the Republican nomination and the Presidency. I support him because he stands for change in a way that absolutely no other candidate is even willing to begin to approach. Ron Paul is for immediate ending of the Iraq war, and retooling our foreign policy to be in line with what the founders would have wanted: a more aggressively isolationist approach to letting the world sort out it’s problems. Ron Paul is for changing the economy, and abolishing the Fed and centralized governmental control over the economy. Ron Paul is for reverting to the gold standard, to ensure that our dollar stops plummeting with regards to the rest of the world economy. Ron Paul is for real, actual change, not just saying “I’m for change” and voting the Republican party line, like all of the other candidates, including the Democratic contenders. Ron Paul’s voting record, passion for change, consistency of truth, and adhesion to the founding principles of this nation make him the most attractive candidate for me, and my personal only hope for real change in this country.

Read up on Ron here: RonPaul2008.com