Kick-Ass

I can describe this movie in one word: Fun. Kick-Ass is amazingly brutal, but still manages to keep the tone of the movie surprisingly light and funny. It has the comic book feel of The 300 and Watchmen, but manages to not be as heavy handed in artistic surroundings, making the movie feel more realistic. Plus the absolute lack of "superpowers" in the characters makes them seem like they could possibly be your neighbor. I enjoyed the fact that there was a lot less gore than there could have been, plus a young girl murdering people and swearing doesn't bother me. I say power to you Hit-Girl, this role has been played by young boys for way too long.
This could be Nick Cage's best movie. He walks the fine line between doting father and creepy mustache guy perfectly. And, I assume from his earlier roles, that the mustache is real as well!
My recommendation: watch it, buy it, enjoy it! Unless you're a prude! :p

Hot Tub Time Machine

Oh Hot Tub Time Machine, how can I express my total and utter disdain for you?? I believe I posted on Facebook half way through this movie that I would "rather be poking out my eyes with hot pokers than watching this movie." The movie begins on a slightly mediocre note and proceeds to go down hill from there.
I will say that the casting was surprisingly spot on, throwing John Cusack back to the era when he was very popular and successful. Rob Corddry is simply disgusting. It's sad that this movie, which had some potential to be witty and fun, like Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion simply fe1l back on 13 year old boy humor and mom-sex jokes.

My recommendation: don't just skip it, run screaming from this torture device.

Older movie reviews

I just finished bringing over all my old movie reviews from MySpace (I know, ewwwwww). I should get started with some new posts on movies as well as possibly books and TV shows soon!
YAY! :p

Don't Shoot the Dog!

My friend just adopted a beautiful new dog up at the Humane Society of Western Montana. I'm really excited to see her (and him) tomorrow. Who wouldn't love this beautiful face?

She's a 10 month old Mini-Aussie that was found and then surrendered by her owners. I don't know who would possibly give her up, she was the mellowest mini-aussie I've ever met and is just a little ball of love. If my friend wouldn't have taken her, I was sure tempted!
As always with me, the topic of training came up. I went off on my spiel of positive reinforcement and how he could train her not to lick him if he wanted to. He asked me if he should smack her with a newspaper or something when she chewed on him (she is still a puppy). My answer, of course, was an adamant NO! He's a pretty involved reader, so I had the bright idea to get him Karen Pyror's "Don't Shoot the Dog" as a new pet gift.
I love Karen's writing style that makes a very informative training book fun to read. One of my favorite sections is how to apply your new training skills to your significant other or roommates. (Though if you do try it on your significant other, I highly recommend that you don't tell them what you are doing first. I made that mistake and then had to be very sneaky about it afterwards as I would often hear "I'm not a dog" if I was too obvious...)
In the end of her book, she does get to a nice section on clicker training. I have seen a bunch of people who have huge misconceptions about clicker training or just training in general. I think both are a great way to communicate with your pet and to stimulate their minds, and should continue well past puppy or kitten-hood.
I can usually convince people that at least a little training is worth it when they come over to my house. I have a siamese/hymalayan cross cat who very vocally liked to request snacks from you every time you walked into/by the kitchen. As he is obviously a very food motivated cat, I was able to train him that he only received treats in the kitchen if he sat when I requested it. His loud presence in the kitchen has now decreased dramatically and it's a great party trick to get your cat to sit on command. Now we're working on targeting, so maybe jumping through a hoop of fire is in his future... or not. :)
Just a note: I am now doing a little bit of affiliate marketing. That means that the lovely picture and link for the book above will take you to Amazon.com. If you buy anything while you are on Amazon.com after you click that link, I will get a small commission. It's the same as with the ads you see on the blog.

Where's the fair weather diving??

I've been looking at my blog title and realized that I may need to let some people know that the weather here, well it hasn't been all that fair lately. In fact, I believe that we are supposed to get a foot of snow tomorrow...
Someone out there may be wondering "what does she do with all her time since she's not diving? Well, one of the answers to that is this blog. Actually it's after midnight right now, and I'm blogging on my phone in bed while I'm not sleeping. (insert mental picture of darkness and a phone here)
Another activity that keeps me more than occupied is DiveBigSky.com. I'm always working on new content for the site, researching dive sites (which takes for-evah), and trying to motivate people to use the site... Don't get me started on optimizing the site tags for search engines -obviously we are still trying to figure that out - and trying to get a better looking mobile site.
Beyond that, I've been training for my new job, playing with my kitties, and watching crappy reality TV. I did write a kinda neat article on conservation and scuba, but I'll have to link it later.
I will write about diving sometime, but part of the fair weather disclaimer is that I only have to do it when I want to. Neener neener neener. :p
I'm going to go and try to fall asleep now. That means I'll probably be thinking of interesting things I can Write about later or describing fruit in my head. Who knows, maybe I'll dream up a not terrible logo...

Ninja cat tries to blog

This is actual surveillance evidence of "ninja cat" last night after her blogging attempt. Actually, I suppose that is a total misnomer, as if she was indeed a ninja cat her blogging attempt would not have woken me up last night… But she did seem to be writing in some kind of code, assisted by auto text. Thankfully I stopped her before posting as she would have sent a message that consisted of "ksiid if sidkfnnnnn keys" out to the world, and who knows what would have happened?
Ninja cat aka Siren was unhappily locked out of the bedroom and away from her nefarious plans last night after her antics. However, this morning she seemed to be in a good mood as she sang the famous song from "Carmen" accompanied by the drum beats of her digging in the carpet at my closed door at 8 am. As I lay there and alternately wished for her to go away or a cat door to be miraculously installed in my door, I tried to make as little noise as possible, hoping that she would think that I wasn't in the room. I did learn a while ago that throwing things at the door in hopes that she would be frightened by the loud bangs and run away actually made her sing louder as her suspicions that I was in the room were confirmed.
When I finally got out of bed and let her in, she told me all about her night in her large vocabulary of vocalizations. I did notice that she didn't mention anything about her sneaky blog attempts. I guess I'll just have to continue to keep an eye on her and hope to intercept her ninja messages in the future. If I don't, who knows what might happen?

Fw: testing this

I thought I'd give mobile blogging a try and see how it went since I can't sleep anyway....
The attached picture is something that I found hilarious at Albertsons the other day. Someone told me it was a type of bread pudding, but I'm going to stick with my initial impression. I guess if someone was bored they could wiki it and post it in the comments. If this works at all that is.

Fw: testing this and it blows

I will try ti figure this all out not on my phone at 3 am

Poor Mr. Boots

I know I talk about Ghost Adventures a lot, but they are so entertaining. The episode I have been watching takes place in some vaults in Scotland. While many nefarious and ghost making activities have happened there, there was a possible serial killer. Many of the tour guides have seen a dark spirit thing that they believe is the ghost of the murderer. So what did they name this unknown baddie? Mr. Boots of course. While their explanation was that the spirit had boots on, I think they may have made a horrible mistake. Many people have said that they have been pushed or whatever by this ghosty. Well, my guess would be that he’s pissed off! I mean what evil spirit would be happy with a name that sounds like an old lady’s cat?
So here we are with our slicked up Ghost Adventurers locked in dark vaults… enter the hilarity. Zak, the macho-ist of the macho adventures goes to the room where a dead woman was found, and insists on being left there alone, sitting in the spot where they found her. He then proceeds to taunt the evil ghost with his unfortunate name. What angry ghost could resist?

Well, I think that Mr. Boots won this round, since poor Zach ends up blubbering to the camera “OMG what is behind me???” He then calls for his buddies who try to get back to him. However since it’s so dark, one of the guys walks right into a wall. Hehe.
Once they all meet up, Zach has another bright idea. He says, “They say he doesn’t like when you flash lights in this room and flash them in his face. So, I’m going to shine my light in here.”
Seriously, how can you not like this show?? It reminds me of the good old days of the Crocodile Hunter where Steve used to go poke animals and try to get bitten.

I (heart) My Montana Diver! - apparently blogger doesn't like hearts...

I had this great idea in the shower this morning, I'm going to make bumper stickers today!I came up with some great slogans, but when it comes to me writing "I (heart) something" in a media I could use..... I was worthless. I'm now convinced that this Macromedia Fireworks program is pure evil. Nothing makes sense in there! You may hit a button that looks like a paint can pouring some paint, something you would think would "fill" with a color. What does it do? It creates some grey gradient that has nothing to do with the lines I had laid out.
Seriously, how hard is it to make a heart with the dive flag coloring inside?
I think that the solution here is to get rid of this fancy dancy software and get some kind of basic paint program... I mean I can make something look better in Word than Fireworks. The good news is that I am still coming up with some great slogans, and I'm actually writing them down!
Completely off topic, but, I was watching "River Monsters" today and learned that I never want to go to the Amazon. It turns out that the story of a fish swimming up a urine stream and climbing in a guy's urethra... is totally true. They even preserved the fish (a weird, vampiric catfish species) so that they could show it off. Mind you, I was trying to eat some awesome B&J's "Half Baked" fro-yo while watching this, so I found it especially icky to watch. :( Man that was some tasty fro-yo though! And only $2.75 on sale at Target today!
It's apparently product placement day or something. Just to be fair, I also got some cheese from Costco today. lol
Here's my best Ghost Adventures quote of the week: "See this guy in the chair here? Come do anything you want to him! Do your best!" after they strapped Zack to a chair in the dark basement of some prison. I decided today that the reason I like ghost adventures is that their faces have the best expressions. It's like the look on the face of a new chatroulette partner when you have some kind of troll on your camera. Priceless.

Dive Vacations that Give Back

While I was looking into freshwater and scuba conservation, I found something really cool. I’ve always heard of voluntourism or ecotourism where people go on vacation and help other people. I thought that it was something like go to Africa and dig irrigation canals or something. I’m honestly still not sure exactly what you do for that, but I learned something really cool. There are conservation dive vacations.
Well, the ones that interested me were vacations… there were some that were longer and involved much uncomfortableness, but if I’m going diving somewhere nice, I would like to be comfortable.
My favorite one that I’ve found so far is Reef Conservation International where you get to catalog species one dive a day and then explore the rest of the day.
On another note, I looked at a calculator online, and it looks like buying a house may be cheaper than renting…. That would be awesome! I was told by a certain someone that I could have a puppy when we got a house….. yay!
And, in case you ever wondered, launching a new website and trying to get people on it is a very time consuming process. I’m talking about every night, for hours, trying to come up with content. Not to mention the freaky ways I’m trying to get people on there… Plus I’m trying to come up with some logos. I’ll see if I can’t get some of my sorry attempts up here eventually.
If you’re bored, go check out www.divebigsky.com and join! And then post lots of stuff!

I am afraid of homeless people and people asking for money. I'm that person who is thinking about how best to not make eye contact with guy coming up to my window at a stoplight... But today, I felt like the universe has been pretty good to me, so I thought that I would give back a little and give something to the guy with a dog next to a stop sign. My first thought was - give him lunchables and dog food. But then I started thinking, what if he doesn't like lunchables? Or what if he is offended when I give him lunchables?? I started getting really nervous...
Since I had to go to Target anyway, I had the idea to just get him a target gift card. $10 popped into my head as a good number, he could get some stuff and it wouldn't break my bank. The next pitfall of what to give was the type of gift card. I really like the funny ones, but would that offend my recipient?? I went with the standard target dog, hopefully he won't have any issues with it, I didn't get him a gift receipt.
I then walked over to the guys and their dogs (now plural) with the sign asking for help, weirdly enough written on the back of a USPS Priority Mail box, and awkwardly handed them the card, think standing as far away as possible and handing him the card with my arm perfectly straight. I'm sure I had a look of pure terror on my face. This isn't just a guy with a sign issue, I'm also terrified of people at cookie counters and supervisors... Once I handed him the card I just kind of stood there for a second with no idea of what to do next.
One of the dogs started barking, so I ran away. I do think I heard a "thank you darlin'" as I scurried away. I just yelled "have a great day" and kept going.
When I got to my car, I realized that instead of feeling aglow with giving (like when I give a present to a friend), I still felt terrified with chills.
Am I still afraid of those guys with the signs? Yup. Do I know if they really needed it or if they liked the gift card? No. And I think that is what is the hardest for me. With an animal, it's pretty obvious if they really need help, and with trash, you know it needs to be picked up and disposed of properly. But with people, it's a leap of faith. It's really hard to trust someone to be honest with needing more and not simply wanting more. I do feel like I gave a little back of what I received lately, and maybe, it was good for me to take a chance that the guy really needed some help.

Starting this thing

Well, I figured I start a blog, why not?
And the best part? I'm not going to tell anyone I know about it!
Really, could my blog be any worse than most of those blogs floating around? Nope!
There's some confidence for you....

Let me tell you about my freakish love of "Ghost Adventures" - I didn't used to be a big fan of horror stuff. I had what was considered an "overactive imagination" which basically equals being to scared to sleep and scary dreams when I was a kid. So, as a whole I simply avoided the whole genre. Then, some years ago I had the super idea to desensitize myself to scary stuff by watching a whole bunch of it. Now, thankfully, I find most of it funny. The stuff that I don't think will be funny, I still avoid.
Anyway, back to "Ghost Adventures"...
These 3 overly macho guys, with their slick hair gel and meaningless tattoos go into supposedly haunted locations and scare themselves silly. My personal favorite is when they decide to pick fight with ghosts, often yelling "Hey ghost, do you wanna fight?" In fact, I'm watching it right now, they all got group headaches. Really, that is a sign of paranormal forces?
The best guy is the one with the shaved head, I believe he is considered the camera man, and not an actual "investigator." They always stick him in a really dark room where things go thump. He then proceeds to scream like a little girl and then run away. Hella funny.
What do I think that I would do in a dark room? Probably scream like a little girl and run away, but I like to think that I could kick some ass if needed. :)
Do I believe in ghosts? I don't know. I had a creepy experience in an old house on some stairs once. I don't want to have a ghostly presence proved to me. I think it would scare the crap out of me, no thank you. But until they day when I unfortunately believe in ghosts, I'll make fun of those that do. 'Cause I can.