New Karate Kid’s Trailer Ruins the Movie

Not that many people have heard about this movie but after watching Sherlock Holmes which comes out on December 25th, everyone will know about it. I am pretty sure the trailer for this movie will be in the set for Sherlock Holmes. The first trailer for the upcoming remake of The Karate Kid was released yesterday on Yahoo Movies. I had the chance to watch it and I was very excited…until I found out it was set in China. The most obvious reason for me to watch the movie is Jackie Chan, he plays Mr. Miagi or win this remake, Mr. Han. I do not mind this name change anyway. When I first heard the news that they were remaking this 80’s classic with Jackie Chan as the sensei, I nearly did a back-flip…as all us ninjas do. I then found out, Jaden Smith will be playing Daniel but they renamed the character to Dre Parker which I find to be an odd name. I guess Will Smith is a fan of the doctah! I was kind of dumbfounded to here that Will Smith’s son got the part. It was out of left field and no one expected it; frankly, everyone expected a white teenager and not a 10 year old black kid. After trying to figure out how this kid who pretty much only has <a href = "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454921/" The Pursuit of Happyness under his belt, I discovered that Jaden’s father, the almighty man in black, the Fresh Prince, Will Smith was behind the production of this movie. I completely understood the reasoning behind the casting. I’m skeptical about Jaden’s performance though. I really do not think he will do well in this role and the chemistry between him and Jackie will not really flourish. All that aside though, that still won’t stop me from watching the movie.

I had my sights on seeing the movie and then I saw the trailer. It was cool at first and kind of strange at the same time…and then the most dreadful thing happened. Jaden’s character, Dre and his family (get ready for this) MOVED TO CHINA. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why would they movie to China? I do not really care the reasoning for them moving to China but I find the decision to have the movie set in China is a big mistake. The whole entire aura of the story and the main part of the story itself seems so out of place. Honestly, I don’t think Jackie Chan can save this by himself now. His other Hollywood movies kind of sucked, story wise and acting wise (especially Forbidden Kingdom where they casted a caucasion male as the lead role. It would have been SOOOOOOO MUCH better if they put in an Asian male as the lead, even half Asian would have been better than that white kid) but the fighting and stunts made up for it. In the case of the Karate Kid, it will not make up for it. Even the stunts and fights Jaden partakes in will not make up for it. I’m very concerned about the success of this movie because it has now been butchered up and Jackie Chan has been casted in a bad Hollywood movie…again. I’m pretty sure deep down inside, he regrets taking this role.

The trailer has given the viewer enough information to piece the story together. Dre’s family moves to China (for some reason, I will not understand) and he goes to school where he meets a cute girl he likes. This bully comes up to him and kicks his ass (multiple times) and then Jackie Chan comes in to save the day. Jackie Chan’s character, Mr. Han teaches Dre about Karate and enters him into a competition where no doubt he will somehow kick the bully’s ass. This would have been so much better if a caucasian male was the lead actor. Don’t get me wrong and everything, I’m pretty sure Jaden’s a great actor or will be but he just seems so out of place in the movie. Not just because he’s a black kid in China…well it’s mostly that but come on, how many black people do you see in China? He sticks out like a sore thumb (if that’s how that saying goes). There’s also another scene in the trailer where Mr. Han defends himself against the group of bullies and obviously kicks their ass. Even though it does not show that part in the trailer, I’m pretty sure he kicked their ass. Now there is the part where the families could go and sue Mr. Han for assaulting adolescent teens but that’s no fun and the movie will end right there. What a great half hour movie that was.

As I digress – I’m actually too mad to talk even more about this but I thought this movie had potential but watching the trailer set me back, way back. I would have much appreciated it if the movie was set in America. I’m pretty sure they wanted to emphasize how much of a loner/new kid Dre is by having the movie set in China and I’m pretty sure the Fresh Prince wanted to avoid the whole racism thing with white on black violence and vice versa but the whole thing about setting the movie in China ruins it for me and a lot of other people. I hope Jackie Chan’s skillz can help make this movie mediocre but I doubt it. I will still go to the theaters and watch this movie but I will set my expectations very low just to prepare for the absurdness that will be shown in front of my eyes. Oh yea, one more thing. It has been a while since I did my martial arts training but I do not think that was karate Mr. Han was teaching Dre.

WTF Happened with my Facebook Settings?

I just posted on a couple of my friends’ walls and to my surprise, my public news feed is displaying my own posts on the wall which is weird but also what’s pissing me off even more is the fact that the news feed notifications are being published. I am pissed off at Facebook for implementing these stupid privacy updates about a week ago and just today it seems as if all my privacy and account settings were reset. I had to go and change them back to normal and now I can’t find the stupid settings to stop the news feed from showing my wall posts to everyone. I don’t know what the fuck just happened between now and five hours ago which was the last time I posted on a friend’s wall. Half my live News feed is flooded with messages I just wrote to my friends. Isn’t the feed supposed to show you stuff that your friends are doing? Not stuff that you know you are doing? I don’t want to go on Facebook and on my news feed, I see that I wrote to my friend a couple of seconds ago, I already know that. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHIT!?!?!?

So far, this is what I’ve done to make my stuff more private, settings –> Privacy Settings –> profile information –> Posts by Me. I changed it to ‘Only Me’ I will see what that does but this is my quick fix right now. I still see my own posts flooding my wall…this is REALLY pissing me off.

I remember back in the day when everyone started to get concerned about their privacy and they all went to the Facebook settings to un-check pretty much every setting/option in the news feed/wall section. Unfortunately, it’s not there any more and I have no clue where the fuck to go to stop my news feed from displaying every single thing that I do over Facebook. ARGGH I’m fed up with this site. I might just go and start using Twitter now, that’s what all the cool old people do now a days; it’s the Facebook for old people as I would like to say it.

As a wise, disgruntled, man once said, “FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU”

You Shouldn’t Have Slaughtered Those Pigs

The upcoming school year has many schools and universities preparing for the potential epidemic of the swine flu or what is technically known as the H1N1 flu. Many colleges and universities are frantically giving away disinfectant hand wash to every student on campus and they even have created procedures for classes if the H1N1 virus hits half the campus. The swine flu which popped up around the spring of 2009 has caused a world wide pandemic. No one wants to go through another bird flu or a SARS epidemic again and Toronto and China can attest to that. Here’s a funny fact about the swine flu. Originally, they called it the swine flu but pig farmers got mad and lobbied to change it’s name because it reflected poorly on pigs and pig farmers in general. Everyone got scared of pigs and stopped buying any type of pork which obviously brings the pig farmers’ profits down. Then they called it the Mexican flu and all the Mexicans got mad because then everyone thought every Mexican (aka: illegal alien) had the disease. It was named Mexican flu because it originated from there, not because Mexicans had it. Now they have resorted to just calling it based on it’s strain, the H1N1 virus.

When this outbreak occurred, every country closed its doors and temporarily banned international flights hoping to isolate the epidemic. The WHO raised the their pandemic level to five (5). That’s pretty serious stuff; once the level reaches 6, it’s total and immediate lock down in every country. Many countries were obviously afraid that the flu would spread amongst the people so travel was banned for the time being. Egypt on the other hand went to a more extreme length; they killed ALL the pigs in its country. Some might say good move because this definitely reduces the possibility of a swine flu case to 0%. Also, Muslims do not eat pigs. They only eat blessed meat or halal and pigs do not get blessed. But why do they have pigs in the country in the first place if they aren’t used for food or food bi-products?

Well, one thing pigs are good for in Egypt is to clean up the organic waste that people throw out on the streets. This unfortunate and misguided attempt at preventing swine flu failed on an epic proportion as now the streets of Egypt are littered with garbage. When pigs were alive in Egypt, they would stroll the streets and eat the organic waste. Now, without the pigs, Egypt is facing an ever increasing amount of garbage on the streets and something even worse than the swine flu can come about, like The Plague. Obviously the government is trying to clean up all the garbage but that will take some time. It’s like whenever a city has a garbage strike. All the residents just throw their garbage in one spot and that area pretty much becomes uninhabitable. No one would even want to walk around there a year after the garbage has been cleaned up. If the government does not act fast, that could happen to Egypt. I’m pretty sure the effects of garbage on the streets are all negative.

This article has more information: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/africa/20cairo.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&topic=swineflu

The Degradation of FML

Maxime Valette and Guillaume Passaglia have a lot to thank to the unfortunate people who get fucked over day after day and like to vent out their depressed thoughts. Of course we are talking about the up and start website, fMyLife which has become a global sensation solely because we all want to have that feeling that no matter how bad our day is, there is at least someone else who has it worse. Or we just want to laugh at other people’s misfortunates. Give or take, these two reasons are pretty much why it has become so popular. The website is actually an English version of the French website, VieDeMerde created by the same people. The website launched in January 2008 but lately it has become a huge hit as more and more people begin to discover other people’s misfortune. Of course I am a fan of the website because the posters’ submissions are hilarious. The website has reached its peak in early 2009 and I am pretty sure it is due to Facebook. Not that many people knew what FML meant but as the website became more popular it has become the next LMAO. Its biggest push was when a fan page was created for it and afterward, it spread like wildfire.

Back then though, the stories which some were probably fake were very good and hilarious. These days, the website has degraded to a form of unimaginative stories which are probably all true nowadays since they suck so much. What happened to FML? The stories people had were so good, but now the stories reaching the front page don’t even get a sound out of me. The website has a section to moderate the FML submissions but, what the hell have these moderators slumped down too. It’s come to a point where

“Today, I was taking the AP Biology exam. It’s strictly timed, yet my proctor spent 30 minutes (a third of the time we have) talking about his sexual relationship with his wife, who was also proctoring. I don’t know how I did on the test, but I now know my proctor had erectile dysfunction. FML”

Yea, that’s truly an FML moment. Oh man good for you knowing that your proctor has ED. That is a terrible FML. What happened to the days where people were submitting stories of them being dumped and getting kicked while down? I remember that FML where the guy paid for his girlfriend’s pay as you go phone for text messaging just to get dumped. That’s sad, and hilarious at the same time! That’s a good FML.

I better finish this article so I can watch the season finale of House or else FML.

Virginia Tech Decapitation

I just read that there was another horrible incident that occured at Virginia Tech; months after the Massacre. A graduate student by the name of Xin Yang was killed and was decapitated by a kitchen knife. She arrived on January 8th to Beijing to study accounting but she passed away too early. Too early for anyone to get to know her, too early for anyone to see what a wonderful girl she is.

Another graduate student by the name of Haiyang Zhu was arrested and charged with first degree murder. This comes about a year and nine months after the Virginia Tech massacre that took the lives of 32 innocent students.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Ms. Yang and those that have perished April 16 2007.

WTF Happened in Battlestar Galactica?

I watched Battlestar Galactica last night. It came out of its winter hibernation and is set to air the last ten episodes of the series. Last night’s episode was AMAZING and there were so many twists and turns that came at you so fast that once they were over you were thinking, ‘what the hell just happened?’ There were so many things going on that it just blew my mind away.

The first surprise was the best. It turns out that the thirteenth tribe was a colony of cylons. That sucks for the president and admiral Adama who have been preaching that they will find earth some day. Well they did, only to realize that it was inhabited by cylons that nuked the hell out of each other.

Next thing you know, you find out that Tyroll discovers he was living on earth as a cylon in the thirteenth tribe. All the cylons in the fleet, colonel Tigh, Tyroll, Anders, and Ms. Foster were copies of the cylons that lived on earth. The music they keep on hearing was the music that Anders’ original body was playing for the rest of them before they all go nuked to hell.

The most WTF moment in the show was when Dualla just shot herself in the head without any warning. Some people say if you look closely in the frames, the skin colour of the hand does not match hers and the angle that it was at did not look like she was pointing the gun to her head but as if someone else was pointing the gun at her. Plausible, but it was very bright in that room and when you do see the hand, its lit up to a point where its just pale white. The whole angle thing, I don’t really know what to say for that.

Starbuck’s scene was most surreal though. She finds out that she actually did come to earth in her viper but she died and you see evidence of a dead body resembling Kara in a destroyed cockpit of a viper. Her ex husband cylon or the guy that held her captive on New Caprica got scared and ran off not understanding what was happening.

To me, the part where Tigh gets the memory of him and his wife getting destroyed by the nukes in the bank and then he realizes that his wife was also a cylon was not so WTF. It did not surprise me at all for some reason, probably because deep down inside I knew that she was a cylon. It would be crazy though if she did ressurect somehow and came back to earth to surprise the shit out of everyone.

Best and Worst Jobs in America

I read an article today from the Wallstreet Journal which gave a list of the best and the worst jobs America has to offer during the recession. To my surprise, the best job right now is mathematician. Actually it is not really a surprise because once the recession hit, pretty much every single company in every single industry got hurt by it. Now, the only safe job to have is being a professor with tenure at a college or university and that is where mathematicians come in. There’s also the fact that as a mathematician you are incredibly smart having an IQ in the top one percentile of America so you are a great asset to whatever company you are working for and will probably be one of the last people to get laid off. Companies can not let go of their most important assets unless if they have two mathematicians hahaha.

The Wallstreet Journal (WSJ) listed:

The Best
1. Mathematician
2. Actuary
3. Statistician
4. Biologist
5. Software Engineer
6. Computer Systems Analyst
7. Historian
8. Sociologist
9. Industrial Designer
10. Accountant

I’m kind of dumbfounded to see Historian as one of the best jobs to have at this point in time. It seems like a job/career that would not be affected by anything, it will always be at the same place never rising nor falling from its position.

The Worst
200. Lumberjack
199. Dairy Farmer
198. Taxi Driver
197. Seaman
196. EMT
195. Garbage Collector
194. Welder
193. Roustabout
192. Ironworker
191. Constructoin Worker
190. Mail Carrier

It sucks for those who have the worst jobs. They’re the ones being hit the hardest in the recession. Most of them are actually trade professions which if looked closely at are related to the housing market…and we all know what happened there.

What is interesting to see is that all the top jobs in America are the ones that require a degree before practicing and unfortunately for the worst jobs, a post secondary degree is not necessary to accomplish the task. The best bet for those people is to go back to school so they can stay protected from the financial meltdown, get a degree and own the hell out of that list.

Z2K9

haha, ZUNE SCREEN OF DEATH bitch!

Its the Y2K of Zunes everywhere. It seems as if all of the 30 Gigabyte Zunes by Microsoft have all failed and have become bricks. At around midnight of December 30 2008 all the 30 Gig Zunes have failed en mass. People thought it was only their Zune but further investigation shows that all the Zune models have failed at the same exact time. They just shut off without any notice and when restarted, the loading screen comes up but freezes when loading is almost complete. Talk about the Zune Screen of Death haha, or Load Screen of Death. Microsoft is aware of this and are working hard trying to fix this problem…well no, because they’re all drunk as the new year arrives. Pretty sure they will start working on the problem once they get back to work in about four days. What a crappy manufacturing defect this has. Everyone was so worried about Y2K and when 2K9 comes about, an unexpected problem occurs with Microsoft…sickening! This news is not good for Microsoft as they’re losing the battle against Apple’s iPod. Weren’t they still recovering from the DRM fiasco that came with the first generation of Zunes?

Well Bush is at Least Good at One Thing

He can dodge not one but TWO shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist. It seems to be the only good thing he has been good at since he stole the spotlight of winning the American presidential election. Oh there’s also the fact that he did a good job at screwing pretty much almost everyone in America, but lets not talk about that now. What is amazing about this whole ordeal is WHERE THE HELL WAS HIS SECRET SERVICE?

The outgoing president of the United States made a surprise farewell visit to Iraq on Sunday the fifteenth of December to talk about…well no one really cared about what Bush was talking about after the journalist threw his shoes at him. He did not just throw one shoe, he threw BOTH of his shoes at Bush. He threw both the left shoe and the right shoe and Bush was able to dodge those shoes pretty well just like the draft. People in the Western world think, why would he throw his shoes at him, someone could have sneaked in a gun and tried to assassinate Bush. Well it turns out that in Iraq’s culture, showing one’s sole of a shoe means great disrespect. Even worse is throwing your shoes at the person. It is Just like ‘flipping the bird’ or saying, “That’s not what your mom said last night. OOOOHHHHH BURNNNN!” The name of the Iraqi journalist is Muntadar al-Zaidi who stood up and he shouted to Bush, “This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people,” and he threw his shoes at him. Obviously it has made news headlines around the world and in less than a week the video has been posted on Youtube and been watched over five million times. That has to be a record!

The problem that seems to have been overlooked was, WHERE THE HELL WAS THE SECRET SERVICE? I’m pretty sure a couple of agents of the Secret Service are always with Bush at all times, especially when he goes to a country he “invaded.” Aren’t they supposed to be behind him or beside him too? It took the journalist about four seconds to throw both his shoes before anyone actually stood up and wrestled him to the ground but it was not the secret service. Other journalists got up and wrestled him to the ground and yet still no one tried to protect Bush. Four seconds, that is a pretty slow response time for bodyguards who trained practically half their lives (well maybe a year or two at least) to protect pretty much the most important person in the United States. They’re also supposed to sacrifice themselves in order to save their primary, yet no one dove in front of Bush during the whole ordeal. It would have been funny though jumping in front of the person you’re protecting just to get hit by a stinky shoe. A few seconds after Muntadar threw his shoes, the Secret Service came in and crowded the podium. What the hell were they doing outside of the room anyway? Well to stop any outside intruders but where was the Secret Service in the room? No where to be found that is. Come on guys, even though he is the worst president ever in America and has the lowest approval rate, he is still the president. If someone tried to attack him back in America, those agents would be all up in the perpetrator’s ass and take him down to the town. If this happened to Obama, there would have been considerable amount of outrage and controversy about the slow reaction time of the secret service agents assigned to protect “Renegade.” There would have been an investigation of how the accused was able to do this and all the major news networks would be all over just that part of the story, but since it is Bush we’ll just let that one slide.

Muntadar al-Zaidi now faces a fifteen year prison sentence for his efforts. He has become an international star though, a martyr is more befitting. There has been protests on the streets of Baghdad to release the journalist but unfortunately it will go ignored. He’s going to jail unless if those 200 lawyers who volunteered to be his attorneys are really good. Muntadar should get OJ Simpson’s attorney then for sure he would be free. As for Bush, well he’s just good at dodging shoes. Pokeballs on the other hand, he has to practice dodging those.

Does Sex Sell? Ask Coca-Cola…Well Kinda

So we all know Coca-Cola is one of the biggest and well known companies in the entire world.  It sells probably the most popular brand drink ever created.  Everyone knows those red cans, even if we can’t see the classic logo of Coca-Cola of a Coca-Cola can, it is pretty much reasonabl to say that the can is a Coca-Cola product.  Coke is such an amazing drink.  It tastes so smooth and and nice, there is an appropriate proportion of sparkling water and syrup, and there is caffiene in it which is the most important ingredient of the drink.  Even though there are the health concerns like obesity, arthritis, osteoperosis, and juvenile diabeties the company is still turning up some profit.  It may not be in Coke but possibly its other brand name drinks like Powerade, Dasani, or their Nestea.

But the real question is, how and why is Coca-Cola’s logo so famous and influential.  It is probably because of subliminal sex messages within the logo.  Wait! How is that possible? Well Gatorade and Powerade (another brand name drink of Coca-Cola) have used subliminal pictures of the penis, so do the red cans and bottles of Coke show the exact same?  Well you do see something, or at least I do.  My room mate told me about this and when I tried to find it, it was almost near dam impossible to figure out what this illusion was.  I finally got it as my room mate did not tell me WHICH Coca-Cola logo had this but once I found the right logo, I managed to see this weird, crazy illusion.  What I saw, surprised.  It was a man…..just standing there…..DOING COKE!!!!!  Crazy enough, there isn’t actually some penis reference I found (maybe there is, but I haven’t seen it)  What I saw surprised me, turns out if you flip the logo on its side you can see a man in a top hat sniffing coke!  You have to have a wild imagination to see it but, I have a picture here if you can’t see it.

Isn’t that crazy?  Ya, active imagination right there.  Unfortunately I could not get a good old school logo of Coca-Cola.  The old vintage logos had the first C in ‘Cola’ extend further all the way to the ‘o’ in ‘Cola’ so it would actually look like the man is holding something to sniff his coke.  I am not surprised by the fact some guy is sniffing coke, I mean coke actually was put into these drinks when the drink first came out.  Surprised it is not a sexual subliminal message though.  It is some crazy coincidence though.  Apparently someone noticed this and notifiedd Coca-Cola and that was a reason why they shortened the ‘C’ to only underline ‘Coca’.  It is purely a coincidence though or apparently that is what ‘Coca-Cola’ says and they never planned to put it in there at all.  I think they did actually put that in there, but originally the man sniffing coke was supposed to be…sucking cock but something happened in the design and they went, “meh, whatever too late now” just like what happened to Monkey Kong, oops I mean Donkey Kong.