I've added a blog to the San Fernando Valley NRA Members' Council web page. Click the "news" link on the sidebar menu. (Yes, I'm that site's webmaster.)

WAFFLES

This morning on Fox, raw footage of Marines in Fallujah was being shown. These Marines had taken over an abandonded house and were drawing fire while spotting targets for air support and other units. What impressed me was the utter calm these boys possessed. They were probably outnumbered by the goblins darting around outside, but you couldn't tell by looking at them. They were relaxed, even joking, as they methodically reinforced their position and hunted out targets. The SAW gunner looked like his only concern was hearing his squad leader's commands over the din coming through the open door in front of him. These "boys" are well trained and they know it. The orcs outside didn't stand a chance.

I was poking around on Google looking up the address that "Citi-online" email links to . (It points the victim to a redirect service in Moscow.) While I was looking, I found the Antiphishing.org website. Think of this as Snopes for email scams.

If you have any doubts about an email you've received, check here. You may not find the exact scam, but you'll likely see something similar. Many phishing scams are very well done, despite the poor Engrish. These Citi-bank scams send you to Citi-bank's site but, there's a pop-up window over the top that isn't from Citi-bank; the "litlle winddow". I had another a few days ago that was a very well done replica of a Paypal page (Similar to this scam.) on a Korean webserver. That one, as a finishing touch, sends the victim off to the Paypal.com 404 page after grabbing the info. In short, be suspicious of what comes to your inbox!

This has got to be the funniest scam email I've ever received...

_Dear Citi-bank Cardholder,



This Email was sentt by_the_ _Citibank serevr to verify _your_ E_MAIL adrress.

You must complete this process by clicking on_the__link beloww and entering

in the litlle winddow your Citi_Bank _Debit card_number and PIN that

_you_use on local_Atm_Machine. This_is _done_ for_your protection becaurse some of our

members members have access to their _e-mail_ adderss_ and we must verify it.



http://citi-bank-online.org/?385586164247



To verify your_ EMAIL_ addres_ and akcess _your_ _citibank

account, klick on__the_link beloww.

I've sure that it was much more convincing in the original Russian.

Talk radio is sorta like a primordial blog. Well, I did some primordial blogging this afternoon. I was a caller on the John & Ken Show at the end of the 5 o'clock hour.

The subject was President Bush whacking California's share of Federal aid for housing illegal aliens in the prison system. John was, predictably, fit to be tied at the development. I called to point out that there's really no political reason for Bush to go out of his way to spend money on the Golden State. We thumbed our noses at him "big time" in 2000. As I recall, he lost by roughly 1 million votes. He's gonna lose again this year. Spending Federal dollars on our prison system isn't going to win him any Electoral College votes out here. That money is going to go to "Red" States; not this bright Blue one!

Hey! What's this? Hmmm... It looks like a "blog".

Kinda looks familiar, now that I think about it...

...like I've seen it someplace before...

Oh... It's my blog.

Never mind.

A thought that is rarely considered by most minds in Hollywood: "Nobody wants to see that."

Why?

Personally, I find this inconceivable!

Happy New Year!

...ah c'mon. It's just a figure of speech. There's no need to get your knickers in a bunch. What do I care if you don't want to have a happy new year? It's no skin off my nose.

Hmmm... You learn something every day: The Guinness Diet.

We saw Return of The King today. (A sold-out 10:15am showing!) It's simply an outstanding movie.

It is as true to the original story as is possible for a film to be. The original was never intended to serve as a screenplay; Tolkien himself doubted that it could be adapted. But Peter Jackson and his crew did the impossible. They took a great story and put into a filmable form without losing the charm of the original work.

Testing... Testing... 1,2,3...

OK... Whatever bug there was seems to have been stomped.

Can you tell yet that I'm looking forward to seeing Return of The King?

I was reading an account on the NY Times site of last night's early showing of the movie. The Times has an entire page dedicated to the Lord of The Rings. A review of the new movie is there as well as of the two preious movies. But I scrolled down the page and found that they have re-posted their book reviews for the novels starting with Anne T. Eaton's 1938 review of The Hobbit.

The Motley Fool has a less than kind take on the Microsoft re-org:Microsoft Circles the Wagons.

Here is another review of Return of The King by Jeffrey Overstreet. And like the "Disembodied Brain" site I mentioned the other day, this is also someone who obviously enjoys, or at least appeciates the genre. In fact, part of his review addresses other critics who obviously dislike the genre and, perhaps, have no business offering reviews...

After the press screening, I overheard several critics complaining about “the Neverending Movie” and “the Movie with Seven Endings.” (They’ll probably hate this “neverending review” as well.) There seems to be an inexplicable disconnect between some people and Tolkien’s style of tale-weaving. (One woman complained that she still couldn’t tell the difference between “Merry and Trippy.” Go figure.) I have no explanation, just sadness that their skepticism stands between them and so many rewarding metaphors and characters. Did they at some point outgrow fairy tales, deciding that they are valuable only as charming flights of fancy for the naïve?

Off on a tangent, I suppose that what makes blogs so interesting is that they generally are written about subjects that the bloggers appreciate. No blogger feels as though he or she was dragged off to a "neverending story".

Overstreet gives ROTK an A+.  He too laments the loss of such story elements as The Scouring of The Shire, but he also points out that much of the Lord of The Rings doesn't translate well to film. In addition, Overstreet notes that Tolkien had his doubts about the success of a screenplay adaptation of LOTR.

...and if they were smoking while having sex, it would be obscene!!

OK... So I was just now looking at the latest posts page on FreeRepublic. You know some spin is going on when these two threads have replies on the list back-to-back...

Bush Says He Could Support Ban On Gay Marriage
			Posted by 11th Earl of Mar to Akira On 12/16/2003 5:26:11 PM PST #10 of 10
Bush Appears to Open Door to Same - Sex Unions
			Posted by KantianBurke to goldstategop On 12/16/2003 5:26:08 PM PST #5 of 5

Is there more than one George W. Bush?

Window dressing?

Jay Wrolstad at Newsfactor.com writes that Microsoft is reorganizing key Windows groups. Specifically, various engineering groups are being united under a single VP to advance the next version of Windows, codenamed "Longhorn". Longhorn is scheduled for release in late '05 or early '06. Analyst Laura DiDio of the Yankee Group is quoted as saying "The message from Microsoft is, 'We will do what we have to do to blunt the spread of Linux' ". However, one cannot help but wonder if MSFT will actually try to engineer a solution to the Linux problem (i.e. build a better product), or if they'll simply try to engineer better FUD.