New Moon....New Low

New Moon is bad. No, really. It's honestly the most ridiculously cheeseball and over-the-top melodrama I may have ever seen. Megan and I were giggling through a lot of it. It's just so blatantly horrible-romance-novel dialogue (about 10 too many lines of "You are my only reason for living") and between the shirtless underage boys, predictable smell-the-fart acting from Edward and Bella, and Edwards floating head through most of it, it's just embarrassing. And I actually liked the first movie--I didn't love it--but I liked it.

Perhaps the reason I didn't like New Moon is because I don't love the books. So if you like the books, the movie is a pretty accurate portrayal. It shows a really weak teenage girl who apparently can't be happy unless she has a boyfriend. Oh and she literally can't survive unless she has a guy there to protect her. And my favorite aspect, the only way she can be happy is to change herself to be like the guy she loves. A really great role model for teenage girls...

Anyway, back to the movie...It wasn't all bad. I really liked the soundtrack, and the sequence with Victoria was really cool. The werewolves are a nice balance to the vampires and bring a little more warmth to a lot of the scenes. Charlie was good. Dakota Fanning was probably the best actor in the whole thing but she only had a few lines. The scenes in Italy were a nice change of pace and there were some funny moments--mostly provided by Bella's high school friends. And it was just fun to be a part of the hype and fanfare. But there were a lot of really bad moments. The scene where Edward is about to reveal himself in the square and you can see that they had to use makeup to give him muscle definition, and the absolute pinnacle of cheeseball was a flash-forward moment from Alice--I honestly thought I might have fallen asleep and was dreaming because no one in their right mind would show that and not be joking (you'll know it when you see it). I think the idea behind the Twilight series is great. A girl falling for a vampire, it's creative and fun. But I guess it's just the fact that the central relationship drives me crazy is why I can't wrap my brain around why this is so popular.

Sorry to offend anyone, to each their own. I'm sure sitting next to Megan, who was laughing about half the time, didn't help :) I know plently of people in my theater really liked it.

Picture tag

Okay I was supposed to do the 10th picture in our first picture folder, but that was a boring one from Brody's mission, so I did the first photo in the tenth folder. This is us at the Demolition Derby in Kamas, red-necking it up. These were taken in July of 08. It was a great time, and produced some great pictures and I couldn't pass up the chance to post more....

Really.....? No seriously, really?

Scientology has been in the news a lot lately and I think a lot of people out there don't really know what the Scientologists actually believe. I didn't. Until recently...

It was founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Here is a short video of Tom Cruise speaking at a Scientologist event, he salutes a large painting of him at the end, referring to him as LRH.



I am using excerpts from Wikipedia to explain the doctrine of the Church of Scientology. If you don't want to have to read, there is a link to a video at the end that explains everything if you would prefer...

The story of Xenu is covered in OT III, part of Scientology's secret "Advanced Technology" doctrines taught only to advanced members who have undergone many expensive hours of auditing and reached the state of Clear

Hubbard wrote that seventy-five million years ago, Xenu was the ruler of a Galactic Confederacy which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as "Teegeeack". The planets were overpopulated, with an average population of 178 billion. The Galactic Confederacy's civilization was comparable to our own, with aliens "walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute" and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those "circa 1950, 1960" on Earth.

Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions of his citizens together under the pretense of income tax inspections, then paralyzed them and froze them in a mixture of alcohol and glycol to capture their souls. The kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The appearance of these spacecraft would later be subconsciously expressed in the design of the Douglas DC-8, the only difference being: "the DC8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't." When they had reached Teegeeack/Earth, the paralyzed citizens were unloaded around the bases of volcanoes across the planet. Hydrogen bombs were then lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously. Only a few aliens' physical bodies survived.

The now-disembodied victims' souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were blown into the air by the blast. They were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic ribbon" ("which also was a type of standing wave") and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for thirty-six days. This implanted what Hubbard termed "various misleading data"' (collectively termed the R6 implant) into the memories of the hapless thetans, "which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, et cetera". This included all world religions, with Hubbard specifically attributing Roman Catholicism and the image of the Crucifixion to the influence of Xenu. The two "implant stations" cited by Hubbard were said to have been located on Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

In addition to implanting new beliefs in the thetans, the images deprived them of their sense of personal identity. When the thetans left the projection areas, they started to cluster together in groups of a few thousand, having lost the ability to differentiate between each other. Each cluster of thetans gathered into one of the few remaining bodies that survived the explosion. These became what are known as body thetans, which are said to be still clinging to and adversely affecting everyone except those Scientologists who have performed the necessary steps to remove them.

A government faction known as the Loyal Officers finally overthrew Xenu and his renegades, and locked him away in "an electronic mountain trap" from which he still has not escaped. Teegeeack/Earth was subsequently abandoned by the Galactic Confederacy and remains a pariah "prison planet" to this day, although it has suffered repeatedly from incursions by alien "Invader Forces" since that time.

In 1988, the cost of learning these secrets from the Church of Scientology was £3,830, or US$6,500. This is additional to the cost of the prior courses which are necessary to be eligible for OT III, which is often well over US$100,000 (roughly £60,000). Belief in Xenu and body thetans is a requirement for a Scientologist to progress further along the Bridge to Total Freedom. Those who do not experience the benefits of the OT III course are expected to take it (and pay for it) again.

So there you have it.... If that was confusing just watch this South Park video of how it all happened, it's been spliced with actual recordings of the founder, L. Ron Hubbard talking about it. I would embed but it's been disabled by request.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfWGwXcUoao

What goes around....

PLEASE take a second to go to this site and sign the petition. Congressman John Fleming (R) has proposed an amendment that would require Congressmen and Senators to take the same health care plan that they would force on us.. (Under proposed legislation they are exempt.)

Go to this site and sign the petition

http://fleming.house.gov/index.html

Also, if this is something you feel is important, please post the link on your blogs, send it to your friends and family, do whatever you can to get this amendment passed! D-bag politicians shouldn't be exempt from the legislation they force on us!!!


Thanks!

Can't Wait

I am so excited to see this! The trailer is amazing and I think we all have fond memories of reading this classic as a child. Oh and if you are wondering what the song is it's "Wake Up" by The Arcade Fire.



I couldn't have that nasty zit video be the first thing people saw when they looked at the blog

Warning!!!

This is honestly the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. Seriously it's so much grosser than you can possibly imagine, so if you have a strong gag reflex please don't watch. I really debated whether I should even post it, but it's just so unbelievable that I couldn't help myself. Oh and the girl with the camera drops the f-bomb towards the end... so maybe put it on mute if that is going to offend you.



You can't say I didn't warn you....

HGTV

I was on a complete HGTV kick this past weekend, and may I just say that Candice Olson's designs truly are DEVINE. Well, all these home decorating, renovating shows, etc. got me thinking about owning a house someday. So yesterday at work I wandered onto the Utah Real Estate website and did a little dream house shopping to pass the time--very fun, but a little depressing. I finally settled on this little gem, but would prefer it in a different location...riiiiiight.

sigh...






Yes, this could be yours for a mere $1.8 million dollars. It is a fun way to pass the time when bored at wok though...