Giant Squid Photographed!

The Associated Press is reporting that some Japanese scientists have photographed a giant squid in the wild for the first time. For those of you who aren't total geeks like myself, scientists have known for years about the existence of giant squid because their bodies wash ashore from time to time. But no one has ever seen or been able to photograph one while it was still alive. It's like the Holy Grail of underwater photography. Now, if I can just get that Yeti picture I took developed, I'll be rich!

Desparate Housewives

The season premiere of Desparate Housewives was perfect. It answered every remaining question from last season, started up a bunch of new questions. Now, if only the writers of Lost would take note!

Elephant Bar Restaurant

We tried the Elephant Bar Restaurant last night. The food was really good, but we had the worst waitress I've ever seen. The food didn't all come out at once. She promised one of our party he could use a coupon, but then the computer wouldn't let her use it. She got all of our checks wrong. I'm not kidding, this poor girl needed to go back to McDonald's and beg for old job back.

Lost and Invasion

Well, Lost continued it tradition of raising more questions than answers. And, of course, it ended with a cliffhanger. The more I watch this show, the more I feel like I'm going to be unsastisfied by the eventual revelation of all the secrets. There's just no way they can explain all the freaky stuff happening on this island.

Did anyone watch Invasion? It made me jump about three times. It was good, spooky fun. I think it's going to be a retelling of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The previews for Invasion and Surface made the two shows look very similar, but after having seen the first episode of both, I no longer see a similarity.

Paying for New Orleans

While the government is struggling to figure out where the money to pay for New Orleans will come from, NASA is spending billions of tax-payers' dollars to send probes to other planets. While I'm all for the advancement of scientific knowledge, it suddenly seems inappropriate. Yeah it's interesting to know how the universe formed, but what does it really gain us? Personally, I think we should put NASA on hold until we can afford it again. I realize the news likes to shoot for the dramatic, but they're saying now if we don't curb our deficit, it might never be paid off. Can you see the United States filing for bankruptcy? It would be the end of everything as we know it.

There's also the war in Iraq. Extricating ourselves from that Vietnam now will go along way to freeing up dollars for Katrina relief.

Having said that, I'm wondering how they are going to rebuild New Orleans. Are they going to bulldoze the low-lying areas and start over? If so, it seems like a waste of money to rebuild there. They will always live in the shadow of levy failure. To properly rebuild, they need to move out of the low-lying areas or build them up so they aren't below the water level.

Now that the Republicans are in control of everything, let's see how they handle this.

Surface

I don't know if anyone else watched Surface tonight on NBC, but if you didn't, you're a loser. This show really has potential to be something great. If you took the movies Jaws, Aliens, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park, and Abyss and combined them, this is the show you would get.

For those of you who missed it, I taped it. Not that I would let you borrow it...I'll just watch it again and again so I can rub your face in it.

Okay, for those of you who missed it and aren't savvy enough to download it with BitTorrent, here is what happened: It all began one night when a bunch of drunk, obnoxious teenagers were taking a joyride in Daddy's yacht and one of them started water skiing. Eventually, the kid on the skis fell. While he was waiting to be picked up, he looked over at a dingy in the water and saw a large creature with a tail jump off it into the water. The next thing you know, the thing, or it's identical twin raised its head out of the water behind him. Obviously, this caused some alarm. He started screaming for his friends, and they pulled up alongside him to rescue him seconds after the creature went back under the surface. No one else saw it. Then, the Coast Guard shows up, parents all called, and suddenly the teen who was in the water is grounded.

Next scene: in some icy waters, a large aircraft carrier has pulled up alongside a derelict submarine. A crazy scientist lands in a helicopter and begins communicating with the officials on the flight deck. We learn through a bunch of technobabble chatter that the submarine went missing a few days ago and was found 5000 miles off-course. They've not been able to make contact with anyone inside. When they pop the hatch, it's empty, but all the circuits in the computer systems are fried. Immediately, the military begins to suspect the Koreans have some kind of new weapon. But the scientist has his doubts.

Next: a young marine biologist drops her child off with her ex-husband and heads to work. She's going on a dive to study a volcanic vent in an effort to prove life began there. When her submarine gets to the bottom, she is in for a surprise. There are gigantic holes in the sea floor that seem to be very deep. As she's studying them, something starts coming up through the hole. Several somethings. The turbulence causes her submarine to flip over. She swears she saw some unusual light and a dorsal fin.

Jump to a couple of red-necks about to embark on a grouper spear-fishing expedition. We learn the guys are brothers and this is "little brother"'s first dive. Are they really that ignorant?

Meanwhile, the boy who had a close encounter can't get it out of his mind. He coerces his friend to take a small boat out to the buoy again late one night. This time they don't find the creature, but instead they find hundreds of eggs floating in the water. Naturally, they snatch an egg and take it back home and put it in the aquarium to see what hatches.

When the marine biologist returns to work the next day, word of her underwater adventure has gotten out and the crazy scientist on the aircraft carrier shows up to tell her that her sub is being confiscated. They interrogate her for three hours to learn what she saw. We learn that she's a very hot-headed woman (any doubts why she is a divorcee?). We also find out the submarine originally found has a large bite mark on the hull...from a mouth large enough to probably swallow the sub.

So the brothers take a boat out to an offshore drilling platform. The older of the two says the best fishing is around the platform. They attach their spearguns and into the water they go. It's not long before they find a grouper. But then they notice something much larger heading their way. The swim into the rig's framework for protection, but the younger brother accidentally shoots his spear gun, hitting the creature. It takes off and since the speargun's cord is attached to his wrist, he goes with the creature. The older brother does his best to save him, but is unable to keep up. As the younger brother is carried away, we see a bright flash of eerie blue green light. So long little brother, we hardly knew you. The older brother surfaces too quickly and gets narcosis.

It doesn't take long before the egg in the aquarium hatches and escapes. The teenage boy sees the creature scurry upstairs into his sister's room. He follows it into her bathroom and locks the door behind him to keep it his secret. Wouldn't everyone in the house wonder what the slim trail is all about? Luckily, he catches it in a shower curtain. Hmn, it can break through glass but a shower curtain can contain it? That should come in very useful later.

The marine biologist returns home and calls her father to tell him how she's been shut out of her lab by the government. Her son sees a news story on the TV about a large whale, or something like a whale, that washed up on the beach in Carolinas. He calls his mother in to look at it. Then, the mad scientist guy shows up on the TV (boy, he really gets around!) and relays some BS story about a whale carcass and how they've shut the beach down to protect the public. She books a flight to that area so she can see for herself what is going on.

The red neck, freshly out of the hospital, also sees the TV story and thinks it might help him figure out what happened to his brother. We learn his wife doesn't believe his story about the flash of light and thinks his narcosis caused him to hallucinate. So he heads for the beach, too, leaving her doubting ass at home.

Cut to a secret meeting with the NSA. The scientist unveils a large tooth about the size of a small microwave oven and begins telling them what he knows about the creatures. But of course, the scene ends before we learn anything, really.

Now, we jump to a fishing boat somewhere off the coast of South America. A grandfather and grandson are fishing one night. A meteor shower begins. But the meteors all seem to be falling in the water just a few hundred feet away. And so we are left with our first cliffhanger...WTF does the meteor shower have to do with it?

The trailer for next week was actually a trailer for the next several weeks. All I can say is WOW! This show seems really ambitious in its scope. It looks very expensive to make. It also looks very similar to ABC's Invasion show, which is getting rave reviews. Invasion starts Wednesday after Lost. I can't wait!

McDonald's is Unethical

I noticed this morning, as I was waiting in line for my daily Egg McMuffin, there was a sign up saying you could win a trip to Disneyland just by buying a Happy Meal.

How is this different than gambling? And doesn't this promote gambling to children?

Of course, I also have a Diet Pepsi sitting here on my desk with a promotion on it where I can win an XBox360. Probably fewer kids drink Diet Pepsi, but the promotion is not limited to just Pepsi's diet drinks. Again, this seems like gambling.

I guess the difference is that you spend money and you actually get something back. Whereas with real gambling, you get nothing back unless you win. Personally, I think I should be able to gamble if I want to, but I have a problem with corporations targeting children.

George Bush to Rebuild New Orleans Personally

After hearing the President's speech last night, I got the impression that he is going to single-handedly rebuild New Orleans. His vision is definitely ambitious. Hopefully, when the government starts helping out with rebuilding, they won't buy they supplies from the same store where they buy $1200 toilet seats.

Kitty Genius

This is the funniest thing I've heard of in a long time. This morning, I've become made aware that my cat has figured out how to turn a touch-lamp in my living room on and off. He was sitting beside it, touching it, making the light cycle through it's three brightness settings. For weeks, I've thought there was something wrong with the light, as it would go on and off in the middle of the night. Now I know otherwise.