What Would You Do For a Yorkie Bar? - If you are this man, you're angry that they're handing thes chocolate treats out in your town, and you're willing to break a few bones.

Sure, the campaign sounds a bit sexist. But... it's free chocolate for goodness sake!!!

Seven Questions - What if pollsters asked slightly different questions?

For my part, I'm sick of polls and poll results because they don't mean much and they are constantly pounded into the ground. Sure, once in a while there is na interesting poll, like the one that shows something outrageous - like how many people believe we never landed on the moon. But, for the most part, polls are a bust for me.

Besides - people ignore polls when they disagree with the results and scream about the polls when they agree.

So perhaps I need to look for some more agreeable poll results!

Thinking of Getting Netflix? - Then you should know that the more DVDs you rent and return quickly, the slower they will start sending them to you. Mike directed me to this SlashDot thread about Netflix's allocation system.

This stinks for me. I watch movies constantly, and even had the 5 disk plan briefly before calming back down and realizing that was too many. I'll get a Netflix DVD in the mail and send it right back the next day (witness Carnival of Souls) in order to maximize my DVD throughput. But it ain't happening.

Whereas before I could return DVDs and get a new DVD in 4 days or so, now it's about 6 days, which slows things down considerably.

Worse than that, I can't get the DVDs I want. I've been waiting forever for the first disk of The Sopranos Season 2 and it's still listed as "Very Long Wait." I despair of ever seeing that Space: 1999 DVD.

Keep this in mind if you're considering Netflix. There are other companies popping up which offer the same service. I'm seriously considering at least giving another service a try.

Update: Here's one of their competing services "GreenCine".

Update: Maybe I'm being too hard on Netflix. I still get quite a few films, and I have enjoyed their service for the most part. But I am doing a trial of GreenCine. There's a good chance I won't stick with it.

Pocky - I'm looking for a good, local asian market. Looks like there are a couple in the Providence area I will have to check out, but I did find this. Japanese snacks online! You can also get some of the stuff here.

Those sites turned up when I was searching for Pocky. What is "Pocky?" It's a japanese treat - a usually chocolate-covered cracker shaped like a stick. It comes in many different varieties. It's the only candy I know that has a "men's" version - Men's Pocky.

(For those interested, here is yet another source of Pocky)

Bleh, bleh, bleh. - That about sums up my mood.

Getting up late. Not posting on the blog early enough for most of you to read.
(Most of you folks check in around noon. And more people check my blog on Monday than on other days of the week, FYI.)

Bleh, bleh, bleh.

I'm in a little bit of a rut. It's not that bad - at least I'm keeping my exercise up. But I'm a little disorganized. I blame Bull (just a little bit) for giving me Civ III last time he came to poker night. He'd bought an extra copy, so he gave me one. Right now I'm running a Chinese empire, trying to remain in peaceful contact with the Russians and Americans while fighting the ever-dwindling French. The current game is coming to a close, and I'm the clear winner (on the easiest level) but all the war I've been waging has prevented me from getting close to launching space exploration.

Then there's Kings of Chaos. I've gotten a few other people hooked, and the way it works once you get to a certain level is that you have to log in and spend your money before someone beats you up to get it.


On top of that, most of you know that I stay up late watching movies brought to me by Netflix. Last night's selection was Carnival of Souls, a film from 1962 that feels like a really long Twilight Zone episode you feel you've seen before. Even so, I found it enjoyable for a number of reasons. It was moody, and with very few special effects conveyed a sense of the unreal. The makeup was minimalist, but it doesn't matter. The effects were the least creepy thing about this film.

A young girl is the sole survivor of a car wreck, and for the rest of the film, things are not quite right. Yeah - you already think you've seen this premise before. And you have. But it's done here well, if you can look past how the film has aged and has now become somewhat cliched. Candace Hilligoss, the female lead, really does a decent job of looking alternately shellshocked and panicked, except for a few scenes in which she is inexplicably in good spirits.

Is it just this film, or do other films from the 60s give you that feeling of being trapped in an almost familiar (though slightly askew) place and time?

So, I'm probably just tired. But I can't seem to get my thoughts organized.

Tom - Here's that Tom Tomorrow "This Modern World" comic: Our Top Priorities. You can catch This Modern World every Tuesday after noon on WorkingForChange. But you all know about Tom Tomorrow already, I'm sure.

Readin', 'Ritin', Rippin' Clothes Off - This story is all over the country, after the AP picked it up. A strip club was recruiting at a Mashpee High School job fair. Okay - so it's not as interesting as it first sounds. They were asked to leave, and they claim they were recruiting for bartender assistants and landscapers. But there's a headling guaranteed to get picked up by every newspaper from here to California.

Working For Change - The WorkingForChange website seems to offer a bunch of the things I look for online in one place. I bet this is where people have been reading Boondocks. Later today I'll try to post a link to the latest Tom Tomorrow when it goes up on the site. I saw it yesterday at Salon.com and it was a keeper.