Movie Months

Good movies do not come out in September, October, or November. The best a movie can hope to be in these months is to be average. So I don’t watch as many movies in these months as I do in the summer time. The only exception are seasonal movies for Halloween and Christmas (which sometimes come out at the end of November for some reason). Paranormal Activity 2 is coming out this Halloween. I can’t wait. I need a good laugh.

August is supposed to be the dumping ground for the summer movies not good enough to be in the real summer months of May, June, and July. I was surprised by the quality of this years August movies. The Other Guys and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World are both awesome movies.

If you are like me and enjoy really horrible movies then the best time of year for this is January, February, and March. These months are so far away from awards season that the studios put out all the crap that doesn’t stand a chance.

Oscar bate comes out in December.

Please note that Oscar bate does not equal good movie. In fact, it’s usually the opposite.

The point of telling you all this is that now that summer movies are over I won’t be writing as many reviews.

That being said, (Your welcome SGSers) I am going to see Takers tonight. A movie with Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen so you know it’s going to be golden.

Mystery Beard

I didn’t work for a whole week. I knew I had to take advantage of the situation and get to the bottom of a mystery that has been troubling me for a while now. Is my beard coming in grey?

The trouble is I can’t have facial hair at work. I work in an oil refinery where I need to be able to put on a respirator in case a deadly cloud of noxious gas wants to kill me. The respirator won’t be able to seal to my face if there’s hair in the way. You can’t even get into the refinery if you have facial hair (kind of… but that’s another story).

At most I’ve been able to go three or fourish days before I need to shave. One day on one of these forth days I noticed something disturbing. My hair was an abnormal color. It had been so long since I had grown out my facial hair that I couldn’t remember if it had always been this blond or if I was starting to go grey in the beard. I desperately needed to find out the truth.

A week off from work would provide me with facial hair long enough to get the answer I needed. These are the results.

I wasn’t able to ask a lot of people but my parents say it’s blond. I couldn’t tell if my mom was horrified or excited at the possibility that it was grey. My uncle Jay Dee says it’s blond.

What do you guys think?

"Um" Tally

We had a meeting at work. Those words alone make me sleepy and what kind of meeting it was hasn’t even been defined yet.

For me, I’ve gotten used to our half hour early morning meeting we have everyday. But the one kind of meeting I will never get used to is the hour long company wide speaker phone meetings we have.

Company wide might not be right. It was just North America. Over 200 people were listening. You would think that this would be a productive well thought out meeting. But they aren't.

First of all, they are useless. They tell us to be safe and then take months to fix things and months to give us permission to stop unsafe procedures. Pointless.

Secondly, they suck at talking. For real. They are the worst speakers on the planet. If this job has taught me one thing it’s how to stay awake when surrounded by the most boring people on the planet talking in a monotone voice about the most boring things in the world.

This is how I stayed awake.

I kept a tally of how many times the speakers used the word “Um.”

I’ll save you some time and just tell you it’s 276 times. In one hour. Keeping this tally is the only thing that kept me awake.

And it didn’t work towards the end. Can you see that big ink dot between 267 and 268? That’s the dot that forms when you keep the tip of your pen on the paper for two long. It happened because I fell asleep.

Do you see that weird discoloration under the tally on the right side of the notebook? That’s from the pastries that we got to eat during the meeting. No doubt they were meant to keep us awake. It was hard to grab a doughnut and do the tally because the “Um’s” were too close together. I’d go to reach for one and they would say “Um.” I’d try again and they would “Um” again. It would happen like five times in a row. I must have looked crazy reaching for a doughnut and then going back empty handed to mark the notebook again and again and again.

Also, the one guy dropped several double “Um’s.” It was like he was starting and ending his sentences with “Um.”