Testing your right to be an American...

This story from BBC News popped up about a revamp to the United States citizenship test. The current old exam involves questions focusing on historical facts that really only requires rote memorization. In hopes of installing a bit more civic-minded immigrant populace, though, the new test apparently will focus on more conceptual ideas about democracy and the reasons behind our specific system of government.

Some of the sample questions proposed for the new test include:

• Why does the United States have three branches of government?
• Name two rights that are only for US citizens.
• Name two cabinet-level positions.
• Name one important idea found in the Declaration of Independence.
• What does the Constitution do?
  

For comparison, I found some of the questions on the current test:

• What are the colors of our flag?
• How many stars are on our flag?
• Who is the President of the United States today?
• What is the name of the President's official home.
• Name one right guaranteed by the First Amendment.

My first reaction to this revamp of the citizenship test was that it was a good idea. Seems like we should be trying to filter the immigrant pool to those that really understand the core ideas of American democracy. After all, we're giving these people the most powerful tool of the United States called the right to vote.

But then, I started thinking about all the natural citizens who are Americans solely on the basis that they were lucky enough to be born on U.S. soil (me included). I read through a sample of 100 questions from the current test, and even I got a couple wrong. Really, who knew Form N-400 is the application for naturalized citizenship? The fact is that quite a large number of your Average Joe or Jane Americans might be at risk of failure were they subjected to this test on the street, whether it be the old test or the new. Frankly, a lot of Americans are no more deserving of their citizenship than many of the immigrants trying to get into this country on the basis of these tests alone. Instead, there seems to be this perpetuation of entitlement, sort of like a spoiled rich kid from old money, and these rights as Americans they were born with are often taken for granted.

I wonder if some people would be more tolerant to the plight of foreigners coming here to try and live the American dream if they were really aware of the challenges they have to overcome just to prove they're "worthy" of citizenship. Maybe we could make this citizenship test a requirement for all Americans, aspiring and current, with consequences of being booted out if they fail. Now wouldn't that shake things up?

For once I'm in the majority!

Never thought anyone would call me the lowest common denominator of anything, though. I feel so...unspecial.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

This guy deserves a Bill Shatner Award...

I saw this link on Pop Candy, and was quite amused. David Caruso, what an actor. Something tells me he wouldn't be quite as effective at night when the sunglasses come of. Then again, maybe he wears them all the time. After all, the sun never sets on the cool.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned or a prude...

I heard this interview of Ariel Levy on NPR the other day speaking about her new book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture and how modern women have sort of perverted the accomplishments of the feminist movement by using provocative attire, promoscuity, and exhibitionism as evidence of their empowerment as women.

It's an odd world we live in, and seems like everyone's trying to live at the extremes sometimes. Before women couldn't even expose a little ankle without being called a whore, and now women are running around without underwear.

Wild Willie (and Fandango in a couple of months), you've got a tough road ahead when your daughters have "exceptional" role models like Lindsay Lohan to look up to:

Lindsay - who has been linked to several different famous men in recent months, including Paris Hilton's ex Stavros Niarchos - told Elle magazine: "My mum is going to kill me for speaking about sleeping with people. But I don't want to put myself in the position where I'm in a monogamous relationship right now. I'm not dating just one person. 'Sex and the City' changed everything for me because those girls would sleep with so many people."

My wife sees Sex and the City as a highly empowering show for women, which it actually is. Unfortunately, if Ho-han's interpretation is representative, young women seem to be focusing on the part where they sleep around as the empowering aspect of the show.

When did monogamy become such a bad thing?

Sometimes, a fresh start is a good thing...

After the string of flops beginning with Moonraker and ending with License To Kill, I think a bunch of people were ready for the James Bond franchise to just die. Then came the "reboot" with Goldeneye in 1996 introducing Pierce Brosnan as the latest 007, and arguably the best since Sean Connery. Goldeneye had all the major Bond ingredients--a spectacular opening scene of Bond bungee-jumping off the top of a dam, the opening credit sequence with lots of leggy ladies and a U2-penned theme song, hot Bond babes (both good and evil), exotic locales, fast cars (even including the famed Aston Martin DB5), Division Q-crafted gadgetry, and a vodka martini or two (shaken, not stirred). Unfortunately, the last three movies sort of fell into the same trap that all the Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton-led films did--too much formula, too much preposterous technology, and too many Bond girls that were bimbos rather than having some minimal amount of brains. Not to mention all the blatant product placements: Omega watches, BMW automobiles, a tank crashing through a Heineken truck. That's in addition to the ones that were really hard to stomach such as Norelco electric shavers and Smirnoff vodka. Like Bond would really use such common-man things.

So now we can say to all the Daniel Craig haters that flocked to the internet when his casting for Casino Royale was announced, "Go eat crow!" The reimagination of James Bond with Daniel Craig may go down as one of the best. Literally reset to a time when Bond just achieved double-0 status, we get a Bond that's still developing into a well-honed killing machine. This Bond is still a bit testy, vulnerable, and a bit uncomfortable in the high class surroundings he must venture through. I had a lot of fun seeing 007 in development. They even throw in how he comes to own that vintage Aston Martin DB5, which was a total geek-out moment for me. His first meeting with CIA operative Felix Lighter, the invention of his perfect martini--what else could you ask for?

Granted, the blatant product placements were there still, which wasn't surprising considering the Sony Corporation owns MGM. At times I thought I was watching a Sony commercial when Vaio laptops, Blu-Ray discs, and Sony Ericsson phones kept showing up. They even managed to throw in a convenient set-up to showcase their Cybershot digital cameras. I was half expecting Aibo, the Sony robot dog, to make an appearance as a critical plot point. I guess they had to make room for other placements. Omega, Brioni, Virgin Atlantic. Did you catch the Richard Branson "blink and you'll miss it" cameo at the airport security checkpoint? I think I even spotted Alessandra Ambrosio--maybe there was a Victoria's Secret ad in there somewhere I missed.

The Chris Cornell theme song and opening credit sequence was a bit of a disappointment, too. I'm still waiting for something on par with the waa-waa horns of Goldfinger, Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die, or a Duran Duran's A View To A Kill. And where were all the provocative female silhouettes? That's just a Bond movie staple that you can't omit.

But back to the good stuff. I think we had all gotten tired of the stereotypical woman that just fainted over Bond, and was glad to see that formulaic piece disappear. "Oh, James!" Gag. Eva Green as Vesper Lynd was a knockout. To think that prior to Casino Royale, all I really knew about her was that she was that French girl that got really naked in The Dreamers. I think she stands up to comparison with the best of the Bond girls such as Honor Blackman/Pussy Galore in Goldfinger or Diana Rigg/Tracy di Vicenzo in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

There wasn't any Q branch mentioned in this one, but I'm glad they sort of managed to sneak a gadget in to save 007's life. It wouldn't be a Bond movie without at least one. Many comparisons to this new iteration of Bond and the Bourne Identity pictures have been made, and in some ways the similarities are there. But I think this new version of the premiere agent of MI-6 still manages to distinguish itself as a unique version of the spy genre using more subtle nuances that can only be found in a Bond film. Daniel Craig in a bespoke three piece suit holding a sniper rifle over his shoulder? What's more quintessentially 007 than that?

**** (out of *****)

Is it bad when you enjoy the opening act more than the main attraction?

So Monday, the wife and I went to The Pageant to see a sold out Death Cab For Cutie performance. The show started out kind of slow. Perhaps it was because I'm not familiar with all their tunes or maybe I was a bit grossed out by Ben Gibbard's incessant need to spit every two minutes or distracted by his total lack of serious dance moves even though he looked like he was really trying, but regardless, I found myself yawning about 10 minutes in. Luckily, things picked up and I was yelling (in a good way) by the end. Things crashed to Earth again, though, during the encore when Gibbard came out to sing "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" which normally is a very pretty tune, except that an obnoxious fat chick from the bar area decided she needed to show the audience that she was a huge fan (in more ways than one) by belting out the song in that grating, drunken, way off-tune kind of way.

The real surprise of the night for me, though, was the opening act, OK Go. Prior to this night, all I really knew about them was that they did that treadmill video and that Wander has been listening to them for awhile. Coming to The Pageant that night, neither my wife or I were really up for a concert, and we got there right at the start time of 8:00 pm rather than coming in an hour early like we normally do. I was feeling kind of old, because I actually got the feeling that I was concerted-out. Standing around in smoky music halls, squeezing in between smelly people, coming out with my ears ringing...I really was contemplating an extended hiatus from live music. Thankfully, OK Go quickly cured me out of my stupor. They were awesome! Maybe that was why I was bored by Death Cab For Cutie when they finally came on--I think I just wanted to hear more OK Go. Even my wife got a kick out of OK Go's mini-encore dance routine of "A Million Ways" (see below) that reminded her of her cheerleading days, so much so I think she started breaking out in hushed cheerleading moves right in front of me.

Snow Patrol comes to town in April, and OK Go is scheduled to open for them, as well. I can't wait...

I guess he could get Creative.

I do not know if this does much more than just piss him off. The US has for the first time ever decided to use trade sanctions against North Korea. It is directed right at Kim Jong II. The US will not be selling I-Pods (among other various things Jong likes) to North Korea.

Seeing as how the man was able to ascertain the stuff needed to build a nuke, he can probably get as many i-pods as he wants elsewhere.

It's like playing keep-away with the little underdeveloped kid in elementary school when the school yard is filled with the exact same kind of ball. Eventually the little kid will realize that those other kids are just punks, he goes to get one of the other balls, and he proceeds to concoct a plan of revenge on them involving bottle rockets and brown bags filled with poo.

The horror...

What a way to end a season. I had a glimmer of hope that perhaps the Horns might get a shot at defending their national championship at the beginning of this season, but in reality we all sort of knew that wasn't a realistic outcome. But who would have thought Texas would have collapsed so dramatically at the finish? The Kansas State loss was painful. Losing to the Aggies, though, really hurts. And in Austin, no less.

I honestly didn't get a chance to watch the game. I guess I'm glad I was able to enjoy my Friday with my folks rather than suffer through the agony of what sounded like a very frustrating four quarters of football. It amazes me after complaining all year about the pass defense, it was the Aggie rush that ended up being what beat Texas.

At this point, I really don't care what bowl game Texas goes to. These last two losses have really been deflating. I think I'll just reset, and wait for next year. In the interim, let's hope:

1. Colt McCoy's "pinched nerves" aren't permanent, and he gets back on that ever increasing learning curve he was on before the K-State game.
2. Jamaal Charles learns how to hold on to a football.
3. They give up on this crazy notion that Henry Melton can actually do anything with the ball on these short yardage situations.
4. The defensive secondary steps up and develops some skills in the off-season to play with consistency.
5. There's a big shakeup in the coaching staff, because the game plans on both sides of the ball were pretty one dimensional all year long.
   
6. Someone amongst the senior class of players takes this team by the horns, and leads.
   

ESPN's take:

It was over when... Texas quarterback Colt McCoy was intercepted at midfield by Mark Dodge with just over a minute left in the game.

Gameball goes to... Stephen McGee. The Texas A&M quarterback rushed for 95 yards, eight of them coming on the game-winning score.

Stat of the game... 244. The Aggies rushed for 244 yards against Texas, which came into the game No. 1 in the nation allowing 42 yards per game.

Now that's what I call a comic book fan...

Don't know if any of you read about this, but Dave Cockrum, the artist responsible for creating the second generation of X-Men including Nightcrawler and Colossus, died last weekend. A sad thing to read about a guy that had quite a big impact on all our childhoods, but amusing to picture how he left this world:

X-Men illustrator dies in Superman pajamas

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) -- Wearing Superman pajamas and covered with his Batman blanket, comic book illustrator Dave Cockrum died Sunday.

The 63-year-old overhauled the X-Men comic and helped popularize the relatively obscure Marvel Comics in the 1970s. He helped turn the title into a publishing sensation and major film franchise.

Cockrum died in his favorite chair at his home in Belton, South Carolina, after a long battle with diabetes and related complications, his wife Paty Cockrum said Tuesday.

At Cockrum's request, there will be no public services and his body will be cremated, according to Cox Funeral Home. His ashes will be spread on his property. A family friend said he will be cremated in a Green Lantern shirt.

Take that back to your fartorium...

A little glimpse of West Texas nostalgia for the Kool-Aid Gang. Mmmmm.

Great-a Scott-a!

To think I thought Heroes was moving a bit slow when it premiered. I was jazzed by the mention of the Alamo Drafthouse last night, although I guess Harry Knowles at Ain't It Cool News thought it was pretty cool, too. This guy puts on the annual Butt-Numb-A-Thon at the original Drafthouse in downtown Austin where you basically sit in the theater for 24 hours straight watching cult movies. I could think of a quite a few other things worse than sitting in a theater eating good food, drinking Shiner Bock, and watching movies for a day.

Anywho, I noticed the Drafthouse has expanded quite a bit with four locations in Austin, and even a couple of theaters in Houston. Maybe that would compel your dad to venture out for Casino Royale, Scootypuff. Nothing like an ice cold beer to spark some spontaneity!

Getting back in the saddle

"Welcome!"...
"You've got mail!"...

I'm finally home with the convenience of cable internet access, and it feels good. My dad still uses America Online with dial-up. I'd forgotten about the three little windows that come up on startup with the the icon of the computer connecting to the running AOL man, which then lights up the picture of the Earth to signify your connection to the World Wide Web. Needless to say, I couldn't even pull up my email in a timely fashion, let alone contribute to the blog this past week. At least I was able to pick out a nice modern laptop for him at Best Buy while I was home (which will probably last him a good year before it becomes obsolete). I can only hope he finds a speedier internet provider to match his new digs.

After 2500+ miles of driving, I've got a lot to comment about. Food, the crazy maze that Austin has become, Casino Royale, the great collapse of the Texas Longhorns...just some of the topics I need to get out of my head in the coming days. Unfortunately, my Accord decided it was time to protest the abuse of my recent trek by making some horrendous squeaky sounds from the left front end that sounds suspiciously like a busted ball joint when we pulled in to Silas and Maddy's for ice cream in Scootypuff's old stomping grounds in Kansas. I suspect I'll be spending most of tomorrow at the maintenance garage, so the blog world will have to wait a bit longer.

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Did anyone check on Wild Willie in his fartorium? Hopefully, he didn't die enjoying the aromas of his personal bouquet.

Catching up on Heroes

Here's your chance: The Sci Fi Channel will air the first six episodes Wednesday, starting at 6 p.m. ET. The network also reruns new episodes Fridays at 7 p.m. ET.

Who is Shadow Man?

Some would say it is Scootypuff, Jr. after a week long "no-shave" routine. But in this case, i'm talking about tonight's episode of Heroes.

I (Scooty) caught the last 40 minutes of tonight, quite cool. But I (Scooty) have missed the last two episodes. Any insight as to who the Shadow man with the ballcap was?

The USA Today had an article on Hiro's rise to this roll. He graduated from Brown Univ. with degrees in Math and Computer Science, a minor in theater arts. He worked for Lucas ILM, specifically on The Perfect Storm, Pirates of Carribean, and Wild Willie's Favorite the Stars Wars prequels.

He has also been in a couple movies, and TV shows. Not bad for a guy with a Math and CS degree!!!

Does anyone by chance have the past Heroes shows recorded somehow, and want to send them to me? One of you computer geniuses must have DVR'd 0r TIVO'd, right?

The lengths I go to...

So as Scootypuff noticed this weekend, I still retain my Texas plates on my car. Keeping the registration up to date is easy--just send my fees in by mail, and they send me a sticker. Unfortunately, keeping my safety inspection up to date is another matter.

I'm currently sitting in a Jiffy Lube waiting to get my car inspected. So rather than enjoying my last day in Austin, I'm wasting an hour for this crap because I'm too stubborn to switch my plates over.

I'm an idiot...

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

If that isn't a kick in the teeth...

No pictures, videos, or other things to see.

Just a simple statement: after the Horns go down to Freeman and the apparent Kansas State powerhouse last week, K State drops this week's game to Kansas, of all teams. and here's a humdinger, Kansas finshes 6-5, to possibly qualify for a bowl. i was so digusted, i coulndn't watch to see how K State's record ended up, other than their shining moment of beating Texas last week. Pathetic.

It made me want to set the prarie on fire (as the fires can rage from time to time on the prarie).
Sorry to vent, this after watching Ohio St., Notre Dame, Florida, USC all do well today.

Deep down i hope the big game is a rematch of Today's Ohio St vs Michigan game.

I guess that's one way to clear out the line...

Here's something that should get a gamer like Wander riled up. Apparently, there was a drive-by shooting in Lexington, KY involving the line of people camped outside of Best Buy to wait for the release of the Playstation 3.

Now I might understand a bottle rocket or something similar would have been funny, but shooting BB guns is quite a different matter. Luckily, most guys that would camp outside of an electronics store to be able to say they were first to get their hands on the latest gaming console from Sony probably wear glasses. As modern eyewear is typically made out of shatterproof polycarbonate these days, I'd hope no one's eye got shot out.

On a different note, the Nintendo Wii is set to be released, as well. Honestly, I'm actually a bit more excited about this game console with it's new controller. Check out the trailer for a Wii game below:

If you ever fancied yourself as a 'toon...

I had to make a double take on this picture I found on reddit. It looks like something out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but is actually a real room at a hotel in Berlin painted to look like a cartoon. I wonder what this would do to a baby's development if you painted a nursery like this?

So long and thanks for all the fish...

Try and Google the term "the answer to life the universe and everything" and see what you get.

Or just click on this link.

Uhhh...I'm almost tempted to boycott Fox now.

I had heard a rumor about this O.J. Simpson book awhile back, but couldn't believe it had any credibility. Guess I was wrong:

In a stunning announcement, FOX TV says it plans to interview the 59-year-old former football star and actor about "how he would have committed" the slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, for which he was acquitted in a criminal trial. (In a 1997 civil case, Simpson was found liable for the two deaths.)

The two-part, "unrestricted" interview, to be conducted by book publisher Judith Regan and called O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened, will air Nov. 27 and Nov. 29, says FOX, the Associated Press reports.