1/01/2012

Thoughts On A Sunday

We here at the Weekend Pundit Manse celebrated the New year's quietly, with Deb arriving home from work about 10 minutes before midnight.

For the most part New Year's Day has been quiet, with the most exciting thing being watching the New England Patriots overwhelm the Buffalo Bills, 49-21 in Foxboro.

The rest of the day was pretty mundane, with laundry and taking down the Christmas tree being the most ambitious things we tackled today.

All in all, not a bad start to 2012.

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We get a two-fer from Bogie to start out the new year.

First there's this First Cuteness of the New Year with two Whack-A-Kitty videos.

Then there's her Happy New Year post that includes her first use of her new George Foreman Grill.

I have one I received for Christmas years ago that I use on a pretty regular basis when it's too inconvenient or time consuming to fire up the gas grill out on the deck, particularly if I'm cooking just for myself. I'll keep using this one until it wears out or breaks, and then get a new one. That's how much I like it.

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Eric The Viking gives us his reason(s) for not going to the movies as much as he used to: cell phone users.

He also bring sup lack of quality, and I have to agree with him. The graphics are flashier and the action is greater, but for the most part the movies just aren't that good. Far too many of them these days are remakes of classics (many times under a different title) and the remakes aren't very well done or lose the point of the original entirely.

About the only movie I have any intention of seeing any time soon is The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Both Deb and I have read the book and are curious to see how well it translates to the screen.

The last movie I saw in a theater was the final Harry Potter flick (Imax in 3D), and then it was because Submarine Tim and his bass Dawn took me to see it for my birthday.

Unless Hollywood get's it s**t together, it's going to keep heading downhill and soon be replaced by something else.

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Speaking of remakes, it appears TV isn't immune from this phenomenon.

We've seen resurrected versions of 90210, Charlie's Angels and Hawaii Five 0. Dallas will soon be coming back. There's even a remake of Bosom Buddies coming soon (retitled, but I don't recall it off the top of my head). For those of you too young to remember, Bosom Buddies was one of Tom Hanks' first regular starring roles before he became a movie hit.

That which is old is new again.

I'm just waiting for them to drag out the old scripts for Dragnet, Emergency, and maybe Have Gun Will Travel. I figure they've just about run out of original ideas.

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So it looks like the Powers-That-Be in Connecticut are about to pull a Granholm.

Former Michigan Governor Susan Granholm basically allowed the SEIU 'organize' day care providers and babysitters into the SEIU with no vote by the affected 'employees'. They had to start paying union dues even though they had no say in the matter and are not public employees. It was a pure power and money grab by the ever more criminally minded union bosses.

Now Connecticut's wholly union-owned puppet, Governor David Malloy, is about to allow these SEIU thugs to pull the same thing in the Nutmeg State.

These folks do not belong in power. They belong in prison, just like many of their mob predecessors.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

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Cap'n Teach has a New Year's prediction challenge for Climate Alarmists.

Writes the Cap'n:

For a long time, the alarmists have been making predictions as to what the climate will do. They say in 10 years, 50, 100. Instead, why not, say, make predictions for……2012! What I want for them to do, from the biggest of big climahypocrites, such as Al Gore, James Hansen, Barack Obama, and Leonardo DiCaprio, to the smallest climate dupes, is tell us exactly what the climate will do this year. For some of these questions, I’m using the USA, but, alarmists from around the world can use their own country/region, if they like.

Read the whole thing.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the unseasonable warm weather has been hanging on, Lake Winnipesaukee is still mostly open water, and I'm not caring as I see the woodpile shrinking very slowly.