Woot T-Shirt Contest

So there is a Shirt.Woot contest that is going on until Monday about wearing a Woot Shirt in a country that is not United States and then submitting the picture. Much to my delight as I will be going to Canada on Thursday and now I will be taking my two shirts “Army In My Pocket” and “Do The Math” but I am still not sure what kind of picture to take.

Any ideas?

Anyways, here is a mini description about the contest with a link above.

You may or may not have known that our t-shirt site, Shirt.Woot, now ships to 45 countries whose residents are otherwise unable to partake of the Woot empire’s offerings. In any case, you know it now. But frankly, we worry a little about sending our “fabric children” out into the great big world. We’d feel so much better if they’d get in touch with us and let us know they’re alright. Your challenge this week:

Show us a Woot tee in its new home in one of the countries on this list.

Any Woot tee, past or present, is fair game – here’s a list, with artwork. Obviously, the funnier the situation and the connection to the country in question, the better. And we shouldn’t need to tell you this, but we will: defamatory ethnic and racial stereotypes will get you nowhere.

Wall-E Review: One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies

I saw this movie earlier today and it turned out to be much better than I thought even though I had read the Rotten Tomatoes review (which put it at 97%) and Yahoo! Movie users which gave it an A- overall grade. Here is a review from Gizmodo which certainly sums up my feelings on the movie. If you get a chance, I would recommend this one – it certainly is a great movie disguised as a cartoon.

One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies in Years, Disguised as a Cartoon (Gizmodo)

Wall-E might be the most sympathetic, lovable robot ever created on film. While R2-D2 was hilarious and endearing, he had the benefit of C3PO to translate for him and a cast of human characters to carry the weight of the story. At the end of the day, R2-D2 was simply comic relief, but his descendant, whose voice was also created by Ben Burtt, is so full of humanity that you feel like your heart might just burst. Simply put, Wall-E is a masterpiece.

The first 40 minutes or so of Wall-E are almost completely without dialogue. Instead, the story is told visually, as we see Wall-E, the abandoned garbage bot, puttering around a staggeringly rendered post-apocalyptic Earth. He goes around doing his job, as he has for the past 700 years, compacting trash into cubes and stacking them into immense towers. On the side, he collects remnants of humanity to keep for his own amusement. Zippo lighters, Rubik’s Cubes, Christmas lights: these are what Wall-E surrounds himself with. Because he’s so alone (except for a little cockroach), these dirty, abandoned objects are his companions, his contact with humanity.

He watches Hello, Dolly! on an iPod that he somehow hooked up to a VCR, emulating the dancing and learning about love. (That’s not the only Apple reference in the movie: he makes the classic Mac bootup sound when he turns on, and his love interest EVE was designed by Jonathan Ive). When you see Wall-E try to imitate the dancing using a hub cap he collected just for that purpose, you know that this is more than a piece of machinery. Proving Pixar’s raison d’etre, this little silent robot has more humanity in him than most movie characters played by actual humans.

Immediately, we realize this isn’t your typical kiddie cartoon. No pop culture jokes? No instantly-recognizable celebrity voices? A decimated, humanless landscape full of towers of garbage and decrepit buildings? A lonely robot trying to learn about love and humanity through centuries of its trash? This looks more like a beautiful, haunting sci-fi movie than a children’s movie, because that’s exactly what it is.

Wall-E features loving nods to everything from Brave New World to 2001 to Star Wars without ever feeling derivative. Instead, it builds on them, making what has the potential to be an almost relentlessly bleak world into one full of complete joy and levity. It always has that undercurrent of melancholy just under the surface, as we never really forget that humanity has utterly destroyed the planet and turned itself into a race of pudgy, helpless babies, but heart of the story is Wall-E and his longing for love.

And isn’t that the sign of great science fiction? While on the surface it’s a movie about robots and spaceships set centuries in the future, deep down it’s about humanity and its place on Earth and in the universe. It uses its out-of-this-world settings and characters as a lens to reflect our own world back at us, showing us both the beauty and the ugliness of our existence through the eyes of a guileless, trash-compacting robot.

In a movie season that’s overpopulated with tired superhero movies, remakes and sequels, it’s incredibly refreshing to see a movie that stands on its own as a completely new and unique creation. It’s safe to say you’ve never seen anything like Wall-E, and you might not see anything like it again. Go. Go see it as soon as you can. 

Google Adsense: Partisan?

Of course I am only kidding but look at the four ads that were displayed when I loaded up my browser just now. Three of them on Pest Controls and how to get rid of mice… followed by the last ad which is titled The Real Barack Obama: The truth behind the candidate – “Barack Obama Exposed” – Free!

By no means am I trying to say that Google is trying to link the two things together, I am just not really sure what tags or posts triggered the three prominent displays for local pest controls. Maybe PETA triggered it… who knows really but that’s quite an interesting set of ads to be displayed for me.

By the way, feel free to support the advertisements shown on the blog on either side including the get paid to write blog posts which is located at the bottom of the right side bar. Enjoy!

Two Strong Quotes

Here are two of the strongest I have heard in a little while… let me know what you think

The first one is from a Op-Ed piece by Roger Cohen titled “Why Obama Should Visit A Mosque“. Read it if you get a chance, really a good a piece.

“Fear-mongering about Islam is a global industry. It thrives on ignorance. Obama has a unique power to break the cycle, not least by emboldening moderate Muslims to denounce terror. Nothing would do more in the long run for the security of the world.”

Even though I am pretty much against the widespread use of “right to bear arms” which certainly does not have the same meaning today as it did back when it was first adopted and certainly in light of the Supreme Court upholding that right, what can you do. But here is a strong quote that certainly drives home the point. This is from one from a pro-second amendment rally prior to the ruling handed down by the Supreme Court.

“If guns kill people, then do pens misspell words?”