Cranky T-Rex's Blog

We T-Rexes are familiar with this problem. Wreck-It Ralph is not really a video game movie, or even a movie about video games.  It is instead a movie about finding your place in life, and how the simple connections we build with others can really make the difference between feeling like you're a meaningless cog in a wheel and feeling like the hero of your own story. So what is the story with Ralph? Well, Wreck-It Ralph is the bad guy in an 80's style arcade game called Fix-It Felix Jr. His job is to smash up an apartment building, which the titular hero Felix uses his magic hammer to repair until Ralph is defeated and summarily tossed off the building by its tenants. It's basically Donkey Kong meets Rampage . Since he's the villain, Ralph is completely ostracized by the denizens of his game, and after 30 years, he's tired of being the bad guy. The last straw for Ralph is finding out he wasn't even invited to the 30th anniversary party for the game,...

If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. --President Barack Obama He didn't build that, apparently. Just a little over seven years ago a small local company came to me and asked me to write them a program. I knew the owners and so they knew that part of my college education had included software development, and since I was in my last year of college with no practical experience and they didn't have a lot of money to spend, it was a good arrangement. We discussed their requirements and then I spent several days banging out my first real software gig. I got paid, they got the software, and everyone was happy. When I finished my degree, I came out into a job market that wasn't terribly interested in my skill set anymore, at least not unless I chose to move to California, which was...

So in a move that surprised almost everyone, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld Obamacare, not because of the swing Justice Kennedy voting to uphold the power of the Commerce Clause, but because Chief Justice Roberts decided Congress actually meant the individual mandate was a tax, and that the Congress has the power to levy such a tax, that is to say a tax on inactivity. Were that not mind boggling enough, in a stunning display of Fridge Logic , conservatives took to their various media outlets to theorize that this incredible defeat was actually a secret win, created by the genius of a Chief Justice looking beyond the immediacy of the current political climate. What is this theory?  Well, to put it simply, they believe Chief Justice Roberts has managed to simultaneously gut the Commerce Clause powers, hand Mitt Romney an election booster shot, and insulate his Court against the backlash that its decisions are merely partisan in nature.  T...

The Avengers is quite frankly the most fun I have had in a theater in quite some time.  Not since Scott Pilgrim vs. The World can I recall myself grinning throughout an entire movie or legitimately bursting out in outright laughter.  Sure I've had some chuckles and some smirks, some "heh"s where one could tell laughter was more or less required, even the occasional "ohh that's awesome", but nothing approaching the genuine inner-child feelings invoked by The Avengers . It is the epitome of the good summer blockbuster.  Unlike the heady Dark Knight franchise, The Avengers doesn't cover itself in layers of grit and darkness in an attempt to take place in the real world.  It starts in the realm of fantasy and stays there, allowing for a much more natural suspension of disbelief and lighter tone in general.  On the flip side, it doesn't suffer from the frenetic editing or rampant stupid contrivances that infects fluff like Star Trek (2009) and the T...

The President's campaign has created  The Life of Julia  to tell the tale of a woman's life as it is affected by his policies.  Here is the story of Julianne, the conservative alternative to Julia. The Life of Julianne 3 Years Old Julianne's parents read to her every night.  They take time to play games with her that teach her how to count and how to solve problems. When they enroll her in kindergarten she's ready to learn and succeed. 17 Years Old Julianne excels in school thanks to her parents' active involvement in her life. Her mother is a stay at home mom that carefully monitors Julianne's homework and grades throughout her scholastic tenure. Her father takes practice SAT tests with her and encourages her to work hard. 18 Years Old Julianne's parents have put part of their yearly salary towards a college fund for her ever since she was born. They also encouraged her to get a part-time job in high school and required her to contribute pa...

On Friday I went to the movie theater for the first time in several months to take in Act of Valor , a movie about and starring active duty Navy SEALs. I wasn't really planning on reviewing it formally like this, but I find the reactions I have seen to the movie quite interesting and wanted to weigh in from a different perspective. This review may or may not contain spoilers so consider that the requisite warning. See, on the Left, people hate the movie for not having whining crybaby SEALs who aren't sure of their orders because they're coming from corrupt commanders who are using the SEALs to do all manner of horrible things in the name of making money and increasing their personal power. They want their morally ambiguous, maybe-the-bad-guy-isn't-really-bad-and-we're-not-really-good, convoluted plot with conflicted characters and all of that nonsense. They're also incredibly offended by the "jingoism" and overly pro-military nature of this kind of mov...