some interesting stuffs...

Casino Royale. gold. pure gold. i loved this movie, and reccomend any Bond fan [except fans of the shitty, money grabbing James Bond Jr. cartoon series] to see it, and keep an open mind for 30 minutes. it took me about that long to be sold on Daniel Craig. sure. blonde Bond. that made me skeptical. hes a bit more muscular than other Bonds. he seems to have that scruff/edge/bite to the character that wasnt there before. but after 30 minutes, i was sold. what really impressed me about this particular film were the level of realism to the stunt work this time.... this is something, that to me, has been lacking since really the Dalton era films... aside from the way the bomb-making guy in the opening chase sequence seems to bounce around all the time, everything else seems very, very plausible, if not how youd expect something to play out... by this i mean, no motorcycles jumping between helicopter blades... no bond, floating around the space station shooting up gold toothed morons... no flying around on metal zeppelins... no flying over japan in a suitcase helicopter... no Tatto or the dude from Fantasy Island trying to be the bad guy... none of that. to me, the story in this film has as much to do with why i like it, as the new actor as Bond. The story is succinct and makes it relevant. Sure, Bond is out roguing around and stumbles into this one; but whats more relevant than the financing of terror? it keeps the scope of the movie quite in line, and quite relevant-- something Moonraker obviously cant figure out-- but it stays logical in progression... something lately that was lost on the movies... while abandoned nuclear arsenals MIGHT pose a problem, the former Bond ally, we never really knew or cared about, faking his own death to ally with some other guy who is billed as a "man who can push himself harder than any other normal man" somehow ended up with these nuclear weapons, just gets lost on me. but for this movie, when its predecessor was "The World Is Not Enough" where do you go, in scope, with that next movie? how many times can we, believeably, watch Bond destroy a nuclear weapon, or fight a guy with a shark tank, or kick the hell out of ninjas, or beat up random voo-doo zombie lords, or screw some ho' named Octopussy, and come away with anything but the campy sense of it all. this movie shattered that for me. why? because they did it once before. yes, Dalton. for all the haters out there; Timothy Dalton's Bond was a stark change from Roger Moore and Connery's Bond. Dalton intrduced vengence, needing luck in fighting the enemy, and more of a sense of plausible nature. Everyone canned Dalton, the actor, but no one says much about the films and story lines of his two films. If anything, they shy away from the dark nature of License To Kill... its laced with profanity, violence, and down right nasty themes of revenge and sadistic nature of people. but Bond needed that, to break away from the campy shit that became the Roger Moore era. Who cares? Well, that formula worked well... that particular Bond actor did not. [by the way The Living Daylights is one of my top favorites!, aka... the Other Dalton movie] , this incarnation gives us a return to a real story line, like what we got out of the Dalton films, but with a Bond that makes it work. Besides, we come to expect a different hero now a-days. Face it. We expect to see a conflicted hero in the post-modern age of cinema. Think Die Hard, think Pulp Fiction, think Gladiator, think Sin City. Huge movies; but all of them twist the classic conception of "ideal good guy" and "ideal villan." We dont want that simplicity anymore. Think Superman Returns. We now question if Superman is gay; because nothing is appealing about plain old PB and J sandwhiches, just like nothing is appealing about the superhero our grandparents adored. We o want: grit, gore and gusto. We get all three from Craig. and it works. Really, fucking well, I might add. I mean it. I really like this movie. About the only spots I grumbled about had to do with the poisoning sequence [somewhat of a spoiler, but not really], and the whole eloping with this chick sequence... only because I felt both of these parts felt unnecessary to force the story. who cares? well, I felt like getting up and leaving when the whole eloping scene started up... I really felt, that if this was the Brosnan, or Moore Bond; thats where the movie would have ended. thankfully, on both accounts, it pushes us back to something thats a bit more interesting. bottom line. go see this thing. its the re-education of James Bond... you'll spend more time, like I am now, trying to figure out how to rank this Bond into the story line of the back catalog, than you will about anything else, if thats the only objection you will come up with.


Work. Some of you might know how I've been getting sick of getting slammed with freight, and getting fucked into doing all the work and watching the managers stand around and do nothing all day. Worse than that, I hate getting smacked by them for things that I do to make sense, because they don't like it... or how thats not how they've done it for 15 years... Well, today made up for that. With a slight smile to my face, someone from general office showed up. Just so happened, I know him. heh. See where this is going? They happened to stumble upon alot of fucked up things in that department... purely on their own... but I fleshed out the back story for everything I was asked about. Well. Little Ms. and Mr. Perfects got their asses hauled in back and thoroughly reamed out today for well over an hour. Appearantly, this was the worst visit score our department has received in recent memory. And, I can't say we didn't earn it. And I can't say, I'm not glad we got hammered for it. They needed that to happen. They needed someone to drop the axe and make them realize things need to change. People went scurrying about to fix things, and supposedly started getting defensive and argumentative with general office about it all. I laughed. Its pathetic. Own up to it. If they say, "Scott, your department looks like dog shit." I've got to own that. I own that statement, just as much as I would own, "Scott your department is the best looking in the district." Because thats what I was told at Staples. But appearantly, I know nothing of the "Menards way", or of running a department. I never once argued with Staples corporate office visits. I, instead, would ask to clarify, or have them walk it with me to see WHY they are saying what they say... I would even, on perfect scores, have them come up with criticisms to put on the reports... Why? Because I need something to work on and improve on... nothing is that good. The Menards way? Be difficult with them, argue, refuse to do things, and let the place look like dogshit. Thats great management appearantly. In fact, people were complaining that the visitor went out of his way to go through and detail all the problems he found.... my comment; "Why wouldn't he?" For God's sake, if it looks that bad, they have no choice. Kind of reckon it to an off-duty cop... if hes sitting eating dinner, and watches someone get shot, hes got to do something. Off duty or not. This store visit wasn't meant to be a house cleaning action, I think it was just a normal drop in, for this guy to check out how his projects are working out in our store... But he walked into a place that looked that bad, he had to do something. Like I said, I can't say we didn't deserve it. And I own up to it. Hopefully some other people around here will as well.

It was more than a week ago when I said, "I'd follow this up with something more." Yeah, that didnt happen so much I guess. Just been caught up working. Ofcourse, once its my weekend, its slammed busy. Plus we had Thanksgiving holiday, and Black Friday in there as well, and those pretty much stripped me of any days off last week... leading me back to the current point in time. So.



Wisconsin.

What can I say really? It was exactly as people told me it would be... yet altogether lacking. To give a generic overview; its about 20 hours worth of company training [the vast, vast majority of it spent in direct vendor/product training workshops], crammed into two days... and... when I say two days, I really mean... We are flown in at noon, stay till midnight, start at 6am then are flown out home by 2pm. Its a whirlwind to say the least. Anyways. Doing my best not to compromise anything here...

We catch a flight from the local /international/ [read: non-international] airport commercial wing, which, cool enough to say, they land the fucking plane about 10 feet from the doors, and you walk right on board.... no tickets, no luggage checks, no security. Private industry is great like this! Anyways, the company plane already has other people on it, we get crammed in the back and we're off! Which, to me, was the best part. I'd never been on an airplane. So everything was new. Well, the sudden urge to vomit when you take off wasnt new... but newly induced. Its a short approach, and since im sitting on the tail, I get the bumpiest ride of anyone... I wasn't expecting it. But nothing happened. But once airborne, I'm somewhat taken back by just how magnificent flight is. I can't find any other words really... majestic maybe. But it was just so surreal coming up above the clouds watching the cars and people shrink to nothingness. Then the idea of just cruzing up above the high clouds just gave that idea of something angelic. I dunno. I was actually fine with just flying around. But eventually it ends... We land at the whopping metropolis that is Chippewa Valley Regional. Wheeee. Its a happening place. Obviously, the only time this place sees this many planes is when Menards flys everyone in. We are taken on buses directly to the "complex" as I heard it referred to.

Menards general offices are much larger than I thought. The reason why, I presume, is that it also houses the main distribution site for product to the retail stores... Which, honestly, is massive. They also have some odd things on the "complex" grounds... a nail stylist, a barber shop, gift shop, restaraunt, and race track. Besides the general office areas. None of this was accessable for me. We were herded directly inside to a convention center wing of the "complex" instructed to dump luggage and take seats in a large lecture hall. From there I met Larry Menard. Then a whole bunch of other people, then some opening comments and pretty much dismissed to start the vendor fair. That involved a large number of the product vendor's from my department, all providing about 40 minutes on topics as they saw fit. It took until 11 something at night to finish up, which we were herded back onto the bus and taken to the hotel... which was miles away from anything... until we were picked back up before 6am to start again doing more of the same, plus with more time from different Menard's people on company related policies and information. Before we knew it, we were herded on a bus again, and shipped to the airport to depart. Seriously, it went very fast.

We had a tremendous amount of information thrown at us in a very short time frame, and I got the impression most people couldn't handle it. Well that, and I walked away with the sense of how incompetent my peers are that work in other stores... people in my groups had very little understanding in products, sales techniques, company policies and none of them seemed to put forth any effort or attention. While I have to admit, most of the information was rudimentary, and not designed to be the be-all-end-all source of knowledge for any thing; I doubt very much that alot of usefull information gets retained in such a short time frame. Well that, and they send the same people to it every year... so many of the department lifer's have done this 10 to 15 times already.

Anyways, that was it. I was back on the ground the next day. Back in Illinois. Somewhat void of the drama or excitement that I was looking forward to finding. The only thing of real excitement was meeting my possible boss and coworkers. The more they talked to me, the more they seemed interested in bringing me up for an opening to interview. Probably as a merchandiser, but maybe as an analyst. It also gave me a brief look at Eau Claire. To a lesser extent, I knew about as much going in as I did coming out, and with out any good looks at the town, I dont have any real impressions about it. It looks to be similar to Iowa City in size, slightly lacking in accomodations thoguh. From the conversations I had, most people spend their free time out on the lakes around the area. Housing looked like a big mix... older houses, with new rentals mixed in hap-hazardly. Supposedly it has a college in the town somewhere. But it doesn't offer any masters programs that interest me; so scratch that possibility. I dunno. I guess Ill find out more about that stuff later on. But that was the trip in a quick burst of sentences.



Things of Other Variety.



I picked up a copy of Cradle of Filth's new cd before I left town. Im trying desparately to like it. Much like Ive been struggling with the new Black Label cd. Its not that either of them are bad. I think its just that I like the preceeding catalog so much, that these dont seem to do much. Thornography is very mellow, compared to some of the old work; like Damnation... or Dusk and Her Embrace... While its an extension from Nymphetamine [their last cd], its not taking it as far as that cd did. Sure, the elements are there. Yeah, the same themes are there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when do I get hooked on this one, like I did with Nymphetamine? Answer is I havent. Im trying. I think this one just goes into the pile. Its been produced to be a logical successor by doing what Nymphetamine did, but it seems repetitive here. Not forced. But not unique either. Its something I'd say is now more gothic metal... not at all the black metal they were at one point in time. Haters say they sold that out for mainstream recognition and popularity [hence people know this band for 2 reasons... the t-shirt with "Jesus Is A Cunt" written on it, or for their appearnce on Viva La Bam on MTV]. I dunno. Same thing with Black Label's Shot To Hell. While Mafia wasnt great, it has alot of stuff I really dig. STH seems to be pushing the ballads more than I wanted... which, dont get me wrong, I love Hangover Music V. 4; but these are a different kind of animal. I was hoping this would turn out more like e. 1919 or the self titled. Not so. So lately I've been playing alot of older stuff from all over.

Anyways... Ive eaten up a bunch of time tonight writting about nothing new. Something interesting... uhm. I had to take in Big Red for the first time. I had an oil pressure sensor go out... she'd run fine, just I had [according to the panel] zero line pressure; however it was running at a nominal temperature! Funny. Since it reads the oil temperature as it passes through the block, it would have to be getting pressure in the line to pump it up to that point. I hoped it wasnt an oil pump going out, which gladly it was not. So that was a first.

Hmm. I bought a new mp3 player. Mainly for the trip to Eau Claire. Partly because I wanted one. I had a cd based one most of the way through college, which was crapping out, so I thought Id splurge a bit to upgrade. No ipod. Those are "teh gax0r" indeed. Instead I have a Zen Touch 40 gig. Works well. All hard drive based, so its heavier and can skip some, but the battery life is fantastic. Something like 20 hours per full charge! Thats what impressed me the most.

I also bought a new coat. It was something I'd wanted for a long time too. So I thought I'd buy one. Its a dress coat, so I really don't many opportunites to wear it now, but it looks good. Classy. Definitely a Scott kind of buy. I've heard that from about 4 people now.