Two days ago, on Sunday, my friend Nate’s dog, Trevor, staged an escape from his backyard and is currently missing. Sometime during the day a neighbor’s tree toppled over (I’m not sure exactly how) and knocked down part of Nate’s backyard fence. When he came home from work, Trevor was gone.

Trevor is a brownish/tan Whippet and is about two feet tall. He basically looks like a smaller version of Santa’s Little Helper from THE SIMPSONS, if that helps. I don’t believe he was wearing a collar at the time.

Here’s a picture of the adorable little mutant:

I know this is a long shot, but if you or anyone you know may have seen or found Trevor, please email me at josh-at-joshbales-dot-net, or Nate at diabolicalsound-at-earthlink-dot-net.

A reward is being offered.

Please repost/retweet this. It’d be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

Just came back from seeing the new Angelina Jolie spy flick, SALT. An enjoyable enough film, overall. The plot was absurd and about three different kinds of incoherent, but the action scenes were well-orchestrated and exciting to watch. Jolie kicks asses like no other movie star.

And, of course, she is still, as the kids are calling it these days, hawt. It’s been fourteen years, I think, since I first saw her in HACKERS, and still I am in love after all this time.

I look forward to the sequel, which is supposed to feature Brad Pitt as Johannes Pepper, an Austrian sleeper agent who goes up against Jolie’s character.

I believe they’re going to call it SALT VS. PEPPER.

Can’t sleep. Too much going on later today for me to sufficiently subdue my brain into unconsciousness.

So instead I will share with you a video titled, “Advice for Young Girls from The Little Mermaid.” It features a starved-looking Ariel providing spectacularly spot-on advice to young girls, such as:

Don’t ever talk to a man until he kisses you on the lips first. Then, as a woman, you’re allowed.

I snapped this last week in the restroom of a thrift store. It’s a section of the wallpaper. Several creative individuals had added word balloons over some of the golfers, which boasted bits of clever dialogue such as, "Your dressed like a fag," plus a whole slew of quotes from HAPPY GILMORE.

Me, I was just jealous of the gentlemen golfers’ awesome attire.

(Posted from the field via Joshua Bales’s Flickr.)

You know what? I’m gonna buck the trend and not spend several hundred words bashing the movie 2012 over the many splendid ways that it is an awful film. Not a peep on its hackneyed characters, overwrought melodrama, ridiculous premise — even by director Roland Emmerich’s standards — or eye-rolling “twist” ending.

Instead, I just want to point out that I find it incredibly funny that the special effects of INDEPENDENCE DAY, a film Emmerich made 14 years ago, look much, much more realistic than the special effects of 2012.

Why?

Because back in 1996, computer generated effects were just beginning to take off, so the filmmakers had to use the traditional method of miniatures and models to stage all of the scenes of the aliens nuking Earth (with a smattering of CGI for tweaks). This had a two-fold effect of forcing the effects teams to be much more creative in their depiction of the world-wide destruction, which they arguably pulled off quite well, and since they were using miniatures and models which actual exist in a physical state — and not just on a computer — they automatically look more “real.”

Whereas in 2012, in an era where CGI has become so common that it’s made many filmmakers lazy and uninspired in its usage, the effects are all-CGI-all-the-time, and, as a result, posses a soft, unreal, and plain fake feel about them, so all the scenes rendered of the Earth having its gigantic psychotic break and cutting itself end up lacking any emotion whatsoever. We are then sucked completely out of the movie, even if we don’t explicitly realize it.

I swear, the only two filmmakers in the last ten years who have been able to effectively use CGI on such a massive basis are Peter Jackson and James Cameron. I just wish the rest of Hollywood would wake the fuck up and take note.

Plugged the first chapter of the Project of a Novelish Nature into the I Write Like analyzer. It informs me that, based upon a statistical analysis ran on my word choice and writing style, I write like Raymond Chandler.

Not too bad company to keep, I suppose.

I write like
Raymond Chandler

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Received an email from a concerned reader yesterday:

Hannah is, of course, referring to this post from a couple of days ago.

I’m not sure what surprises me more: the fact that I received a complaint, or the fact that I have a reader who isn’t one of my friends, and is in fact a complete stranger.

Very politely, I pointed out to her that while I didn’t throw up an NSFW tag anywhere in that post, I did mention that the picture showed “the teeth/mouth apparatus that are mounted into the jaws of Real Dolls, those life-like sex dolls that so creep me the fuck out.” One would think that if I say an image is one of a group depicting the construction of sex dolls, then the NSFW would be implied.

So let me spell it out now.

JOSHUA BALES dot NET is occasionally not safe for work.

If you are worried about getting in trouble at work for looking at something that could be considered inappropriate, then maybe you should not view this site until you get home.

Of course, I don’t plan on this blog turning into some sort of goatse or lemonparty linkblog. I don’t hate you that much, gentle reader. However, on occasion I do post stuff which could be frowned upon if viewed at a more conservative workplace, and when I do post such content, I don’t generally preface it by saying it’s not safe for work.

That being said, anything I do post that might be considered NSFW will almost always be phrased so as to clue the reader in to the fact, such as with the sex doll example above.

I mean, it’s not like I’m going to say, “Hey! Look at this picture of a cute cat,” and then link to a picture of a giant penis.

Though that would be funny.

Been busy the last couple of weeks. As a result, broadcasting has been infrequent of late. And I’m not gonna lie to you, Marge — it’s not going to get better in the near future, either.

The biggest thing taking up my time and mental energies is the impending Move. In one week, I move out of the apartment I’ve lived in for the last two years, from a one-bedroom unit to a two-bedroom. The upside is that the new apartment is located in the building next door (Huzzah for not moving very far). The downside is, I’ll be having a roommate, so no dedicated office/library for me. Yet.

Aside from painting my old apartment back to its plain-jane, all-white self and packing up the oh-so-very-many books I’ve accumulated, I’ve also been busy with a multitude of activities, such as helping other friends move; playing DOOM II; hanging out with friends who were in town visiting; playing golf and actually doing well; watching PREDATORS; making progress on the Project of a Novelish Nature; and a lot of other shit which escapes me at the moment.

So, yeah, posting will probably continue to be sparse for the next week or so.

In the meantime, however, I will share with you this image of the teeth/mouth apparatus that are mounted into the jaws of Real Dolls, those life-like sex dolls that so creep me the fuck out.

I watched THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO last night, and I think I may have just seen the best film of the year. It was absolutely mesmerizing.

I’m not going to go into the plot of the film or anything (you can read about that on Wikipedia), but I will say that it is a superbly crafted thriller, and Lisbeth, the punk main character played by Noomi Rapace, is one of the more uniquely compelling anti-heroines I’ve seen in the movies in a long time.

A quick note: it is a movie made by some damn foreigners from Sweden, so you’ll either need to watch it with the subtitles, or, if you prefer to be a lame doorknob, with the English dubbing. Me, I can’t stand to watch anything dubbed, as nothing will pull me out of a movie faster than dialogue not matching a character’s mouth.

I’ve yet to read the book that the movie is based on — though I did order it last night — since most movies are generally inferior to the original source material, and I like to enjoy the movie based on its own merits first.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was so good, though, that now I’m curious to see how the book stacks up in comparison.

Woot, that company I regularly throw money at in exchange for clever t-shirts — and who also popularized the “Deal of the Day” on miscellaneous stuff — was acquired by Amazon last Wednesday.

The company’s sense of humor is pretty demented, and almost always LOL-inducing, as evidenced by the write-up for this shirt. The letter that Woot CEO Matt Rutledge sent out to employees announcing the company had been bought was in the same whimsical tradition, and very entertaining. The first sentence alone sets the tone for the rest:

I know I say this every time I find a picture of an adorable kitten, but please set aside 20 minutes to carefully read this entire email.

Definitely one of the better “Hey, we’ve been acquired by another company” letters ever.