Burke's Joystick

I am not what you would call much of a "movie goer".  Never was, for that matter.  Rather, I am the type of person whom would much rather wait a few months so I can watch a movie in the comfort of my home instead of in a sticky-floored, teenager-chatting movie theater...and for top dollar, no less.  No thanks,  I can wait. This is why I have just gotten around to seeing the actioner, Act of Valor (AoV).  When I first heard the pitch for this movie, I was excited: When a covert mission to rescue a kidnapped CIA operative uncovers a chilling plot, elite, highly-trained U.S. SEAL teams speed to hotspots around the globe, racing against the clock to stop a deadly terrorist attack. Pulse-pounding combat sequences, cutting-edge battlefield technology and raw emotion fuel this unprecedented blend of real-world heroism and original filmmaking -- a thrilling tribute to the skills, courage and tenacity of the world's most revered warriors. This soun

Still trying to get caught up with this blog after a trying month and a half.... One bit of old business concerns the results of the last poll I conducted.  If you recall, the question was: If Mitt Romney was a character from a video game, which character would he be? The people have spoken!  The winner, with 66% of the vote, is....

  I missed so much over the past month.  Sorry about that.  However, I did come across two things that have been stuck in my craw and I just need to address.  First, this guy: Yeah...Glenn Beck.  I have a love/hate relationship with this guy.  On the good side, Beck did yeoman work on his (alas, appropriately) short-lived show by bringing the wisdom of the Founding Fathers to life like no one has on television in a long, long time.  On the bad side, Beck fell victim to Bill O'Reilly-itis (the demagogue O'Reilly being his mentor at FOX News, of course) and quickly developed such a huge ego that he brashly took credit for everything good that occurred in this nation's political life since the start of his television show, including the rise of the Tea Party, the rejection of Obama, and the re-discovery of America's brilliant founding principles. Nonetheless, I still feel compelled to defend Beck for no other reason that the Left hates him so (so he still m

I iz bak! Amazing how everything can change in a matter of minutes. For me, the world turned upside down about three week ago when my father had a heart attack. I never saw it coming as my father had no history of heart problems. Nonetheless, there I stood in the local emergency room early one Sunday morning wondering how we wound up in such dire straits. Interestingly, neither the ambulance techs, nor the emergency room doctors, could definitely conclude that my father was having a heart attack as the EKG was inconclusive, and my fathers symptoms were not the classic symptoms of a heart attack (pain down the arms and/or jaw, trouble breathing, etc.). In fact, for some three hours, the docs were thinking gallbladder attack or a bloodclot in the lung (his only symptoms were a severe pain off near his shoulder, and falling blood oxygen levels). However, the blood test showed that at some point he did have a heart attack.