B-Movie Central Cheese Blog

Ok, so we had to run to Wal Mart tonight to get some dog treats and a few other things. So we get there, and the first thing we see when we drive in are a couple of Mexican guys, one at each door, collecting for some charity or other. This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. If I wanted to give to a charity, I would. I don’t need to be guilted into doing it by some schmuck standing in front of a store at Christmas time. Thank god for side doors. We just shot in through one of the side doors and out the same way. So a big James Brown, “HEH!” to you schmucks.

So we go in and get our stuff, and we walk down to one of the self checkouts. The genetic reject in front of us is this short, skinny, dopey lookin’ guy with a cigarette behind his ear. He’s got one…yes, I said ONE pack of batteries in his hand. No sweat right? You’d think not, but here’s what happened. He runs the damn thing over the scanner…and it scans twice. Ok…it happens. No big deal right? So we’re standing there waiting while he tries to figure out how to cancel the extra one. He does cancel the extra one, and you’d think it’d stop there. It didn’t. This shining example of human intellect scans the damn thing again! Ok, so now he goes back into the menu and cancels everything and starts over. Could this really be this difficult? Apparently so, because the idiot then starts waving the batteries back and forth over the scanner and the damn things scanned three times!!! So he goes in and cancels them all and then the system wants approval for the void so the checkout assistant had to come over and clear it…which took a couple more minutes. Finally it’s clear and he manages to scan the damn thing just once. So it’s over right? NO!!!!!! He finally gets the damn thing scanned, and then he proceeds to pay for them with pocket change!!! So we had to sit there waiting for him to dig through his change and drop coin after coin in the damn cash box thing!!! The whole time, I’m standing there watching this and wondering why he didn’t just go through a normal checkout if #1 the mechanics of the self checkout were too mentally taxing for him, and #2 if he had to pay with pocket change anyway! God, I just wanted to yank that cigarette out from behind his ear, light it, bend him over and insert it into his wrinkly ol’ stink eye hot end first. I will never for the life of me figure out how people in this day and age can be so utterly stupid and just flat out incompetent. Self checkouts are a common thing and yet so many idiots out there can’t seem to manage them. The lesson here is, if you’re an idiot, save yourself a few brain cells and go through the normal checkout.

In other news, I’ve started changing the links over to the new ones for my reviews and such in IMDB and the Rogues Review Directory. It’s taking for freakin’ ever because IMDB takes about 7 or 8 steps to do what it should be able to do in about 3 or 4. Oh well, I’ll get through it all eventually.

Wife is pissy, it’s cold and windy outside and all three computers just took a dump because we had a power fluctuation and the UPS kicked everything off. I think I need a different UPS. At least I didn’t lose this post I was working on.

Oh well, back to other stuff now…

After tons of work, the new B-Movie Central is now up and running.  So be sure to check it out, and leave me a comment either here or in the new forums to let me know what you all think.

Now comes the fun part…changing all the imdb and rogues directory links.

Today I got a new forum component for the site.  It’s not as slick as phpBB but it’s a nice forum script and the benefit to it is that it’s internal to the Joomla system, which means it’s internal to the site instead of using some link plugin to link to the old ones and then having to worry about if it’d still work or not if I ever wanted to upgrade the version on the old ones, etc…  Basically, it’s simpler and easier and far easier to manage to use forums that are internal to the site rather than external.  I’ve set them up to have all the same sections as the old one except for the B-Movie Graveyard stuff, so the new forums are strictly BMC.

I also just set up the web links, which was the last bit of content I had to move over.  It was kind of a pain, but it did allow me to do two things.  #1 I was able to clean out any defunct links, and #2 I only entered links to sites that are linked to me.  If you don’t have a link to B-Movie Central on your site, then your link didn’t get moved over.  If you want to exchange links with me I’d be happy to.  Just drop me an e-mail and let me know.

There were problems with new user registration and with the site not sending e-mails.  I fixed both of those today and now all is working properly.   The only reason to register on the site, at least so far, is for the forums.  Other than that there really would be no reason you’d have to.

I need to make a new header image and then start changing all the links on IMDB and in the Rogues Links Directory and then I should be ready to go.

I’m still looking for some extra stuff to include in the site.  Here are a few of the options:

• A shoutbox.
• A live chat.
• A flash games component.
• A newsletter component that will notify registered members of the site when it’s updated with new reviews.

Those are just some things I can possibly throw in there.  If any of them sound good leave a comment on this post and let me know, or if you have any other suggestions, let me know those as well.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’ll do another progress report when I have stuff to report.

All the content for the new site has been imported now and I was even able to get the poster shop working internally, which kinda surprised me.  Anyway, things have gone much faster and easier than I expected.  The menus are done, the sections are all up and running and now it’s just a matter of making a new header image for the theme and then starting to change all my links on imdb and in the rogues review directory.  Again, time consuming, but it’s stuff that can all be done within a few days.  So basically, things have progressed well.

I have tons of movies I have to watch and review before the next issue of Rogue Cinema, and I’ll probably end up trying to cram them into about two days worth of watching.  That’s gonna suck, but I need to get them done.  Oh well.

Oh, and I got my interview back from Alan Rowe Kelly today.  He did an awesome job on it.  It’s definitely one of my best, if not the best interview I’ve done for Rogue Cinema.  He did a phenomenal job answering all the questions and I’m really looking forward to running the interview in next month’s issue.

Anyway, I’ll keep you all updated on the site progress.  I’d like to try to find something new or interesting to throw in there before I go live with it.  I’ll see what I can find.  Hopefully there’s something I can grab and put in there that’ll be fun.  For right now though, it’s 6:41am and I haven’t slept yet, so I’m gonna go feed the dogs, shoot Missy up with her insulin and then crash.  I’ll write more tomorrow or the next day.

It’s taken several days but between my wife and I we’ve gotten all the reviews added into the new site. This was probably the most time consuming part of the project. It was also rather surprising because I discovered that I’ve done 93 reviews so far on the site. I thought I was still somewhere in the 80′s.

Starting today sometime I’ll start importing the other pages and content from the old site. Not sure how long that’ll take. It just depends on how things go, but I’d say I should have everything moved over completely in the next few days, and then it’s just a matter of setting it all up, doing the new header graphic and setting up the new forums and such. I’d say the whole thing should be done and ready to go within the next two to three weeks.

Now for the other stuff…

Last night my wife Sharon and I decided to go check out the mall. It opened at 1am and probably 80% of the stores inside were open for business. We weren’t ready for what we found when we got there. It looked like every friggin’ high school around here exploded and all the emos landed in the mall. The number of people there was unbelievable. People were being trampled, doors damaged and the whole thing was just one big pile of mayhem. My question is…why?

What in the hell would possibly possess people to act like that? Oh a sale! Big friggin’ whoop! These stores have sales all year. Why the hell does everyone make such a big deal out of the sales on Black Friday? I guarantee you’re going to see a hell of a lot more sales closer to Christmas. So people, please just relax and try to act like human beings rather than a bunch of bargain hunting animals.

I got a new Zippo lighter tonight too. It’s just a plain black lighter with a red line border and says Zippo in the corner, but I really like it. I have a pipe lighter just like it. I don’t smoke cigarettes because I can’t stand the nasty things, but I do smoke pipe tobacco cigars and my pipes on rare occasion. I smoke those less now though because I can get the same tobacco in cigar form and it’s a lot less hassle than a pipe. Anyway, it was kind of a birthday present, but because I got the cheaper, less fancy one, my wife has to get me something else for my birthday too. Not sure what she’ll get me, but I’ll find out soon enough.

I actually found out something really cool about Zippo lighters tonight when I was browsing their site. Their lighters have a lifetime warranty and they have their own repair center. They never charge for repairs either. Just five bucks for shipping and that’s it. They don’t guarantee the finish, just the mechanics, but if you ever have a problem you can ship it off to them and they’ll make it mechanically perfect and ship it back to you. That’s just awesome. More companies should be like that.

Been into the comedy series Scrubs lately. We’ve been buying the seasons on DVD and watching them. We’re about two-thirds of the way through the fifth season now. Dunno how many of you are fans of the show, but it seems to me that the show kinda went downhill after the 2nd season comedy-wise. I still really enjoy it for the characters and it is still funny, it just seems like the first and second seasons had a lot more comedy and fun to them. They’re in the 7th season now, so we’ll have to wait to see that one.

Speaking of 7th season, the 7th season of Married with Children is out. I need to pick that one up. I love that show. I didn’t even know it was out. Saw it in Wal Mart last night. If you’re a fan, be sure to grab it.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I hope everyone who deserved it had an awesome Thanksgiving. As for those who didn’t deserve to have an awesome Thanksgiving, I hope you all got food poisoning and spent your holiday in various positions around the toilet. Jerks!

Now that I’ve extracted myself from the psychic vampires in my life, I’ve started working on something new so I can get a new focus and really start changing some things so that my life doesn’t feel so constantly stagnant. Those of you who’ve been visiting B-Movie Central for any length of time are used to how it looks and navigates and what not. Honestly, it works great, and I think it’s always looked pretty great for what it was and when it was designed and I’m really proud of the work I’ve done on the site. So what’s the problem? Well, it’s old hat. It looks like a site that was designed over five years ago, and it needs a change.

So…

I’ve installed the Joomla! content management system on the site. This will allow me to be more flexible in how I do things here and what I do with the site. It also means I can open up a guest review section for all you fans out there who would like to contribute your reviews to the site. That way things don’t have to be so quiet in my down times, plus it’ll add more content to the site.

Here’s where I stand in my progress on this project right now:

Joomla! is installed and up & running.

I’ve modified the stylesheet on the theme to contain the stylesheet elements I was already using, basically meaning not only that transferring the site’s content over will be MUCH quicker and easier, but will also allow it to maintain the same look it always had while existing in a new system.

I’ve started transferring the reviews into the new site. This will take me several days since I have like 80+ reviews and I need to modify the html in each one so it looks right on the new site. The modifications for the most part involve a few simple search & replace operations and a manual fix or two. Takes me about 5 minutes for each one, but I can only do a few at a time because I want to pace myself with it so it doesn’t become some mind numbing thing.

Things I have to do still:

Once I get all the reviews moved over, I need to make all the other sections and move all that over.

I need to clean out the default content that installs with the site.

I need to set up the nav menus on the side and top.

I need to create a new header graphic to plug into the top of the theme.

I need to modify the footer.

I need to check all the extensions and plugins to see if there’s anything useful.

I need to set up the poll.

I need to install and configure the forums extension. The old forums will be replaced with the new ones. This blog however will remain unchanged and simply be linked to in the nav and top menus.

I need to set up the home page with the normal entry page content minus the includes which will be directly edited in the system from now on.

I need to dig around and see if there are any other cool extensions and plugins out there I can use to add more cool and or interesting stuff to the site.

I need to set up the search engine optimization links.

I need to check to make sure everything is cool.

I need to go and modify all my review links on IMDB and in the Rogues review directory. (This one’s gonna be a colossal pain in the ass.)

Once all that stuff is done, I can go live with the new site. This is also really cool for me because it’s giving me experience with a new, and what is probably the most popular CMS out there right now. I wish I could move Rogue Cinema into it, but I would need to do a separate install and do some testing before I could find out if that would even be possible or not. Even if it was, again…colossal pain in the ass moving the content over. I believe there’s a script to import the articles, but man, I don’t even wanna get into trying to manually transfer three and a half years worth of content from the magazine if an import script doesn’t work, or doesn’t work well. Basically I’d get one shot at it, and if it didn’t work well, I’d have to uninstall the whole database, reinstall everything and just start clean, doing it all one item at a time. That would be such a big ball of suck I couldn’t even tell you. Fortunately it doesn’t matter too awful much because the current Rogue Cinema CMS is pretty secure now and works quite well. Still, it would be nice to be able to move it into a new system. Who knows, maybe that will be my next project.

Anyway, I guess I better go feed the dogs. They’re cold and hungry and miserable and will be really happy to see me so they can sneeze all over my legs, thereby sharing their snot with me, and lick me on my arms and hands when I pet them even though they know I hate it. Ah well, I love my doggies. They’re a real source of happiness for me, so I can put up with a little snot and slobber now and then.

Just a little warning on this one.  It will mean nothing to any of you.  It’s just something I need to say.

It’s nice when things go really bad in your personal relationships to have some closure.  It’s even better when that closure can be on friendly terms.  That person I mentioned in my last post and I had it out today and I finally have the closure I needed, but at a price.  It cost me someone else I thought was a friend and she tried to smear my rep and turn people against me rather than just taking the high road and saying good bye and letting us each have the closure we needed so we could go our separate ways.  She’s the coldest, most vindictive and probably the most psychotic person I’ve ever had the misfortune to know.  I personally just took the high road, explained the situation to the other people and they understood.  Still, I’m no longer associating with any of them now because I just needed to extract myself from everything there and move on.  I just seriously don’t need to deal with any of this anymore.

So why does it still bother me?  Well, the guy who I thought was my friend bailed on me even though this situation had nothing to do with him. Maybe if he wasn’t so high up on his judgmental pedestal he could see that everyone makes mistakes, and that’s when they need their friends to rally around them the most, whether you understand their mistakes or not.  I guess he wasn’t the person I thought he was.  It also bothers me because this whole thing didn’t need to happen.  Things could have ended peacefully.  Unfortunately, the psycho felt the need to be small, petty and unbelievably vindictive about it all.

So where does that leave me?  Honestly, I’m…well I’m not hurting so much as I am saddened, disturbed and pissed off by everything that happened today and the smallness and pettiness in people.  I’ll move on with my life, and because I’ve extracted myself from the place where all this went down, I’ll have a lot more time to focus on the things in my life that have been suffering due to my lack of attention.  My writing being the biggest one.  I haven’t done anything for this site in ages and I’m backed up with my screeners for Rogue Cinema.  I still have that movie script I need to finish too.

So although I’m hurt by all this, I just need to focus on the other things in my life that are good.  My wife Sharon is always supportive and I love her so much I can’t even tell you.  I just feel bad for her that she’s going to have to put up with me being down for a few days until I can get myself focused on other things.

Anyway, that’s it.  There won’t be any more posts about this crap.  From now on I’m going to go back to posting interesting and fun stuff.  All this other crap has dominated my life long enough.  God I hate petty people.

For all of you that still come to this site and are hoping I’ll start reviewing again, all I can tell you is, yes I’m going to.  When I will start up again I can’t tell you because I’m swamped with stuff for Rogue Cinema right now, but as soon as I get caught up on all that, expect to see some new reviews here.  I may even re-vamp the site, but I’m not sure yet.  I’ll have to do some experimenting with a CMS I want to try out and see if it’ll be suitable for what I’m doing here.

Anyway that’s it.  Thanks for indulging me with all this personal crap.  I just needed to get it out.  Blogs are really good for helping you to unload things you’ve been holding inside that are eating you up.   It’s like a release to just say what you have to say and get it out.  I’m glad I have a place where I can do that.  I tend to internalize my problems too much, and having this outlet really helps more than I could even tell you.

Anyway, back to normal here starting with the next post.  I promise.

I’ve had some events in my life recently that have gotten me thinking about loyalty, empathy and sensitivity.  These are some of the finest qualities any human can possess, and yet there seems to be so little of it in the people I encounter in my life.  Why is it that the people who supposedly love you or are supposedly your closest friends always seem to possess these qualities in minimal quantities if at all?  It’s extremely depressing to know that I can never count on anyone to truly be on my side, care about my feelings or really understand me and be sensitive to who I am as a person so they don’t hurt me.

I’ve had many times in my life where I would know a group of people and then suddenly one of them would turn on me for whatever reason.  All the rest of the people who were supposedly my friends and close to me, still associated with that person because that person didn’t do anything directly to them.  Some friends.  They would show no concern for my feelings or loyalty at all and just go on like everything was normal.  Yes this happened again just recently, and one of my “friends” who was the coldest and least sensitive about it all, is also one that I used to care a lot for.  She said she was just going to go right on associating with the other person just because they hadn’t done anything to her.  There wasn’t even any concern over how the whole incident affected me.  It was a cold and heartless response to it all and honestly, after everything that’s happened between me and that person aside from that recent incident, I wouldn’t walk two steps to piss on her if she were on fire.  I don’t want her in my life anymore…but unfortunately I’m too nice of a guy to just come right flat out and say it.

It happens all the time though.  I have people in my life who I think are my really close friends, but anytime I’m having problems or need a good friend to lean on, they’re nowhere to be found.  Let them need something though and I’m always there, and because my own personal sense of honor dictates that I should be there for them, I am, and I get used, and then when they don’t need me anymore, I’m tossed aside again.

I guess I always hope that someday I’ll find someone…a genuine friend…a best friend who will give me back all the loyalty, empathy and sensitivity that I give to them.  So far, I haven’t found a single person in my life I can have that kind of a relationship with.  Sometimes I really don’t know why I even bother going on with my life.  I’ve lost all hope in finding anything good in humanity, and my life has become one huge stagnant bore with nothing to look forward to and nothing that makes me genuinely happy.

Now when I say I’ve never found anyone, I exclude my wife Sharon from that.  She’s the one person in my life I can always count on to be on my side and love me and be sensitive to my feelings.  The problem is, she’s my wife, and as awesome as that is…she’s my wife.  I need someone outside, like a really good guy friend.  The sad part is, she’s just like me.  She needs someone too, and has no one for the exact same reasons I just stated.  So basically, we have each other and that’s it.  It’s awesome that we have each other, but sometimes, you just need that good, close friend on the outside that you can talk to and confide in and who’ll be there for you to take you out for a drink or to do something fun when you’re depressed and let you just get away from your life for a while.

I really wonder what’s happened to people.  Why are people so damn self centered and self absorbed that they can’t understand what it truly means to be a good friend to someone or to really love someone?  It’s a rare trait to find in this world now, and it’s especially painful to those of us who really understand what it is to be loyal, empathetic and sensitive to others while never receiving that back for ourselves.

I know this may seem a bit rambling, as I’ve been having a hard time putting the words together.  Let’s just say that the only thing keeping me alive at this point is the love I have with my wife Sharon.  If I didn’t have her, I’d have ended it long ago…for many reasons.  Believe me, there’s a laundry list of them.

Sorry for the depressing post, but they can’t all be upbeat and fun.  I’ll try to post something fun soon.

Yes I know it’s been a long time since I’ve made a post.  It was a combination of laziness on my part, general burnout, being busy with other stuff and having some personal issues I was dealing with.  So, I was sitting here tonight and thought to myself, “Hey, I should probably post in my blog again.”  So that’s what I’m doing.

Let’s see, what’s been irritating me lately…

This thing is Pakistan has really been irritating me.  First off, we should be supporting Musharref in his efforts to stop the muslim extremists from taking over his country’s government.  So what do we do?  We chastise him, tell him he was a bad boy and that he should step down as head of the military and become a civilian leader and hold elections on schedule.  Where the hell do we get off telling him what to do in his own country?  He did a good thing, he’s been an ally, which is more than can be said for most of the other countries over there…so what the hell is our government thinking?

See, when someone like that ass down in Venezuela cracks down on his people, he’s doing it to be a dictator and a tyrant.  That’s wrong and should be stopped.  What Musharref did was for the good of his country.  That should be supported.  Besides, Pakistan has nukes.  The last thing we need are muslim extremists taking over the government there.  That’s why I’m so baffled by our government’s response to what’s going on.

The problem with our government is that they try to be politically correct all the time instead of doing what’s necessary to fight this war and win it.  As long as we have idiots running our government who don’t have the balls to do what’s necessary to win this war, it’s never going to be over.  Unfortunately, the mindless sheep in this country keep voting for people in one of the two major parties, both of which are completely full of self serving morons.  So until people wise up and vote those two parties out of office, nothing is going to change.  We need strong and resolute leadership, and that’s something we’ll never have again I fear.

So what else…

Well, October started off bad for me.  I had a week long SEVERE stomach flu.  When I say severe, I mean I was like a fountain for a week and I had a fever that went up and down like a yo yo and actually broke no less than five times, if not more.  It had a couple of major breaks where I woke up just literally drenched in sweat.  It was really bad.

At the end of October I went to the It Came From Lake Michigan! 2007 film festival.  I had a great time and hung out with lots of great people.  I also taught two classes.  You can read all about it in my write-up in the latest issue of Rogue Cinema.

Ok, now what…

Oh, a week or two ago I was reading about how christian groups were bitching about some movie coming out that they say is pushing atheism on young people and they were protesting it.  First of all, christians never seem to have a problem brainwashing young people with christianity, so I don’t see how they can bitch about a movie that presents an alternative point of view.  Second, if their religion’s basis is so weak that it can’t stand scrutiny or debate, then maybe they should re-think their belief in it.  This world is full of religious idiots from all religions who feel that only their religion is the right one and it’s their duty to impose it on everyone else whether they like it or not.  This world would be a hell of a lot better and nicer place if they would all just keep their religion to themselves and let people believe however they want to believe and just accept that everyone is different and have their own individual beliefs.

Ok, what next…

I’ve got a huge number of screeners to review for the next issue of Rogue Cinema.  I don’t know how I’m gonna get through them all.  I’m just going to have to pace myself I guess.  I’ve watched some of them.  I have a bunch more to watch though.  It’s going to be a nightmare writing up all those reviews.  Between stuff that was sent to me and stuff I picked up at the film festival, I’m just swamped.  Plus I still have some interview questions I need to write up and send off.  Man…busy busy busy!

I might have a web design job coming up soon too.  Not sure if it’ll come through, but so far it looks good.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.  We could really use the money.

And finally…

I had a really nice time with Sharon last night.  It’s funny how simple things can give you so much pleasure.  We drove over to Winco (24 hour grocery store) and picked up some iced tea and snacks.  Then we just sat in the car in a dark part of the parking lot and smoked some pipe tobacco cigars while we listened to the radio and talked about stuff.  It was just a really nice and relaxing time.  Aside from being married, Sharon and I are best friends, so we really enjoy those moments like that together just simply because we enjoy being with each other.  We should really do that more often.

I guess that’s it for now.  I’ve kinda caught you all up some with what’s been going on, bitched about a few things and generally re-established my presence.  I’ll try to be better about posting more.  I’m sure I can find plenty to bitch about without even trying hard.