Filsinger.org

I just finished reading my friends blog inwardaudio, and he did his year end list of favourites.  He decided to pick his top 5 albums, movies and the like.  I read lists on the internet a lot, Top 10 miscast actors, Top 5 worst movies of all time, Top 5 overpaid hockey players, Top 10 top 10 lists, etc.  So I figured why not write my own lists.  I decided to go with top 3, to keep it short, readable and to write on a bunch more topics.  These aren’t necessarily things that were created in 2008, just things that impacted my year.

Top 3 Movies (get the obvious one out of the way).

1. Dark Knight - Perhaps the best superhero movie ever made, also one of only few movies I’ve seen twice in theaters.

2. CloverField – I was expecting a lot from JJ Abrams monster flick and it delivered.  It has serious hype going into it as what the monster would look like and it delivered.  It felt gritty, non-Hollywood, and left mystery for an sequal without being dumb.

3. Burn After Reading – One of the most unique, character comedies of all time.  Definitely macabre, dark, and a great laugh.

Top 3 Books.

1.  The Road by Cormac McCarthy – A dark tale of father just trying to take care of his son in Post Apocalyptic world.  He is better known for his writting of “No Country for Old Men”.

2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – A sci-fi book written in the 1950s that predicts the ipod and plasma TVs.  A great story about the struggle for a man’s humanity.  One of the great quotes from the book is “We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

3. unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.

I’m not done reading this book, but I’m fairly close, and will finish it before the year is out.  The book summarizes in painful detail what I have been suspecting for quite some time, that Christianity in North America is largely hated for what it has become and has obviously lost it’s roots in what really matters.  We have lost our love for the hurt, the oppressed and the poor.  Instead we have made crusades against so called morale issues which at the end of the day get us next to nothing.  If you are a christian, or not, you need to read this book, and see how we really should be portraying Jesus to the world.

Top 3 trips

1. Las Vegas in December – I get to travel considerable amounts, and this year was no exception.  But the trip that gets #1 on my list is my vacation to Las Vegas where I got see the Blue Man group and enjoy some nice weather during the cold month in PEI.

2. Florida in February – Jenn and I went to Florida and Disney World in February and had a great time seeing all 4 theme parks.  Something we are glad we did once, but probably won’t do again.

3. Youth Workers Conference in Toronto – Just before I left to Vegas I got to attend the Youth Workers Conference in Toronto.  It was amazing, I got to hear Tony Campollo and listen to Starfield, and heard a some really great discussions on Youth Culture and where ministry is headed.  Oh and I caught a leafs game too.

Top 3 Video Games

1. Fallout 3 – All the fallout enthusiasts hated it.  I loved it.  It had the perfect balance of story telling, RPG, real time gameplay and you can go anywhere and do anything.  I will be playing through this game again, and I don’t do that very often.  Sadly the weakest part of the whole game was the ending, no one can ever get that right.

2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - This game came out in November 2007, but I did not buy it until this year.  It was crazy awesome, got me to finally accept shooters on a console and it probably won’t be outdone until Call of Duty 6.(COD5 sucks)

3. Star Wars: Force Unleashed – There were moments in this game of pure brilliance.  At times, I would sit down and say “Oh Crap that was pure awesome”, but… There were parts in this game that made it utter crap.  Such as the death destroyer boss fight, and some of the design choices.  This game might not be worth $60, but if you have a friend who has it borrow it, because it is definitely worth a single play through for the story and the really high production level.

Top 3 Most disappointing Movies.

1. Quantum of Solace – Read my Girls, Guns and Gadgets review.  But essentially, this latest Bond outing had a fairly confusing plot based around water… no seriously.  I was not left satisfied.

2. Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – Overall the movie was a typical Indiana Jones movie, but some parts of the movie were just really dumb.  ie. The monkey in the trees scene.  It just ruined it.

3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars – This movie was epicly bad.  I love the Star Wars Universe, and I love cartoons.  I had extremely low expectations for this movie, I was going into treating the movie as no more then a single episode of a Saturday morning Cartoon show.  It turned out to be worst then most of the crap out on TV nowadays.  I was thoroughly disappointed, and that was going to be hard to do, considering I really expected it to be bad.  I love the Friday evening 20 minute cartoon that they have put out, any one of those episodes is better then the trash they tried to call a movie.  (Yes even the JarJar episode…. shudder).

Top 3 Youtube Clips:

1. Chimpanzee Riding on a Segway - This video stumbled on my lap this week.  It is pure comedy gold, if you are a having a bad day, this is a must watch.

2. Double Knockout – I’ve really gotten into MMA this year, and this clip speaks for itself.

3. LOL PATRIOTS LOST

Top 3 Pictures

1. Daily Dose of Imagery – Lightning at Sunset

2. Man Using a Jetpack to fly - We are in the future.

3. My own photo just cause its funny

Top 3 Websites in no particular order:

1. www.digg.com - A great place for wacky news and interesting links.  Social news at its best.

2. http://www.google.ca/ig?hl=en – The place where I keep all my RSS feeds in one tiddy spot.  Helps me through the day to keep up to date on all my news, blogs and sports scores.  If you haven’t set this up for yourself, you are missing out.  I have 25+ news feeds for various things such as video games, cnn, sports scores, blogs, twitter, my gmail account, on one easy to read page.

3. www.flickr.com – I am starting to get into photography as a hobby.  This is the site to go for great pictures, sharing yours with people and getting great ideas.  Oh and it’s free.

Runner up – www.failblog.org - they make me laugh a lot.

Top 3 Shows

1. Lost – Amazingly mysterious has me super hooked.  Comes back in like a month… can’t wait.

2. The Office – Always makes laugh, check out the British version of the show if you haven’t.

3. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – I love this show, a few episodes have been weak, but overall a great waste of an hour.

Runner up – Heroes – It had its moments this year, but some of the character plots were absolutely terrible.  I’m looking at you Hiro.

Top 3 Places to eat

1. Churchill Arms - If you love curry and have extra time on a Wednesday, make sure you go and check them out.

2. Thai Food - It’s in a guys house and that is really the name of the restaurant, thats all I need to say… yummm.

3. Downtown Deli - Friend showed me this place, have yet to be disapointed with what I’ve ordered.  Great lunch time choice.

Top 3 Anticipated Movies in 2009

1. Star Trek - JJ Abrams takes the helm and casts Siler from Heroes.  Could be amazing, could suck, but I can’t wait.

2. GI Joe: The Ries of Cobra - A large part of my child hood… please don’t suck, please don’t suck

3. The Watchman – Based on the graphic novel that I have not read, but it looks freaking sweet.

Runner up Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen – I liked the first one, but I have a feeling this one is going to tank hard… but I’m still looking forward to it a lot.

Top 3 Purchases:

1. Suzuki SX-4 – After a long battle with what to buy, we decided to lease this car.  I love it, and don’t regret the decision at all.

2. Xbox 360 - I finally moved into next gen gaming and have loved almost every minute of it.

3. New Pair of Vans – I had to replace my Elements that I paid $10 for… and this was a good choice.  And I got them for $35.

Top 3 Bands I did not know existed in 2007

1. John Butler Trio - Great guitar, catchy melodies and songs that make you smile.

2. PowerGlove – prog metal + video games.  That’s all I need to say.

3. The Myriad – Just heard them yesterday and I can’t think of anything else.  Worth the $8 off iTunes for sure.

That is it for now.. I may add more later.. if anyone has made it this far… i’d be surprised.  If you did, email me at filsinger@gmail.com and I’ll have a prize for you… lol.

When I was in high school I loved the X-Files. It had one of the greatest opening theme songs of all time. On the creepiness level, it was only matched by Robert Stack and the Unsolved Mysteries opening theme.

After being off air for quite a long time, and most fans believing the show was long over before it technically stopped filming. (I say when Mulder was pulled from the show and replaced with the guy from Terminator). It has come back with movie. Was it time for another movie? Yeah I think so. What do I think of it now? Well… here is the cliff notes version of my review. The movie would have made a decent single episode, but it doesn’t stand well on its own as a movie.

The plot is surrounded around an FBI agent who is abducted because she swims at a local pool. Some priest dude has a psychic connection to case and is helping the FBI search her out. They don’t understand the freak priest and call on Mulder to help. He hasn’t done any FBI work in 10 years and looks like a mountain man. For all the paranormal stuff that went on during the show, they pick a little psychic connection to bring him out of hiding. I was hoping for something a little more grandeur like an alien invasion or werewolves, or talking trees, not a Frankenstein doctor and a psychic.. boring.

Anyway, there is lots of chasing, and fights, and guns being pointed and xzibit complaining about Mulder, and hot Scully ranting about child care. The movie wasn’t that great… if it were just a simple episode of the show, my opinion would have changed. It did make me realize how much I miss this show, and Fringe is not much of a substitute, but yet I watch.

Is it worth a rent? Yeah for all you X-Files fans out there, if you weren’t a fan of the show stay away. I give it 7 bleeding eye pedophile psychic priests out of 10.

I just finished reading an article about a guy who came up with the simple idea to have someone pay him to wear their companies tshirt. He is charging $1 a day on January first, then each day will add +$1. So on December 31, 2009, it will cost you $365 to buy that day. In the end he’ll have made over $66,000. This is exactly the type of idea that I love. Simple, and in the end what do you have to lose? It reminds me a lot like the millionpixels guy who made over a million dollars selling 1 million pixels for $1 each.

This is the guys website

http://www.iwearyourshirt.com/

Here is the article where I heard about it:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/12/iwearyourshirt.html

Like any good idea, someone has already stole it, and a girl is doing it.

… again… why didnt I think of this. It’s so simple.

www.redpaperclip.com <– for another similar story… guy uses a paper clip to get a free house.

I think the picture speaks for itself.  This was taken in Las Vegas at the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino.

From Las Vegas

This was taken down near the Welcome To Las Vegas sign.  It also speaks for itself.

From Las Vegas

I need to preface this article with a bit of a back story.  When I moved out to Calgary in 1999, I was introduced to the absolute magical world of Slurpees.  Eventually, after many, many trips to various crushed ice dispensing units I began to develop very strong opinions on the subject and at some point made the jump from mere drinker, to connoisseur of this wonderful beverage.  Over the years I developed what I called my slurpee rating scale, and drinker types.  Fast forward 7 years, and I was in Toronto with my Youth Group explaining this to someone while enjoying a slurpee (which is very rare for me now).  I was fairly certain she thought me to be a lune, but a few months later she sends me an email requesting me to write up my thoughts on the subject.  So without further adieu I present to you “The Hierarchy of Slurpees: An expose on the intracies of flavoured crushed ice.”

What makes a good Slurpee?

Before you can begin a discussion on a topic, you need to define it.  What makes a good slurpee can be a bit subjective, but I believe a consensus can be made.  When I look for slurpees, there are primarily three characteristics that I look for.

• Thickness – The slurpee must be thick as all can be.  There is a direct correlation to the length of time it takes you to pour your slurpee and it’s quality.  You can plot this on a graph, I’m sure of it.
• Size of the Ice – Similar to thickness, if the size of the crushed ice is big, your slurpee will be crap.  If the ice particles are size of a sand or smaller, your slurpee will be heavenly.
• Colour – Now since I’m a purist (more on that later), I drink Coke only.  So the darker the slurpee the better.  If it’s black its gonna be awesome, if it’s light brown or close to white, it will be poo.

Now that, that is out of the way.  I’ll move onto the next topic.  The Ranking system I’ve developped.  This is probably not entirely accurate as I have not spent a significant amount of time testing the local watering holes since I no longer live out West, but this will be done completely based on my memory.

Store Quality

• 7-11 24th Ave/4th St NW Calgary – 11/10 – The absolute perfect Slurpee.  Thick, Dark, and very very tasty.  Undisputedly the best place in all of Calgary to buy a Slurpee.  It is pure perfection.  They keep their machine clean, they do not get a lot off foot traffic so the machine gets to reach the -2C it needs to be for proper serving.  Stay away from it’s close cousin on 16th Ave.  They have perhaps the worst Slurpees in Calgary(I believe this is primarily to the amount of foot traffic/Slurpees they sell)
• 7-11 – 10/10 – They invented the Slurpee, they own the name, they perfected it.  There is simply no one in the world that makes a better Slurpee.  This cannot be argued, this is fact.  Now, there are stores which are not run properly and their individual rankings can drop below non-7-11 stores, but essentially they are the undisputed kings of the Slurpee.
• Macs - 8.5/10 – Easily the second runner up to the Slurpee crown.  Their slurpees or “slushies” come a very close second to the king.  Their machines are generally very cold, clean, have a variety of flavours and I’ve had Mac Slurpees that rank in my top 10 of all time.  They won’t dethrone the King at any time, but on a hot summer day, they are a great alternative and you should never be ashamed to hold a Macs Slurpee in your hand.  These are also called Slushies, but that is because 7-11 owns the word “Slurpee”.
• American 7-11 – 6/10 - They inject their Slurpees with air.  This degrades the overall quality and makes it so that consumer gets less Slurpee in the cup.  Good stuff, but not quite as good as they could be. edit: I recently had one of these, and the addition of air just ruins it.
• Esso Gas Station - 2.5/10 – Pretty much the same quality as Shell, sometimes they will eek out a passable drink, but that is such a rare occasion you might just see an eclipse that night.
• Shell Gas Station – 2/10 – You might as well just buy a can of pop and stick in your freezer for 3 days.  It will be better than this mess they try and pass off of as Slurpees.  They are always full of air, are watered down, and their ice is the size of finger nails.  It’s gross and a waste of your money.
• Insert Local Corner Store Name Here – 0/10 – Don’t.  Just save yourself the tears and don’t.  They are usually slush puppie machines that taste like dirt.

Types of Slurpee Drinkers

• The Traditionalist - Someone who drinks nothing but Coke or Pepsi.  They do not mix.  They do not try “other” flavours.  They are the purist, only Coke will do.  I am such a drinker.
• The Mixer – These people layer their Slurpee with 2 or more flavours.  I personally don’t understand their approach, but to each their own.
• Flavour Shooters – You fill your cup with 98% of one flavour and add a quick shot of another at the end and mix it in.  This way you can make a “Cherry Coke” slurpee, or a sprig of lemon flavour to your grape.  Has it’s value in certain conditions.
• The Fruit – This is not a derogetory term.  They simply just like non-pop related flavours.  You will see them drinking mostly grape, orange, lemon, lime and the like.
• The Floater – They like to mix pop with their Slurpee.  I know, it does not make sense
• Hardcore – These people buy the 2L heavy duty mugs and drink 3 a day.  They can be any of the above drinkers, but do it to the extreme.

Technique

After drinking a few Slurpees you will begin to notice that about half way through your drink, the bottom will become white, and pieces of ice will form.  To negate this, there is a trick.  Get two straws.  Yup, every serious Slurpee drinker, must grab two straws.  The reason for this, is that it allows you to mix up your Slurpee constantly, maintaining that freshly poured consistency.  Without this, you can easily ruin your Slurpee without paying attention.  Secondly, on a hot day, your Slurpee will melt and the bottom will form a liquid faster.  To counter act this phenomenon and keep a strong thickness, you will need to use one straw and suck up the melted Slurpee as fast as possible, while stirring.  Repeat as necessary.

If you drink it too fast, you will run into a BrainFreeze.  This will happen, it sucks, but you can counter act it fairly quickly.  There are two ways to do this.  First press your tongue to the back roof of your mouth.  Or two, open your mouth wide and breath in.  This will help with the pain, that should go away quickly, but hurts like crazy.

Random Slurpee Facts

• Winnipeg is the Slurpee capital of the world. They sell more there then any where else.
• All Slurpees are sold at -2C(28F).
• When Slurpee first hit the market, it wasn’t self-serve. The machine was behind the counter and the clerk served the product to you.
• Slurpee Day is July 11th. – Mark it on your calendar.
• Every year enough Slurpee drinks are sold to fill up 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
• The scientific name for BrainFreeze it is Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia.
• Bob Stanford, a 7-Eleven agency director, coined the term “Slurpee” in 1967.

To conclude, not all Slurpees are created equal and the lower quality ones should never under any circumstance be called Slurpees.  It’s just wrong to do so.  I live on the east coast of Canada, and unfortunately we do not have a 7-11 or a Macs close by.  So I have gone Slurpeeless for quite a long time.  If anyone reads this, and thinks of anything I missed, I would be glad to have your feedback.  You can contact me at filsinger[at]gmail.com.

I’m lazy.  I have some great idea for some blog posts, and well then I get lazy and don’t do them.  I just finished some work I had to do, so I figured I’d blog.  I write movie reviews, and I doubt anyone reads them, but here is another one.

I rented Hancock this weekend.  I wasn’t expecting much, it wasn’t very much of a movie, but overall, it was worth $5 and 2 hours of my time.

They tried a new approach to the super hero genre that has been making millions, and millions, actually probably billions of dollars over the last few years.  There have been some great super hero movies and some not so great ones *cough*spiderman3*cough.  This came across somewhere in the middle of the mediocore gooey center of that list.

They tried to be edgy, Hancock is this angry old drunk who likes nobody, mr. arrested development comes and perks him up.  He saves the day, there is a twist, a hot girl is involved in the middle and a happy ending.  Your usual affair.  The movie really could have been awesome, if it had ended about 5 minutes before it actually did.  Just one time I want Hollywood not setup a sequal.  It would have really stood out as something different.  Oh well, it made 100mil+… what do you expect? Will Smith’s is like an instant guaranteed 100mil at the box office.  It’s just as automatic as Tim Horton’s coffee making me feel like the day has started.

Overall I give it 6.5 broken buildings out of 10.