The Pot and The Kettle

My 20's were so early 2000 anyway.

First sign I am in my 30's.....glasses! My dilfy eye doctor said upon meeting me for the the first time, "Well, Paul, you almost made it to 30." I would have hated him if he wasn't a potential dilf.

I officially have 2 months to go til I am 30. I don't think I mind just yet, but I am in denial, because we all know that being a 30year old just doesn't make sense for me. There is practically nothing adult about my life - except the movies I like. Zinger.

When chatting with someone recently, I told him I didn't believe in goals. His goal for me was annoying and overstepped many many boundaries, but then he got freaky angry with me for not believing in goals. I did one time think I might finish my MA before I turned 30. That ain't happening, but things may work well to at least finish it while I am still 30. So that could be something kinda. Most people are able to do it when they are like 25, but so what. I am all about jinxing myself anyway. I need to do something to provide excitement for me.

More on my trek to Planet 30 soonish.

Here's a rundown of the netflix brouhaha disaster.

1. Netflix.com went back up late Tuesday afternoon, Eastern Time.
2. They did in fact receive The Diary of Anne Frank. Phew. We are very surprised about that given yesterday's mass-hysteria.
3. They said they were mailing my next movie, The Man Who Loved Women yesterday (Tuesday) so that it would arrive today Wednesday. They either 3a) didn't mail it, 3b) mailed it extra slow or 3c) mailed it from Oklahoma City instead of fun, close New Brunswick, New Jersey because it is not in my mailbox today.
4. Today they should have received All of Me, a stupid Steve Martin movie, to be remade with Queen Latifah in the Lily Tomlin role and Martin perhaps reprising his own role. Incredibly dumb, right? Right. They did receive All of Me today, but they also should have received The Departed as I mailed it at the exact same time from the exact same mailbox. Somehow, they didn't get it. Ridonkulous.
5. According to Yahoo news:

Hoping to retain more of its current customers while enticing new subscribers, Netflix is decreasing monthly fees by $1 on its two most popular plans to match Blockbuster's prices for comparable Internet-only services.

Love the idea in theory, but why only $1 off its two most popular subscriptions? Of the two, I subscribe to neither of those plans. This selective deal-making and seems like I am living in feudal times. Silly idea, netflix. I mean, I want a dollar off, or at least my movies to be sent and received in a timely manner.
6. I think it would be fun if netflix sent all of their subscribers a fun apology email, don't you? Maybe the power of the blog will make that happen.

Labels: apology, disaster, netflix

Here at Pot 'N Kettle, we are closely - CLOSELY - tracking this story. The Netflix website has been down since last night (Monday). Frequent visits to the website have issued times when it was expected to be up and running again. Those times seem to be changing continuously. Originally, the website was to back live Monday, then early Tuesday morning, now we are looking Tuesday afternoon. Currently, the website is not even giving a time when it expects to be back up, only the following message:

The Netflix web site is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes you. Please visit us again soon. You can contact Netflix Customer Service at 1-888-638-3549.

Curiouser and curiouser. Apparently the website went down as Netflix was updating its computers to reflect price drops. If the price of my subscription drops, I will probably overlook this whole thing. I have a feeling it won't though. We'll see. Or maybe we won't see anytime soon. The price drop will only be for new customers or some other bogus idea.

In an article from the washingtonpost.com, one can find the following bits of news as well: To make matters worse [falling stocks], Netflix's Web site _ the hub of its rental system _ went down Monday evening and remained inaccessible as of Tuesday afternoon (EDT). Spokesman Steve Swasey attributed the outage to an unanticipated problem that he declined to describe. Engineers hoped to fix the trouble by 2 p.m. EDT.

I am not going to criticize Netflix's customer service just yet, because I find its website pretty top-notch on the whole, and they almost always respond to my emails. Its speediness has frustrated me in the past, however; as the website has chosen to either not reflect returns they have received from me, and/or decided to ship me movies days later than they should have, from obscure locations (Tacoma, Seattle, Sante Fe, what have you).

Today they should have received from The Diary of Anne Frank - which was ok, if angelic Anne Frank was a tickle grating. Shelley Winters somehow won an Oscar for an amazingly minimal role. Even if the website is down, I would imagine they could still process my new movie, right? We'll see, but I am not optimistic. Tomorrow they should receive from me The Departed and All of Me. My parents have had The Departed for a relatively short amount of time - for them - as they tend to ask me for good movies, only to never watch them, and then screw up everything. All of Me was a horrible mess, but I couldnt help wanting to know how it ended. Alas.

Updates soon. This is more exciting than the NYC pipe explosion coverage. This is the kind of slip that may make me go running to Blockbuster. Just kidding! I would never revert to that infringement franchise! Long Live Netflix.

Labels: blockbuster, netflix, website crash

The 2008 Olympics are nearly upon us. It will be a mess. A big Communist mess. as we learned from Animal Farm. And once again, everything bad in the world all comes down to Animal Farm.

First we heard of the tricky problem of ticket prices. No one in China can afford to go, not even when tickets are going as cheaply as $16!

But even at these rates, Olympic seats will be too expensive for many of China's 1.3billion citizens, who live on less than $350 a year.

However, the prices will be highly affordable for the country's rapidly growing middle class - those earning at least $10,000 a year, most of whom live in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Li Qian, 28, a professional who lives in Beijing, said the tickets were cheap. "To watch an Olympic Games is a once-in-a lifetime experience. [The cost] is nothing - it's the cost of admission to a dance party or a dinner with friends. I pay [about the same] for one session of yoga in Beijing." Citation

What is Li doing even going to Yoga!!?!? That's a story for another time, I suppose, but I can't imagine the Animal Farm chickens would be able to go to the Olympics, let alone do fun yoga.

Second, we have this fun story: Olympic organizers want the Chinese people to be nicer.

With most venues for the 2008 Summer Olympics near completion, organisers said Beijingers still had to work on improving their behaviour in order to hold a successful Games, state press said Monday.

"The Olympic Games is not simply a matter of competitive sports -- it is also a question of raising the quality of the people," the China Youth Daily quoted Zhang Faqiang, vice head of the Beijing Olympic organising committee as saying.

Damn. Smackdown on rude China. The quality of the people need to be raised. This won't be the fun Lillehammer Olympic village I guess.

3. And most bizarre. China wants to ensure nice Olympic weather. Which is a nice intent. But in an freaky Mr. Burns blacking out the sun kind-of idea, here is how they want to produce nice weather: Cloud-scaring rockets.

China will fire rockets into the sky to scatter any rain clouds ahead of next year's Beijing Olympics to ensure perfect weather, state media said on Tuesday.

China has already guaranteed perfect weather for the August 2008 Games, but until now had not said how it would make sure its forecast comes true.

Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Association, announced the decision to use rockets in Beijing on Monday, the China Daily said.

Exsqueeze me, Zheng? This seems a tickle extreme. If this were Ok, wouldn't say Wimbledon, major gold tourneys, hell, even the commercially driven Superbowl want to employ these nice weather rockets? How about some rockets to drive some manners into the Chinese, which I guess is necessary as well?

I digress. Lindsay Davenport is maybe eyeing a U.S. Doubles spot. 2008 is gonna need some joy like this, as it will be headache inducing political year.

Labels: Emmy, Jenna Fisher, Pam, The Office

This is what we love about Wimbledon.










This is what we hate.