Not much to report today, this has been a pretty quiet week altogether. Earlier this week I went down to an auction with my brother and bid on a number of different items, including a large commercial copier. I managed to pick it up for what I thought was a pretty low price. But now I’m not so sure. I can only hope that I can sell it on eBay or to Craigslist and make a decent little profit.

Other than that, I’ve been thinking about some interesting job suggestions. Sometime last year, I entertained the idea of becoming a travel agent. We actually have a friend of the family who is one. And although she doesn’t make a great deal of money, she makes very good money. She has been doing it for some time.

The only question is the certification. Liberty Travel is the best place to get started, but they have stringent rules against applicants with checkered backgrounds (that would be me). So I’m going to call her this week and find out what the requirements are to get certified on my own.

If I can pursue training and certification locally or online, that might not be a bad job for me to do. At least I could do that until I make up enough capital to do something else with my life. Or I could remain self-employed in the travel business and just enjoy all the perks, including the opportunity to travel to different places all around the world.

It’s also the divisional round of the NFL playoffs today. Although my Dolphins are out of it, I have a couple of other teams I’m pulling for. In the NFC, I’d like to see the New Orleans Saints go all the way. In the AFC, I’d like to see my other “hometown” team, the San Diego Chargers, win it all.

See you all on Monday!

Here are some new promotional images of the sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean. The third part of the trilogy is called Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End. Some of these may be used in the in the movie poster artwork. Others are just theater cards.

Pretty cool! I really enjoyed the first movie, but thought the second one was a little silly. Hopefully the final part of the trilogy brings it all together.

Click each thumbnail below to open a full-sized window. The first image is a widescreen wallpaper.

Rotten Tomatoes is one of my favorite sites for checking movie reviews, and they recently had sort of a year-end review.  They compiled the best and worst movies by genre.  The tomato rating number is based on reviews compiled from print and television. The more positive reviews, the higher the tomato rating.

Anyway, I just thought it was cool that most of my favorite movies of last year also happen to be among the best reviewed.  They included Borat, The Departed and Casino Royale.  All were movies that I’ve profiled here (and had been looking forward to) before they were released.

Special props to my favorite director of new horror movies, Neal Marshall, and his most recent film: The Descent.  I’m a big fan of his first movie, Dog Soldiers.  And I spent almost a year telling everyone how great I thought Descent would be.  Vindication!

Article:

“Casino Royale” and “The Queen” are more than just two of 2006’s most favorably reviewed films — on Wednesday they became winners of the eighth annual Golden Tomato Awards.

The Golden Tomato Awards honor the best-reviewed films of the year as determined by the Web site Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews from print, online and broadcast film critics to measure the percentage of favorable critiques.

“The Queen,” a drama about British royalty, racked up a 98 percent ranking. The James Bond flick “Casino Royale” grabbed 95 percent.

“Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” took the Golden Tomato for comedy. “Cars” won for animated film, “The Departed” was named best thriller and “Pan’s Labyrinth” was best foreign film.

“Children of Men” took science-fiction honors, “The Descent” won for horror film and “Lassie” was the top family flick. “The Science of Sleep” was named best romance and “Wordplay” won in the documentary category.

The Moldy Tomato, awarded to the worst-reviewed film of the year, went to “Basic Instinct 2.”

Here’s a pretty cool music video from the archives of my hard drive. The single goes back, maybe seven or eight years, I’m not sure. But I do remember it was my favorite Stone Temple Pilots song, and it features the lovely Chosen One herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Anyone who knows me knows that my favorite show of all time is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So that makes this particular cool video even cooler still. Enjoy.

I have been really jonesin for this game ever since I first saw the trailers for it about three weeks ago. It’s due out for the end of January, and I hope they hold to that date. Lately it seems every video game I like is pushed back - often for months. I’ve been waiting on Forza 2 Motorsports for about three months now, and that one isn’t due until about April at the earliest.

Battle Stations Midway is going to really rock in online multiplayer. I can’t wait to get my WW II on with other strategists around the globe. Here’s the description from IGN:

Battlestations: Midway blends intense 3rd-person action with epic, large-scale naval combat and brings to life the great Pacific battles of World War II. From the chaos of Pearl Harbor, through the Philippines, Java and the Coral Sea all the way to the epic Battle of Midway.

Players can relive classic battles with realistic locations and accurate historical detail and take part in huge multi-unit online battles with up to eight players controlling over 60 units. Players can take direct control of over 60 different warships, planes and submarines, many of which are based on actual historical vehicles, from a 3rd-person perspective.

Single Player mode features 11 large-scale campaigns with 12 bonus challenge missions while the online multi-player combat offers an entirely new online battle experience and features head-to-head and co-operative battles featuring over 60 Allied and Japanese units.

Check Out the Trailer right here!

In the last two months or so, I’ve become quite interested in the phenomenon of YouTube. I starting by watching some funny video clips and other ones about music and video games and such. That was followed with subscribing to some of the funny, cute girls who post personal videos there (more on that in another article!).

Anyway, here in my A/V Club posts I’ve put up some of those videos and I have a pretty cool one to share today. It premiered months ago and I ‘favorited’ it; now it’s your turn to see some of what I’ve been watching.

‘YouTubers’ is a short video showcasing various YT members. It’s actually quite a poignant and humanistic view of my fellow man - which is something I usually don’t appreciate.

Well there hasn’t been much new to report here over the last month. Many of the entrepreneurial ideas I’ve been trying to implement have been falling through, including my RV idea. I picked up some new e-books and really considered going back into some sort of short-term retail business on eBay. But every time I research something, it seems to fall through.

And I’m almost completely out of capital.

The real irony is that I continue to play blackjack and make thousands of dollars using play money. I’d like to do something short-term to at least work up enough savings so that I can get back into playing professionally. I was just getting good at it and becoming successful with the Cipher program when my reserves got too low to risk anything.

And it seems that every year at this time my life seems to go south. Looking back over the last six years, it seems that every year some terrible catastrophe always happens sometime between October and December. During these periods, I have had business problems, including customer fraud and the loss of my business’s merchant account. And I have lost two homes in the last four years, all before Christmas.

The only equity I have left right now is the car. The obvious problem here is that by selling the car I will have nothing to drive. Perhaps it is time to cut my losses and leave the U.S. for good.

I know one thing that cannot continue is my state of mind. Every day, I struggle with feelings of depression and hopelessness. What’s worse is that these feelings have sapped away any energy and vitality that I might have to fight my way back. I have fallen into the old cycle of procrastination and despair.

I spend much of my time now just reading blogs and surfing the web. It’s like I’m still trying to find that next great idea that will pull the nose up on this plane one more time.

There have been periods here that I have not even been updating this blog regularly. I try to make at least one post every weekday, but for the last three weeks I haven’t much felt like writing anything.

In the past, the New Year has brought renewed hope and some clever idea out of the blue. I hope that’s the case now in 2007. And I hope that this time I can maintain enough momentum to pull the nose up on this plane for good and soar ahead into a brighter future. (Could that possibly have sounded any more gay?)

Not to sound too needy, but if there’s anyone out there now still reading this, a few comments would surely help. I’m not usually this whiny, but I figure my server stats say there are about 30,000 of you visiting every week - mostly checking out Becky the Prank Caller. So how’s about throwing a little love my way?

Man, what the hell has become of my life..?

Been very down this holiday season and new year. 2006 goes into the books as another one that’s ended badly. Anyway, there isn’t much to be thankful for (or even hopeful about) and I feel like I may be playing out the last of the string.

One bright spot was watching a fun movie recently that featured a song I was unfamiliar with. It was this little gem by Billy Joel - and I thought I’d share it with you.

As always, my policy is that if anyone would like a download link for this song, just make a Comment below and ask - I’ll hook you up with a link in a comment-reply of my own (check back with this article). Download links are automatically embedded in my RSS feeds.