I CAN beat the KFC $10 Challenge!

OK. So you see those stupid YUM! Brand Kentucky Fried Chipmunks
commercial where this "family" goes to the supermarket to see if they
can do a KFC Family meal by buying it at the grocery store.

What it consists of is Biscuits, 1 side (like baked beans), and 7 pieces
of chicken. The meal, that is. Let's not forget coleslaw. Most people
want that. Or corn. Hey, let's consider it all.

Now, right off the bat, I'm going for the cheapest route for this meal.
So let's knock off the Biscuits, pre-made, in a tube. And for the sake
of prices, we're Buying It All at Aldi's. Biscuits right now are about
$1.20 for the tube, grand buttermilk style.

Corn in a can, whole kernel, is 45 cents. or just under.

Chicken in pieces for frying. Prolly about $4.00 or so. I'll have to
check this. Remember, these are ALDI'S prices. not some rip-off major
chain like Giant Eagle. Aldi's even beats Walmart a lot of the time.
anywho, consider it a 3 pound bag, frozen.

OK. So now you need to find a way to coat the chicken before you cook
it. Flour is likely in the coating. You can either use a packet of dry
Italian dressing mix or try this, which you can find on the net:

Garlic Salt (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Onion Powder (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Sugar (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Oregano (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Black Pepper (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Thyme (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Basil (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Parsley (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Celery Salt (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Salt (1 Tablespoon per serving)
Paprika (1 Tablespoon per serving)

I'm not sure what else you'd need to do to coat the chicken, but let's
say you already have those "herbs and spices" (I know we do!) and the
flour = Cost $0. Total $5.65 so far.

Now the actual secret behind cooking the chicken is to use a PRESSURE
COOKER. This keeps the juices in the meat. Even Red Barn restaurants
knew this! So let's just say you have one of these, too. And vegetable
oil. I guess you could try to pan fry the chicken, or put it in a
covered roaster in the oven.

Anywho, let's see.. if I go to Aldi's and buy the chicken and the
biscuits, perhaps a can or 2 of corn, I still have some leeway and still
be under $10 if I go to one store and get a 2 liter bottle of Coke Zero
for about $1.15 and STILL be under $10. Or if I have to change my price
on the frozen pieces of frying chicken up $2 - I'd STILL beat the KFC
Challenge. I can add coleslaw and dressing and STILL beat it. I know
where the best prices for all that are to be found.

Sorry, YUM. You lose again.

It's pathetic.

BTW: Have you ever noticed that 20 oz bottles of pop cost more than 2
liter bottles? Those have 67.63 ounces in them! Why do 20 oz bottles of
pop cost more? It doesn't make sense.

And for you idiots who hate the use of the word "pop" for "carbonated
soft drinks," you're still idiots. I don't use "Soda" because that
implies Baking Soda or other significant amount of SODIUM, and as you
can see on the side, there's very little "salt" in "pop". It's not a
redneck term, it's just what some people have learned to call the stuff.
Because when you opened a 16 oz glass bottle (and I'm old enough to have
done so) the top "pops" off the bottle, therefore the drink is "pop".
Ever heard the term "pop bottles"? You could find and return them to
grocery stores for the deposit. Some stores around here got pissy about
that and would ask if you bought it at their store. That's beside the
point. The deposit was so that the glass bottle WOULD GET RETURNED AND
REUSED. The bottling company would in turn reimburse the store for the
return of their bottles. I miss pop bottles. If you found enough of them
in the park, you could buy yourself some ice cream at Dairy Queen, which
for cheap ass people, was almost a hobby.

Finding crayfish in the stream was almost as fun.

Anywho, ask the older people around you and in various regions around
this country what they'd call it - pop or soda?

OHIO PEOPLE - VOTE YES ON ISSUE 5. KEEP THE PAYDAY LENDERS IN CHECK.
THERE ARE NO JOBS (meaning all the payday lender people) IN ANY DANGER.
All the payday lender offices have already applied for licenses to
provide other kinds of loans. Don't believe their crap. Note where all
the No on 5 signs are placed - outside of these evil loan stores and the
owners of them. YES ON 5 TO PROTECT OHIO FAMILIES FROM AN UNENDING CYCLE
OF DEBT.

DAD - PISS OFF!!

Dad, I know you read my blog, and for some reason you have twisted a recent post around to something that benefits your twisted mind. I have had it!

I hate to have to turn my blog Private and password protected, because so many other friends keep in touch with me through it. But your actions are unconscionable. (i hope the spellchecker has that right). This is your final warning to keep off my blog.

My Mother is Not Gambling. I've Never Said she was! Where did you get that idea?

picture relevant to post

How do you get rid of these guys?

For some time now, I don't know how my mom got on these creeps' mailing
list, but from time to time we get these stupid "BETUS period COM" booklets or
somesuch about sports betting.

We're not people who bet on sports.

We're not about to begin.

The people who make and mail out this crap don't exactly make it easy to
get them contacted by mail and get them to stop. I found a feedback form
on the site. I can only hope this note (edited) got through.

Oh yeah, I tried a Whois lookup. I got some addresses in California and
Panama, the country. What the fedge?

To wit:

TO WHOM THIS WILL CONCERN:

STOP SENDING YOUR LITERATURE TO THE FOLLOWING NAME AND ADDRESS. WE ARE
NOT AMUSED, WE ARE NOT INTERESTED. STOP WASTING YOUR TIME. IF YOU DO
NOT, WE WILL BE FORCED TO FIND OUT WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU ARE AND MAKE
SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO SAY.

REMOVE ME!
MAILED FROM MECHANICSBURG, PA PERMIT NUMBER 63

[address info deleted]

SINCE YOU DON'T SEEM TO PUT A MAILING ADDRESS IN YOUR LITERATURE AND
HAVE MADE IT HARD TO FIND ON YOUR SITE, WE CAN ONLY ASSUME YOU ARE
CONDUCTING ILLEGAL BETTING.

WE ARE NOT INTERESTED, HAVE NEVER BEEN INTERESTED, AND DON'T KNOW WHY OR
HOW YOU GOT THE IDEA ANYONE AT THIS ADDRESS WAS INTERESTED.

I'M ASKING NICELY NOW. I WON'T BE NICE IN THE FUTURE AND YOU SURE DON'T
WANT ME TO HIRE A LAWYER TO SUE FOR HARASSMENT WHEN I'VE ASKED NICELY TO
STOP BOTHERING US WITH MAIL WE JUST THROW AWAY.

A NICE POSTCARD ACKNOWLEDGING THE PERMANENT REMOVAL WOULD BE A NICE
GESTURE. GOOD DAY.

You think they'll listen? Do I have to go through the post office and
have them contact the post office in Pennsylvania to look up the permit
number to find out who the hell is mailing this crap out? Sounds like a
place to start.

Removing the skirt from my Ame-comi Catwoman figure

Finally found the paint I needed to finish off my modification to the
Ame-Comi Catwoman figure. Ever since I saw it advertised, I decided that
the skirt they put on her did not work at all and if I ever got my hands
on one I'd rip that thing off and modify it using filler putty and paint
to fix her up.

I had the opaque black I needed for her outfit, but for the skin tone..
Folk Art #738 Peach Cobbler proved to be an exact match for the skin
color originally used which I finally found a couple days ago! Now I can
also work on completing my 2 Shampoo resin kits.

It took a while to get that damn skirt off. They could have made it
easier. Filled in her sweetly shaped hips with filler putty and aside
from touch up painting and a little touch up with filler putty, it
practically looks like she never had a skirt at all. This is one of
those projects were you just sand carefully by hand and try to get it
exactly right, but since I did the wrist on my Dirty Pair Kei PVC kit, I
don't seem to have that amount of patience anymore. The paint revealed
what defects the sanding left.

Her head should have been left movable. Oh well. I like the
neck-to-crotch outfit design on her anyway which was a big selling point
for me. ^_^

Maybe I'll post a photo sometime.

Rescued off old tapes

Finally had a chance to get my hands on Dirty Pair TV fansubs on VHS. While I was organizing the material as I copied them to DVD, I also dug out the Ranma 1/2 episodes from off-air Japanese TV. As a result, I was able to restore about 98% of the footage from the commercials, as well as this End of Episode title card from Ranma 1/2. ^_^
I'll just put this here...

Strange things happening

About a half hour ago, I was online with the terminal writing an email
when suddenly the Toshiba TV just goes and clicks off without me
touching it, then it came back on. By some strange measure, the computer
monitor downstairs, on a different wiring circuit ALSO shuts off! Well,
it was on without a picture.

I don't know if it was some sort of static discharge (it hasn't happened
before) or what. Anywho, I did what I usually do, I shut off the monitor
to the Dell (a niece was on it playing something) and turned it back on.
The picture came back, though I noticed it wiggling around a bit before
it stopped doing that. My niece reported some sort of red line when it
went out.

It's been raining, not heavy but a sort of steady light rain off an on.
The 'puter did not shut off - it doesn't seem to be affected. And WebTV
didn't shut off nor the VCR I run it through. There might have been some
sort of hiccup in the power line - I don't know. Our other TV connected
to the satellite receiver was not affected at all! There might have been
a little dimming of the lights but to have 2 CRT screens go off like
that at the same time in different parts of the house is just spooky.
Water dripping on the power lines or something? Inside the house? Mouse
chewing on wires???

I really need to get the dust out of the Toshiba.

This reminds me of the blank DVD last week that the Maggie tried to load
but couldn't because it was blank. I got it out of the unit OK, but I
won't try using it again.

My anime collecting comes almost full circle

Years ago, when I was a bit younger (like 1989, 1991, or thereabouts), I
used to be a member of CVACC - the Cuyahoga Valley Atari Computer Club.
I was also a subscriber to the long gone Cancomm BBS. I had a festering
interest in Japanese anime all during this time (somewhat fueled by the
dubbed Robotech / Macross / etc series and dubbed Starblazers / aka
Space Cruiser Yamato). So finding GIFs ('jiffs') of anime video captures
was something that certainly added more fuel to that festering.

Especially GIFs from Compuserve's Anime forum / roundtable / whatever
they called it posted on Cancomm. Bubblegum Crisis and Dirty Pair were 2
of the titles I wanted to know more about. This was years before
Internet access. Searching for information like this was very hard if
you weren't on one of the "online services" like CompuServe (is it still
around?) or GEnie.

At some point during one CVACC picnic, fellow member (and power user!)
Ron Mullens began telling us about some of the stuff he's seen, stuff we
could get a little of from him. (He still owes me a blank tape darnit).
We bought off him a fansub tape of Project A-ko, years before CPM would
license it. That was just the tip of things.

Over the course of a couple years from that point, I managed to get Ron
Mullens to produce tapes of Bubblegum Crisis raw without subs, and then
a mix of others like Dirty Pair TV, Ranma 1/2 off Japanese TV with
commercials, and a couple of movies. I think I got about 3 or 4 tapes
total.

Most of what I got I later went on to buy licensed releases. I have all
of Ranma 1/2 on subtitled VHS that Viz elected to release. Castle in the
Sky I can get from a Disney release. Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful
Dreamer I actually own as a CPM-released, Animeigo produced subtitled
movie. Friends and I would later go on to buy the other Project A-ko
videos. I still have yet to buy the original Bubblegum Crisis OVAs, but
believe me, I will, now that Animeigo says they are including the
Holiday in Bali video which is quite rare. (though I do have a raw tape
copy of - it would be nice to know what they are saying. Though it's
kind of self-serving to see them feasting in Bali because fans bought
the anime.)

I recently was finally able to locate fansub VHS tapes of Dirty Pair TV!
I'll just thank the kind person who sent them to me by first name only -
doumo arigatou gozaimasu, Chris! I think I've been after this series for
at least 20 years.

I've begun to wonder if there were more than one edition released and
how. I remember my raw episodes coming off LDs - they open with a title
screen and credits on a white background. This screen wipes off to the
right to show the promo for the upcoming episode. The middle of the show
has only 1 eyecatch.

The fansubs show 2 eyecatches in the middle. No opening white background
title screen. No introduction clip for episode 1, either. Later tapes
show 2 episodes run together, separated by a single eyecatch. So which
are from LD and which are off VHS tapes from Japan? Or were there 2
different LD releases? Did stuff just get moved around when the fansub
source was put together? I don't know.

After episode 10, there are no preview clips on the fansubs, at least as
far as I have gotten right now.

So while copying the fansubs to DVD, I managed to dig out my Ron Mullens
tapes and slip the clips I wanted off those into the DVD copy I made.

Another side benefit from this work was also recovering the Japanese TV
commercials that are among my Off-air Ranma 1/2 episodes. I was never
able to see these commercials until I ran them through my Maggie MWR10D6
recorder. I'd say only 2% of the video was not restored, but everything
else I was able to finally see nicely for the first time - ever.

I have tapes of Spanish-dubbed Cardcaptor Sakura as well as Ranma 1/2
from Mexico. I should see if the Maggie can help this video as well.

Even if my Maggie ends up not making decent DVDs at some point, the
video restoration capability will keep it useful.

Now to make good on my promise to find Bubblegum Crisis. I'd rather get
the VHS subs. ^_^

I had never seen anyone do that until I saw it in anime

And I'm still giggling about it now. When I saw this, I nearly fell off
my chair.

Episode 8 of Lucky Star - the girls are in their school's sports
festival day. Konata (the long blue-haired otaku type of the bunch) is
up for some running event, like a 100 meter dash. Her friends ask her
how she plans to win, and Konata's reply is all about visualizing it.

So as her event begins, it switches to showing something like the NES
Konami game called Hyper Olympic (according to the liner notes), and
then the funniest bit - a hand holding a controller appears on the right
side of the screen. This is one of those games that your performance
depends on how fast you press the buttons. ^_^ First a finger presses
the button (aka button mashing), then you see the same hand holding a
coin and quickly striking the button, and then what really got me
laughing was the use of a stiff ruler flicked in such a way to vibrate
it on that same button.

How clever is that? I had to watch that scene over again to make sure
that's what I saw. If I get a chance to see that with a few friends, I'm
sure it'll be the shot of the episode. We'll ALL be laughing about that
bit!

The usual Criticisms about NBC's airing of Olympic Opening Ceremony

I watched and taped the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics
tonight. I don't know why it wasn't shown letterboxed (aka converted HD
broadcast) on DirecTV like they're going to have to do soon - which I am
against. I am against digital-only TV broadcasting. At least there
should be a trigger in the signal that tells converter boxes when
something is in Standard Definition (aka current analog 720 if I
remember right) and High Def (1080i or 1080p - interlaced or progressive
scan). That way converter boxes know how to display the digital
broadcast correctly between the 2 formats of programming, and
re-broadcasters like DirecTV can program _their_ satellite receivers
accordingly. But really - aren't there other signal ranges that can be
used for what the gov't is proposing to do with analog TV spectrum?

Anywho, what did NBC's broadcast suffer from, as usual?

1. TOO MANY COMMERCIALS - At least when you break into the program to
pay the light bill, PICK UP WHERE YOU BROKE OFF.

2. IT WAS TAPE-DELAYED - I don't necessarily NEED my Opening Ceremony in
Prime Time When it can be shown LIVE earlier in the day!! Just when are
we US viewers of the Olympics not going to have to put up with tape
delayed programming any more?

3. BAD CAMERA ANGLES - Considering the Bird's Nest Stadium is so HUGE
(room for over 90,000 people), most if not all of the visuals required
an Overhead or Wide Angle Shot. Was it shown in HD? I don't know because
we didn't get a letterboxed picture at all. Sure, there were moments
when a close up was a good idea, but the director of photography didn't
seem to know what he wanted the cameras to do, nor which cameras to use.
And considering what amounted to as a huge LED screen on the field,
there should have been direct overhead shots to show that content. I
would have liked it.

4. THEY HAD 4 HOURS TO USE - and like I said, it was on tape, so they
did the best they could with the Parade of Nations with all the athletes
and other Olympic Officials from various countries, but the actual
theatrics could have been done better. We also didn't get to see how the
flame cauldron was brought into the stadium. I would have loved to see
how they made that appear!

I'm not complaining about it being 4 hours long - sometimes it could be
longer. ^_^

There were some nice aerial views of the fireworks (Tamaya!!) and that
was nice. Some shots could have at least been rehearsed. We missed some
things because nobody seemed to know what was going to happen next - at
least tell people where they should be pointing the cameras even if you
don't want to tell them what they'll be seeing!

I'd have liked more wide shots, a live broadcast earlier in the day, and
fewer commercials which also means less missed content of the Opening
Ceremonies show, especially if you pick up exactly where you left off.
This is SO easy to do, and is such a no-brainer. This was a huge chance
for NBC to show Chinese culture to a new audience who might be more or
less ignorant about it. Instead, NBC used this program as a shameless
attempt to hawk their Fall Shows. Well, Heroes really doesn't need
hawked - it's a ratings grabber without much problem, and the other new
shows? I'm probably not going to bother at all.

Work it out with your sponsors and do it with very limited commercial
interruption, much like HGTV does the Rose Bowl Parade.

And to all those cute Chinese girls who lined the edge of the inner
field where all the athletes ended up after marching around the stadium,
the pretty Chinese girls who danced and greeted them for over 2 hours,
my hats off to you, and you're all invited over to my house for an
after-opening ceremony party. BYOB. ^_-

Maji de!!!

If you hadn't been watching the "I Survived a Japanaese Gameshow" on ABC
the past few weeks, you missed a great finale tonight.

The most important thing I should stress is how they introduced Japanese
culture to "fish out of water" US citizens while in Japan. I wish they
had given these contestants some off-time to go out and see the Real
Japan, like the restaurants and shopping at Akiba between competitions.

I taped the 2 hour finale tonight. How do people sign up for these
things? If they do this again (and have it Japan again), I'd LOVE to try
getting on it. I have a passport already! I even know some Japanese. ^.^

From what I can tell, though, the game show they used as the backdrop
for this ABC series is fictional - it doesn't really exist in Japan. It
IS typical of the sort of things they would do though!

I wish it would get repeated, because I would / should have taped it. We
may never see it again - it might never be offered on DVD. For an anime
and manga / Japanese culture fan such as myself, I was completely
entertained by this show. Kudos to ABC for the thinking that went into
presenting it.

I liked the first elimination challenge they had the final four do - go
out onto the streets near Toho Studios and complete 5 tasks with people
they run into. ^_^

I might have cringed severely at the thought of having to do that.
Though it would be nice to make more Japanese friends! I'm still hoping
the woman I marry will be from Japan.