Even in high-heeled boots, you still must use a lot of low-angle shots to make Javier Bardem look really tall.

We here at Bloggy Blog got around to seeing a movie we already referenced, and let it be known -- the reference still stands! We enjoyed the Coen Brother's remake of 1986's Blue Velvet. In them, a small-towny young man is aimlessly walking around a field where he finds an ear/2 million dollars. This unforgettable find leads him to a tangled web of intrigue, violence, and a pure-evil psychopath type that carries around a creepy gas tank. Both films have a decidedly 'retro' ambiance, and annoying old ladies that don't quite steal the scenes they were intended to. However, the Greater-Houston area audience in the theater we saw it in sure liked her quip about Mexicans in suits! [Borat Voice]High five, Lou Dobbs![/Borat Voice]

I Want My, I Want My, I Want My MP3s

So, our two-year old mp3 playa broke in a silly way this week, with the power cable connection housing fracturing and breaking from the circuit board. It was a good run. We originally bought the 40gb Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra because it was a high capicity, no-nonsense player with a user replaceable battery and a DRM-free software interface. It's downsides of size and battery life didn't really matter to us; we just wanted to put all of our music on one player and let it play through some speakers at wërkenzie.

Well, a brief tour through the World Wide Web for a new mp3 player showed that Creative had conceded the high-capacity mp3 player market. Dismayed, we anguished between the expensive, fanboy cliché iPod, and the probably shitty Microsoft Zune.

Then inspiration struck us down like a thunderbolt from Baby Jesus herself: buy one of the used 30gb versions floating around Amazon Marketplace (fer $130) and switch out the hard drives! Will this harebrained scheme bring back the sultry sounds of Kraftwerk et. al. to the lab? Will there be some kind of lame 'firmware' problem? We will update you, and we know you will be refreshing this page every 30 seconds until the answer comes!

The Fox News Commode Stall Wall that is the NOLA.com Comment Board

The website of the New Orleans Times Picayune is NOLA.com, and has an unmoderated comments column at the end of every article ... and thus has turned into the call in segment of a Rush Limbaugh radio show circa 1996. Lets lead off with the nuanced position of 'cjdla', who writes in responding to a story about a string of Cuckoo Nest-style escapes from a juvenile facility involving 15-17 year olds:

"I say when they catch them put a bullet in thier head., i guarantee one of these thugs will kill someone before they die"

At heart, cjdla is simply a proponent of "No Country For Old Men" style conflict resolution. Of course every Hannity needs a Colmes, or in this case a 'SPATZMAN', who advocates an alternative housing plan for the soon-to-be displaced homeless encampment near city hall:

"Ok enough is enough. Let Stacy Head take all those homeless people to her house. We need to move forward and not worry about a bunch of bums who have spent years milking the system. If Stacy can"t take them home this evening let the Fire Department give them a bath every morning . They will move.Spatzer"

Indeed, spoken elequently from years of personal experience by the Spatz-dawg. Gotta dig that Spatz-miester! This next poster, 'cardsup2', is a student from the prestigious School of Hard Knocks who only wishes his life was as awesome as displaced public housing residents:

"I'm a student making an income equal to the small percentage of previous public housing residents with jobs(which i believe was only under 30% of residents), and all I can say is this; i only wish I could send my rent bill, my power bill, my water bill to the city to pay. But I can't, i have to budget, I have to save, I have to practice smart spending (no $12,000 bling rims for my ride), and if I come up short, do I march on city hall demanding that the government foot my bill? Heck no, if I come up short on my rent, I get kicked out, if I come up short on my power, the lights go off... if you saw my white face marching on city hall, I would be laughed at and called "privelidged" even though I am far from it."

Shit, no bling rims? Budgets? Bills? When oh when will this war on the middle class end?