Sungha Jung – Incredible!

If you like guitar music, then you’ll LOVE this video of Sungha Jung playing “Yesterday Once More” by the Carpenters.

Sungha Jung is an 11-year-old Korean boy who has been playing guitar for just a couple of years. He has a guitar that was custom made to fit his body size and plays the thing like he was born with it in his hands.

If you so desire, you can check out his MySpace page here or his YouTube channel here.

Enjoy!

Not A Fan…But…

When I say I am not a fan of the Indiana Jones movies, what I mean is I have never seen the Indiana Jones movies. Not sure why I haven’t seen them, but I haven’t. I think I have seen bits and pieces of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but other than that, I haven’t seen any of the movies. That is, however, until last night.

Now, I am absolutely just not an “opening night” movie-goer. Sure I like going to movies, but I don’t like the big crowds. I don’t like a packed theater. I don’t like having to figure out where I’m going to sit due to few available seats. But when a friend of mine invited me to go see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I decided “why not?” I hadn’t been to a movie theater for a few years (not a theater frequent-flier either). I was afraid it was going to be a crowded event, but fortunately, the showing we went to was not bad at all.

I have to say, even though Harrison Ford is starting to look pretty old, it was still a good fit. In fact when we were leaving the theater, my friend said that the movie was “true to form.” I also have to say that Shia LaBoeuf is really surprising me these days with his acting skills. I am not sure why I am so surprised by how well he portrays each role I see him in, but I am.

I won’t go much into the story line as to avoid giving any spoilers or ruining it for anyone who might actually read my blog (I’m not sure either of you would really care…), but know that the story-line was good, the action was packed, there were a lot of subtle jokes that made me chuckle and several scenes which evoked a good hearty laugh. I don’t think I have ever seen a high speed car-chase sword/gun fight with vine-swinging people and monkeys making their way to gigantic ant hills (both this hills AND the ants were huge!) before this movie.

As a parting note – I was slightly concerned that the movie might turn out to be “crap” but not without good cause. I was flipping through the channels this past weekend, and the Sci-Fi channel was running and Indiana Jones marathon. I couldn’t resist snapping the picture when I saw the following:
I guess the Dish Network is limited to 35 characters on their channel guide for show titles…but why not check something like that before making it public??? They could have abbreviated somewhere else, I’m sure! Anyway, I was not really inclined to tune in to watch anything about a “Temple of Doo” and it made me question whether or not I’d be joining my friend in going to watch the newly released Indy movie.

But it was a good movie. If you’re the type who likes action movies or Indiana Jones movies or whatever, go see it.

Get Out of My Way!

I have seen a lot of things that have made me wonder if I was daydreaming or if reality was somehow being spliced into an alternate, less believable reality by some rift in the space-time continuum. I had one such occasion just this week.

I was sitting at a traffic light…third in line in the left lane of a one way street. I have seen plenty of people who push the envelope and speed through an intersection only to go through after the lane I was in turned green. That pisses me off…a lot. If I have a green light, I should not be waiting for cross traffic to stop.

Anyway…there was a car that was not speeding through, but somehow (I think) didn’t realize that the light had turned. It started through the intersection as the first car in the right lane of the street I was on started to go forward. The result – the driver of the car on my street slamming on his brakes and laying into the horn. The other car stopped abruptly, issued a polite “Oops, I’m sorry” honk…the driver smiled sheepishly and waved at the other driver as he backed into his proper position in his lane behind his red light.

The culprit? A SHERIFF!!! Holy FREAKIN’ cow! It was a sheriff! Now I would imagine that MOST of the cops I’ve seen driving around here would have at least turned on their lights and sped through the intersection…as if to make it look like they were in a hurry to get somewhere and that’s why they ran the light. (I have actually seen cops turn their lights on…run a red light and turn their lights off). This guy actually admitted that he was in the wrong and corrected his mistake! Not only that…but I had JUST witnessed someone blaring their horn at a cop and not getting some kind of weird reprimand!

I’m telling you, life doesn’t make sense. I just don’t think that’s something I’ll ever witness again. It took some guts for that driver to blast his horn at a cop…but you know what? Good for him! We shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for ourselves when we are in the right.

After that…the hole in the space-time continuum sealed back up…

for a short while anyway…

I Fear

…for the world around me…for the human race…for my sanity.

I encounter a fair amount of stupidity on a pretty regular basis. Normally I try to level my opinion of stupid by telling myself that ignorance does not equal stupidity. If someone truly doesn’t know something that I know, that does not, in and of itself, make them stupid. It may still seem funny, but stupid it is not.

But not always.

I did, however, get to witness some evidence that there are incredibly stupid people out there. It is for this reason that I live in fear for what our world may become. These people breed. These people pass their genes on to offspring to continue a legacy of intellectual destitution.

We had a situation develop at work this week where somehow, some way, an employee got ahold of, and cashed, another employee’s paycheck. Let’s just ignore the level of incompetence that it would take on the part of a manager that allowed this to happen (managers pass out the paychecks!). Here are the facts. The person who picked up their co-worker’s check has the same last name. The person who stole their co-worker’s check has a very similar first name. So similar, in fact, that there is a possibility that an unknowing person could have thought that the first name on the check was just misspelled. One’s name was Maria and the other was Maira.

It’s not as if these employees got each others’ checks accidentally and one cashed the check before it was caught. Not that simple. One employee ended up with BOTH checks. I dare not guess how this actually happened. She at least thought far enough ahead to cash the checks at two different places. She even thought far enough ahead to have someone else sign one of the checks (at least, judging by the handwriting, it appeared that way.)

So far we have seen crafty deceitfulness. Enter stupidity.

At the check cashing place where she cashed the incorrect check, they asked her for her driver’s license number and date of birth. I am actually trying to decide if I think she was just stupid enough to give her actual information or if she panicked and decided it was too late to try to be any more slick (what, no pre-planned fake ID?)…but she did…she gave her ACTUAL driver’s license number and date of birth.

Well, a couple of days later the girl who did not get her check asked her manager about it and they called the office wanting to know WHY this gal did not get her check. We explain that it was sent. They explain that it’s not in the distribution envelope. We look up the check number to verify that it hasn’t cleared the bank…guess what…it has. Both have. It was a matter of minutes before we were able to isolate not only that the wrong employee got the check, but that she had done so intentionally. She stole the money and tried to get away with keeping it only to be tracked down by her identification that we are required to collect in order to allow employment.

So there you have it. A perfect example of why someone may one day walk over to my cubicle and find that I have actually smashed my head into my monitor.