The TiVo is going belly up (sniff!) and I'm home sick with the creepin' crud, so I'm catching up on old shows before the box dies completely (a new hard drive is on the way from WeaKnees).
Months ago I recorded a four-hour mini-series called Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King that was showing on SciFi. It's original (Euro) title was Ring of the Nibelungs. Yesterday and today I watched it.
There should be criminal sentences for movies like this. I mean it — with mandatory sentencing criteria that includes jail time.
We're talking acting so reminiscent of 1960's animatrons that you'd think the entire cast had been personally trained by Al Gore. I mean come on, Kristanna Loken showed more emotion when she played the Terminatrix in Terminator 3!
Of course, it could have been the fault of the dialogue. This stuff is cornier than a bushel full of Hee-Haw tapes. It's the kind of banter that makes your eyes roll — just before they glaze over and you fall into a self-induced coma.
The sound track was inspired by someone who loved big orchestra sound. And only big orchestra sound. Or maybe they just played the same recording over and over. I couldn't tell. It all sounded the same.
I admit, there were bright spots. Kristanna Loken is OMG hot and looks great as a blonde. Alicia Witt has come a long way since she played Cybill's daughter, Zoey [interesting side note: Witt was reading at 6 months and reciting Shakespeare on television by age 4].
The filmography was good and the scenery was nice. It was shot in South Africa and, believe it or not, there was some beautiful scenery there.
And the computer-enhanced graphics were above average (other than the awful fire on the funeral boat at the end). The dragon was rather nice — at least, what you saw of it. Note to all you movie types: if you put "dragon" in the title, you should give the audience more than three minutes of a dragon in a cave, especially during a four-hour miniseries.
I've always had a flaw in that I finish what I start. That doesn't go for tasks around the house (as AlphaWife will be all too glad to expound upon for several hours). But boring tasks, bad books, bad movies — for some reason these things I feel compelled to complete.
I was once ashamed of the fact that I actually sat through all 83 minutes of Dude, Where's My Car. That poor life choice pales in comparison to losing hours of my life to this bit of Eurodrek.
I once counted the number of pieces I cut up a credit card and it exceeded 200 tiny its of now-meaningless plastic. (Of course, I started out by scraping the magnetic strip off so it could never be reconstructed.) I shred CDs (which are tougher than you think) and in the pre-CD days I would even take apart my old backup tapes and manually cut them into one-eigth inch bits of confetti.
Worse yet, I would take the bits of credit cards or backup media and put them into multiple trash cans over multiple days so the bits couldn't be found all together.
Yes, people laugh and say that there should be a 12-step program somewhere for people as paranoid as I, but shredding is an obsession I will not abandon.
AlphaWife asked me why I shred junk mail, but I have a ready answer: if you only shredded the important bits of paper then it would be easy to identify and reconstruct. By shredding even the most trivial of items it becomes virtually impossible for anyone to reconstruct anything meaningful. The number of tiny bits of paper would give a supercomputer a nervous breakdown.
Why do I shred? I don't really know. On an intellectual level I know that no one would bother to pick through my trash just to see what magazines I subscribe to, what charities and political causes solicit me for funds, what utility companies I use, etc. After all, they could just steal my mail before it gets to me if they were that interested. And if the interested party were the government, why it could just track my life through the post office, it being a government supported monopoly and all.
Still, it makes me feel a little safer and thus my I indulge my obsession.
Besides, there is something fundamentally satisfying about a really good shred. Perhaps I spent my last life as a low-level bureaucrat in a government agency on foreign soil in a windowless room, tracking secrets and protecting them by using a monster cold war era shredder? More likely, it is the same feeling of satisfaction one experiences when using a really powerful weed whacker in a field gone wild.
All this is to say that I have an appreciation for shredders. And my family knows this, which is why I received not one, but two shredders as presents last year.
Royal VF1000MX
Pictured on the left is Royal VF1000MX. A gift from AlphaMom, the VF 1000MX is a powerful 10-sheet chomper that will chew through credit cards and has a slot for CDs. The CDs are not shredded, but are run between two rods that imprint a diamond pattern on the CD surface, rendering it unreadable. (Note for the really paranoid: if you run a cheap CD through 15 or 20 times the recording surface actually separates from the plastic body, so you can then shred the part that holds the data.)
This model no longer appears on the Royal website so it has probably been discontinued. But it has been a tough little shredder and still performs well — with two caveats. After about six months the auto start and stop quit working, meaning that I have to manually turn the shredder on to use it. No big deal and to be fair I never contacted the manufacturer to give them a chance to address the issue.
Also, I often save up a week's worth of shredding and do it all at once. Several times I have overheated the unit and it shut down for safety, forcing me to wait for it to cool.
Bottom line: I feel comfortable recommending MX line of Royal shredders to anyone interested in a good shredder for light-duty home use.
Ativa X1800
Pictured on the left is an Ativa X1800, a cross-cut shredder that can chew up to 18-sheets at a time — paper clips, staples and all. Ativa is the "home brand" for Office Depot shredders, introduced in 2005. Brother Advised by Wolves presented me with an Ativa for Christmas.
This monster is designed for small office use but is absolutely incredible for home use. The 8 gallon waste bin is massive when compared to the smaller home models, allowing me to shred several days worth of mail at a time.
Moreover, the metal teeth will take credit cards and CDs, making short work of anything you throw at it. I have not yet jammed it and cannot feed it fast enough to keep it going.
Best of all, the throat is over 9½ inches wide so you can drop junk mail envelopes in length-wise with no problems. In fact, sometimes junk mail doesn't even get opened — I just drop it in, the Ativa growls for a second and my problem is gone. And it will take those big paper-sized envelopes as well.
Not only is the Ativa quick and powerful, but it is quiet when compared to smaller units. I no longer have to wait until the TV is off and no one is on the phone before kicking off shredding operations.
Bottom line: the Ativa may have been designed for small businesses, but my home will never be without one or something similar. And at just $150, this is a bargain that will last for years.
Technorati Tags: Review, Shredder, Product Review.
Patriot Performance is an eBay store owned by a friend of mine.While perusing the offerings I decided that I absolutely must buy a 2005 Mustang GT Convertible because it would be really, really cool to trick it out with a ZEX Nitrous Kit.
My inner child salivates.
