Pour a 40 oz'er for Confucius off the Pakoda y'all ...

It was the great philosopher and some would call the original gangster of political science Confucius's birthday last week. Hmm, he would be well over 2000 years old if I am not mistaken.

In tandem with the great words of wisdom that Confucius was known for, here is one quote that I really like.

When asked about examining what citizens like and dislike Confucius replied:

"If the people dislike something it should be examined. If the people like something it should be examined"

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Blu-Ray Disc Review

This review rates the picture and sound as I am a video and audiophile as well as the storyline for the movie.

The video is presented in full 1080p (my 42 inch plasma TV goes up to 1080i). The images are clean and clear with very good color and clarity throughout the movie.

The audio track contains a DTS Master Audio 5.1 mix as well as a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. I played the DTS Master Audio track back and I found the overall presentation clear though a little on the subtle side. For example, many scenes take place outdoors and I didn't hear a lot of presence in the surround field in the way of ambient sound effects. There are some nice low frequency effects when explosions occur that are not wall shattering.

I am not an avid reader of comic books. With that out of the way the storyline is essentially a prequel to the first three X-Men movies; more specifically the character Wolverines back story.

I really liked the initial trailer for the X-Men Origins movie I saw but like most movie trailers sometimes what you see in the trailer makes the overall movie actually look better then it is.

I think where the storyline falls short is the back story that was chosen for the script and to a lesser degree how said back story was presented. The best way to describe how I felt when the movie was finished was that I was not excited and awed by the storyline. I will leave it at that as I don't know the full back story myself and am now interested to read Wolverines' back story to see what may have been omitted, or, as so often happens with comic book to movie adaptations, changed.

Overall ratings:

Picture: 4.5 out of 5
Sound: 3.0 out of 5
Story: 2.5 out of 5

Penny pinching when buying video games

Well, you wouldn't be the only one pinching pennies because of the recession that looms over all of us to some degree. Sales of video games are down much like sales for most other products around the world. Even before the recession I was becoming more 'picky' about spending money on video games. The biggest factor is most likely the fact that I don't want and/or don't have endless hours to spend playing video games. And let's face it, 60 plus dollars for a brand new video game is a lot of money to part with compared to the price of let's say, a new release blu-ray movie.

I am looking for the best bang for my buck when it comes to spending money on a video game and I'm sure that I am not the only one. A couple of years ago I started reading reviews for video games at ign.com before considering purchasing a game as background research. So, I would like to end with a survey if you prefer to buy a new video game or a used video game primarily.

Is the Enviro Levy dry ....

I was just recently at Home Depot and was asked if I would like a bag for five cents. I can't recall this situation occurring in the past at Home Depot until not so long ago, and now it seems to be the norm for consumers to be asked if they want to pay for plastic bags and/or just be charged for plastic bags wherever consumers shop for small ticket items.

Putting aside the plastic industries morbid fear of cloth bag dominance, my recent plastic bag incident prompted me to ask; where does the money from the enviro levy go?

I was under the impression that the enviro levy is paying for the cost of disposing of the plastic bag at a landfill. Or is it to help keep recycling facilities going?

Many plastic bags don't get recycled and I am curious if anyone has any specific information on this subject or can direct me to a link that might.

Into the blog frontier

Hello,

Welcome to the Unofficial Meat Man blog. My hope for my blog is to have a variety of reviews and articles about video games, movies, electronics, and commentary on topics of interest such as politics. Over time I anticipate that my blog will undergo changes and focus as the world around us certainly can and will change. To all my fellow creative communications section 1 classmates I look forward to checking out your blogs as I hope you look forward to checking out mine.