I have a huge pet peeve. Stupid voters. Now I firmly believe in our democracy, but stupid people just kill me, especially in voting.

There are a few main types of stupid voters. In my opinion they are:

“At least he’s not X” voters. These kill me. There are more than 2 choices for most elections (3 or 4 for president – like the Libertarian party) so rather than vote against someone vote for someone. Read about the candidates and vote for the one you agree with the most.

“Hypocritical voters”. Let me explain this one. Recently I was debating Colorado Amendment 36 with a friend. After discussing it with him for about 15 minutes he agreed with me that it was totally wrong and unfair. There was no further debate as to wether or not it was a good idea or not. However he still insists he is going to vote for it. What? Oh my God, did he really say that? Yep. How someone could vote for something they know and freely admit to me is wrong is beyond me. Stupid voter.

“Just ’cause” voters. These are the ones that have no clue and just vote “’cause”. They voted for Clinton because he could play sax or wore boxers instead of briefs. These are the worse. If you don’t know why you’re voting DON’T VOTE. Again as I said at the beginning I want everyone who as the right to vote to do so. Just speed some time reading about who you’re voting for (Farenheight 911 doesn’t count as research, nor does listening to Rush Limbaugh). If you vote for someone know why.

So, on Tuesday go vote. But please know who you’re voting for and why. Cherish the fact that you can vote. Think about what you’re voting for. Oh, and vote Libretarian when you can. Oh, and if someone asks why you voted Libertarian just say “Ross told me to”, that should be enough for anyone! And how am I voting? Well that’s none of your business!!!

Last night we went to see the Colorado Ballet perform Dracula. We thought about seeing it on Halloween night but decided it would be better to see a Saturday night performance.

The show starts out wonderfully creepy, all done behind a sheer screen to give it this great eeriness. In the first act (of 3) there is a wonderful scene where they are paying tribute to something (I can’t remember exactly what). The music and dance in this scene are completely mesmerizing (the clarinet player in the orchestra was simply amazing). The first act was rather short at just over 30 minutes (which was surprising to me) but was a great beginning.

When the second act begins all of a sudden you feel like you’re not watching Dracula anymore, but rather a ball room dancing seen from the 1800’s. Gone is all the creepiness, now everything is bright and cheery. Huh? This is Dracula right? Honestly it completely fell apart here and totally lost me. The entire second act was completely pointless and in my mind did absolutely nothing for the story at all. It was a total sleeper (I did stay awake though).

Fortunately the third act gets back to Dracula once again. The final scene is good, but nothing nearly as great as the first act. It does pick itself back up, but given how wonderfully it started we left disappointed. The bright notes to the entire show were the dancing was just amazing (I still don’t get how the ballerinas stand on their toes like that!), the sets were wonderful and really added to the show, the music was fantastic (it was so nice to have a live orchestra for this one, something none of the other Colorado Ballet’s we’ve seen had). The lighting was also superb, and other than the happy-day Act 2 it was totally creepy. All in all it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t wonderful either, which honestly is something I’ve come to expect from shows like this.

We just finished watching the 4th movie in the Alien series, Alien: Resurrection. How was it? Well it was unbelievably bad. It was so bad I’m actually upset that I lost almost 2 hours of my life watching it. After 10 minutes we wanted to turn it off, but since we’d seen the other 3 we wanted to finish it all out with the fourth one. Man so I wish we’d have just turned it off.

Ok, so it’s 200 years in the future, but nothing has really changed. Actually the special effects are worse, everything looks older, not newer at all. Once again Ripley is back (through cloning) to face the evil aliens. The twist is that she’s no pseudo-half alien half human and the mother (basically) of the new alien. She, and a rag-tag group of traders (including a horrible role by Winona Ryder as the new synthetic person (like Bishop before)) are running for their lives trying to get off the doomed science ship. Dan Hedaya (Nick Tortelli from Cheers and the dad from Clueless) is just terrible as the general leading the project. The plot is unbelievably bad and full of holes (surprising given that Joss Whedon wrote it (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Disney’s Toy Story). Honestly it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, I’d say going to the dentist would be more fun.

Last night we watched Alien³. It was as I remembered, pretty bad. Once again Ripley is being chased by the big bad aliens who are determined to kill everything they can. This time she winds up on an all male prison colony and everyone that escaped from Aliens conveniently dies at the beginning (we can’t possibly bog the plot down with that now can we?).

The only bright spot was Charles Dutton, who’s role as the lead inmate was great. He leads the no reformed inmates (they’ve all found religion now) in an attempt to destroy the Alien that tagged along with Ripley. You know how it ends. It’s completely predictable all the way through, and lacks the great action “shoot’em up” sequences from Aliens (there are no weapons in the prison colony). All in all it’s pretty terrible, I’d say pass…

Last night I subscribed to Vonage. I’ve got several friends who use Vonage and love it and I’m really looking forward to it. The order process was VERY easy, basically it’s all web based and very straight forward. I did make a little mistake (your account has to be in the same name as your phone account, I signed up using my name but our phone is in Melanie’s name). So I had to call them. After trying about 6 times (each time I got a “we’re too busy, call back later” – this didn’t bode well for them…) I got a very nice person who helped me out. The entire process took less than 30 minutes (would have been 3 if I hadn’t screwed up). So next week I should get my box, then in about 4 weeks my number will be ported over and BYE BYE Qwest!!! Woo Hoo!!! I can’t wait! More when I get the box and start using the service…

We just finished watching the classic sci-fi film Aliens (the second in the series). We decided to watch 2, 3, and 4 this weekend (we watched the first one about a month ago). While we’ve seen this one many times it’s one of those that’s fun to watch ever now and again.

I’m sure you’ve seen this one, so I don’t really have anything new to add about it. If you haven’t seen it, well, you’re not missing anything huge. It’s your typical sci-fi action romp, basically it’s what you think. Big, loud, bad acting (although I love Bill Paxton’s character – hysterical if you ask me!). I haven’t seen Alien³ in a very long time, and I’ve actually never seen Alien: Resurrection so I’m sort of looking forward to it (although seeing Winona Ryder in an action movie sounds very strange to me…). I guess we’ll see…