The Kids are back in town

Spring break has broke and we have been overrun by chillens! We ahve had three weeks of madness so far and have five more (including High-school breaks) to go.

This has been a record year for us with kids travelling from Wisconsin, Arizona and all kinds of places. Li'l Chickies have been callin out for the boys and the guys have been seeking babe-age all over the beach!

The fun has been massive and Kids know what they are doing here. We had a fraternity staying at our office last week and I couldn't belive what they were listening to:
ALL EIGHTIES MUSIC

Stuff like Duran Duran, Poison, Scorpions and even Air Supply - Now my son is actually got head phones on and singing "She Blined me with science".


Oh well, at least i can understand the words. Now one of our top guests schools, GMU, is blowing folks away in the Championship! unbeereebubbu!

Oh yeah - If you don't haven't already been on your spring break then go to Spring Break Myrtle Beach and get yerself a house (boats sold seperately).

Who's the racist?

So I was bored today and looked at the US Census (census.gov). Types in Ted Kennedy's zip code 02647 and looked at the racial makeup of his community. Go ahead, clicky clicky.
As you'll note there are no non-white houses in his zip code.



Now we see Trenton, NJ. This is where Samuel Alito grew up. He has been interacting with black folk all his life. Teddy has only seen black people who are serving him or who are serving his need for power. For more on his life go to http://www.ytedk.com/index.htm

For more on how "elite" hypocrits live their lives check out Do as I Say

Ted Kennedy's Club

So after raking Judge Alito (or as the post-martini Senator said it "Alioto", Or "Scalito") over the coals for having a membership, for a short time, twenty years ago, in an organization that didn't want specials standards for minorities entering Princeton; Teddy got called out about his ACTIVE membership in the Owl Club. The Owl Club is a men-only club that was thrown off the campus of Harvard over twenty years ago for its sexist policy.

At first the Senator tried to deny membership but relented and agree to end his forty year good old boys club enrollment. At least for this club.

The Senator's nephew has chided the Bush administration for not seeking renewable energy sources. When he had the opportunity to see a windmill farm put up near his beloved Nantucket Robert F Kennedy Jr. Said he was all for wind power - just not near his family's eclusive retreat on Nantucket. RFK Jr also drives a Dodge caravan and denounces those who drive limos. But...... When it's time for him to enjoy nature on one of his ski trips, Bobby Junior flys in a private jet (too good to fly with poor people).

What color is this light?

So hereI am lookin gat this - There is a traffic signal there, I assure you.

How am I supposed to know when to go? Lucky for me I have all the kind people behind me to see the light for me - They are so kind as to honk the ever-lovin' bejeezers out of their horn. Then I know it's time to go.

The War of the Magi

Dangit! Just after I came home and put away the last gift for my wife, she comes beeboppin in with a couple bags that she secreted away from me.
Now I have to go out again and buy some freakin other thing. I'm getting fed up with this - I just want to come home and sleep already!

I did my part - I went out early this year and started stocking up on junk fer her. She must have sensed this. My intelligence indicates that she has piled up a mess of mess for me.

Why can't she stop? Why must this nonsence go on. I've checked and we have every card maxxed out, there is nothing left in the bank. I have a second job lined up to get us out of debt after the holidays.

I guess we're in for a Merry Christmas!

Happiness

Does it get any better?

Aboy, His best friend, and his dog.
Okay a boy, his Dog and his computer - let them fight over who's the best friend.

Can I have my cord back?

So about two hours ago this kid from the shack next to my office came by and asked to borrow an extension cord.

"Sure" I said, "just make sure to bring it back."

About 2 minutes after the cord went over, the music started - Ozzy. Now this is a kid that at most is ten years old - little innocent looking sk8tr who is always doing tricks on the stage we have next to the beach.

"I AM IRON MAN" is at about three times the legal sound level for about six minutes before it is accompanied by a caucauphony of bangs and cracks which, upon peeping out the front window, I realize is firecrackers.

For those not aquainted with the most wonderful thing about South Carolina I will expound. We have a strong tradition in this state of independence and self-reliance. We think that you ought to be able to buy whatever amount of explosive entertainment you feel you can handle and do with it as you will on your own property. Blow yer hand off - don't come crying to me.
EXCEPT within certain cities which have (for the sake of tourists) determined that noise is bad for business. North Myrtle Beach is one such city. So within city limits you are not allowed to set off fireworks. Nor are you allowed blast a stereo. But you can still ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Splatter yer brains all over the back of a Semi - Don't come crying to me.

Now about 22 minutes have passed since the bright green extension cord went out the office door to the shack next door. And it is suddenly quiet. Quiet enough to hear the distinct sound of the police radio.

I decide it is time to water the Hibiscus on the front porch. Is the plural hibiscii?

Sure 'nuff the blueman has about five kids there and is giving the old "keep it down" lecture when one decides that he is to tough to listen to this. It always happens so fast. Suddenly the kid was in back of the car and backup was on scene with the dog.

All the kids were eventually taken away and now my green cord is sitting there in the yard with a radio on the end of it. I guess I'll go get it and hope they don't bust me for contributing to the whole event.


Never loan your stuff.
I reserve the right to revise and extend my comments fo r the record

It doesn't say if she was blonde or not.

When he told his boss a remote starter caused a driverless car to strike his home, his boss replied, "No way."

Christine Djordjevic stepped outside Monday morning to discover her car -- which she said is "possessed" -- had driven itself across the street and crashed into the neighbor's home.

Djordjevic said she must have accidentally hit some buttons on her key chain and activated the car's remote starter. And since the car had been parked in reverse gear, it backed up and didn't stop until it crashed into her neighbor's home.

The accident, which occurred about 8:20 a.m. Monday on Governor Road, in South Haven, caused several thousand dollars to Djordjevic's car and neighbor Gregory Hajduk's house.

Djordjevic said police were skeptical of her story until they witnessed her remote starter activate, sending her car driving down the road. They chased it down and prevented it from hitting anything, she said.

Police reports confirm the vehicle "was checked and it was learned that the vehicle will start and drive when the remote start is activated."

Djordjevic, who got the 1995 Mercury Tracer Trio in January, said the remote starter already was installed. She said the device previously caused her car to jump over a curb at Wal-Mart while she was outside the car and her 11-year-old son was inside yelling, "Mom, where are we going?"

To prevent any further problems, Djordjevic said she is taking the remote starter activator off her key chain.

"I don't even know how the stupid thing works," she said.

"It usually does it by accident ... It should have never had a remote starter put on it."

Many remote starters are advertised as not for use on stick shift cars like Djordjevic's car. Larry McIntosh, manager of K&T Auto Creation in Hobart, said he doesn't put remote starters on stick shift cars because there is no guarantee the driver will leave the car in neutral.

McIntosh said a remote starter professionally installed in an automatic transmission vehicle will only start the car and let the heater warm the interior, and will not drive until the driver depresses the brake pedal and puts it in gear.

Hajduk, whose home sustained damage to the garage door and the surrounding structure, said people are generally surprised when he tells them how his home became damaged. When he told his boss a remote starter caused a driverless car to strike his home, his boss replied, "No way."

Djordjevic said people never have believed her when she tells them her car's unique abilities, but she points out that her first name is Christine, which also is the name of a possessed car in the 1983 horror flick "Christine."

Both Djordjevic and Hajduk said they're glad this story ended with nobody getting hurt.

Chain saw serenade!

So our second Pine tree out back has gone to poopoo. It still has about three green branches on it but it's going down tomorrow. The old owner planted the thing too close to the back of the house and we were continually having to trim it to keep it off the house and the needles and cones were forever botching up the gutters.

It will open up a better line to see that side of the yard from the sunroom and kitchen but will open a space for neighbors to see in from the other side so I will have to plant some oleander or cedar from the Catalina when we tear it down. anything but another pine tree or "Bradford".

So anyhow I'm going to add a shed out back so when i get old i can put my scooter in there. By the yime i need to get a scooter to get around I won't be ble to build one so I might as well do it now.

GUG is on

The long and the short of it

I'm going against my own advice and stretching out my point on brevity.



Hippocrates: "The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words."

Thomas Jefferson: "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

Albert Einstein: "If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well."

Mark Twain: "I never write metropolis for seven cents when I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman when I can get the same money for cop."

George Eliot: "The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words."

Christopher Buckley: "The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.'"

Truman Capote: "I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."

Winston Churchill: "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all."

Cicero: "When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium."

Leonardo da Vinci: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

Albert Einstein: "Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction."

Wilson Follett: "Whenever we can make 25 words do the work of 50, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish."

H.W. Fowler: "Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."

Anatole France: "The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them."

Anatole France (and all criminals): "The best sentence? The shortest."

Learned Hand: "The language of law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it."

Robert Heinlein: "The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat."

Samuel Johnson: "Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters."

Samuel Johnson: "A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit."

Joseph Joubert: "Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear."

James J. Kilpatrick: "Use familiar words--words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away."

C.S. Lewis: "Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."

John Locke: "Vague forms of speech have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard words mistaken for deep learning, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but a hindrance to true knowledge."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "Many a poem is marred by a superfluous word."

W. Somerset Maugham: "The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut."

Charles Mingus: "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

George Orwell: "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

Blaise Pascal: "The letter I have written today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it shorter."

William Penn: "Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood."

Alexander Pope: "Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found."

Beatrix Potter: "The shorter and the plainer the better."

Will Rogers: "I love words but I don't like strange ones. You don't understand them and they don't understand you. Old words is like old friends, you know 'em the minute you see 'em."

William Safire: "It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do."

William Shakespeare: "Men of few words are the best men."

William Strunk: "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

Mark Twain: "As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out."

Mark Twain: "Anybody can have ideas -- the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."

E.B. White: "Use the smallest word that does the job."

William Butler Yeats: "Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."


While I appreciate the brilliance of the people above - I am glad that Garbl's Concise Writing Guide
took the time to put them together for us.

Speak well. Or in other words, persay, the obligatory excretious verbage, while meleflous, is overabundantly extranious.

Sensitivity Raining

So as I made my rounds in cybertown last night I had the opportunity to stop by some crazy lady's blog - Like they're ain't enough of them in this burg.

she had this heart felt saga about her crazy dog

Well, Muggsy's blowup-free September ended at 23 days today. It was just a weird day all around. In fact, it was so bad that I called the behaviorist. When I got home, everything seemed OK, but when I went to lie down because I'm coming down with something, Muggsy came bolting into the bedroom and laid ontop of me. He wouldn't leave. Chubbs and Fenway wouldn't go near him. It was so weird. After that, he wouldn't leave my side. He wouldn't even get six inches from me. I was doing laundry, and he was underfoot. I sat on the couch, and he sat beside me. I sat down at the computer, and he tried to climb on my lap. He sat in the bathroom for 10 minutes and tried to catch a fly. I put him in his crate and he cried to get out. It was very un-Muggsy-like behavior.

I called my boss and she told me to call the behaviorist. The behaviorist said that something probably happened to scare him today and just go on with life as if he were fine. She said not to be worried until it went on a couple of days. But of course I'm worried! My boss suggested that maybe someone tried to get in the house today or made a big noise outside. She also said that an earthquake might be coming since dogs tend to get freaky before an earthquake. At her advice, I took him to a drive-through for a special treat. We went to McDonalds and then I gave him a chicken sandwich at Peck Park. When we got back home, he seemed a little better. But then he got really freaked out by a fly in the living room. He just couldn't settle down, running from room to room, climbing on Ross. We killed the fly and put him in his crate with a bone. And so comes the blowup.

We noticed that he wasn't chewing on the bone, so we went to try to let him out of his crate. As soon as Ross got close, he started growling. A few minutes later, I tried, and he growled at me. But I didn't want to leave when he started growling because I don't want him to learn that aggression works. I waited and he kept going, progressing into a full-blown blowup. I'm letting him relax now before I try to let him out one more time. If I can't let him out now, he'll have to stay in there all night.

Oh and did I mention that when we were leaving to go to the drivethrough, four little boys were walking by on our sidewalk and started making noises at Muggsy. So he lunged and burned my hand with the leash, trying to hold him back.

But Ross has generously offered to stay home tomorrow and make sure he's OK since I have two deadlines in the morning. I hope to see improvement tomorrow.

And I couldn't help but laugh until pieces of my throat lining dislodged and came to rest on my keyboard.
Of course this deserved a comment that would help and i manged something like:
"that's the funniest thing I've ever read because you really believe it!" Then I added the advice that she should leave her radio tuned to NPR for poor puppy while she and "daddy" are away. It would help aleviate puppys insecurity and make him have more self esteem.

When people are so self absorbed that they won't raise children, they try to compensate for their natural desire to nurture by turning poor puppies into their "children". This is a disaster factory. There is no way that a dog who is treated like a spoiled human baby will ever be normal.

It would be better for the dog if it were a stray, roaming the streets for food and joining a pack of currs.

Please don't do this. If you feel the need ot spoil a living creature, go to the local orphanage and buy some kid there a chicken sammich - they will probably say "thank you" and maybe even hug you. Do this three or four times a week if you want to, just don't screw up some poor dogs mind with your "love".

Why are women so stupid?

I mean really, French Pedicures? We all know that allfrench women are perfectly coiffured and have imaculate hygene but why inthe heckare chicks all over America doing this thing where they put the little white stripes on the edge of their toenails? and why do they have a quarter inch of claw haning off the edge of their toes anyway? What, are they climbing telephone poles? What could women in America possibly be doing that requires their toenails to drag the pavement?

I'm just gonna warn my wife right now - if you come to bed with daggers onyour feet you will be there alone!

I have been out in public and seen what seem to be normal housewife type women of all ages with these Talons dangling out of their sandals. Not old, nasty women who never seem to be able to keep them trimmed (due to lack of flexibility or pedicure funding) but women who go into "happy nails" and tell the Vietnamese lady "Make my toenails stick out real far".

Gross.

Britney's guide to semiconductor physics

I just had to add theis link becaus it is wonderful. Britney's guide to semiconductor physics.

It is amazing that she had the time to study - let alone explain this tough subject what with her singing career, motherhood and tv reality show and all. Did you see the episode where she and Kevin got the Schrödinger equation tattooed on their inner thighs? Now that's Reality TV!

Sunday Morning Wakeup Call

7AM - I worked till 11 last night and didn't really get to bed till 3AM. Sooooo I wasn't really happy when Skittles the Wonder Dog (played by Ed from The Lion King) Came scratching and whining at 7AM.

He (accompanied by Maddie - played by Nala) went out and had a great time peeing and pooping and sniffing and licking themselves and each other. For about ten minutes. Just as I had settled back in again and got all snuggly with Michele , the howling started - Skittles can break windows when he gets going.

Most of his life he was very quiet but in the last couple of months he has found his voce and been getting very demanding (much like his older sister, Reese - played by Santa). Where Reese make the neighbors think we are beating her (with her sharp, painful-sounding yipes) when she wants in, Skittles does an impression of an A10 Warthog. The piercing noise doesn't even sound dog-like. Imagine a beagle with his balls in a vice. Then play that at double speed and there you go. If you have ever heard the distinctive sound of an A10 - Imagine one tied down outside your bedroom window at full throttle.



That's what I got at 7:15AM this morning.

The whole time Virtual Boy snoozed in his room.

The price of gas and beach bums

So tonight I sat and waited for the freakin tourists to show up. Normally I am so annoyed with Labor Day and can't wait for the throngs of blibbety-blabs to get the giggety giggety out of town so I can have my beach back

Tonight however was a real experience. I rented two rooms - one to a local. Either the price of gas put the trip out of the reach of many families or folks decided to give their vacation money to the Salvation Army and Red Cross.

I really hope it's the latter.

Give to the Red Cross Here.

Donate to Salvation Army

Don't forget the Wonderful Ministry Samaritan's Purse


All three of these organizations are well-run and do not waste money padding the pockets of execs.

First Homework of the year

This is the first homework assignment my son completed for high school. It's a poem using metephors to describe himself and I think it's freakin brilliant.

Nathan
I am a Typhoon
wild
   crazy
     unpredictable
I come quickly
   then...
I go as fast as I came
with a piece of that place with me
as a reminder
and leave a reminder with that place
always moving
never stopping...
Learning
I am a Typhoon

Kick him some props at his site

I didn't write this

So i found this from the Boston globe.

The Cindy Sheehan you don't know
By Cathy Young, Globe Columnist | August 22, 2005

IT IS ENORMOUSLY difficult to say anything critical about Cindy Sheehan, the Everymom of the antiwar movement, without sounding indecently callous. She is, after all, a woman who has lost her child -- one of humankind's most universal images of grief. Her vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where she has vowed to stay until the president meets with her and hears her out, has inspired great sympathy. Conservative attempts to make an issue of Sheehan's far-left ties have been cited as an example of how low those abominable right-wingers will to stoop: They'll even slime a grieving mother.

I respect Sheehan's pain, no doubt compounded by her mother's stroke last week. Yet Sheehan is not simply expressing her pain and rage, privately or even publicly; when she turns her grief into a political cause, her politics cannot remain off-limits.

Sheehan's first and foremost demand is that all American troops be brought home from Iraq immediately. On this scale, irrationality becomes dangerous. Even many of those who opposed the war in Iraq from the start are convinced that a quick pullout would be a disaster -- both for the Iraqis, and for all those who would suffer if Iraq became a fully operational terrorist base. Who will have to give account to the bereaved men and women whose loved ones will be killed as a result?

But there's more than that to Sheehan's politics. She is not simply against the war in Iraq (and, as she told talk show host Chris Matthews on CNBC, against the war in Afghanistan as well). She has thrown in her lot with the hardcore Michael Moore left, and this less savory aspect of her crusade has been largely ignored by the respectful media.

In her public appearances, Sheehan has not only called Bush ''the biggest terrorist in the world" but suggested that his ''band of neocons" deliberately allowed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to happen: ''9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through," she told a cheering crowd at San Francisco State University last April.

That crowd, by the way, was holding a rally in support of Lynne Stewart, a radical New York attorney convicted in 2003 of aiding and abetting a terrorist conspiracy. Sheehan compared Stewart -- who served as a liaison between her incarcerated client, terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and his network outside -- to Atticus Finch, the lawyer in ''To Kill a Mockingbird" who heroically defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in the Jim Crow South.

Even more troubling opinions have surfaced in an e-mail Sheehan sent to ABC News last April: ''Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC [Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think thank] Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel."

After some media outlets publicized these comments, which smack of blaming the Jews for drawing the U.S. into the war in Iraq, Sheehan disavowed them: she claims the offending lines were inserted into her email by an ABC News staffer. (The original email has been lost due to an Internet virus attack.) But this latest conspiracy-mongering is hard to believe, especially given the general anti-Israel tenor of Sheehan's public statements: for instance, she railed against the notion that ''it's okay for Israel to have nuclear weapons, but Iran or Syria better not get nuclear weapons."

A comment on the left-wing website Daily Kos described Sheehan as ''Terri Schiavo reincarnated." I believe this was meant as a compliment. But actually, the Sheehan circus has a lot in common with the Schiavo circus, none of it good. Both stories represent a triumph -- on different sides of the political divide -- of emotion- and sentiment-driven politics. Schiavo's parents could go off on paranoid, crazy, vitriolic rants, and enjoy a certain immunity by virtue of their unthinkable tragedy. The same is true of Sheehan.

Sheehan's grief entitles her to sympathy, which is why I believe the president should have granted her the meeting she wanted. (On pragmatic grounds, it would have also taken the sting out of Sheehan's protest.) But her loss does not give her, as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has claimed, an ''absolute" moral authority -- any more than it would if her reaction to her son's death was to demand a US nuclear strike against the insurgents.

Boys night in

So the Wife and friends are out shopdiddly opping and I am home with three 14 year-old young men. I was invited to join in on a round of NGC Super Smash Brothers Melee . I realized it was a setup and left quickly to avoid total desecration. Now i am sequestered in the Living room with pork loins goin in the oven. I have added an old imac keyboard to the notebook so i have a marble mouse and keyboard while sitting on the couch.

When the boys are done playing Clue I will serve up gently roasted, then braised pork chops with three color chili beans. They have already snacked on chips while playing games and then had Mozzarella sticks during a break.

The Surround Sound game room is a real hit! I can barely hear my TV in the living room and the kids are at the other end of the house. They have been killing each other, beating each other with oversized mallots, and blowing a lot of things up.

Seachele has called and said they are having fun (means spending money) so i am counteracting by turning all lights off and settign the thermostat to 85%.

Conan the Destroyer is on right now - what a waste after the groundbreaking epic Conan The Barbarian.

Well the pork is ready - gotta go.

A gazillion more rednecks on the Riviera!

Well, it's official! There will now be one gazillion more rednecks headin to the Redneck Riviera this year. The explosion in Condo building on the north end of the grand strand has assured more "ignernt jaluliments" than ever before. As if we didn't have enough gugenflems cloggin up the streets and walking around all sunburnt and irritable.

So now this boom in building has them draining every swamp for 10 miles and filling it with tourists - not a bad idea if they did that the proper way, but they'll build condos first; fleece the saps of all their cash; then stack 'em 30 stories high. Make sure they have a pool. Don't let the wind blow sand into their faces. "Could you do something about the water? It keeps coming in and going out! What kind of way is this to run an ocean, anyway? Disney has softer water! and there are thingies crawling all over the sand. Can we get someone to call an exterminator?"

All I have to say is thank you very much. Now I'm going to have to find another out of the way small town and settel there. Until people realize I have moved in and then the property values there will soar like they did here. The whole thing will start again. I 've spent half my life making places popular thenm having to move to get away from the popular places.

Next time I ain't telling anybody where I go.

The Island of The Experiment

I really wanted to go to the Island - phooey!

I really liked the new movie "The Island" It reminded me of a novel by John Darnton The Experiment. The premise is identical but the movie has a lot more explosions and hovertrains and such (huda thunkit?). It was the second thriller type movie we took Nathanga to and he really enjoyed it! He did cover his face during the one brief kissykissy, rubbyrubby.
It was a solid story based really closely on The Experiment. However it was going to have to sell to the masses so out went a bunch of plot and in went thirty minutes of explosions, car chases, futuristic imaginary thingies and all the other stuff that make teenagers go "shizizzle" (or what ever they go these days).
I guess they decided to change the story enough to make sure Darnton couldn't get a penny from it so they substituted the south Georgia barrier island for a gazillion-dollar megacomplex and took the time of actual cloning from years to "a year" just to make it complete BS. The scenes were put together well, though and despite the science of the movie being looney; the fiction part was pretty nice.

SPOILER - just to make a dramatic chase scene with lots of banybangy smashysmashy - they were carrying locomotive wheels on a flatbed truck - but all the trains in the movie were HOVERTRAINS! just another example how Hollywood will contradict itself just to make some more explosions.

Despite the contrived technology (Why would anybody make a high-tech, double-barreled harpoon gun? and wouldn't the one-inch hook rip out of the guy's back before it would support him twenty stories above nothing?) The Island had a nice little plot. And a little plot is about all todays teenagers could handle isn't it?

The Island is a nice little pic with plenty of flash and jerky camera moves to make up for solid filmmaking. It will keep you entertained for 2:18, and thats more footage for your money than the average film these days.