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I am a huge fan of Halo ever since my friend introduced me to it. I have played all three Halo games so far. I have seen every episode of Master Chief Sucks At Halo and Arby 'n' the Chief. I have also seen the only three episodes of It's A Wonderful Live.Fake info: Was born on Harvest and selected for the SPARTAN-II program. Was one who barely made it through augmentations.
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Sorry, but after something from Thecairocat I moved the blog.
North America's most beautiful beaches, Tom Cruise in Top Gun II, Halifax disrespecting the water, and TV's most evil reality show villain..
[edit] [American Beaches]
A gallery of 21 of North America's most beautiful beaches.
[edit] [Fun, But Not Original]
There is nothing new under the Hollywood sun but with remakes like these, who cares?
The Rocky Horror Picture Show will be tarted up for a new generation with additional songs. Lou Adler, exec producer of the original musical film, hopes for a Hallowe’en release this year. Casting and writing are underway.
‘Part man, part machine and all cop’… RoboCop is heading back to the big screen after knocking our socks off 21 years ago. Darren Aronofsky and original producer Mike Medavoy are keeping the logline is secret but insiders say the sci fi hero will enter noir territory. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way shingle is producing a big screen version of The Twilight Zone, the classic supernatural TV series that debuted in 1958.
John Waters is writing a treatment for a Hairspray sequel following the success of last years’ musical. Director-choreographer Adam Shankman and his team will return with new songs and, they hope, the same cast - John Travolta, Queen Latifah, Christopher Walken, Nikki Blonsky, Zac Efron, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Marsden, Amanda Bynes, Elijah Kelley and Allison Janney. Action picks up the next day.
Tom Cruise is prepping Top Gun II, a follow-up to the 1986 hit and he hopes to reprise his role as Lt. Pete Maverick Mitchell. The new story involves a ‘cocky new female pilot’ under his tutelage.
Harold and Kumar are returning for a third kick at the bong. The team Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay will be back on board with stars John Cho and Kal Penn. Storyline is secret.
It’s Freddy time! A Nightmare on Elm Street will relaunch as a franchise, the first film to coo-incide with the film’s 25trh anniversary. Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger is one of the most enduring and lucrative bigscreen villains.
Actor/director Peter Berg is retooling Hercules in the film The Thracian Wars, based on a comic book by Steve Moore. Berg will also direct and produce a new version of the Frank Herbert sci-fi novel Dune.
Johnny Depp will produce a film version of the sci-fi comic book story Calibre to be directed by John Woo.
Jenna Dewan and Luke Goss will star in Magdalena, based on the comic book about a sexy, holy warrior. Dewan will play Patience, who discovers that she is from a line of female warriors descended from Mary Magdalene who fight supernatural evil. Goss will play Kristof, sent to protect the lineage buy a secret organisation.
Phillip Noyce will retool the 1935 film classic Captain Blood for new auds. Errol Flynn starred as a doctor in the 1600’s who is convicted of treason against the King of England, sold into slavery and then escapes to become a pirate.
Tim Burton has found his Alice. Australian actress Mia Wasikowska will play Lewis B. Carroll’s fantasy heroine for a re-up of Alice in Wonderland. The 3-D film will combine live-action and performance-capture footage.
Buoyed by the success of Dark Knight, Warner Bros. is eyeing a new sci-fi comic book franchise called Capeshooters with Bryan Singer. Two slackers who specialize in shooting videos of superheroes are thrown into danger when they discover one of the superheroes is actually evil.
Singer Fergie will play the woman who introduces Daniel Day-Lewis’ character to sex in the musical Nine. She joins Marion Cottilard, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren and Judi Dench. It’s Fergie’s first big film role.
Tobey Maguire will star in The Crusaders about a famous court case. He will play an idealistic lawyer fresh out of law school, who joins forces with NAACP Legal Defense Fund head and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to win a Supreme Court case that ruled segregation in American schools illegal.
Jamie Kennedy is expanding his resume, producing the indie drama In Northwood. Nick Stahl will as a man sentenced to a mental hospital for murder, unusual material for the standup comic. Kennedy describes the project as taking place ‘at a moment when you're at a crossroads and have to choose what decisions you would make to survive.’ Olivia Wilde, Dash Mihok and Shohreh Aghdashloo will co-star.
[edit] [dirty Halifax harbour open to skeptical swimmers]
Ryan Maynard stares out at Halifax harbour and laughs when asked if he'd dare take a dip in one of the country's most notorious waterways.
"Swim? It's not going to happen any time soon," Maynard, 22, said with a chuckle as dense fog closed in on a rocky beach in Point Pleasant Park, at the south end of the Halifax peninsula.
The sentiment is not uncommon among a population that's seen raw sewage spew into its historic harbour for more than 250 years and is now being told a new treatment system has made it safe to head back into the water.
"I'm not convinced that it's safe," says Maynard. "Just the fact that it was bad for so many years and in a year they claim it's clean, I don't know, it doesn't seem right. When I see the mayor jump in, I'll jump in after him."
It's a hard sell in a city where citizens became so familiar with the problem that they crafted their own lexicon for the unsavoury bits routinely seen floating on the surface.
Finless browns, beach whistles, whitefish and brown harbour trout were some of the terms used for the fecal matter, tampons, condoms, gobs of toilet paper and anything else flushed down the toilets of 360,000 or so Halifax residents.
All of it would gurgle to the surface and float past boardwalks, shoreline restaurants and the city's busiest tourist traps, impervious to the disgusted looks of passersby.
Now, most of that detritus is gone and the city is beckoning residents to wade in more than three decades after lifeguards were pulled off beaches and signs warning of bacterial contamination went up.
"Before, most people would look at you like you had three heads" if you got in the water, said James Campbell of Harbour Solutions, the group behind the lengthy cleanup project.
"Now you've got a harbour you can swim in, you can recreational boat in and all manner of stuff and not have any health concerns. You can walk along the boardwalk and see the water and only see the water - you don't smell it, you just see it."
As of next week, lifeguards will return to urban beaches after recent testing in the harbour showed levels of fecal coliform and fecal enterococci were so low that it was safe enough for swimmers.
The news came nine months after the first of three waste water treatment facilities began operating as part of a $333 million project that took years of construction and difficult negotiations between three levels of government.
Within days of the startup, Campbell said readings showed a dramatic drop in bacterial contamination while the squadrons of tampons and condoms began to disappear.
The city has also had to haul up garbage because the once cloudy water along a stretch of boardwalk has become so clear that you can see all manner of litter on the harbour floor.
In one day, divers said they filled a barge with about 1.5 tonnes of car and truck tires, pylons, shopping carts, beer kegs and other unsightly junk.
Still, observers question whether the system the city has installed will adequately treat the 200 million litres of waste that used to flow freely into the harbour every day - an amount that could fill more than 25 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The city installed an "advanced primary" system that strains large particles through two screens and treats the fluid with a solution to help small particles settle as sludge, while the remaining water is exposed to ultraviolet light to kill bacteria.
"This system is not nearly good enough," said Emily Rideout of the Sierra Club in Halifax, reflecting on a time not long ago when people complained of getting rashes and infections after being dunked in the harbour.
"It strains out solids and zaps out bacteria, but that does nothing for chemical contamination like medication, PCBs and household contaminants."
Most Canadian cities have secondary water treatment systems and some, like Calgary and Edmonton, have tertiary wastewater facilities that provide even more filtration and water treatment.
Rideout said Ottawa is expected to introduce regulations that will likely make secondary treatment the standard, meaning Halifax will have to adapt its new facilities to comply.
"Our harbour is an industrial harbour, so I would imagine we have some interesting industrial effluent," she said.
Still, Halifax is ahead of Victoria and St. John's, N.L., cities that continue to dump raw sewage into their harbours while wastewater treatment plants are under construction.
"The progress is at a snail's pace," John Werring of the David Suzuki Foundation said from Vancouver. "With regards to sewage regulation, we're even behind some developing Third World countries. It's quite an embarrassment."
Indeed, it may take some time for a wary public to buy into the assurances that Halifax harbour is safe and clean.
Rachelle MacDonald said she's seen too much while crossing to Halifax on the ferry or walking the beach on an island at the mouth of the harbour.
"We went out there and they told us not to go anywhere near the beach because you'll see syringes, toilet paper and God know's what else," the 21-year-old says with a laugh.
"I'm still not completely convinced."
[edit] [Cowell voted best villain]
American Idol judge Simon Cowell has been voted reality TV’s best villain in a recent poll. His colleague Paula Abdul was voted worst judge.
AOL’s Reality TV Awards allowed site visitors to vote for their favourite, and most-hated, shows and personalities in reality programming.
Held over a span of two weeks this month, the awards were decided by the 1,340,208 votes cast.
Cowell won the best villain award with 39 per cent of votes. Abdul won worst judge with 42 per cent of votes.
But love or hate the Idol judges, the reality show looking for America’s next singing sensation is still number one in viewers’ hearts – it took home the best reality show award with 33 per cent, beating out Dancing With the Stars’ 32 per cent.
Of course Dancing’s cast wasn’t left out of the picture. Julianne Hough took the hottest female star award, while Jason Taylor took the hottest make star award. The two good-looking dancers may have helped the show remain near to America’s heart even though Samantha Harris took the title of worst host.
Harris shouldn’t feel bad though, at least she wasn’t labelled skankiest star like Tila Tequila was, or scariest star like Flavor Flav, whose show Flavor of Love also scored the title of worst reality show. Leave it to MTV-produced shows to score the creepiest awards.
F*CK YOU SIMON COWPATTY!
And I ment Cowell