A guy who hated fascism, and wrote about humanity’s increasingly-growing “infection” of fascism; an infection which threatens us all. (Note that in his works, you could not cooperate yourself out of the fascism found in 1984 or Animal Farm. Violent resistance was really the only thing left to do.)
People who use Google Reader may recall that I had previously shared an item about George Orwell‘s blog. But I’d never actually bothered to blog about it. So I’m going to mention it now!
It’s pretty cool. They use George Orwell‘s actual diary. They set it on a 70 year delay. So, for example, since today is Nov. 30, 2008 (20081130), his blog would post his diary entry for Nov 30, 1938 (19381130).
The irony is that right now, his life is really boring. Basically all he “blogs” about is how many eggs he got from his chickens, or what crops are in bloom, or how much the animals cost here. Lots of agricultural stuff. The real exciting stuff wont start happening for a couple years I guess.
So anyway, many entries are simply, “One egg.” And that is it. Sometimes, “Two eggs.” At this point, I finally started noticing there were like 15 comments on the “one egg posts” (a “one egg post” is gradually starting to become a figure of speech of mine for something way shorter than it should be).
People are pretty funny. I like that they bothered to comment about “one egg”. After a “two egg” day, people talked about Fibonacci sequence conspiracies. Or people would complain, “this post is tagged ‘egg’, but not ‘one’!”. If chickens could think, I wonder what these now-long-dead chickens would think about their eggs one day becoming conspiracy theories in blog-comment conversations?
Anyway, today took the cake. Someone actually found a letter by Orwell (something NOT from his diary/blog) that related to the one egg posts and posted as a blog comment. Jesus Christ. People are frickin’ weird. And I love it.
Anyway, here is a link to today’s “one egg” post, with strange comments:
By the way — It says something about you as a person, if you can write 2 words about your animals, and have 15 people around the world discussing these 2 words 70 years later…. (more…)
(Summary written by Carolyn, pronouns changed by Clint, this may be messy..) So we saw They Might Be Giants at the 9:30 Club on the day after Thanksgiving. The show was sold out. The 9:30 Club website didn’t mention an opening band. It said doors were at 8, and TMBG was at 9. So we decided to leave at 8:15, then changed it to 8. Carolyn remembered last year when she went with Vicky & Kipp (Clint went to see Ween in Baltimore instead). There was a line to get into the doors. Since the show was sold out, we’d have to find a parking spot. When we got to the 9:30 Club, we found the lot indeed to be full. As we were driving around the block, we considered going to that other paid parking lot for a split second — until the guy running it blinded us with his stupid light. Fuck that. That’s twice we’ve chosen not to park there because of the light in our face. The line to get into the 9:30 club went around the block. We drove up to the end of the line, and Clint asked the people if they had tickets. The answer was yes. Clint had a hard time believing it, and asked a few times, until I was like “yes, they have tickets, it was just like this last year!” One of them was like, “It’s a sold-out show” So we turned around and parked in the last spot. I commented, “At least we don’t have a long walk from our car to the end of the line”. Small consolation. It wasn’t as cold this year as it was last year when Kipp, Vicky, and I stood in that line. Still, you’d think that a club that says “doors open at 8” would not make it’s paying customers stand in the cold for 2.5 blocks of line, advancing 6 squares of sidewalk every 3 minutes, a full 45 minutes past when these doors were suposed to open. 9:30 needs to send the hand-stamp guy down the line so everyone is stamped already when they present their ticket. This would move the line a lot faster.
Not sure what time we got in, or what time it started or anything. We got in, went to pee, and then when I got out of the bathroom, Clint was like “it’s really crowded in there.” I said “Well, maybe we should go in this way…” and then Clint suggested we go upstairs. So that’s what we did. We went up to the top level to the bar up there to get our drinks and then scope out a spot. Clint was like “Look, they have the stairs roped off so people could stand on them.” But it was a VIP area. But it was convenient because I got to have that spot right there by the rope at the top of the stairs, and I could actually see. Yay. The upstairs bartender made our drinks really strong. It was cool.
When TMBG came on, they said they were doing things a bit different. They were going to play Flood in it’s entirety, and then take a 20 minute break that would last about 19 minutes and then come back and play other songs. It was awesome.
Someone farted a couple of times, and Carolyn got a whiff of some bad breath a couple of times, but all in all, there weren’t any annoying people around.
During the 20 minute break, Caroln asked Clint if we should get another drink. Clint said something about driving so I said, “Well, considering TMBG is in my top ten, if not top 5 bands, can I get another drink and you drive?” Clint said “Get two drinks.” Carolyn got drinks while Clint held their space. Some pour soul was standing at the bar, and Carolyn squeezed in next to him. The bartender came around with the other guy-next-to-me’s drinks and pointed at me and said, “Two vodka 7-ups, right?” and Carolyn was like, “yeah!”. She turned to the poor soul and said “Wow, he remembered! I’m impressed!” Then Carolyn came back and told Clint about how the bartender remembered her, and what drinks she had ordered before. Carolyn glanced back at the bar, and that guy who she had squeezed in next to was still there! The bartender hadn’t even served him yet! She felt somewhat bad because that usually happens to her instead of someone else. But we got over it pretty quick — the drinks were really strong.
They played a bunch of songs, then went out, and then came back for an encore. So there were like 3 sets. 4 actually, but the last one was only 1 or 2 songs. The encore consisted of Fingertips. They also played She’s An Angel from the first album. Mark had said that that is a popular song, and they’ve probably played it at concerts and I just didn’t know that song. So, when they played it, I thought of Mark and how he was probably right about that. Also, they had a lot of fucking around during Particle Man. But it wasn’t boring fucking around (like Violent Femmes can be). However it was definitely the requisite musical masturbation moment (RMMM).
TMBG mentioned several times that they were playing the next night in New York, and they were playing the entire Apollo 18 album. Carolyn said to Clint she was glad we got the Flood album. Flood is way better. And we got all 21 tracks of Fingertips anyway! Tho it was kind of strange that the ended with Withered Hope (“sad saaaaack”), one of TMBG’s few sad songs. It was kind of a stranger bummer note to go out on. But hey, they went on stage FOUR times.
After the show, Clint was hungry, so we were looking around for some place to eat, and he was like, “Maybe we can go to Adam’s Morgan and get one of those jumbo slices.” I was like, “You know how to get to Adam’s Morgan from here?” Because I sure didn’t. Then Clint said, “Oh wait, didn’t that place burn down or something?” As it turned out, there was a jumbo slice place right on U St near 14th street, so we ate there. Clint got a gyro, and I got a jumbo slice of pepporoni. I knew to expect a big piece, but that piece was HUUUUUGE! It was like a half of a pizza almost!! It was crazy. I ate about a third of it, and about three bites of Clint‘s gyro. Clint ate his gyro, and the rest of my pizza (and regretted it). Carolyn kept starting to wrap it up for later, and Clint kept telling me to wait. Until it was gone. When we got home, we chilled awhile, and then watched The Life And Times Of Tim.
The setlist for this concert was considerable, and we know much of it. It is is posted HERE.
As if American consumerism isn't bad enough, people literally have the mentality of sheep. "It's black friday so I have to go shopping, even if that means going out before the stores open." It takes a real fucking idiot to think there's any sense in even bothering to go out shopping on the busiest day of the year. It takes an even worse idiot to trample somebody to death.
I hope they do file criminal charges, but I doubt they'd be able to figure out who everyone was, since they closed the store and thus didn't get everyone's credit card number when they shopped.
Of course, Wal-Mart makes sure there's no union to help ensure safe conditions for workers. Tho this was kind of a freak thing, I think it'll happen again.
Okay Buddhism: You're full of stupid dogma too, even if you are the coolest of the main 5 religions. Stupid religion. I'm gonna have to say: Fuck the Dalai Lama. He needs to get laid BAD.
Uh, no. This is not change. This is business than usual. Anyone know anyone else with IT skills who is unemployed or under-employed? Those are the Americans who's jobs are being taken away by H1B visas.
Of course the people telling me I should vote for Obama because he's "not as bad as" McCain don't realize that this issue affects my personal job employability.
And guess who was against H1B increases? Not McCain. Not Obama. But Nader.
Sure glad I didn't vote for Obama, as I don't tend to vote for people who want to sell my American job out to non-citizens.
There is no skill shortage. There is a shortage of skilled American IT workers who will work for the global IT wage (which is very low, like $20). And big business wants cheap labor (and illegal immigrants too) in order to compete globally with foreign sweatshop corporations…
[IMDB link] [Netflix link] Gregg Araki‘s 7th movie, and his most optimistic, now that he is done with his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy (Totally Fucked Up, The Doom Generation, Nowhere). Yet despite its optimism, this controversial movie still only garnered a 5.1 on IMDB (3.2 stars on Netflix). (Factoid: I had forgotten that Araki also directed the amazingly-funny stoner movie Smiley Face, starring Anna Faris.)
PEOPLE:Gregg Araki directs. Kathleen Robertson (aka Clare Arnold from Beverly Hills 90210, also in Psycho Beach Party, Nowhere, and Scary Movie 2) plays the leading lady/main character. The two dudes are played by Matt Keeslar (Psycho Beach Party, Scream 3) and Johnathon Schaech (How To Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog, The Doom Generation). And… another movie with Adam Carolla in a bit part?!?!?
QUIRKS: This is a movie about polyamory. Most of Araki’s movies have some kind of sexual quirk — usually a gay character, as Araki himself is gay. This one is polyamory. This movie is not really focused exclusively on the sexual act of the threesome — like National Lampoon’s One, Two, Many — but rather on the three-way emotional interplay involved in a polyamourous relationship. And that’s really the focus of the whole movie.
BAD STUFF: It’s not a comedy? But the situations are so interesting that you might be smiling anyway.
GOOD STUFF:Finally — a movie dealing with non-traditional sex that does it right!
None of the “everyone’s lives goes to shit / it doesn’t work out because they have sex not approved by the moral majority” — something that annoyed me about Boogie Nights; Kinsey; National Lampoon’s One, Two, Many; and pretty much every other movie I’ve seen that might involve threesomes, the porn industry, or non-traditional sex and relationship structures.
[highlight for spoilers]→…And a happy ending! In an Araki movie, no less! A happy ending that the moral majority might not approve of — MAJOR SPOILERS NOW — she decides to permanently stay with both men in a 3-way relationship, after becoming pregnant. The credits feature a scene of a baby looking up from a crib at its mommy and two daddies — who then start taking her clothes off. They drop the the floor, out of the baby’s view. The end. Everyone’s happy. And in a way gay-marriage-hating people are bound to hate!
CONCLUSION: Taboo happiness is far more entertaining than normal happiness. Good stuff!!
RECOMMENDATION: If this were a movie about a guy and a girl… I would think it lame, and not want to watch it. But this is a movie about 2 guys and a girl. The situations are far more unique. I think this is one of Araki’s best movies. It should definitely be seen by the sexually/romantically close-minded/prudish/religious — just to make them writhe in their seats a bit and see what they could be missing. We both liked this!
FRIENDS’ OPINIONS:
Eve & Chris: “So, we weren’t crazy about Splendor because the alternative lifestyle didn’t really play into the plot at all. She could’ve been with one semi-unemployed guy instead of two and would have had the same plot. So it was neat that they had that arrangement, and I bought that the one guy moved in becuase the other one did, but the main conflict was about the rich-stable guy, and really, the triad was irrelevant to that exchange. // So I think that’s a pretty big one for us, and we like Seeing Other People better, because it was ABOUT lifestyle stuff.”
COINCIDENCE #1: (Splendor, Brutal Massacre: A Comedy) 2 movies within a week that had people going to the hotel room 333 (half of 666!).
COINCIDENCE #2: (Splendor, Just Friends) 2 movies in a row with scenes where characters romantically involved are talking to each other in a public place that has large screens where, on those screens, are the same people talking to each other.
COINCIDENCE #3: (Splendor, Wasted) 2 movies within a week or so that both unexpectedly had Adam Corolla in a small part.
Last I checked, reverse engineering has always been legal. But the DMCA has never been a sane law in the first place — And Apple are BIG DICKS as usual. Hashing data in dickish ways so they can be dicks to other people just trying to exist in a world not clearly defined by Apple parameters. What dicks.
Yea. Dr. Seuss characters are copyrighted. Don't you dare use them for a city Christmas display without paying someone. (It's good that these laws are protecting the rights of Dr. Seuss's rotting corpse, which is rolling over in its grave right now.)
Obama's FCC transition co-chair is a hardcore World Of Warcraft player. This may bode well for us. Someone controlling our technology policy who actually understand its use firsthand, in a fashion other than what you'd read from an executive summary or what you'd do at work. Too bad the title sounds kind of temporary.
She was a season ticket holder who had her seat stolen from her, so she sat somewhere else. Surely all of the combined police force here can move a 54-year-old lady without having to taser her to the point where they have to put her in a wheelchair?
I'm sure this will be found to be justified, though. And the cops lied by saying she was sitting in an aisle. 24 eyewitnesses have signed a petition protesting the police's behavior.
Pain ray compliance: Once thought to be science fiction, it became reality much faster than anyone could have predicted.
And as always — funny how the video is being kept under wraps. Personally, I think it should become public record in cases like these. (At the very least, after the fact.)
Hmm. I’ve always noticed that a lot of people in prison seem to convert to Islam. Could it be that some of them are doing so to escape beatings from fellow muslim prisoners?
Where are the Christian and Jewish beatings anyway? (Oh yea, we like to just bomb people.) Either way, I think this shows how Islam is more individually brutal than Christianity or Judaism. Christians wreak more violence overall, but we do it in an impersonal fashion – military support, bombings, etc. Muslims like to get up personal, beat you, and behead you — something I don’t generally see Christians doing.
My conclusion is that all religions are evil, but some are more evil than others in certain ways.
Yup, they’re submitting these results to Congress. So everyone who’s not a religious douchebag who thinks the world should be run based on scriptures that were written before the dark ages — please fill out this survey with some SANE results.
What? They don’t love us for bringing our freedom to them? How can this be???
Oh. Wait. 7 years later people are still dying, the Taliban still controls most of the territory, and we never got Bin Laden. Are we just sending people there to act as magnets for the bad guys in the hope that we’ll shoot all the bad guys? That’s not how it works.
In the end, we killed more of their innocent civilians (5,500) than they killed of ours (3000 on 911). That’s if you count September 11th as coming from Afghanistan, which I don’t really, since most of the people were from Saudi Arabia.
Who’s more evil? Them, because we are justified in our killings and they are not? Or us, because we killed more innocents who had nothing to do with either sides? I suppose the answer is a matter of opinion.
Wow. Some amazing stuff; I had to watch the video all the way through. And it looks like he has another handicapped protege at the end of the video. Awesome. This is just the type of story parents use to tell kids the lie that they can do “anything”. I’d say “anything within reasonable bounds”, personally. And this guy just pushed those bounds a lot further. I’d like to see non-handicapped people try to pull this off in a wheelchair (and possibly actually need it afterwards).
Maybe this is why the list of appointees has been so shitty? Because the two parties are largely one in the same, working together to appoint Business-As-Usual cronies?
Is this “CHAAAANNNNGGGGEEEEE”?
“Oh, but their policies are different enough that you shouldn’t waste your vote voting 3rd party!” (Yes, I’m going to beat this dead horse for as long as I can.)
There’s certainly something to be said for finding experts regardless of what party they are, but this type of collusion is nonetheless quite disturbing to me, representing how the two parties do whatever possible to ensure that our “two party system” (which isn’t really) stays as such.
The comments here do some good to express how this could be considered either good or bad. . .
While DailyKos is pointing the finger at Dick Cheney, and Halliburton — guess who passed this exemption? A DEMOCRATIC congress.
Now why am I supposed to vote democrat again? Because they aren’t as bad as the republicans? It’s like voting to be stabbed in the stomach instead of shot in the head! Why would I vote for a party that makes it easier to put chemicals in my water?
I’d like clean drinking water, please. WITHOUT having to buy bottled water, please.
Meanwhile the democrats are running around screaming “CHANNNNNGE” and “YES WE CAN”, just like the Hippies in 1969 who thought we won the culture war (we list).
Will they realize the error of their ways in 4 yeras? (I’m hoping *I’m* the one who’s wrong, but I really doubt it.)
I’d almost forgotten how much physical media can suck at times. I found a box of DVDs I got from last Christmas, skillfully hidden from myself due to construction. We sold our spare refrigerator to Gene & Heather, which caused me to clean the utility room, which caused me to find the box.
Of course, we need to catalog and backup all these bought dvds. But in order to do that, I need to pull the DVDs I already own in order to make sure THEY were catalogged too.
Of course, once I catalog them, I’ll need to store them in my media cabinet (I have 4, each holds about ~140 VHS tapes). Of course to do that, I need to see if there is room. Oh wait, which cabinet is which? I guess I’ll label the cabinets. While I’m here, I need to go through and throw away a few old tapes to make room. And also go through Carolyn’s tapes, and determine that they are “as good as blank”. (Uncatalogged AND full of shows that we now have on DVD anyway.)
And oh, I have some bought tapes that have not gone into my number tracking system. I’ll assign some numbers to them (I have free numbers interspersed throughout due to a renumbering project 8 or so years ago) and then insert them into the right place in my collection. But of course, as I’m inserting new numbers in between old ones, that means my cabinets fill. So I end up having to slide 10-20 tapes from each cabinet to the next. Finally I’m to the last cabinet, and it’s iffy as to whether there will be room for my dvds or not.
Meanwhile, I found 3 tapes in the wrong cabinet. I found a copy of a tape that needed to be numbered and put by the original. I found a few uncatalogged and unlabeled tapes. Apparently we still recorded VHS in 2003. (WTF? I thought I was done long before that when I started recording shows on my computer around 2001-2001.). I also found a video Carolyn had to make for a college (?) class, which she said was really embarassing. We definitley need to watch some of this sometime. I’d like to buy one of those VHS->DVD converters, now that they are the same cost ($50ish) as a video capture card was in 2000. I’d like to convert some of these. Right now a guy is converting some of my tapes to dvd for me, but postal mail is a hassle, and re-assimliating the data from his dvds is an extra step we would not need to take with our own stuff.
It will be nice to finally close out the VHS catalogs, since it’s been 5 yrs that some tapes have remained uncatalogged. Why? It’s inconsequential. Most of those shows have been available on dvd (or via other means of digital acquisition) for some time now.
But the VHS age wont be officially closed until I’ve gone through all my tapes, and converted anything “special” that only exists on those tapes. Home movies. Local stuff. Rare shows and specials. Movies that never came out on DVD. Technical video experiments. etc. And of course, I bought the entire Showtime mockumentary adult-comedy series Sherman Oaks on VHS for $50 or so on Ebay. THAT needs to be converted to DVD *badly*. I would say the ETA for being done with my last VHS tape would probably be 2015 or 2020. Le sigh..
Anyway….. Hopefully today I can finish dealing with the VHS tapes, so I can start dealing with all the DVDs which originally caused me to start all this again! (more…)
Free markets and competition essentially ‘force’ businesses into the best (economic) behaviors, because if they don’t do it, some other company will, and will metaphorically take their lunch.
It’s good theory, but it’s not reality. Not anymore. Initial economic theory never knew what today’s globalism was going to look like. The game of capitalism and free markets changes substantially from the 1800s world of limited markets with few people to use them, to the 2000s world of a market with an infinite number of suckers to buy whatever you want. There has been a subtle paradigm shift.
One can now make big money screwing over one’s customers, and new ones will replace them. Nobody will take your lunch, because if you can sell something everybody needs (bottled water), or even wants (cellphones), there’s a replenishing supply of tons of people willing to consume your product. If you get unpopular, you can just move to another country with fewer laws and sell your product there, possibly with a higher profit margin (fewer regulations) allowing you to make just as much money with lower-volume sales. Granted this is how it’s always been, but I feel like today’s scale of population and globalism has somehow changed the feasibility of bad behavior in a way that we may not yet understand.
The market force of the people has moved to a much slower speed — in the old days, if there was a shitty product, you’d tell the guy next to you at the market, and it would spread around the town in a day. They even used to have professional rumor companies (before slander laws) that would go to train stations and pass the bad word. Nowadays, it is different. While we have vast communiation networks that are unparalleled by anything mankind has seen, there are simply too many people on the planet for us to be as closely connected as we were in the small-town days. Even with the internet.
It’s doubtful that that kid in Iran is going to know what my problem with product X is. I may blog about it, but he’s never going to run into my blog. And in fact, if you criticize a corporation too harshly, they may sue you. And guess who is going to win in a legal pissing contest between a lone blogger and a mulit-national corporation? The game is stacked. But the fact of the matter is — that kid in Iran is never going to know why he shouldn’t by product X that I had a problem with. Thanks to globalism, a company can sell product X to anyplace in the world. That is a huge market. You could piss off 99% of the planet, and stil have 10 million customers. That’s not how it worked in the 1800s.
The market force of the producers and corporatins, meanwhile, has moved to a much faster speed. In the old days, if you failed in a market, you have to ride your horse to another town and try to drum up business again. Transportation was not cheap; we didn’t even have combustion engines or oil. Nowadays? Just sell it online, and the whole planet is your sucker. If you stop selling well in America — go sell your product in China instead. The cost will not be that much more; shipping corporations have created an economy of scale in transporting products that did not exist back in the 1800s. Even as a civilian, I can ship somethign to China for an extremely cheap price. Something someone in the 1800s could not have done.
Most of our economic theory (Adam Smith, and the “founding fathers of capitalism”) came out in the 1700s and 1800s, right? This was a time when even our founding fathers failed at adequately writing a constitution that still applies today. The constitution has been largely shot down, one amendment at a time, due to creative legal intepretation. Every amendment is now a razor-thin wire, barely holding up. The 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 10th amendments especially have been shat on. What happened?
Quite simply, the founding fathers needed to catch a glimpse of the future. They needed to see how the world changed, and how what they said on paper actually does not make total sense in the 2000s. They needed to be more clear about free speech, gun control, declaration of war — and perhaps how votes are counted after the 2000 Election debacle in Florida.
Now consider the founding fathers of economics. Similarly, they laid out their theory in a non-globalized, colonial world. The “Invisible Hand” of the market that we were taught about in school was actually supposed to be the invisible hand of GOD, not of market forces. (Though tTis may be the matter of some debate.) In other words, even when initially coined, the idea of an “invisible hand” that fixes the market was only believable if you believed in magic sky fairies (God) pulling the strings of our economy like a puppet. The fact of the matter is, if you take out mythical entities such as God, even the creater of the free market didn’t believe it worked.
Also, Adam Smith also believed that the rich should be taxed at a higher rate than the poor. Take that, free-market capitalists! I’m just mentioning this because a lot of people who think that a free market magically fixes everything also think that a Flat Tax is fair. A flat tax absolutely is not fair, and Adam Smith agreed with this.
So anyway — our constitution has largely failed because the GREAT men of the 1800s were not so great as to be able to see into the future.
By and large, I feel the same way about lassez faire/free-market capitalism. It was an idea proposed by GREAT men of the 1800s, and made a lot of sense at the time. But the ideas did not properly consider a future which none could have possibly imagined, and thus suffered some entropy when faced with a modern reality.
The founders of our constitution could no more imagine how much law (and the interpretation thereof) would change over the next 200 years than the early proponents (“founders”, if you will) of capitalism could imagine how much economics and the global market would change over the next 200 years.
Perhaps this is why the great Thomas Jefferson considered revolutions mandatory, happening on average every 200 years? Perhaps Jefferson had the humility to know that even his own enumerations of his own basic ideas could not possibly be refined to withstand he could never glimpse.
And I’m not saying capitalism doesn’t work. Free-market capitalism works for MARKETS. If I’m going to have a yardsale or a flea market or a farmers market, that is the system that it will work by.
But the whole planet is *not* one big MARKET. It’s something else. Call me crazy, but I’m going to call it a “PLANET”. A “MARKET” does not have INFINITE people. A “MARKET”, in old world understanding, was really limited to a particular locale and subset of people. Today the global “market” effectively *is* infinite, with a global population at record levels that are being broken every second. I feel this somehow changes the parameters of basic economic theory.
I’m not smart, educated, insightful, unbiased, or ambitious enough to write a treatise on just how and why everything changes, or to enumerate the methods by which these mechanisms occur. I’m not observant enough to see every gear turning, and to understand how every piece of the machine works together… I doubt many are.
But I do feel that what is happening in our society today is, in some ways, mirroring the fall of communism in the early 1990s. They simply faced their economic collapse 15 years earlier than us. They lost. And now we lost. America is no longer going to be in control of the world’s finances — the other leaders of the world have basically already decided this. The world has seen our ways as being largely wrong, and it’s time that we stop clinging to futile old dogma. Both with religion AND economics.
Even pre-economic crisis, I felt there were many things wrong about the way we were doing things. (Just look at the homeless, for example. Oh I forgot — they “don’t want” to work and chose this!) (Or spend a summer reviewing medical records and notice how it “costs” $500K every time someone dies, even though everyone who dies doesn’t have $500K.)
Neither the far-right system of communism or the far-left system of capitalism is going to take the world to its future. People need to wake up and see that everything isn’t merely a two-sided dichotomy. That is American false dichotomy thinking, and is also a cause of the “two-party” system.
I heard once that the Rastafarian god is capable of seeing issues from more than one (or two) sides at once. We should try to do the same in considering economic theory for the future. (more…)
While DailyKos is pointing the finger at Dick Cheney, and Halliburton — guess who passed this exemption? A DEMOCRATIC congress.
Now why am I supposed to vote democrat again? Because they aren’t as bad as the republicans? It’s like voting to be stabbed in the stomach instead of shot in the head! Why would I vote for a party that makes it easier to put chemicals in my water?
I’d like clean drinking water, please. WITHOUT having to buy bottled water, please.
Meanwhile the democrats are running around screaming “CHANNNNNGE” and “YES WE CAN”, just like the Hippies in 1969 who thought we won the culture war (we lost, and got the 1980s, cocaine, consumerism, Reaganomics, and Republican expansion instead.).
Will they realize the error of their ways in 4 yeras? (I’m hoping *I’m* the one who’s wrong, but I really doubt it.)
This is absolutely ridiculous. California passed their medical marijuana laws via VOTER REFERENDUM (um…democracy? sometimes it happens), and 10 years later the government that is supposed to be FOR the people it is OF (of, by, and for!) is still ignoring the will over the voters.
It’s quite obvious to any nincompoop that if voters want X done, that they mean you can do X without losing your driver’s license, your house, and your your job (the right to continue working after failing a drug test for medical marijuana had to be fought for in court too).
BIG DEMOCRACY FAIL. But hey, DMV people like to be jerks anyway. You hear that Virginia DMV? You’re jerks.
The DMV justifies its license revocations of medical marijuana patients by calling them “drug abusers” despite no evidence to back that claim. The DMV has not taken similar blanket action against people prescribed opiates, barbiturates, sedatives, tranquilizers, or stimulants.
…or at least, the ones that the government things are “sexually aggressive”. Would this include a 13 year old who hugged his teacher, a guy who mooned his sister in law, or a teenager who took a nude picture of himself? Becuase in America, those things get you on sex offender lists.
The funny thing is that when RFID chips came out, the people who were right all whined that this would eventually be used to track humans and violate human rights. But the pro-technology, pro-free market, pro-government crowd basically said the liberals were chicken littles crying that the sky was falling.
Well look who’s laughing now? The RFID chip manufacturers, who now will be making a profit treating human like cattle.
Remember: The best way to systematicaly remove of people’s rights is to take away the rights from those who are hated first: sex offenders, criminals, the poor, minorities, those who have unpopular opinions or lifestyles. “Then they came for me, and no one was left to speak out.”
This says a lot about what is wrong with the Democrats, Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder.
I’m more convinced than ever that voting for Obama is a mistake that results in more “business than usual”. Voting 3rd party is the right thing to do.
I wonder how many potheads will go to jail via the policies of someone they voted for, and turn around and say, “Well, at least he’s not as bad as McCain”. (But uh… YOU’RE IN JAIL, dumbass.)
An increase in the War On Drugs is business as usual. Just like the War On Terror, the War On Dugs is a way to make money in an “eternal war” while clamping down on civil rights.
I look forward to being proven wrong here. Everything is speculation until Obama actually starts doing stuff. We’ll see if Obama is any more hypocritical than Bill Clinton.
Will the 3rd president in a row to do coke and/or pot arrest people who have done the same in record numbers YET AGAIN? Will people continue ignoring the futility, and go about their 2-party pep-rally?
I didn't write that headline, but if the facts in this article are true (as inflammatory as the tone may be), then this continues to be another disappointing choice by Obama — and another Clinton crony to boot.
Am I to be convinced that just because Bush and McCain suck so bad, that I should be happy to vote for this guy? It certainly looks like business as usual so far.
I can't wait until inaguration and the end of all this bullshit speculation (self included). But right now, it sure isn't looking good.
(REDUNDANCY ALERT!!!!) Crap! I accidentally reviewed this movie twice. Forgot to remove it from my list of movies to review after reviewing it the first time. Oh, well. Let’s see what happens.
[IMDB link] [Netflix link] Be careful with this one — there’s tons of movies called “Wasted”, even with similar descriptions at times. This is the 2006 version. They probably should have stuck with the “Farewell Bender” title, as that is more appropriate.
PEOPLE:Eddie Kaye Thomas, who is becoming quite well-known to Carolyn & I. He seems to be popping up in movies we choose to watch quite often. Kip Pardue. Adam Carolla. Marisa Coughlan (from Super Troopers). Josh Cooke (also in Young People Fucking, a movie we later watched). Also, Twin Peaks fans (!!!!) should notice that the priest is played by Chris Mulkey (aka Hank Jennings), who was also in Cloverfield — which we didn’t notice. (He also voiced a villain in 3 episodes of Batman Beyond.)
QUIRKS: A “coming of age”, 20-something film. Plenty of substance abuse, but this is not a party movie. This is based on the real-life experiences of the 2 writers (1 of which is also the director.)
While I doubt many people have seen all 3 of those films, it really does describe the 3 overwhelming themes to this movie. 1) Appreciating and dealing with life and death. 2) Returning home to face your previous social role in your hometown. 3) Trying to find love but being placed in the “friend zone”. I am really surprised by how well this equation holds up.
BAD STUFF: Well, it is kind of depressing! This is a slow drama. Ouch.
It’s especially depessing if you consider how in the ending, [highlight for spoilers]→everyone falls back into their original ruts at the end of the movie, basically changing nothing. Nor does Eddie Kaye Thomas get the girl. Which is no surprise, since the only time that happened was in Dirty Love, which was written by Jenny McCarthy, directed by her husband, and got a 2.1 or so on IMDB. :)
CONCLUSION: It was at times an emotional drama. I’m just not sure what lesson I took out of it.
I would rather revel in the individual 3 movies that I consider the components of this movie:
The Wackness – a better drama with better lessons about life. SubUrbia – a better slow drama with possibly better dialog, and a more indie feel Just Friends – a romantic comedy. While not necessarily better, it stars Ryan Reynolds essentially playing the same character and acting same plot as Eddie Kaye Thomas in this movie — but without the distractions of the other characters in Wasted (2006).
RECOMMENDATION: I wouldn’t recommend this to people who like the kind of movies I like. I’d recommend the other 3 movies instead.
COINCIDENCES:
#1: (Splendor, Wasted) 2 movies within a week or so that both unexpectedly had Adam Corolla in a small part.
#2: (Just Friends, Wasted) 2 movies in a row with people returning to the town they went to high school in, as well as scene/plots involving trying to get out of the ‘friend zone’ by dating a female friend they were interested in. Oh, and (more…)
[IMDB link] [Netflix link] This movie is strangely rated 6.1/10 on IMDB (216 votes) — not too shabby considering how many movies I’ve enjoyed that are rated under a 5. This movie is only rated 2.5/5 stars (509 votes) on Netflix. So it has some mixed reaction.
PLOT: Several friends return to their hometown for the funeral of a good friend of theirs, learning things about themselves in the process — sort of like Up A Creek without the fantastic camping adventure, Death At A Funeral without the comedy, or Suburbia (or Just Friends) without the funeral. :)
QUIRKS/BAD STUFF: A college coming-of-age cult comedy (according to IMDB keywords) that isn’t funny and is actually depressing. People drink and do drugs, try to hook up with girls who just want to be their friend, get shafted, get arrested, life sucks, everyone goes back to their rut, and nothing good happens to anyone.
Also, there are several movies called wasted. It’s really easy to get the wrong one. I’m just pointing out this is the *2006* one.
CONCLUSION: A realistic movie with real characters — based on some of the real-life experiences of the screenplay-writer — that makes many subtle points about life (life life). Eddie Kaye Thomas‘s character is just sad. I unfortunately have to give this 2/5 stars (Netflix) and 5/10 (IMDB), because it was entertaining, but really just left a bad taste in my mouth.
RECOMMENDATION: If you aren’t put off by the depressingness of it all… This is a decent drama. How IMDB can call this a comedy is beyond me. Netflix calls it an Indie Drama. A lot of people writing reviews for it either completely hated it, or completely loved it. Fewer people fell in the middle.
COINCIDENCES: This movie & Just Friends — we watched 2 movies in a row with people returning to the town they went to high school in, as well as scene/plots involving trying to get out of the ‘friend zone’ by dating a female friend they were interested in, which [highlight for spoilers]→ultimately failed.
The important lesson is the ways in which the industry clings to it's profit lines at our expense. And this is a good lesson. For a mere $7, pirates can make a *profit* (a big profit) selling BluRay movies on normal DVDs.
Blank DVD = 4.5G. Movie DVD = 9G. BluRay = 20-30G. But BluRay downsampled to 720p (2.25X DVD quality instead of 6X) converted to 4.5G and put on a blank dvd? Subjectively, it's 90% as much of an improvement as the actual BluRay. Which costs TWENTY FIVE FRICKIN' DOLLARS. And which may not work in your old BluRay player, as they upgrade copy protection schemes and leave early adopters in the dust.
So anyway, everyone — Have fun wasting your money. The cost of a blank dvd is about 25 cents, and that can hold 90% of the experience people are paying $25 for. Have fun spending $24.75 for an extra 10% of quality that most people can't even tell.
Hollywood wants you to keep buying these obsolete physical discs for as long as possible, to keep the high-cost sham alive.
Looks like sick fuck Ramon Borbon is now convicted of kidnapping, sexual assault, and obstructing an investigation…WHILE IN HIS D.A.R.E. uniform.
But what this article doesn't say (but is said elsewhere) is that there were FOUR OTHER COMPLAINTS against him, and the precinct found them to be "without merit". So he could have stopped at 4 and called it a day and gotten away with it all — of course many get away with it.
Attention unconvicted pedophiles: Apply to be a police officer, and maybe you can find uncredible teenagers to rape and molest too! Your department will protect you! Isn't that better than being on a sex offender list? [this is sarcasm]
The school's internet filtration software was not working because it's license had expired!
So a substitute teacher (Julie Amero) will probably never teach again, and will be permanently economically oppressed due to her criminal record. All because some pop-up adds popped up on a computer that she used. AS A SUBSTITUTE TEACHER.
What the fuck is up with our stupid fucking judges who don't understand the most basic things about computers — that you have no control over what someone else's (and even your own) computer does. The school was negligent here!
And a special "fuck you" to God/Allah and Jesus for teaching our culture that the human body is something to be ashamed of, and for treating the human breast as the mortal enemy of children (How are they supposed to breastfeed if boobies are bad?)
18 months she had to fight to not have her life totally ruined, and now she has to acquiest to haveing her life ruined "just not as much". TOTAL JUSTICE FAIL.
Basically, you carry an identification card with your name and a PIN. Anyone can call the # on the card, check the PIN, and see if you are current in your HIV testing.
I'd like to see realtime testing machines in bars, so people can test themselves right before hooking up. But the technology simply isn't there yet. This is the next best thing for safe sex. The article contains a bunch of whiners saying, "You just don't KNOW!", but the simpe fact is — you never KNOW, and people have sex. (Pro-lifers and STD-haters don't seem to understand that people are going to have sex no matter what the risk.)
Looks like I'm actually going to have to step up and defend Sarah Palin. (sighs)
So she did an interview in front of a turkey slaughterhouse? So what! Last I checked, most of America eats turkey on thanksgiving. I eat ground turkey excluslively at home (no ground beef).
Do whiny bleeding heart liberals really think that this incident is significant, IN THE SLIGHTEST? Tell me about how she thinks seeing Russia is foreign policy experience. Tell me how she doesn't know what countries are in NAFTA. Tell me she believes in witchcraft.
But when people start whining about her doing an interview in front of a slaughterhouse? Well, it just makes people look like whiny idealistic liberals who really are unable to properly focus on real issues.
Turkey is food. Food gets killed. Life feeds on life. Even vegetarians have to murder other lifeforms to survive. Alaska is not exactly the center of agriculture. People need to eat. Are you seriously going to decry Palin for that? Stupid liberals!
It's about time. U.S. Mercenaries in Iraq (who outnumber actual U.S. solders — something I did not know) will be subject to Iraqi law in January.
Hopefully this will stop the Blackwater massacre(s)… As if the one that got proven is the only one. Anyone sensible should know there were all kinds of things that happened that nobody will ever find out about.
No shit. The CIA acted outside the law. Duh. You don't just shoot down planes because you THINK they have drugs in them. Oops — shot down a plane full of Christian missionaries. The men (father in son) lived, the women (mother and daughter) died.
Real nice, CIA. It's so great that we kill kids in order to keep them off drugs.
Veronica Bowers and Charity Bowers: You may have been stupidly following fake sky fairies to go preach in a foreign land you had no place in, but that's absolutely no excuse for you to be killed by a government funded by your own tax dollars. We still remember you now, and will continue to remmeber.
i love how many people parrot that pot is legal in amsterdam. it never has been, and it's been cracked down heavily in the past 5 yrs, halving the # of establishments allowed to sell it. the fight never ends.
funny how more american kids smoke and drink than over there..
Wow. If none of these Hindus were Hindu, and none of these Christians were Christian — maybe they wouldn't fight at all? Or maybe if they are naturally violent people, they would fight for something worth fighting for, instead of who's imaginary sky fairies are better?
I love all the people who say religion is necessary to keep society together and make people act "good". Yet the two largets killers of people in the history of man have been religions and governments. And govenrments are usually based on cultural religion anyway! "One nation under God", right? But who's gone? Mine? Yours? LET'S FIGHT!
Anyway, I don't get to hate on Hindus often enough because it seems that 75% of douchebaggery is by Christians and Muslims, with the remaining douchebaggery by Jews in Israel against Muslims in Palestine/Syria/Lebanon/etc. So, nice to hate on the Hindus for once.
What the fuck? I don't care if you're a satanist who eats the hearts of dead animals — that doesn't take away your right to be a parent. It's good (sarcasm) to see people still fighting for rights they supposedly had since the inception of the Bill Of Rights.
Good old Arkansas. Arkansas, Alabama – what's the difference? "A" is for asshole.
The music industry is COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL. Now they are suing ISPs, makers of software, and open source platforms (SourceForge) that host 10000+ programs because ONE of these COULD be used for copyright infringment.
This would be like the police going after us for having kitchen knives, because they can be used for murder. Or the phone companies being sued, because someone could commit a crime via the phone. Or the postal service sued, because not 100% of mail is being legal.
Utterly ridiculous.
I've used SoulSeek once. To find obscure music by a side-project of an obscure band I used to listen to (Wrathchild America). The ONLY way this music was available was to scour the internet and fire off begging emails to addresses that may not exist. EVENTUALLY, I GOT IN TOUCH WITH A MEMBER OF THE BAND. He shared *his own files* that are *not owned by any corporation* directly to me using SoulSeek.
Look at the school cop trying to act big and mean. Of course the Chief has expressed regret over this incident, but that doesn't change the fact that free press is at a threat here. Oh really, as a pedestrian, she hit his car and incited a riot? Last time I checked, that was called a "car accident".
This is a good move; the practice should be illegal everywhere. It's not a matter of religious freedom. Cutting pieces of a child's penis off is cruel, even if it is accepted by most of society. Parents should absolutely not do this. Don't believe me? Go read http://sexuallymutilatedchild.org/ for awhile and get some facts on the matter.
Female circumcision is largely banned; now it's time to give the same rights to male babies.
For the most part–we've all been wronged. In the crotch. In God's name. Wow. Thanks, God.
A society where nobody is allowed to make anyone else uncomfortable is actually not a free society. Given that almost anything can make anybody uncomfortable, where do we draw the line? Will touching be de facto criminalized simply becase people are fearful of making someome "feel uncomfortable", then being convicted of a "sex crime", then having to be on a "sex offender" list?
I was "Washington Checkbook" is probably the best way to find out about contractors around here. Similar to Angie's List, it's a pay service. But the guy at Home Depot said you can just go down to the Fairfax County Library and get their information for free. He swore by it. Forget things like [SITE I'VE LEGALLY AGREED NOT TO BLOG ABOUT IN EXCHANGE FOR $500] — this is based on surveys of homeowners. This is not a place for contractors to coalesce to find easy work.
All this is hearsay, tho, as I have not used the service.
1) Ex-post facto punishment in unconstitutional.
2) Mooning someone is not a crime. In fact it's been ruled protected speech in Australia, when people mooned the cops.
3) The human body, even naked, is not an evil or bad thing.
4) This does nothing to protect children at all. Absolutely nothing.
5) This is a waste of taxpayer money.
Because the law on where sex offenders may be is so strict, he literally has no where to go. By law, they have to move their mobile home every 2 hours.
Wow. Children make society so fucking stupid. And people who shoot people? They still get to go to work and don't have to move from their house if they can still afford it…
"In the email sent to Cuban, Floyd dismisses the viewpoint presented in the documentary as a “conspiracy theory” and accuses Cuban of “smearing the good name of a patriot like President Bush.” He then promises to send the email to Christopher Cox, the chairman of the SEC who was nominated for that position by Bush. Although there is no actual evidence, it appears the outraged Mr. Norris may have provided the SEC with the idea of going after Mark Cuban for daring to declare his intention of financing Loose Change, not for any serious criminal behavior in regard to stock trading."
Yup. IBM PC compatible computers came out within a year or two of IBM PCs, greatly lowering the price. But Apple is going to make damn sure that nobody does the same thing to them — while profiting off open source software which they did not initially create. Wow.
No wonder Macs are so overpriced. (Not that I'm not saying the ruling is legally imporoper. There are a ton of wrong laws on the book, and a ton of creative corporate lawyers who look for any and all loopholes.)
Nevermind the fact that Macs now *are* PCs in the sense that they run on Intel ships. It's just an OS like windows. Imagine if Microsoft bundled windows with a computer and sold it themselves, then started suing Dell for selling computers that also run Windows.
Somehow Apple has gotten away with this, and they shouldn't have.
Apple should not be the only hardware manufacturer allowed to run OS-X, no more than microsoft should be allowed to decree that windows is not allowed to run on AMD and Gigabyte hardware.
Good stuff. All these bailouts need to stop. We AREN'T so interconnected that the sky will fall if shit happens. That's merely a threat from those who are trying to take even more of our money.
Pfft. This is exactly why I never turn my computer off at work — it's a huge time drain to set everything back up right !
This is MUCH uch like how coal miners were not paid for the *hour* it would take them to crawl through the tunnels and get to what they mined… Or for the *hour* it would take for them to crawl back….
…until they sued.
The corporate charter is all about profit. Since corporations are essentially run by a mob (the shareholders), they possess no morals of their own (amoral, not immoral) and will do anything for profit. And people who's rights are trampled on have to band together (lawsuits, or unions) to stop this.
Profit. Easy when you're a big corporation. Just cut corners until a lawsuit tells you not to. If the corner-cutting saves you more money than the lawsuit, you still win even if the people win.
The said thing is that the lawyer handling this case has handled many like it.
I need this for Christmas. This is a somewhat David Lynch-ian cartoon, which they even admit in an interview. Lots of beer. Looks like it was drawn by a 2 year old. Feels extremely pointless but then it all makes sense in the end. Lots of beer. A fireman who's practically tripping constantly. A weird creature that makes weird noises but is a main character. Quite insane.
…Or you'll have to do this.
At least she took off her shirt (but not bra) first.
Carolyn & I almost didn't catch on that this was what was going on at first. But look at her cellphone (or whatever that is) in the last picture! I'd have left the damn thing!
This Improv Everywhere site is pretty funny. The idea of forming welcome parties for complete strangers and then photographing their expressions as they get confused is pretty damn funny. The looks on their faces are priceless…
And also — it's nice that is is indeed possible to pull a prank that is actually constructive!
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