A drunkard threatens to throw a jacket, and slightly slaps a cop in the face…
…vs a cop punching a man in a wheelchair 3 times in a row, and throwing him backward into the ground.
A bit disproportionate, especially considering the cop is supposed to be sober, good, and one who deescalates a situation and stops harm.
Lovely that he threatens the person he was supposedly protecting too.
Turns out, this cop is already a bad cop. He’d already signed an agreement stating if he fucked up again, he’d be fired, after tipping off a sex criminal in direct violation of a department’s interests. He lied about how many times he hit the man in the wheelchair on the report. And they dropped the charges against Drunken Wheelchair Man as well. They probably would have had a good case against Drunken Wheelchair Man if Asshole Officer Richard Jouppi HADN’T gone overboard and lied about it.
Of course if a camera wasn’t around, the cop’s lies would have stood and court and been sustained in a conviction. Nobody is safe from police lies as long as are deemed a magical truth by any judge.
Hard to explain, but: Kind of creepy animated GIFs made from vintage black and white pictures. The vintage pictures evoke a time long before animated GIFs, which evoke a post-modern time. The clash between the two, combined with the creepy psychedelic choices made… represent some really interesting images.
This was an unplanned expedition — we woke up late, around 11:30AM, and decided to go to Burger King and a yardsale that was posted for Ravensworth Rd.
We ended up finding a few bonus sales that were never posted online.
As our main point was to get food and go to the Dollar Store, we only counted the time and mileage that deviated from our plan. This made the calculations a bit more complicated than usual, and there was some estimating involved.
We spent about 1 hour, 4minutesyardsaleing.
Spent $2.00 plus ~$2.05 gas for 6 miles of driving (12mpg*0.8mi + 9.6mpg*1.7mi + 12.5mpg*2.7mi + 9.9mpg*0.8mi, all @ $3.79/G), for a total cost of $4.05.
We made 32 purchases/gets (41 items) for a total estimated value of $511.86, leading to a profit/savings of $507.81.
So in essence, we multiplied our $4.08 investment by 126X.
(Also, if you think about it, the profit counts for even more when you consider that we have to earn $558 on the job, pre-tax, in order to take home the $507.81 that we saved. How long does $507.81 of disposable income take to earn, vs the 1 hour we spent today?)
Anyway, this works out to a *post-tax* “wage” of $479.87/hr as a couple or $239.93/hr per person. Absolutely crazy, record-breaking numbers today. But a lot of the stuff was valuable stuff nobody really wants or can use. Funny how that works out.
COMMENTARY/ANECDOTES:
Unattended yardsale that just had a sign out that said “free stuff”. Crazy amount of stuff. Where most of our stuff came from.
Guy’s pack-rat brother died of an aneurysm, so he flew out from San Francisco and basically had a yard full of junk. As we arrived late, he was pretty much giving everything away. Including 2 trombones. We took 1.
THE BOOTY:
$1.00: chair, camping chair, tan, cup-holder, carrying bag (EV:$9.97) – Can’t have too many of these
$1.00: lug wrench, tire iron (cross/superior style, larger than last one we paid $1 for) (EV:$15.50) – Now 2 of our cars have upgraded tire irons, yay!
$-0.10: trombone, Bundy brand (EV:$75.44) – had a dime inside the case, so we were actually paid to take this :) – turns out trombone is like the easiest wind instrument to pay… I am surprised I could pick up on it so quickly, I’ve never been able to do ANY wind instrument outside of a recorder (lame)
$FREE: duster, extendable, rainbow, Dollar Tree (3) (EV:$1.00/ea) – these definitely get used
$FREE: antenna tuner, field strength/SWR tester, Radio Shack, cat no. 21-523, new in box (EV:$13.50) – will try to sell/give away/look at fondly before throwing away
$FREE: paint, spray, winter gray gloss, Rust-oleum Painter’s Touch, 12oz, 2/3 full(EV:$1.76 * 2/3 = $1.17) – our siding is grey, so this may come in handy
$FREE: battery charger & meter tester, GN Deluxe Universal, WY-108, 6.75×5.25×1.75 (EV:$10.00) – already have spare battery chargers, but at this point I’ll never need to buy one again
$FREE: battery charger, universal Ni-Cd, MW, MW398, orange (EV:$9.99) – already have spare battery chargers, but at this point I’ll never need to buy one again
$FREE: frame, 24.625×20.5″ (EV:$37.12) – largest frame we own now
CB STUFF!
$FREE: CB radio, Realistic, TRC-449, production no. 70011686, serial no. 00055353 (EV:$15.00) – trying to sell on craigslist
$FREE: CB radio, Realistic, Navaho, TRC-431, Serial no. 73626390, including microphone, Realistic cat no. 21-1172 (EV:$19.99) – trying to sell on craigslist
$FREE: CB antenna, 46″: (EV:$16.95) – trying to sell on craigslist
$FREE: CB antenna, Anttron 1700, 6′, 10-11 meter hi-power, 2′ 3/8″ fiberglass rod w/ 4′ SS Whip, #14 wire, 3/8×24 thread, new in package (EV:$13.79) – trying to sell on craigslist
$FREE: CB antenna, Hustler, 1C-100 magnetic, 44″ length, new in package (EV:$24.95 price tag 16.75) – trying to sell on craigslist
$FREE: CB antenna, Firestik II 5′ 5/8 wave, model FS5, (EV:$15.95) – trying to sell on craigslist
$FREE: CB watt/SWR meter, Archer (EV:$13.99) – trying to sell on craigslist
$FREE: dustpan, standing/long handle, Dollar Tree 138996 (EV:$1.00) – now Carolyn can clean without bending down as much
$FREE: headphones (2), large ear/1970’s/studio headphones, Optimus, Nova-57, 1/4″ jack, 33-1056, left/right volume controls, new in box (EV:$8.54) – the ones I grew up with went bad, these are the best possible headphones. Not as comfy as modern headphones, but maximum sound quality, and seal your ears all the way around so you hear nothing else. What people use in studios and such.
$FREE: headphones, large ear/1970’s/studio headphone, Realistic, Nova 40, 1/4″ jack (EV:$27.00) – another one!
$FREE: headphones, Optimus, Pro 25, volume control, generic (EV:$1.25) – volume-control-build-in headphones are nice
$FREE: headphones, stereo, Dollar Tree 656041 0SSL4, 4′ cord, new in package (EV:$1.00)
$FREE: umbrella, clampable, plastic tablecloth-like material, yellow/blue flowers, green background (EV:$12.00 Dart Drug price tag) – Carolyn’s mom had just paid for one of these, so Carolyn insisted on taking it because it was free
$FREE: figurine, cat, metal (aluminum), 6″ (EV:$9.99) – dude selling his dead brother’s stuff forced it on Carolyn
$FREE: CD-RW mini disks, Memorex, 4x, 5pk (EV:$6.99 price tag 1.93) – like DVD-Rs, but smaller. Neat. Would never buy these, but very well may use them sometime.
$FREE: binoculars, Zenit, 25×60, field 7′, 148ft at 1000yds, ZE-IR (EV:$12.66) – we’re close to having a dedicated set of binoculars for every window-with-a-view in the house!
$FREE: microphone, ham radio, The Astatic Corp, T-UG9 Stand, 12″ (EV:$69.99) – VERY nice microphone. Unfortunately it only hooks to ham radios, and we can’t use it for the computer or karaoke.
$FREE: power strips (6), 6 plugs (EV:$6.99/ea) – we’d almost run out of these!
$FREE: gas cans (2), 2 gal (EV:$6.18/ea) – my 5G one hurts my back and is too big. So we got 2 smaller ones for our cars, in case we ever have to walk to a gas station.
$FREE: light socket to socket+2 outlets converter, with pull, 718B (EV:$1.85) – useful, I use many of these to create extra plugs around lights. Great if you don’t have enough plugs in your bathroom, for example.
$FREE: carpet scrap, about 3’x2′ (EV:$5.00) – decided to keep this one in my trunk in case I ever have to fix a flat tire. More comfort, less road dirt.
2012 STATS SO FAR:
TOTAL EXPEDITIONS: 15
TOTAL HOURS: ~58:48
TOTAL MILES DRIVEN: ~629.5
TOTAL MONEY SPENT: $569.76
TOTAL ITEMS BOUGHT: 365-502 (depending on how you count multiple-item purchases: purchases vs items)
TOTAL ESTIMATED VALUE: $5,017.79
* EV stands for “Estimated Value”, which I estimate by looking things up in Google Shopping/Google/Amazon/Ebay. I don’t always deduct for an item being used, unless it’s actually in worse condition in a way that matters. For example, I estimate books at the cover value. I also try to only count shipping if it’s the type of thing that would need to be shipped, and only if the price isn’t “fixed” (i.e. 1 cent items that cost $10 to ship would not be $10 in person). (more…)
So I was in an episode of The Office. I was Jim. But something had happened, and I had forgotten my shirt. We were in some assembly type meeting in a reverse ampitheatre. That is, it really reminded me of the real-life Squires Student Center at Virginia Tech, except instead of the teacher on the floor at the lowest level, with everyone looking down… We were sitting at that lowest level, looking up. This makes no sense, as that’s not how ampitheatre/classes are held. But nobody noticed this.
So I was hanging out, kinda joking around, not paying too much attention to this assembly… When one of The Office characters (Kevin?) pointed out that I had no shirt on. I was somewhat disturbed that I’d gone to work shirtless, and not even realized it. I asked someone for a shirt. I think Andy had a spare one, but then it was a bit small for me.
I’m not sure when The Office part ended. It was a bit more elaborate than my description. At some point I was not in The Office, but was still shirtless and in the corporate world. We had gone to another building for a friend to run an errand. I was in the halls with him, still embarassingly under-shirted. Walking down corridors. He went into one businessplace, so I was in the hall alone, shirtless, getting a drink from the water fountain, as businessman walked by, obviously wondering if they need to call police/security. Awkwarrrrd.
At some point, I woke up from The Office dream — and perhaps the outer-layer dream that the inner-layer-Office-dream was contained in — and told CarolynALL about it, in greater detail than I can remember. I had written talking points on my left arm, succintly summarizing up what happened, and I elaborated on each one to her.
But the point that I woke up and told my dream to Carolyn might have been at the very end of things. Or it may be that I fell back to sleep and had more dreams. I’m really not sure.
Because I also had a crazy dream segment with me trying desperately to get home, but failing. I was in my car, but it was at the bottom of a 2-storey tall concrete backyard stairscase. Cars were not supposed to be down here. There was no road or driveway. It was a pedestrian staircase to someone’s house (as is common with houses higher/lower than the street they are on). To top things off, the top of the staircase was a cul-de-sac, and a car was parked in front of it. I was pretty much trapped, but I said “fuck it”, and drive up the concrete stairs. Amazingly, I got enough traction to handle the 45-degree pointy-stair-corner angle, and even gained enough momentum, to drive over the curb/bushes that were necessary to drive over to get around the car blocking the top.
At some point, I looked at my car, and it was just the trunk and the engine. The insides were all smashed up. Not sure how that worked. I really should realize these things are dreams!
But that wasn’t then. I still continued to drive around. I was at some downtown market. I ran into an ex-co-worker. Maybe Meschelle, but as is common in my dreams, people are not fully defined, just concepts, so I don’t know who they are for sure. Hardly ever. Even when they are close friends. So anyway, we are talking, and without her saying it, I gather she is homeless. So I offer to buy her some overpriced $5 sandwich at a local vendor stand. Meanwhile, my car is fucked up (maybe now it’s finally just-trunk-and-engine), and I’m not sure how to get home myself.
Everything was a jumbled mess. There was definitely a dream-within-a-dream, for sure. But the downtown-market-stuff was likely a completely different dream. But the fucked up car in that dream seems to be linked to the driving-up-concrete-stairs event, except that my car WASN’T fucked up for that one. So who knows. There were a lot of other crazy aspects that I don’t remember.
“Dreams… They’re the hurricanes that wash the soulfilth from the superdome of our nightminds.”
– Xavier:Renegade Angel(more…)
Really… A better weapon would be the 3-D Jonas Brothers concert video.
But anyway… Why the hell can’t I find the seizure-inducing Pokemon clip for watching?
Surely someone must have videotaped it… And uploaded it somewhere. LiveLeak? I’ve looked for torrents and never found it.
I WOULD LIKE TO TEST MY VIEWING MIGHT.
I mean, I gotta be able to take more than a japanese schoolkids, right? How bad can some fucking flickering cartoons really be? I want to judge their wussiness by seeing it myself.
I was a Xana-style space warrior princess. Can’t remember being a woman in a dream before? I had somehow gotten stranded on a sentient insect-race ship that was mostly empty. Problem is — they had noise detectors. If you made more than a whisper’s worth of noise, hooks would come down from the ceiling to scoop you up and imprison you. It was a very harrowing dream.. I may have woken up. It may technically have been a nightmare.
“Dreams… They’re the hurricanes that wash the soulfilth from the superdome of our nightminds.”
– Xavier:Renegade Angel(more…)
I’m not sure how, but we were going to play this board game. I think it had a 3-phase turn. Phase 1 was to just pick up whatever currency/gold was laying at the square you were on. Phase 2 was to use it to buy something. Phase 3… No clue. But it existed.
I’m a lazy dreamer and don’t flush out unnecessary details; friends don’t have faces/names etc. But one person WAS there for sure: Dana C^r1s3n.
Anyway, we decided to LARP the game up a bit, and ditch the board, putting the various currency pieces all around the basement. For your turn, you’d have to walk to a different part of the basement, find the currency, edit your inventory, then play out your main turn.
I was thinking it was pretty kick-ass, but then about 3 turns in or so, people stopped me, and were just like, “Okay. You win Clint. I don’t want to play.”
I was a bit crestfallen at the situation. It reminded me very much of real life, where I have a lot of friends who refuse to play games, forcing me to just sit there and do nothing. I’m fine with conversation, but… If we can’t watch a movie or show, or play a game, conversation alone only holds my interest for 30-60 minutes, unless there is a party’s worth of people to talk to (i.e. 20+). I’m starting to realize (again, in real life) that if that’s how it is, I’d rrather just hang out with Carolyn.
“Dreams… They’re the hurricanes that wash the soulfilth from the superdome of our nightminds.”
– Xavier:Renegade Angel(more…)
PLOT SUMMARY: Hit men must hang out in the town of Bruges (Belgium), awaiting an assignment that one of them will dread carrying out.
UNCOMFORTABLE PLOT SUMMARY (inspired by this): [highlight for spoilers]→Whining child-murdering hitman fails to achieve spiritual bullshit.
PEOPLE:Colin Farrell (Bullseye in the DareDevil movie, Minority Report, Phone Booth, The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus) as the whiny, no-fun hitman. Brendon Gleeson (Beowulf, Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody in the Harry Potter movies, The Village, Troy, A.I., Braveheart) as the more serious hitman. Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort from the Harry Potter Movies, Sunshine, Strange Days, Schindler’s List, The Hurt Locker) as the big boss. Clemence Poesy (Fleur Delacour from Harry Potter) as a random drug dealer/movie star/accessory to robbery. Also, you may have seen the dwarf before in Harold & Kumar, where he played a giant bag of weed (haha). He was also in Howard The Duck, American Pie:Beta House, and American Pie:The Naked Mile.
I’m kind of surprised how much overlap there is between people in this movie, and people in Harry Potter movies. It also has a brief scene with Ciaran Hinds, who will play Dumbledore in the final 2 Harry Potter movies.
QUIRKS: Hit men, Europe, drugs, midgets, spiritual redemption, slow-paced build-up.
VISUALS: Dreary European medieval buildings.
I liked the Hieronymous Bosch stuff they briefly showed; always been a big fan of his work.
It wasn’t outright bad — It just held my attention, promising to deliver more, while failing to ever do so.
Very, very, very slow. Too slow. The last movie I saw that took place in such a dreary European setting, with such a slow pace, was Let The Right One In — which also disappoited me.
It definitely had its funny moments, but it felt like they could have done much more with it. It ended up coming off as kind of generically quirky for quirkiness’s sake or something. I’d rather watch Hot Fuzz (which also disappointed me by not being nearly as funny as I thought).
This movie failed as a comedy movie; it failed as a drug movie; it failed as an action movie. All that was left was spiritual bullshit / emo whining related to children (fuck children). It’s like they tried to sprinkle elements (action, comedy, drugs) onto a thin spiritual redemption plot in order to spice it up. And it did spice it up — but only enough to hold my interest, tricking me into thinking there would be a worthy conclusion or message to the movie.
Note to self: Start asking people WHY I should listen to their movie recommendations.
MORALS: So being a hitman is “okay”, and killing innocent people on accident is “okay” — but as soon as you kill a *child* by accident, suddenly even the criminals want to kill you? Because children have magical powers that make hitmen and criminals care? Yeah right. I happen to think killing an adult is worse than a child; more is invested in the adult. So for me, the whole moral foundation of this movie is completely flawed. “What if you kill a kid on accident?” is a stupid question to me–the real question should simply be “What if you kill a person on accident?” It should make no difference if it’s a kid or not. The fact that they had to use a child here just strikes me as emotional string-pulling.
So anyway — If you are someone who swoons and looses all logic when children are involved (like, I’m guessing, the writers of this movie, and most of the people on planet earth who are merely expressions of their child-loving, child-creating DNA-influenced existence), then you might be able buy into it. But only if you can also buy into all the spiritual bullshit too. Good luck with that. I’m guessing most people with kids have already lost sight of reality, and will automatically identify with the morals here. Just another reason to hate kids as far as I’m concerned: How about showing some morals where your DNA isn’t involved?
And of course there’s the whole idea of finding hitmen lovable and cuddly. Which I actually *can* buy into… But Pulp Fiction did it much better. Even How To Be A Serial Killer, while not that great of a movie, caused me to be more interested in its characters than In Bruges did.
In short: OVERRATED. Or as this guy says, it’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes Of Crappy Cinema”. I don’t really think it was “crappy”, but it wasn’t good either.
POLITICS: Not much, but some anti-American sentiment.
CONCLUSION: Bullshit spiritual redemption — and only because children were involved — spiced up with bits of comedy, action, and quirkiness. But not enough to get the taste of bullshit out of my mouth. Failed as a comedy, action, drug movie, leaving only spiritual bullshit. Had its moments, but not worth watching. Definitely not worth of IMDB Top 250.
The native public rating for this movie is: IMDB: 8.1/10 (Top 250: #189), Netflix: 3.5/5 stars (Netflix‘s predicted rating for us was 3.6/5 stars–WRONG!). Way overrated.
RECOMMENDATION: If you’re spiritual and into loving children and thinking bad things happening to children are so much worse than adults, and can stand very slow paced movies, then you’ll probably enjoy this based on the high IMDB ratings. But if you’re an atheist child-hater who loves comedy movies and isn’t crazy about mob-style movies — stay away from this. Far, far away.
SIMILAR MOVIES: I’ve heard Pulp Fiction and Fargo, but those movies are actually good. Their quirks are fun to sit through. Their endings leave you satisfied. Not so with In Bruges.
I’ve also heard Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. Those movies were mostly un-memorable generic-pass action movies to me. Decent to watch, but no real memory. In Bruges will definitely stick with my memory more, but I still liked it less than all of the above.
I also wasn’t exactly blown away by The Boondock Saints or No Country For Old Men, which are also mentioned alongside this movie at times.
IMDB also mentions Miller’s Crossing. I thought that movie was passable, with some incredible scenes — but it also disappointed me, as many Coen Brothers movies do.
So basically — this isn’t really my kind of movie.
MOVIE QUOTE:
Ken: Harry, let’s face it. And I’m not being funny. I mean no disrespect, but you’re a cunt. You’re a cunt now, and you’ve always been a cunt. And the only thing that’s going to change is that you’re going to be an even bigger cunt. Maybe have some more cunt kids.
Ken: You from the States?
Jimmy: Yeah. But don’t hold it against me.
FRIENDS’ RATINGS: I think Mom, Dad, and my sister loved it. Ian put it in his Top 100 movies of the 2010s. He said it was original and engaging, and I can’t really agree with either of those. :/ Wish I did… I also have another FB friend who said it was brilliant. Really, I don’t see what people see in it. (more…)
Yup. Jaywalking = death sentence. You can see it in the video. A man running away is not a threat, and certainly a man that’s been shot in the back 4 times is not a threat either.
Supposedly they found a gun on him, but there were none of his fingerprints on him. Doesn’t matter if he did have a gun — carrying a gun is our constitutional right.
Imagine how much more this happened before we had surveillance cameras everywhere — back when the violent crime rate was higher than it is today.
Isn’t it funny how the cop’s name is protected from the public, but people who are arrested are a matter of public record? One set of laws for us, another set of laws for them.
[
Claire's blog 