blogging, idiocy, the world today

so ok, ok, let's start this out with a little disclaimer, due to something i'll be talking about a little further on in this post... namely: the "gotcha" effect. yes, this is a blog, and yes, "feelings" have occasionally been touched on here, but really, i'm not talking about a sentence here or there, this whole section is referring to de facto diaries.

blogs, tv, and so on. so what is it about people today that makes a significant segment of the population think/feel that ANYONE else cares about EVERYTHING that's going on in their lives? it's fucking bizarre. like, this little blog or whatever i've got going is mainly just to bitch and let you know how i feel about things (given that i post approx. once every 2 months, it's not really that big of a deal) and maybe make a few people chuckle or at least smile to themselves every now and again. i'm talking about the de facto diaries that are out there. really... what are you thinking? are you really accomplishing anything by spilling all of your dirty laundry out there for the world to see? you do realize that this is the internet, correct? like, just because you're typing it in the privacy of your home/office doesn't make it private, this nonsense can be accessed from literally anywhere on the planet and will remain there as long as the internet exists. we've all seen them, the blogs that consist of 3 posts a week of nonsensical drivel about this or that relationship or this or that fight or this or that friend that did or did not do what this person wanted them to do. jesus christ... are you fucking kidding me? how crazy are you to want to broadcast to the world just how unstable you actually are? whatever happened to shame and/or modesty? something strange happened and i'm not sure exactly when it happened, but if there was a way someone could bottle it back up, that'd be great. people used to be modest and reserved and ashamed of the crazy shit they were thinking/thought and keep it to themselves without sharing with the world all of the nonsensical shit going through their slightly functioning skulls. all of a sudden it became acceptable for everyone to share every single thing about themselves to all of the world. if you're having guy/girl problems... why're you telling the world about it? is that going to help solve those problems? um, i'm going to go with no... b/c anyone new is going to be scared off by how batshit crazy you are, and whoever you're having problems with is going to be pissed that you're spilling his/her shit all over the web. if you really want to fix those problems, pick up the phone or grab a friend and talk it out... b/c NO ONE GIVES A FLYING FUCK what you have to say. really, i think i figured it out... and i'm going to blame our parents' generation once again. it all goes back to this whole philosophy of everyone being "special" and having equal worth and everyone deserving recognition and blah blah blah. no, that's all fucking bullshit. and we're living now with the consequences, witness maury and jerry springer and judge judy and "cheaters" and every show on MTV/VH1 and every other display of the decay of civilization. the powers that be behind education decided that everyone deserved to be recognized and told of their worth, no matter how plain and stupid and worthless whatever they were doing really was. i mean, if you're a shitty painter, shouldn't you be told so so you can focus on something that you might actually be good at? -- of course, right? well why doesn't the same concept apply to everything else? why are these crummy ass writers and fucking batshit crazy dramatists permitted and encouraged to share whats going on with them with the rest of the world? lets look at what's going on: 1.) blogging: allowing endless drivel about completely worthless shit by anyone with the willpower to put forth a little effort to sit around and type about the nonsense going through their half-empty brains. 2.) social networking sites: once again, encouraging people to spill all of their personal shit with the world, as if it was important to anyone at all and really bettered anyone's day by seeing your fucking status: "hard day today". uhh... news flash, no one gives a fuck, at all. if you want to keep a diary, keep a fucking diary, the old, anne-frank style. that's not what the fucking internet is for, and you're only embarrassing yourself and all those associated with you. i mean really, this is on the extreme end, but the example applies, take a look at the maury show sometime. there are just the worst of the worst on there, the utter dregs of society that deserve nothing more than our pity, and they're fucking proud. i mean, people who don't know who their baby daddy is, people who are banging their wife's sister, i mean, you name it. the type of shit that you should take to their grave, not parade around on tv. why are they proud do you ask? b/c they've been encouraged to share everything going on with them every step of the way. that's what reality tv is completely based on, and its taken over everything. how fucking terrifying.

now, to continue on with how fucking stupid the world and all of its residents are, i'll continue with another favorite activity of an increasingly dumbed-down populace, and that's the "gotcha". everyone's so fucking self-absorbed now that those individuals that aren't completely debauched and functioning retards and may actually have a shred of intelligence are obsessed with proving to everyone how fucking smart they are by trying to prove everyone wrong. for instance, lets say i put some statistics or something in this post. you'd better believe that some smug asshole somewhere (assuming anyone actually read/reads this blog) will be looking some shit up trying to "get me" and prove his utter superiority. check out the "comments" section of a website sometime. what is it packed with? smug assholes trying to prove how fucking smart they are. it's the exact same thing as the blogging thing. listen joker, this person has a website or column or whatever, you do not, do you really think they're evaluating your 3 page fucking critique and supposed refutation of everything you said and considering it point by point? no, of course they're not, b/c you're basically masturbating onto a website by trying to prove how fucking superior you are. listen, chances are that if you weren't a talentless hack, you'd probably have a column of your own, since you obviously have a lot invested into that nonsense, so just accept the fact that you don't know everything and shut the fuck up about it. i mean, its ridiculous the standards we've created for ourselves. everything has to be perfect at the same time that everything is being incredibly dumbed down b/c of broader participation in everything. of course there are mistakes and generalizations in this or that article, the author was one individual with limited knowledge. we can't expect every person to be 100% authoritative about everything they ever say. i noticed this trend during the presidential campaign... guess what dipshits? if you're on the job, you don't need an encyclopedic knowledge of everything b/c you can look it up or ask someone who might know. this "everyone's a critic" shit just needs to stop. listen, no one cares what you have to say, about anything. whether its your feelings, or your disagreement with a sports/news columnist or whatever. just do what normal people have always done and complain about it to your friends if you have a gripe with it and leave it at that.

oh wait... there's the heart of the issue... no one has fucking friends anymore. technology has made us a society of quasi-strangers. i mean, we're associated and acquainted with people, but how many do you really honestly know? the internet, cell phones, tv, whatever, have all made it easier and easier to distract and distance ourselves, so we can avoid dealing with actual people and deal with shit we're comfortable with instead. the blog is not your friend. it's a public fucking forum. go get a friend and buy a notebook at the grocery store for $2 and have at it, really. it's infinitely classier. b/c lets be honest... lets say we had two girls i was interested in who were otherwise identically attractive to me but one had a blog where she bitched about guys and this and that personal nonsense and the other felt the same things, but kept it to herself like a normal person. which do you think i would be INFINITELY more attracted to? (and probably 99.9999% of all other guys) that's right, the one who kept her insanity to herself. personal shit should be just that, personal. not broadcast across the internet to anyone you casually know.

something else that makes you suck as a person:
- getting offended. what in the fuck is the point, honestly? i have never, and will never, understand people that get offended on behalf of other people. like, it's one thing if i call you a fucking idiot and you get a little upset b/c you don't like that. fine, fair enough, understandable. what i'll never understand is, lets say i say someone is "retarded" or whatever. and someone gets offended b/c "retard" is offensive to people who have learning/developmental disabilities or whatever. i mean, really? come the fuck on and lighten the fuck up. who decided that you got to defend this or that group just b/c you read some article or took some class or whatever? don't you have enough to worry about without appointing yourself arbiter and determinant of what is appropriate and what is not? just a thought, but you'll probably enjoy your life a hell of a lot more if you stop being such a lame person.

a little something about the economy: i realized i haven't posted since all of this shit went down and the global financial sector pulled a tom petty and went free-fallin... and all i've got to say is, is anyone really surprised? i mean, it blows my mind when people act fucking shocked over something that people have known about for a long fucking time. i graduated college in 2006 and recall reading articles referring to the "real estate bubble" in 2003 and 2004. what did you think was going to happen? explosive growth in home values indefinitely? i mean come on. so i don't feel sorry for anyone, honestly. i don't feel sorry for banks that lost their asses, b/c you were gambling and lending money to people who you knew could afford that house, and i don't feel sorry for homeowners who overpaid for houses based on the belief that the market would continue upwards. listen, if you're playing blackjack, and you're hot, does anyone feel sorry for you when you stop hitting and start losing? of course they don't, b/c you're gambling and knew what you were getting into. i fail to see how speculating on real estate prices was any different. if you bought a house expecting to pay for the house with the increasing value of the house... well then, you're pretty fucking stupid and deserve to lose your ass. honestly, what the world is missing is a little fucking personal responsibility. everyone's crying about this or that wrong or this or that slight but really, how much of it was your fault? look in the mirror. the same shit is going to happen soon with credit card debt (which they've also been talking about since the early 2000's). if you are paying for a lifestyle you can't afford with credit cards... i don't feel sorry for you. i'm sorry, but i don't. guess you shouldn't have bought that flat screen on an 18% interest rate. whoops. i'm not saying that the government shouldn't help anyone or whatever, but what i am saying is what this country needs is a little less whining and hang-wringing and a little more accountability by those responsible. everyone from congressmen to buyers to lenders to you name it. but at the same time... all of the hysteria needs to calm the fuck down. was the stock market overvalued along with commodities and most other markets? absolutely. however, what is fundamentally different now about the american economy than 6 months ago? the answer, other than the housing "bubble"... NOTHING. so chill the fuck out, stop acting like it's the great depression 2 and stop taking everything the media says at face value. this is the same media who called the iraq war vietnam 2. (if you're keeping track at home, iraq war: 5 years, approx. 5,000 american dead, vietnam war: 8 years, approx. 65,000 american dead). at the height of the vietnam war there were 600,000 troops in country and hundreds were dying a week. my point is that the media is sensationalist... think about it, what sells, the plain, boring truth or the dressed up crazy truth? lets be honest now. and when you answer, consider that the median IQ in this country is 100. (yes, half the population = double-digit IQs).

movie notes: i saw valkyrie the other day... and was pleasantly surprised. yes, tom cruise is a crazy SOB, but he's an underrated actor, and the film was really well done. anytime you can pull off a suspense film when everyone in the theater is 100% aware of how the thing ends, you've done a good job. if you check it out, you won't be disappointed.

LOST and BSG start back up really fucking soon... get exited!

i guess this has kind of been a negative post... but hey, you'll have that. and i am truly convinced that our society is on the fast track to disaster.

my political manifesto.

so generally, i try to avoid political discussions if at all possible, due to the simple fact that unfortunately in today's day and age opinions/emotions and reason/fact are indistinguishable. this is largely due to the bastardization of the western education and socialization system which has switched from an emphasis of preparing people to handle the world to an emphasis of making people feel good about themselves via wishy-washy mumbo jumbo, accomodations for those that are unable to succeed under traditional techniques and the hogwash mantras: "there are no stupid questions", "multiculturalism", and generally, the viewpoint that an opinion based on nothing more than emotion or intuition is worth as much as a carefully reasoned argument built on knowledge, experience, research, reason and fact. i personally find it interesting that the same people (see: liberal multiculturalists) that destroyed the american education system by switching the emphasis to inclusion rather than achievement are currently the ones complaining about the "failure of the american education system" and advocating for the federal government to overhaul the educational system. just a thought, maybe if your ideology hadn't ruined what was once the pinnacle of world education systems, we wouldn't be in this situation today. heres the real problem. 1.) the social welfare net has removed all consequences from self-destructive decisions. 2.) so therefore, there is no incentive for people to care about school. unless you have a solid familial base behind you, which sadly, many people do not, given the effects of liberalization on the american family, you simply are not likely to achieve in school. and why would you? what child wants to do schoolwork on their own initiative? school-age children are immature, plain and simple, couple this fact with the culture of acceptance, inclusion and acceptance so pervasive in american schools and you're setting many people up for failure. unfortunately the real world isn't as wishy-washy as today's classroom. sadly, this holds especially true for the poor. for a significant portion of the american population (maybe 10% or more), their existence is defined by a life of substance abuse, petty crime, promiscuous sex, general ignorance, and, of course reproducing.. this all happens on the state and federal government's tab. if anyone coming from such an environment succeeds, its a miracle on a truly biblical scale. and liberals blame the educational system. blaming the schools for the poor performance of poor students is treating the symptoms, not the disease. the american dream once was that this was a nation where anyone could achieve anything through a little hard work, entrepeneurship and ingenuity. remember "ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country"? can you imagine a democratic politician saying that today? they'd get booed off the stage. have you listened to one of obama's speeches? he sounds like he's a high school kid running for class president making outlandish claims that he knows can't possibly be fulfilled: "if you elect me class president, i'll get us couches in the locker bay, new pop machines in the cafeteria, and extra study halls and half days on fridays". he's talking about how he's going to fix education, health care, the economy, foreign policy, the trade imbalance, the loss of blue collar jobs, and every other problem facing the country today. look, there's a reason why these problems persist, and that's that contrary to what people may believe, there are no simple solutions to complex problems. the founding fathers realized that, and people realized that for millenia until somewhere around 1960 liberal leaning politicians throughout the united states decided that they were enlightened enough to overhaul millenia of human experience and revolutionize the way everyone lives their life. while the coincidental rise in technology has allowed the west to prosper, society lies in shambles, with violence, imprisonment and addiction all rampant, broken families the norm and a culture of fear, blame and discontent pervading not only the united states, but much of the west. today, due to the culture of victimization so pervasive on the left, nothing is ever anyone's fault. if someone commits a crime, it's because they were poor and had no choice, a comical statement which completely ignores the fact that 99% of the poor do not commit such crimes.

but i digress. all of that was basically an aside, i'd like to present my theory on what separates, fundamentally, the "conservatives" and "liberals" in the west, which makes up the basic dichotomy of pretty much every western political sphere. if no other reason than to simply annunciate my views, for my own benefit more than anyone else's. i'm going to focus on the united states and the development/evolution of the ideologies which i believe fundamentally motivate both "parties" as it were, as that is the region everyone that's reading this is most familiar with. (an aside: while typically i align most closely with the republican party, i recognize that in truth, we basically live in 1984 and there is little difference between the two parties. i am truly an unabashed libertarian. however, the fact that unlike basically every congressman i was an economics major means that i am largely a fiscal conservative, and given that in truth, what the government does with your money is its most important function, i feel that i am forced to align with the republicans, if only to maintain some sense sanity.)

i believe, at a truest, most fundamental level, that what separates the two ideologies is, simply, answers. this is, of course, an oversimplification, but i believe it nicely frames the fundamental disagreement between the two parties. those on the left believe that they are in possession of answers that are capable of changing both human nature and human society. those on the right recognize that human nature is relatively rigid, and therefore acts/initiatives which contravene this recognition will invariably do more harm than good. however, herein lies the fundamental problem. the group that is "pro" anything immediately gains the upper hand in any argument, and in this case, the left has highjacked the language of the discussion in order to make it appear as though disagreement with their worldview is due to ignorance, bigotry or outright hate, and that everyone would agree with their supposedly enlightened views if only they gave the issues a little thought. the liberal worldview has become an issue of dogma wherein certain fundamental truths are necessary in order to embrace the ideology. this dogma has permeated every facet of our society to the extent that for the most part, you wouldn't know that these things were open to debate. how did this happen you ask? its relatively simple really... modern "liberalism" as we now know it, aka the welfare state, was created at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th as a natural continuation of the enlightenment movement which led to revolution and social upheaval throughout the western world as the systems which had governed the continent of europe since the nation-states began to coalesce around 1000 AD disappeared one by one, sometimes with bloodshed, sometimes not. (the american was one of the first, and undoubtedly one of the most benign) the liberal viewpoint became more and more radicalized until ultimately, violent socialist/communist revolutions broke out in many nations, most famously russia of course, which ultimately discredited liberalism in those nations that did not embrace socialism (most notably the united states - much of continental europe attempted socialism at one time or another). early liberals in the united states were ostracized and marginalized from the halls of power early on, largely due to the dominant ideology in the united states at the time, we know this as the "american dream". liberals and its adherents, those who believed they were in possession of certain truths which could change the way people lived, realized that if they were to make any headway in the united states and other nations who had rejected their proferred "improvements", they would need to fundamentally overhaul the way people thought in these nations. hence, they retreated to academia, where more theoretical work could be done an a relatively small number could have an impact well in excess of their relatively small number. hence we see the rise of various liberal doctrines like historical revisionism, victimization, multiculturalism (ask the Balkans how multiculturalism is going for them) and the touting of the benefits of social welfare programs in academia. then, of course, comes the great depression and one mr. franklin delano roosevelt. he began implementing wholesale various (probably unconstitutional - given the fact that the court only aquiesed to his programs after he threatened to increase the size of the court and stack it with his own appointees) social welfare programs akin (on a lower level, of course) to those found in communist russia, which liberal academia was busy touting the merits of to anyone whom would listen. of course, after World War 2, liberal academia chose to credit FDR's programs for america's economic recovery, rather than the much more logical fact that america was the only industrialized nation that survived WW2 with its infastructure intact. if everyone else's factories are bombed into dust, and you're the only country with factories left who is busy selling materiel to nations from communist russia to britain to china, doesn't it make sense that the war which resulted in this situation is responsible for your posterity as opposed to social systems which alleviated some suffering but largely had no effect on the macro-economic picture? however, now the precedent of widespread social programs was in place, which leads us to the 1960s, easily the most disastrous postwar decade in american history. LBJ's "guns and butter" programs, i.e., fighting the Vietnam war (btw, anyone who compares Iraq II to Vietnam probably was a theater major and has no idea about anything whatsoever. in order to back this statement up, i give you 2 numbers. 59,000+ and 4,000+.) while massively expanding social programs bankrupted the american economy and led to the widespread upheaval of the 1970's (stagflation, et al.). however, herein lies the true evil of social programs. once they're implemented, they're basically impossible to remove. if you've talked half of congress into the idea that people are starving, so they need help, you can hardly turn around and take that away if you ever want anyone to vote for you again, can you? ergo, the united states is stuck with social programs that do more harm than good due to experimentation based on scholarly arguments and misguided socialist ideologies that were ultimately discredited in the biggest way possible when within the span of 10 years the world's two largest communist nations collapsed (ussr), and went capitalist (china) in turn. what is forgotten is that the ideology that led to our social programs was derived from the supposed successes of stalinist russia. it's pretty easy to look good when you're controlling all information that gets out of your country, but hey, who are liberal professors going to believe? naysaying capitalists or their radicalized ideological progeny in russia? i thought so. however, a funny thing happened along the way. the liberal academics who retreated to the ivory tower early in the 20th century succeeded in the goal to supplant the american dream as the dominant ideology and managed to fundamentally alter the way americans thought about themselves, the world, and government. this is obvious by the way that the 1960s played out, a legacy that we are still dealing with today. voltaire and rousseau didn't have any evidence for the things that they wrote and believed, it was just philosophizing. and while they were an influence on the american constitution, their influence was far outweighed by the practical lessons learned by the experiment with the articles of confederation and the influence of the english constitution. likewise, their ideological progeny who also believed that they were in possession of answers to questions that had long troubled leaders and thinkers wrote and prophesized based on either speculation, incomplete information, intuition or downright wishful thinking and treated the conclusions based on such "research" as dogmatic truth rather than what it was in fact: just one way among many of looking at a complex situation. when this is coupled with the fact that the language of truth was highjacked by the left early on, and you have a situation where the discussion quickly degenerates down to absolutes. one side is right and one wrong, one good and one bad, one accepting and one "racist" or "sexist" or [insert term here]. however, anyone familiar with the social sciences, from political science and psychology to economics can tell you that there are no absolute truths in any of those subjects, they are not based upon mathematical or scientific certitude like say geometry or chemistry, but rather upon the observations of an infinitely complex organism subject to millions of variables. given such a situation, how can anyone claim to be in possession of defitinitive answers? of course, they cannot, but go ahead and tell a liberal that social welfare programs have done far more harm than good and see how long it takes them to label you as either ignorant, immoral, hateful or backward. how can this be? how did this unfortunate turn of events undermine the ideological underpinings of the greatest experiment in human history? the answer, of course, is education. when one group has highjacked the education system and the language/ideology which motivates it, they are able to manipulate society in a myriad of ways. one being, of course, turning a nation built on individualistic entrepeneurs to one of quasi-socialists. if you're reading this, chances are you're under 30. how many of your friends do you know that are unabashed liberals? it's a significant margin i'm sure. probably over 80% (unless you're religious, but that's another post for another day), and why is this? because these are the people most recently impacted by the american educational system. it isn't until people live their lives and are able to garnish their opinions from their own life experiences that many come to realize the truth: that social engineering is doomed to fail by human nature itself, that mankind is, by its very nature self-interested, greedy and short-sighted, whatever the wishful fantasies of a supposedly enlightened minority may decree. given this environment, social programs are doomed to fail. it's one of the first rules of economics: (aptly called "the dismal science") that people respond to incentives. if you pay someone to do nothing, they will continue to do nothing, especially when this individual knows no existence other than one of foodstamps, substance abuse and petty crime and when the old american ideologies of hard work and self-sufficiency have been undermined by 50-70 years of left-leaning apologist thought. couple this reality with the thing that neccessitates social programs, a raise in taxes. in effect, a raise in taxes is the equivalent of cutting wages for whoever the tax raise effects. lowering wages decreases the incentive to work. (while this may seem counterintuitive, those that make more money work more hours. see: doctors and lawyers pulling 80 hour weeks while McD's workers do not.) this explains why when taxes are cut, tax receipts in fact raise, because the incentive to avoid paying taxes is lowered. (remember the rule: people respond to incentives) therefore, an increase in social programs lowers the incentive for those receiving government benefits to work because they're paying people to not work, while correspondingly lowering the incentive of those who are working to work, due to the cut in wages which accompanies any tax raise. this is truly an indictment of the income tax, which is, of course, the chosen moneyraising method of the left, because it can be used to redistribute wealth under the principle that those who make a lot of money deserve this money less than those who do not. (yet another argument treated as dogma by a morally bankrupt ideological regime) when carried to its fullest extent, redistribution of wealth becomes what we know as communism, which, of course, was fully discredited perhaps as no ideology ever has been in world history, but the left conveniently ignores this and other glaring indiscrepencies in their beloved theories which fly in the face of millenia of human experience.

which brings me to the right. (and i am talking about true conservatives, not religious types or neocons, both of whom seek only to use the political process to achieve their own dogmatic beliefs and therefore are no different from liberals in my view) believe me, it is much less enjoyable to be on the right than it is to be on the left. you don't get to pretend that you have all the answers or that your system, if implemented, would solve all the world's ills. you don't get to pretend that you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is ignorant, bitter or hateful. the only thing you get to recognize is that no one truly holds all the answers as pertains to humankind, an infinitely diverse and variable creature and correspondingly, the government should not impede on an individual's affairs and dictate the proper course to address every problem that impacts society. to someone on the left, the proper place of government is to implement programs that address the various problems facing society and force compliance among those who may not agree because these programs have an air of dogmatic truth and are not open to dispute. in contrast, to someone on the right, the proper place of government is to do as little as possible and stay relatively out of the way. the less government (with its wasteful, "pass the buck" beaurocracy and uncanny talent to accomplish less with each dollar spent than any other organization outside of the UN in the world) does, or tries to do, the better. while this may seem "heartless" or "cruel" to those individuals that believe the proper role of government is to attempt to address all societal wrongs, the conservative realizes that complex problems have no simple fix and that a program implemented under the best intentions can in fact have devastating, wide-ranging and unforeseen consequences. therefore, given such a state of affairs, no program (whether that program is welfare, social security, affirmative action or a myriad of other well-intentioned but ultimately harmful programs) is better than a misguided one.

how two polar opposite belief systems can be reconciled is another post for another day, but to me, the above post best explains why there is such violent opposition between the two parties, neither of whom is capable of accomplishing even 1/5th of what they promise in such a large, populous and diverse nation. so i guess the lesson of this post is, everyone, just fucking relax. stop acting like sarah palin is the devil or barack obama is the devil (even if he and mccain are both taking their $172,000 senate salary of your hard earned money to be professional campaigners - if you're a CEO, i'm pretty sure you go to jail for that), because really when it comes down to it, they got into politics for the same reason, to try to help people, even if their way of helping couldn't be farther apart. blame whomever you like for this state of affairs, i blame leftist scholars over the past century who had the gall and audacity to pretend that they were in possession of definitive answers capable of solving all wrongs facing the world (racism? just place unqualified members of the minority class in jobs/colleges that we envision they would have if there was never racism - yeah, that's not setting that group up for failure more often than not. poor people? use the only institution legally entitled to use violence to compel compliance with its wishes to force people to hand over money that they earned to those who did not... it's ok, we're creating an ideology where people who are rich are considered greedy too. i could go on all day), which, if you are willing to look at the situation objectively, is really pretty ridiculous. even the best intentions do not excuse such behavior. at any rate, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask. i could've written about 20 more pages on this topic, i just decided to quit so you could actually read it in one sitting.

TDK. other such things.

so, the big news as of late, the dark knight and everyone freaking the fuck out about it. now. granted, i loved the dark knight, and it's a fucking great movie, one of the best ones to come out in recent years. however, what i'm unhappy about are all the fucking posers and the general hysteria surrounding the whole thing. that is, people who wouldn't have given 2 shits about the movie if heath ledger was still alive and/or people who are speaking about the thing like it's the best movie of all time. it's got a 9.4 with 150,000 + votes right now on imdb, which makes it #1 by like .3 of a point. come on now, that's absurd. of course i loved the dark knight, i'm pretty much the target audience for christ's sake, 24 year old violence-obsessed male, comic book nerd, movie nerd, huge man crush on christian bale, lover of chris nolan, but i'd never for a second pretend that it's the best movie ever made and talk about it in that way. yes, heath ledger's performance was amazing and will go down in the annals of movie history as one of the great villain performances, however, call back in 6 months after you've watched gangs of new york and silence of the lambs and the dark knight in quick succession and tell me if you think ledger's performance is significantly better than daniel day-lewis' or anthony hopkins. and of course its not. the dark knight is good, very good, maybe the best comic book movie ever made, but its not so much better than every other comic book movie so as to blow the competition away. i watched v for vendetta the other day (an alan moore graphic novel), and the dark knight is not a whole lot better than V, or its own predecessor, batman begins. i mean, have you seen the godfather lately? what about pulp fiction, goodfellas, shawshank or the departed? you're going to legitimately say that a studio film that's rated pg-13 and includes a shit-ton of hokey dialogue because of the fact that when its boiled down to its essence the dark knight was intended to make money, and a lot of it, for warner brothers is better or even as good as any one of those films? come on now. that's just silly. the dark knight is a certain kind of film, and very well may be the pinnacle of this certain kind of film, but no matter how good it may be compared to its genre-mates, this type of film can never possibly be as good as a film that is r-rated and made for artistry's sake rather than for a studio cornerstone. that's just the reality of the thing, and it just kind of bothers me when everyone acts so ridiculous about something just because its brand new. everyone has a tendency to do that about everything, no matter what it is. because it's new, it's the best ever made/done/accomplished, no matter what may have come before. i guess what i'm getting at is that the general hysteria over the dark knight quasi ruined what should have been a great experience for me. it's no fun when posers are into it, it really isn't... not to sound like a snob or anything, but really. was heath ledger's performance amazing? absolutely. the joker as played by him goes right up there with bill the butcher and hannibal lector in my book. is the dark knight amazing? of course, i loved it. i give it like a 9... straight up. it's an incredible achievement, and like i said, probably the best a movie of that genre can possibly be, but at the same time i recognize that a movie like "the dark knight" can only be so good, because of the inherent limitations that go along with making a movie of that stature (it's a studio cornerstone, it has to be pg-13 so the little shitbricks with strict parents can see it, you can only do certain things when the studio is giving you $120 million to make a film, that's just how the world works). not that i really have anything against a movie being rated pg-13, but really, a psychopathic killer has a conversation with a bunch of crime figures and no one says "fuck" once? come on now, that's absurd. life, as i've said many times, is r-rated, whether suburban parents like it or not. i can almost guarantee that no one in the world has worse language than cops and robbers, except for maybe anyone in an all-male locker room or in the military. so it just seems fake to me when a movie dealing primarily with grown men who are in high stress life and death situations are speaking ad nauseum without a single hard swear word. that's a huge complaint of mine… when movies that would be 10X better as a hard r-rated film are cleaned up so goody goody parents don't bitch to the studio about little jimmy hearing a word his dad probably says 10X every day at home anyway. it just figures, everyone's always worried about what's going on outside... when if you run your household right from the inside, it won't even be an issue... but i'll let south park generally speak for me on that issue. -- (oh, by the by, if you're curious and would like to know what my favorite scene is, it's when the joker is egging on that cop in the interrogation room and explaining the nuances of killing someone with a knife, and how you know more about people when they're about to die. "so you could say i knew your friends better than you did... would you like to know which ones were cowards?" i love it, but then again i have a thing for the unredeemably dastardly)
--> in another aside, i like to think that the 2nd story the joker gives about his scars is the true one. if his father fucked him up, that's almost an excuse, a crutch if you will, and it makes him a lesser sort of evil. if, however, what's happened to him is due to his own hand, then it makes him a force of nature, a man who lives by his own code, who simply "wants to watch the world burn".
--> in my last batman aside, i have one particular complaint about the "batman" as we've grown to know him from cinema. in the comics, batman is just as renowned for his brilliance as he is for his physical skills. there's a reason why a glorified MMA fighter is a key member of the justice league, and that's that besides just being the peak of human physical achievement, bruce wayne is a brilliant detective and one of the world's best tacticians who can basically plan and counterplan for anything you throw at him. i feel this side of the batman mystique is downplayed at the expense of some cool action scenes.

so, i don't know if i've talked about this before.. but it's a theorem of mine, closely followed by its opposite and reverse, that being, of course, the "Beatles/Godfather effect". now, you may call it whatever you want given your own personal experience, but it basically is the name for the situation that evolves when you've heard so much hyperbolic praise of a movie/band/book, whatever, that when you finally partake in that experience which you've missed for whatever reason, you're inevitably disappointed just because everything you've heard is so damned over the top. now, me, (if you can't tell by my blog) i'm obsessed with movies, obviously, and i got really really into them at some point late in high school/early in college. well, having been seriously into movies for quite sometime, i found that my favorite genre (as many people's is), happens to be mob movies and those dealing with the complex morality plays presented by organized crime. however, i had not yet seen the godfather, for whatever reason. so of course everyone was talking about how i absolutely HAD to watch the godfather and all of this, and how its 10X better than goodfellas, etc, etc. well, i watch it, and i'm inevitably disappointed. nothing, and i mean nothing, can possibly live up to endless praise and the anticipation which such praise builds. not that i don't like the godfather films, i thoroughly enjoy them, its just that... i was disappointed when i first saw the film, and you know what they say, first impressions last a lifetime. same thing goes for music and the beatles. so i guess the moral of the story is... don't needlessly jack off something (ahem, ahem, dark knight), because you never know who's experience you're going to ruin by rattling on like a schoolgirl with a crush. but, anyway, the whole "beatles/godfather effect" is a negative thing, i'm talking about its positive cousin, that is, having experienced the disappointment accompanying hyperbolic praise, you temper your expectations expecting latent disappointment, and instead experience surprise at the quality of what you're experiencing. this has happened to me this summer in the shape of one nerdy awesome-fest, being: battlestar galactica. now, i had sworn off sci-fi following the shit-fest that was the first three chapters of the star wars saga, decrying the loss of a quality genre to a love of special effects and cgi. and low and behold, who comes to lead me from the darkness but jaime escalante himself, james edward olmos, and his favored companion, miss stands with a fist, mary mcconnell. now, i've heard nothing but good things about BSG for several years now, claims that it rescued sci-fi and such things, and my dad has been raving about the exploits of adama and crew for years. so, seeing as how i'm having the summer of your average 6th grader, i signed up for netflix and decided, what the hell, lets give BSG a shot. so i watch the miniseries, and, well, needless to say, i was completely blown away. far from being the best sci-fi show i've ever seen, it may well be the best show period i've ever seen. sure, it's set on a spaceship, but that's just the setting, if it's a good story it's a good story, whether its set on a desert island, a spaceship, someone's mind or 1750. it's a story of (very) ordinary people rising to face extraordinary challenges in a completely ordinary way, which is something i'm into and is the main reason i got into lost. i'm going to straight up say it, bsg is better than lost. am i a nerd? absolutely. however, bsg features many of the best characters i've ever encountered on a basic cable tv show (you don't get to count HBO. your shows don't play by the same rules) and delves into issues more suited for an upper level philosophy class than a television show. give the miniseries a watch, i promise you won't be disappointed. oh, by the way, the "beatles/godfather effect"'s positive cousin also applies to netflix. its everything i ever could have expected and then some. i love it. if you play your cards right, you can get 3 DVDs a week. 2-3 DVDs a week = 8-10 a month, for $9/mo? yeah, suck it blockbuster.

i've got more shit to say, i just feel like this post is long enough. i'll be back, soon enough.

death in the third world, tall tales of studying, general annoyances.

so this post is motivated by all the news over this Burmese (see: Myanmar) Cyclone that evidently killed something like 14 trillion people over the weekend. in case you don't know what a cyclone is, it's a hurricane, or at least a tropical depression just like a hurricane. i don't know what they're up to in the third world, but it's nothing good. i mean, anytime a disaster or accident strikes, just absurd amounts of deaths ensue. it pretty much goes at least 100-1 in terms of death toll. like, if a bus crashes in the US, 3 people will die. if a bus crashes in China/India/Africa, whatever, that number is something like 45 deaths. like, how is that even possible? it's like every day on the news something absurd happens in a far off place. "flood in Bangledesh, 16,000 dead, 45,000 homeless". "earthquake in Pakistan, 34,000 dead". perhaps the best examples are the infamous "ferry sinking" and "train derailing". you've seen the headlines as many times as i have, i'm sure... "ferry capsizes in Sri Lanka, 345 people feared dead", "train derails in Thailand, 452 feared dead". first... how do you fit 345 people on a ferry that is just capsizing in smooth waters? and second, how are they all dying? just swim, do the doggie paddle if you have to, you'll make it. it's mind boggling. i'm pretty sure that 345 people wouldn't die in the US if a ferry capsized on Lake Minnetonka in January, let alone some tropical lagoon. like, how is that even possible? and the train accident thing... i'm pretty sure that the vast majority of third-world trains are traveling no faster than 30 mph... how are they so lethal? i mean, if we really want to defeat the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe we should provide them with 1960s-era bus/train/ferry transportation and watch the mayhem ensue. a flood here kills... i don't know, 15 people tops, right? an earthquake? maybe some old man's pacemaker stops so he dies. wildfires? the only people who die are the ones too stupid or stubborn to leave when they put the warnings on freaking CNN. but honestly, it's just bizarre. i mean, you can even take Katrina (on Wikipedia it says 1,800 people died from Katrina, but it also says 2 of these victims were in Ohio... and well, i don't know how that's even possible, so i'm refusing to credit Katrina with at least 2 of its supposed 1800 deaths.) and 9/11, easily two of the worst things to happen in recent history to a Western country, and those death totals combined are what? 5000 people? i'll even throw in the Iraq war, that takes us up to around 9,000, guess what, multiply that times 10, and you still are about 10,000 short of the cyclone death toll. that makes my brain hurt more than the last few episodes of lost and kind of just makes me want to curl up into the fetal position and whimper like i'm one of those puppies on that Sarah Mclaughan "angel" commercial. i just don't understand, someone explain it to me, please.

so ok, (as i slowly but surely build my readership up from the depths of nonexistance), but as i mentioned in my last post, we're currently all up in exams like nobody's business. which brings me to my general peeve about exams. well, not exams so much really, as the behavior of the students partaking in aforementioned exams. the "tall tales of studying" so to speak, are, in a word, absurd. like first, there's the whole "outlining" thing, which, if you don't know, is the practice, primarily done by law students, during which they convert their classnotes into outline form. typically, most students will then take this outline, and make a "mini-outline", in order to make things easier to find. here's my thought on the whole thing: first, outlining is a giant waste of time and is only necessary if your notes are a mess. if you keep your notes clear and concise in class instead of just transcribing word for word what comes out of the professor's mouth, then you won't have 90 pages of nonsense that it takes several days and a rosetta stone to work through in order to translate it into something that makes sense. take your notes in outline form, it kills two birds with one stone. then, people take this outline, and devote silly amounts of time to copiously devoting minor details to memory, often crafting elaborate super hypos that could only possibly occur in a legal "perfect storm" scenario, which then, of course, confuse said student, whoever they're studying with, and the whole class when the hypo is posed to and typically dismissed by the professor. nicely done. as horrible as all of this is, it all pales in comparison to the absolutely absurd time investments that everyone claims to have made to studying. "i studied for 9 hours friday, 11 saturday, and 12 yesterday" will be overheard on a monday. and, um, that means one of two things... either A.) you're like a master scholar and now qualified to write THE textbook on the subject. or B.) you're horrible at managing time, like me. just because you were up and on your computer for 9 hours doesn't mean you were STUDYING. you were probably facebook stalking people, watching youtube, reading ESPN/celebrity gossip sites (depending on your gender), whatever, but you weren't fucking studying, so stop the act. it's just silly.

now: just a couple of general annoyances that have sort of been rattling around for a while, and what the hell, now's as good a time as any to get them off my chest.

- driving/being around roads in cincinnati can be intense. one thing i've noticed is that red lights don't mean anything here. like, i've got to cross a decently busy street every day on my way to school. typically, when the light turns red, everyone stops, and you can safely cross. here, you'd better count to 5, and then cross, because chances are at least 2-3 people at every light think that the time when the light changes from yellow to red is not time to slow down and stop, but rather the time to gun it and have no qualms about running the shit out of a redlight. it's crazy. and that's just cars going straight, heaven forbid people turning left through a red light. there are times when you've got to wait half of the green light just to wait for the 3-4 cars that are inevitably on their way to clear the intersection. its absurd. stack up one more group of people that need to be sterilized at the very least, ideally, beaten with rods.

- how no one ever says anything about the level to which hillary clinton, barack obama, and john mccain are full of shit, hypocrites, and generally not good people. lets see, all of them ran for election to the united states senate, correct? they presumably made promises to their constituences (kind of like they are right now) about what they were going to do for this or that and blah blah blah. when was the last time any of them was an actual senator? like, as a US senator, you're one of the 130 or so most powerful people in the US (i figure that the pres and VP, high ranking cabinet posts, the speaker of the house and the supreme court trump them, but still) and those three buffoons are taking advantage of the trust placed in them by the people that elected them into office by doing what? never doing their jobs. nice work. it must be nice to have a position that pays $170,000 that you can DO NOTHING for and still get paid, especially when all three of you are already worth millions. so don't talk about "change", if you want to change, grow a conscience, quit playing it safe, and do the voters and taxpayers of america a service by resigning your senate seat like a classy individual with morals would do.

- another annoyance, why, when you publish a post, does it say the date you began working on the post rather than the actual publishing date? this says the 6th, which would be when i wrote the cyclone part, then i worked on the rest periodically through the week, only to finish it saturday. obnoxious.

- the use of "poop" in the media as if it's an actual word. "poop" is not a word unless you're fucking 5. twice this week i've seen stories with the word "poop" in the title on CNN. something about babies "dealing with the sleepless nights, the poop, blah blah blah" and something about puppies "puppies - the love, poop on your rug, and chewing your furniture", or whatever. ok, whatever, i understand the idea you're trying to get across, but saying "poop" is the equivalent of saying wee-wee. like, if you're an actual adult, you call the male member a cock, dick, or whatever slang term you prefer to use, purple-headed yogurt slinger, whatever. if you're a child, you call it a wee-wee or whatever the hell kids call it nowadays. in between, if you're a doctor, a reporter, someone using the term technically, you call it a penis. the same goes for "poop". if you're a child, you call it "poop", "poo-poo", whatever the fuck. if you're an adult who's not trying to impress anyone, it's shit. if you're a doctor or someone with a technical usage, it's feces/fecal matter, not fucking "poop". jesus. cnn, get a fucking handle on your writers.

- the democratic primary system. either way here, someone's getting screwed, and i find it hilarious that these are the same people that make a big stink about Gore winning the popular vote in 2000. lets see, if Obama wins, as he's likely going to do, he's going to be the Democratic nominee without winning California, New York, Texas, Florida (i know technically no one won florida, but do you really think he'd beat Hil there? it's like New York/Ohio jr.) Ohio or Pennsylvania. if hillary wins, she's going to do so without winning the popular vote, and thereby causing a big stink. and no matter who wins, the 20 million people that live in michigan and florida are getting fucked by having no votes at all. and this is the DEMOCRATIC party? christ. when other countries pull this shit we send troops in. fix the primary situation already, it's a freaking joke.

- ashton kutcher and generally "movies" like "what happens in vegas". how is this no talent asshat still getting work? what's his contribution to american cinema and popular culture? playing the "joey" character on "that 70's show"? great. great contribution. (note to self: travel back in time and prevent "that 70s show" from ever being made to spare the world of topher grace, ashton kutcher and wilber valderamma (sp?)) lets look at your body of work... "the butterfly effect". meh, mediocre at best. "dude, where's my car?" - dude, where's my gun? and then, oh, surprise surprise, 10 movies where he plays the same fucktard he's going to be playing in this shitfest that's destined to get a 1.2 on imdb. generally, i just hate, i mean loathe, i mean despise movies that are like this "what happens in vegas" fiasco. i mean, anyone with a positive iq can figure out exactly what's going to happen in the movie from the 30 second preview... and there isn't even anyone very funny in it, those shitty movies usually star matthew mccaughnehey. lets see, ashton and cameron go to vegas, get drunk, get married, realize it's a mistake and decide to get un-married, win $3 million, try to get/keep the money from each other, then realize they're perfect for each other and fall in love for real. awww... how sweet. oh wait, it sounds like something Awesome-O wrote, or maybe the Family Guy manatees. aren't these "films" usually right to DVD? and how'd they get Cameron Diaz to sign onto it? she actually has displayed flashes of talent at times... oh well, she must have a vibrator made of rolled up $20s at home.

- something that seriously annoys me and that i just have a general beef with is the absurd (over)use of the exclamation mark (!) by our generation. (disclaimer: i am not referring to appropriate use of "!", i.e., when its used as an EXCLAMATION, i am referring to the gratuitous and downright absurd usage that pervades popular culture today, as in "Well I can come there if you want!" - psh.) what's up with that? like, doing quite a bit of communication via the written/typed word, whether it be a text, email, IM, facebook message, whatever, i couldn't tell you how many times someone has typed something along the lines of "i haven't seen you in a while! how are things!" uhhh... why the unnecessary exclamation, and why the complete disregard/willful ignorance of proper english usage? am i trying to overhear you while we're going 90 with the top down? are you an overenergetic stereotypical sorority girl in a college comedy? or you know, me being something of a joker, i'll say something to someone, at which they'll reply "LOL!!!". um, ok, typically i save the the exclamation for special occasions, but alright... i guess. kind of weird and generally creepy, but alright. i guess your overenthusiasm isn't quite as creepy as your general outlook on the world and attitude towards everyone, now that i reflect on it. but no, seriously, do yourself a favor and browse through various facebook profiles and/or myspace pages, if that's your thing (although really, if you're big on myspace, go read someone else's blog, myspace is for people that 1.) went to technical school, 2.) are wanna-be rappers/producers, or 3.) are indie kids trying to "make it" by living the band dream. either way, i'll happily lose your readership) and just check out the use of the exclamation point. it blows my mind. like, i'd like to think i'd never use an exclamation point, but i guess if i was in a Sri Lanken ferry accident i'd exclaim "Someone save me, i'm the only person here who can swim!". honestly, there's only one phrase that truly deserves the full exclamation point treatment that i know of: "Not in every nook and cranny John!". but if you aren't a badassed former Republican Guardsman, seriously, lets save the unnecessary exclamation points, honestly. i can just imagine these kids writing horrible fucking papers growing up: "George Washington was the first president of the United States! He married Martha and had no kids!"... um, thanks there Billy, but removing that exclamation point makes you appear much less like the first monkey who learned to read and much more like someone who might someday finish a whole book, of words and sentences, paragraphs and maybe even "ideas" (although honestly, who am i kidding -- someone born after 1980 who can handle "ideas"? lets not get ahead of ourselves. and really, not to single out our generation, people have always been dumb, i'm just most intimately familiar with people aged 20-27 or so, so i feel most comfortable critiquing their general "culture", worldview and what not.) no less. really, an exclamation point adds nothing to the discourse whatsoever, besides making you appear to be an overeager fool, it connotes no added meaning and generally dumbs the whole thing down, particularly when used improperly, as it so often is and can be. i guess we're picking up on a general theme throughout this blog, and that's just the general degradation of the english language as a whole. its just a sad thing, this deterioration. haven't you ever noticed how much more fun it is to converse with someone who's well-spoken and articulate? i try to stick to general english as much as possible in my communication, whether they be messages, texts, IMs, you name it. you should too, otherwise you might be caught making a general douche of yourself, "I know, me too!". uhh, how about you turn down the intensity a couple of notches there champ and take a couple of plays off... you're about at a 14, we're going to need you to be at 6 or less, thanks a lot. i think about these things, and they trouble me. (i'm not even going to mention multiple "!!!"s, but lets just say that your douchey-ness increases exponentially as each "!" creeps into your exchange. so don't say you weren't forewarned).

Life.

that "black" guy up there? Robert Downey Jr. i shit you not.

So here I am. i highly doubt anyone reads this anymore, and why would you given the erratic at best update schedule. which i apologize about, but i've had a lot of shit going on over here. so what is new with my life you ask? oh. well just the usual, you know, school sucks ass and law school is incredibly stressful, which non law students don't understand and it will inevitably lead to conflicts and problems in your relationships with non-law students. but hey, i knew all this going in, so whatever. we're balls deep in exams, yay! there's nothing like the feeling of having an entire semesters' worth of time and effort validated or rejected in the span of a 3 hour test, that's a really equitable and effective way to evaluate one's performance, and definitely the most efficient way to prepare people for the practice of law... oh wait, scratch that whole last sentence, b/c it's the most retarded thing i've ever heard of. so you know what's fun? when you entirely fuck something up that's really important to you, and really didn't mean to fuck it up, at all. that's just an awesome feeling. if you really want to make yourself feel like a million bucks, go ahead and try that on for size. so one exam down, 3 to go, still no job for the summer. oh what a joy. no one knows where the fuck my life is headed, and i'm not sure how i feel about that, at all. but... whatever, i guess i've always just kind of rolled with the punches, so why stop now? know what is badassed? newspeak. you know, george orwell, 1984, the whole idea that the government would simplify the language to stifle creative thought (it's kind of inadvertently happening as we speak, go check out your average 19-25 year old female who uses like as one of every 4 words or your average frat dude who thoroughly enjoys "dude, bro and fuck"), anyway, in newspeak, "bad" was "ungood", "excellent", "stupendous" and other such fancy words became things like "plusgood", and "doubleplusgood". anyway, it's just a cool fucking concept. plus, doubleplusgood is fun to say. try it. and suck my doubleplusgood cock while i avoid the thought police.

anyway, now that all of that is out of the way, let's talk about Iron Man. if you look down at my last post, which was sadly, some 3 months ago (i'm embarrassed, really), i definitely put in a little bit talking up iron man and the casting of mr. Robert Downey, Jr., who is absolutely brilliant. see Iron Man, seriously, it kicks ass, and hey, it actually felt like it was made for people over the age of 11, which certain super hero movies wouldn't know anything about (ahem, we're looking at you tobey mcguire), i mean, cartoony has its time and place, but really, these characters deserve better. but anyway, well done Marvel, well done. it's right up there with Batman Begins as my favorite super hero movie, and is a fitting tribute to one of the better characters in the marvel panthenon. however, the glaring detail of my viewing of Iron Man comes, unfortunately, not from the movie itself, but from the damn audience members, yet again. yes, i realize this issue was touched on in my last post, but dammit, this problem is endemic and must be addressed. so the theater over in newport has this thing where movies before noon on the weekends are $5. so i figure, screw it, nice theater, $5, set the alarm, head on over, enjoy a nice, quiet moviegoing experience, right? WRONG. first of all, evidently "Iron Man" was the #1 choice of all 20-somethings dragging around failure broods this weekend. the child to adult ratio had to be 3-1. i shit you not, at least one family wandered in, candy in tow (of course, kids just MUST have shit to rustle about with), with 7 kids and one fucking adult. its times like that that i become utterly convinced of the reality that there is no god, but i digress... so needless to say, children are running around the entire time, spilling shit, going to the bathroom, acting like general spazes and generally proving my point, that children should not be allowed out of the house until at least 12, for me. all of that was bad enough, but it paled in comparison to the hungry hungry hippo/illiterate mother of 5 behind me. it's bad enough that you somehow managed to get a man to have sex with you enough times to pop out those 4 demon spawns you drag around and publicly abuse, you also have to let the rest of us know exactly just how stupid you are. i mean, this lady(?) is sitting there exclaiming "ohhh" at every event, cheering on our protagonist during action scenes, and generally behaving as if she's at a sporting event, not a movie. where are these people from that they literally have no idea how to behave at a movie? it actually says in the lead up to the film "quiet please", but then again, i don't know who i'm kidding, since these people are always at least 10 minutes late and then make sure to sit in the 3 empty seats that you were enjoying having next to you until their belated entrance. god. i wish my fingers emitted mace.

this brings me to my next point... the issue of wastes of space breeding like wildfire while those that actually should be having children (see: those with IQs over 90), are being responsible and not squirting out kids that they can't afford and certainly can't care for, given their general inability to care for themselves. so lets talk about our society. can you just build a house anywhere? oh, no, you have to go get that approved by the city/township, whatever. once you have this house, can you just build anything you want in the yard? nope. you have to run that by the city too. can you just hop behind the wheel and figure shit out on your own? nope, you have to pass a test and get a license. can you just open up a business wherever the hell you want? nope. have to run that by the city too. so lets see here, the government cares if you build a house, build shit outside/around said house, drive a car, or open a business, but they don't care if you MAKE A FUCKING BABY!?!?! what the shit? tell me which fucking fantasy world that makes sense in? maybe a doubleplusgood one, but not this one. seriously, who/what causes the problems in this world? randomly built homes, or randomly built people? which one should the government care about, but doesn't? i'm not saying they should be able to control how many kids you have, or when, i'm just saying there should be some basic standards in place before you squirt out a munchkin. you can't just go around, fuck whoever, make a baby, and then let everyone else deal with the consequences of the fact that you aren't ready to be a parent, that's not fucking fair. so here's what we do. make everyone take birth control/use condoms (sorry catholics, god's probably fake anyway, let it go), and then make you apply for a VARIANCE (see the zoning analogy there?) to stop taking/using these contraception methods and have an approved pregnancy. like, we evaluate your psychological well being (likely excluding me), employment status, substance abuse status, etc., and then let you know if you're allowed to have a kid or not. if you're a crackhead who's whoring herself out for a high... sorry, no babies for you. if you're a 14 year old who wants to get pregnant to keep her boyfriend she's going to end up hating in 2 years anyway? sorry, no babies for you. i mean really, this can solve a lot of problems, just nip them in the bud. and of course, if someone has a baby without applying for this license, there's a penalty, maybe the state can take the baby, which they more than likely will anyway, or something of the like. what's the drawback here? granted, i know that not all children born to drug addicts, the severely impovershed, teenaged parents, the mentally ill, whatever are doomed to fail, but lets be honest, a cursory look at the foster children throughout this nation will overrepresent those groups by a significant margin. so why are certain groups, who are already inherently irresponsible allowed to take such a significant step without any intervention at any level? no one knows, it cannot rationally be explained. ergo, in the same way that you need a driver's license to drive a car, you need a parenting license to have a kid, we'll teach you all kinds of fun stuff like: don't rape them, change their diapers, don't shake a baby, give them their shots, and make sure you have the means and ability to adequately raise a child in today's society, and bam. you've got yourself a baby license, go knock yourself out sport. enacting this provision wholesale will greatly add to the enjoyment of future generations, take my word for it.

what else is new? oh, i know. glasses. i've posted since i've had them, but i haven't actually talked about them yet. so i've got glasses now, and i'm still not sure how i feel about them. everyone says "you should get contacts", but no, i refuse. i'm not fucking acknowledging the situation as permanent, this is a temporary stopgap until i have money and can pay to have my eyes fixed via star trek laser. that's the #1 thing i'm doing once i have money, #2 is fixing that tooth i chipped on a beer bottle. damn it, i'm falling apart. but anyway, they're totally screwing up my chi. those of you that know me will know that i thoroughly enjoy wearing hats. well, when the glasses are combined with a hat, i feel like i'm Matt Damon heading out to the grocery store and trying to avoid the paparazzi. but really, it's no big deal, i don't even really need them except to drive at night and read the board in class, and most people say they look good. so whatever, either they're lying, or they look good. either way, i'm ok with it.

so i honestly could not be more excited about The Dark Knight. i shit you not, Heath Ledger's suicidal (really) devotion to the Joker is going to give us (hopefully) the best movie villain of all time, and considering Batman Begins was already incredible, there's no possible way this movie is not going to be incredible. oh yeah, speaking of summer movies, check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5xUx5GA4YU and you tell me how there's any possible way that people don't flip out over Robert Downey Jr. putting on blackface? i don't know, maybe people will be cool for once, but considering that the national newsmedia likes to act like college kids are bringing back apartheid when they throw a "pimps and hos" party, i don't see how there's any way that the do-gooder hypocrites in the national media don't make this out to be something it's not, but anyway, it looks hilarious, and any film that has the balls to try a stunt like that I'm behind, even if that glorious fucktard ben stiller is behind the whole thing. well, i like Zoolander, i'll give him another chance.

so anyway, that's all i've got. i should probably pretend to get back to schoolwork anyway. if you want to hire me, let me know, i'll work hard, show up every day, and won't fuck anything up, well except for my relationships, but hey. thanks.

movie going ettiquite. celebrity worship. the super bowl. the president. other such things.

as you (hopefully) know, i'm obsessed with Daniel Day-Lewis.. and therefore, there was no way in hell i wasn't seeing There Will Be Blood as soon as humanly possible. so i saw it the other weekend... and let me tell you, it's immaculate. this is not an exaggeration: Daniel Day-Lewis gives the best performance I've ever seen. he's captivating and dominates every single instant that he's on screen. paul dano is also outstanding, considering his most noteworthy previous role was as the nerdy friend in The Girl Next Door .
I'm not going to say it's a movie that you're going to watch and re-watch.. but what it is is genius on display. I'm going to go out and say that the fact that "there will.." is #15 on the IMDB top 250 is not ridiculous. it's one of the great performances of our time, of all time, that stacks up with anything that's ever been accomplished or attempted in movie history. it's a sweeping epic, spanning decades and doing it magnificently. that being said, raving about DD-L is not the primary purpose of this post. that would be to complain about damn simpletons that have no idea how to behave when you're in a movie theater. of course, there have always been idiots, but it seems to me that the problem is accelerating in recent years. prior to my There Will Be Blood experience, the worst behaving crowd i've been around was the first time i saw the Departed, and sat behind 3 children under the age of 10, playing with toys and coloring books. listen. a movie theater isn't a babysitter. that's a hard R rated movie. give me a break, you should lose your parenting license for that shit. (oh wait, there is no parenting license, like that makes sense) anyway, the day care paled in comparison to ma and pa McCormick, fresh off the farm and into their first ever film with color and sound. listen, you aren't in your farmhouse watching Sleepless in Seattle or whatever garbage film you usually participate in, don't carry on full-volume conversations in a movie theater. seriously, what the fuck? just asking questions, chatting it up, stating the obvious, and never once attempting to even whisper. thats a big no-no even for a little kid. how'd you make it to 70 without knowing that YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP WHEN YOU'RE WATCHING A MOVIE. christ. just thinking about it pisses me off. they should actively enforce movie theaters. if you're in there acting like a moron, chatting it up, stating obvious plot developments "is that the son?", then you get kicked out. no refund, no nothing. it's not my job to babysit adults. if you're a moron, guess what, you lost your $9. sorry, but that's the price to pay for having a double-digit IQ. personally, i think that's a pretty nice compromise, because ideally the solution should be to drive you out in the woods and give you a big old blanket party, work you over with pipes and such. that would weed out the retards in a matter of weeks. but, like anything that would actually work, that's a little too extreme for more sensitive sensibilities.

ah, yes, speaking of movies... how absurd has the media storm over Heath Ledger's death been? i mean seriously, it was the lead story on cnn.com as soon as it happened, and every news show talked about it WAY too much. i mean, the guy died. it happens. it wasn't a national tragedy. was he a good actor? yes. and yes, it's sad, but come on now, the media coverage was just a little too ridiculous. it wasn't that long ago that Chris Farley died, i can remember, i was in 8th grade. it was news, but it wasn't NEWS. our celebrity worship is just way, way too over the top. people die in Iraq every day, thousands die in Africa and in endemic conflicts around the world. the world economy is undergoing change on a level it hasn't seen since the 1940s, but we should be worried about heath ledger. i'm not even going to touch on britney spears here, but clearly, that's example #1. who the hell cares about how batshit crazy she is? really, in what way does that matter? she used to be hot in like 1999-2004, but what is her significance as an individual? she's a no-talent pop act who's famous for acting the way that trailer trash the world over act. great, that should be the #1 focus of the news media. basically, to be "famous" today, you have to be attractive, and have no qualms about acting like a complete fuck in plain view of millions. is that something to be encouraged? really, in a perfect world, people like britney spears and paris hilton should be shot in the face and thrown into an open pit, in order to cleanse the gene pool, not paid and celebrated. jesus christ i don't want to live here anymore. this country is going straight to shit, there's no other way to describe it. i pray that we go the way of Rome sooner rather than later, if that's what our "culture" is really all about today.

well, i suppose i wouldn't be a self-respecting american if i didn't talk about the super bowl. i don't trust anyone who's that into the super bowl, it just stinks of being a poser to me. people i know that are into the NFL don't really care about the super bowl, it's basically anti-climatic at that point. unless you're a giants/pats fan, then why do you care so much? honestly, it's just a championship game. it's built up to a ridiculous level. i'm not even going to comment on the absurdity of the prices and hype of the fucking advertisements, it doesn't merit my response or attention. so therefore, if you can remove yourself from the teet of corporate whore-hood, think before you attend your next super bowl party (unless you're a fan of a competing team of course) and ask yourself: "why do i care so much?". if you don't have a good response, stay home. plain and simple. save your celebrations for meaningful games involving team(s) that you actually like, and if you don't like any teams, then don't watch football, because honestly, why just partake in something b/c it's a tradition? especially one that involves worshiping clever advertisements and celebrations of why our nation is fading, fast.

anyway, now that the super bowl is over, we enter the dead time also known as "the worst part of the sports year", and that's from the super bowl until the beginning of baseball/march madness/the NFL draft. those 2 months are filled with nothing except regular-season basketball and the sport formerly known as Hockey, which can now be viewed on such stellar stations as the "versus" network. the regular season in the NBA doesn't mean shit. the regular season in the NCAA doesn't mean shit. (see:2007 dallas mavericks, winners of 67 games, losers in the first round, see: Memphis every year, who goes 29-2 or some ridiculous record and loses in the sweet 16) no one cares. therefore, sports sucks for 2 months, except for the combine. i personally will argue that april is the best time of the sports year, followed closely by august/early september (football's starting, baseball is getting good), and then followed by october (football is in full swing, baseball playoffs), and next is may/june with the NBA playoffs and the excitement of a young baseball season.

also, this tuesday was "super tuesday", hyped up by all of the 24 hour news networks/dregs on society. if you missed the hoopla you're either somewhere that i want to be, or completely oblivious to what's going on. now, hopefully you know i think, and hopefully you think yourself, that presidents are the quarterbacks of the political world. they get way too much credit when shit goes right, and way too much blame when shit goes bad. really, they reap the benefits of the world geo-political scene. see: Bill Clinton, supposed harbringer of the 90's boom. what really happened? he happened to be president during the first peaceful era since the 1920s and got to reap the benefits of a massively expanding global economy. nothing the federal government did was going to have a bigger effect on the economy than the fact that half of the world's markets were newly opened to the US economy and the US and capitalism enjoyed a renewed prestige among the world's nation. this fact coupled with the massive expansion of high technology (spurned by decades of R&D conducted in furtherance of the cold war) was a recipe for economic expansion. the president has no more impact on geopolitical trends in the short term than you or i do, sure, he can influence long term strategy and such things, but short of starting WW3, the President acting alone is not capable of affecting the kinds of trends that bring growth or decline in a global age within the span of a single term. FDR gets jacked off for "saving the nation". sure, he did "save the nation", by becoming the world's largest arms dealer. the US economy did not reach its 1928 level until mid-1941, and by 1943 had doubled its previous high, and was tripled 1928 level by early 1945. so you tell me, what saved america? the propaganda piece known as the new deal? or the fact that America alone among all industrialized nations was isolated sufficiently to sell weapons to anyone who'd buy them, from Britain and Russia and China to the nations of latin america and the middle east. anyway, my point is that the president's influence wanes before that of greater geo-political trends that the United States has only a minimal influence on. for instance, what's the global story now? China and India's emergence as big time economic players. what did Clinton or Bush do to bring on this expansion? ding ding ding. nothing. the things that are happening in the global economy (high fuel and commodity prices, the declining dollar, high trade imbalance) are because of China and India's growth, not some well-intended but insufficient spending bill. the government is good to provide talking points, bad to provide anything worthwhile. congress/the federal government is not capable of acting in a fast enough fashion to resolve any major economic issues, they're always resolved by the time Congress gets around to acting. even the great depression. the GDP hit its low point in mid-1932 and had already started its upswing by the time FDR was inaugurated on March 1, 1933. did the alphabet agencies help? sure, they gave people hope, but they didn't really impact the America economy in a meaningful way, it took World War 2 and the lucky fact that America's factories were out of range of German/Japanese bombers to change that. so basically, following my AP history essay, my point is that i HATE it when people stake their lives on Presidential campaigns. if you haven't met an obnoxious Obama supporter yet... then i wish i was you. honestly, every year people get WAY too into the presidential election. why can't people recognize that any candidate that's a viable possibility to be elected president isn't going to change anything. sure, Obama and Hillary say they're going to change health care. but they were both in the Senate, and how many bills did they write? Congress controls spending, man up, and make something happen. don't just play the part of the enthusiastic high school junior making outlandish claims of "getting more pop machines". don't make baseless claims or start more unfunded initiatives. the debates "we need to fix education, health care, global perception of america", right, we do, but did you ever think that maybe the reason those things are messed up to begin with is federal meddling? (see: Medicare, the FDA, the AMA, decades of global interference by both parties). both parties have lost the ability to see that often times more governmental interference is not the answer. the bumbling bureaucracy that is the Federal Government oftentimes does more harm than good.

on a lighter note and in conclusion, there's an Iron Man movie coming out May 2nd. (http://www.ironmanmovie.com/) if you don't know who iron man is, he's my favorite super hero, and the ultimate badass. he's like Batman, only better. Batman is just a creepy ninja guy. Iron Man is a genius who built himself a suit of armor, and can now take out the Hulk. anyway, http://www.empireonline.com/features/25_most_exciting_movies_of_2008/5.asp. there are several other movies on there that are promising to be pretty badass, hopefully summer '08 kicks some ass, movie wise.

oh that note, i'm out. try not to talk to too many people about the presidential election today.

anyway, see There Will Be Blood.