This will be a touch more personal than my posts usually are.
Fuck 2012.
I can name a handful of great things that happened:
My sister got engaged.
I got to spend another year with my wonderful girlfriend.
Got to visit with people that I have been missing.
But then there is the bad:
I've been sick for the entire year. I won't be diagnosed and treated until 2013.
I'm on the verge of losing my job. "Happy New Year!.... You're now unemployed.."
I've been so busy with work and illness that I've been unable to do all the things I wanted to do. Parties, gaming, video games, music, writing.
I've been so sick all year that I missed alot of important things that I wish I had been able to attend.
Example: My Great-Aunt died this year. She was a wonderful woman and I remember her fondly. But I was unable to attend her funeral because I was bed-ridden.
So yeah, Fuck 2012.
But as the good song says: "Always look on the bright side of life."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M
This year has given me the intense feeling that it is no longer ok to just go along with what life gives me.
I need to stop getting stuck in shit jobs. I need real work, that pays me real money.
And lastly, I need to stop sitting on my problems and waiting for them to go away. They don't go away, they just bunch up and bite you in the ass.
So fuck that, and fuck 2012.
Look out 2013, once I'm well, I'm going to grab you by the balls.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
The Hobbit & Wreck-it Ralph
I'm currently on sick leave from my job, so I figure it's time to review some of the movies I've seen in the past month.
The Hobbit
Peter Jackson once again gives us a stunning Tolkien trilogy.... except it's based on one book instead of three. Two books if you count the Silmarillion (yes I did have to look up how to spell that title).
The Hobbit is a short book. As an adult you can read it in a day. Jackson is showing it to us over the course of 8 & 1/2 hours.
So this is a very long movie, and it feels long.
That being said, I still highly recommend this flick.
It has something that LOTR didn't have, and that's adventure for the sake of adventure.
In LOTR the ensemble makes their epic journey because if they don't then the bad guy get's his OBJECT OF ULTIMATE POWER and takes over the world.
In The Hobbit they go on the adventure for wealth, prestige, and to reclaim what was stolen from them. If they suddenly decided to go home and say "to hell" with the stupid quest, they'd be back where they started, but no worse off. Bilbo chose adventure, Frodo had adventure forced upon him.
And the results are telling too. At the beginning of LOTR Bilbo is wealthy and surprisingly old for a Hobbit. His adventures rewarded him. At the end of LOTR Frodo is forced to retire to Elf Heaven only a couple years after his quest. Meaning he never got to marry, probably never even had sex (unless him and Sam got freaky off-screen). Effectively he was punished for the quest that he was forced into. Plus the whole losing a finger and being tortured by the being off all evil.
So end result, The Hobbit is basically the same concept as LOTR but with fewer elves, more dwarves, a happier story, and a goddamn dragon.
Now onto Wreck-it Ralph.
Honestly, this is my movie of the year. I've seen alot of movies this year, but this was my favorite, I went back to see it again in theaters and I added it to my Amazon.com wishlist immediately after leaving the theater for the first time.
Settling in close to the most nostalgic portion of my heart, it tells the story of a old school arcade videogame villain who grows tired of being the villain and wants to be the hero. The rules of his world are such that he literally cannot ever be a hero or else humans will realize that video game characters were alive (kinda like Tron). So he sets off to prove himself a hero in other video games. And of course he fucks it up, because, hey, he's "Wreck-it Ralph" not "Automatically-succeed-at-everything Ralph".
But what really makes me happy in this film is the sense of personal growth for every single character. Everyone in the cast grows, even minor characters get to grow.
The story drops hints about the eventual outcome of the plot, but they aren't so heavy-handed that you're likely to guess the twist until it actually happens.
So yeah, if you can find it still in theaters, go see this movie, if not, just buy it on DVD. Hell, I'm gonna get whatever DVD/Blue ray super combo pack I can for this movie, and watch it until I burn a hole in the disc.
Every time I left the theater after watching that movie I just felt happier, and I want to own it just so I can continue feeling that.
The Hobbit
Peter Jackson once again gives us a stunning Tolkien trilogy.... except it's based on one book instead of three. Two books if you count the Silmarillion (yes I did have to look up how to spell that title).
The Hobbit is a short book. As an adult you can read it in a day. Jackson is showing it to us over the course of 8 & 1/2 hours.
So this is a very long movie, and it feels long.
That being said, I still highly recommend this flick.
It has something that LOTR didn't have, and that's adventure for the sake of adventure.
In LOTR the ensemble makes their epic journey because if they don't then the bad guy get's his OBJECT OF ULTIMATE POWER and takes over the world.
In The Hobbit they go on the adventure for wealth, prestige, and to reclaim what was stolen from them. If they suddenly decided to go home and say "to hell" with the stupid quest, they'd be back where they started, but no worse off. Bilbo chose adventure, Frodo had adventure forced upon him.
And the results are telling too. At the beginning of LOTR Bilbo is wealthy and surprisingly old for a Hobbit. His adventures rewarded him. At the end of LOTR Frodo is forced to retire to Elf Heaven only a couple years after his quest. Meaning he never got to marry, probably never even had sex (unless him and Sam got freaky off-screen). Effectively he was punished for the quest that he was forced into. Plus the whole losing a finger and being tortured by the being off all evil.
So end result, The Hobbit is basically the same concept as LOTR but with fewer elves, more dwarves, a happier story, and a goddamn dragon.
Now onto Wreck-it Ralph.
Honestly, this is my movie of the year. I've seen alot of movies this year, but this was my favorite, I went back to see it again in theaters and I added it to my Amazon.com wishlist immediately after leaving the theater for the first time.
Settling in close to the most nostalgic portion of my heart, it tells the story of a old school arcade videogame villain who grows tired of being the villain and wants to be the hero. The rules of his world are such that he literally cannot ever be a hero or else humans will realize that video game characters were alive (kinda like Tron). So he sets off to prove himself a hero in other video games. And of course he fucks it up, because, hey, he's "Wreck-it Ralph" not "Automatically-succeed-at-everything Ralph".
But what really makes me happy in this film is the sense of personal growth for every single character. Everyone in the cast grows, even minor characters get to grow.
The story drops hints about the eventual outcome of the plot, but they aren't so heavy-handed that you're likely to guess the twist until it actually happens.
So yeah, if you can find it still in theaters, go see this movie, if not, just buy it on DVD. Hell, I'm gonna get whatever DVD/Blue ray super combo pack I can for this movie, and watch it until I burn a hole in the disc.
Every time I left the theater after watching that movie I just felt happier, and I want to own it just so I can continue feeling that.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
What your government has stolen from you.
As a man of thirty years, I've seen much change in this country. Talking to those older than me I see even more that has changed.
We've lost many things in the past fifty years, and what we gained in return is nowhere near fair value.
When I first started going to college ten years ago community college tuition was $9 a unit. When my mother started college it was $3 a unit. When she was a kid it was free. Now it is $36 per unit. That's insane.
To make it worse, back when my mother attended school, community college wasn't a mandatory thing. Hell, university wasn't required. People went to university to become leaders in an industry. Doctors, lawyers, powerful businessmen, teachers, etc. It wasn't required. Your average adult never went to college of any type. They started working straight out of highschool and that was their career. And it was enough to live on. People went to college to join the middle class.
Now we need a college education just to be at the top of the lower class.
To make matters worse, the pay of teachers has become abysmal. These are the people who educate our children and take care of them for us during the day. The least we can do is to pay them better than a nanny.
And whenever the government cuts money from schools, the first thing they do is cut the "non-essential" fields like art, music, and theater.
Now moving on to our tax dollars at work.
Thirty years ago the country was filled with low-cost/free Mental health clinics. These weren't mad houses for the criminally insane, they were places for people who just have some crossed wires and couldn't deal with the real world. Then the country started closing them. All of the mental health care professionals cried out that this would leave our streets filled with crazy people, and they were right.
Before all of these people with mental problems could be treated and medicated so that they weren't a danger to their neighbors. Now they are homeless, or living with relatives or friends because they can't hold down a job un-medicated and they can't afford their medicine.
If you look into alot of the mass-shootings that have happened in the last thirty years, the gunman often suffers from some sort of mental condition that is untreated. Yes, having access to high-powered assault weapons gave them a means to act out their madness, but their madness effected the rest of us because the government decided to get rid of the mental health clinics so that the rich could have another tax cut.
Before it was rare to see a crazy person walking down the street talking to themselves. It's not that we've suddenly developed more crazy people, we just stopped treating them. Before if the police came across a man talking to a tree (in a non-religious way) they would pick them up and take them to the clinic to be examined and treated. Now they just pick them up and dump them at the border to another city. Make them someone else's problem.
Next factor to consider is public transportation.
Prior to 1963 California had a great public transit system. Everyone could take a train or a trolley everywhere they needed to go. Then GM bought out the public transit and mothballed it so that people would be forced to buy cars.
Now this was the act of a corporation to make your life more difficult, but the government let them do it.
Next we have health care.
Free or Discount health centers still exist, but they are much more rare now, and their quality and funding are all but gone. Now they are effectively a place to pay $50 for a antibiotic prescription.
They don't give the care that they used to, how can they when their budgets have been gutted.
Now what have we gained for all that we gave up?
Facebook.
Seriously.
Also, free porn.
I will grant you that the internet is an impressive tool for the people. Mass communication allows us to share information with loved ones across the country, our friendships are no longer limited by zip codes. There are great things that the internet has done for us. We have access to literally any piece of information in the world with just a few keystrokes.
But it also comes with a cost.
Yes twitter, instagram, facebook, myspace, etc allow us to cyber-stalk eachother. We can e-poke eachother, with our cell phones we can reach eachother at any time.
But really, is that an improvement?
When I was a kid, if I wanted to talk to a friend of mine I got on my bike and went to visit them. I would knock on their door and say "Hey, can _________ come out to play?". The same was true for my parents and the generations before them. To communicate with people, we had to be physically with them.
The current generation of young people has got to be the most anti-social humans ever born. They don't see eachother in person, they see eachother online. And what's worse is that this behavior has affected the rest of us. It's the rare people who actually see their friends on a regular (more than once a week) basis. We all remain creepily aware of eachother's lives via Facebook, but really, who the fuck cares what that bitch of a co-worker said to you when you got to work?
Before nobody talked about that shit, because it wasn't important.
Here's a shocker: It's still isn't important.
Nobody cares, but we all know about it because we have the captive audience of the internet. Any stupid little thing we say gets posted online and everyone "likes" us complaining just to make it clear that they were paying attention and not ignoring us.
And then there's porn.
Nothing has done more good and damage to modern sexual relationships than internet porn. Back in my youth porn was a rare thing, and it usually consisted of a half-torn playboy somebody found in a dumpster or half-blocked cable porn.
Now we have access to any, and I mean literally ANY crazy type of porn we can possibly think of.
If you get off to people beating their own genitals with live squid, I'm sure you can find porn of it.
But is that really a good thing?
Before people started having sex, all they brought to the table was their partner and whatever previous first-hand experience that they already had.
Now by the time people actually have sex, they've already seen hundreds of strangers having sex. Internet porn has turned all of us into Voyeurs, Voyeurs with completely unrealistic expectations. Yes, we can find porn of people doing whatever crazy as thing gets our rocks off, but wouldn't it be better just to find a partner who is willing to do that with us?
Honestly, before it was trial and error. People would find a partner and experiment. Now people are going into experimentation pre-disposed for or against whatever the kink is. Before it was new, and most often both partners were trying it together for the first time. So good or bad, neither one had any pre-existing opinions.
So now instead of learning about sex from eachother, we're learning about sex by watching other people have sex incorrectly. Cause let's be real, nobody really has sex the way they do in porn. It's not intimate, it's not comfortable, and most of the positions are too physically stressful for most of us.
It's all stupid. And for the loss of cheap health care, safety from psychos, loss of affordable education, and loss of cheap transportation. All they give us is Facebook and porn.
We've lost many things in the past fifty years, and what we gained in return is nowhere near fair value.
When I first started going to college ten years ago community college tuition was $9 a unit. When my mother started college it was $3 a unit. When she was a kid it was free. Now it is $36 per unit. That's insane.
To make it worse, back when my mother attended school, community college wasn't a mandatory thing. Hell, university wasn't required. People went to university to become leaders in an industry. Doctors, lawyers, powerful businessmen, teachers, etc. It wasn't required. Your average adult never went to college of any type. They started working straight out of highschool and that was their career. And it was enough to live on. People went to college to join the middle class.
Now we need a college education just to be at the top of the lower class.
To make matters worse, the pay of teachers has become abysmal. These are the people who educate our children and take care of them for us during the day. The least we can do is to pay them better than a nanny.
And whenever the government cuts money from schools, the first thing they do is cut the "non-essential" fields like art, music, and theater.
Now moving on to our tax dollars at work.
Thirty years ago the country was filled with low-cost/free Mental health clinics. These weren't mad houses for the criminally insane, they were places for people who just have some crossed wires and couldn't deal with the real world. Then the country started closing them. All of the mental health care professionals cried out that this would leave our streets filled with crazy people, and they were right.
Before all of these people with mental problems could be treated and medicated so that they weren't a danger to their neighbors. Now they are homeless, or living with relatives or friends because they can't hold down a job un-medicated and they can't afford their medicine.
If you look into alot of the mass-shootings that have happened in the last thirty years, the gunman often suffers from some sort of mental condition that is untreated. Yes, having access to high-powered assault weapons gave them a means to act out their madness, but their madness effected the rest of us because the government decided to get rid of the mental health clinics so that the rich could have another tax cut.
Before it was rare to see a crazy person walking down the street talking to themselves. It's not that we've suddenly developed more crazy people, we just stopped treating them. Before if the police came across a man talking to a tree (in a non-religious way) they would pick them up and take them to the clinic to be examined and treated. Now they just pick them up and dump them at the border to another city. Make them someone else's problem.
Next factor to consider is public transportation.
Prior to 1963 California had a great public transit system. Everyone could take a train or a trolley everywhere they needed to go. Then GM bought out the public transit and mothballed it so that people would be forced to buy cars.
Now this was the act of a corporation to make your life more difficult, but the government let them do it.
Next we have health care.
Free or Discount health centers still exist, but they are much more rare now, and their quality and funding are all but gone. Now they are effectively a place to pay $50 for a antibiotic prescription.
They don't give the care that they used to, how can they when their budgets have been gutted.
Now what have we gained for all that we gave up?
Facebook.
Seriously.
Also, free porn.
I will grant you that the internet is an impressive tool for the people. Mass communication allows us to share information with loved ones across the country, our friendships are no longer limited by zip codes. There are great things that the internet has done for us. We have access to literally any piece of information in the world with just a few keystrokes.
But it also comes with a cost.
Yes twitter, instagram, facebook, myspace, etc allow us to cyber-stalk eachother. We can e-poke eachother, with our cell phones we can reach eachother at any time.
But really, is that an improvement?
When I was a kid, if I wanted to talk to a friend of mine I got on my bike and went to visit them. I would knock on their door and say "Hey, can _________ come out to play?". The same was true for my parents and the generations before them. To communicate with people, we had to be physically with them.
The current generation of young people has got to be the most anti-social humans ever born. They don't see eachother in person, they see eachother online. And what's worse is that this behavior has affected the rest of us. It's the rare people who actually see their friends on a regular (more than once a week) basis. We all remain creepily aware of eachother's lives via Facebook, but really, who the fuck cares what that bitch of a co-worker said to you when you got to work?
Before nobody talked about that shit, because it wasn't important.
Here's a shocker: It's still isn't important.
Nobody cares, but we all know about it because we have the captive audience of the internet. Any stupid little thing we say gets posted online and everyone "likes" us complaining just to make it clear that they were paying attention and not ignoring us.
And then there's porn.
Nothing has done more good and damage to modern sexual relationships than internet porn. Back in my youth porn was a rare thing, and it usually consisted of a half-torn playboy somebody found in a dumpster or half-blocked cable porn.
Now we have access to any, and I mean literally ANY crazy type of porn we can possibly think of.
If you get off to people beating their own genitals with live squid, I'm sure you can find porn of it.
But is that really a good thing?
Before people started having sex, all they brought to the table was their partner and whatever previous first-hand experience that they already had.
Now by the time people actually have sex, they've already seen hundreds of strangers having sex. Internet porn has turned all of us into Voyeurs, Voyeurs with completely unrealistic expectations. Yes, we can find porn of people doing whatever crazy as thing gets our rocks off, but wouldn't it be better just to find a partner who is willing to do that with us?
Honestly, before it was trial and error. People would find a partner and experiment. Now people are going into experimentation pre-disposed for or against whatever the kink is. Before it was new, and most often both partners were trying it together for the first time. So good or bad, neither one had any pre-existing opinions.
So now instead of learning about sex from eachother, we're learning about sex by watching other people have sex incorrectly. Cause let's be real, nobody really has sex the way they do in porn. It's not intimate, it's not comfortable, and most of the positions are too physically stressful for most of us.
It's all stupid. And for the loss of cheap health care, safety from psychos, loss of affordable education, and loss of cheap transportation. All they give us is Facebook and porn.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
First Presidential debate Oct 3rd
Ok, didn't manage to catch all of the debate, but I saw a large portion of it.
I'm firmly of the belief that the system for political debates is kinda retarded. Arguing a point with limited prep time and only 2 minutes to speak is crazy nightmare.
But onto the debate itself.
All of the analysts are saying that Romney won the debate. Mainly in that he gave the impression that he was giving concrete details, while he in fact was disagreeing with himself all the time.
Example:
Obama says that his medical plan is exactly like the one Romney used in Massachusetts.
Romney responds that no their plans are totally different because his was a bi-partisan effort.
Obama responds that regardless of who made it, the two plans are the exact same formula, with a couple additions.
Romney changes the subject to complain that medical care should be the problem of the state, not the federal government.
Obama rolls his eyes.
This is something that has been bugging me for the last fifteen years that I've actually paid attention to politics.
Republican candidates always say that they want LESS Federal control, MORE state control, LOWER taxes, but HIGHER spending.
Taking the first two under examination, the Republican party doesn't actually have a good record with those two concepts. Every time we get Republicans in power, they want to Increase Federal control (Hello? Patriot Act?) and try to take the power away from the states by trying to enforce morality/religion. I'm sure I could come up with better examples, but I'm tired.
Second part they actually keep their word on, but it's fiscally insane. You can't reasonably spend money that you don't have. Hence why every time we get a Democrat in office, they have to reduce their spending and increase taxes to pay for the debt of the previous administration.
Romney is doing the same thing in his campaign.
He's talking about reducing taxes again but keeping the budget basically the same, so yet again, more debt. It's like giving a teenager a credit card with $100 in the bank and no spending limit. You hope that they will be smart enough not to spend more than the $100 they have, but with no limit they are spending like crazy. And given our financial crisis, that's fucking insane.
But the whole concept of putting the power back in the states, yes, it's permanently part of the platform, but they'll never actually do it. More control for the states requires more money for the states. So either Federal taxes need to go down so State taxes can go up, or the federal government needs to give a sizable percentage of their earnings to the states.
So yeah, much of the debate was simply massive research and math failures.
But I am looking forward to the VP debate. Mostly to see what crazy shit Paul Ryan will say.
I'm firmly of the belief that the system for political debates is kinda retarded. Arguing a point with limited prep time and only 2 minutes to speak is crazy nightmare.
But onto the debate itself.
All of the analysts are saying that Romney won the debate. Mainly in that he gave the impression that he was giving concrete details, while he in fact was disagreeing with himself all the time.
Example:
Obama says that his medical plan is exactly like the one Romney used in Massachusetts.
Romney responds that no their plans are totally different because his was a bi-partisan effort.
Obama responds that regardless of who made it, the two plans are the exact same formula, with a couple additions.
Romney changes the subject to complain that medical care should be the problem of the state, not the federal government.
Obama rolls his eyes.
This is something that has been bugging me for the last fifteen years that I've actually paid attention to politics.
Republican candidates always say that they want LESS Federal control, MORE state control, LOWER taxes, but HIGHER spending.
Taking the first two under examination, the Republican party doesn't actually have a good record with those two concepts. Every time we get Republicans in power, they want to Increase Federal control (Hello? Patriot Act?) and try to take the power away from the states by trying to enforce morality/religion. I'm sure I could come up with better examples, but I'm tired.
Second part they actually keep their word on, but it's fiscally insane. You can't reasonably spend money that you don't have. Hence why every time we get a Democrat in office, they have to reduce their spending and increase taxes to pay for the debt of the previous administration.
Romney is doing the same thing in his campaign.
He's talking about reducing taxes again but keeping the budget basically the same, so yet again, more debt. It's like giving a teenager a credit card with $100 in the bank and no spending limit. You hope that they will be smart enough not to spend more than the $100 they have, but with no limit they are spending like crazy. And given our financial crisis, that's fucking insane.
But the whole concept of putting the power back in the states, yes, it's permanently part of the platform, but they'll never actually do it. More control for the states requires more money for the states. So either Federal taxes need to go down so State taxes can go up, or the federal government needs to give a sizable percentage of their earnings to the states.
So yeah, much of the debate was simply massive research and math failures.
But I am looking forward to the VP debate. Mostly to see what crazy shit Paul Ryan will say.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Wedding tips from a veteran Best Man.
Ok, I've done the best man gig twice now, and there are a few things that I have discovered about weddings that I think everyone should know about.
1. Weddings are a much bigger pain in the ass than you think.
Consider all of the details of your perfect wedding. The type of flowers you want, the dress, the color theme, the reception. It's lovely isn't it?
Now consider the other things. The invitations, the thank you cards, the seating arrangements, the photographers, the DJ, the back seat bridesmaids. Shit goes from lovely to horrifying really fast.
Simple tip: Focus on simplicity. The wedding is going to be inherently complicated, so try not to add more complication to your plate.
2. There is going to be drama.
Without fail, someone is going to be pissed or emo about your wedding. If you're very lucky it won't be one of the people actually getting married. But the best thing you can do is to assign a bulldog on the bride and groom's side. The groomsman bulldog basically acts as a bouncer. His job is to kick drama out the door to make sure it doesn't fuck with you. The bridesmaid bulldog has the job of trying to catch the drama before it becomes unmanageable. These people have a rough job, make sure to do something nice for them.
3. Make sure you keep your wedding gift registry in the price range of your guests.
If most of your friends are poor, make sure you give them cheap options. They feel obligated to give you something, but don't try to break the bank.
4. Be ready to compromise.
As part of the process you may feel like everyone is trying to influence your decisions, and when you are in the planning phase you should tell people to go fuck themselves. It's your wedding, do it how you want. However, as you get closer and closer to zero hour, be ready to ditch your elaborate plans when they become too convoluted or too costly to keep. Yes having the bride and groom arrive in carriages might be awesome, but not cheap, and if the church has no ability to handle horses, you're kinda stuck.
5. Be willing to delegate, and be ready for the consequences of that delegation.
Firstly, don't try to do every little thing yourself. Yes you may have a special way you want the napkins folded, but teach it to someone else and let them do it. However, don't get pissed off if they don't look exactly the way you want them. Yes within reason, but they are trying to help you, don't get pissed at them.
6. Avoid having too many chiefs.
You need one master plan, and for everyone to follow that, don't let other people try to influence your plans or to try to turn your wedding into their ideal wedding. Fuck those people.
7. Clearly define everyone's roles. The first time I was a best man I had no idea what to say for my toast. The second time I wasn't notified that I was the best man until the day before the wedding. Fortunately I managed to pull together an awesome speech the second time, and the first time I managed to pass it off to someone who did know what to say. But think clearly, people don't automatically know what you want them to do at their wedding. Do you want a bachelor party? Should the speech avoid any specific topics? Should the bridesmaids attempt to match accessories? Important details to remember. You can always pass the buck to someone else, but you do need to make sure that person knows what you want.
8. Make sure to take time to enjoy yourself.
Weddings are a stressful time for the couple in question. If you don't focus on your own happiness then the beginning of your new life together is going to be a constant reminder of one of the most stressful days of your life. Take naps, cuddle, remind eachother why you are doing this. And get good and drunk at the reception. Unless you really want that wedding night sex to be special, expect your wedding night to be spent passed out from exhaustion.
9. Skip the wedding night sex.
Unless you are getting a quick civil service, you are going to be entirely too wiped out to perform properly in the bedroom. Just go to sleep, and try to impress eachother the next day when you are less tired.
1. Weddings are a much bigger pain in the ass than you think.
Consider all of the details of your perfect wedding. The type of flowers you want, the dress, the color theme, the reception. It's lovely isn't it?
Now consider the other things. The invitations, the thank you cards, the seating arrangements, the photographers, the DJ, the back seat bridesmaids. Shit goes from lovely to horrifying really fast.
Simple tip: Focus on simplicity. The wedding is going to be inherently complicated, so try not to add more complication to your plate.
2. There is going to be drama.
Without fail, someone is going to be pissed or emo about your wedding. If you're very lucky it won't be one of the people actually getting married. But the best thing you can do is to assign a bulldog on the bride and groom's side. The groomsman bulldog basically acts as a bouncer. His job is to kick drama out the door to make sure it doesn't fuck with you. The bridesmaid bulldog has the job of trying to catch the drama before it becomes unmanageable. These people have a rough job, make sure to do something nice for them.
3. Make sure you keep your wedding gift registry in the price range of your guests.
If most of your friends are poor, make sure you give them cheap options. They feel obligated to give you something, but don't try to break the bank.
4. Be ready to compromise.
As part of the process you may feel like everyone is trying to influence your decisions, and when you are in the planning phase you should tell people to go fuck themselves. It's your wedding, do it how you want. However, as you get closer and closer to zero hour, be ready to ditch your elaborate plans when they become too convoluted or too costly to keep. Yes having the bride and groom arrive in carriages might be awesome, but not cheap, and if the church has no ability to handle horses, you're kinda stuck.
5. Be willing to delegate, and be ready for the consequences of that delegation.
Firstly, don't try to do every little thing yourself. Yes you may have a special way you want the napkins folded, but teach it to someone else and let them do it. However, don't get pissed off if they don't look exactly the way you want them. Yes within reason, but they are trying to help you, don't get pissed at them.
6. Avoid having too many chiefs.
You need one master plan, and for everyone to follow that, don't let other people try to influence your plans or to try to turn your wedding into their ideal wedding. Fuck those people.
7. Clearly define everyone's roles. The first time I was a best man I had no idea what to say for my toast. The second time I wasn't notified that I was the best man until the day before the wedding. Fortunately I managed to pull together an awesome speech the second time, and the first time I managed to pass it off to someone who did know what to say. But think clearly, people don't automatically know what you want them to do at their wedding. Do you want a bachelor party? Should the speech avoid any specific topics? Should the bridesmaids attempt to match accessories? Important details to remember. You can always pass the buck to someone else, but you do need to make sure that person knows what you want.
8. Make sure to take time to enjoy yourself.
Weddings are a stressful time for the couple in question. If you don't focus on your own happiness then the beginning of your new life together is going to be a constant reminder of one of the most stressful days of your life. Take naps, cuddle, remind eachother why you are doing this. And get good and drunk at the reception. Unless you really want that wedding night sex to be special, expect your wedding night to be spent passed out from exhaustion.
9. Skip the wedding night sex.
Unless you are getting a quick civil service, you are going to be entirely too wiped out to perform properly in the bedroom. Just go to sleep, and try to impress eachother the next day when you are less tired.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Why the 11th Doctor Who sucks.
Before I begin, yes, I will be bashing Doctor Who in this article. And yes, this article will be filled with a shitload of SPOILERS.
So 11th Doctor, written by show-runner Steven Moffat. Gone is the happy-go-lucky David Tenant and in is the brooding psychotic god of the universe Matt Smith.
The main episodes of note are "The Pandorica Opens", "A good man goes to war", "The wedding of River Song", and "Asylum of the Daleks".
Pandorica Opens finally bring the Doctor and Amy Pond to the reason behind all of the random tears in the universe that we had been seeing since the first episode. It turns out that The universe was destroyed by the Tardis blowing up. (They never actually explain why this causes the entire universe to detonate, but apparently it does. Only Earth is spared, and the Doctor uses his prison to fuse to the Tardis, finish detonating, and then re-build the universe from his memories. The Doctor makes statements that Amy Pond's memories are the source of the new universe that is created.
But let's face some facts here.
1. Amy is a semi-normal human
2. Amy is actually from a parallel dimension where her family was eaten up by the cracks in the universe.
3. Amy has no knowledge of most of the universe. Sure she's been on some adventures with the Doctor, but her knowledge of the universe is far from complete.
Which leaves us to assume that the Doctor provided the memories that re-created the universe. He just told Amy to remember so that he could mess with her mind at her wedding. Either that or he tried to write himself out of the universe and realized that he can't be the creator of the universe if he doesn't actually exist.
So the universe is back, and it's exactly as he remembers it. Which means by definition it should only contain things that he knows about. Specifically it is now impossible for him to be surprised, because he already knows everything that exists.
So the Doctor destroyed the old universe and created a new one in his own image.
Fast forward to "A good man goes to war". The entire universe has decided that yet again they are sick of the Doctor's shit, so they kidnap Amy Pond so that her human/timelord hybrid daughter can be brainwashed into killing the Doctor. The Doctor of course rescues Amy with the help of Rory Williams and the rest of his friends. At the end River Song reveals that she is Rory and Amy's daughter.
Which, given that the Doctor created the universe and everyone in it, means that he always knew she was their daughter, even though in the episode he gets all angsty about it.
Fast forward again to "The wedding of River Song" and River has decided despite the fact that she's been programmed to kill the Doctor, she doesn't want to. She'd much rather fuck his brains out. So she changes history so that she doesn't kill him. Which stops time and condenses the entire universe and all of history onto Earth. The Doctor forces her to go through with it after he explains that he is faking his own death.
The universe reverts back to normal and life goes on.
Then we get to "Asylum of the Daleks". The doctor meets a awesome hacker trapped in the body of a Dalek. She rescues the group by erasing the Doctor's existence from the memory of all Daleks.
Following this, the Doctor has the brillant idea to erase all evidence of himself from the universe so that no-one will know who he is.
And here is where we get a massive paradox.
The doctor created the universe because of the Pandorica which was a trap designed for him because everyone in the universe was pissed at him.
The exploding Tardis also happened because of that event.
If nobody ever knew that the Doctor existed, then they would have no reason to create a trap for him. Which would mean that the old universe was never destroyed and re-built, The cracks in the universe never existed, which means that the Doctor would never have met Amy (because she was only interested in him because she was living in a big-ass house that was un-making her relatives from existence.)
If he never met Amy, her and Rory would never have given birth to River Song the Timelord hybrid. If River wasn't a hybrid, she wouldn't have grown up around Rory and Amy and made them realize how they felt about eachother, thus negating her own existence.
And of course, if he was hidden from the universe then they wouldn't be waging war against him, which wouldn't cause him to go back and erase himself from history.
Case in point, if he was erased from the knowledge of all Daleks in all of time, then they wouldn't have kidnapped him to go to the asylum where he meets Oswin the super-hacker who erased him from Dalek memory.
So we are left with a massive paradox. And the most obvious rule about time travel. I.E. DON'T FUCKING LET ANYONE KNOW THAT YOU ARE A TIME TRAVELER!!!
The other Doctors seemed to not have a problem with that. They hid their time-raping nature from the universe. Like, you know, a sane person.
So 11th Doctor, written by show-runner Steven Moffat. Gone is the happy-go-lucky David Tenant and in is the brooding psychotic god of the universe Matt Smith.
The main episodes of note are "The Pandorica Opens", "A good man goes to war", "The wedding of River Song", and "Asylum of the Daleks".
Pandorica Opens finally bring the Doctor and Amy Pond to the reason behind all of the random tears in the universe that we had been seeing since the first episode. It turns out that The universe was destroyed by the Tardis blowing up. (They never actually explain why this causes the entire universe to detonate, but apparently it does. Only Earth is spared, and the Doctor uses his prison to fuse to the Tardis, finish detonating, and then re-build the universe from his memories. The Doctor makes statements that Amy Pond's memories are the source of the new universe that is created.
But let's face some facts here.
1. Amy is a semi-normal human
2. Amy is actually from a parallel dimension where her family was eaten up by the cracks in the universe.
3. Amy has no knowledge of most of the universe. Sure she's been on some adventures with the Doctor, but her knowledge of the universe is far from complete.
Which leaves us to assume that the Doctor provided the memories that re-created the universe. He just told Amy to remember so that he could mess with her mind at her wedding. Either that or he tried to write himself out of the universe and realized that he can't be the creator of the universe if he doesn't actually exist.
So the universe is back, and it's exactly as he remembers it. Which means by definition it should only contain things that he knows about. Specifically it is now impossible for him to be surprised, because he already knows everything that exists.
So the Doctor destroyed the old universe and created a new one in his own image.
Fast forward to "A good man goes to war". The entire universe has decided that yet again they are sick of the Doctor's shit, so they kidnap Amy Pond so that her human/timelord hybrid daughter can be brainwashed into killing the Doctor. The Doctor of course rescues Amy with the help of Rory Williams and the rest of his friends. At the end River Song reveals that she is Rory and Amy's daughter.
Which, given that the Doctor created the universe and everyone in it, means that he always knew she was their daughter, even though in the episode he gets all angsty about it.
Fast forward again to "The wedding of River Song" and River has decided despite the fact that she's been programmed to kill the Doctor, she doesn't want to. She'd much rather fuck his brains out. So she changes history so that she doesn't kill him. Which stops time and condenses the entire universe and all of history onto Earth. The Doctor forces her to go through with it after he explains that he is faking his own death.
The universe reverts back to normal and life goes on.
Then we get to "Asylum of the Daleks". The doctor meets a awesome hacker trapped in the body of a Dalek. She rescues the group by erasing the Doctor's existence from the memory of all Daleks.
Following this, the Doctor has the brillant idea to erase all evidence of himself from the universe so that no-one will know who he is.
And here is where we get a massive paradox.
The doctor created the universe because of the Pandorica which was a trap designed for him because everyone in the universe was pissed at him.
The exploding Tardis also happened because of that event.
If nobody ever knew that the Doctor existed, then they would have no reason to create a trap for him. Which would mean that the old universe was never destroyed and re-built, The cracks in the universe never existed, which means that the Doctor would never have met Amy (because she was only interested in him because she was living in a big-ass house that was un-making her relatives from existence.)
If he never met Amy, her and Rory would never have given birth to River Song the Timelord hybrid. If River wasn't a hybrid, she wouldn't have grown up around Rory and Amy and made them realize how they felt about eachother, thus negating her own existence.
And of course, if he was hidden from the universe then they wouldn't be waging war against him, which wouldn't cause him to go back and erase himself from history.
Case in point, if he was erased from the knowledge of all Daleks in all of time, then they wouldn't have kidnapped him to go to the asylum where he meets Oswin the super-hacker who erased him from Dalek memory.
So we are left with a massive paradox. And the most obvious rule about time travel. I.E. DON'T FUCKING LET ANYONE KNOW THAT YOU ARE A TIME TRAVELER!!!
The other Doctors seemed to not have a problem with that. They hid their time-raping nature from the universe. Like, you know, a sane person.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Welcome to the world of tomorrow.
Warning, heavy politics/ economic theory ahead.
So, currently the U.S. along with most of the world is on the verge of massive change. Most of the world is in an economic depression. Which logically makes zero sense. In theory, if everyone is poor and miserable, simple change the rules so that everyone is less poor.
The problem is that it's not everyone, just the lower and middle class. The rich are now insanely rich. They are so rich in fact that they have to invent ridiculous new things for them to spend their money on.
So the anarchists scream "Rob from the rich and give to the poor!"
Well, that might have worked for Robin Hood, but he was operating on a small scale. Our Prince John's operate on a global scale. They employ an army of accountants and lawyers to protect their money from potential theft.
No, merely targeting the Rich won't solve the world's problems, not unless you manage to cripple their power structure so that their lawyers and accountants can't protect them.
But something is coming, everyone can feel it. Wall street is moving to protect their interests by investing in stable low-growth options like gold. And the Government is supposedly creating caches of hollow-point bullets all over the country to put down any potential riots or civil uprisings.
But they are assuming that's the way it's going to go.
Yes, the world is currently sitting on a powder keg. Any major fuckup could lead to riots or worse. But the people who are likely making plans aren't likely to want to do anything that horrible fucks over the average people.
No, the likely targets are the banks. Not even specifically the money in the banks, but rather the debts held by the banks.
Currently the US banks hold some 750 billion dollars in credit card debt. This of course isn't counting mortgages and such. But still a hefty amount hanging over everyone's heads. Significantly digging into everyone's pockets and costing them large amounts of money every month.
So if someone wanted to really empower the lower and middle class, they would wipe out the debts.
I'm not a hacker, so I don't know how difficult that would be, but I do know that computer experts have been predicting a massive computer security breach for years now.
Simply wiping the banks wouldn't really change anything except for fucking with the FDIC. All banks are protected up to $250,000 and only an idiot would put more money than that in one account.
A truly scary attack would be to wipe out the FDIC and all of the banks at once. Banks are required by the FDIC to keep between 6% and 10% of their money in capital. So if all banks and FDIC files got wiped then there would still be around 8% of everyone's money still available.
That would lead to a 90% deflation in the US and would theoretically make the American dollar very, very strong (one U.S Dollar would be worth 75 Euros.).
This would lead to a massive deflation of the other economies aswell since they wouldn't want the US to become nonsensically wealthy overnight.
These are some really scary possibilities, but that's the thing to remember, they are possibilities, not certainties.
We know something is going to happen, likely in December (As the frigging Mayans left too much of a cliff-hanger there for something to not happen.) Some crazy person will do something then.
Two events that might trigger early problems are the November election and Police violence.
The election should be pretty obvious. Regardless of who wins, half of the country is going to be pissed.
The police thing is a case of trigger-happy nutjobs being given positions of authority. Most police are good people, they keep the peace and they honestly feel that they are officers of the law with the duty of protecting their community.
But there are always some bad eggs.
Some of my readers may be too young to remember the Rodney King riots, but those were some scary times in LA. Some racist police officers brutally beat a young black man, and it was filmed.
The cops involved were charged then acquitted.
The day that the verdict was rendered, LA erupted into violence that lasted almost a week.
The extent of the violence is not really discussed, because the police very wisely decided to stay the fuck out of the riot zones. They knew then that if they appeared in the riot zones, they would be killed.
Police officers are usually protected by the polis because they protect the people. When the police have been shown to not to have the people's interests at heart, that protection is rescinded.
What worries me about the potential violence in the future is that these police don't seem to have the common sense that the LAPD had back in 92. These guys will try to march into the warzone and strong-arm everyone, which will turn a riot into a bloody mess. Regardless of which side wins, the police entering a riot zone is ALWAYS a bad idea. It greatly increases the injury rate and the injuries of the innocent bystanders.
Especially if the rumors are true and the government is stockpiling hollow-points. Giving the police hollow points is effectively saying "We're not taking prisoners. If you are in this zone, we will kill you." and the rioters would respond the same way. It's like issuing a hunting license for PD.
If they were less retarded they would be stockpiling non-lethal rounds. That way the trigger-happy nutjobs could go crazy and not risk excessive escalation.
So potential scary times ahead, everyone remember to protect eachother.
That's honestly the best way for the people to handle it. Simply band together with your neighbors and declare it a "riot-free zone". Gives the police no reason to enter and start bashing heads and means that you and your neighbors get to stay safe.
Try to keep in mind that we're all in this mess together. Violence isn't the option you really want. It may sound glorious and such, but getting beaten up sucks. Try to avoid it.
So, currently the U.S. along with most of the world is on the verge of massive change. Most of the world is in an economic depression. Which logically makes zero sense. In theory, if everyone is poor and miserable, simple change the rules so that everyone is less poor.
The problem is that it's not everyone, just the lower and middle class. The rich are now insanely rich. They are so rich in fact that they have to invent ridiculous new things for them to spend their money on.
So the anarchists scream "Rob from the rich and give to the poor!"
Well, that might have worked for Robin Hood, but he was operating on a small scale. Our Prince John's operate on a global scale. They employ an army of accountants and lawyers to protect their money from potential theft.
No, merely targeting the Rich won't solve the world's problems, not unless you manage to cripple their power structure so that their lawyers and accountants can't protect them.
But something is coming, everyone can feel it. Wall street is moving to protect their interests by investing in stable low-growth options like gold. And the Government is supposedly creating caches of hollow-point bullets all over the country to put down any potential riots or civil uprisings.
But they are assuming that's the way it's going to go.
Yes, the world is currently sitting on a powder keg. Any major fuckup could lead to riots or worse. But the people who are likely making plans aren't likely to want to do anything that horrible fucks over the average people.
No, the likely targets are the banks. Not even specifically the money in the banks, but rather the debts held by the banks.
Currently the US banks hold some 750 billion dollars in credit card debt. This of course isn't counting mortgages and such. But still a hefty amount hanging over everyone's heads. Significantly digging into everyone's pockets and costing them large amounts of money every month.
So if someone wanted to really empower the lower and middle class, they would wipe out the debts.
I'm not a hacker, so I don't know how difficult that would be, but I do know that computer experts have been predicting a massive computer security breach for years now.
Simply wiping the banks wouldn't really change anything except for fucking with the FDIC. All banks are protected up to $250,000 and only an idiot would put more money than that in one account.
A truly scary attack would be to wipe out the FDIC and all of the banks at once. Banks are required by the FDIC to keep between 6% and 10% of their money in capital. So if all banks and FDIC files got wiped then there would still be around 8% of everyone's money still available.
That would lead to a 90% deflation in the US and would theoretically make the American dollar very, very strong (one U.S Dollar would be worth 75 Euros.).
This would lead to a massive deflation of the other economies aswell since they wouldn't want the US to become nonsensically wealthy overnight.
These are some really scary possibilities, but that's the thing to remember, they are possibilities, not certainties.
We know something is going to happen, likely in December (As the frigging Mayans left too much of a cliff-hanger there for something to not happen.) Some crazy person will do something then.
Two events that might trigger early problems are the November election and Police violence.
The election should be pretty obvious. Regardless of who wins, half of the country is going to be pissed.
The police thing is a case of trigger-happy nutjobs being given positions of authority. Most police are good people, they keep the peace and they honestly feel that they are officers of the law with the duty of protecting their community.
But there are always some bad eggs.
Some of my readers may be too young to remember the Rodney King riots, but those were some scary times in LA. Some racist police officers brutally beat a young black man, and it was filmed.
The cops involved were charged then acquitted.
The day that the verdict was rendered, LA erupted into violence that lasted almost a week.
The extent of the violence is not really discussed, because the police very wisely decided to stay the fuck out of the riot zones. They knew then that if they appeared in the riot zones, they would be killed.
Police officers are usually protected by the polis because they protect the people. When the police have been shown to not to have the people's interests at heart, that protection is rescinded.
What worries me about the potential violence in the future is that these police don't seem to have the common sense that the LAPD had back in 92. These guys will try to march into the warzone and strong-arm everyone, which will turn a riot into a bloody mess. Regardless of which side wins, the police entering a riot zone is ALWAYS a bad idea. It greatly increases the injury rate and the injuries of the innocent bystanders.
Especially if the rumors are true and the government is stockpiling hollow-points. Giving the police hollow points is effectively saying "We're not taking prisoners. If you are in this zone, we will kill you." and the rioters would respond the same way. It's like issuing a hunting license for PD.
If they were less retarded they would be stockpiling non-lethal rounds. That way the trigger-happy nutjobs could go crazy and not risk excessive escalation.
So potential scary times ahead, everyone remember to protect eachother.
That's honestly the best way for the people to handle it. Simply band together with your neighbors and declare it a "riot-free zone". Gives the police no reason to enter and start bashing heads and means that you and your neighbors get to stay safe.
Try to keep in mind that we're all in this mess together. Violence isn't the option you really want. It may sound glorious and such, but getting beaten up sucks. Try to avoid it.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Quick Review of Paranorman
Haven't seen very many movies lately, but I do want to go see Expendables 2 at some point soon.
But what I have seen is Paranorman.
First warning, this is a kids movie, so if you go to see it in theaters, expect a shitload of children.
That being said, the movie had plenty of adult jokes hidden in it to make it enjoyable for those of us who can vote and buy cigarettes.
I couldn't help but laugh when the adult jokes came in and the laughter in the audience changed from high-pitched to lower.
The movie is basically about the kid from "The Sixth Sense" but a few years older and much more cynical. He can see and talk to ghosts, his family and everyone in town doesn't believe him.
Shit happens.
But then craziness goes down and the town is confronted with the reality that ghosts exist. Good times.
I'm actually rather pleased with the overall moral of the story "Don't judge people who are different than you."
It comes out quite obviously in the adventures of the title character, but it also features very heavily in his overweight best friend, and a gay character who I won't name to avoid spoilers.
The gay character really slams home the moral. Like smacking the audience in the face and saying "With all of this crazy shit going on how could you possibly think that I'M the worst thing out there?"
Cause, really, who cares if someone is gay. It shouldn't matter to anyone but them and their partner. And with all of the war and economic trouble in the world, gay people should really be the least of our worries.
I love that this children's movie decided to make a point about that. It made the already enjoyable movie that much more enjoyable, and it introduces children to the concept that gay people aren't as weird as some people make them out to be. Cause really, throughout the whole movie there is very few signs that the character is gay. They are just another person, who happens to be gay, and that's really how everyone should look at it.
Thumbs up all the way on this movie.
Political/ Economic theory post in the works, I'll get it up here eventually.
But what I have seen is Paranorman.
First warning, this is a kids movie, so if you go to see it in theaters, expect a shitload of children.
That being said, the movie had plenty of adult jokes hidden in it to make it enjoyable for those of us who can vote and buy cigarettes.
I couldn't help but laugh when the adult jokes came in and the laughter in the audience changed from high-pitched to lower.
The movie is basically about the kid from "The Sixth Sense" but a few years older and much more cynical. He can see and talk to ghosts, his family and everyone in town doesn't believe him.
Shit happens.
But then craziness goes down and the town is confronted with the reality that ghosts exist. Good times.
I'm actually rather pleased with the overall moral of the story "Don't judge people who are different than you."
It comes out quite obviously in the adventures of the title character, but it also features very heavily in his overweight best friend, and a gay character who I won't name to avoid spoilers.
The gay character really slams home the moral. Like smacking the audience in the face and saying "With all of this crazy shit going on how could you possibly think that I'M the worst thing out there?"
Cause, really, who cares if someone is gay. It shouldn't matter to anyone but them and their partner. And with all of the war and economic trouble in the world, gay people should really be the least of our worries.
I love that this children's movie decided to make a point about that. It made the already enjoyable movie that much more enjoyable, and it introduces children to the concept that gay people aren't as weird as some people make them out to be. Cause really, throughout the whole movie there is very few signs that the character is gay. They are just another person, who happens to be gay, and that's really how everyone should look at it.
Thumbs up all the way on this movie.
Political/ Economic theory post in the works, I'll get it up here eventually.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.
A Review.
-----MASSIVE GODDAMN SPOILER ALERT---
A Review.
-----MASSIVE GODDAMN SPOILER ALERT---
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Sunday, July 1, 2012
The politics of 2012
This article will cover a variety of topics and make a number of political predictions.
People have been building up alot of suspense for 2012, all of the various predictions and such in addition to all of the political maneuvering for the November election. But what people don't seem to realize is that November is a foregone conclusion.
Prediction #1 Obama will win the election.
A number of things make this a certainty. First, he is a MORMON Republican. The GOP has never elected a non-protestant president. The only non-protestant president was JFK, a Democrat. The entire GOP platform is based on the concept that people of other religions are wrong, so they will lose a significant number of voters simply because he is not of their religion.
Second major factor is that both candidates are already bought and paid for by the corporate Juggernauts of the world. There is no law preventing special interest groups from donating to multiple candidates, therefore they cover their bets by donating to both. Regardless of which candidate wins, he will be in the pocket of the corporations. Currently their is significant civil unrest in the country, and electing another Republican would cause that unrest to grow significantly. Which is bad for business, so it is in their best interest to make sure that Obama wins.
Thirdly Obama managed to pull off two major political victories. He killed off Osama Bin Laden. American public enemy #1, and he got his medical reforms past the House, Senate, and Supreme court (More on this topic later.). This shows him as a strong President who gets things done. Something that the previous administration lacked.
He is going to win the November election. I will be insanely surprised if he doesn't.
Now onto the "Obamacare" legislation.
The Republican party campaigned very heavily against this, but not for the reasons that they say they did.
To clarify, I'll break down what it does.
1- It forces every citizen to get medical insurance, or to join the federal medicare insurance.
This is both good and bad for big business. It forces everyone to spend money on Insurance and doesn't require the corporations to provide it.
However, it specifies that non-citizens (illegal aliens) become ineligible for Medicare and other such public medical coverage. This makes living here very, very dangerous for illegal aliens, and they are the primary physical labor workforce in this country.
The laws also have a clause that makes it so if medical insurance would cost more than 8% of your total family income, then you are exempt from the law and aren't required to pay the penalty tax.
#2- It increases the number of high-risk (i.e. pre-existing medical conditions) that are required to be accepted by medical insurance. And their premiums are to stay in the normal range rather than the astronomical range. This part is kindof a wash as it's good that these people get coverage, however it's bad that it'll likely lead to increased rates.
#3- Tanning beds are given a 10% sales tax. Making the company pay the government for giving you skin cancer that they are likely going to be treating later in your life. It makes sense. Fuck you tanning companies.
#4- Insurance companies are prohibited from creating a "lifetime dollar limit" for medical bills. This is a very good thing for average people and especially the retired. It means that as long as you keep paying your insurance, they aren't allowed to say that you "ran out of money" regardless of how expensive your bills become.
#5- Extending the family insurance age from 24 to 26. Since most people are graduating college and moving back in with their parents now, this makes sense. It allows their parents to continue covering their medical bills for two more years.
#6-Insurance is prohibited from doing any of the following:
- Withholding treatment for children under the age of 19 with pre-existing medical conditions.
- Dropping policy holders from coverage when they get sick.
- Hiding any hidden "Administrative fees" from the policy holder.
- withholding preventative procedures and exams. They are now required to supply breast exams, check-ups, etc. and they cannot charge you a deductible for these procedures.
-Discriminating or charging extra for patients with pre-existing conditions. If you have diabetes, they aren't allowed to charge you more than the person without diabetes.
- No annual spending caps (same deal as the lifetime spending caps. If you have a bunch of injuries or illness in one year, they can't make the "you are out of money" claim.
#7- Physicians pay will be based on quality of care rather than volume.
----------------
Basically the program makes it so that all citizens and legal residents get Private or public medical coverage (patient's choice) regardless of their income. If your family makes $30,000 a year then your insurance premiums will only be $992 a year (3% of their total income for full coverage of the entire family)
While families making $88,000 a year will be paying $8,379 a year (9.5% of their total income.)
--------
Note: Average yearly Insurance premiums are $4,968 a year currently. So the cost goes way down for the very poor, but doubles for the wealthy.
The example of $88,000 a year is for a family 400% above the poverty level (which is $22,000 a year)
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The entire concept of "Poverty level" doesn't really work on a national scale, considering how varied the cost of living is depending on where you live. $200 a month in rent is fair in some locations while others are charge $2,000 a month. That alone makes a big difference. For a family living in a $2,000/month area, $22,000 a year is severely below poverty as their rent alone would eat up 109% of their income.
-------
End notes: The Obamacare system or "Patient protection and affordable care act" is actually a good thing for the country as a whole. It makes sure that our lowest legal income individuals and families won't be sick and dying. However it does eject our illegal residents from the system.
The Republicans aren't worried that it's socialist, they are worried that it might get rid of the slave labor we have in this country. Illegal immigrants are a major factor in what causes the wealthy to keep their wealth. It's the cheapest and most effective way of cutting costs, and they do it all the time.
What this means for you?:
If you are wealthy, guess what? You are going to be paying more for medical insurance.
If you are poor, you are finally going to be getting the medical coverage you likely desperately need.
About damn time too.
People have been building up alot of suspense for 2012, all of the various predictions and such in addition to all of the political maneuvering for the November election. But what people don't seem to realize is that November is a foregone conclusion.
Prediction #1 Obama will win the election.
A number of things make this a certainty. First, he is a MORMON Republican. The GOP has never elected a non-protestant president. The only non-protestant president was JFK, a Democrat. The entire GOP platform is based on the concept that people of other religions are wrong, so they will lose a significant number of voters simply because he is not of their religion.
Second major factor is that both candidates are already bought and paid for by the corporate Juggernauts of the world. There is no law preventing special interest groups from donating to multiple candidates, therefore they cover their bets by donating to both. Regardless of which candidate wins, he will be in the pocket of the corporations. Currently their is significant civil unrest in the country, and electing another Republican would cause that unrest to grow significantly. Which is bad for business, so it is in their best interest to make sure that Obama wins.
Thirdly Obama managed to pull off two major political victories. He killed off Osama Bin Laden. American public enemy #1, and he got his medical reforms past the House, Senate, and Supreme court (More on this topic later.). This shows him as a strong President who gets things done. Something that the previous administration lacked.
He is going to win the November election. I will be insanely surprised if he doesn't.
Now onto the "Obamacare" legislation.
The Republican party campaigned very heavily against this, but not for the reasons that they say they did.
To clarify, I'll break down what it does.
1- It forces every citizen to get medical insurance, or to join the federal medicare insurance.
This is both good and bad for big business. It forces everyone to spend money on Insurance and doesn't require the corporations to provide it.
However, it specifies that non-citizens (illegal aliens) become ineligible for Medicare and other such public medical coverage. This makes living here very, very dangerous for illegal aliens, and they are the primary physical labor workforce in this country.
The laws also have a clause that makes it so if medical insurance would cost more than 8% of your total family income, then you are exempt from the law and aren't required to pay the penalty tax.
#2- It increases the number of high-risk (i.e. pre-existing medical conditions) that are required to be accepted by medical insurance. And their premiums are to stay in the normal range rather than the astronomical range. This part is kindof a wash as it's good that these people get coverage, however it's bad that it'll likely lead to increased rates.
#3- Tanning beds are given a 10% sales tax. Making the company pay the government for giving you skin cancer that they are likely going to be treating later in your life. It makes sense. Fuck you tanning companies.
#4- Insurance companies are prohibited from creating a "lifetime dollar limit" for medical bills. This is a very good thing for average people and especially the retired. It means that as long as you keep paying your insurance, they aren't allowed to say that you "ran out of money" regardless of how expensive your bills become.
#5- Extending the family insurance age from 24 to 26. Since most people are graduating college and moving back in with their parents now, this makes sense. It allows their parents to continue covering their medical bills for two more years.
#6-Insurance is prohibited from doing any of the following:
- Withholding treatment for children under the age of 19 with pre-existing medical conditions.
- Dropping policy holders from coverage when they get sick.
- Hiding any hidden "Administrative fees" from the policy holder.
- withholding preventative procedures and exams. They are now required to supply breast exams, check-ups, etc. and they cannot charge you a deductible for these procedures.
-Discriminating or charging extra for patients with pre-existing conditions. If you have diabetes, they aren't allowed to charge you more than the person without diabetes.
- No annual spending caps (same deal as the lifetime spending caps. If you have a bunch of injuries or illness in one year, they can't make the "you are out of money" claim.
#7- Physicians pay will be based on quality of care rather than volume.
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Basically the program makes it so that all citizens and legal residents get Private or public medical coverage (patient's choice) regardless of their income. If your family makes $30,000 a year then your insurance premiums will only be $992 a year (3% of their total income for full coverage of the entire family)
While families making $88,000 a year will be paying $8,379 a year (9.5% of their total income.)
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Note: Average yearly Insurance premiums are $4,968 a year currently. So the cost goes way down for the very poor, but doubles for the wealthy.
The example of $88,000 a year is for a family 400% above the poverty level (which is $22,000 a year)
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The entire concept of "Poverty level" doesn't really work on a national scale, considering how varied the cost of living is depending on where you live. $200 a month in rent is fair in some locations while others are charge $2,000 a month. That alone makes a big difference. For a family living in a $2,000/month area, $22,000 a year is severely below poverty as their rent alone would eat up 109% of their income.
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End notes: The Obamacare system or "Patient protection and affordable care act" is actually a good thing for the country as a whole. It makes sure that our lowest legal income individuals and families won't be sick and dying. However it does eject our illegal residents from the system.
The Republicans aren't worried that it's socialist, they are worried that it might get rid of the slave labor we have in this country. Illegal immigrants are a major factor in what causes the wealthy to keep their wealth. It's the cheapest and most effective way of cutting costs, and they do it all the time.
What this means for you?:
If you are wealthy, guess what? You are going to be paying more for medical insurance.
If you are poor, you are finally going to be getting the medical coverage you likely desperately need.
About damn time too.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Getting back into the groove.
Greetings readers, It is my pleasure to resume writing to you. A political post is in the works but for now some movie reviews:
Brave (Pixar):
I was rather pleasantly surprised by this movie. It's Pixar, so I expected high quality, but I was rather impressed by how memorable they managed to make each character.
When you look at most movies, the main characters tend to have a basic introduction of who they are, but most often that barely makes it past a job description.
Think about it, what do you know about McClane from Die Hard? He's a cop....and that's about it. How about Jake Sully from Avatar? Well, he had a twin brother who died, and he used to be a marine. No idea what his dating life was like back on earth, no specific details about how he lost the use of his legs, Hell we don't even know anything about his parents. Did he get along with them? Are they still alive? Totally unanswered. Because it's generally not important to the plot.
In Brave, the characters Are the plot. The movie is less about What happens, than Why it happens. The plot itself is simple standard fantasy. Things are kindof annoying, magic gets involved, things get terrible, heroes triumph, heroes realize "kindof annoying" is waaay better than "Horrifucking-awful".
The important part is the personal growth that happens to each and every character in the movie. I swear, every frigging character, even characters that aren't even named. There is a character that I can best describe as ridiculous bad-ass composed entirely of steroids. He's not a named character, he's mostly there for comparative humor. But even he gets to experience some personal growth and gets in touch with his softer side.
Aside from the interesting character growth, it's everything we've come to expect from a Pixar film. It's cute, funny, and memorable.
The Secret world of Arriety:
A Miyazaki film (Howl's moving castle, spirited away, etc) that branches out from it's own genre.
Most Miyazaki films focus heavily on Asian mythology, this one specifically focuses on western mythology. So that by itself was a startling change, but the movie was good so it's ok. Same as Brave it has all of the qualities you expect from a Miyazaki film. The only thing that concerns me about these two movies is perhaps they are staying too true to form. Miyazaki films always follow the same structure. Namely normal person interacting with the supernatural and exploring a different world.
Pixar for quite awhile was following a similar standardized formula (I.E. What if _____ was real and could talk?) In Cars it was that the cars replaced people, yet, were still cars. In Monster's INC it was "What if the monsters in your closet were real and had their own society?". Toy Story is almost the standard for their format "What if toys were alive and could talk?".
The one major shift from this format was Wall-E. In Wall-E everything did what they were already capable of doing. Robots did robot stuff, humans lounged around, and super-computers were evil. But the movie managed to tell an amazing story with very little dialogue, almost all of which had little to nothing to do with the plot. I hope that Pixar continues trying to break out of the mold that it's gotten itself into (UP was another good example of deviation.), and I really hope that Miyazaki gets himself out of his formula, because his movies are becoming very predictable.
John Carter (Disney):
This is a case of the Disney marketing dept dropping the ball off of a skyscraper.
John Carter is based off the book "Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (The creator of Tarzan). Princess of Mars is an incredibly important piece of science fiction because it sets the tone for science fiction for the next century. Asimov, Heinlein, Roddenberry, etc. All of the modern Sci-Fi writers based much of their work off of Princess of Mars.
So you'd think that re-introducing modern culture to this historic piece of work would be easy? Well, apparently Disney Marketing can't figure it out.
The movie itself is rather good, not exactly the same as the book, but adjusted slightly to make it more acceptable to modern viewers. At the time it was written, absolutely no-one knew anything about Mars. Now we've sent probes and such, we know about Mars. So the story needed to be adjusted to account for that. But as far as the plot itself is concerned, it remained very true to the original plot. With the only exception of combining multiple story arcs from the John Carter book series into the movie (Which most movies based on books do).
I am actually currently in the process of reading the books to compare everything, but because it was written back before we had CGI the book is heavy in descriptions. Which at the time it needed to be. Nobody had any concept of what an alien might look like. Now the genre is saturated with various aliens so our collective consciousness can fully form what an alien might look like.
Another important concept to consider is that some of the aliens in the book are non-humanoid. (I.E. would have to be a puppet or CGI if they appeared in modern TV/Film) and that was a major first in science fiction. Before then it was assumed that people from another planet would look very similar to people from this planet. Various creatures appeared in fantasy books before then, and that's where Burrough's drew inspiration from. What if life on another world was different than life here? A novel concept that launched the mass of Sci-fi works we have today.
Final comments on John Carter: It's a good movie, and an important piece of Nerd/Geek history. Unless you'd rather read an extremely detail-heavy series of books, I recommend the movie instead (which will likely make you want to read the rest of the books just so you can find out what happens next).
Brave (Pixar):
I was rather pleasantly surprised by this movie. It's Pixar, so I expected high quality, but I was rather impressed by how memorable they managed to make each character.
When you look at most movies, the main characters tend to have a basic introduction of who they are, but most often that barely makes it past a job description.
Think about it, what do you know about McClane from Die Hard? He's a cop....and that's about it. How about Jake Sully from Avatar? Well, he had a twin brother who died, and he used to be a marine. No idea what his dating life was like back on earth, no specific details about how he lost the use of his legs, Hell we don't even know anything about his parents. Did he get along with them? Are they still alive? Totally unanswered. Because it's generally not important to the plot.
In Brave, the characters Are the plot. The movie is less about What happens, than Why it happens. The plot itself is simple standard fantasy. Things are kindof annoying, magic gets involved, things get terrible, heroes triumph, heroes realize "kindof annoying" is waaay better than "Horrifucking-awful".
The important part is the personal growth that happens to each and every character in the movie. I swear, every frigging character, even characters that aren't even named. There is a character that I can best describe as ridiculous bad-ass composed entirely of steroids. He's not a named character, he's mostly there for comparative humor. But even he gets to experience some personal growth and gets in touch with his softer side.
Aside from the interesting character growth, it's everything we've come to expect from a Pixar film. It's cute, funny, and memorable.
The Secret world of Arriety:
A Miyazaki film (Howl's moving castle, spirited away, etc) that branches out from it's own genre.
Most Miyazaki films focus heavily on Asian mythology, this one specifically focuses on western mythology. So that by itself was a startling change, but the movie was good so it's ok. Same as Brave it has all of the qualities you expect from a Miyazaki film. The only thing that concerns me about these two movies is perhaps they are staying too true to form. Miyazaki films always follow the same structure. Namely normal person interacting with the supernatural and exploring a different world.
Pixar for quite awhile was following a similar standardized formula (I.E. What if _____ was real and could talk?) In Cars it was that the cars replaced people, yet, were still cars. In Monster's INC it was "What if the monsters in your closet were real and had their own society?". Toy Story is almost the standard for their format "What if toys were alive and could talk?".
The one major shift from this format was Wall-E. In Wall-E everything did what they were already capable of doing. Robots did robot stuff, humans lounged around, and super-computers were evil. But the movie managed to tell an amazing story with very little dialogue, almost all of which had little to nothing to do with the plot. I hope that Pixar continues trying to break out of the mold that it's gotten itself into (UP was another good example of deviation.), and I really hope that Miyazaki gets himself out of his formula, because his movies are becoming very predictable.
John Carter (Disney):
This is a case of the Disney marketing dept dropping the ball off of a skyscraper.
John Carter is based off the book "Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (The creator of Tarzan). Princess of Mars is an incredibly important piece of science fiction because it sets the tone for science fiction for the next century. Asimov, Heinlein, Roddenberry, etc. All of the modern Sci-Fi writers based much of their work off of Princess of Mars.
So you'd think that re-introducing modern culture to this historic piece of work would be easy? Well, apparently Disney Marketing can't figure it out.
The movie itself is rather good, not exactly the same as the book, but adjusted slightly to make it more acceptable to modern viewers. At the time it was written, absolutely no-one knew anything about Mars. Now we've sent probes and such, we know about Mars. So the story needed to be adjusted to account for that. But as far as the plot itself is concerned, it remained very true to the original plot. With the only exception of combining multiple story arcs from the John Carter book series into the movie (Which most movies based on books do).
I am actually currently in the process of reading the books to compare everything, but because it was written back before we had CGI the book is heavy in descriptions. Which at the time it needed to be. Nobody had any concept of what an alien might look like. Now the genre is saturated with various aliens so our collective consciousness can fully form what an alien might look like.
Another important concept to consider is that some of the aliens in the book are non-humanoid. (I.E. would have to be a puppet or CGI if they appeared in modern TV/Film) and that was a major first in science fiction. Before then it was assumed that people from another planet would look very similar to people from this planet. Various creatures appeared in fantasy books before then, and that's where Burrough's drew inspiration from. What if life on another world was different than life here? A novel concept that launched the mass of Sci-fi works we have today.
Final comments on John Carter: It's a good movie, and an important piece of Nerd/Geek history. Unless you'd rather read an extremely detail-heavy series of books, I recommend the movie instead (which will likely make you want to read the rest of the books just so you can find out what happens next).
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