Doomed Generation?

We are a unique generation. We are the first generation in the history of the world where we don't wake up with the knowledge that if we do something really wrong humanity might go extinct.
We wake up with the knowledge that if we don't do something really right, humanity will go extinct.

We are the generation that has inherited all of the mistakes of those that came before us. We don't get to just pass off our mistakes to our children and grandchildren. If we don't fix these mistakes we won't have any grandchildren.

Our massive technological and medical advances have allowed us to wallow in our pursuit of decadence. But we have reached the point where the status quo will no longer sustain us as it has for thousands of years. We need to restore our natural environment, consume significantly less resources, produce significantly less waste, and control our population growth.

All of these goals are attainable, it's not too late to save the human race. We just have to get off our asses and do it. We need to stop distracting ourselves with Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Porn, Television, etc. We need to return to a simpler way of life.

We aren't going to get rid of computers, they are still insanely useful, we just need to learn to rely on them less. Instead of hiding from social interaction behind our computers, we need to use them to engage in real-life. They need to be tools for education, science, medicine, and communication. Not for time wasting. Yes, video games are awesome, but do you want to look back at age 65 and realize that the greatest achievement in your life was getting a server-first boss kill on World of Warcraft?

I don't.

I want to write stories that my friends read when they get home from work.

I want to play music that get my friends dancing after a long week.

I want to see my friends and loved ones regularly because they are important to me, not just "Like" their statuses on Facebook.

They deserve more than that. I deserve more than that.

We all deserve more than that.

We deserve for our children to grow up to a brighter future than we had.

We deserve to grow old with our friends, not sit and regret their early death from war or drugs or car crashes.

We deserve to live in a world where you can walk to work, rather than spending 5% of your life sitting in rush hour traffic.

We deserve to be able to go to sleep every night and know where our next meal is coming from.

We deserve all of these things.

More importantly, our children, their children, and their children's children deserve all of these things.

We can do it, we just need to start making changes now.

Two Constitutional Laws that are currently being Violated.

Ok, this is something that everyone should know and should be excessively pissed off about.

#1 The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

The Law:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effect, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The Violator:
The Patriot Act.
Titles II & X
Sections:  204, 209, 210, 212, 213, 217, 219, 220, 225, 1003

202 adds electronic devices to the list of things that can be spied on.
209 adds electronic devices to subpoenas.
210 allows them to track your phone number, identity, location, and banking records for how you pay for your phone.
212 allows the various electronic companies to give the government all of your personal data, absolutely anything, if they think you might be dangerous.
213 allows them to invade your property and take your stuff without showing a warrant, and gives no specific timeline for when they are required to show a warrant.
217 specifies that entering into a protected computer without contractual permission gives them full right to enter your computer. Also this law does not apply to their investigations.
219 specifies any U.S. judge can name something or someone as a terrorist and can issue a warrant for any area regardless of jurisdiction. So a judge in Florida can issue a warrant against a suspect in Oregon.
220 allows them to use the laws of other cities and states (and territories) against someone in a terrorism investigation. So like when they use the laws of a U.S. territory that has no timeframe for when you need to be charged or released.
225 specifies that any electronic entity that provides them with information regarding any investigation shall not be charged with any crime relating to it.
1003 grants further rights to spy on "tresspassers".

These laws were further amended by closed military tribunal that made allowance for spy organizations to gather information on Everyone regardless of any warrant or suspicion or probable cause.

So basically this clusterfuck of a law declares that they can spy on everyone, without cause or warrant, without specifying what or where they are searching.

A clear violation of the fourth amendment.

#2 The Constitution of the United States of America. Article 1, Section 8.
The Law:
"Congress shall have the power to...(Abridged)...To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the standard of Weights and Measurements."

The Violator:
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913
Section 11, Pard (D) 

"To supervise and regulate through the Secretary of the Treasury the issue and retirement of Federal reserve notes, except for the cancellation and destruction, and accounting with respect to such cancellation and destruction, of notes unfit for circulation, and to prescribe rules and regulations under which such notes may be delivered by the Secretary of the Treasury to the Federal reserve agents applying therefor."

I'd like a moment of gratitude for actually finding that quote in the wall of text that is the Federal Reserve Act. 

Now let us take one important information into account. 

The Federal Reserve Bank, is NOT part of the U.S. government. They are a monopoly corporation that was given the right to print and regulate our money. Furthermore, when we need more money than we have in gold reserve, they print out more and issue it to us as a loan, with significant interest.

So the U.S government is paying interest for using it's own currency.

This is a major violation of the Constitution because this Act specifies that the Federal Reserve Bank with the advice of the Secretary of the Treasury  have the right to coin money and regulate it, rather than Congress as specified.

What makes this more ridiculous is that all other banks are required to subscribe to this scam. If they were to refuse they would no longer be allowed to be a bank (i.e. issue loans).

Realities of economics and minimum wage.

The minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 an hour. as of 2007 it was $5.15 an hour. In 1990 it was $3.35 an hour.

Visually it looks like our minimum wage has been growing drastically in the last quarter century, but this does not account for inflation.

The highest actual value for minimum wage we have ever had was in 1968 at $1.60 per hour ($10.64 in modern currency).

But look more into what is required of employees in the past as opposed to now. In the beginning of the minimum wage laws it was the wage for completely untrained labor. Trained laborers made more. But comparatively, Most if not ALL modern employees would be considered trained labor. A POS computer is a complicated program, far more complicated than a simple manual cash register. All employees are expected to be literate, have customer service skills, be computer savvy, able to do manual labor. A very long laundry list of different skills that are common now, but are far outside the scope of the initial minimum wage laws. So the employees have become more skilled and more productive, but their pay has not gone up to match. Instead all of that profit has gone to the owners of the companies and the CEO's.

So we now have a vast skilled labor force, many of whom have higher degrees, still stuck working at poverty level employment.

This is simply not a viable way for a society to exist. The complexity of modern life has grown vastly, and the average worker is expected to do more and make less for their efforts.

But there is a threshold, we can't simply pay all employees a maximum amount for their labors, otherwise there would be no incentive to work towards more difficult careers. Why be a doctor when you make the same amount of money as a retail clerk?

But the employees need to be paid what they are worth.

Now some economists claim that raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment, that's simply not the case anymore. Everyone remembers the excessive amounts of downsizing and merging that happened in the last few decades. Any two jobs that could be done by one person have already been merged.

Most jobs simply cannot be downsized any further and remain in business. If anything, some corporations might attempt to close multiple locations to drive all the business into fewer stores. This is kindof a wash because the compressed consumers will require more employees at the fewer locations, plus it increases the risk of brand disloyalty for the sake of convenience.


So that argument is rather moot. There will be minor downsizing as the corporations attempt to wring out every last bit from their worker pool, but there is only so much they can do.

But let's use an example of a drastic increase in the minimum wage, increasing from $7.25 an hour to $22 an hour.

A full-time employee at the current rate with no sick days or holidays makes $15,080 a year before taxes.
That means that they are taxed at a rate of 15% for $2,262 in income tax

If the wages are increased to $22 a year with no sick days or holidays full-time the same employee would make $45,760 a year. They would jump up a tax bracket to 25% and would pay $11,440 in taxes.

Take-home for the employee at current wages= $12,818
Take-home for the employee at increased wages= $34,320
(both excluding state, local, social security, etc)

So the employee, for the same amount of work is now taking home almost three times what they were before and the government is collecting five times as much in taxes. Furthermore, because of their increased pay, they no longer need additional government support, fewer people on food stamps and other social services while fully employed.

So the government is collecting more money in taxes, the employees are collecting more money in wages, the only people currently losing out are employers. But there is a solution there too. Increase government subsidies to all employers.

So after the subsidies, the government is taking in slightly more money, the employees are making significantly more money, and the employers are making slightly less money.

Hell, for further motivation, make the subsidies system based on the percentage of employees that are Americans. That would actually drastically help smaller businesses. They don't out-source overseas so they would be rewarded significantly.

Thus increasing the demand for American laborers for the bigger companies to increase their employment subsidy percentage.

This isn't hard, we just need to wrestle control of the government away from the big corporations so we can fix all of this.

Endless Beach

You wake up to find yourself standing on the edge of a beach. It's dark out, but the moon illuminates the water. You look around the beach and realize that there is no-one around for miles. No buildings, no people, no birds, no cats, no dogs, you can't even see any bugs in the area. The coast is lined with palm trees leading into a dense forest.

You look back out towards the water and it hits you. There is more definition and color in the water than there should be. There are no waves crashing against the beach, but the water ripples with the wind. The water seems to be glowing light green almost blue near the surface and seems to fade towards purple the deeper the water goes. Given how dark the sky is, you shouldn't be able to see the horizon, but you can anyways.
It splits your vision like a slashing wound. Below all the colors of the water, above just the darkness of the night, surrounding the brightly glowing moon.

Alone as you are on this beach, you start to think to yourself where it is you have found yourself.
Is this a dream?
Is this heaven?
Did I die?
Where are all the people?

Why am I the only one alive here?


That notion strikes deep into your core. You are absolutely alone on this beach.

You begin walking along the beach hopeful that you might find someone else, someone to tell you where you are, someone to prove that you aren't alone.

You search and search. You lose track of the time. Have you been searching for minutes? No, it must be more than minutes.
Hours? Possibly, but why don't you feel tired or hungry?

Come to think of it, you don't remember any of the usual feelings that you should have had by now. You don't have any spots that itch, or ache. You don't need to use the restroom. Your teeth don't seem to have any residue or film on them from previous usage. Like they have never been used.

This whole time, however long it has been, you don't remember saying anything. For that matter, you don't remember hearing anything. Subconsciously your brain has been adding in the sounds of crashing waves and palm fronds blowing in the breeze, but there is no sound. You just thought there was because you think that a spot like this is supposed to have sounds like that.

Other things begin to strike your notice.
You've been walking all this time, but there are no foot prints in the sand. You seem to remember wearing shoes, but you don't remember ever seeing them.

You begin to question your own existence. You think about putting your hands up to your face to prove that you have substance, but you are too afraid to be proven wrong. You want to cry out, but are fearful that no sound will escape your lips.

Terror wracks your body, your mind, your self. Whatever it is here that can be identified as you. You are alone on this beach, but the only one who knows that you exist is you, and that is merely assumption.

What if you were to look down and see no body beneath you? What if you were to attempt to scream your own name and hear no voice calling for you?

These thoughts feel like they are devouring you. You fall down to the sand as sorrow engulfs you.

Despondent, you look out over the water. This moment, your moment, is beautiful.

Maybe you only exist here, maybe you don't exist at all, but be that as it may, it is such a beautiful place.

This is a place for postcards you think to yourself.

You decide to sit on the beach and watch the rippling of the water to pass the time. Whether no time or much time passes is unclear to you, but you've accepted your place in this world.

Once you have this memory thoroughly engraved in your mind, you close your eyes, and let yourself drift off to sleep.

The American notion of debt (and theories on what it might mean)

Ok, so money doesn't really have a specific value, it's a promise of value based on the total value of the country. That being said, although most countries have significant value, through intellectual property and such, you can't exactly liquidate intellectual property, so the countries need actual money to spend. So they issue dated IOU's to anyone who will buy them. There is a theoretical limit to how much they can issue, but the US and Denmark are the only countries with official limits.

So every country's economy exists in a sense of the value of their current currency and the debt that the owe. In the US the debt is largely held by social security (because social security operates at a surplus) but other parts are held by corporations, private individuals, and even other countries.

Now here is where things get more complicated:
These debts are on a timer, so at regular intervals they come due and must be paid in full. And we usually don't have the money on hand to pay them, so we create new debts to pay for the debts we have now.

Does your head hurt yet?


Continuing on,
The Tea Party Republicans and specifically the Congressional majority leader and his people are currently pushing us towards debt default.
The major problem with this is it doesn't all come from the same source and there is no precedent or even rules for what happens when a country defaults on a debt. The only historical example I can think of is post WW1 German where they became over-run with debt and we know where that went.

Certain debt holders may be willing to simply erase the debt. Social Security will likely just swallow the debt as they currently still have the finances to do so. Countries whom we hold debts against might be willing to let our debts cancel eachother out.

The major concern is corporations and private investors. These are people who could theoretically hold significant leverage over our government and might try to use this moment of weakness to profit off of us.


And here is where the other shoe drops.

There is no way for these private investors and corporations to force us to pay back the money. Normally if someone defaults on a debt, the government forces them to pay it. They re-possess their belongings and sell them off to settle the debt. But there is no higher court to force our government to pay back the money. It was loaned in good faith, but with absolutely no leverage or ability to force a collection. It's not like they can re-possess Florida and sell it to Cuba to settle our debt.

So depending on how the creditors behave, this could become a very economically volatile situation. If America defaults on it's own debt and doesn't pay it back, it sets a precedent for other countries to do the same. Because it's not just us, most countries follow this same business model. Nobody has tried to force a default because no-one knows how it will change the world's economy.

But now we have some idiots in the Congress who are hell-bent on causing a default, they claim so that the US can get out from under it's $16 trillion debt. But we have no idea how it would play out. Currently all major investors are throwing their money off-shores to try to shield it from any sort of collapse.

But we don't know if that would be enough, with a big enough crash, the dollar could be de-valued so vastly that their off-shore fortunes could become pocket change.

Ideally, this won't happen. Cooler heads will prevail, and the country won't default, but if the default does happen, there is potential for massive upheaval.

Keep your fingers crossed, and as always, everyone try to stay safe out there.

Racist America

This post will be discussing my own personal experiences with racism in America, along with some general theory. Any names used will be changed.

Largely speaking I am a white American. I have some Native American and who knows what else from my Creole side, but if you were to look at me, you'd say I was a white guy. I also have red hair, which is celebrated in some cultured, and discriminated against in others.

To start off my story, let me begin with my childhood. I grew up going to very mixed ethnicity schools, but I was one of the very few ginger kids. So rather than picking on someone for being Black or Asian or Hispanic, they picked on me because I had red hair. It didn't help matters that I was already a very creative yet disconnected kid. I liked living in my dream worlds, because in there I had friends and adventures, rather than just getting beaten up a lot.

Then when I hit puberty I was introduced to my most hated anti-Ginger ethnic slur.
"Fire Crotch".

Firstly, very vulgar.
Secondly, when a kid is already experiencing the discomfort that is puberty, why go the extra mile to point out to them that their genital area is a different color than everyone else's?

It was more singling me out for something I had no control over. Numerous boys my age bullying me and trying to force me to pull down my pants to show off my different colored pubic hair.

Rather unpleasant.
I endured it for awhile, but then fortunately I hit my growth spurt early and people stopped trying to bully me.

But then comes my encounter with unintentionally being on the giving end of racism.
When I was in Junior High it was still during the days of hazing and casual violence, so a regular tradition amongst my male peers was "birthday punches". One solid, but not overly painful punch to the arm for every year in your new age. You'd walk around with a bruise on your arm for the rest of the day, but otherwise good-natured ribbing.

When it was my turn I ran for a bit, but eventually they caught me and I took my punches.
But important to the story is that most of my friends at this time were black. My friend Mark and I were both interested in rap culture and had just ended up associating with the Black clique in our school. So we were the two token white kids in a otherwise dark-skinned friend's circle. We didn't mind, they were our friends, we never considered it to be an issue.
They liked the same music as us and we all got along, race didn't make a difference.

Then came the day of Chris's birthday. He was one of our black friends and when it was his turn he also decided to run. Mark and I were the two fastest guys in the group so we gave chase, the rest of the group cheered us on.
Chris sprinted all the way across campus but Mark and I eventually caught him. We gave him his birthday punches and walked away, we considered the scene to be over and we went on with our morning.

What we didn't know was that apparently our school was also home to some white-supremacists.
They saw two white guys chase down and punch a black guy, and they took it as an excuse to get in on the action.
After Mark and I left they beat Chris brutally. I saw him later and his face was bruised and purple, his lip was cut open. It was horrible.

And I had the horrifying realization.
This was my fault.

My inattention to my surroundings led my friend to being savagely beaten by opportunist assholes. I didn't have the common sense to make sure I was seen as his friend and not as his attacker. He knew we didn't intend for this to happen, but that didn't change the fact that it happened. Chris was forced by campus authorities to point out who had been the people who chased him. Not who were the people who beat him, but who was it that incited the violence.

And that was me, and Mark.
Mark served a week of study hall during Christmas break, I had some family event I had to attend during that time so my punishment was delayed until after. When we came back campus authorities had forgotten about me and I never ended up serving my punishment.

But even without it, we already lost what was really important to us. We lost our friends.
Our circle of friends knew that we didn't intend to cause all of those problems, they had even cheered us on at the beginning, but now we were branded on campus as the racist guys who beat up that black kid.

It took the rest of the year of us telling the white supremacists to go fuck themselves and behaving as best as we could before people were able to look us in the eye again without flinching.

Our old friends couldn't remain connected to us, it made them a target.

We never did get back the closeness that we had with them, even after we salvaged our reputations.

More importantly, we unintentionally had led our friend Chris to be forced to have the memory of being beaten because of the color of his skin.

As a guy who was beaten because the color of his hair, I hate that I had anything to do with that.


As I got older things largely improved. My friends circle was made up of multiple ethnic groups, and none of us considered it to be an issue. Hell, we hardly even discussed it. Any discussion of it was usually just making fun of eachother's culture, not race, not skin tone, just culture. I'd be made fun of for Irish music and Shamrocks, and in return I'd poke fun of my hispanic friends for Mariachi music.

Half the time the jokes didn't even make sense. We used to refer to my friend Tony as the "Cuban Love Machine" even though I don't think he's even Cuban.

It was during this time that I realized; Racism is not inherent. It is a state of mind.
It can be taught to a child, or it can be decided upon during life, but a person without outside influence will not consider someone to be automatically superior or inferior to another based on their skin tone or hair color.

Because really, they are just minor adaptations for climate. Dark-skinned people are adjusted for warmer weather, light-skinned people are adjusted for colder weather. Red-haired people are adjusted for extremely cold weather and very little sunlight.

But these are all minor adaptations, they don't make us superior intellectually, spiritually, or emotionally.
Nor do they make anyone inferior.

I get sun burned during a full moon (Yes I'm that pale), how the hell is this supposed to imply that I am somehow superior to someone with dark skin who doesn't burn as easily?

It doesn't.

And violence towards someone because of something they have no control over is absolutely disgusting.

Attacking someone because they are black, female, gay, etc. These are all bullshit excuses for someone who really just wants to hurt people. They want a target that they can get away with bullying.

Well fuck that, I'd much rather kick a dude's ass for being a racist shithead than for what continent his ancestors came from.


Last anecdote:
Also during my Junior High years, for awhile I kept running afoul of a hispanic kid who was really intently of the belief that he was a gang member. Our city has had precisely zero gang activity in the past 30 years, so it was all for show. But he really wanted to make a name for himself, so he kept trying to pick a fight with me.

This was after my growth spurt so this guy would have had a very hard time beating me in a one-on-one fight, so he kept trying to convince his buddies to gang up on me.
I just told him that they were welcome to do that if they didn't think he had the balls to fight me on his own.
They never did try to fight me. The lead guy tried a couple times, but I was much bigger than him so I just deflected him away and moved on with my day.

One particular day he was ranting about how the white people had invaded California and taken it away from his ancestors and how awful we are for doing that. He stepped up to me and said something to the effect of "Why don't you just get off my land White-Boy?!"

To which I replied:
"How many generations has your family been in California?"

He smirked, kicked his head back and said "Three Motherfucker!" Clearly impressed with himself.

I just chuckled at him.
And said:
"Well, my family has been in California for five generations. Why don't You get off My land?"

He looked affronted, then stormed off. He never said anything like that to me again.

And it's actually true. I've had ancestors in California for five generations. My family first entered America in the 1500's, before this was even a country. Our most recent immigration, I.E. the most recent blood relatives to enter the country, was in 1890.

My family has been here for a long fucking time.

And that's not even counting my Native American ancestors.

So from my perspective, most Americans are "Immigrants". The vast majority of Americans have immigrated to this country more recently than my family did.

So none of you get to give immigrants shit before I do.

Furthermore, despite the fact that my family has been here for a long time, we did originally come from somewhere else. We're all immigrants from somewhere, no-one gets to claim moral authority because their ancestors came here slightly before someone else's ancestors.

From the perspective of the Native population (who also immigrated here, albeit a much longer time ago) all of us are foreigners who arrived about the same time.

It's a stupid bullshit argument, no-one has the moral right to anything on this planet, everyone was an immigrant from somewhere. I may have ancestors from Britain, but their Ancestors came from France and Norway and Germany. The British Isles changed hands dozens of times. The Celts, Romans, Saxons, Anglos, Vikings, etc. So claiming you're from "Pure English Stock" is basically saying that your ancestors got conquered and intermarried with their conquerors a lot.

Not exactly bragging rights.

Be proud of what you do, not where you came from. It's just a place to hang your hat. It's especially pointless if neither you nor anyone you know ever actually hung their hat there. I can't have any personal pride in something my ancestors did back in Ireland.
I wasn't there, nor were any of my surviving relatives. It's amusing to note where we came from, but it is of no importance.

What matters is what we do now, not the color of our skin or where our ancestors came from. We must define ourselves by what we do, and a good start would be for us to stop with all the bullshit about "Race".

Heads up everyone, here's some shocking news:

We're all the same race. Homo Sapien. We're not even different enough to denote a sub-species.

Get over it and stop being idiotic towards eachother.

Too Many Remakes. (Batman/Superman)

So it was just announced that Ben Affleck will be playing Batman in the new Batman/Superman movie set to come out in 2015. Regardless of whether or not this is a good casting call, it is extraordinarily early for a remake. The Dark Knight Rises finished the previous extremely successful Batman reboot in 2012. The previous Batman run ended  in 1997 with Batman & Robin. Eight full years before Batman Begins.

Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man are five years apart (2007 & 2012 respectively) and even that was said to be too soon of a reboot.

The audience needs to be given time to cleanse it's pallet of the previous version before a new version can be introduced. An allowance can be made for  when the new series is replacing a terrible series. No-one will argue the point that Batman Begins is worlds better than Batman & Robin, but given the improvement, they could have gone sooner than eight years. Probably closer to the Spider-Man five years. But Hollywood timing being what it is.

The problem is that the studio is trying to compete with Disney/Marvel's  Avengers 2 Also slated to come out the summer of 2015. Despite the fact that DC has a losing record for summer releases. Everyone saw the insane amount of money that The Avengers made and they want a piece of the ridiculous blockbuster action.

But this is a terrible time for studios to be investing in blockbusters. One failed blockbuster often means the difference between whether or not a studio is going to live or die. They will likely be spending somewhere in excess of $300 million on the Batman/Superman movie, and if it's not a resounding success then they will lose their shirts. The Avengers was a safe bet because it was made up of pieces of other successful movies. Namely Iron Man, Thor, Captain America & to a lesser extent The Incredible Hulk. I was entirely safe for them to wager all their money on that movie because it was made up of pieces that they knew worked.

The S/B movie is under the impression that they have the same safety. They have Man of Steel, which wasn't a smash hit, but made quite respectable profit. And they are assuming that they are hanging onto the coat-tails of the Christopher Nolan Batman franchise. Only Nolan isn't involved. Nor is Christian Bale. None of the cast from those movies have been tagged for this new film. So as far as the audience is concerned, it's an entirely new Batman. A Batman who doesn't have his own stand-alone movie.

They are wagering all of their money on a gamble where 50% of their primary variables are untested. Not just untested, but walking in with a bad reputation. Affleck has a good solid rep for writing, directing, and mainstream acting roles, but his only foray into super-hero films was a colossal failure. That is not a good thing to be hanging over someone's head as they walk into a film that could make or break the studio.

Honestly, if it were me, I'd keep my money the hell away from this project. Especially the same summer as Avengers 2. That's like trying to fight Mike Tyson in your first ever boxing match while you already have a broken arm.

The great and the terrible. (Movies)

Five movies to review today.
Pacific Rim
RIPD
Yakuza Weapon
Safety Not Assured
God Bless America

First up. Pacific Rim.
I love this movie. I went with a friend who had already seen the film and she was really enthusiastic about how good she thought it was. Within the first five minutes I was enthralled. I love that movie, I want to see it again, I want to own it as soon as it comes to Blue Ray. I will spoil nothing about it other than to state that I went in expecting it to be a special-effects movie with all flash and no substance and I was pleasantly surprised that there was substance to it.

RIPD
Skip this movie. It was a major let-down. It was Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges as sheriffs of the afterlife. Reynolds was disappointingly wooden throughout the movie. Bridges had some great lines and some funny moments, but really, the whole thing was rather stupid. Save your money. I'd watch it again on cable, but I'm not going to buy the DVD.

Yakuza Weapon
This movie was a case of "So bad it's good". This Japanese movie with English subtitles is about the son of a Yakuza mob boss seeking to avenge his father's death. That's the premise. But that is probably the least important part of this movie. It features action sequences that are completely over the top. I won't spoil them because they are just too good. Ridiculous action sequences where everyone ends up covered in blood, and then magically clean the next scene. People running out of ammo in one sequence, then having limitless ammo in the next sequence. Truly a glorious film for those of us who enjoy campy films. If you liked "Wild Zero" then you'll love this. It's available on Netlflix, I'm tempted to buy it so I can share it with others. The one thing I will give away to sample the absurdity of the film is there is a moment where the hero travels to another killing spree by being propelled by a large stack of dynamite and a landmine. He then claims that "It's all about willpower". His literal premise is that he is entirely too bad-ass to be damaged by something as trivial as a landmine and a shitload of explosives. That happens near the beginning of the film, and it just gets better.

Safety Not Assured
This movie was somewhat disappointing, but still heartwarming. It was described as a movie about time travel, but that doesn't happen until literally the very last second of the film. It's really a love story that takes place in the weeks leading up to the time travel. Between the would-be time travelers. So if I had not been expecting a movie about time travel, I would have been enjoying it much more. But with my expectations set for sci-fi and action, I was left impatiently waiting for when the time travel would occur.

God Bless America
This movie was surprisingly good. If you have seen "Leon: The Professional" and liked it, this should be right up your alley. Same general premise, older man and younger girl go on a killing spree, but unlike Leon, the girl does her share of killing aswell. What I really liked was the motivation. In the film, our two killers do their murdering because they are disgusted with American Sensationalist "Mean TV". They hate how America has turned into MTV shows about spoiled reality TV stars and American Idol being all about making fun of the shitty singers rather than just celebrating the good singers. Clearly they are mentally disturbed for thinking that a killing spree is the proper solution for this problem, but it was an interesting portrayal of this problem.

Three movie reviews!

So I now have all the movie channels on my cable, so you get to hear my reviews of newer movies. Two terrible movies, and one good movie.

The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.
Pretty bad. Constant bursting into song without the previous scenario of the chipmunks performing for an audience. It's like they have tourettes but their verbal tic is singing. The entire concept is retarded. The chipmunks get lifted away from a cruise ship on a kite, then Dave & Ian get lifted away on a hand-glider.
Then for some unexplained reason the cruise ship doesn't follow normal nautical procedure for a man overboard. They make it to an island, meet a crazy person, and sing some more. I actually enjoyed the first two chipmunk movies, this one was garbage.

Breaking Dawn Part 1
I have no idea why I watched this. I think I vaguely wanted to see Bella finally as a vampire. But apparently that's in part 2. Part one was just awful. The acting was terrible, the plot was pointless, and everything wrapped itself nicely in a bow for no apparent reason. I regret watching this movie.

Rock of Ages
I really enjoyed this movie. It's a rock & roll musical using all the classic rock anthems from the 80's. The two leads were excellent no-name actors. Great singers and great performances. The Big name stars (Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, etc) were all great. I actually watched this twice over two days, hell, I'll probably watch it again tomorrow. If you are a fan of musicals, I greatly recommend this one. Alot of movie musicals kinda fall on their face (Looking at you Les Miserable) but this one actually did well. And it's not just a re-hashed version of a broadway production like most of the other successful ones. In the last five years I can only name two movies that did well as original musicals. This movie and The Muppets. Ironically, both movies used the song "We built this city".
So yeah, if you love musicals, watch this movie. If you don't, you should probably skip it.

SPOILERS



Best moments:
-Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin having a love song together then making out.

-Tom Cruise's pet ape "Hey Man"

-Russell Brand pulling a Fonzie with a PAR can.

-"We built this city"/ "We're not gonna take it" Mashup.

The Hangover Part 3 is terrible

Ok, so I finally broke down and watched this movie.

I own the first two, I had hopes that the last movie of the trilogy would be a pleasant send-off to the franchise.

I was terribly wrong.

Firstly, it breaks the previously established formula, in a bad way. In the previous two movies all of the action took place the day after a blackout bender where the three members of the "Wolfpack" try to piece together what it was they did the previous night, while trying to find their lost fourth member.

In Part 3 there is no blackout hangover. Instead there is a ridiculous criminal conspiracy. For no logical reason. The wolfpack gets sucked into the conspiracy because apparently all mobsters are criminally inept.

So the plot has more in common with Ocean's 11 than it does The Hangover.

But the major problem with The Hangover 3 is that it wasn't at all fun.
The first two were hilarious because of the mystery and discovering at each new clue exactly how ridiculously drunk the boys were the previous night. The classic ending to the first two movies being a slideshow of recovered camera photos from the bender.

This third movie had no slideshow. Because there was no bender. There was no awesome experience that they wish they could remember. Just a bunch of awful interactions with criminals that they wish they could forget.

The filmmakers received alot of flak for making part 2 just a ramped up version of part 1. But after seeing three, they really should have stuck to the formula.


And as a bonus, I'm also reviewing Warm Bodies:

Ok, so this one I'm much more pleased with. It's not a great movie, but it's very cute. Somewhere, someone had the bright idea "Hey, why don't we combine Romeo & Juliet with Zombies?"

Honestly, I wouldn't have done it. There are other Shakespearean plays that much more easily lend themselves to a zombie apocalypse. But it had cute romance and vicious zombie horror.
Which is my one major complaint. It's like they tried to make the perfect "Date movie" that had romance for girls and action for guys. The problem is that they both detract from the other. The romance reduced the suspense of Zombie horror, and the Horror added anxiety to the romance.

So they tried to do two things at once, and ended up being ok at both. The Zombie Horror wasn't all that scary, and the Romance was a bit off-putting. But it worked out, kinda.

I'd watch it again, but not sure I'd recommend it to anyone.

Reviewing two terrible movies.

It's that time again. Your lovable Jester suffers through awful movies, and then makes fun of them.
On tonight's Menu:
Win a date with Tad Hamilton.
&
Catwoman.

Yeah, I really suffered for you all this week.

Ok, Wadwth. This is a pretty awful movie. It's the typical Cyrano-esque love triangle where two guys are into one girl, one guy is smart, the other is good looking.
But the "Smart" guy is Topher Grace.
I'm not sure who decided that Eric Foreman deserved a movie career, but he really needs to go back to TV.

For a brief moment I thought this movie might be going somewhere interesting. The "Wise Bartender" played by Kathyrn Hahn, is probably the character in the movie with the most depth. She's the real Cyrano in this story. She's in love with Topher Grace's character who is in love with yet another woman who is herself in love with a movie star.
Yeah, got that?
But here's the amazing part. The bartender advises the man she loves to go chase after the woman he loves, after confessing her love to him. She tells him that his happiness is more important to her than her getting her way.
That's amazingly self-sacrificing.
But of course he ditches the amazing bartender and gets the girl he wanted after she breaks up with the movie star.
The end of the movie is Topher Grace and the female lead dancing in the middle of a road after they finally decide to be together.

Totally boring ending, I'm actually kinda glad the bartender didn't get with him, he's a schmuck.

Then there was Catwoman. Or "Halle Berry attempting to turn her X-Men success into a solo action-star success."

This movie was dreadful.

The character of Catwoman is like a weird letter to Playboy. She's bizarrely hyper-sexual, and completely filled with cat-like behaviors. She purrs, hisses, claws people, licks people, and she's afraid of the rain.

So already really dumb.

Then apparently they couldn't figure a way to do any of the stunts that they wanted Catwoman to do, so they just did her as CGI for half the movie. Every action scene only included Halle Berry on close-up shots or when she was posing between ninja backflips.

So this movie is ridiculous, but it's also terrible. The hero is completely unsympathetic, the "Final villain" is the abused wife of the initial villain. So her change from abused wife to psychopath appears totally random. She's a helpful victim for the first 3/4 of the movie then for the last 1/4 she turns psycho super-villain. Makes no sense, and completely idiotic.
Highlight: Alex Borstein as the ditzy best friend. She was probably the only enjoyable part of the movie.

Final thoughts:
Avoid both of these movies. They were mistakes that they were even made.
Wadwth had a production cost of $22 Million (Probably around $44 million if you include marketing) and it's only made $21 million world-wide to-date.
Catwoman had a production budget of $100 million ($200 mil after marketing) and it only made $82 million world-wide.
So both movies lost money, Catwoman lost alot of money.

Compared to "John Carter" Disney's biggest marketing (or lack thereof) failure. It cost $250 million to make (with minimal marketing added on) and it made $282 million world wide. That movie killed Taylor Kitsch's career, but compared to Catwoman, he actually did pretty well.
I'm amazed that Halle Berry can still find work at all these days after a blunder that big. It's well-established that she's "Hollywood poison" with a Q-rating of "Zero" (even with her Oscar). But dear god, she should have a negative score after Catwoman.

The truth of the internet

So recently I discovered that my blog post from back in 2012 making fun of Doctor Who has been picking up steam in the Whovian crowd.
Amusingly I wrote an earlier post making fun of Harry Potter and nobody seemed to notice.

But one blogger in particular felt the need to yell at me and condemn me for not citing sources or having evidence to back up my claims.

I have a simple response to that:
This is the internet, I don't have to.

More specifically, this is a opinion blog. I'm writing for free, whenever I feel like it. I have no editors to respond to, no deadlines, and no need to cite sources.
The only source I have most of the time is my own opinion.
The reader can choose to believe me, or they can believe that I'm completely full of shit. Both are entirely possible. Hell, I will freely admit that sometimes the things I post are complete bullshit.
In the earlier version of this blog, back when it was just a spare Livejournal account, I posted a bunch of guides to dating back before I had any real experience in the dating world. Well, I had some, but not enough to stand as any sort of authority on the subject. I later revisted one of those posts and took apart my own writing to see what had changed in my perspective.

But here is the real point:
Things you read on the internet are not facts. They are opinions.
It's all a matter of whose opinions you trust.
People often cite wikipedia as the infallible source of all knowledge. And in truth, it is largely accurate. But not 100% of the time.
As a birthday gift one of my former roommates edited wikipedia so that my other roommate's boyfriend was listed as the lead singer of the band White Lion.
We all had a good laugh, but the page stayed that way for over a month before somebody fixed it.

So, not always accurate.

Furthermore, you need to always question when someone lists something as "Fact". That's one major difference between the older generations and the younger ones. The older generations are convinced that they truly know many details about the world. Hell, if you asked them how many planets there are in the solar system they would automatically respond with "Nine".
Depending on how much they keep up with the world around them they might remember and change their answer, but they were trained from birth to believe that there are exactly nine planets in the solar system. This is a fact.

The younger generations are more cautious when using the word "fact". We know that facts aren't always facts. They are beliefs, theories, assumptions, but unless you have personally witnessed it yourself, it is not a fact.
I know that I am wearing black shoes today. That is a fact for me. But for you, it is an assumption. You are assuming that I am telling the truth. I could be lying, my shoes could be brown, I might have decided to go barefoot all day. You don't know because you didn't witness it yourself.

So don't use the word fact unless you witnessed something for yourself. Everything else is just your belief that the source that is providing the information to you is doing so correctly.

History is a great example of this. If you look at the history of many major events, the story is very different depending on which side you are on. The American Civil war is a great example of this. In K-12 school they tell you that it was a war over slavery. In college they explain that it was a war over economics (like most wars.). But if you look at the documentation at the time they were painting two more different pictures. The south claimed to be fighting for the sovereign rights of the individual states, while the north claimed to be fighting to protect the country as a whole. Four different versions of the same event.
Which one was right?
Who knows? We weren't there. All we have are assumptions based on what documentation we can find from the period.

Big lesson:
Don't get butt-hurt over someone's opinion on the internet. It's an opinion, not a fact. Facts directly affect you, opinions directly affect them.

I could say that it's my opinion that the sky is actually purple. That wouldn't change the fact that it looks blue to you.

The future of Dungeons & Dragons

Ok, this is going to be a nerdy/technical column. So if you aren't a gamer, you may want to skip this one.

Ok, so currently Wizards of the Coast are Playtesting their new system "D&D Next". It's usual NDA stuff, so I can't discuss specifics, but what I can do is talk about what went wrong with D&D 4.0 and what should have been done to fix it.

Ok, firstly, let me state that D&D 4.0 was a combination of the last version of 3.5 (commonly referred to as 3.75) and World of Warcraft. Some things were great changes, others were terrible.

1. Stop with the power creep in every additional book they release. Happened in 3.5 and 4rth. If you didn't own all of the latest books there was absolutely no way to compete with those who did. The Core books should be all you need to play, the splat books should be for additional flavor, NOT increased power.

2. @will and Encounter abilities were a good idea. Run with those. Daily abilities of any kind are a terrible idea. We hated them in 3.5, we hated them in 4rth. Just stop it already. We want our characters to go to sleep when we start getting to exhaustion penalties, Not when we run out of Daily spells or heals. Healing surges were a great idea, but just give a per-encounter limit, not a per-day limit. Daily limits break the logical flow of the experience are insanely frustrating. Most parties just pump out their daily abilities as quick as possible, then go to sleep to recharge them. It's stupid.

3. Make utility powers @will rather than encounter or daily. It makes zero sense for a party to go searching for random squirrels to kill so they can get more uses of their encounter powers.

4. Make the Paragon & Epic paths more significant. They were useful, but there should be a significant power jump when a character reaches level 10 and 20. Those are significant numbers, make the upgrades significant.

5. Make fewer magic items, make them scale automatically, and make them more generalized. The Adventurer's vaults contained entire books filled with multiple versions of the exact same item but scaled for different levels and worded differently for each class. That's stupid, just make them generalized and make them scale.

6. Make @will attacks scale faster. There is a large number of levels in 4rth where you absolutely only use your @will powers when you are completely out of encounter or daily spells. Make them a more viable option.

7. Give more and more interesting utility powers. 3.5 got this right. There were a million utility powers and most of them were awesome. They made you feel much more super-hero-like when you used them. In 4rth damn near every power was combat-only, which meant that when you were outside of combat your character was basically a normal guy. Which is not the image you want for high-fantasy roleplaying.

8. Get rid of racial bonus stats. In 3.5 & 4rth the large majority of players picked the race that gave them the statistical advantage. That's not how you should be encouraging your players to play. Their race should be for RP reasons, not stats.

9. Shift the combat focus away from encounter/daily abilities and more towards @will abilities. 3.5 made the great decision of allowing characters like Warblades and Warlocks access to their primary attacks for the majority of the combat. 4rth made the @will abilities mostly worthless and focused on abilities with long cooldowns. This is a bad game design. Players want to always be able to do their primary attacks, they don't want to have to wait to be effective.

10. Ongoing condition saves. This is a stupid system, it added a weird random factor to every battle. Just give the conditions a set duration, not "lasts until a successful check". It drags out combat entirely too long.

11. Loosen the range and movement restrictions. 3.5 could be played entirely without a battle map. 4rth required a battle map for all combats. Find a happy middle ground. You shouldn't need a battle map to fight one opponent. You just need to remember how far away from them everyone is.

12. Fix the invisibility rules. Any opponent that could become invisible became a huge pain in the ass.

13. Reduce the number and complexity of all abilities that players have. Part of why combat took so long was because it took forever to pick the right ability, set up the placement, and then roll out all of the attacks and effects. Make it more streamlined so that combat doesn't last for three hours.

Things that worked in 4rth that the should keep or alter slightly.

1. Half level skill progressions. This gave everyone atleast some ability in every skill. But get rid of the trained only skills. It makes perfect sense for an adventurer to pick up minor ability in things they deal with every day. For a fighter to be unable to identify that zombie despite having killed hundreds of them before because they aren't trained in Knowledge Religion is just stupid.

2. 1 hit point minions. Low hit point minions make combat more interesting. But get rid of the rule where they are immune to AOE. AOE was designed for taking out low level mooks. Let them do their job.

3. Rituals. These were a great idea. It helps to add distance to the game for the party to require ten minutes to set up the teleport spell before teleporting. Plus it makes teleporting away from combat impossible.

11 O'Clock News

My girlfriend and I watched the 11pm news tonight, for the first time in many years. I must say, it's actually rather distressing when you look at it objectively.

When I was a child, the news had a fairly even balance. Bad news versus good news. Then I remember when The media started trying to be sensationalist about nonsense. "Killer Bees" became the buzzword. They started telling us how dangerous these Bees were going to be, how they were making their way towards our community and everyone was going to die.... From Bees.
Clearly they're full of shit, cause it's twenty years later and we're all still here.

Then 9/11 happened. And something change. We got so flooded with horrifying images that the whole country got desensitized to violence. It was horrible, but everyone was riveted to their TV's. And the media took notice. They realized that tragedy would bring in a larger audience than simply reporting the news. So instead of trying to improve everyone's moral they tried to hit us with even more tragedy.

Today when we turned on the news, every single story was a tragedy.

It's not the news anymore, it's a clip show celebrating all the worst things that happened recently. And they don't just report a tragedy once, they report it hundreds of times. They go behind the scenes and they interview the murderer's gardener and his pediatrician and damn near anyone they can find who ever met them.

Here's the truth:
We really don't want to get to know these murderers or terrorists. We want them stopped and we want their victims helped, rescued, or avenged.

But the media's fear-mongering has done more to help terrorists than any suicide bomber ever could.
They've spend years now campaigning for fear.

You want to really give a "Fuck you!" to terrorism?
Ignore them. They do what they do because:
A. We're doing something they don't like
B. We have something they want.
C. They want attention for their cause.
D. And they are batshit crazy.

Don't celebrate them.
Don't play their clips on the news.
Don't show their face.
Don't try to get their life's story.

Just stop them from doing it again, and move the fuck on.

It really irritates me that the NYC government dropped the ball at rebuilding the World Trade Center.
The best thing they could have done would have been to construct the buildings exactly as they were.
With a big-ass American flag in the courtyard.

Like saying to the world "Anything you destroy, we can rebuild. You're not stopping us. All you've done is piss us off."

Instead, with all the fear we get fed every day, the terrorists have won. We're scared. And the terrorists aren't even the cause. It's our own idiot media that's to blame.

The Fourth Estate has failed in it's duties.
It's not keeping the government honest, it's not even keeping itself honest. It's just one massive clusterfuck of skewed statistics and bullshit stories.

If you really want to hear the news, just watch the monologues of the latenight talk shows. They give you a concise digest of what's going on, but they keep it light hearted and brave. The Ruler of North Korea threatened to bomb us.
The media spread the story like wildfire and encouraged us to be afraid of this little man, with little bombs, in his little country.
The Late-night talk shows responded the proper way. They made fun of him. They pointed out how ridiculous the whole thing is.

We could turn that man's country into glass if he actually attacked us. But it's highly unlikely that he will, because he's on the opposite side of the world. He has much more danger from his neighbors to worry about. Attacking us would just be inviting his own destruction. But to remain safe from his neighbors he needs to look powerful. Which he apparently decided to do by trying to look intimidating to us.

And we let him. Our own stupid media backed the story and retold it constantly for weeks.

That's not news. There is always going to be some jackass saber rattling. If it's a real threat, tell us, but even then, it doesn't rate weeks of constant coverage. Cover the story then move onto the next story.

And while you're at it, how about doing some real reporting? Currently all of the TV stations run the exact same national stories. Does nobody pay journalists anymore?
I understand we're in the digital age, but that doesn't mean that everyone should stop doing their own research.

Get the facts straight, and stop trying to scare us.

Review of Sci-Fi's Defiance.

I'll preface this post with this statement:
HUGE GODDAMN SPOILERS.

If you don't want the series premier spoiled, stop reading now, watch the show, then come back and keep reading. Go ahead, I'll wait right here.


Back now? Good.

Ok, first off, despite the negatives I'll be discussing about this show, I'm still interested to see what they will do with it. It has an insane amount of potential, I'm just worried that they won't do anything good with it. The series has a vastly interesting world, much like the Harry Potter series, and like HP the writer seems intently focused on the least interesting parts of the story.

Problem #1 with Defiance.
Dear god, soo many Tropes and Cliche's. It's like the writers went to TVtropes and hit random a bunch of times to decide on the themes of their show.
Listing off the tropes in no particular order, the wrong names, and with whatever evidence I feel like adding:

Gun-for-hire: The main character like Han Solo, Malcolm Reynolds, the crew of Cowboy Bebop, etc, is a wandering hired gun. This is a ridiculously common cliche.

Significant military marking: The main character has a tattoo that shows what famous military unit he was in. Just like Mal Reynolds, Han Solo, etc.

Let's visit the crappy town where I'm Famous: The main character randomly stumbles into town, not recognizing it. But apparently 15 years ago he fought a famous battle in this town and he is instantly popular because of it. Yet none of the residents recognize him, even though he's clearly important to them. This trope of course is famous in Harry Potter and Firefly.

Retired soldier: The main character is an ex-marine/military guy. Like Jake Sully in Avatar, Mal Reynolds, Han Solo, etc. Noticing a trend here?

Alien Side-kick:  Main character has an adopted alien daughter who is his accomplice in everything. Just like Chewbacca, Ney'tri, Ford Prefect, etc.

Side-kick is a kid: Just like in the first Indiana Jones movie, and Ed from Cowboy Bebop. I could list more but I'd have to look them up.

Romeo & Juliet: 30 minutes into the pilot episode it's revealed that there are two rival families and their children are of course in love.

You killed Tybalt!: The Romeo-esque character is accused of killing the Juliet-esque character's older brother. Who was an aggressive douchebag.

The Grand Vizer is always evil: An hour into the pilot it's revealed that the Mayor's aide/adviser is secretly evil and plotting her destruction.

Stop making me feel old: 1/2 hour into the pilot the ex-mayor makes a joke calling the new mayor "grasshopper". Which she doesn't understand (I guess grasshoppers went extinct?).

I was one week from retirement: The city sheriff gets killed and he's clearly really old.

Hooker with a heart of gold: The owner of the town brothel is the mayor's sister and one of the most blatantly obvious good-guys in the show.

The MacGuffin: Not only do they have the vaguely explained doomsday weapon that everybody wants, but's it's actually an Orb. How much more obvious can they get?

Reluctant lawman: After the sheriff is killed the main character reluctantly accepts the job. Just like Wyatt Earp.

I'm leaving you to die, just kidding: This happens twice. First the main character & sidekick leaves the town to be destroyed, then he has an attack of morals and returns with the MacGuffin but the sidekick leaves him to die. Then She has a whooping case of morality and she comes back at the last second with reinforcements who save the day and give the heroes enough time to activate the MacGuffin. This is most famously used in Star Wars a New Hope. Han Solo leaves the rebellion to die, then comes back at the last second, rescues Luke, who then blows up the Death Star.

I'm in it for the reward: Mal Reynolds and Han Solo own this trope. The main character promises to track down a murderer, as long as they pay him for it.

Jinkies!, It was that sneaky former ______ all along.: The villain who arranged most of the problems in the episode was the ex-mayor and mentor to the current mayor who is secretly a psychotic "evil plan for the benefit of all mankind" mastermind. The character was unmasked to the audience, but the protagonists remain clueless.

Problem #2
Please pick one plot and run with it.
The pilot episode had one A plot, which was a murder mystery that never gets solved but ends with a climactic battle. But it also had a dozen B plots, none of which went anywhere. I think they were trying to set up all of the A plots for all future episodes at once. Rather than doing the more standard formula of inserting the A plot for next week as the B or C plot for this week.

All of that being said, I'm still going to watch next week's episode. The writing is terrible, but the setting is amazing. I hope they some how figure out something good to do with it, but I kindof doubt it.

All video game characters are on PCP.

This has been bugging me for awhile and I finally decided to write about it.

Have you ever played a videogame where you are a melee character of some kind and an enemy starts shooting you with a gun or a crossbow or whatever? You know how it's a huge pain in the ass to running over to them so you can hit them while they slowly eat away at your hit points?

Well, this is only possible because your character is on PCP.

There are only a few instances in the real world where someone is shot and then proceeds to run up and murder the shit out of the person who shot them. Generally it's because the shooter only grazed them, or they are some combination of wall-humpingly insane or doped up to their eyebrows.

In real life if you get shot, you don't charge the guy shooting you. If you are still able to move, you charge away from the guy shooting you.
Yes, if you get up close to him you could stab him or beat him with a shoe, but in the time it takes you to get over to him, you are becoming a much easier target to hit.
And with every shot you take, your ability and chances of reaching the shooter go down.

So why the weird logic in videogames?

Well, cause otherwise if you got hit once by anything, you'd be dead.
In videogames your health is graded by a health pool or hit points or whatever. In real life you have one hit point. In videogames you can have millions of hit points.

Ever see a level 1 character try to hit a lvl 90 character in World of Warcraft?
Short version, the lvl 1 character cannot possibly kill the lvl 90. Too many hit points and their passive health regen is higher than the lvl 1 can ever overcome, also the lvl 1 is missing almost all the time. And then the armor of the lvl 90 reduces all damage to 1hp.

So with no health regen and unlimited time (and replacement weapons, cause you'll break your weapons before you ever kill that 90) the lvl 1 could possibly kill the lvl 90. It would just take weeks.

Hit points make combat more complicated than "Who attacks first?".

When you have hit points using a sword to attack a guy with a bazooka makes perfect sense.

But let's look at this from the character's perspective.

Either all weapons are extremely shitty and take forever to even break skin, or everyone is hopped up on PCP so they can keep fighting even though they are rapidly bleeding to death.

That's another thing. "Bleed effects".
Unless someone is hitting you with elemental magic that doesn't create a wound, all attacks should cause you to bleed. Yet for some reason in WoW when I shoot a dude with my poison coated arrow they get the poison but don't bleed from the arrow wound.

Videogame combat mechanics cause the players to behave in a way that is completely opposite from the real world. You don't charge the guy with the bazooka, you run the fuck away and pray that he didn't see you. Cause holy shit bazookas can kill the fuck out of you.

Sexual Identity

Been watching alot of Youtube videos lately, and I came across a major revelation.

Americans tend to have no clue as to their sexual identity.

This is most obvious in how we treat those who are on the far edges of what we would consider "normal" sexuality.

First Example:
Transgendered people.
Americans seem really at a loss for how to react to these people. Much in the same way that we don't know how to react to transvestites. When you take away all of the paranoia and vague religious subtext, you simply have a person who is uncomfortable in their native gender and would prefer to be another gender. For transvestites it's usually less severe, they simply don't feel comfortable in the garb of their native gender and would much prefer to wear the garb of the opposite gender.

Realistically, this shouldn't matter to us as a country. If a little girl feels uncomfortable being a girl and would much prefer to be a boy, then why would we want to stop her?
If a man feels miserable wearing a suit and tie and would much rather wear a slinky dress, why stop them?

No-one is telling the general population that they are required to do this, they just need to tolerate other people doing it.

And this brings us to our first major point, Humans, especially in America, have a major gap between who they are and who they want to be.
Some of the problems are environmental and cannot be changed.

Second Example:
A woman might grow up poor but with the feeling that she would have been much better suited to being royalty or nobility or some such. That's a matter of who your parents are. You have no control over it and it cannot be changed. Just like how there are all of the people who become obsessed with another culture and wish that they were born into that culture. (Weebos obsessed with Japanese culture for example). If you were born a white man from Idaho, we can't exactly change you into a Japanese man from Tokyo. You can try to be as similar to that culture as possible, but you'll never be a native.

Other problems can be changed. If you were born poor and want to be rich you can work your ass off and possibly make it to wealthy before you die.

But the major issue is that America seems to fully endorse and encourage one shift and discourage and often outlaw others.

We endorse the concept that you should be Heterosexual, should seek wealth, should be religious, and should get married and have children.

But the supposed "American Dream" lifestyle is both unrealistic and doesn't account for all of the people who don't want it. Furthermore we have an entire culture of shame for people who reject the American dream.

What's especially sad is that the people who reject all or parts of it don't generally choose to, they were just born with brain chemistry that leads them to behave differently.

Atleast we live in slightly more enlightened times, in the old days people like this would have no option. They would be forced into their native country's lifestyle regardless of how they felt about it.

The problem is that America is still clinging to this flawed idea of "Normal" far after it stopped being relevant. Christianity is no longer the one religion of the "civilized" world. It never really was in the first place. People have a wide array of religious faiths or even complete lack there of.
So trying to force the morality of one religion on the rest of the country is insane, because the majority of the country does not practice that religion.

This takes a step further into insanity when we examine sexuality and gender roles. The gender roles are supposedly equal now, but when you look at the statistics they really aren't. Women still make less money than men, they still have a harder time reaching positions of power and they are still treated like property culturally.
If a man were to cheat on his wife then society would roll their eyes and look the other way. If a wife cheats on her husband it turns into world war 3. The country is still trying to treat everything like an old boys club, they cling onto the idea that men are somehow superior to women, and they continue to encourage that behavior in each following generation.

Part of the reason there is so much opposition to homosexuality, transvestites, & transgenderism is that they blur the lines of gender roles. If a relationship consists of two men then they don't know who is supposed to be the dominant one. If a man marries a woman, but he prefers to dress as a woman, does that make him less dominant as a man? If a man transforms into a woman, is he giving up his dominant male power? and furthermore does a woman turning into a man gain his gender's power?

It doesn't matter.
Gender roles are archaic and stupid.
The fact that America still clings to this idea proves that we are too stuck on the past.

Furthermore, strict gender roles lead to unhappiness. Even in stereotypical American Dream families the gender roles are sometimes reversed. We've all seen families of subservient husbands and domineering wives. This isn't new, but for some reason we accept that even though it is just as opposed to the supposed gender roles as homosexuality or cross-dressing.

I often want to argue with especially obstinate religious folks that if a wife ever disagrees with her husband, then by their own religious laws she is being just as sinful as a homosexual and is supposed to be stoned to death.

This is clearly a insane and outdated idea (not that it ever made sense in the first place). You can't pick and choose which rules to follow. The bible says don't eat lobster and men shouldn't have sex with men? Ok, so are you planning to stop eating lobster any time soon? Also, your wife is supposed to be your slave, and if she comes anywhere near a male person while menstruating she is supposed to be executed.

They often reply that Jesus got rid of those old crazy laws.
To which I reply "So when exactly did he tell you that he hates homosexuals?"

Those that are up on their religious history point out that one of the apostles wrote about the subject.
To which I respond that he wrote that while in a Roman prison. Prisoners tend to have a very harsh opinion of anal rapists.

The argument ends and they don't have an answer for me. They are living a lie. They follow one part of the rules because it lines up with the stuff they were planning on doing anyways, they ignore the parts that condemn the stuff that they want to do, and latch onto the parts that condemn other people, who aren't even a part of their faith.

It would make more sense if the people they were attacking were a part of the same religion, but they aren't.

And here is the part where we feel bad for these people. Because of the faith that they have chosen, they don't get to live the life that would make them happier.
Sexual orientation has been widely examined and the major conclusion is that most people are not totally straight or totally gay. Like most things it's shades of gray.
Most Heterosexuals actually contain some homosexual impulses. A man may not want to have sex with another man, but he does want to kiss another man, or to embrace another man lovingly.

In older cultures this was normal. We didn't look down on men who were more open with their affections, it was part of being a man.
But we have developed such a taboo about homosexuality that even minor innocent acts such as these are scorned because they resemble homosexuality too much.

Thus America has become a country of people with pent-up sexuality or people scorned for their sexuality.

It really needs to stop. It doesn't mean anything. Even in the Bible Jesus kisses another man. How is it ok for god yet not ok for his subjects? "What Would Jesus Do?" if he met a male friend who he cared greatly for? He would hug and kiss that dude.

It's not gay, it's not awkward, it's simple affection, and we need to stop making such a big deal about it.

Furthermore, we need to stop freaking out about what other people do in the bedroom, or how they dress, or what gender role they live in.

It doesn't matter. All that matters is what works for our own lives.

I personally prefer to be an equal partner with my significant other. I don't really want either of us to be dominant of submissive. I don't especially want to dress in women's clothes, but I would like the freedom to use their accents (of style, not voice) without someone assuming that I must be a transvestite or a homosexual.

And even if I was, it's none of their business.

Move on, grow up, and stop worrying about what other people do.

Stick to worrying about what you do.

The un-examined life

As you read this, you probably consider yourself to be a good person.

But here is a fact. You are probably a bigger douchebag than you'd like to admit.

Think about your life, think of the good things that you've done.

Now take money out of the equation. Don't count the times you gave to charity, don't count the time that you paid for your friend's dinner. Don't count the time you gave your friend a ride somewhere.

Those are things you did with money. Money is a relative qualifier, a millionaire has plenty of money to be generous with, a beggar has very little to be generous with. The only way we could equally value good deeds that involve money is it we consider it as a percentage of your total income, minus the amount of money you need to survive.

If we do that, suddenly the millionaire donating $10,000 to charity doesn't seem like much when it's like 1% of his total income.

Money makes charity and kindness hard to judge, so we're discounting it from this test. We're judging you, not your money.

Now, without money, what good things have you done for people?

Not as much now I'd wager.
Now you need to look for moments of selflessness. Introducing your friend to his future wife, despite you being single yourself? That is a charitable act.

Spending all night helping a friend or relative deal with an emotional problem despite have much "better" things to do? Damn right that counts.

Ok, we're all probably feeling a bit better about ourselves now. We can all name a few instances where we were really shining examples of humanity.

But now come the bad part, now we weigh our sins.

Count all of the times you were a bastard to someone. Every time you fucked someone over for your own gain or just for the lulz.

Now add in the minor fuckery. The times that you got two slices of pizza when everyone else only got one. The times when you cut off that other driver because you didn't feel like letting them pass you.

So you now have a small pile of selfless acts, and a shit-ton of selfish acts.


Now, what does this mean?

It means you're human. Selfish acts is your nature looking out for yourself. You taking the extra pizza was you making sure you had enough to eat. When you stole your friend's girlfriend, you were attempting to preserve your own genes over those of your friend.
But the moments of charity and kindness? Those are you attempting to preserve the human species. We exist as individuals because we look out for ourselves, we exist as a species because we actually want to help other people when it counts. This is the same drive that causes someone to dive onto a grenade to save his friends. (along with enormous brass balls).

We're all fuckheads, but we're not entirely without merit. We have to have both.

Someone who only cared for themselves would be a sociopath. Completely without care for the rest of humanity.
Someone who only cared for everyone else would starve to death because they don't think to take care of themselves.

To be human, you need both qualities. The Bastard and the Saint.

Don't dwell on it, just try to be less of a bastard when you have no possible gain from the situation and try to help people more when you can. Start with those you care about. It'll make the acts much easier to come by. Giving money to the poor is one thing, but can you imagine yourself spending days of your life physically cleaning up a homeless guy and helping him work through his problems?
Probably not. Start with the people you already care about.

Mary-Sue, that might be You.

For those of you who don't know what a Mary Sue is, here is a brief overview of the term:

Back in the early days of geekdom, before nerdry became mainstream, there was Trekkies. And there was Trekkie Fan-fiction.
Mary-Sue was an original character that a fan-fiction author inserted into the original series of Star Trek. The character was supposedly real "normal" and boring, yet all of the title characters were falling over themselves to hook up with her and do things for her. She would randomly experience Sherlock-Holmes level deductions where she would be the only one who knew the answer to whatever problem despite having others in the crew who specialized in that particular field.

Since then the character of Mary-Sue has come to mean any ridiculous non-canon character whom has been inserted as some sort of author superhero substitution.

There is also a vast genre of "Canon-Sue's". Which are characters who are native to the fiction, but are equally ridiculous.

Most heroic characters wander dangerously close to Sue-land.

Harry Potter is a Canon-Sue. Despite being a supposedly normal British boy, he has an entire culture obsessed with him, fangirls flock to him everywhere due to his fame. Damn near every character is obsessed with him in one way or another. The entire third book was devoted to his Godfather's obsession with him.

Clearly, a Mary-Sue.

This is a startlingly common trope in fiction. And it's easy to understand why. When authors are trying to make the main character interesting, the easiest way to do that is to make all of the other characters interested in them despite not having a good reason to do so.

Bella in the Twilight series is another great example. She is described as very plain and awkward, yet she is instantly popular and has creepy stalker men obsessed with her from day 1. They made people interested in her because they couldn't figure away to make her someone worth being interested in.

There is a very simple way to test and see if your character is a Mary-Sue.
1. If the character is socially popular or notable, did they do anything to deserve this popularity or notoriety? If the answer is no or simply weak then your character is a Mary-Sue. Re-work them and figure out if their popularity is a requirement of the character, and if it is, come up with a good explanation for it.  If you want them to be an "average joe" who is popular, perhaps add to their backstory that they used to be popular, but then lost their popularity for some reason.

2. If the character is especially powerful, do they really need to be that powerful? Stories where the main character can easily curb-stomp the villain are not interesting. Ideally a protagonist should be just powerful enough to defeat the villain, or even not powerful enough, and only becomes powerful enough briefly to defeat the villain.

3, Does the character know too much? Data from TNG is a classic example of this. He is a walking computer with damn near limitless knowledge. Sherlock Holmes is a worse example of this, because he didn't have the excuse of being a android to explain his vast knowledge. If the answers come too easily to the protagonist then he becomes too powerful. Modern versions of Holmes have given him severe social problems to counter-act his uber-powered intellect. The storage of all knowledge character is an easy writers tool for getting plot secrets to the protagonist. (Hermione Granger, Mr. Universe, Professor X) Yet again, it's because the writer is stuck. They can't figure out a way for the protagonist to learn the secret, so they introduce a character who already knows it, and just needs the protagonist to ask them.
This is the "Old wise man on the mountain" trope.

The reason Sherlock Holmes knows everything, is because the writers work backwards from the solution to the problem. This is why Holmes makes outrageous jumps in logic, because they are working the problem backwards.

For a better character, try to work out the problem the real way. It makes it harder to deceive the audience, but much more impressive when you do so.


It's very hard to break the mary-sue habit. Eventually you have confront the fact that as an author, it's your job to fuck over the protagonist. If you become too attached to the hero, then you'll be constantly fighting the drift into Mary-Sue.

What I really want to see is an author who is willing to go balls-out and actually kill the protagonist. It happened in Game of Thrones. But they kill off everyone in that series.

No I want to see a heroic sacrifice by the protagonist. Not the redeemed villain, not the anti-hero, not the side-kick. The Hero. The hero always survives the story, almost without exception.

Ironically, until they bribed Holmes's author, he had the distinction of being the only real heroic sacrifice. He died defeating his greatest enemy. It was a worthy death, and the audience loved him even more for it. But they wanted him back.

Don't be afraid to break the audience's heart. If you kill the beloved hero and keep him dead, that character will become truly immortal. An act of sacrifice so perfect that despite their cries to change it, doing so would be a disservice to the character.

What if? America became Hyper-socialist?

Just a preface on this. Unlike most of my writing on this blog, this is actually a work of fiction rather than a opinion piece. The main narrator of the story is me but in a theoretically future somewhere around 2030. I kept all names out of this story with the exception of a fictional cat. Hope you enjoy it. Leave a comment and let me know if you want to read more of my fiction in the future.

The street lights began to flicker on as I exited the rail station. I lived on Pico & Union but I

work on Sunset & Vine. So I have a short train ride to and from work every day. I’m a producer over at Channel 93. These days producers don’t need to worry about money, instead we’re in charge of babysitting the project from script until broadcast.  I was actually really happy to get a channel below 100. I started my television career on Channel 497, one of the porn channels. At least it was less sleazy since they added the pornography regulation and safety laws.

Regardless, I am much happier at Channel 93. We create Sci-Fi and action films. Which is a bit more difficult these days with the strict budgets. Basically it means all of my actors are actually stuntmen, all of my actresses are hired for stunts and tits, and none of them were hired for their acting ability. All of the good actors are on the lower channels, but occasionally we get a good actor who does the movie because they like it.

As I approached my apartment building I reflected upon how much I like this neighborhood. The artistic neighborhoods may be kinda loud, but they are still much better than the technical neighborhoods. I even managed to be in the same building with some of my old friends. My “Life Partner” and I share a double. A nice 10’x15’ space for my spouse and I instead of the standard 10’x10’ single. I always argue that that logically couples should have a 10’x20’ space since singles get 10’x10’ but they never seem to agree with me.

I greeted my wife as I entered our room. She was sitting at her desk writing with our cat on her lap. She leaned back to kiss me and I absently scritched the cat. She asked me about my day while I set my work supplies down on my desk. She’s a novelist so all of her work takes place at home. She likes to hear about my work. The prima-donna actors always make her laugh.

We don’t use money anymore, at least not on a personal scale. Economy is compared by what each state produces and we use that to buy goods and services from each other. My state is comparatively wealthy. We produce a large portion of the technology and entertainment for the rest of the world. we also have the massive solar energy farms out in the desert. So mostly we just buy food and water from the other states. We could use the desalination tech on the ocean, but fresh water is simpler. We turn them on during droughts to provide water for our plants. Helps us keep the price down from Colorado.

We’re not entirely without currency. The government instituted a “Luxury credit” system. Everyone gets a little fun money every year for extra goods or services. Difficult or dangerous jobs get a little more luxury credits than other jobs. It’s the incentive for people to become doctors or lawyers or underwater welders. Of course the luxury system has led to a black market for illegal goods or services. Drugs and prostitution  may be illegal, but if you have luxury credits you can still get them.

I relaxed in my chair and clicked on the TV. The world had changed a lot from what I remember. There are 40 million people living in this state, but our way of life is much different. Before the corporate riots of 2017 and the socialist secession of 2023 the country was bloated with middle managers and people whose entire job was just the manipulation of money. After the riots corporations were outlawed. Wall Street was burned to the ground. Those were some dark days. Many people were killed. Drastic economic upheaval. Most of the corporations were absorbed and repurposed by the U.S. government. It was a major injection of wealth for the government, but most citizens survived on welfare.

The Socialist Secession changed all of that. We re-defined ourselves as a country. When we got rid of money a lot of people were suddenly unemployed. We never thought about it before, but half of American workers made their living manipulating money or separating people from their money.

Overnight we got rid of all salesmen, stockbrokers & telemarketers. Drastic changes had to be made to employ all of these people. First the government started the great public works projects. Cities were torn down and rebuilt, the public rail system was installed. Cars still exist but mostly they are used for cargo and emergency services. Everyone else walks and takes the train.

Next there was the suburban withdrawl. All of the pointless suburbs were replaced with solar fields or wind fields. Everyone moved into the much denser cities. It took awhile. First the cities has to be rebuilt before everyone moved. But it’s a much more stable lifestyle now.

Eventually the major public works projects ran down and we were left with another surplus of workers. So we did two things. First we re-established American manufacturing. American goods are built to last and cost a pretty penny on the foreign market. “Made in America” actually means something again.

Secondly we shifted to a 30 hour work week. I work from 10am until 5pm, Monday through Friday with an hour for lunch. So everyone has more free time. Amusingly, resorts like Disneyland are flourishing in the new system. They provide a much desired service. They entertain us. It also led to the explosion of LA media. When I was younger everyone was outsourcing entertainment away from LA because it was cheaper. Now we’re back in LA because cost is no longer a problem and it’s much more efficient to have us all centrally located.

My station for example is producing movies year-round. We film them either in our building or on location nearby. Then it’s sent across town for editing and FX. Then back to our building for broadcast rotation. Every time we make a new movie it’s added to the rotation. Newer films get more frequent placement but all of our movies get seen.

I look over at my wife and smile. I’m discouraged from calling her that. The definitions of marriage were altered drastically with the new system. The government decided that if two consenting adults want to live together, then fine. Whatever. Sign the paper and here are the keys to your joint apartment. There are even some threesome and foursome life partners. The hardcore religious folks weren’t happy about this, but the concession was made that they can still have their religious husband and wife ceremony. It’s just that in the eyes of the law they are just life partners.

I don’t really care either way. I married my wife before all of the social reforms. I can call her what I want. Or at least what she’ll let me.

The country isn’t entirely socialist. Some of the smaller rural communities  still use money for trade in their town. And of course there is still Las Vegas. People gamble with their luxury credits out there.

Eventually my wife informed me that she was getting hungry so we went downstairs and walked to one of the neighborhood diners. We decided on Chinese tonight. The diners function basically like always active cafeterias, but since money was taken out of the picture the quality of food has been up across the board.

After dinner we joined our friends in our building’s rec room to chat for a couple hours. My wife brought her computer down for a bit so she could chat with her internet friends while remaining social with our real life friends.

Some people like to bitch about our way of life now. They say it’s too restrictive and they miss the opportunity to be a billionaire. I disagree. The way we used to be, we were miserable. 99% of us never had a chance to be a billionaire. It just wasn’t possible. We worked and slaved all day just to get by. Now we have options. Tomorrow I could decide that what I really want to be is a lawyer. I could quit my job and enroll in law school and my quality of life wouldn’t change. I’d just change my job title from “Producer” to “full-time student”. Or if I wanted to work in two fields, I could split my hours. I could work 20 hours a week at my current job and 10 hours a week writing a book, or teaching, or whatever I want.

Regardless of what I do, my life remains the same. The only people who are screwed  are those who refuse to take a job of any kind. Even being the primary caregiver to children is considered a full-time job. As it rightly should. If you are too lazy to do anything, then I have no pity for you. I’ll wish you farewell when the government deports you for being a shithead. Hell, there are plenty of people who are registered permanently disabled/ invalid for work. Usually people with severe mental handicaps. Those people get full government support and are accepted into our society. Yes they are a drain on our resources, but we support them because if we were in their shoes we’d want the same support.

Criminality has also changed drastically. Everyone has to have a job of some kind, but criminals tend to do their illegal activities in addition as a way to increase their luxury without paying luxury credits. Theft is especially common in certain neighborhoods. Some people are too trusting of their neighbors and leave their doors unlocked while they use the restroom or take a shower. My wife and I have a cat, so we’re especially cautious about locking our door. Yes, if the cat goes missing the government will replace it. But it won’t be the same cat.

Specifically irreplaceable items we especially like to keep safely secured. Most of my belongings are easily replaced, but some of my items from before the secession you just can’t find anymore.

Eventually the evening began to wind down. The Mrs. and I made our way back to our room. I changed into PJ’s and she went to go shower.

I will admit, the public restrooms were the biggest change to get used to. The shower and toilet stalls all have real doors and real locks on them. They’re just communal. So you don’t have a bathroom in your own apartment, but there is a bunch of communal toilets just down the hall. Our building has a special courtesy sign on the doors. You flip the sign over to signify that you left some foul odors in that particular stall, or some ridiculous mess. Everyone is suppose to be responsible for their own mess, but sometimes you need to run downstairs for the cleaning supplies.

I will say, the small changes make all the difference. Because the buildings weren’t constructed by the lowest bidding contractor, they were actually built properly. All the walls are properly insulated and have sound dampening. It makes it feel like when you close your door, that you are actually alone, despite sharing the floor with 30 other people. The standardized features also help. All buildings have laundry, air-conditioning, high-speed wifi, Hard line TV, etc. Our building even has a roof garden to cut down on the heat during the summer. And due to the Americans with disabilities act, all buildings have working elevators. Granted, we only live on the third floor so we usually take the stairs, but moving is much easier with elevators.

Although moving is much easier now. Last time we moved we just grabbed a moving cart from the basement of our new apartment, loaded it with our duffle bags, computers, cat carrier and musical instruments. And we were good to go. We pushed the cart two blocks to the rail station, took the train to our stop, then pushed it another block to the apartment. The whole process took less than an hour. Once we got here my wife set up the room and unpacked while I went down to the basement to return the cart and acquire our bedding and towels. By the time I got back Artemis, our cat, was already lounging on the bed, like she was claiming it all for herself and we humans could sleep on the floor.

Artemis was rather put out when we made her move.

Curling up in bed with my wife, I talked with her about how much our lives had changed. We’re old enough to remember the bad times. We remember the riots, we remember the constant poverty. But we were young enough that we could adapt to the change. Much of the older generation retired early or moved to rural communities because they couldn’t handle the new lifestyle.

But we could. We got through it and now we enjoy our lives. My wife is almost finished with the first draft of her new book. Once she finishes we’re going to use our mandatory vacation days and go on an adventure. And our only concern is whether to bring Artemis with us or leave her with one of our friends.

I can live with that.