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.

Hotel Transylvania Movie review

Finally saw this movie last night. Initially I had wanted to go see it with my girlfriend but she expressed a disinterest in it so we saw Paranorman instead.

So the first big surprise for me was that this was a Adam Sandler film. I have been really unimpressed with his movies lately so this was already a strike against it for me, but my sister was ranting about how good it was and she had already watched Wreck-it Ralph at my request so I stuck it out.

Not really all that impressed with the movie.

Firstly the characters are over-the-top stupid. Like all of them. Dracula (Sandler's character) is the only non-retarded person in the whole film. Oh, and also the Hunchback of Notre Dame too, despite that character being classically considered mentally retarded.

Then there is the plot.
Mild spoilers


Dracula builds a castle/Hotel to protect his daughter from humans. All the other monsters come and visit him once a year to celebrate her birthday. A random human stumbles across the castle and Dracula disguises him as a Frankenstein (despite the fact that Frankenstein was the creator, not the monster, they describe all such creatures as "Frankensteins".).
Hijinks ensue and the human and Dracula's daughter fall in love.


And it's not like a slowly developing love, they specifically portray it as "Love at first-sight". So randomly, the first human she ever meets is her soulmate whom she instantly falls in love with.


So the plot is garbage, the character development is asinine, but now we come to the big question for any comedy film:

Is it funny?

Answer: Kinda, in places.
It's not hilarious the entire time, it tries to be, but most of the jokes just aren't funny. But out of every ten jokes they attempt maybe one or two actually hit the mark.

Final thoughts: I wouldn't buy the movie or pay to see it in theaters, but if it was on TV I'd probably watch it.

Noblesse Oblige

Ok folks, here comes an angry political/economic post.
(for the purpose of legalities: All statements produced here are opinion and not a statement of fact. I believe that these statements are likely to be true, but that's just my opinion.)

By now most of you must have seen one of the dozens of memes or videos making their way around the internet that show how big the gap between the haves and the have-nots has become.

Shit is getting real.
If you look at the Forbes top 400 list, the top 10 are all names you would expect: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, the Koch brothers, and the Waltons.

For those of you living under a rock, the Waltons are the owners of Walmart. They are listed individually on the Forbes top 400 list, but if you counted them as a family, they would easily be #1, by a very large margin.

How did they become so wealthy? Walmart first opened in the 60's, so 50 years of business to become the richest people in the world?

Easy, Deal with the Devil.

I don't mean that literally (of course it's always possible), but the Waltons got rich by performing and encouraging the least American behavior possible: Outsourcing.

They buy almost all of their products overseas from sweat shops. Then they bring the products here and keep their prices low enough that all competitors have to do the same thing just to keep up.

This isn't just happening in the US, 15 countries have Walmarts. All selling goods that were effectively produced by slave labor.

They may not keep their slaves on U.S. soil, but lets not kid ourselves, the Waltons are modern American slave owners.

For the last fifty years they have made their vast fortunes by taking the jobs away from honest, hard-working Americans and giving them to slaves working in foreign countries.

We, as Americans, hell, as humanists, cannot allow this to continue. The world outlawed slavery decades ago, indentured servitude or forcing people to work below a living wage is no different. If a person has no choice but to work, then they are slaves. Call an egg an egg.

This is the problem of all the new billionaires. They don't understand the responsibility of being rich.
To be rich and to STAY rich, one must learn the lessons of the past. If you fuck over everyone to get rich, eventually everyone is going to line up your whole family for the guillotine.

To stay wealthy, you needed to keep the peasants happy, most people are ok with other people being richer than they are, they are not ok with people being insanely wealthy and pissing on them from an Ivory tower.

Numerous times in the history of the world the people have rebelled against the wealthy for trying to pull too much shit on us. The French revolution, the American revolution, we just don't like the rich pissing on our heads and telling us it's rain.

What is most surprising about our current situation is that historically Americans have revolted for significantly less. Remember, this whole "America" deal started because the British were taxing us more than we thought was fair and without letting us equally represent ourselves in Parliament.

Now onto congress, this is officially the least effective congress we have ever had.
We just had to implement "Automatic budget cuts" because they couldn't agree on a budget.

Seriously?

Congress, this is really your only job. Yes, you are also in charge of creating newer, stupider laws for us to break, but working out the budget is THE ONLY THING YOU ARE REQUIRED TO DO!!!!!
Seriously? If you worked at McDonalds and someone walked up to you, gave you five dollars, ordered a hamburger, fries, and a coke, and you sat on your hands and cried about how you hate coke and McDonalds should really switch to Pepsi YOU WOULD BE FIRED!!!

Seriously, they failed at their job, Fire ALL of THEM.

Every time they take office, they must repeat the following oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

 And for the specifics of what they are required to do for their job title:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_duties_of_the_US_Congress

See that list of things they are supposed to provide for? Yes, that means that the federal budget is their job. If they collect the taxes, they must spend the money they collected on federal budgets like the military, social services, etc.
If they can't budget correctly then Firstly, they shouldn't be getting paid for their work. If they can't balance the budget, their salaries should be the Very First things cut.


Now back to Walmart.
There are alot of complicated legal battles we could go through to fight them, but none of it will be anywhere near as effective as this:

Stop buying from Walmart.

I have never bought anything from Walmart, and I never will. It is worth it to me to pay 10% more on goods to know that I am not endorsing slavery and to know that I am supporting American jobs.

Fight Walmart, buy American.

Even considering how broke we all are, we can afford to buy American goods. Or atleast Mexican goods.
And buying American goods takes away money from evil corporations and puts it back into the American working class.

Outsourcing is the most un-American thing a company can do. Do not endorse companies that support it.
We can't get them all at once, because of outsourcing pioneers like the Waltons everyone else had to start outsourcing to keep up.
But as we push away from sweatshop labor, it will bring money back into this country. We need those jobs back, and we as the consumers decide where we shop. Stop Walmart, and then we'll take on the next evil empire.

Assuming the US government doesn't collapse in on its own stupidity by then.

A Movie Review!

So, I realize that I'm late to the party on this one, but here is my review of "The Hunger Games".

So, I'll preface this with stating that I never read the books, nor did I look up anything on Wikipedia before watching this movie. All I knew was what I saw on TV trailers and interviews. Like I was aware that the main character was an archery chick named Katniss, and the main Fanfiction pairing was Katniss/Peta or "Peniss".
yup.

So started the movie...

FUCKING SPOILERS.

Katniss and Peta live in District 12, which apparently the US had a massive civil war of some kind and afterwards all of the country was divided into districts. Districts 1 & 2 were super rich, districts 11 & 12 were like 1930's poor.

Turns out that every year 24 children ages 12-17 are drafted into a reality TV show. But the point of the show is to kill the other players rather than vote them off the island or whatever.

Katniss volunteers to save her younger sister and Peta is drafted like normal. They go to District 1 and are groomed for the game. They train, and they try to entice sponsors.

Now as far as I can tell, sponsors are totally bullshit. Katniss's sponsor helps her twice. Once they gave her some burn cream when she was hit by a fireball, and the second time they sent some soup for Peta when he got sick during the games.

Now there are a few major problems I have with the entire concept.

#1 Who the fuck cares about sponsors?
Seriously, They don't help you much, but apparently they are a major factor to the game, I honestly don't see it.
Better Idea, if you were a kid living in this setting, you should train like a motherfucker FROM BIRTH to compete in the game. Even if you are never selected, you are still learning good skills and discipline. The kids from Area 1 supposedly always win, because they spend their childhoods training, and then volunteer at the maximum age. Why the hell doesn't every district do that? Every year, pick like four kids to be the volunteers in 17 years, everyone pulls together and makes sure those kids are training non-stop, and then at age 17 the volunteer for the games. Even if they lose, it's still better for everyone in their district. Because the children decide how many rations everyone gets for the year by how many raffle tickets they take. So what they should do is elect the tribute amongst themselves before the "Reaping day" and the day of, EVERYONE takes as many tickets as possible. The person who lost the raffle before volunteers, and everyone else, including the Tribute's family, get a shitload of resources for the following year. It's a no-brainer.
So with 17 years of training, the tribute should be a fairly even match for the tributes from District 1, because their wealth doesn't mean anything in the game, they don't get to take any supplies with them.

#2 How does no-one notice that the people running the game clearly cheat?
Seriously, Katniss gets hit by a shitload of fireballs and then chased by dogs. They also change the rules of the game, mid-game, Twice! I suppose it's being true to reality TV in that everything is staged, but if everyone knows that, then the premise shouldn't be making the sponsors like you, it should be making the people running the game like you. If you gotta give a blowjob to Mr. Evil-Mc-Evil-Beard to make sure he doesn't shoot fireballs at you, then shut up and suck that dick. Your life LITERALLY depends on it.

#3 If things are so bad in the outer districts, why hasn't there been more civil wars or Riots?
Supposedly everyone behaves because all of the Army/ Police force are from Districts 1 & 2. But honestly, how many of them could possibly be in the military compared to everyone else who works & lives in those districts?
Furthermore, who does all of the "shit jobs" in Districts 1 & 2? Clearly they don't do it themselves, everyone in those districts are super decadent, but decadent people are less capable of taking care of themselves, not more.
Theoretically Districts 1 & 2 should also have a working/slave class pampering all the rich bitches, and in that case, their entire military would be devoted to keeping those people from revolting, not worrying about the outer districts.
And apparently they even have divisions whose entire job is to make sure nobody leaves their district or goes off to live in the woods.

So where the fuck are all of these military people coming from? They are clearly describing a Spartan-esque military state on one hand, and then a super decadent Roman state on the other.

The only way for these numbers to add up is if they have a 90-10 population split. If all of the people live in the central districts and the outer districts were almost ghost towns then it would make sense. But it also makes it so that it would be LITERALLY impossible for anyone from the outer districts to win the hunger games.
Example:
The United States have a population of 300 million.
Peru has a population of 30 million.
If we had a global tournament of games to judge each nation by sports... Oh wait, we do! Let's do the math here.
In the 2012 Summer Olympics the US won 46 gold medals.
Peru won zero medals in the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The US has won 990 gold medals in Olympic history.
Peru has won ONE gold medal.. Ever. In 1948.

It's simple logic, the more people in your population, the wider the variables in that population. So you are much more likely to find a singular excellent athlete in a highly populated country than a small country.

So no matter which way you go, the logic of the movie doesn't work.
Either Katniss should have gotten her ass handed to her by vastly superior athletes or the government should have been overthrown a long time ago.

Finally, Fuck The World of Warcraft.

So, As a long time WoW player, I feel it is my right to bitch about the steady decline of the World of Warcraft.

This gets pretty damn technical in places, so if you aren't a gamer, you might want to skip this one.
Back when I started playing, sometime around 2006-ish, The game was pretty bad, constant glitching, insane lag, getting an instance group took forever, it was basically a game of waiting for the stars to align so you could do the stuff you wanted to do.

I loved running instances, getting into a group with four other people and kicking the shit out of monsters? Hell yes.
But back then the mechanics were kinda retarded.
First the quests:
Example: Scholomance
In the early, early days, Strat and Scholo were actually 10-man raids, but by the time I got to that level they had been nerfed down to 5-man instances, but they still had the quests from back when they were raids.
You had to start a quest chain in the Bulwark, then fight a bunch of undead in Western plaguelands, then go the Tanaris (on the other side of the world), then back to the bulwark, then more killing in WPL (this time with a full 5-man group), then eastern plaguelands, then you got your key to the front door. About 300 gold (which was alot back then) and a month of your time later, you could finally enter the instance, of course if you had a Rogue in your party (who had spent that same month pick-pocketing trash mobs for lock-boxes) you could just go in, no quest chain required.
So you would run the instance, and eventually your reputation with the appropriate faction would become friendly, so now you could do the first set of quests. which involved running the instance two more times (back before we had the ability to reset the instance, we just had to wait 24 hours. We would often schedule the runs at 10pm and again after the reset (which was either midnight or 3am depending on how the server was feeling that week.)
That would go on for awhile, and every time we would gain another level of reputation, more quests would open up.

Shit was ridiculous. I'm baffled at myself for wasting that much time, especially since in later expansions they got rid of attunements, keys, prerequisite quests, etc.
So all of that shit was for nothing.

But despite all of that, it was still the best MMO at the time, so we all played it.

Then The Burning crusade came out, and Shit got real, Blizzard decided to step up their game in raid content difficulty  to the point where UI modifications were not just useful, but mandatory. You simply could not beat the boss without the UI mods. Clearly somebody managed to figure it out to make the mods, but all of the mods were developed in the public test realms by the top tier raiding guilds.

To make matters more complicated, they added two new races that had access to the faction-only classes (paladin & Shaman) of the opposite faction. So now both side were equal, before this change, all of the world's top raid teams were alliance only, because Alliance had Paladins, and paladins were entirely too useful back then.

For those of us who weren't hardcore raiders (i.e. like 80% of the players) we got to explore new content in the world, new races, and new classes, but the game didn't really change that much.
Except for Karazhan.
Karazhan was a new 10-man raid (like Stratholme and Scholomance used to be) that was accessible for everyone, you had some basic gear requirements, but they were entirely reachable for non-hardcore players. And the Raid was like a loot pinata. 10 people went in, and more often than not, 10 people got gear.
I spent the entirety of burning crusade in Karazhan, I still remember it fondly.

Then Wrath of the Lich King came out.
I had the perk of being on the closed-Alpha test And the Beta test for that game.
It was glorious.

Blizzard introduced the new "Hero class" Death Knights, with their own bad-ass storyline and the amazing perk of starting off at level 55 instead of 1. Once that hit the shelves, EVERYONE had a deathknight, the game was filled with them, because it was entirely too convenient.
Why would you start off a character at lvl 1 when you could start at level 55? It was a no-brainer.

They also add the "Looking for group" system. Instead of standing in town all day constantly bugging everyone to run a instance with you, you could simply press a button, and the game would find a group for you. Meanwhile you were free to continue questing or doing whatever you wanted, but the point was, you didn't need to beg people in Trade Chat anymore.
Back before LFG there was alot of servers where unless you belonged to a large guild, there was no possibility of finding a group, all the guilds ran instances specifically with people in their guild, no-one else.
Now, it didn't matter if you were in a guild. The computer didn't care, it got rid of alot of the elitism.

The elitists of course refused to be stopped, the the Gearscore UI modification was invented. It was a program that scanned your character and did the math on the total value of the stats on your gear, and compared it to what instances and raids you would find easy or hard just based on gear.
This of course ignored player skill, quality of computer, and quality of internet connection, but they didn't seem to care, the Score was everything to these people.

But us casual players didn't care, because we had LFG, which meant that anyone could find an instance group and get better gear.
And then they made a drastic change to raiding in this expansion aswell. All raids would have a 10-man and a 25-man version.
They decided that the old 40-man raids were just too much of a pain in the ass, so they reduced it down to 25, and they gave the 10-man version to us casual players. They also added "Heroic mode" for the hardcore raiders.

So finally they had raiding where almost everyone was involved to some degree, everyone was getting to do all of the content.
Finally after like 4-5 years, all of their development was getting used by almost all of their players. For the first few years all of the raid content was only enjoyed by like 2%-20% of the players.

They had their timing figured out finally too. They would release the patch, then slowly decrease it's difficulty (or let the gear creep decrease it's difficulty automatically) until everyone had beaten it atleast on 10-man normal mode. Then they would release the next patch. It was awesome.
By far my happiest memories from the game.

Then tragedy struck, Activision bought Blizzard Entertainment, and the game turned to shit.

Activision decided that the game wasn't user friendly enough, so they dumbed it down... alot.
Some of the changes were good, they made things that used to be impossible significantly easier. But most of the changes were insulting.
Like the classes were decided to be too volatile. too much room for exploitation.
So they changed the talent system so that users couldn't exploit or even personalize their characters.
Back in WotLK I loved playing my Death Knight. I had figured out a totally bizarre setup of talents, that was  by no means the most efficient, but too me it was the most fun. They got rid of all hybrid specializations in the first new expansions "Cataclysm" and then destroyed even partial hybrids in the second expansion "Mists of Pandaria".

This really pissed me off. I liked the way the game functioned before, I loved how complicated the math was and when I was Tanking, me and my fellow tanks would spend hours awake late at night theory-crafting better ways to do our jobs.
It was fun.

So on top of making the game mechanically boring, they also ran out of good plot.
Wrath of the Lich King was the end of the story. The characters had been building towards this since Warcraft 2 when we first discovered about the Lich King and then Heightened in Warcraft 3 when our beloved hero Arthas fell into darkness and came back as the evil Lich King.
We needed to put our fallen hero to rest, we had been working towards this for over a decade over three different games and additional expansions.

At the end of WotLK we finally defeated Arthas, our quest was over, we were looking forward to what new story Blizzard might have in store for us.

And this is what we got:
"Yeah, you remember all of those Dragon Aspects? The quest givers in WotLK?"
"...Yeah?"
"Well, there is actually another one, and he decided to destroy the world because a goblin kicked a football into a volcano."
"........WAT?!?!"

Yeah, no joke there. that's the actual plot.
Oh, and the "Maelstrom" which is supposed to be this massive hole in the planet caused by when the elves and the guardian of Tirisfal kicked the shit out of a god? Yeah, that's actually just the entrance to that evil dragon's prison, and that football weakened things enough for him to escape.

Yeah, we were not impressed.
Some of us quit, but most of us decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. Cause we already had 5+ years invested in this story.

So turns out this evil dragon has a cult, that existed previously in the story, but previously had no connection with the dragon at all.
So yeah, random. Most of the expansion was based on fighting the cult, then eventually we fight the evil dragon himself.
But between WotLK and the Fall of Deathwing, most of the casual raiders had quit raiding.
So they introduced "Looking for Raid" which is just like "Looking for group" but with five times as many assholes.
Before you would run an instance and if one player was a dick, you'd kick him out.
If most of the players were dicks, you'd leave the group.
But in LFR EVERY group has atleast 5 assholes in it making your life miserable.
Without fail.

So that was stupid, really made alot of us dislike raiding even more, but whatever, we got our gear.

Then Mists of Pandaria came out.
The Plot:
Gilligan's Island.
(No joke.)
The Horde and the Alliance are off fighting eachother and whatnot, and they randomly crash into this massive continent, that they some how never noticed before (because it was covered by "Mist").
And then we randomly get involved in the bullshit drama of the native Pandas (you heard me right, fucking pandas), but really, no-one even gives a shit.
The entire premise is that both the Horde and the Alliance want to claim this already fully occupied continent for their own faction. And the Pandas seem happy to let them fight over it, aslong as they solve all of their hidden problems in the meantime.

I could literally give two shits about the drama of the Pandas.

I will give credit where credit is due, Monk is a pretty awesome new class. But it should have been a Fucking Hero Class!! I already had EIGHT max level characters at the beginning of this new expansion, I really don't want to level another one from 1-90. Fuck that. That is entirely too much time to waste.
Fuck, Blizzard, here is a free idea to save yourself a shitload of problems. Every time a player reaches maximum level, they get to add 10 levels to another character. So if you have two max characters, you can create a new character that is lvl 21 rather than 1. I'd happily take that deal.
I'm just fucking sick of level grinding the same boring shit over and over again.

But really, at this point, they need a much bigger fix.
They need plot that doesn't suck.
Because really? Pandas? And their shitty Panda drama?
There is literally an entire instance devoted to monkeys stealing beer.
I shit you not.

I'm fucking over it, I spent years invested in this game, and they are literally boring me to tears.
And it shows. They keep losing subscriptions hand-over-fist. Players are leaving because the game sucks now. It's sad, but it's true.
And until they can get good writers again, the players are going to stay gone.