Thursday, July 30, 2009

Geekier than I






I find it comforting that no matter how geeky I am, there will always be someone, some many someones, in fact, who are far, far geekier than I could ever hope to be.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Normally, I object to unscientific polls.

I tend to not object to results that I agree with. I suppose that this is the way for everyone.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Who wouldn't enjoy this?



Nobody I know.

Sometimes when I look at Star Wars, I think that children today look at it like I look at The Wizard of Oz, or Gone With the Wind, or Citizen Kane, that is, a great movie that came out a long, long time ago. Waaaaaaay back in 1977! I was 13! I went to see during its first run at least 12 times! (Honestly, once you saw it on your own just a couple of times, people would bring you along for kicks, which added to your total.) Are there any movies being made now that kids will look back at when they are in their mid 40's and say "That was an amazing experience!"? And if you didn't say that during the first Star Destroyer flyover shot in the "First" Star Wars film, YOU WEREN'T THERE. I had a whole lot of Star Wars toys, too, and you know what I did with them? I took them out of the box, and played with them. And I don't obsess over how much they would have been worth if I had kept them in the box, either. Some people today have lost the meaning of fun. There I go again, soundin' like an old fogey. Well, maybe I am, but I enjoy it so.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Fly me to the moon. To the moon, Alice!



A friend pointed out to me that I had not posted on "We didn't really go to the moon day", yesterday. Well, this is the best I could come up with, on such short notice. One of the most prolific moon deniers had been stalking Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, for a long time, trying to get him to swear on a Bible, that he really had been to the moon. He took Buzz's refusal to do so as an admission that it was all faked. Well, Buzz, a very religious guy, gets fed up, and cleans the little bastards clock. The guy had lied to Buzz, asking him to give an interview for a Japanese children's TV show. How classy. He tried to sue Buzz for assault, and the judge threw it right out of court, saying that Buzz had been provoked. Note to self: Don't Provoke Buzz Aldrin.

Note to Conspiracy Theory Idiots. We. Went. To. The. Moon. It would have been more expensive to fake it than to actually go. And required thousands of murders to cover the evidence. But, in fact, there is no evidence to cover, because we went. We actually went. And someday we'll go back, and visit the original landing sites in 3D high definition video, and we'll be able to follow it all extremely closely, and these idiots will still say it was and is all faked. We should just ignore these morons. I'm just glad that Buzz finally gave this one what he had coming to him.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Too many hours in a day.

Some people say that there are not enough hours in a day. I say quite the opposite, as long as we're talking about the:

24 Hour News Cycle.

Honestly, CNN, HLN, MSNBC, FOX, and whatever else I'm missing, have so bought into the idea that they have to be transmitting "news" 24 hours a day, that they have become blind to the fact that a great deal of what they transmit is not really news at all. A squirrel with its head caught in a yogurt container got several minutes of coverage the other day. The footage was sent in to HLN by a viewer, who, thankfully, then proceeded to remove the container from the squirrel. How is this news? It isn't. I think they should have a stoplight at the top of the screen, red, yellow and green. If it is real news, from real reporters, the green will light up, if it is not news, but entertaining or at least distracting, it will light up red. If it is questionable, maybe news, maybe not news, yellow. That's pretty simple, but it will never happen, because the red light would be on most of the time. I guess they have just redefined "news". And all of the viewer content is kind of ridiculous, too, with people sending (or... shudder... tweeting) in their opinion on stories, which then get read on the air. I honestly don't care what some random viewer thinks, and I would rather they not bother me with it. Maybe the 24 hour cycle is getting to the newsdrones, so they have to add viewer opinion to break the monotony and keep from going crazy.

Another sufferer of the 24 hour cycle is Comedy Central. I've been watching some of their stand up comedian's specials, and I'm sorry, but they're not that special. loud, rude and mean spirited seems to pass for funny these days. Sure, I had a chuckle or two, over the course of an hour, but these guys are playing to huge theaters, and the crowd is near hysterical with laughter. I just don't get it. But when you're called Comedy Central, you have to fill the entire day with what passes for comedy. Although they do play The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, several times a day, which is their crossover with the 24 hour news cycle, I suppose. And honestly, the reporting and most importantly the information in the reporting is usually vastly superior to what you can get on the all-news channels. And at least they get to run the infomercials overnight, which are actually funnier than a lot of the stand up they run during prime time.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Yet another rant about the rich.


Yes, yes. Once again, I'm going to rant about the rich, the rulers of this country and of the world.

You should be used to it by now.

The Rules for the Rich:
1. The Bottom Line is the ONLY Line.
2. People don't matter.
3. Any taxation is EVIL.
4. The pain of the people is unimportant.
5.The pain of the Rich must be passed on to the people.

What I'm trying to say is that during these hard economic times, when things have gotten so bad that even the ruling elite are feeling it, they will continue to complain about how they are suffering, and in turn, must pass that suffering on to the masses. Never mind that their tax cuts have not been rolled back or removed, never mind that they still live lavish, opulent lifestyles where they have to invent things to waste their money on, never mind that now they have the time and energy to mount tax protest "Tea Parties", complaining how heavily they are already taxed. Okay, let's lay it on the line once again: Taxes on the Rich were nearly eliminated on the theory of Trickle Down Economics. By this theory, if they are not taxed, they will reinvest the money that they would have been taxed into their businesses. That theory has proven absolutely wrong, time and time again. Instead of reinvesting, the rich have hoarded their money in tax havens like Switzerland and the Caribbean, or spent it on extreme luxury goods, partly just to rub it in the noses of the rest of us that they do not have to be concerned about getting by, and that the only definition of enough that they subscribe to is "Too Much". Honestly, the market for extreme luxury goods has not suffered in the slightest in this economy. If anything, it has increased, as the rich indulge themselves to relieve their pain at how the country is becoming socialist (which it isn't). "Spreading the Wealth Around" is not Socialism, it is just trying to make the rich aware of the fact that although they should not be punished for their success, they have to be made to realize that their success is made on the backs and the blood of the masses that they are so disdainful of. Henry Ford realized that his company could only succeed if it made a product that his own workers could afford, yet today we have a huge market for thousand dollar high-heel shoes, hundred thousand dollar handbags, three hundred thousand dollar wristwatches, and half million dollar cars. Do you honestly think that the price of those goods is at all reflected in the wages of the workers who produce them? No, the profits go to the business owners, in a part of the cycle of waste that is almost completely removed from the rest of the economy. What needs to happen is to completely remove the Reagan-Bush tax cuts, and to tell the whining rich that they have and are still benefiting hugely from the economy, more than everyone else, and now it is their responsibility to help the peasants for a while. Then, once the middle class is restored, they will start purchasing again, and that will more than make up for the taxes that you are now paying. Share the wealth, share the responsibility, share the rewards. And stop shaming the memory of the Boston Tea Party with you tax protests. The issue then was Taxation Without Representation, and as far as I can tell, you are more than adequately represented by our government, which is still, with a few notable, wonderful exceptions, a bunch of old, rich, white guys, running the country for the benefit of a bigger bunch of old, rich, white guys and their families. All we want is what was promised to us when your taxes were cut back to almost nothing. Give us that, and we'll leave you alone, and make you richer in the bargain. That shouldn't be too much to ask.