John Kuehl Online

Relative Deprivation

2011-06-21T10:15:00.001-07:00

With the exception of a Facebook post or link here and there, it has been a while since I have written anything about current events. I have spent a lot of time trying to think of why that was. Maybe it was graduate school, or work, or just life. But those were excuses. The real reason I did not write anything is that I have been growing more and more disgusted with the state of affairs in this country.

We are still in Iraq, we are still in Afghanistan. The president decided, without the permission of congress, to bomb a country that poses no threat to the security of the United States. We entered another country and assassinated an enemy of the state. Unemployment is at record levels, the stock market appears to be completely unhinged from the economic reality, foreclosures are still rampant, and there is a general feeling of uncertainty just about everywhere. The news is filled with a presidential election that is almost a year and a half away. The press rabidly goes after elected officials who tweet pictures of their genitals, but completely ignores the wars we are fighting, our broken economy, and our crumbling infrastructure. Is this 2008 or 2011?

No matter what politically well informed friends tell you, neither side of the echo chamber has all of the answers. And believe it or not, the further you go into the rabbit hole on either side, the crazier it gets. A year or so ago, I had a friend who decided to “De-Friend” me on Facebook after I told him that Facebook would never have been invented in a purely socialist society. In a message that was written to me after the fact I was told “Don’t post on my page anymore you arrogant son of a bitch.” His response mirrored that of some of my free-market conservative friends. What they have in common is that they are unable to properly articulate a mature and adult response when someone questions a core tenant of their beliefs.

This may be hard for some people to read, but the only way you can completely eliminate private ownership in society is by killing a lot of people. Not just the billionaires, but everyone that has ever worked hard in their lives to start a business or own something. It will be equally hard for others to believe that a society based completely off of market choices will not raise the level of prosperity for everyone. That society often ignores the people that cannot make choices for themselves, and could not work properly unless it started with a blank slate where everyone had equal levels of education.

Where does that put us? If you made it this far, you probably know the answer. We are living in the most pivotal moment in the history of our country. We are broke, we are unemployed, we are over-extended, and we have politicians that live in a separate reality. Many citizens realize this. There is an academic term for this that is the title of this posting, Relative Deprivation. There are many interpretations of Relative Deprivation and feel free to Google it. I have always looked at it as the longer you deprive someone of what they believe they are entitled to have, the likelier it is for there to be civil unrest. I feel that our country is in the early to mid-stages of people realizing that the America they grew up in is failing them. This America was one where we had a job for everyone, roads that worked, and politicians that served the people, not themselves. At this moment those things are quickly disintegrating, and unless we fix the problem I believe there will be serious problems on the horizon. Look at Greece, Spain, and parts of France. These countries are revolting because their countries are being stripped of their protections. If the global recession continues, and it likely will, this unrest could easily make it to our shores.

The easiest way to ease tensions would be to provide people with economic security. If you can’t pay your bills you usually can’t do much else. Contrary to popular media opinion you can’t do this by cutting someone’s taxes 400 dollars annually. Giving someone an extra 7 dollars a week doesn’t help them at all. Nor does telling them that the Social Security they have contributed to all their lives has been used to pay for a bunch of wars. What does help is keeping their taxes exactly the same, stop wasting money on war and defense, and finding people better jobs. Capital expenditures often raise the value of companies, and they would do the same for the country.

To accomplish this task everyone needs to stop putting up with elected officials from either party that only listen to their constituents when they are up for re-election. Career politicians need to get voted out of office, and the money in our politics needs to go away. Because the longer business as usual continues, it is more likely serious civil unrest will occur. Sooner or later it will be too late, and our democratic republic will have vanished into history as our government sends out police in riot gear to shoot tear gas at a bunch of people who have been kicked out of their homes and are out of work.

Is Vincent Jackson worth the risk?

2010-09-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

When Brett Favre threw a bad pass into double coverage against the Dolphins yesterday, a lot of people assumed that had Sydney Rice been healthy he would have made that catch. The problem with questions or assumptions like this is that in the world of football, they are not logical. People get hurt in football. People get injuries. Good teams, the teams that make the playoffs, are teams that make adjustments when players are hurt. Assuming that a healthy Sydney Rice would have made something out of an error of judgement on Favre's part is simply denying that the Vikings offense looks just as bad as it did in 2008 before Favre was on the team.

Now it may be week 2, but since Sydney Rice is out of the picture until at least midseason, the main contingency plan is to pursue Vincent Jackson. Jackson is out until Week 6 because he liked drinking and driving. And since just about everyone is reporting it will take at least a 2nd round pick to acquire him, the Vikings are between a rock and a hard place. And the Chargers who really want nothing to do with Jackson, are now in a position of power after the Vikings folded against Miami yesterday.

Imagine for a moment that the Vikings have to give up a 2nd round pick and Bernard Berrian to get a guy who will not be able to play until Week 6. That leaves the Vikings with Greg Camarillo, Percy 'Excederin Migraine' Harvin, Greg Lewis, and Javon 'I did a Lambeau Leap 5 years ago' Walker as receivers. Everyone is complaining that Favre just does not have a weapon. What is going to happen when even Berrian is gone? Greg Camarillo is not going to get double coverage. It does not matter who is lining up under center, an offense based off of throwing to the tight end and running up the middle is not working out too well for the 49ers, and it will not work for the Vikings.

It certainly makes sense to defer the blame from Favre to the lack of receivers because of how great last season was. But last year Brett Favre didn't look tired, he didn't look slow, and he didn't underthrow guys repeatedly. Waiting 3 more weeks for one receiver could bode poorly for the Vikings. If Favre plays the same way this Sunday against the Lions as he has against the Saints and the Dolphins, it will not be because he lacks weapons, but because he is playing poorly.

Is Vincent Jackson worth the risk? If Brett Favre bounces back and has a great Sunday against the Lions he will be. If not, trading for Jackson is admitting that the season is lost without a deep threat that is month away.

Why the deficit really doesn't matter right now

2010-09-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

From a historical perspective, when Dick Cheney famously remarked "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he was referring to the fact that that the United States was borrowing heavily to fund a multiple front war. But one could take Cheney's statement a bit further, and point out the fact that America has been running a budget deficit for nearly every year for the past 30 years, and for better or for worse, America was on top.

From a contemporary perspective, Liberals and Conservatives alike will point their finger and blame the other party, all the while shouting from the rooftops that the deficit is really important, and that we "have to fix it now." Except we don't.

It would be foolish to say that having a massive federal deficit isn't a problem. But thinking that the best time to solve a massive budgetary problem in the middle of an economic depression is a good idea is amazingly foolish. America is not a business. There is no proper way to 'reorganize' the federal government. Because as much as politicians claim that this would be the right thing to do to meet standards of 'efficiency,' no politician in their right mind is going to willfully shed jobs from their district in this climate.

There is no doubt that there are ways to cut spending. By cutting spending, we are only going to make things worse. There are real ways to fix our budget without cutting jobs or working on efficiency. Here are some ideas:

-Cut military spending by at least half. This would effectively bring many soldiers home, put them on bases in the United States, and have the Army Corps of Engineers working on our problems instead of other countries. This money could be spent elsewhere.
-Make the tax code fair on every level. Having a progressive income tax that taxes the wealthier a little more is not unfair, it just makes sense. The rising tide lifts all boats.
-Fix our banking laws. It should be illegal for people to store their money in tax free bank accounts abroad. They are effectively stealing from the government. If you are an American citizen, you should pay American taxes, and provide banks with the equity so they can stimulate the economy through lending.
-Eliminate massive subsidies to companies that run massive profits. Why should taxpayer dollars go to conglomerates who essentially pocket the money? We complain about welfare reform, but we give massive corporations almost ten times as much money as we provide the welfare system. Which needs reforming?
-Consolidate government agencies. The CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, and HSA should not be separate, when they deal with very similar areas. Like a police force in any major area, there are departments. Instead of multiple separate bureaucracies, there should be one.
-Go digital. Having a paper records is not only wasteful for the environment, but wastes space where documents are stored, and the energy to power the buildings. Transitioning to digital would not only provide data entry jobs to those making the switch, but would save serious energy costs in the long term.
-Require countries that we trade with to play by the same trading rules as we do. America has a fairly open trade policy, but some of our major trading partners do not. If everyone played on similar fields, not as many jobs would go over seas, and America would have higher tax revnues.

And when it is all said and done, when we finally balance the budget, make serious plans to not only pay back the deficit over time, but to take some of the surplus money and put it away for a rainy day. This way when we need another massive jobs program we can use that money under the mattress to get the job done.

The Hypocrisy of 'Going Green'

2010-05-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

As oil pours into the Gulf of Mexico at an alarming rate, it is clear that such an accident was the direct result of little to no environmental regulation. This accident, like so many similar accidents should motivate our society to step back and take a bit of time to think about how our society can move away from using fossil fuels to power our cars and factories.

But anyone with half of a functioning brain knows this cannot be. Instead, what we will do is put 'An Inconvenient Truth' onto our Netflix queue, read about the developing catastrophe and wonder why our government cannot simply work towards a few easy plans to ween ourselves off of petroleum. As this is happening, someone with a large public profile will tell the public that they can help make the planet more 'green' simply by buying some new light bulbs, and putting new air in their tires. Derrick Jensen wrote an article in Orion Magazinelast year that gave a few examples about how this is just asinine.

The idea of false individualism and how buying anything can make a difference in the world is the biggest threat to modern society. A perfect example of this sort of cancerous behaviour is the reusable coffee sleeve currently being sold at local Caribou Coffee shops. It seems like a noble idea, that Caribou Coffee is trying to cut down on cardboard usage by offering reusable sleeves to their daily (I fit into this category) consumers. Except taking a look at the back of the packaging reveals that all of these sleeves were 'Made in China.' While this is not the time to get into the total deterioration of America's manufacturing base, let's step back and think about this for one second. The reusable coffee sleeve I could be buying was made in a factory in China, placed into a box and shipped over the Pacific Ocean on a freighter. Not some little sail boat like the one Seth Coen used to sail to Oregon in 'The OC,' or some massive row boat, but a diesel powered freighter like the one that found Tom Hanks in 'Cast Away.' After it made it to America, it was undoubtedly shipped by train car or a semi (both diesel powered) and then it was finally hanged up in a Caribou. But the hypocrisy does not even stop there. The sleeve itself is packaged around a fake cardboard cutout that is made to resemble a cup of coffee. This would not seem like that big of a deal if the cardboard were made of recycled paper, but there is nothing on the cardboard that says it is so we can safely assume it is not.

If we were to take our micro-investigation a little further we could point out that China is the largest user of coal fired power plants in the world and that there is no way that the 'carbon footprint' of one just one persons purchase of a coffee sleeve could ever be matched by a lifetime of them buying coffee with good old fashioned cardboard sleeves.

But that is not the message massive conglomerates of any stripe want us to hear. They want us to believe that buying an 'Ipad' makes us special, and that being able to 'customize' a car makes it ours. Corporations do not want people to think for themselves. They want people to buy their products. And while it is great to see companies making strides in reusable goods, buying a 3 pack of light bulbs is not going to lessen our increasingly economically/Geo-politically/environmentally dangerous use of fossil fuels.

The same could be said about 'Cap and Trade.' Instead of actually making laws that move our nation closer to less dependence on non-renewable energy, we want to create a market for companies to keep polluting, as long as they pay for it. Taking a look at the oil spill in the Gulf, and the collapsed mine in West Virginia, is it not obvious that massive corporations would rather pay fines than actually make capital investments. Cap and Trade would not change the status quo, it would only create a market to encourage it's growth. This is just a larger version of the coffee sleeve argument. It does not really accomplish anything, and it is not even close to a step in the right direction, but a few people will sleep better at night and a few people will win elections.

Our society becomes better with science, reason, and intellectual progress, three steps our society needs to make if we are to move in the right direction.

Stop Whining about Health Care

2010-03-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

The extreme left and extreme right in this country are in the middle of a paper bag clenching panic attack. The left believes that the entire health care bill is a large corporate giveaway and it deserved to go down in flames, while the right is convinced that health care reform will do more to undermine American life than a 7 year war in Iraq based entirely under false pretenses. While there are positives and negatives in the health care bill signed on the 23rd, just because a piece of legislation in a representative democracy does not satisfy everyone completely is not a cause for panic. This position is irrational and wrong.

The problem with believing that 'my way is the only way' is that it tends to be devoid from political reality. A lack of perspective is something both sides of the spectrum tend to have in common. To the left, universal health care is a great goal and something I would prefer to the current plan, but universal health care did not have the votes. Not because there is a massive puppet corporate government controlling the United States, but because the insurance industry in this country is so large and integrated into various parts of the economy that it is going to have to die a slow death, not a rapid one. For the right, being against everything the president stands behind is not a correct way to govern. Believe it or not, there are conservatives who were on the side of health care reform, but they were betrayed by their Representatives who chose political maneuvering over doing their job. Furthermore, fueling vitriolic, and often racist beliefs does not accomplish anything other than making those on the outside looking in recoil in disgust. Nor
does decrying that these people are just 'bad apples' when they certainly would have rushed to call liberal activist loons when they burned Bush in effigy.

What that leaves our country with is a good but not great piece of legislation that is immediately going to impact people's lives. Liberal activists have to understand that our country is not the European Union. Universal health care is the goal, but at this time it was not the solution, and not believing there is any compromise is detrimental to the process. Case in point, the bill that was signed into law on the 23rd was in some ways similar to the health care bill Nixon tried to get passed almost 40 years ago. It was killed in part, by Democrats. Ted Kennedy often said that one of his biggest regrets was not passing it. Partisan divides blind people from seeing that there is room in the middle. Conservative activists seem to forget that 40% of our country is already covered by a single pay system, Medicare. People love Medicare. They also seem to forget that there were over 200 Republican amendments to a bill none of them voted for. Conservative activists also seem to forget that they have been raised in a system full of various federal mechanisms that have enriched their lives.

This is where the two radical groups diverge, because one group being idealistic while another is unrealistically naive.

The polls were wrong, the pundits did nothing other than work to get as many people angry as they could and raise their ratings. In the end the president won a huge political victory by passing the first significant piece of national legislation in the last 25 years. Now it is time to move on and think about how important it is to bring rational discourse to each national issue.

Cost controls and Subsidization

2010-03-09T20:28:00.000-08:00

Listening to various hyperbolic cries of "Socialism" and "Marxism" from people who know nothing about either topic never gets old. Case in point, a limited understanding of the various subsidies to businesses big and small that the government provides. It does not take much of our collective gray matter to see that if the government subsidizes business of any kind, that those subsidies are a form of socialism. One could also make the argument, all the more stronger since the supreme court recently recognized corporations as having the same rights of speech as individuals, that these subsidies amount to corporate welfare. This seems to rub people the wrong way, since telling a business owner that they are the recipient of 'welfare' and all of it's negative connotations only causes people and the companies they represent to become defensive. But the fact of the matter is, if the government provides a business with some form of subsidization, it is socialism.

This is not to mean that all government subsidization of government is bad. Far from it actually. In a global market, it is occasionally the job of the government to aid in the stimulation of growth in various parts of the private sector. To help a new business, or promote the growth of struggling ones. However, what often happens with long term government subsidies is a universal burden to consumers and the government.

There are two excellent examples of out of control government subsidization: farm subsidies and education subsidies. Most people are oblivious to the fact that the small family farm has nearly vanished in America. Most of these farms have been replaced by large corporate outfits that operate mega farms throughout the United States. For better or for worse, and one could make either argument, although I will say it is probably in the middle, a main reason behind the death of the farm is the government subsidization of the seeds farmers plant. How it works is quite simple: a farmer plants their seeds, and the government cuts them a check to pay for the seeds. Simple enough. The point of this originally was to make sure farmers could actually feed themselves and their families. Unfortunately, what has happened over time is that the companies that make the seeds, knowing the maximum subsidy the government will provide, have raised their prices to match the subsidy.

One could say that this move by seed producers is just the private sectors answer to the demands of the market. In reality, this is more along the lines of taking an entire row of Oreo cookies, when 6 will do. This steals money from the government, and makes people poor.

The same thing is currently happening in our education system. When Bill Clinton was president, one of the few great things he did was make more Pell Grants, and student loans available to a wider base of people. In theory this is great. Except that the corresponding move by public universities was not to lower their tuition, but instead to raise their tuition to the same percentage at which grants and aid were increasing. Coupled with the massive hits education funding has taken around the country (in Minnesota for example, the cost of tuition at the University of Minnesota has increased 25% since Tim Pawlenty was elected governor) and this amounts to the fleecing of the government, and the fleecing of individuals. What happens in situations where government subsidization is clearly unmonitored is the surge in various groups or organizations that spring up in order to exploit these subsidies. These are often called upon as responses to demand in the market. Notice the surge in technical colleges over the last 15 years? Technical colleges were always around in the droves, but until there was rampant uncontrolled government subsidization, they were inexpensive. Now they are everywhere, often with regressive rates of tuition designed around getting profit and not providing a worthwhile education, what amounts tot he complete opposite of going to college in the first place.

If the government is going to subsidize anything, it needs to do so with strict rules. Take education for example. If the government is going to become the sole lender of student loans, which is the current plan of the Obama administration, they need to cap the amount at which colleges can raise their tuition annually. This is not going to limit their ability to compete in the 'market,' it will only make them more competitive and accessible, which is what college should be.

Businesses that take money from the government should have to play by strict rules that give the government a maximum return on their investment.

Proto Capitalism

2010-02-15T12:41:00.000-08:00

One of the great debates of the modern era is America's supposed great descent into "European style socialism." While these claims and assertions by the right are abhorrently false, it would be good to examine a new approach to economic stability in the digital age.

By 'New Approach' one is not saying all of modern capitalism is a failure and must be discarded. But, what can be understood is that in order to make American style capitalism the dominant force it once was, a new strategy must be taken that combines old ideas with contemporary ones. These can best addressed in a human centered domestic policy, an equal trade policy, and security based revenue reform. These three issues, if left unresolved, seriously threaten American democracy more than anything else.

Our health care system is broken. While there is no doubt that America has the best doctors, nurses, and specialists, when people cannot afford to actually see them, there is a problem. A start to fixing America's domestic policy would be to give any American the option to buy into the Medicare system. This would create competition by providing low cost comprehensive health care, and also protect private sector health care instead of threatening it with nationalization. In tandem, the digitization of medical records would reduce costs, medical errors, and provide citizens with easy access to their medical records, and provide American IT workers jobs that could not be outsourced. Relieving small businesses the strain of medical costs under this system would allow companies to hire more people or give hard working employees a well deserved raise. Further steps to bettering our domestic policy would be institution of a national and comprehensive education policy that is well funded that promotes learning while simultaneously promotes extra curricular programs that keep children busy in a digital age. These two steps are a start at improving our lives at home. While this is being addressed, our global trade policy must be given a serious look.

Not many people know that Japan had it's own version of "Cash for Clunkers." Nor would they know that American cars were not included in Japan's take on creating automotive demand. This is simply not fair. Many people would be hard pressed to answer questions regarding the value of free trade when everyone involved is not playing the game fairly. Thus, in order for free trade to actually work the way it should, it must be fair. The solution is not to automatically tax foreign made goods with tariffs, but to remove all business incentives for companies that move jobs overseas, and to ensure that when a company does move sector's of it's business offshore that it treats international workers fairly. The government should actively promote internal job growth with not only tax incentives, but highly funded government research in robotic production. This is no easy task, but what needs to be understood is that if given the proper incentives, the business community will see the benefits of robotic factories that do not need to take a break, and only need to be monitored by American workers with advanced degrees. And while there is no doubt that certain jobs are gone forever, the government must protect it's citizens from goods that are made in sweatshops, by people that do not get breaks, and from people that are treated like slaves. One of the biggest problems when it comes to getting people to be proponents of 'free trade' is the human factor. It is difficult to be for a system that openly expolits people. If the government were to stand up for all workers, the image of America as a "City on a Hill," would actually be imaginable. Pushing forwards, what American Capitalism needs more than ever is revenue reform.

Dick Cheney was largely quoted when he said "Deficits don't matter." In some ways, he was absolutely right. With 20% of the country unemployed, the government needs to be concerned about jump starting our economy, not fixing our deficit. But where Cheney's proclamation was wrong was that governments, when not in dire straights, can spend whatever they want. This is a bankrupt ideology. When the government is wasting money, there needs to be oversight. There needs to be a group looking at the budget and making cuts. There does not need to be 3 committees when 1 will do, and there is no need for a frighteningly massive cold war military superstructure when the cold war is long over and won. To achieve economic equilibrium in the future, the government must be swift in it's regulatory practices, steadfast in it's budgetary practices, and relentless in it's collection of revenue. What this means is that the government must have a sustainable budget. And the only way any budget can be sustainable is through a combination of the three ideas just mentioned. All food, agriculture, service industries, banking industries, and all speculatory finance need to be regulated. Not in a dictatorial way, but in a way that promotes growth while protecting American consumers. This is not socialistic, this is humanistic.

The government needs to stop wasting money on a military that it cannot afford, borrowing money from Medicare and Social Security to make up the difference, and most importantly, eliminate a great deal of hierarchical bureaucracy that has been growing on the shoulders of the government for 200 years. At the same time, taxes have to go up for everyone, not just those making over 300 thousand dollars a year. Obviously, the marginal tax rate on the super rich needs to rise, but not at a level that would throw anyone under the bus because even those who are very progressive need to understand that all of the ills of the world cannot be cured by taxing the rich.

While the concepts discussed may seem like various "isms" what is essential in understanding is that while both capitalism and Marxism have their distinct advantages on paper, neither concepts have been fully applied in society. It is impossible to create an absolute free market system without large patches of inequality, and it is impossible to remove the right to private property without taking away the livelihood of a large group of people.What society is left with is growing resentment towards both systems, not fully understanding either, and shunning all concepts and attempts that would undoubtedly change the existing system. Marx called this "superstructure," and he was absolutely right. The unwillingness to change anything only perpetuates and validated a broken system.

Any new approach will be met with resistance. This is as natural as the apprehension of consumers switching from VCR to DVD players. Yet, like the DVD of the cassette, a combination of both systems is superior to the slow and inefficient system our society operates under. Through improved human centered domestic policy, and equal trade policy, and a strong domestic economic model American can once again be the center of the world.

Time for a Peaceful Revolution

2009-11-10T23:02:00.001-08:00

The majority of Americans in this country are not represented properly by either political party. Looking left or right anyone with an internet connection can see that both parties are bought and paid for by the same conglomerates, whatever side controlling the government receiving the most money. Both sides have an equally polarizing television network in their corner (MSNBC/Fox News), and both seem to always blame their lack of movement on any issue on the opposition. The more people realize this, the more frustrated they become, and the more they want to change things. When this happens people mobilize and throw out elected officials. That is what happened last year when Barack Obama was elected president. Unfortunately, not much has yet to change, and with the recession growing, people are growing more disenchanted.

Not many people are willing to admit that when people have jobs and a steady paycheck, they do not care who is in office, as long as their respective family is secure. But now 17% of our country is out of work or underemployed, and the other 83% of working Americans are in some way fearful they are going to lose their job. This is when small fears becomes a larger fear. This is when people start swallowing lies. This is when factory workers are duped into thinking that free trade is going to make their job more secure, when teachers take pay cuts, when unions are strong armed, when people compare the holocaust to healthcare reform, the president to a dictator, and any government program as over-reaching. In a world with money, having economic security is essential, and it would only make sense that in our country people start focusing on what makes us different from each other when it seems when the light at the end of the tunnel is all but burnt out.

Regardless of what someone’s ideological persuasion is, it is baffling to see that the Democrats have yet to do anything. This is because of the aforementioned corporate control of the government. Ideologically blind liberals are just as dangerous as ideologically blind conservatives, and slowly but surely both are waking up to the fact that everything they stand for is irrelevant, because belief system has been hijacked and used against them. This is usually the point that disenchanted voters start mulling over the issue of a third party. And while a third party would certainly shake things up, in the current system the end would be the same. Corporations would donate to the third party, naturally, and in the end our country would be at yet another ideological gridlock. For there to be a functioning third party in this country, all political parties need to function period. One way to accomplish this would be a complete overhaul of campaign finance reform that eliminated all corporate contributions and limited personal contributions. Still, one has to ask themselves what a third party would be all about.

Most people seem to define themselves as ‘moderate,’ but the more people debate each other, the more people add ‘meat’ to their respective belief systems, the more apparent it is that many people fall into the category of moderately liberal. This is not a finding that is based on any bias, but the fact that most American citizens fall into a category of being middle class, and their socio-economic lifestyle is best maintained by so-called liberal values. But there is already a ‘liberal’ party, and like it’s conservative counterpart it misrepresents it’s voters and does not get anything done. So having a moderately liberal third party would not accomplish much of anything. Neither would a party based on theology (a commonly proposed third party) because although most Americans identify themselves as ‘religious,’ most people firmly believe in church and state separation, since our country was founded on the basis of escaping a theocracy. A party based in the idea of the 'free market' would also fail, as it is an extension of a neoconservative viewpoint that in the end would only maintain and extend the prosperity of a few Americans. The lack of identifiable party ideals in the end, leaves us with only one option: revolution.

Revolution is a fairly strong word that brings with it a great deal of emotion. Yet when the government fails to meet the needs of it's citizens, it is the responsibility of any citizen in any democracy to revolt and press for change. That does not mean we should blow up buildings or run through the streets with machine guns. What it means is that people should organize peacefully, with a unified message. That our nation of middle income workers should collectively strike, and with the exception of those working for vital industries (power, health, etc) the middle class in this country should literally walk away from their jobs at the same time, and refuse to work until changes are made that actually benefit everyone instead of large conglomerates, billionaires, and millionaires. While it may seem like a radical idea, it is peaceful, and actually plausible. What would our government do if everyone stopped working and went home for the day? Would they force everyone back to work? Would they let people sit at home and starve? No. They would be forced to stop making excuses and do something. If they chose not to, it would be revealed that our entire system of government was a sham.

Any revolution must strike down the status quo. Our president may have campaigned on tearing down that status, but instead chose to embrace it. Each of us, this young generation, needs to rise up and embrace the rights and obligations placed upon us by our forbearers, fought for by our ancestors, and instilled in us by our parents; that our nation is one of many, yet stands above others as a land of opportunity, equality, and hope. If we choose to ignore the injustice in front of our eyes we shall become blinded by the falsehood that prosperity is reserved for the few, and in this blindness the ideals of generations will be erased by the unforgiving current of history.

State of the Nation, Part 3

2009-11-09T15:58:00.000-08:00

As our nation continues it’s downward spiral, it seems that both commonly accepted mainstream ideologies are pointing fingers. But as any wise parent tells their child: “When you point a finger at someone, there are three pointing right back at you.” Such is the case in modern America. In the 80’s the republicans embraced the free market and began tearing down regulation. In the 90’s the democrats furthered the process by deregulating banks. In the last nine years, both parties have shown their collective ambivalence towards regulation of any kind. In these thirty years of deregulation and mass consumption, something quite odd has happened in America: the middle class have become fervent supporters of not only the ruling class, but the idea of upward mobility.

It is strange to see that during this health care debate, those most in need of affordable health care have chosen to side with large conglomerates instead of their friends and neighbors. Suddenly, these massive companies are not only patriotic, but have been anointed as the spirit of American free enterprise. It is baffling to listen or read about how someone can actually try to defend how people do not have a fundamental right to something as simple as healthcare. Often times, these are the same people that claim those who do not work are lazy, or those who want health care should seek a job that provides it. Are there lazy people in the world? Absolutely. But the 17% of Americans that are currently unemployed or underemployed are surely not all lazy people. And of the 30 million Americans that do not currently have health insurance for whatever reason probably want a job that provides health care of some sort. Unfortunately, any person with reading comprehension skills could see that 30 million and 17% are pretty large numbers, and to make the claim that someone is ‘lazy’ or ‘needs to find another job’ is shortsighted to say the least. What this problem points to in my mind is not only how sadly misinformed that American populace is (Who really believes that half of all the doctors in American would quit their jobs if there was any healthcare reform? I mean seriously?) but how absolutely selfish our society has become over the last 30 years.

Most of those who rage against health care seem to stand by two points: the government is big enough, and do not take ‘my money’ for your ‘socialism.’ So let us start off with the size of the government. Most conservatives point to FDR as the go to guy for a mushrooming government. Well, look at Reagan, Nixon, and George W. Bush. First, Reagan worked as hard as he could to grow the military during the cold war, by spearheading development of missile protection systems. Nixon did the same thing (he even started the EPA, much to the chagrin of conservatives who know nothing about history). Now let is move on over to George W. Bush. He actually founded an entirely new branch of government: the Department of Homeland Security. This was the largest expansion of the role of government in the history of the United States. Wait a second; I thought only liberals grew the government. Nope. It seems that all conservative ideologues are concerned about is whether or not our growing government helps people of different heritage, not whether or not we build more bombs and spy on our own citizens. We would not want to actually help anyone, or give them a leg up in the world, would we? Nope.

Then we move on to listen to people complaining about ‘their money’ and ‘socialism’. Here are a few ‘socialist’ enterprises: police and fire departments, parks and recreation departments (ever played in a city ran little league? Congratulations, your family just supported a socialist enterprise), the public education system, the national park system, the interstate highway system, and the military, just to name a few. So, when I hear or read about people complaining about which money is theirs, and how they do not like where it is going, I often scratch my head in befuddlement, as almost every one of my peers was educated at a public school, and has used some form of a government program in their lifetime. What is more frustrating about this is that people either lack the understanding or the will to see that paying taxes helps everyone, not just poor people. All of these ‘socialist’ programs I just mentioned are paid for with tax dollars. We cannot pick and choose. We cannot say: “Well I have to take care of my family, and my kid doesn’t play football, so I should not have to give them my money,” because in the end, this same person may need to use another service that their taxes provide. These are the same people that are either related to teachers who are underpaid and only make a reasonable living because of their strong union, or have actually personally experienced what it is like to have to go to the community and ask for money due to astronomical medical bills. Not only is this a fundamental failure in understanding, but it is the pinnacle of American ignorance; a virus that my generation has yet to cure.

In the end we are left with a society that only seems to be focused on ‘me’ rather than ‘we.’ There is no excuse that our country lacks an efficient health care system that covers everyone at a fair cost. There is no excuse that people are unable to understand that helping everyone reach a level of prosperity should be the goal of any society, and the goal of the government is to protect it’s people. Our generation may volunteer more, but from what I have seen and experienced that does not matter. What actually matters is that we must work together as a society to make the lives of everyone around us better. This is not some deadly ‘ism,’ this is what it means to be human.

Ideological Noise

2009-07-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

People rally around chants of ‘less government’ and ‘lower taxes’ without having the slightest inkling of what those statements actually mean.

So let us start with the notion of ‘less government.’ Where do we make the cuts? Surely a few things could go, maybe cutting down on certain parts of government bureaucracy that, like all forms of bureaucracy, are just a little redundant. But who decides what should be cut? And from where? How could we guarantee that this accountant was free of ties to industry that could benefit from cutting a few ribbons of government? These are questions that a bunch of people shouting buzz words simply cannot answer with factual information. What about the people that actually lose their jobs from these cuts we are going to make? What do we tell those who have undoubtedly given incredible amounts of their time to average paying jobs? Do we tell them they just picked the wrong career, and wish them well and send them into a most likely hostile job market? More questions which happen to be impossible to answer. Most times the answers to these questions will be answered with hostility and the claim: “I am not in the government, I don’t do the budget. I just think there should be less government.” So even though these people have no idea how the government functions, they want to make cuts. There is no other way to put it: this way of thinking is not only embarrassingly idiotic, but dangerous.

Continuing down the road to nowhere is the idea of ‘lower taxes.’ Paying taxes does not put a smile on anyone’s face, but if a taxpayer actually stops to think about where the money goes, they tend to realize that the money is well spent. But since we are on the way to ‘lowering those high taxes,’ let us ask some more questions. First, for whom do we lower taxes? If we lower taxes, how will the government be able to pay its employees to work? What do we do about the massive budget shortfalls that will result from lower tax revenue? More questions that those rallying around buzz words cannot answer. Why is it so difficult to answer the core questions surrounding a position? Because both of these questions cancel each other out.

Shrinking the size of government would lower the tax revenue the government would be able to generate, since government employees also pay taxes. One would then argue that the government would be shrunk and then taxes would be lowered to make up for the surplus generated by a suddenly streamlined government. This is just asinine. Because the fact is that the higher the unemployment, the more strain there is on the government’s coffers. Therefore, shrinking the size of government is never a positive solution since the effect of a large swath of newly unemployed people would hurt the books of the government. And that is where the problem of cutting taxes hits the wall, because if we cut taxes we have to lay off government workers or workers contracted by the government, thus raising the unemployment rate.

It could be said that this train of thought could lead to everyone being employed by the government. Then again, those who make this claim are the same people who believe the ideologies denounced in the paragraphs above. While the government is a tool like any that should be used when things are broken, the government is not always the solution. The government is more of gauze for when the bleeding becomes too severe. Not understanding that the role of the government has always been to protect the people is a failure of common sense. This lack of understanding is disturbing because putting the blinders on and heading down the track never leads anywhere positive. These same people rallying against socialism and dictatorships fail to understand that is exactly what their ideologies promote.

Rationalizing the Cost of a National Health Care Plan

2009-06-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

With the talk of a national public health care option heating up, the current conservative response to a looming national plan is decry that it is too costly to provide the nation with health care. When in reality, who cares? I ask this question because six years ago the Congress gave President Bush authority to wage war against Iraq, not requiring a price tag, let alone an estimate. The war on multiple fronts has cost our country trillions of dollars, money that could have been spent on a health care plan. Therefore, one could argue that anyone against health care because of cost values going to war with other countries in the name of ‘security’ instead of providing every American with affordable health care. Health care makes Americans far more secure than a war ever could.

Simply put, I am willing to be that more lives have been lost in this country because of our profit based health care system than the total deaths of 9/11, both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and every other act of terror against Americans combined. So what those who are afraid of spending money on something that will benefit many instead of a select few (like every war in history basically has) have to ask themselves is: How do you sleep at night?

Public Health Care Solutions

2009-06-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

Unless one happens to have their head in a hole in the ground, the legislative fight over public health care has begun. And while the benefits of a public health care option should be obvious to anyone who has ever had to pay a medical bill, the arguments against a public option have taken center stage in the media. Obviously this has to do more with the boat load of medical advertisements and corresponding revenue generated than reasonable arguments against providing inexpensive health care to every American. Conglomerated media has identified the drop in revenue that would result with a nationwide health insurance plan mainly based off of preventative care and cost control. Once the government competes with private health providers, the astronomical price of medication will decrease, and many drug companies will have to cut their advertising budget. This is why many media outlets labeled ‘liberal media’ by conservative fundamentalists are actually more in line with free market ideologies than those same conservatives are willing to admit. Still, there are realistic compromises that must be made on the issue of a national health care system, and understanding those compromises will bring satisfaction to both the right and left.

Cost is not an issue. No matter what someone who claims to be a deficit hawk happens to believe. If there average cost of health insurance for a family of four is $12,000 a year, surely the government’s cost would be less. One would in turn then argue that the amount of people using a public option would drive the total cost of health care up. Wrong again, as the entire concept of insurance is that the pool of risk is spread out to cover the cost of actual care and while the starting costs would be great because people would actually be going to the doctor, the long term costs of a public option would be considerably less.

Making a public health care option is not socialism. In fact, having a public option will only make private business work harder to keep their customers. Obviously the government and its unlimited resources will win the battle over time, but a public option will not prevent people from having private insurance and will undoubtedly allow the private industry to become more specialized in the realm of supplemental insurance or even plastic surgery insurance.

The one argument that actually has traction is it is a bad idea to completely destroy the health insurance industry by offering a no deductable option against the private insurance industry. Even though a no-deductable insurance plan should be the eventual goal of a public option, offering it to the masses immediately instead of only to Americans with the lowest incomes would be detrimental to the American economy. Mainly because the amount of people that would shed their health insurance plan and jump over to the free plan would be massive, and would be answered by the private industry with layoffs. While it need not be said that there is no pity for an out of work executive, a layoff of the claims adjuster who makes $38,000 a year will affect the economy. And while many of those working in the private industry will go over to the public plan, it is not like our government is nationalizing the industry and retaining all of the workers. A public option will result in redundancies, but it is important that they happen gradually instead of all at once.

But this is not at all where the public option dies; it only hits a snag and becomes gradual instead of immediate change. Cost is not an issue; neither is race, or concepts of socialism. What is at issue is the risk of massive job loss with a significant change in the insuring of a majority of Americans. This is why it is important that the public option is weighted to provide health care to the poorest Americans at no cost, and to significantly reduce the cost of health care for average Americans. Because an immediate shift from cost based care to free care would only hurt our economy, whereas a planned transition to a national plan would allow the job losses to be staggered and absorbed. This would also allow the added pocket money middle class Americans to be directly injected into the economy instead of the saving that would result in another unemployment spike.

At the core of every anti public option argument it is difficult to comprehend why conservatives are against public care, as conservatives tend to believe that giving the people more money in their pockets is a good thing. If 70% of our economy is based off of consumer spending, giving middle class people more money will surely make up for the losses of massive gains the drug companies and health insurance companies manage to see every quarter. But it quickly becomes apparent that the reason for conservative backlash is simple: being for a public plan completely goes against the ideologies that have been the forefront of conservatism for the last 30 years, and a successful public plan would only invalidate conservative ideology and bring about a democratic swing in the government not seen since Roosevelt. But one thing is certain: a public plan would allow the private health care industry to do what it has been doing to Americans for decades: die a slow death.

Advancing American Society, Part 1

2009-06-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

There comes a time when all services whose benefits outweigh those of free enterprise be absorbed by the government for the betterment of a society. While the idea of expanding government disrupts theories of free enterprise, what needs to be reevaluated is our understanding of ethical choices in regards to equal global prosperity. When a service is provided that becomes integral to everyday life, eventually it becomes necessary for that service to function as an entitlement. Two prime examples of this concept are banking and health services. Both of these industries have transcended and overwhelmed the value of free enterprise, thus endangering their ability to advance positively.

For a time it made perfect sense for banks to be public for profit institutions. The world was less connected, and the amount of small town banks made competition close to what could constitute a free market ideal. But over time the sense of capitalism eroded as all available markets were cornered and filled. Demand would always fluctuate, and like most businesses there would be highs and lows that would shape loans, interest rates, and other variables in the banking sector. But there was not any new product to dramatically raise demand, and with public banks the bottom line and short term gains became more important than long term investment. Essentially, the publicly owned banks had goals of profit which directly contradicted the aims of saving and lending. These new ‘products,’ however detrimental in the long run brought about short term gains that made even the most wary warm to increasingly large sums of money. Like all things speculative, the end was catastrophic and required government intervention. Unfortunately, the intervention was not nearly enough as these banks were basically allowed to shore up their losses by breaking the backs of faithful customers, and positioning themselves for another series of speculation and high profit margins. It is at this time apparent that it becomes the responsibility of the government to absorb these banks to protect citizens from the pitfalls of capitalism. In a modern society banking should not be for profit: banks should lend to fuel private enterprise, not be a private enterprise. Therefore it is important that our society addresses the importance of limiting the power of banks by decreasing their size, removing ownership from the public sector, and bringing clear regulation into every inch of savings and lending. Letting the guardians of free enterprise become devoured by out of control capitalism has led our society down the road to ruin. And as our countries ability to finance itself has become crippled, so has our ability to care for ordinary citizens.

If the beginning of the Hippocratic Oath is to ‘First do no harm,’ it is entirely contradictory in the practice of medicine that anyone is ever turned away from medical treatment. While this has been said repeatedly, it should be the aim of a good government to place the care of citizens within its priorities. Because if a government can guarantee military protection from war, surely it can provide care for the far more consistent and constant threat of illness. Some would argue in the case of medicine that government control would halt development of new treatments and cause scientific stagnancy. Yet the concept of medical invention for profit itself is unethical; people will always want to cure disease and prolong life. This is something proven throughout history, as some of our greatest medical achievements have come not under the guise of profit but under the desire to extinguish disease. Government intervention would actually have the opposite effect in medicine, as its ability to research can out pace any private business. Government non-profit medicine would not remove people from choice either; rather it would shift more of the responsibility onto the individual rather than for-profit corporations who seek profit alone. Government medicine is not about individuals getting rich. What needs to be understood by business as well as individuals is how important it is for our society to move away from individual achievement into the realm of societal advancement. While the individual must be honored and respected for contributing to society, what should be recognized is the importance of the contribution. Like banking, medicine has the ability to help individuals while enriching the lives of many. Where banking provides the loan that helps a business grow, medicine provides the treatment for the business owner’s family and the employees of the aforementioned business. With this a connection is made; anyone can see that if a government provides entitlements to citizens other sectors of free enterprise will emerge, thus allowing the concept of American capitalism to flourish. This same concept of interconnectivity can be tied into the government having a role in societal advancement.

When a service or field is emerging that could provide a country with prolonged internal stability, it is the responsibility of the government to help develop that field. Like healthcare and banking, our national security should be rooted in the concept that what is good for ordinary citizens is even better for the government. This is why it is in the best interests of our government to pursue clean and renewable energy with all of its capabilities. Petroleum, coal, and nuclear energy are all commodities that require more energy to defend than to produce. They are also limiting the possibilities of our long term survival as a species. Therefore it becomes the role of government to either take control of scientific development, or to nudge private business into the driver’s seat. In this situation it is obvious that using government resources is cheaper than those of private corporations, and that in the long run citizens will benefit rather than share holders in a publicly traded company. Let me provide an example. Say the government developed cost effective and free solar panels for every home in America. While not entirely relieving our dependence on inefficient commodities, this would allow a massive reduction in their consumption. This would also spur private sector development in other renewable energy sources, like wind and geothermal to fill in the rest of the gap. Furthermore, while the government would employ citizens to design and manufacture the panels, the private sector would be used to transport and install them. Thus the argument for government hurting the private sector is erased, as is the idea that private corporations would cease to exist if the government competed against them. Because while there will always be things the government can do better, the private sector is still essential because it brings balance to the field of play and vice versa.

One could argue that these ideas are overly idealistic and utopian. One could also argue that in a society like this bureaucracy would takeover, and cronyism could run rampant. This is surely a real possibility. But what must be understood is that by removing certain essential fields from the category of being ‘for profit institutions’ and moving them into the sector of societal entitlements, we allow other forms of growth and innovation to rise in their place. What has occurred over the course of my life is the opposite; our society has become infected with a poisonous brand of capitalism that violates the rights of citizens under the guise of shareholder satisfaction. This is not free enterprise, this is unethical greed centered individualism that has destroyed our ideals and threatens to tear the fabric of our nation apart. It is time for solutions that benefit the many instead of the few.

I can fix America in 3 paragraphs

2009-06-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

No matter where side is spinning, America is in a free fall. Most of out banks are solvent, true unemployment is in double digits, our planet is being killed by our apathy towards scientific progress, and the deck is stacked against the average American. One could argue that the solution to these problems requires common ground, but all of the compromises that we as a people have made are no longer the bedrock of America they are shifting sand. The time for compromise is over. Honest people have been told for too long that compromise is moral high ground of idealism. That should end now.

To fix our broken financial system we need air tight regulation, a simplified and strict tax code that punishes people who cheat it, and trade policies that are beneficial to importers and exporters alike. A cap of all interest rates at 10%, and the elimination of for profit banking institutions would not only make it easier for people to borrow, but limit the probability of future banking meltdowns. As a society, the idea of ownership without work needs to end. All immigrants within our borders should be given amnesty so businesses are forced to pay them fair wages, and racist whites stop blaming them for taking jobs. Unemployment can be solved two ways: by increasing the minimum wage so that it is a living wage and by creating a robust Works Progress Administration to rebuild the parts of our country we have let deteriorate.

To restore our manufacturing base and embrace our future energy needs we need to create a national solar panel company that provides solar panels for every home and business in America. To lower the costs of operating a business and to promote equality, we must provide a public health care option to compete with private insurance. Doing this will cover every American and lay the ground work for universal Medicare. Keeping our society healthy is a goal we can make progress on by regulating our food industry to guarantee that the animals we slaughter are healthy and treated humanely, and that the produce we eat does not harm the earth it grows on. In furthering the opportunities of citizens, education should be realistically affordable to those who seek it. Most importantly, stop believing that change is a utopian impossibility.

Welcome to the Tea Party!

2009-04-16T15:24:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was tax day, a day that for some reason Americans dread. I have never really understood why people have always hated paying taxes on April 15th when they pay taxes on most goods and services all year round. Maybe it is because the most I have ever paid into the federal government is around 15 dollars, but I do not take out any deductions when I get paid and because of this the government usually gives me a check to what I have overpaid. But many Americans are not as fortunate as I, many have children and mountains of debt, so they have to take deductions and actually pay in for what they withheld from the government over the course of the years. Seems fair enough, right? Apparently not.

An estimated 250,000 people came out for ‘tea parties’ across the nation yesterday, and I will admit I am frightened by what I saw. The level of ignorance displayed was frightening. Protestors held signs that covered the spectrum of racism to fascism, often times not understanding what they were actually protesting about. One of my favorite signs was: Obama=Hitler. A CNN journalist approached a sign holder and asked him to explain why the president was a fascist and the guy actually said “He just is. He is just like Hitler.” For anyone who does not understand what fascism is I will lay it out in one sentence: Fascism is a nationalist form of government where citizens have few, if any civil rights while the government suppresses other nations with fear for its own corporate and authoritative interests. After the last eight years it is understandable for people to fear fascism, but the people at these protests did not seem to mind that the last eight years was full of citizens of our nation and the world being denied rights and shocked into fear for the interests of the United States.

When these protestors were not shouting about the president being one in the same as Hitler, they were spouting off the importance of hanging liberal senators, a new violent revolution, and putting the president on trial for treason. Once again, I am wondering where these protestors have been for the past eight years. Then again I have been to anti war rallies, and I have never seen a sign advocating for the death of conservative congress members or violent uprisings. Because even though people hated President Bush, they respected the fact that he was president of the United States. The news media has been working hard painting these protestors as an extreme minority, but I disagree. I have written extensively on conservatives not understanding what socialism really is, and these tea parties are no different. I do not believe in conservatives or liberals, I believe there are 4 very distinct groups of political belief: progressive, liberal, moderate, and conservative. Of these 4, 70% of Americans are progressive, moderate, or liberal. The 30% that are conservative are usually uniformed and irrational. They call for deaths of presidents, say that God hates Fags, blow up abortion clinics, believe America would be better as a theocracy, and go on the radio to tell people to buy guns because the president is going to take their guns away. This 30% of Americans believes that the system is set up for them to fail, and that they are having a tough time in life for a laundry list of sensational theories that often incorporate racism and partial truths. These are the sort of people like the governor of Texas that actually called for Texas to secede from the union because of Tax policies that help almost everyone who lives in Texas, and actually denied 550 million dollars in unemployment aid.

These people make the argument that my generation is going to be paying government debt back for our entire lives without understanding that the United States has only been deficit free for maybe 6 years in its entire history. What it comes down to is what one chooses to believe. People that do not question anything they hear on television or that comes from the mouth of Sean Hannity are conservatives. But someone who voted for McCain and while upset he lost, understands and accepts that Obama is the president for at least the next four years is a moderate. Everyone else is liberal or progressive, and they voted independent or for Obama. Conservatives often support things without knowing what they are actually supporting and having a ‘tea party’ to shout about unfair taxation to 5% of the richest Americans that will not even begin until the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 is the pinnacle of why conservatism in America is a delusional way of thinking.

People ask me why I concern myself so much with what other people’s political beliefs are, and I always respond with a simple answer: whenever someone believes in something, they should be able to defend it with facts. Do not shout something from the rooftops that cannot actually be backed up with real information. The people at these rallies are so frightening to me because they did not come to protest armed with facts and a unified message, they came armed with anger and vitriol. Those are the type of people like Timothy McVeigh, who was so convinced the government was near a civil war that he took the war to the people of Oklahoma City. Protests have made our nation stronger, but until these ‘conservatives’ actually know what they are fighting for, they should stay home.

Stop it with the 'Socialism is bad' nonsense

2009-02-19T22:01:00.000-08:00

Since it has been a week of firsts, like the largest middle class tax cut our nation’s history, I figured I would go and tackle something that is a tried and true topic: socialism. For anyone unclear as to what socialism actually is, here is a quick definition from Dictionary.com:

A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. Unfortunately, socialism is often confused with communism. Communism is:

A system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.

While these two ‘isms’ are somewhat similar, there is a clear difference; socialism does not go hand in hand with oppressive governments. So what in the hell is going on in our media and their strange fascination with the word socialism? Well it is a bit complicated, and needs a little explanation. I have come to the conclusion that all mainstream cable news media is a reaction based form of reporting that does not actually report news but shapes information resembling what news would be if it were a product. If you have the time, go and watch all three major news outlets and watch how they repeat themselves every 35 minutes or so. There is no in depth reporting, no corrections, and seemingly little to no investigation prior to a live feed. Look at how networks react to a drop in the Dow. Most people do not understand how the stock market works and that is fine. But know this, it rarely effects the average citizens everyday lives. In the current economic climate it can play a small part, but there is an outside force that is affecting the market.

Most people forget that each of the 3 main cable news outlets happen to be owned by publically traded companies that have stake in the stock market. Not only does this eliminate their journalistic impartiality, but a drop in the market makes reporters fear for their jobs. Now it is not at all new to pick on the mainstream media, but over the course of the last few months I have grown tired not only of blatant partisanship (conservative Fox News and liberal MSNBC), but the disturbing national phenomena with panels (CNN literally had about 20 people in the same room on election night). From one side partisans scream at each other, and then their respective panel of ‘experts’ debate on what the viewer should think.
We have seen these panels of ‘experts’ before. Except last time they were retired generals working secretly with the Pentagon to sell the War in Iraq to the American people. Even though these panels are no longer selling wars, they are clearing dealing in ideas. Networks use these panels to abuse the trust of their viewers, because people trust those with experience. And each cable news network uses these panels to craft the message of their broadcasts. Which is where the socialism fear scapegoat rears it’s ugly head. Calling anyone a pinko or a commie has been pretty much verboten since the McCarthy era, but with these panels in full force, mentioning socialism diverts everyone’s attention from real topics and moves the focus to fear. Instead of speculating on what may happen and what people should think, the panels leave message and champion the perils of socialism which even they seem to confuse with communism. This is a fear tactic usually addressed by a member of the panel that is so to the right they make the Nixon conservative blush. And as everyone knows, fear is the weapon of choice of the Republican Party. And socialism has always been their favorite cannon to load.

So why is there such a strange fascination with socialism? Well, we have reactionary news with interest in the financial markets using people to shape their message that are often openly partisan, and a political party that is damaged to the point at which they are shooting at a Panzer tank like Tom Hanks in ‘Saving Private Ryan.’ Like Tom Hanks, this party fears death and a rebuttal of the policies they have been pushing for the last generation. This is a lethal combination that is hard to get away from unless we think of the good that socialism brings to our society. Police departments, Fire departments, and schools are 3 socialist enterprises. They are funded and governed by the state. Each of those things people take for granted. You do not see people pointing that out when they rally against socialism. Nor do they acknowledge that we have a socialist military. A classic rebuff of people to socialism is that advancement stops when things become socialized, this is a classic anti universal health care argument. Well the stun gun was not around in the twenties, neither were modern fire trucks and complex oxygen relay systems. Take a look at the last 100 years of military technology and how it has advanced at the hands of private enterprise. The private sector developed them for the government sector and moved things forward. This is what would happen under a single payer health care system.

Socialism should not be applied to every part of our country. There needs to be private business. But there are some realities all of us need to face: socialism is not a bad word, but a way to classify things that benefit all of American society as a whole. We need socialist health care, and socialist fire departments, and a socialist military to protect us. What socialism should really mean to all of us as Americans is that socialist sectors of our government are basic human rights that should be cherished and protected. Not used to divide people. Remember that the last 30 years of this country has contained very powerful individuals claiming that anything that is beneficial to the masses is costly socialism. And over the last 30 years we have witnessed the meteoric rise of the upper class, 3 wars, 5 recessions, and no real help for middle class Americans. So the question all of us should be asking ourselves is whether or not socialist practices are the problem or the solution to societal advancement.

Financial Common Sense

2009-02-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

As our economy continues its freefall there has been a great deal of speculation of the long term effects of a deeply indebted United States. Historically speaking when the debt of a country exceeds its GDP, the country in question loses a great deal of its political capital around the world. Believe it or not that is exactly where America stands. Without getting knee deep in statistics, our national debt is over 10 trillion dollars, likely to reach 13 trillion dollars by the end of the year because of massive deficit spending. And although deficit spending is a proven way to fight recessions, deficit spending is usually accompanied with leveraging in the form of tax increases. Unfortunately tax increases, like Social Security, are the third rail of American politics. If our nation hopes to be prosperous in the future it has to come to grips not only with harsh realities but misconceptions about finance in general.

Here are the facts. Over thirty years we have deregulated banking, telecommunications, mining, healthcare, and manufacturing. Of those five, which have provided positive opportunities for Americans? Banking got a lot of people rich, but systemic risk infected the banking system of our entire country to the point at which our own government is on the brink of bankruptcy. Deregulation of the telecommunications industry gave companies like Comcast dominance over massive areas of our country with little to no competition and allowed them to raise prices at will. Mining companies blow up entire mountains to find coal or other minerals; that we end up shipping to China because we stopped manufacturing things here. We killed our manufacturing business to drive up stock points, and we let health care companies put a stranglehold on nearly every American. The time for the free market has passed. Uncontrolled and unfettered capitalism has proven to be a morally bankrupt ideology. Over the past thirty years we have seen that the less restriction we place upon business, the more businesses tend to do to maximize their profits. While there is nothing wrong with turning a profit, businesses tend to do this mainly at the expense of workers.

So what can we do? We can act aggressively. First, we need to immediately set in motion a single payer health care system in this country to compete with massive HMOs. This will not only drive down health care costs, but provide every American with healthcare, thus lowering bankruptcies and stabilizing some credit markets over the long term. Secondly we need massive campaign finance reform along with ethics reform that makes it illegal for private corporations to donate to any member of government, along with provisions limiting all donations of any form to 2,000 dollars. Ethically, anyone who is in congress should not be able to become a lobbyist or a consultant in Washington D.C. Ever. Third, we need real and serious tax reform in this country. It should be easier for average Americans to do their taxes, and harder for the rich to cheat. A simplified tax code would do this. Along with tax code changes it is absolutely necessary to increase taxes on individuals and families making more than 300,000 dollars a year. Along with this tax increase, the Marginal tax rate (the percentage of tax incurred on people making more than 3 million dollars a year) needs to be raised to pre-Reagan levels. This is revenue our government desperately needs. Fourth, we need to bring back the regulations that have been repealed over the last 3o years. No more tricky loans, massive outsourcing, and destruction of our environment. Those thirty years after World War Two were the golden age of our country. It was a time when business respected people, and people respected business. Fifth, after all of this is said and done we need a sound energy policy. Our country has lacked one of these since the end of the Second World War, and it is time our nation got onto the right track. This can be done by a massive investment in ‘green’ technology. Wind, solar, and geothermal energy are the future, and our ability to harness these will determine our military and financial strength for generations to come. This energy policy also consists of an overhaul of our energy and transportation infrastructure. We need both of these to combat high fuel costs and to guarantee that incidents like freezing power lines in Kentucky do not become a regular occurrence. Finally, all of us as citizens need to make real sacrifices. We need to stop over extending ourselves, and idolizing celebrities who lead lifestyles we will most likely never achieve. Instead, all of us need to start helping each other more. It starts with selflessness, not selfishness.

Our problems are greater than any of us want admit. The solutions run parallel in difficulty. But if we stand up for what we believe to be true, what we believe to be just the difficulty goes away. The days of dishonestly have come to an end. It was the dream of our founders to be a diverse people with a collective set of ideals. This dream will come to an end if we let selfishness infect the lifeblood of our country. It is our time to act. We must do so swiftly and with grace.

Where were you when everything went to hell?

2009-01-23T23:08:00.000-08:00

Where were you when everything went to hell?

Since this has been one of those ‘where were you when’ weeks that our country has not had since September 11th, I began to wonder if the swearing in of our 44th President was going to be the moment when our country finally woke up. By waking up, I mean awakening to the fact that for the last thirty years every citizen of this country has been lied and stolen from. It has come from both “sides” of the American political landscape, but more importantly it comes from individuals and corporations alike who care nothing about people but only about money. There are many reasons why this has occurred, but when we look at some of them we can see that we have not only been lied to, but we have willingly gone along with the lie. Unfortunately, not many of my generation understand how much they have been swindled and duped. While I will willingly admit that I do not have all the answers I do know facts and I do understand that this is one of those moments in American history that our failure to act at this moment will lead to an unimaginable catastrophe.

Our social security problems are not the problem of baby boomers getting old; they are the problem of our government using Social Security to cover up our massive deficits after our government cut taxes on the rich in half (more on that later). After his re-election in 2004, George W. Bush talked about privatizing social security, effectively making our government retirement fund into one big 401k. This is not a new idea, Reagan tried it, and so did H.W. Bush. The idea has always been centered on the idea that “it is my money; I should be able to get it when I want it and spend it on what I want.” But that was spin. The purpose of Social Security has and always will be to protect people when they retire so they can live a dignified existence after a life of back breaking. Many claim that the privatization of Social Security would cause the stock market to surge like 401ks did when they took over pensions. And since a 401k is basically a constant money flow to the market, the stock market would stay somewhat balanced because people were always putting money in. Except there is one catch with this idea that is often overlooked: the only people who always benefit from the stock market are the super rich. Privatization would only line the pockets of mega-corporations and give them the capital they need to find as many ways as they can to cut jobs and raise dividends to the rich share holders who actually play the market. The fact of the matter is, after how much people have lost in their 401ks this year, is it really a wise move to gamble with the nation’s retirement? But privatization of our retirement fund is just the beginning.

Why is it that our health care in this country is so bad that it has become a walking joke? Everyone knows the facts about health care related deaths, bankruptcies, denied claims, and people too afraid to go to the doctor because they cannot afford it. Why in the world does this country not have a socialized health care system that serves every American at a reasonable rate? Because people have been duped yet again; our nation has been led to believe that having affordable health care for everyone will only lead to massive taxes and “the government picking my doctor.” Let us address the first issue: massive taxes. Sure, there would be an increase in our taxes for our medical expenses. But imagine that on a pay stub that the amount we pay into Medicare increased to what that pay stub used to label as an expense to our HMO. Because Medicare is a single payer healthcare system that could be rolled onto every American gradually, and it is unlikely many Americans would see a decrease in pay because of a national plan. They might actually see an increase, since the cost of care plans would no longer be irrational. My favorite response to a universal healthcare plan is that “The government would be picking your doctor, and you don’t want some bureaucrat picking your doctor.” As opposed to what, an insurance company bureaucrat that works for a company that makes more money not helping people. Think about it, what does insurance do? It covers someone or something in case of emergency. But if there are no emergencies, that money is pure profit. Therefore, it is in the interest of every health insurance provider to not provide service. And like the death industry, people are always getting sick and people are always going to need doctors. Health Insurance Companies really could care less if any of us lived or died as long as we were paying our premium while doing it. As our debt piles up from health care, often people get thrown out of their homes.

Writing about the depression we are moving into is difficult because it is so complex that economists with PhDs have difficulty understanding it. But as I have written many times before, it is simply explained in that the entire world has more debt than it does actual equity. Pile on top of that that individuals are making less money than they have in nearly a decade and things add up. Too much funny money made prices rise, while wages decreased. All the while this debt was traded to people with more money. When the people on the bottom could not pay, the whole set of teacups collapsed. During this time, we were told that the market was driving us into a new age. During an extra five minutes, Google what our stock market has done over the last 100 years. Over the last 30 years our stock has raised over 7000 points. With all that wealth and prosperity, one would think we would be living like kings. Except most people in this country live like servants, fearing they could lose their jobs at any moment and that the king is going to take their house. We live in a time of prosperity for the few and little for anyone else. It is time for us to collectively believe that the mega rich are going to help provide for us little people. The last time that happened in this country was the 1700s. But there are solutions that are easy to come by.

People have to face it, cutting taxes outright is a bad thing. Because people seem to forget that when taxes get cut, the money that used to pay for something is no longer there. This is why Reagan began borrowing from the Social Security pool, because after he cut the marginal tax rate on the rich in half he had to come up with the money somewhere. And it stayed there during Clinton’s years (although he raised the tax on the rich slightly, he still had to borrow from Social Security) and was later cut down more by Bush II. Bush II also slashed the death tax to shreds, even though the whole purpose of the death tax was and is to prevent plutocratic elements of our government from forming. Eventually, these deficits became too big, and we had to borrow massive amounts of money from foreign governments to pay the bills. Even worse is that the rich can afford to pay more taxes. A trip to visualizingeconomics.com will show anyone that in 2006 that .01% of our population averaged
976 times more income than 90% of Americans. That should startle anyone because of how absurd it is. Simply put, the rich should be taxed more. This would eliminate massive deficits and allow the burden to be shifted from the poor and old to the rich like it should be. Because no matter what anyone says, the middle class, with their size and spending capability fuel the economy more than the rich ever will. Jefferson said it best: "Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual." And the wealthy can spare some money to help everyone else.

As we move on to a New Year and new time, I think that it is important we wake up. Our world, the world our parents promised us has been a lie. One would say that the rug has been pulled from beneath us, except the rug was already stolen and we are just sinking in mud. Our generation has been betrayed by those in power, and from this moment it should become our mission to institute changes that benefit not just people with massive amounts of money, but everyone. These goals are not easy, nor will the people in power go quietly. But it is our job as Americans to fight for what is right for all Americans, not just a few. Without all of us waking up, we will face a future that is more dangerous and uncertain than any of us can imagine. Wake up.

The best and worst in movies of 2008

2009-01-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

Since I rarely take time to discuss my non-political interests, I decided to take a break and write about one of my favorite things: going to the movies.

There is nothing better than going to a movie theater and watching a good, or a movie that is so bad that it is good.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about how much it costs to go to the movies, but to me the cost is often equal to the amount of enjoyment I get sitting in a theater watching a movie. And when the concessions are snuck in to the movie the cost is even less. But since I saw more than three dozen movies in various theaters across Minnesota this year, I figured I would submit my best and worst movies of 2008.

Worst

1: The Spirit Bad plot, worse acting, poor direction. The only thing that made this movie watchable were the load of beautiful women and Samuel L. Jackson in an S.S uniform.

2: Hamlet 2 The trailer made this movie look hilarious. It even had decent buzz. I have never seen a movie with as many failed attempts at humor as Hamlet 2. Even the parts of the movie that were intentionally cornball moments fell flat.

3: Max Payne Another movie based off of a video game that turned out to be shit. Except the cast in this movie was not horrible. But everything else was. I still find it hard to believe that a movie based off of a game that's sole purpose was to go into 'bullet time' and kill people was completely devoid of good action.

Best

1: Wall-E Part love story, part satire, part message movie, Wall-E was perfect. What was easily the best aspect of the movie was that a digitally created robot was able to show more emotion without doing more than beeping than most of the young actors in movies today. Wall-E was not just a cute little Pixar movie, but a rare movie that kids and adults can equally understand and appreciate on different levels simultaneously.

2: The Dark Knight Easily the best comic book movie ever, and probably one of the best action movies of the last decade. How a movie that is over 2 hours long managed to feel so fast only shows how great of a director Christopher Nolan really is. To create a world populated with great actors is a feat directors rarely accomplish.

3: Gran Torino Clint Eastwood. Need I say more?

What should no longer be verboten

2009-01-04T21:39:00.000-08:00

Every so often I get into a spirited debate with some friends of mine about the existence of a higher power. While I have always been one to throw my opinions around on a wide variety of topics, religious debate is one topic I usually find myself fighting a losing battle. Not because I am making poor points or because I am uninformed, but because my passion for my beliefs far outweighs my ability to discuss them rationally. It is quite difficult to express an opinion and remain open minded about something when the viewpoint I have tends to be looked upon as verboten. When I express my views that there is no god, and that the purpose of life is for all of us to treat each other as equals, I am looked at quizzically and many give me looks that beg for me to stop talking. Most times I keep going and bury my head as far into the sand as those on the far right that believe all of us are bound to eternal damnation. It gets worse when people tell me that I am lost, and while I thank them for their prayers, I know very well I am not ever going to reach Providence. But since I believe that listening to others and keeping an open mind is the key to understanding anything, it is important for people to understand how I came to the belief that there is no god.
I had a normal life. I did not go to church, but my parents were raised in the church, and through their upbringing they were able to instill in me values that could be labeled as Christian values, even though every religion shares pretty much the same basic value structure that revolves around not being an ass. When I was younger a bunch of my neighbors went Awana, and I declined. Religion never meant anything to me. I never once felt moved by the power of god, and I often felt myself bored during any religious ceremony. But when I became older I was able to get a job working at a local nursing home as a janitor. Nursing homes are not exactly the most positive environment. And not just because people get old and die there, but because of the way people die. When people get sent to a nursing home they do not die the next day, instead they tend to wither away for months or even years. It could be something as simple as a fall or as devastating as Alzheimer’s that puts them in the place they will eventually die. Either way, it is not the best place to have to live and most of the residents know it. Except people with Alzheimer’s, they do not know who they are, let alone where they are. That is what made me snap. Alzheimer’s drains the life out of people. I would go clean the rooms of residents who were in a special locked down unit of the nursing home and see pictures of them on the walls full of life in moments they could not remember. Seeing those people for years made me think of all the things wrong with the world, and how religion was clearly wrong on pretty much every front.
Some say that when they find god everything becomes clear to them. The same could be said for me; except it was the day I realized I did not believe in any higher power. I was on one of the many breaks I took and I heard a coworker of mine talking about religion. After a while I was brought in unwillingly. Someone asked me what my views were, and I told the two people that I found it impossible for there to be a loving god that would let a terrible thing like Alzheimer’s into the world. That was probably a mistake; because before long I was being told that I was not only a sinner, but I would one day be standing on a lake of fire waiting to be judged. I realized how contradictory religion was. The same coworkers were not obeying the teachings of their god and were judging me. So I unloaded on them everything I could and saw for the first time the look I would see become very familiar. I began to see clearly that day how contradictory religion really was. A friend of mine always made sure to stop drinking soda for lent. That is right, his god was crucified after starving himself for 40 days, and the sacrifice he made to honor him was to give up drinking Mountain Dew. I know it is the thought that counts, but come on. I looked at my grandma who once had a great deal of faith. She had lost husband to cancer, a son to AIDS, and later her other son to a brain aneurism. How one so loyal to a god could be punished so severely. God did not need any more angels, because god does not exist. All three of them died unfairly and too soon. But that is how the world works. No one likes it, but we each deal with it.
With my new found definition of belief I decided to learn more about other religions. I read the Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism), the Tao (Taoism), a few books on the principles of Buddhism, the bible, and began reading the Qu’ran. Through my reading I discovered that while religion is good because it instills in us a set of values while uniting people under common beliefs, it is equally negative because of the hate it breeds. A great example of this is the current conflict on the Gaza Strip. See, the Jews hate the Muslims because their religious texts ask for the destruction of the other. Now read that line again. They hate each other not because one group is worse than the other, but because a religion told them so. There plenty of extenuating circumstances here, but it boils down to nothing more than religion, and each of them is guilty.
Each of us pushes ourselves to become better individuals through different means. I can respect someone’s beliefs and hope that there is a heaven. But what I refuse to accept are the shrill and unrelenting cries of a people so blind by ideological viewpoints that they go against the will of the god they claim to love and worship. So many of these people have not even read the bible they claim to love. Instead they take the idea that the lord is my shepherd quite literally and prove to be sheep. What it comes down to is this: each of us is not only entitled to our own opinions, but it is our duty to respect the opinions of people we do not agree with. People need to stop spreading the seeds of ignorance and be respectful of one another.

Corporate Money is destroying politics

2008-12-05T11:31:00.001-08:00

While there is no doubt that our country is on the verge of another depression, many are wondering how and why we could be where we are. News media outlets, both liberal and conservative have tried to put the pieces together, and while they do have opposing views on many things they can agree on one this: this is amazingly complex. It is so complex that to explain it to the American people it would probably take a well edited twenty page document or a two hour impartial documentary that aired on every television station simultaneously. Because it really is that complex; explaining economics to a nation that has been told not to worry about such matters for about twenty years only leaves most of us scratching our heads when we hear words like ‘derivatives’, and ‘credit default swaps’. However complicated these things may be there is no way I could even begin to explain them concisely because even though I think I have a fairly firm grasp on the current economic situation, it is just so all encompassing that it is staggering. Imagine retracing the steps of a small mistake, like forgetting to brush your teeth in the morning, and multiply that by a million. And if the problem is so great, where can we begin?
We have a full scale problem on our hands and as the charts I am going to provide show, the fault lies in the hands of the politicians whose votes were bought. And as the charts show, political parties do not really matter, because the many companies in the financial sector gave money to just about everyone. Some would argue that the democrats that are in control now are at fault. Republicans were getting huge money when they held the power, and therefore the fault is universal. Others would argue that Barack Obama received more money than John McCain during the 2008 election; and here is why: when Barack Obama’s numbers rose and it became more apparent that he was going to win by a large margin, corporate interests raised more money for him.
Regardless of political party, anyone who does not see the problem and the correlation of corporate donations and political clout is either party of the corporate hierarchy or they are an absolute idiot.
These type of contributions are not limited to the financial sector either. Nor have they been occurring for the last year or so. Bush, Kerry, and Gore all received money during their runs for presidency, and as the charts also show, there are quite a few name that reoccur. Most of them are on the banking committee.

I urge everyone to go to www.opensecrets.org and take a look around (this is where I was able to get the data to make the charts). Giant corporations donate to every committee that has an influence on their business. That is wrong. As a people we have a voice. Corporations are not people, the employ people. And they do so under the guise of our constitution, and to buy votes is not only shameful but degrading to our union. Laws are supposed to be made in the best interests of the citizens of the land, not conglomerates who do not physically exist or have a vote.
Imagine a government that actually fought for the best interests of its people, not the best interests of those who seek only profit and who keep the powerful in power. It is our duty as citizens to stand as one to rally against this sort of behavior and make corporate political contributions of any form unconstitutional. Hopefully we can.

The Surge against Americans

2008-12-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, Secretary Treasury/former Goldman Sachs CEO/Multi-Millionaire Henry Paulson spoke in a room full of reporters, cameras. There he told his local audience and millions watching from home that the original selling point of the 700 billion dollar bailout, (the buying of toxic mortgages from troubled banks) had been removed from the plan. Instead, the money would be allocated to help relieve the pressure being put on other sectors of the increasingly chaotic credit markets. The guarantees continued in the days and weeks that would follow, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke guaranteed a total of 7.7 trillion (3.3 of which has already been spent on the bailout, bailing out companies, and partially nationalizing banks) to help soften the credit marker. Then Citi Group managed to implode and was handed 20 billion dollars and a guarantee that 300 billion of their assets would be backed by the government. And all Ford, GM, and Chrysler wanted was 25 billion dollars. And the government said no.
Just to keep everyone up to speed here I will break it down: The original purpose of the bailout is gone. The bailout itself has proven to really be symbolic, since the Federal Reserve guaranteed trillions. Banks are being nationalized by a president whose party claimed Barack Obama was a socialist. Every financial institution that was absurdly greedy has effectively been given blank checks. And a group of 3 large manufacturing companies that directly and indirectly employ 1 in 10 Americans are being denied what in the scope of this crisis amounts to chump change because they did not have plan.
To be fair, the auto companies are partially responsible for the mess they are in. They pretty much went all in on the big cars game, and they rode the wave until oil prices made buying an SUV not only a stamp of arrogance, but a burden to one’s pocket book. But making SUV’s was most cost effective, and the sole goal of any business is to provide something and make a profit from it. Flying to Washington D.C. on 3 separate private jets did not help either. But does anyone actually think that when the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, AIG, or any other billion dollar financial firm flew to Washington to testify and beg for money that they flew coach? Please. These guys make the kind of money that makes winning the Powerball look pathetic. But no one bothered asking them whether or not they charted their own private jet to ask for money. This may have to do with the fact that the finance committee gets more money from the banking and securities industries than anyone else. Most of its members receive larger contributions donations from one or more of the trouble banks. After they pretended to get angry in front of the cameras, probably because someone was actually paying attention to their committee, they gladly wrote them a blank check.
Any American who does not see anything extremely wrong with this is either is very wealthy or amazingly uniformed. How can this be? How can American institutions like the GM, Ford, or Chrysler get sandbagged for not having a plan when the corporations that cater only to the smallest percentage of Americans get whatever they want? The answer is simple: These are the battle lines of Class Warfare. By no means is Class Warfare a new term, but it has never been more apparent that almost every American is losing the war. In other words, “The Surge is working.”
Businesses push harder and harder against unions. They claim them to be relics of a different era, when working standards were rough and people did not get breaks. They claim that times are different because things are safer and modern. Except very few of those jobs that caused unions to form exist here anymore. You would have to go to China to work at many of them. Since they work 12 hours days for little pay like slaves maybe they should unionize as well. Neo-conservatives love to trash unions. But then again, find me a neo-conservative who was ever a member of a union or who is not a multi-millionaire and then we can have a real discussion of their value. As a former union member, I can say that unions are the backbone of the American worker. There may be times when they are corrupted the same way politicians often become, but the goal of every union, to protect workers with fair wages, and fair treatment is more important than ever before. Look at what Wal-Mart has done to this country. Employing people at the minimum wage, not giving benefits, and firing employees at will. All while reaping the profits. People that try to unionize are fired, they even have gone so far to close entire stores. A poor populace is something that will only hurt our nation. From the looks of things, it clearly has.
There is something to be said about personal responsibility and not buying things we cannot afford. Many of my peers living in the spend everything economy willingly participated. Impulse buys and nights out at the bar send many into financial lockdown waiting for the next paycheck. Except some people went out and bought houses. While there is data showing that some people spent money buying houses with money they did not have, we have to understand why this happened. Easy credit. This made buying homes easier, which made demand for housing rise, which made prices for homes rise in turn. Those are some of the basic economic principles of supply and demand. Except that credit was available for everything, and every price rose. Eventually it broke, and now everything is tumbling. There is a great deal more that goes into it than what I wrote, but we can save that for another time. But let this be recognized: blaming the economic crisis on a group of people that could not afford to live in their homes is not only ignorant but often comes off as thinly veiled classism. If people would have decent wages, they would not have gotten risky loans in order to chase the American dream. The fault is twofold. The more people argue, the longer we take our eyes from the battlefield.
Moving away from the problem, we can find solutions centered on prevention. An easy step would be to make it illegal for any business to make political contributions. A quick move to www.opensecrets.org will show anyone that it does not matter what committee a person is on or what party they represent, corporations are buying votes. This needs to stop. Businesses do not deserve a larger voice than the people. This would make it far more affordable for ordinary Americans to enter into political races and make our government as accessible as it was intended. And instead of buying votes, they can continue to employ Americans who may just help them find ways to save money and make more money in an honest way. Furthering the move towards a more honest future would be to fix CEO salaries. CEOs should not be allowed to have stock options in the companies they work for. This would be a small check that would help make sure that CEOs work for their employees, not the shareholders. Nor should they be allowed bonuses when the companies they work for ask for financial help whatsoever.
Raising the minimum wage is another step in the right direction. This would give ordinary Americans a little more purchasing power that would stop them from taking risk filled loans. We also need more regulation in our financial markets. And not just the overly liberal regulate everything idea. Having regulations that favor business as well as taxpayers is possible if we can accept the term ‘less profit.’ There would still be profit, just not as much. Restructuring trade is also essential. And there is a simple solution, raise tariffs. For anyone who does not know what a tariff is it is rather simple: a tariff is a fee on items that come into this country from a different one. Like China. It is not isolationist at all to seek profit from the amount of goods coming into this country from outside sources. The tariffs we currently have are more pro-business than pro-people. There is a way to make that neutral and fair.
What each of us as citizens have to do is what I have been saying for months, become informed with the current financial crisis. More and more Americans would live at or below poverty level. These are how things get before great upheaval. And letting any of the Big Three fall would be just the beginning. This is full scale war against the average American. It is our job to fight it hand over fist, and scream as loudly as we can that this is unacceptable. Failure to see how absolutely critical it is for the Big Three to get a loan from our government could have dire repercussions. Imagine an unemployment rate of 13%, double the current rate. 20 million people would be unemployed. That is the entire state of New York. Not only that, but imagine one of the big three being bought by a non-American corporation. It would be the beginning of selling off American companies to the lowest bidder.

November 4th

2008-11-04T22:16:00.000-08:00

As I bask in the glow of a historic victory, I figured I would take some time to give a rudimentary explanation of what socialism is. By definition, Socialism means: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. That simple definition from dictionary.com is incredibly important tonight, because as I read various text messages from conservative friends as I sat looking at my Facebook, I noticed that many of my friends placed a great deal of emphasis on President-Elect Obama being a socialist. This twisted belief stems from his now infamous conversation with “Joe the Plumber,” about ‘spreading the wealth around.’ Even though spreading the wealth around is exactly the point of taxation (tax: A contribution for the support of a government required of persons, groups, or businesses within the domain of that government.) people have a tendency to avoid reasonable thought and jump to the conclusion that all taxes, no matter what the form happen to be a form of socialism. Now let’s get one thing straight: Barack Obama is not a socialist.
And while I usually take a few thousand words to make my point, I am going to break down how taxation does in fact spread wealth and could in turn be explained as a form of socialism. Except that, without taxes capitalism, and thus democracy could not exist. Here is a simple example. Everyday most of us drive to work, or take a bus that happens to travel across a paved road. People do not think much of it, but roads cost money. People need to get paid to design a road, and people also get paid to actually build it. This money does not materialize out of thin air. It comes from taxes. Therefore, taxes provide jobs. The construction workers then take the money they make and spend it as they please. And their salary is taxed like everyone else’s, so that other projects can be funded and people can be paid. This is why we pay taxes. So that things are created for the common good. This is not a socialist ideology, this is a human ideology. People that make more should contribute more. Not to impoverish them, but to make it possible for others to have the opportunity to rise further than they could have otherwise.
What befuddles me about this ‘socialist’ and ‘Marxist’ buffoonery is that people who claim a politician is a socialist are the same people who would benefit from the logical expansion of our tax system. This is amazingly startling to me among my peers. I have one friend who makes 6 figures. And she works harder than anyone I know. Every one of my other friends makes no more than 50,000 dollars a year. A higher tax rate on the very wealthy would allow wages to increase, civic projects to expand, and employment to go up. How can people vote against their own interests? Because they are lied to. To see through the lies there is one solution: educate yourself. Stop reading email forwards, and read actual articles. Don’t read someone’s Wikipedia page, read the source material that is taken to make Wikipedia entries. The option is available. Not taking it is the equivalent of being a sheep.

The Risk of Single Issue Voting

2008-10-06T23:14:00.000-07:00

As November 4th draws near, I find myself becoming disenchanted with a growing number of individuals in my life. These people are mainly moderates that for some reason label themselves Republicans. Now mind the distinction there, I said Republicans. Because conservatives are not Republicans; even though Republicans beg to differ, a politically conservative person tends err to the side of caution when making decisions. And thus, Republicans and conservatives are two very different groups. Case in point: the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses. Although it has not always been the case; as numerous and better writers than myself have stated (read American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips for a better explanation) the Republican Party has become the party of fear mongering and corruption. And oddly enough, there is one other strange bedfellow: god.
At first, the melding of the Republicans and the Christians seemed like a natural fit: conservatives are not risk takers (even though they worship one of the biggest risk takers who was crucified for being rebellious), and neither are right wing conservatives. But over time, something went wrong. Instead of pushing conservative values, the Republican Party pushed religious values. And through the guise of religious values, the Republicans got caught in numerous scandals that were pushed under the rug because of their close ties to the religious community. Even the financial crisis was brought about by the conservative party. Suddenly abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools, and creationism became something to talk about. Why? That really is a good question, especially coming from the party that believes that the less government control in people’s lives the better. Why would the control free party want control over each of those aforementioned issues? The religious right has money, a lot of money. They have enough money to have services at Lakewood Church, (http://www.lakewood.cc/Pages/index.aspx) where the Houston Rockets used to play. And since they seem to be writing the checks, the Republicans have pushed their issues. And over time, they began to believe them as conservatives retired and religious politicians took their places. George Bush eventually became the result of the Republican Party’s move to the religious right. And after eight years of Bush, these values have not worked. Even conservatives know it.
This is probably why there are so many undecided voters in this country and why a great deal of true conservatives like John McCain. John McCain is not a ‘maverick’ or a ‘reformer’ like he says he is. Nor is he a ‘Christian’ man like he claims to be, simply because it is highly doubtful that a man who spent many years in a prison camp believed in god after the first two years went by. God did not get John McCain through prison camp, John McCain got himself through prison camp through cunning and determination. And after he got out of prison, he eventually had an affair and married his mistress, the current Mrs. McCain. And just those two facts, on top of numerous others I am too lazy to cite show why John McCain had to pick Sarah Palin. Even Republican pundits have said that she “fired up the base.” She is what the current Republican Party is: ill-informed, ignorant, and most importantly, Christian. Who cares if she charged for rape kits, shoots wolves from helicopters, and doesn’t believe in abortion even of matters of rape (which was the foundation of Roe v. Wade, by the way) or even incest. She also left her little town of Wasilla 20 million dollars in debt, which does not really make her a conservative as much as it does make her completely oblivious to modern economics and spending. Which brings us to where we are, complete and udder stupidity.
Let me say this outright: there is nothing wrong with a person having religion in their life. That being said, there is something seriously wrong when someone’s personal religious viewpoints bleed into the public policy in this country. What do abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools, or creationism have to do with the fate of the Republic? Absolutely nothing. This is why legislation should not be drafted outlawing abortion, defining marriage, or bringing religion anywhere near a classroom. Unfortunately some people do not see things this way. They believe that their personal lives should come to control the lives of everyone in this country. They effectively ignore the teachings of the god they pray to in order to undermine the very country that gives them the freedom to believe in the god of their choosing. Who cares about our growing debt, (which just passed 10 trillion in case any of you at how were keeping count) our crumbling roads, loss of jobs, or a health insurance crisis that has made the life expectancy in this country sink lower than Canada? Those to me do not sound like problems when compared to a woman’s right to do with her body what she pleases, or whether two consenting adults that love each other should be able to spend the rest of their lives together. These issues are a smoke screen.
Let me put it simply, to vote based on how a candidate stands on one issue is not only ignorant, but dangerous. There is a simple exercise to prove the validity of this statement: Think of every friend you can, and if they disagree with you on any one thing at all, eliminate them as friends. Pretty soon, you will get pretty lonely. Which is why choosing a candidate on how they stand on one issue is pretty dangerous. Because the candidate could be anti-choice, and gay, and pro religion in schools, but they could also be someone who would be completely damaging to the country; case in point, George Bush.
What makes things worse is people’s naivety on more than the single issue (or group of ‘moral issues’ that usually center around religion) leads them to take whatever radical viewpoint they can find and run with it. Concerns over Barack Obama being a Muslim are a great example of this, even though in both of the books he has written he has extensively detailed his faith. It is not because people are stupid, but because people are lazy. This is why people buy items off of television under the belief that they only have to work out for 12 minutes a day. The result of their laziness tends to be those odd shaped black iron bars with the two pads on them that can be found sitting by the curb at any garage sale across the country. If only the lazy people in this country would take those twelve minutes and read their paper, or and read ccn.com or google’s compilation of news stories.
Only having inflammatory and biased information on one topic is not only limiting, but leaves individuals open for manipulation of the highest degree. A perfect example of this is a person like Sean Hannity. Sean Hannity is the lowest of the low. Most liberals point out Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly as a couple of numbskulls. But they are both conservatives who really only make pointed comments to anger people like myself. And they occasionally make a good point, which is why liberals love to hate them. But Hannity is different. Hannity is a Republican. He brings up Obama’s middle name, and has no issue accusing Obama of being a Muslim. Because Hannity is a fear monger, he is the type of scum that only serves to make himself look better by spinning lies and divisiveness among people. Because the more afraid someone is, the more they want to listen to Sean Hannity tell them how to fix their problems. The solutions usually have to do with religion and that liberals hate America. This, coming from a guy who has ties with neo-nazis (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050620/blumenthal) is definitely a guy to be listened to.
Many months ago there were rumblings about Barack Obama being an elitist, even though he put himself through college and chose to work for non-profit groups instead of taking a big pay day. He was essentially being insulted for being intelligent. And the best part about it was that he was being insulted for being intelligent by intelligent people. Which is an ominous and disturbing warning that our country is truly at a point of change, and not just politically. Our nation has come to a point when people can choose to be educated on issues or choose to be ignorant. And while it is common to say that ignorance is bliss, historically, ignorance and a lack of interest lead to the rise of tyrants and to war. No one thought that Hitler was going to slaughter millions of Jews, but because of their ignorance it happened and they accepted it. If the average American chooses to ignore the past and deny the present, it could easily happen again.
So take the time and read a newspaper, do research on both candidates. Because hundreds of thousands of American men and women have died defending our right to vote and our right to assemble, and without a vote that’s passion stems from an educated love of a candidate, Americans run the risk of losing the rights so many of us were born into.

The State of the Nation

2008-07-04T18:57:00.001-07:00

On this day of days/year of our lord/232nd year of our independence, America is once again on the dawn of a new frontier. The war in Iraq has not only proven to have been a colossal failure, but has in result caused unnecessary civilian and military casualties. It has also diminished our standing in terms of worldwide diplomacy and destabilized an already unpredictable region. Events like Operation Iraqi Freedom will undoubtedly have profound historical ramifications here and abroad. Much like secession, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, appeasement, communist containment, and various others bogged down by the weight of history.
Along with our military actions in the Middle East, the rise of India and China at such a meteoric rate has scared middle class Americans while lining the pockets of businessmen. No one will argue that the point of owning a business is to make money; but the rate at which Americans are losing jobs while prices stagnate is stunning. Pro business laws have not helped matters either; they have only made the rich obscenely rich. Even though the American idea of the free market and free speech walk hand in hand in the field of modern America, our government has suppressed our freedoms (enemy combatants and the rise of unfounded executive power) while letting our free market have far too many (the uncontrolled power of corporate lobbies and loopholes).
Theses two events, while completely unrelated upon surface glance are more connected than they appear. Our invasion of Iraq has now been proven to have been a thinly veiled act to secure Iraqi oil fields. It was a resource based war that not only violated the constitution, but went against every idea of American diplomacy since Washington addressed the people in his farewell address: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop,” (Farewell address, 36). Instead we chose the absolute opposite route. We enraged the region where most of our oil is produced, and the emerging economies of India and China are now able to compete with us in terms of purchasing power. In simple terms, they can buy oil from the Middle East, and the Middle East is not angry with either of their governments.
Also, while competition may make the world go round, America’s role as the sole superpower for the last thirty years allowed us to monopolize the oil industry. We set the price, and oil was traded by OPED according to the dollar standard. And like all monopolies progress stagnated and the mega-corporations of the oil industry spread their arms and became a lumbering machine that was big and scary. American auto companies also became big and scary. But the problem with big and scary corporations is that they also happen to be too slow to react to fluctuations in the market. And boy did the market fluctuate.
Two years ago anyone could buy a home. I made $12,000 in 2006, and I was mailed six pre-approval letters from mortgage companies (I kept most of them as a source of humor). I was clearly not the only person who was mailed these letters, and oddly enough, something seemingly too good to be true, was. Across the country people that were not ready to be homeowners in the first place were having their home foreclosed on. The interest rates rose, mortgage companies went belly up, and once again, the housing market became a buyer’s market. This is old news of course, but the way our housing market completely collapsed on itself is just another link in a long and disastrous chain of events.
As the housing market tried to pick their own guts off of America’s floor, the credit industry also scrambled. It turned out that along with home loans, credit cards were given out like free suckers at the local bank. And the same people who could not pay their mortgages were not paying their credit cards off. Credit card bills, mortgage payments, and gas were beginning to rise. Although the rise of gas was not directly linked to either event, it just happened to move at the same time.
Suddenly market analysts were confused. They did not seem to understand that Americans were having trouble not only paying their bevy of bills, but buying the gas that brought them to work so they could pay their bills at all. And in turn, people were no longer rushing out to drop $1,000 on a new television. Windows Vista arrives and is hailed as a failure because the average American computer is too out of date to run such a ground breaking operating system. Americans do not have money to pay for anything as their country falls apart.
In fear of a less active consumer because of the previously stated financial concerns, the stock market began a freefall. Without the active trading of high risk hedge funds and 401ks, our stock would be at depression levels. And while the word ‘recession’ was the most obvious course of our economy, analysts could not stop parading the resilience of the American economy and its ability to change. But realists understand the dark times ahead.
The government came up with a plan a “stimulus” package. But since most people are in absurd amounts of debt, they chose to pay off a bill or three. The lack of concern of the average American over our economy is one of little speculation. We really only care if the market drops more than a hundred points for a few days in a row. Once the market gets a little bad people start to worry about their 401ks, but they are too worried about their own personal economies to care that the stock of General Motors is now around $10 a share. But maybe it is Karma. Americans pinched by mounting gas prices probably show little sympathy for companies that were far too busy making money to care at all about modernizing their fleet of vehicles. It is hard to see a laid off American auto plant worker upset over GM and Ford losing money after they shipped their jobs to Mexico so they could save money over paying the pensions they mismanaged.
As the pieces of the puzzle began to fray, the edges bent as the nation watched the Army Corps of Engineers camera of the 35W bridge collapsing. The thirteen people that died may have been small in comparison to other tragedies, but most Americans suddenly became aware of how their highways and bridges were also crumbling. The nation’s roads were deteriorating at the same rate our mortgage industry, just much quieter. It feels like all of the wheels on the bus are falling off at the same time. And now we are paying for it, or at least talking about the massive undertaking that is paying for it.
We have to face the reality that our nation has more debt than equity. We cut taxes during war time, cut funding to schools and cornered students into the world of debt. At this time I have over $20,000 in student loan debt, and I have yet to finish college. Along with the tax cuts, our president encouraged us to spend and to “Go shopping.” And we did. Remember that grandparent that saved the wrapping paper? We stopped caring that they had lived through the depression, and it is now apparent that their coffee can savings mentality was completely accurate. Once again, history shows how a few actions can ripple over time.
But hope emerged. Literally. Barack Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, saying: “Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.” There was something special about Barack Obama. He spoke eloquently and passionately, and seemed to echo the voices of young people disenchanted by the do nothing congress and senate. His passion and honesty carried him to national prominence as he made a historic run for president. I saw him when he visited Minneapolis, voted for him in the primary, and screamed at the top of my lungs inside the Xcel Energy Center as he became the presumptive presidential nominee on June 3rd. Tears filled my eyes on both occasions, and I had never felt such pride and passion for my country. Finally, I felt that I was actually making a difference. I began to understand and appreciate what Lincoln meant by “Last full measure of devotion.” My voice however small, had opened up a few of my friend’s eyes and they too began to believe Barack Obama was what the country needed.
About a week later something happened. Barack Obama stopped sounding like Barack Obama. He started sounding like everyone else. I felt an anger rise within me only comparable to the passion for this country Obama himself had instilled. I felt confused. Speaking with my peers, they felt the same way as Obama took conservative positions on FISA, the death penalty, gun control, government funded religious organizations, and their collective cringe as he presented a plan that cut NASA funding (Google any of these to see for yourself). The idealist in me hopes that this is a brilliant, Lincoln like strategy to get votes. But being that our current president has a 25% approval rating, it is clear that most Americans are not going to vote for someone that has any resemblance to the current executive in office.
Obama’s shift also frightens me in that his movement from progressive ideals to a more populist campaign is almost a reassurance that our government no longer caters to the people, but to the people that employ the people. Our economy and standing in the world are far more important than the profit margins of bogged down American conglomerates. And for the purveyor of hope and change morphing into the purveyor of moderate party line politics does nothing but tell me that our nation is only changing it’s masthead, not it’s design.
For the problems of this country may not only be George W. Bush and his band of thieves, the problem may be the government itself. As I write on this day of independence, I remember the immortal words Thomas Jefferson “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Maybe it is once again time for us to reform our republic, based upon the model our founding fathers set into place those many years ago. For this union has always been imperfect, and in striving for perfection we must seek what is right, what is true, and what is fruitful for this republic of men and women. It is time for each one of us as citizens of the republic to show our frustrations and problems with this government; it is our civic duty. We must assemble as one to change our nation, and to change the course of events that have been set by people who clearly lack the understanding or responsibility to lead. This is our nation, this is one cause. Our liberty depends on our immediate action.

The new Manhattan Project

2008-06-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

What would be the most devastating military power in the world? The electric tank. Imagine a tank that does not need to stop to be refueled, and the only effect it has on the environment is raw killing power. A fuel cell powered mobile army would not only be frightening, but would completely change the way the military supplies itself.

After we throw billions into the research and development of electric tanks and have upgraded our military, we could sell our old tanks to countries that we have strategic ties with. The trickle down effect that the electric tank would have on the auto industry would be staggering, as war is always technologically beneficial.

It is a shame, if not disgraceful that our government is so tied to special interest groups that this has not been the great technological advance of our era. The atom bomb defined an age, just as the fuel cell may very well define this one. It is time for our government to gather the best scientists and get to work.

Battlefield: Bad Company, hands on demo review

2008-06-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

Like many who enjoy spending hours of their life immersed in another world, I do not have the privilege to play games before they get released to the public; I get to wait like everyone else. This last week, Xbox Live has literally blown up with demos that I have actually wanted to download and give a try. One of them was Battlefield: Bad Company, by EA. My absolute disgust with the unregulated video game industry aside, there have been a few notable first person shooters to hit the market as of late (Call of Duty, Halo, Bioshock, Condemned 2) so I had my hopes up.

And they were dashed about 2 minutes in. Bad Company has great character models and pretty looking guns, but that is about it. The demo even starts you off by making you drive, and you quickly learn that the truck you are driving controls like a box on ice skates. There is also no animation for entering or exiting the vehicle, just a quick fade to black. If that is not demo only that is just flat out lazy. Would it be hard to pull back and watch my character hop into the driver's seat?

Bad Company also features 3 quirky NPC's, all of whom have either witty comments and styles to go about. We have the guy with the old fashioned black rimmed army glasses, the Italian looking New Yorker, and the black guy, who even has a scar on his face. As the leader, he is also grizzled.

Actually playing the game is worse. When NPC's are not engaging you (no more than about 6 at a time, spread out across a map) they can be seen standing around, and not even moving within your site line. I literally shot a man in the head with a .50 caliber mounted rifle from about 20 yards away. He was standing still and sideways from me. The guns are even worse. When firing the M16, it is nearly impossible to keep the thing still, even when bringing the gun to "iron sight" mode. Shooting more than one round at a time seems to make the gun dance across the screen, causing a scene reminiscent to basically any time the nerdy guy/girl fires a gun in an action movie. The only interesting thing the game brings to the table, is the epinepherine pen, a way that the player can heal themselves when after taking damage. This of course beats the now popular first person shooter method of running around the corner and waiting for the game to stop making heart beat sounds.

The computer controlled bad guys do not help out much either. For the "normal" difficulty, the computer's aim was impressive. It was nearly impossible to shoot the computer, since coming up from a trench caused me to get riddled with bullets. And there were only 4 computer enemies. And of course, the friendly NPCs did nothing.

Graphically, the game was nothing new. The character models looked rather impressive, but the environment was so bland that it brought the entire game down. The reason for this is that apparently, most of the environment can be destroyed. Well that is terrific, but if the environment can be blown to bits, I don't care how pretty it is as long as the game has a nice look to it. Take a game like Grand Theft Auto IV. While it looks great, it is nothing absolutely groundbreaking. But for how good it looks when compared to the scale of the game, wow. So instead of giving me great characters, throw me a game that has everything.

Since I obviously did not care for this game whatsoever, I have to touch upon one thing that annoyed me more than anything, the friendly NPCs. While I was annoyed by their cookie cutter personalities, my biggest problem with NPC's in first person shooters is that they never do anything. The only times I have ever seen an NPC actually kill something is the sniping mission in Call of Duty 4, and in Halo 2/3 (and the non-playable arbiter rarely did anything other than die and give up his sword). Bad Company had this problem, as the 3 NPCs either took cover, or shouted after me to save them as they provided "covering fire." I am tired of how every single game that requires me to run around with a computer controlled buddy requires me to constantly save them. They shoot with less accuracy, and I am stunned that these soldiers actually made it to the conflicts they get themselves in during countless game campaigns.

Overall, this is Battlefield Bad Comapany's problem: It is a crappy first person shooter with the brand Battlefield stuck onto it. Much like the James Bond games, EA has a tendency to make bad games with nice ips in front of them to sell units. It really would be nice if EA could take some of it's limitless resources and make an original ip that was not complete and total crap.

The Borat effect

2008-06-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

Almost two years ago, Borat took the world by storm. The movie was literally in every aspect of popular culture, and I saw the movie twice in crowded theaters. I fondy remember two older adults walking out during the nude wrestling scene while the rest of the crowd was laughing at near panic levels. After the film's initial release, catchphrase bonanza, and Hot Topic T-shirt whoredom, Borat took it's place alongside many movies that are viewed and quoted repeatedly by adolescents and young adults. Shockingly, there were no copy cat films that came out that summer, and all was well. At least until this weekend, when "Don't Mess with the Zohan," wiggled it's way into theaters.

First thing is first, I love Adam Sandler. With the exceptions of "Little Nicky," and "Billy Madison" (yes, I am in the minority here) I think that Sandler does a good job being who he is in movies. But this film is different. "Zohan" is the first Sandler movie where I actually felt like Sandler was not even trying. "Zohan" is like a scripted less funny version of "Borat." There is male nudity, penis jokes, and random cultural references. Except they are not funny. Palestinian and Jew jokes have just gotten old. I do not care if they like hummus, drive cabs, or talk with accents. Last summer I watched "I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry," which was a long and drawn out gay joke. It knew what it was and executed it well.

There were a few decent laughs, but what was disenchanting about the film was that the laughs were riding solely on Sandler's absurd accent and exaggerated persona. And it looks like we get a two week break before that stain of a movie (from the previews anyway) "The Love Guru" comes out. The fact that these movies are even made disturbs me. Just because someone comes to America from another culture and has an accent does not make everything they do hilarious. The reason "Borat" was funny was because of Cohen's charisma, and his ability to get the common person to go along with what he was doing. Knowing that there were only a few people who knew what was actually happening made the movie funny. Pointing out cultural differences can be funny, but only if they are not obscure and played out. Once again what it comes down to is writing. Good writers do not rely solely on their star to make the film. Sure, Sandler has his base, but we all know he can actually act. This movie was never going to be intelligent humor, and I do not think anyone should expect it to be. If only it were not as stupid, it could have been much funnier.

Interesting concept, failed execution

2008-06-07T07:25:00.000-07:00

I have recently come to realize that movies are like baseball players; there have been countless ball players throughout the years, but only a select handful are memorable. Such is the case with Bed of Roses, a love story starring Christian Slater and Mary Stuart Masterson. And while I may be about 12 years late to the party here, wow, this movie was terrible. Slater plays this guy that owns a flower shop and he sends a random woman (Masterson) flowers to cheer her up. Masterson plays the 90's version of a typical career woman, overworked, trying to seal some big deal for the ambiguous company she works for. And guess what, these flowers just throw a big wrench into her life and she goes on a quest to find her secret admirer. I have always been a a strong supporter of the romantic comedy and even the occasional love story, but this movie just takes it to a point that is almost vomit inducing.

Slater plays Lewis, a flower shop owner. Here are a few interesting things about Lewis: he delivers flowers to see the smiling faces of his customers, reads leather bound books, goes to the library and listens to a woman read stories to children just to hear the stories, has planted a rooftop garden on top his apartment (with a perfect view), and is even a widower. And get this, his wife died in childbirth. Even cheesecake is not this thick.

Christian Slater is, well, he is Christian Slater. I spent a great deal of my childhood watching my VHS tape of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and I just cannot forget that he was the Will Scarlett to Costner's Robin Hood. Masterson does not help the film either, since her idea of a career centric woman is to play her character like she has a stick up her ass. While this is common in most portrayals of working females in almost every movie I have ever watched, Masterson is just not up to snuff when it comes to playing that role and everything she comes off as forced.

When I think about the past when this movie came out, I can see countless boyfriends and husbands being dragged to this film with the guarantee that "Next time we will see what you want to see." Well I did a little research and I found that in 1996, another Christian Slater film, Broken Arrow came out only two weeks later. I am willing to bet that the countless number of men that took the bullet to sit through 90 minutes of poorly written dialogue and terrible chemistry were never rewarded with a tale of stolen nukes two weeks later.

I guess what I am getting at here is that good love stories are not written for one audience, they are written so that everyone can appreciate them. Sure, what Slater does is sweet and all, but there were so many opportunities for this film to have actually been watchable that as the movie played I saw myself rewriting it so that it could either have been a romantic comedy or at least a watchable love story. Alas, what could have been.

Ignorance is by no means bliss

2008-06-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

Recently over in Bloomington three seniors were prevented from walking during graduation because of their choosing to wave confederate flags in the parking lot of Bloomington Kennedy High School. Read the article here. On the cover of today's Star Tribune the three students are standing defiantly, each looking like they have an acute understanding of the world, when they clearly know nothing about it. The fact that this story is considered front page news, not because of how what these kids did, but because they were suspended is insulting. The confederate flag stands for nothing but hatred. A friend of the three boys was quoted as saying: "They've flown the Confederate flag before and simply admire the 'Southern lifestyle' and TV shows such as 'The Dukes of Hazard.'" The southern lifestyle? Is the lifestyle where we deny the teaching of black children, spray protesters with fire hoses, drag people of color from trucks for using a segregated bathroom, and kill people of color because they try to vote? Is it the same group of people that seceded from the union and caused a combined 650,000 plus deaths of Americans over a 4 year period? Because I am confused. That is some lifestyle. In my mind there is only one other symbol that represents hatred as much as the confederate flag, the swastika. How dare they. I dealt with this same sort of crap when I was 18 and it disgusted me then as it does now. I think that we are all a little prejudice. But there is a serious difference between our small prejudices and racism. This is not just stupidity on the part of these children, but their parents, for raising them in an environment that promotes the oppression of others based on the color of their skin. The confederate flag represents a denial of basic human rights. By wearing the flag, a person is saying that they believe a person of color does not have the rights of a human being. Wearing the flag says that slavery is acceptable. It is not a statement of freedom. The south wanted to deny the rights of humans and use them as cattle. These children did not deserve to walk in graduation. They should probably spend more time in school to learn what it actually is to be an American. The rights and freedoms that this country provides is something that millions of people have died for, and these three students, as well as anyone that wears a confederate flag should be ashamed of themselves. It is unfortunate, if not pathetic, that nearly 150 years since we abolished slavery, people still think it is acceptable to brandish something that represents something so horrible.

Of all the places to invade my privacy

2008-05-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

For the last few months I have been excited to see the low budget comedy "The Foot Fist Way," a comedy about a tae kwon do instructor. I think that says it all. The trailer I watched at firstshowing.net was hilarious, and I put off going to the website, because I find official film sites to be slow loading and annoying pages. But since I had nothing to do before I worked on Tuesday, I meandered on over to www.thefootfistway.com to kill some time. This is the delight I found when trying to enter the adult version of the site:

Seems simple enough. But since I grew up during the age of the internet, I simply entered a fake name and age, even though I am 24. Why enter a fake name? Simple, the small print at the bottom of the warning says that entering my personal information is just for data purposes, and anyone with more than one email account knows that those declarations of "We won't sell your information" are about as reliable as our government being honest with us. So I punched in my fake name, and in return, I get:

This alarmed me. How in the hell does the internet know what names are real and what names are fake? And how is this okay? Right now a ten year old kid could type sex into the google search bar and find about 847 million different options to pick from, and all of these websites ask is whether or not the kid is 18. And guess what, children simply click yes. And one could simply argue that some type of security is needed to prevent children from looking at porn (we could call it parenting, and getting decent firewall software) but when an R rated movie starts requiring real names just to look at a few free clips we are in trouble. Imagine a world where we would need to put our actual name in somewhere just to look at the smallest amount of information. Where does this information go and who controls it? When will the websites we browse determine our status and freedoms in our society? Individual citizens could be denied access to anything the government disagreed with. One of the interesting parts of the internet is that everyone can have their own voice and be who they want to be.

It is odd that a movie about a tae kwon do instructor could be the catalyst for what could be an early battleground at the heart of free speech.

A "Real World" vision quest

2008-05-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

Twenty years into it's culture redefining run, MTV's "The Real World" is actually showing real signs of fatigue. These are not the signs of fatigue that crtics have pointed out ever since the collossal success of the infamous Las Vegas season, but these are real actual points of fatigue for a show that has been around for most of my life. The current season, set in Hollywood California is not only boring, but each character is a caricature of another 'roommate' from seasons long since past. There is the alchoholic (Joey), the girl with the past (Brianna),the one with the boyfriend (Sarah), the nice guy (Will), and a few more forgettable typical characters. A simple search on good old Wikipedia will show anyone that most of this years cast aspire to be actors or models. While this may translate to a life of bartending, the show is cleary going in the wrong direction if most of the cast haver aspirations to go into acting or media. I am not claiming that the last 8 years of "The Real World" have been anything more than excercises in superficiality, but this year seems to be the most blatant insult to what is "real" yet. How can we fix a show that ratings have deemed not to be broken?

Make "The Real World" actually feel like the real world. Don't get me wrong, every season needs the one night when a couple of cast members get drunk and hookup, but not every episode has to be an all out drunken drama fest. Stop picking people that will provide the most drama or fit certain molds. I would love to watch a Real World where people are not complete idiots. There is already one show on MTV full of morons, it is called "The Hills." How about we take 7 people who have all recently graduated college and put them all to work for the same company. And not some stupid "job" the show usually gives them. A job where the cast would actually have to show up. Give them real, entry level jobs at a company that will let cameras in. They don't even all need to work in the same department, just the same company. Take people from different backgrounds, but people that are educated. Throw in conservatives, liberals, people with deep religious beliefs, people with varying sexual preferences, that are all mentally stable and watch what happens. People talk about the relevance of shows like "Survivor" and "The Real World," because of how both seem to have reached the point when they only take people who fit the mold of what characters the show already has. And even though the ratings seem to point the other direction, this sort of crap has to stop.

Imagine an episode of "The Real World" where there was actual drama. What if a workplace relationship became a little bit more. Bringing cameras into a real work place would actually make it seem like the cast of the show was not on some extended holiday where they just drink (and anyone with a brain knows that bars are giving the cast free drinks for the free exposure) work at some resort, and then go on a trip. This is the opportunity for MTV to take something that used to be entertaining and make it into something that is a relevant look at how recently graduated college kids blend into society and find work. Talk about the "Real World."

It is now winding to a close and it is time for another great political editorial

2008-05-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

As my last blog made quite clear, I thought Hillary Clinton was hurting the Democratic Party. And while she was hurting the party for some time, Obama's decisive win in North Carolina a few weeks back showed that even though she did do some damage, Obama's ability to draw the youth and African American vote is magnetic. Now Hillary is 20 million dollars in debt, and running on fumes. She has quit with the negative ads, and even stepped in to defend Obama (although indirectly) when Old Man McCain and George Bush lambasted him for his views on foreign policy. So as we all get to watch both candidates do stump speeches, we should take a look at the way this has ended to see how prepared this has made Obama for the general election. I don't really need to go into particulars, mainly because I am too tired of the punditry to write them all out, but Obama has learned not only how deflect issues, but how to attack back in a way that is not getting down to the level of the republican party. This is important because they will be sure to bring the entire kitchen sink to the voters this November.

This long and drawn out contest has also helped show the Democratic Party how their voting base is spread out. Cable television pundits have argued long about Obama's weakness with the white working class vote. The Edwards endorsement aside, seeing where Clinton pounded Obama in this country (like West Virginia) will end up being very helpful come November. Why? Each state Hillary performed well in will be a place where she will be campaigning for Barack over the next five months. When Barack shows up in West Virginia with Hillary at his side, the people that voted for her will get behind Obama. And voters need not worry. While Hillary will not be the next Vice President, she will make an excellent Secretary of State, just like John Edwards will make a great Attorney General.

Having just finished reading Team of Rivals, the excellent story of the Lincoln presidency by Doris Kearns Goodwin, my statement actually has merit. Lincoln was not the front runner when he was chosen at the RNC, it was a man named Frances Seward, who like Hillary Clinton assumed that he would be the next nominee for president. Seward became the Secretary of State, and also became one of Lincoln’s closest friends and confidants. I am not naive enough to think that Obama could be the next Lincoln, but a man from Illinois who came out of nowhere to get the nomination for president does excite me. But what is most important from the lessons of the past is that after the RNC, the party healed itself and backed Lincoln. Just like the Democratic Party will need to do and get behind Barack Obama.

That being said, other questions about Obama's electability come into question, like: Is he ready to be president? I can only answer that question with: Who is ready to be president? The simple answer is no one. Being president is the only job in America where there really are no vacation days. Sure, the current president may go take some time at his ranch once in a while, but he still gets briefings every morning, noon, and night. If we all sit down and think about it, no one is really qualified to be president. The only thing that qualifies anyone is their ability to get more than a handful of people to think that they actually could be president. This is the first time since Kennedy and LBJ when a senator will be president. And no matter how long Old Man McCain or Obama have been senators, how is a person that votes and deliberates with other people that vote more qualified to be president than someone who does the same thing? While one may have been around longer, does this mean that they have earned the presidency because of years served? If that is the case, there are plenty of life long factory workers that deserve higher paying executive jobs just because they have worked in a factory a long time.

What I am saying is, just being around for awhile does not make anyone qualified to be president. To win the presidency in modern times, it is very much like the time of Lincoln, with one exception. A candidate has to be honest, charismatic, and willing to compromise. The modern exception is public image. Those are 4 qualities John McCain certainly does not have. He may have moments of honesty, and moments of charisma, but I think we would be kidding ourselves if we all thought they were genuine. Putting him on television in a public debate next to Obama in the fall will have serious echoes from the now infamous Nixon-Kennedy debates of years past, the vibrant Obama and the old looking McCain switching places with the aforementioned candidates. Public image is something that is clearly important to the masses today; I can just point to supermarket tabloids and how quickly issues about fat celebrities sell. We could all go and lie to ourselves about people voting based on looks, but every single election year there are countless studies done on how people vote based on looks, or even the color of a candidates tie.

To conclude this long and drawn out opinion piece, I will finish with a story. About a week ago, a friend of mine and I were having a political discussion about Barack Obama's electability. My friend mentioned to me that her grandfather was having serious doubts about Obama for a few reasons, but more importantly because he was black. This did not surprise me. Even in the state of Hubert Humphrey, the stains of prejudice still remain. And I get it, some older white voters may be inclined to not vote for Obama because he is black. While I may not believe that it is any way acceptable, I can understand why a 65+ person may be disenchanted by the thought of a black president. That being said, anyone under the age of 65 who votes on the basis of skin color simply does not deserve the right to vote. Too many people from too many different ethnic backgrounds have died trying to defend this country for us to base our political decisions based on race.

This is an exciting time for our country. Gas prices may be up, and the economy may be dropping as quick as the dollar, but come November our nation will have the choice to take the steps necessary to change our country for better or for worse.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

2008-04-23T18:50:00.000-07:00

The day after Hillary Clinton's 10 point victory in Pennsylvania, I decided to take some time to reflect on the quandary that is the current democratic race for the presidential nomination. While I did not expect Obama to pull of a miracle victory of any sorts, a closer gap in points would have been nice, as Hillary has managed to raise a little more money in order to keep her campaign alive. This will certainly give her the opportunity to spout out republican cannon fodder against Barack Obama. Simply put, Hillary Clinton is tearing the democratic party apart. She knows it, and she simply does not care.

Her husband has stepped out in her defense many times, telling the press great statements along the lines of 'politics is a dirty game,' and 'she is only getting treated like this because she is a woman.' The irony in both of those statements is that Hillary has brought both of them upon herself. Smear campaigns, 3am calls, flag pins, ministers, Osama Bin Laden, possible ties to the Muslim faith have only been a few of Hillary's stumping points. It is rare that we live in a time when democrats treat other democrats like republicans.

Obviously the media has complimented these allegations with 24 hour a day coverage and constant analysis. But can anyone blame them? If they did not cover the mess to the race to the White House, they would be forced to cover important things like the looming recession, and how they no longer cover the war in Iraq. Also, the media outlets realize what anyone with a brain can clearly see: the democrats have basically been handed the 2008 presidency and they appear on the brink of having it completely blow up in their faces. Stephen Colbert has brilliantly covered this during The Colbert Report, and it is unfortunate that his show is one of the only shows in the country to have actually looked at how these circumstances are panning out. It is like driving by a car accident, we all watch, slowing down traffic as we pass.

Our world has real problems and we need someone who can bring about real solutions. And no matter who the next president is, they are going to need to see past rhetoric, the analysis from the sea of pundits, and actually try to change our country. The world of the free ride is over. This country does not have nearly as many complex issues as people claim. Here are a few of the "complex" issues: the economy, the war in Iraq, and rising oil costs. I will start with the economy. Our economic issues can be fixed with one word: taxes. We need to pull back the various taxes that help the 1% of America as well as increase taxes across the board completely. Why? Because to live in this country you have to spend money to have nice things. Putting more money into our government helps almost every issue our country currently faces. Give the government more money and strict restrictions on how to spend it and they will get a lot done.

The war in Iraq can be solved by us leaving, and leaving now. I do not believe in a timed based exit strategy simply because it is not worth it to us financially or for the safety of our troops. The country of Iraq is imploding, and it is not solely our fault; the Iraqi people have shown us that they simply cannot govern themselves without killing each other because of their religious beliefs. Build a military base that is out of the way and keep 30,000 troops there with all of the military equipment we have that is only intended to be used in desert conditions anyway. Will we take a hit in the world of global politics? Most definitely. But getting out of Iraq is the most important thing to our country.

Last but not least is our "addiction" to oil. I use the term "addiction" loosely because it is hard to consider something an addiction when it is all we have ever used to power our automobiles. My hatred of ethanol not withstanding, we really have not developed anything near a reasonable solution to ending gasoline powered cars. But our recent problem has not been that we need gasoline to drive, but who we are getting the gas from. The Islamo fascists we buy oil from are raising the prices, and the "Americans" that help facilitate these purchases are making more money than god. Why do I call the "Americans"? Because, while there is nothing wrong with capitalism, capitalism that solely exists to exploit the masses is disgusting an goes against everything it is to be an American. The solution to our oil woes is to stop buying oil from people that oppress their people and shake our hands with their left hand while shaking the hands of terrorists with their right. Our need for oil can be cured by using our own oil reserves. If we commit ourselves to solving the need for gasoline powered cars within 20 years, we will have plenty of our own oil to sell to the American people. At this point, Americans simply will not mind paying 2 dollars a gallon. And oddly enough the oil companies will still be raking in money hand over fist.

The problems in this country are great, but their solutions are simple. We must learn to compromise and shed our partisan ties. This country is clearly divided more than it has been for a hundred years. The people we elect to positions of power need to do what we pay them to do, not what lobbyists pay them to do. No matter who the next president is, the longer we dance around our countries problems the hard they will be to solve.

Check out my iMac Portfoli!

2008-04-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

This is so cool. I really am glad people base their purchases on whether or not their computer fits into a manila envelope.

When in doubt, blame ethanol

2008-03-20T07:41:00.001-07:00

Let me first say that I am a champion of environmentalism. Everything about the natural ecosystem fascinates me, and not a day goes by when I am not amazed by how the smallest things matter. But in a world with 6 billion people, a few trees have to be cut down, and a few streams have to get waste tossed in them. The old saying of "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet" comes to mind. Of course technology eventually caught up with the omelet breaking and we were able to slowly start correcting the mistakes we had made. One of these solutions were called biofuels. Not be confused with the "Mr. Fusion" from the Back to the Future films, biofuels are a type of combustible that are made from the environment, hence the cute name. For a while virtually everyone was hot in the pants over our own scientific prowess. Turning corn and soybeans into a type of gasoline was pretty awesome, even if it burned at a lower temperature and caused cars to get worse mileage. And since we were so proud of ourselves we didn't do any research and we gave the Big 3 auto companies a special credit if they gave their cars the ability to run a special blend of gas and ethanol, known as E85. So auto companies started churning out cars that ran on E85 and made them bigger, but stamped the E85 logo on them and made themselves out to be environmentalists. To top that off, our government is giving massive subsidies to farmers so they grow their corn for ethanol instead of food.

This link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18784732 also shows how bad ethanol is for the environment.

Besides the reasons I have provided, the real reason ethanol is bad is because it is effecting the cost of food. Take a look at the back nearly every food product we consume and there is some form of corn inside of it, the most common being high fructose corn syrup, a sugar substitute. Add onto that the fact that all of those chickens we eat are fed corn feed, as are most livestock house pets (unless they are fed the livestock or chicken parts that we don't eat, but since those parts came from corn eating animals I think the point is clear) and so many other products. About a year ago there were stories everywhere about how the cost of cereal was going up. People ran to blame the price of gasoline or the war in Iraq. And while those obviously contributed to the cost of cereal, what people failed to report was that farmers are growing fields of corn for gasoline instead of fields of corn and wheat for food.

Of course anyone could break this down with the counter argument that we need to cut our dependence on foreign oil and develop a renewable resource. And I completely agree. But there are better solutions to cheaper gasoline while we figure this out. Hugo Chavez is in Venezuela with a ton of oil under him that he is willing to sell to the United States for a much cheaper price than we are getting from a bunch of imperialistic sheiks across the ocean. I am not an economist, but I imagine that shipping oil from Venezuela to the United States is considerably cheaper than moving it across a massive ocean. I am also not a scientist, and I don't know what the solution is to get rid of our dependence on foreign oil. But I know that this solution is not something that has to be bought again and again by Americans. I am not saying that it has to be free either, but it seems to me that the solution to our problem has to be solved by Americans for Americans. We need a solution that when we pay for it, the money is going into the pockets of Americans, not Americans and some person that indirectly funds cells of people that want to kill people because of their religious preference. Then we can take our magical solution and sell it to the world like the world for a high price like they have started to do to us. A solution for a clean and renewable energy source would not only help our environment, but cement us firmly as the most powerful country in the world for the next 50 years. But then again, maybe starving ourselves while we pay 3+ dollars a gallon is a good idea.

These are the sort of things I have to work with

2008-03-14T09:48:00.001-07:00

The problem with a post-apocalyptic earth

2008-03-09T12:12:00.001-07:00

Obviously, the title of this post is a bit different than most but bare with me. I just saw a trailer for a movie called "Doomsday." It was not the first time I saw this trailer, and the only redeeming quality of it is a shot at the end that features the star (Rhona Mitra) of the film's ass walking out of a car. My being more of a leg man aside, I have serious issues with the "Doomsday" trailer and the growing genre of dystopia-world films.

In the future, if a plague wipes out most of society, those left to survive on their own are not going to become leather cod-piece clad freaks. You know when you walk down the street and you see that guy with the shirt that boldly reads "You think I am different, you look all the same." Would that guy survive the super virus and the looting that followed? No, he would not. The people that survive are the healthy people and the people that will do anything to continue living. So you basically have the disciplined people who live very healthy lives, and the predators who loot and pillage. But the thing about that is, even gang and mob culture has it's own empirical system; there is always a leader, and that leader is smart. This leader would be smart enough to know that in a desert you may want loose and light clothing, but you also want clothing that protects your skin. And in the survival of the fittest mentality, only the women are going to wear eye shadow.

The terrible future I can imagine would have these two clans constantly at war with each other. Not necessarily a violent conflict, but a difference in ideals. The people that are in shape and healthy are going to have to protect their cattle and farms from wandering hordes of people that look the same as they do, but are far more sinister. They don't have eye shadow, mohawks, or tons of piercings. They look like everyone else, just maybe a little dirtier, like a mechanic before he washes his hands. And he will kill you and your family to eat dinner and survive. That is a scary future.

Brett Favre, a class act

2008-03-06T14:19:00.000-08:00

When I was in 9th grade I watched Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers lose in Superbowl 32 to the Denver Broncos. I couldn't have been happier; because I lived Minnesota it was embedded in my DNA to hate the Packers, and since my brother had started to love Brett Favre, the loss was even sweeter. As the Packers lost to the Broncos I constantly berated my brother about how the Packers and their quarterback were choke artists.

Fast forward to my adult life. I suddenly have an immense amount of respect for Brett Favre. The guy was a machine. When numerous and less of men would have hanged it up, Brett kept soldiering on. Even through his wife's lengthy battle with cancer and his father's death, there was Brett Favre. Favre transcended the normal perception of the modern athlete. He played through pain, he played when everything in his life seemed to be falling apart. In other words, he did his job. In his later years he may have not had the greatest of co-workers, but Brett was always constant.

I have always been hesitant to hop on board with the majority of sports journalism that idolizes sports and paints modern athletics with same shade of paint that classic sports had. Gone are the days of blue collar ball players, and players that while big, still have the look of the average dock worker. Today is the day of big houses, big cars, and even bigger egos. And while there is no doubt Brett Favre has a big ego (it takes one to play quarterback at the professional level for nearly two decades), and a big house to boot, there was always a certain quality about the way he carried himself that made him different from all of the malcontents that have flooded professional sports. The guy did Wrangler Jeans commercials for crying out loud. I may not wear Wranglers, but I know that Tom Brady is never going to be caught dead in a pair of them.

Watching Brett Favre sit in front of the press corps and the cameras in Green Bay today crying his eyes out was just a testament to what kind of a player he was, and most importantly what kind of man he is. Brett Favre was a legend and role model. The definition of how an athlete can be great and also be humble. His dedication will not be forgotten.

The New "New" Pioneer Press

2008-03-02T15:18:00.000-08:00

Last Monday morning I did what I do every Monday morning, I walked down the steps from my room and grabbed the paper from the steps in front the door to my house. Not that that means I read it, most times I just grab the paper and throw it on the kitchen table so newspapers do not pile up in front of the house. Last Monday however, I was surprised to see that the St. Paul Pioneer Press changed it's layout and format once again. The paper now resembles a sort of red headed step child of the USA Today and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. This is not a good thing. Then again, any news paper that employs a tech writer that cannot seem to go more than 2 weeks without talking about how great the Apple corporation is: http://www.twincities.com/techtestdrive

In the Sunday paper today the newspaper tried to state their reasons for the design change. Obviously, they were not going to go out and tell everyone that they think a "hip and now" looking paper is going to increase readership. Instead they used great reasons like: "Easy-to-use. We redesigned with readability in mind. Just on example: Page 2 of the Local section will be your new daily 'destination' for newsy community briefing items-now displayed in one convenient package." Sounds simple enough I guess. If I was a complete idiot. When I pick up a newspaper I expect 3 things: Words on a page, the occasional picture to correspond with said text, and to get my hands a little smudged up from the ink. A newspaper does not need to be "Easy-to-use," because it is a newspaper, and that is pretty self explanatory.

All around the world people seem to thing that the newspaper is dying and that the internet is going to replace printed media. If this happens it will not be because of how integrated computers have become in our lives, it will because newspapers started treating the people that read them like idiots. "Distinctive. A new color palette gives each section a look all its own: green for business (WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT) blue for local, deep red for sports, and teal for features." I do not need special colors to help me identify things when I am looking through the newspaper, I just need print with words on it.

Sure, I am busy during the occasional morning, but when I do read the paper, odds are I am going to read it throughout the course of the day. The USA Today is about the only paper in the country that can get away with short snippets of news, but that is because that is what the paper is designed for. That is why it is a national paper that is in airports, hotels, and even college dorms. A local newspaper does not need to be quick and convenient, it needs to contain well written articles that actually tell stories worth reading, not stories worth discarding. Treat consumers like they are intelligent and that intelligence is respected and there will be a whole lot more people buying your paper. I should not have to go online to get a more detailed story, it should be in the paper, or maybe it should be a multi part series. If things get any worse, I will stop reading.

Election Center 2008!

2008-02-22T21:53:00.000-08:00

My father and I have political discussions on a regular basis, many of them centering on Barack Obama and his electability. My father, the jaded politically savvy veteran, seems to support no one, labels both Hillary Clinton as well as Barack Obama as "crooks," whereas I support Barack Obama with an idol worship that is usually reserved for sports heroes. And while my father and myself are both registered democrats, he is well aware that I lean far more to the left that he probably ever has. The two of us discuss politics at a level that my mother seems to draw quite a bit of disdain for, probably because my father and I seem to cut her out of a lot of our political discussions. My father and I swing barbs back and forth to one another, my father hoping to get me a bit too worked up over my devotion to the Illinois Senator, and my loathing for the New York Junior senator he is competing against are his two main tools to try and derail me. Our little "arguments" usually end in a sort of camaraderie that is reserved for friends rather than father and son.

As of late our arguments have centered around the idea of voting in November rather than who the candidate is. My father has repeatedly stated to me that in November my generation is going to have to turn up big to vote especially if Barack Obama is the nominee for president. And my father simple doesn't think that my generation is going to hold up to it's end of the bargain. My father believes this simply because my father is not longer 23 years old, and like I eventually will, he has become his father. My father told me recently that he sees kids my age that are simply doing nothing and getting by. I of course told him that there were just as many people in his generation that did the same thing and age had changed his perspective. I had to defend my generation, just as I have defended Barack Obama. And then I got to thinking, what if my generation doesn't show up?

Anyone who knows me can understands that while I am cynical, I have a realistic perspective about the word. And recently that perspective has began to worry me. In a society where people are more energized to see the results show of American Idol than they are to take an active role in our government, there definitely is room for fear. And as much as that statement has been overused and hammered into the ground by various pundits, it is actually starting to resonate in my head as a very threatening concept.

I see the political spectrum as an amazingly polarized field where not much happens. There are many reasons for this, for which dozens of books have been written. But the problem with nothing getting done is that people like my father become just as polarized as the politicians that aren't getting anything done and younger people like myself just start to ignore everything around them. By no means am I saying that we should get rid of television or any of our guilty pleasures. But I am saying that it is about time for us to start talking about politics again instead of letting the pundits do it for us.

People say that Barack Obama doesn't have any firm causes or beliefs. I always ask the person who makes a statement like that if they have done any research regarding Senator Obama. "No," is a common response. In the interconnected society we live in, it is time for all of us to get on a computer and look some things up. Also, while we are at it, we should find some issues that have actual meaning. Abortion should be legal. Not because it is hedonistic, but because no one wants to come home and find their teenage daughter dead on her bed because she tried to give herself an abortion. We can educate people all we want about the risks, and we can even let the various religious groups have their chance to talk people out of terminating pregnancies. But stop talking about it, just stop. The same goes for religion in schools. If the main concern of your day is whether or not your kid gets to have group prayer before lunch, you may want to reevaluate your life and find something that actually makes sense to get angry about. Keeping prayer out of schools has worked for 200 plus years. Lets keep it that way. It is great if you have your own beliefs, but remember, they are your own.

These are the reasons I agree about my generation not voting if Barack Obama is not the candidate. Obama has a charisma about him that speaks to young people. When I saw him at the Target Center here in Minneapolis before Super Tuesday, I really understood what it was. It really was hope. And not the hope that everyone sort of rolls their eyes at. Obama has been campaigning almost non stop for months, and when he stepped on stage there was a sort of energy that was undefinable. Even though he looked tired, and once a few words seemed to escape him, it was that vulnerability that made me understand it. He is a person that seems trustworthy. And even if he is a politician, and even if he knows how to work a crowd, I felt like I could trust him. For the first time in my life I understood what it really felt like to be an American. That we live in a nation that gives anyone the opportunity to be great, that once in a while someone comes along who instills a sense of greatness onto all of those he touches. Sure, there will be a learning curve. And his ambition may be pushed a bit in the first year. But Obama is a candidate that has the potential to unite the nation. So what we as Americans have to ask ourselves is: Do we want the same old same old, or do we want the potential to set the groundwork for something new.

Sandwiches, a dining guide

2008-01-18T14:25:00.000-08:00

Lets get one thing straight, I love sandwiches. I could eat a sandwich every meal every day of the year. But when I am too lazy to actually grab two pieces of bread and find something to put between them, I usually stop by one of the usual sandwich shops in the metro area: Subway, Quiznos, and Jimmy Johns. And while there are plenty of other sandwich shops in the area that I could go into in far more detail discussing, I have chosen the 3 most commercial solely for the purpose of their recognizability. While all 3 of these sandwich shops specialize in sub sandwiches, it is not the sandwiches I will really be focusing on. Instead, I will focus on the staff.

Subway
Subway has two types of employees: clean, and dirty. Clean employees are usually well put together individuals with occasional body jewelry and a look that says "I showered before I came to work. The dirty employees on the other hand are generally unkempt, and have multiple tattoos below the elbows and occasionally on the neck. You know a bad place to tattoo something? On your neck. Are you a piece of meat at a butcher shop, a coat at the local Target? No? Then don't get a tattoo on your neck. It doesn't mean you love someone more, it means that you will never make more than 14 dollars an hour. However, regardless of how a Subway employee looks they usually make an average sandwich that never seems to vary from the well known Subway formula.

Jimmy Johns
Every employee at Jimmy Johns looks clean and is often quite happy to take your order. Of course, because the music inside every single one of their shops is loud enough to drive any normal person insane, they often have to yell at you over the music. Still, most times the sandwich is in your hands before your Visa processes, so I don't mind.

Quiznos
I chose to leave Quiznos for the end because I have never been to a place with worse service than Quiznos. The employees are clean, but that does not make up for the fact that every single Quiznos I have been to has employed the most inconsiderate of individuals. Even the managers seem to operate on the mentality that Quiznos is the cat's pajamas when it comes to restaurants. I am a regular guy and it takes a lot to get me really worked up about where I eat. But when I order a sandwich that is not even a foot long and that costs more than the competition, I expect the staff to be kind and respectful. I don't like to have questions barked at me, and as much as I sound like my parents when I say this; I definitely do not need to have someone roll their eyes at me.

In the end, I say choose Quiznos only if you really want to deal with some 16 year old burnout treat you like you ruined their day of listening to Linkin Park and driving their parents car to work.

Transformers!

2007-07-04T19:53:00.001-07:00

After getting past the trailers for upcoming films, and getting over the fact that Transformers was a GM trailer, I found Michael Bay’s latest film to be quite enjoyable. Don’t get me wrong, I think that the movie could have used another half an hour of robots fighting each other, but overall the movie was worth the 8.75 I shelled out on Monday night.
That being said, Transformers was not a perfect movie, far from it. Usually when films have problems it is any, if not all of 3 issues: script, actors, direction. Transformers biggest problem was like most other Bay films, (save Bad Boys 1&2, which were saved by the amazing chemistry of Smith and Lawrence) a horribly weak script. Any time the old Transformers catchphrase “More than meets the eye” reverberated in my ears I literally laughed out loud. I knew it was coming at some point, but I was not prepared for exactly how bad it would be. Another key script blunder occurred when Shia Lebeouf and amazingly sexy Megan Fox are having a romantic moment as robots are fighting all around them. The sound knob gets turned down as Fox says to a dirty Lebeouf “No matter what happens, I am glad I got into that car with you.” Awww, young love.
There are 3 storylines in Transformers: high school geek Sam Witwicky (Lebeouf, who is the best actor in the movie), the Department of Defense tracking the mysterious occurrences around the globe (Jon Voight, Rachael Taylor, and Anthony Anderson each play roles), and the Army guys who first encounter the Decepticons in Iraq (Tyrese Gibson and new father trying to get home Josh Duhamel). While each part of the story is necessary, the script doesn’t really know what to do whenever Lebeouf is not on camera canoodling with his girlfriend or hanging out with robots. While all the actors are great, Tyrese and Duhamel are fantastic in their story arc and have great chemistry, Jon Voight is simply Jon Voight, and not every character was necessary. Rachael Taylor’s role was really only to object to the government’s ideas and introduce Anthony Anderson’s hilarious character. Taylor could have been written out entirely and replaced by Anderson, and no one would have noticed.
Why complain so much about a movie I really enjoyed? Because it could have been even better, that being said, there were still plenty of positive moments. The film was often funny, especially when Anderson was on camera. The special effects were easily some of the best I have ever seen, and even if the fight scenes were visceral and intense, I could have watched nothing but robots fighting for days. Bay easily produced his best film, and I can’t say there is a better epic scene director. There was never a part during the multiple robot fights that were happening simultaneously that I asked myself what was going on with the other robots because Bay kept up with everything as it happened.
It was flawed, but fun, which is all anyone can ask for in a summer full of lackluster sequels. I will see the inevitable sequel.

8/10

Live Free or Die Hard

2007-06-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

As an American male, being a fan of John McClane is hand in hand with loving apple pie, women in Victoria's Secret, and airplanes. But some people seem to hate Live Free or Die Hard because McClane is no longer the chain smoking, profanity spewing, hungover average joe that he is in the previous installments. In Live Free, John McClane is fifty, has a hot daughter that he protects, hangs out with a geek, and is more unstoppable than ever before. Don't get me wrong, I missed the swearing, but in some ways it would make sense that McClane is no longer a chain smoking hungover average Joe. John McClane and his daughter don't get along, so it would make sense for him to at least give up smoking (my father just did after 30 years of addiction and he has the energy of a much younger man), and since he was looking for his daughter when the shenanigans of Live Free began, not being hungover is acceptable. The whole not coughing up blood mid movie was a little upsetting, but before I could dwell on it, McClane was fighting a woman inside of an SUV that was somehow suspended in an elevator shaft. Changes aside, I would have appreciated about 40 more F words, instead of one Shit! That is why it didn't feel like John McClane, because of his dirty mouth, not his mortality or addictions, but because he just didn't sound like John "I tie fire hoses around myself and jump off buildings" McClane.

I did find myself entertained by Live Free and the 2 hours of explosions. And I am not too proud to say that I felt guilty about enjoying it. Live Free wasn't as good as the original, but easily beats the hell out of Die Harder. The movie was funny when it needed to be and overall, just a fun film. In a summer of watching sequels, Live Free was the first one that did not leave me walking out of the theater wondering what they could have done to make the film actually move like a film should (I am staring at you Spiderman 3). Instead, Live Free made me want another McClane movie, because I know it would be more over the top than this one. And after McClane jumps onto a crashing jet and slides down a piece of broken highway as said jet explodes and the explosion follows him all the way down before he gets right up and runs after the bad guys like it was just another day in the life, I really don't think you can top it.

My pitch: John McClane and Will Smith's agent K from Men in Black are dropped off in Jurassic Park. Simply put, greatest movie ever.

Iran does not care for 300

2007-03-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I saw the movie 300 twice because it was that good. Was it a mind bending drama where I bonded with the characters? No, but it was a great action movie with amazing battle scenes, that stimulated the male part of my brain reserved for explosions and blood. However, not everyone loved the film as much as I did. The Iranian cultural advisor was quoted as saying "The film depicts Iranians as demons, without culture, feeling or humanity, who think of nothing except attacking other nations and killing people. ... It is a new effort to slander the Iranian people and civilization before world public opinion."
Great, Iran thinks 300 is insulting. It is good to see they are spending about as much time as our government does focusing on important things in the world. 300 is a movie based off of a graphic novel that in turn is loosely based on actual events that happened almost 2,500 years ago. Most of the people who saw the film probably did not even know the Persian Empire existed, let alone know there was ever a Battle of Thermopylae. Those same people are probably even less aware of where the Persian Empire was even located. If the cultural advisor would like to spout out things about hatred and ignorance, maybe he should turn his suspension of disbelief button on.

Since the Super Bowl is around the corner.

2007-01-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

As of recent there has not been much for me to blog about, and while I have had the free time, I have used most of my creative energy working on my novel. But, since I just saw Smokin' Aces (which I will surely pick up when it hits the 3 for 20 dollar bucket at Blockbuster, not that the film was bad, but it was not 20 dollars new great), I figured I would blog about something I have probably blogged about already, sports in movies. And not just any movie with sports in them, but movies in the future. The future of human society represented in movies show sports to be played with glowing batons or feature people running around in even tighter uniforms while the editing does what is known as "jump cutting" (when scenes jump from one to another) all while some popular song ironically plays during the "Super Sports" montage.
In the future, sports will be nothing like they were in movies, except maybe the tight uniforms. With advances in modern technology and how our culture worships sports figures, one can only imagine that the four main sports we have now will only be faster and more intense. Fifty years ago professional athletes looked like they could be your next door neighbors, and today even some of the kickers look like mercenaries. In the next fifteen to twenty years, the athletes that enter the world of professional sports will have been born and raised on Christmas Eve practices, and daily workouts. Each year youth sports get more and more intense, and it would only make sense that because of the intensity and overly competitive parents that in the world of ever growing television channels; that Children's Sports Television (CST). Owned by a dummy corporation that is owned by equal percentages of the four major sports, CST will have a playful logo like that of Major League Baseball, and will televise children's games regionally. Remember that local sports hero who you thought fell off the map? Well guess what, here he is, breaking down the upcoming local 9 year old baseball season. The better teams in all years of youth sports will play on CST in prime time and will feature pre and post game breakdowns by hall of fame athletes from the current generations massive pool of talented athletes that want to add to the pension plan. The smaller, less talented teams will play on CST2, and the women will play on CST:W The glory of the CST though will not be the games, but the advertisements that they feature. Because children are a marketer's dream, the idea of team representation has never been better. A world when children play games with each other, and the Oscar Meyer Bulldogs beat the Green Giant Ogre, is a perfect way to market children to anything. To the parents watching at home, they of course get the auto advertisements, but the major sports get the big bucks, as they now are profiting from a true "minor" league system.
Obviously, because we will have bred a group of children for the sole purpose of playing sports, some of the rules will have to be changed. Walls of baseball fields will have to be pushed back, basketball courts made larger, while football and soccer will stay the same. Thats right, soccer. While no one ever thought that soccer would make it in America, with the birth of a generation of super athletes, the normally boring soccer becomes a fast paced game that, before Iran and the oil crisis bankrupted it, Nascar had. Men with less than a percent of body fat that can bench press twice their body weight and run marathons in under two and a half hours sprinting towards a small white speckled ball begins drawing massive crowds in the future. And because of the reaches of technology and lack of padding, soccer players make perfect billboards, as each of their jerseys contain electronic fibers that each player is featured on. A star player would be on television, dribbling a ball slowly while a commercial featuring him plays directly on his jersey. The commercial of course would be instantly accessible because of the complete integration of internet and television.
Football of course will compete. But since their players' uniforms are far too complex, they will have to rely upon the field itself, which is why in 2021, the NFL banned grass from all of it's fields. To raise the stakes of every game, the NFL teamed with NASA to manufacture a poly-carbon blend of field turf that changes colors. As team approaches the end zone, the area in which they are in changes color in relation to that specific team's probability of not only scoring a touchdown, but percentage of first downs and broken plays. Where the players cannot be affected, commercials play on the grass, and every player wears a protective visor for which commercials starring him or endorsements play in a manner that does not affect their vision.

But of course, Super Bowl XLI, or XXXXI as I like to call it is on the horizon. I am taking the Colts over the Bears: 35-21. I expect Peyton to have a strong second half.

A pleasant afternoon with Capital One

2006-12-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

Since I activated my Capital One credit card last year, I have been being billed each month by something called Payment Protection. Payment Protection is a wonderful system Capital One has put into place in case I was to lose my job the credit card company would make payments on the interest for up to a year. It sounds like a fair system, if I was 35, and with two children and a wife to support. But since I am 22, and still living at home Payment Protection was just another fee that went along with my credit card, so I called the special 1-800 number that was provided on the website, and spoke to someone who helped me rid myself of that 5 dollar burden. But I still had to speak to Capital One, and I had to call another 1-800 number for that.
For some reason, Capital One, which according to their automated message, provides services for 1 out of every 3 card holders in the United States, decided that it would be too much of a burden to have a number on their menu so that I could speak directly to a customer representative. I tried the default 0, and nothing. I tried again, and it told me "Incorrect Selection, try again." So I hung up. I called the original 1-800 number, hoping for some answers. I was quickly helped, and told I would have to press 0 not once, but three times.
On my second call to Capital One, I pushed the 0 once, twice (once again, Incorrect Selection, try again) and then the third time, at which point I was prompted to give th last four digits of my social security number. I then spoke to a wonderful woman named Sam, who informed me that if I called again, I could simply do nothing, and I would be sent to a customer service representative.
Now I see a few problems with this, mainly the amount of deception that Capital One is using. As a customer I should be able to access a real human whenever I want, and not have to be lied to. What disgusts me is that these people do not want to talk to their customers, they would rather have them jump through hoops. And when I finally was able to speak to a real person, I had been on hold for fifteen minutes. How could that be? Did that many people have to push 0 three times or not push any button long enough? Another thing that bothers me is that Capital One is promoting an image of being the good guy, when it looks more like the well dressed guy at the party that gets a girl drunk enough to only be able to lay there while he goes to town. How hard would it be to have that horrible computer voice say one more thing? Not that hard, but they really would rather not speak to you.
What's in your wallet? Once I pay this card off, not Capital One.

Moderating the comments on your blog is stupid

2006-11-27T14:59:00.000-08:00

Sure, if someone puts something disgusting on my comments I get rid of it, but I at least give it a chance to be read. The people that leave these comments are the type of people that like to moderate the comments on their blogs. Most people refer to those as the type of people that can dish it out but can't take it.

If they reinstate the draft, I will not go to Canada

2006-11-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

Recently there has been talk in Washington about the big D. And not Democrats or Democracy, but Draft. And being that Iraq has been, to say the least, a complete and total failure it would make sense. And while many politicians talk about lowering troop levels, as someone who is a liberal I don't really think that it is that great of an idea. I would love to say that things are going well in Iraq but they are not, and while it would be just fantastic to get all of the soldiers back home, that would only make things worse. Much, much worse. By going into Iraq and doing what we did (read: carpet bombed it) it would only make sense that we would have to help rebuild what we destroyed. And while it would cause a great deal of civil unrest here, maybe even riots, I have come to the conclusion that if it came down to reinstating the draft that I would go. Not because our country is in danger, but because it would be for the greater good. While some citizens of Iraq may not want us there, others do, and those that do will surely be killed if we were to leave. And the only way to suppress those that oppose the new democracy (or at least the hybrid of democracy that will work in that region) is to have more troops in the region. If I was to be drafted, and sent to Iraq I wouldn't be scared, I would be scared if I was drafted to go somewhere else. And if there is a draft, I will get to fire an M-16, which is pretty cool, even if I am not the biggest fan of guns.

New look, same arrogance

2006-11-20T09:47:00.000-08:00

After I posted my latest world changing opinions, I was prompted to change the template of my blog, so here it is.

I am also almost tempted to get myself a subscription to ESPN: The Magazine, just so I can get ESPN: The 256 mb MP3 Player.

America's Funniest Home Videos is a misleading televsion show

2006-11-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

As I take a look back into the abyss where my memories lay, I can see the ghostly image of one Bob Saget, speaking in falsetto as a squirrel jumped out of a new decorated Christmas tree into the arms of an unsuspecting mother as she stood admiring little Jimmy's school made styrofoam angel that sat atop the tree. Boy, that was funny to me when I was eight, but nowadays with youtube, and various other video sharing sites, America's Funniest Home Videos (or AFV as it is called to stay hip and fresh) seems to be dedicated more to those that do not own a digital camera, or those that are just too technologically clueless to start a youtube account. "AFV" is filled with various pet antics, children being children (read: sickeningly cute), and the occasional shot to the crotch/face/butt. Unfortunately, those sort of things just are not as funny as they used to be, save the crotch shot, which is always funny. One of the main reasons that AFV is no longer funny is because of it's host Tom Bergeron. Bergeron, who also hosts ABC's unfortunate hit, Dancing With the Stars has a deep monotone voice that would be fine if it were on the radio or telling us which cough medicine is better. Bergeron tries his best to fill the shoes that Bob Saget was able to fill so well but the difference between Saget and Bergeron is that Saget was and is funny, whereas Bergeron is easily the most annoying, non-political pundit on television.
But Bergeron is not the only problem with AFV. Like I wrote earlier, youtube has made AFV irrelevant. If I want to see someone get hit in the crotch, I am going to check youtube. So what can AFV do? For one, they need to dump Bergeron and find someone who can actually make people laugh. Maybe David Allen Grier, he seems to be free. And most importantly, AFV needs a partnership with youtube. This way, the funniest videos from youtube would make it onto television, and people would actually compete to get onto the show, not just for internet fame. Until then, America's Funniest Home Videos is almost as pointless as this blog entry.

This has been one exciting week

2006-11-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

It sure has. First, the democrats took rightful control of congress, and most likely the senate. And then of course, Britney Spears finally filed for divorce. While I would say politics are much better implications for society, now that Britney has rid herself of one civilian, she can make room for another, me. But what do I have that Britney Spears already had with K-Fed? Simple, I am not a loser. Well, at least not the type of loser that K-Fed is. I am cheap. I am not really into expensive clothing, and style is not the most important thing in my life. I think that a man's job is to match and look good at formal events, not look like a fashion show on a daily basis. I also have goals in life that are realistic, not to be a rapper. I am also not a piece of shit. Kevin Federline liked to have his picture taken while he spent his wife's money. The future wife and I would keep it real in Minnesota, away from the contraversy, and tucked away in the midwest. I would make a promise to never leave our house in a wife beater and to always tie my shoes. My hair looks like shit whenever it gets long, so there is no possibility for me to ever have corn rows. And I would take my place at her side quietly, and never try to steal her shadow. That was Kevin Federline's problem, he thought he could be more famous than his wife.

But, on to politics. It was a fine Wednesday evening, as the Democrats took control of congress and the senate, finally bringing some decency back to this country. At least for a while.

Sports Sports Sports Sports Sports

2006-10-31T21:54:00.000-08:00

I will never claim to be a know it all when it comes to sports, but as someone who has played or watched sports since he could walk, I think that in many aspects I have a firm understanding of many popular (read: Baseball, Football, and some Hockey) sports. That being said, if there is one thing that has been bothering me about sports recently, is the network that brings most sports news to the world, ESPN. ESPN, or the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, (many confuse Entertainment with Eastern) runs Sports Center every morning from five am until noon, and I am fine with that. However, what I am annoyed with is ESPN is no longer reporting sports news, they are making sports news. When it is basketball season, they cover Shaq and Kobe, even if they have not played together for two years. During baseball season, they cover the Yankees, and apparently A-Rod has been having trouble in New York. And now during football season, we have been given the privilege to learn about the inner workings of the Dallas Cowboys and Terrell Owens, and how Tiki Barber is betraying his team by retiring while he can still walk with his own knees.

So what is ESPN's problem? ESPN cares way too much about itself. Just like MTV, ESPN is beginning to believe that it actually is a big deal in peoples lives, not that the information they convey is important. Sure, there are millions of people like me that wake up every morning they have free and take up a couple of hours watching the same episode of Sports Center (it is usually better the second time around unless there are basketball highlights on). But what I do not and could not care less about is Kobe and Shaq. Sure, the fine citizens of Los Angeles cared about them, but I did not need ESPN's signature loud mouth, Stephen A. Smith getting his own show because he was able to talk about Shaq and Kobe three months after nobody cared. The same goes for Tim Kurkjian of baseball tonight, who until everyone finally admitted that the Yankees pitching was flat out bad, could not seem to get off of the A-Rod talk. So he went hitless for a few games; this should never have been more than a brief note at the end of a high light package, maybe a little longer pending streak size.

Then of course, there is Terrell Owens. He is a perfect example of how ESPN actually is a big deal in some peoples lives. While Owens is, to say the least, a talented receiver, he is the definition of the modern day selfish athlete. After playing one of the best games of his career with the Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX with a broken ankle nonetheless, Owens wanted a lot more money, and his downward spiral began. And ESPN went along for the ride. Episodes of my precious Sports Center interrupted by some rich jackass holding a press conference outside of his mansion, where his agent tells the press he is being mistreated. Yep, he sure is, I think that Terrell should mail me some of that mistreatment so I can buy a better couch to better understand his feelings. All the while, ESPN displays Owens career stats to the right. Sure, this was a big deal when it happened, but about a year later it has only gotten worse. When Owens signed with the Dallas Cowboys, ESPN had to let us know because apparently it was a big deal to every fan in the country, not just Cowboy fans. What should have been a twenty second story on Sports Center and a blip on their 28/58 crawl, became a phenomenon. A phenomenon they created. Before his Super Bowl performance, Owens was known for his talent, and after the Super Bowl he was more well known for his talent. But Owens was not and is not a Jordon, Gretzky, Clemens, Aikman, or Young. He was just another guy that played a great Super Bowl. But for some reason, ESPN blew everything out of proportion with Owens, and sports fans hopped aboard for the ride. And that roller coaster has yet to stop. But what makes Owens interesting is that in all of his obnoxiousness, he is completely self aware of the impact he is having. Love him or hate him, he knows that if he says one little thing negative, the press is going to be all over it, because they are already too deep.

Tiki Barber is almost and enigma in this situation. Barber, a 13 year veteran of the NFL and an athlete who comes off as selfless decided that this year was his last year. He probably figured this decision out on his own, and maybe it slipped out to someone. But ESPN picked it up and ran with it, (probably to distance themselves from the cult of personality they helped create) breaking down every reason why Barber would want to retire during the prime of his career when the answer was obvious: Tiki likes walking. Tiki is relishing the idea of not having to work out three hundred days a year so that he can get beat up for five months in a row by guys that are much larger than he is. Granted, Tiki chose the life he has lead, but I have been confused why it is such a big deal that someone wants to change jobs. Tiki wants to go into broadcasting, and not the Micheal Irvin type of sound bites, Tiki wants to read the actual news. And because Tiki wants to give it up honorably, some people think that he is a bad guy.

Of course, the repercussions from Shaq and Kobe, A-Rod, and Owens have had major effects on major sports; most of which can be seen during post game press conferences, where so called "sports journalists," try and ask questions to ignite controversy.

So I have a solution. A show dedicated to ESPN's "major" news events. I call it: YankeeShaqTO. Of course it is going to need air time, so we might as well let Stephen A. Smith host it, so the lack of actual news in the hour time spot would cancel itself out.

It is impossible to eat an apple quietly without cutting it

2006-10-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

And I of course, didn't have a knife on me. But if I would have, I would not have used it anyway; someone pulling a knife out to cut an apple in the middle of a linguistics lecture may have scared a few people. Or maybe, it would have given people the idea that I was going to kill myself, which anyone who has attended the lecture for Analysis of the English Language could tell you that it might not be a bad idea.

There really is no point to todays blog, other than that it has been about a month since my last one, and not much has happened since then. School is school, and with the exception of a few instances (conservatives telling me to shut up) not much has happened to me that I would say is blog worthy.

The only thing I have now is a sample of my Christmas Card.

Pasta Roni is the new Soylent Green

2006-09-22T17:29:00.000-07:00

It has been a rather uneventful Friday, and as I had the obligatory first bite of my Shells and White Cheddar Pasta Roni, I came to this conclusion: every flavor of Pasta Roni tastes the same. While each flavor is delicious (even beef, suprisingly) the taste of the noodles/shells, whatever it happens to be, far outweighs the taste of white cheddar. Which brings me to a lame conclusion, Pasta Roni, is people. Albeit, one delicious group of people.

I love conforming

2006-09-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

Today I read my friend Jamie's blog on one of the ever growing social networking sites (myspace) and she touched on one of my favorite sources of discussion: trying to be different.
I would love to post a blog about how different I am from the rest of a world, but unfortunately I am a pretty average guy. I shop at target, buy my groceries from Rainbow, wear cologne, and I enjoy almost every type of music, even the most sugar filled pop. I also think that having dreadlocks is a great way for you to tell the entire world that you think showering is a really bad idea. But why do I like discussing individuality? Because for the most part, I think that the way it is currently perceived is stupid. Of course I do not really think that being an individual is dumb. But, I believe that thinking the only way you are an individual is if you go out of your way to be as different from everyone else as possible is stupid. We do not need to go against the grain to be different, we can have our own opinions while wearing common brands and listening to "pop" music. Just because I shop at a certain store, listen to a certain band, or even have a tattoo in a certain place (I don't) does not mean that I am any less of an individual. The person shopping at Savers while clinching the indie rock album he just picked up from some guy he knows who knows the band who hooked him up with an advanced copy of their "sweet" EP is just as much as an individual as I am. We can all be different without looking different. When we all begin to think the same, we will have a problem.
I think that the current theme of my more recent blogs are attacking something I call Young Elitist Syndrome (YES). YES likes to go against the grain. Is that stupid? Yes. Do I have a problem with people being pompous about their own actions? Yes. Is YES a problem? Unfortunately.

If you walk around in some sort of all natural haze, you need a punch in the face

2006-09-10T19:26:00.000-07:00

As someone whose father worked in management for a beef company, eating meat has always been a norm to me. I have eaten beef, chicken, and pork for all of my life, and as I get a bit older, seafood is beginning to grow on me. I like the taste of meat, I like cooking it, and I even like preparing it. And it has never once crossed my mind to stop eating meat, because to me it just does not make sense. Which brings me to the point of this blog; people on crazy all natural health kicks.
I have bought food from a co-op, and it was a fair experience. I will admit it, I felt a bit healthier buying the food and supporting local farmers. But here is the thing, that was it. I enjoyed a couple of local apples, jerky, and some all natural jelly beans. While I felt like a bit of a prude, it stopped there. I did not freak out about the ink from the flower pattern on my paper towels seeping into my skin, or go on some tirade about how buying food from a co-op is better than shopping at the local grocery. Why did I not freak out? Because it is not a big deal. In fact, it really isn't a deal.
People that complain about how bad for us everything is need to shut up. A floral pattern in paper towels isn't going to poison me; I guess I would be more concerned with the giant vats of toxic dye they make all of our clothes, and bedsheets in. I've got it, a war on clothes MAN! Lets take down the man. This clothing business has to stop. But I digress.
Just because you shop at a co-op doesn't mean you have to let everyone know it. Example: "What did you have for dinner?" "I had some organic lettuce, organic beets, and organic carrots, all with some nice organic dressing, for a wonderful organic salad." Be quiet. Nobody cares what type of lettuce you have, or what type of beets were on your salad. In fact, don't describe the contents to me, just tell me you had a salad, and you made it yourself, this is not the first grade. There is nothing wrong with telling everyone what you ate, but holding it over everyone's head that you ate organic food is just flat out stupid.
The same goes for television. A good friend of mine one time had said he did not like television. This was of course only a few weeks after he had borrowed my copy of the first season of LOST, and watched all 26 episodes in five days. But he doesn't like television. No, he does like television, he just did not have a TV when he said that he didn't like television. Now, is there a lot of crap on television? Yes. But should people say that they don't like television because they are trying to be edgy and present some sort of false intelligence? No. Television, like movies, books, and music, is just another form of escapism. If you like reading more than you like watching TV (I do), fine. But don't say you don't like television unless you are over 60, because anyone under 60 grew up with television, and at one point, loved it.
I think what I am trying to get to here is that trying to be different is fine, but trying too hard to be different is arrogant. When you think about it, its kind of a downer, but a great deal of us are very much alike, and accepting that while we may eat the same food, watch the same TV, and use the same paper towels, pushing away everything that is the same doesn't make you different, it makes you a pompous ass.

Looking at elitism

2006-09-06T20:04:00.000-07:00

Today I only had one class, Screenwriting. This was the one class I had been excited to take all summer, and I thought of it as a good chance to help me with some of the weaker points of my novel. There was a catch however, I was not completely in the class. This was because the University of Minnesota has a system that in some classes, you need a registration code to completely register for the class. And when I tried to get that code, I was told that the class was full, and some with the code had yet to register. Confusing? Yes. But I was told to attend the first class anyway, because most times people drop, and there was a chance I would be let in. So when I drove to campus tonight, I was nervous that I would not be let in, and excited to go to a class I wanted very much to be in.
Unfortunately, the class was a tremendous let down. While we watched a movie I had never seen before that turned out to good, The Full Monty, and it looked like I could have gotten into the class, I chose not to take it. But why? Why would I decide after a summer of anticipation, to not take the class I was most looking forward to? Because the elitism disgusted me. There was a point during class, like there always is during college classes, when everyone introduced themselves. However, since this was in essence a film class, we had to say which film gave us a visceral

by or proceeding from instinct rather than intellect

reaction. It quickly became one big pissing contest. There were the usual movies, like Run Lola Run and others threw in their own, lesser known movies to get indie cred. I joined in with Infernal Affairs, a movie that is not only foreign, but being remade by Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Gangs of New York) as the movie The Departed. This game me some indie cred, and made me come off as someone who also liked movies that are worth watching (which the majority artsy indie movies are not). It was going well, until the person after me said that the movie that gave him the most visceral reaction was the hockey movie Miracle. I nodded my head, I liked Miracle, I even saw it in the theater. However, many of the students in the class began to fidget uncomfortably, because they seemed to know that this was not what the teacher was looking for. And they were right. My professor had not seen the movie, he admitted it. About the hockey game, was what he said, stunned. And then he said it:

You know what happens.

I have never heard a professor sound so blatantly condescending. It upset me to the point at which I decided I did not want to be in the class.
So what is the point of this blog? Well, I am getting a bit tired of elitism. And while I have looked down slightly upon people for some of the choices of music (liking Nickelback to the point of them being in your top five bands ever) I have never chosen friends based on their tastes in those areas, and honestly never judged someone on their taste in movies, books, or music (with the exception of the Nickelback thing). This same sort of pretentious crap comes up during english classes when people list their favorite authors as Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook), Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code), or John Grisham (The Pelican Brief). Professors commonly poke fun at widely published authors, I have even had a professor call John Grisham "common." Which of course aggravated me because I like John Grisham, but I also enjoy lesser known novels.
So what if someone's favorite movie is Armageddon because like it or not, it really is not that bad of a movie. Improbable, yes, but really not that bad of a movie. What really bothered me about the statement the teacher made was that it was stupid. When I saw United 93 I knew how it ended, but I still had a gut reaction, it still touched me to the point of chills. My point is that just because the end of a film is determined, or if it is maybe fluff like Armageddon, does not mean that it cannot cause a reaction, or touch you in some way. I cannot figure out what compels people to feel this way. I just do not get it. If it is entertaining, makes you turn the pages, or tap your foot, who cares how commercial it is. Looking at things with the attitude that big budget movies, music, or books lack quality is stupid. I think that from now on, that will be my statement. I am now too elite to be elite.

If I can hear your ipod, it is too loud

2006-09-05T08:31:00.000-07:00

I start school again today. So far it is going well. I had the first day of school jitters, and I left very early so I could do some things before my classes began, but I am enjoying myself thus far. However, one thing has already began to bother me. People need to learn to turn down their Ipods. It really is not that tough of a concept to understand; maybe I just cannot fathom why anyone needs to hear 50 Cent's "Disco Inferno" at the same decibel level as a chainsaw while they wait for their bagel. Not only is it mildly disrespectful of those around you, but you are doing harm to your ears. Maybe I am just bitching, but people need to turn it down just a little. I own an Ipod, and even on the lowest of the low volume settings, I can hear it. The "earbuds" are only cenimeters from my eardrum, not a mile away.

The internet is a trailer park of broken dreams

2006-09-03T21:45:00.001-07:00

I am not one to criticize the internet, mainly because I spend a lot of time on the internet. But if there one thing that has started to bother me, it is a certain aspect of the social networking website, Myspace. And while it is trendy at the moment to get down on myspace and dislike it because of it's popularity, I am writing this wonderful blog about myspace because some of the people on myspace deserve a lobotomy with a rusty spoon. The inspiration for this came from one of my former high school classmates, whose page I unfortunately clicked on moments ago. Her are a couple of nuggets from his page

-"I am nothing but shattered remains, figments, pieces of life, being and matter formed into a coherent being. I have no purpose, place or meaning, I am only here to live my life and to brainwash the likes of millions to my cause and to enlighten the minds willing enough to listen."

-"I'm T-----, I do just about everything and I do it extraordinarily well." This translates into: I am an insecure prick.

-"I'm 22. Issue? don't add.
-Yes I'm in a band (ask for info)
-I am Single and currently just want sex
-No I probably won't have sex with you
-No I do not want to meet up and "chill"

Could someone please tell me what this is, because I am trying to figure it out. Is there something that compels people to write razor to wrist shit about themselves on the internet? At which part of any of those statements did he think, gee, I bet people will be impressed.

I will have a try: My name is John, I am like the sweeping wind blowing across the desolate plain of my thoughtless joyless existence. Alone in the world, cold in nature, I stumble through, leading those who are more blind than I to a promise, a cause. Leading them to something, anything, that shall feed their blood thirsty souls with the life from the bottom of oblivion bleeding heart fetal placenta gate mouth toy.

People like this need to take a step back and maybe think that maybe, just maybe, emo pout time was a bad idea. Don't even get me started on spelling errors.

More on movies

2006-09-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

Today my friends John, Vance, Chad, Josh and me went to go see Crank at the movie theatre. For those who have yet to hear of Crank the plot is this: A man is injected with a drug that will kill him unless he keeps his adrenaline up. Essentially this movie is like Speed, just without Dennis Hopper, Keanu Reeves, or a bus. There really was not much to the movie other than kicking ass and explosions. Suffice to say, the movie was a thrill ride, if not the thrill ride of the summer. And I say that having seen Pirates of The Caribbean 2, which was supposed to kick everyone's ass, but failed to do so miserably. In a summer where there really has not been many great non comedy movies (Clerks, and Ricky Bobby were easily two of the summer's best) Crank basically beats the living shit out of everything out there. But that is not the point of this blog. After my friends and I stepped off the ride, we walked out of the theatre to hear this phrase "Well, I was afraid the film just wasn't going to be organic." This phrase made me want to turn around and punch this guy in the face. He just watched a movie when a man was injected with a drug that made him go on a crime spree so he would stay alive, and this guy is worried about the film not being organic? Don't get me wrong, I have picked apart my fair share of movies, but I have never gone into an action film hoping for organic characters. If I wanted that, I would have seen The Illusionist. Still, Jason Statham has further solidified himself as one of the coolest action stars ever.

I am directing the sequel to Con Air

2006-09-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

Thats right, Con Air 2: Flight to Freedom. Tyrese Gibson is set to star alongside school shooting mastermind Frankie Muniz. This will be a treat.

The fact that this exists makes my week

2006-08-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

Whoever buys this is truly an idiot. Am I the only one that would push it over for kicks?

I wish there really was a bloodsport

2006-08-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

While UFC may be the hip thing to enjoy these days, seeing two men who can rarely string a coherent sentence together fight it out doesn't really do it for me. Match example: Tom "Snake-bite" Nelson Vs. Julio "Spiderghost" Sanchez. I get that they are athletes, but you are not a warrior unless you dip your double stick tape covered hands into a bucket of broken glass shards and fight the man with an eye patch across from you. All the while, the barn you are in is filled with all classes: farmers, bookies, and out of state businessmen who are not only betting on the fight but on a lookout for twelve year old boys to have sex with. If only this could be realized.

A man who truly loves children

2006-08-17T18:30:00.000-07:00

So they apparently for JonBennet Ramsey's killer. This is the face of the scum that loves little girls:

I hope this guy fries.

A couple things I could really care less about

2006-08-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

1: Steroids and baseball/any other sport. Is using steroids cheating? Yes. Do I approve of cheating? No. But really, do we need to spend taxpayer dollars on a grand jury for steroids? Also, no.

2: Mel Gibson. I don't like that he made anti-Semitic remarks, but I could care less about the guy. It just happens that he is a celebrity. I am more upset that they tried to cover it up.

I think that maybe the people who care about these two things should get together and try and figure out a new thing to "scare" America. Maybe something like counterfeit arcade coins/tickets from county fairs.

The 651.

2006-08-04T01:14:00.000-07:00

While I was at the bar tonight, I overheard more than one person mention their area code, and follow it up with some witty phrase. These phrases were so witty that I cannot remember any of them. What this all boils down to is stupidity. What the hell is wrong with everyone? So what if you live in the 651 area code, congratulations you can go and rock it out and chill with the coolest that Farmington or Stillwater has to offer. When will people just learn to shut up? Whats next, zip codes?

Midnight running and the joy of sweat

2006-07-31T23:09:00.000-07:00

This is going to sound like an assignment for an eight grade English class, but that is my intention.

Whether or not I am running one mile or ten, running is one of my favorite things. By no means am I the best runner, but I think that running is an activity that even if you are not the best in the world, you can watch yourself improve, and challenge yourself to improve. But physical self improvement is only one of the many things I enjoy about running. To me running is about two things, form and thought.
Without proper form, running is painful and actually physically damaging. Running without proper form is like walking around with one shoe untied; it is not guaranteed that you are going to fall on your face, but it is more likely you are going to eat some dirt. However, the dirt you will be eating without proper form is pain in the knees, thighs, shins, ankles, and even feet.
Thought on the other hand is quite different. Whenever I run, I focus more on feelings than I do of the run itself, unless of course it is any type of competitive event, then I focus on finishing with a good time, but back to feelings. I think that running gives me the perfect time to sort out my problems or get myself out of whatever rut I have managed to put myself into.
This of course leads me to the title of this blog entry. A few minutes ago, I just walked back into my air conditioned home after a midnight run. Running at night is my favorite time to run, also for a wide variety of reasons. At night it is cooler, which with the heat is a plus, but running in cooler temperatures is something I really do enjoy (winter running is something I also love). Not only that, but running at night lets me run with my shirt off. By no means am I obese, but if there is one thing that I hate about summer, it is people who run with their shirts off that cannot pull it off. At this point, I just do not think I can, maybe next summer. The problem with not being able to pull it off is that I love running with my shirt off. When I barefoot run at a soccer field nearby my house with my shirt off, it is the closest thing I will ever do to running naked (unless of course I win the lottery). With the moonlight, the smell of dew in the air, and some nice music, a midnight run is almost as close as I can get to being perfectly centered.
Not only is running at night great for those reasons, but there is always a chance of rain, like the rain that came down for about five minutes during my run. Rain not only cools me down, but it makes me feel like I am my own highlight reel, and that is just fun.
To end this, because I could go on forever, running calms me, and has made me feel more alive than I have ever felt.

On blogging

2006-07-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

As someone that has a blog, reading the blogs of others has always been something that I have enjoyed. That is why I got into blogging. But I have never ever written a blog about my feelings because I feel as if that it is in some way even more self-centered than having a blog and thinking that people actually care about what you have to say. But at this point in my life, late at night on a Saturday night when I should be sleeping, I have arrived at the conclusion that the parts in my life that I have felt most alone end up being the best. Do I feel alone now? Yes. I honestly can say that I have not felt this "alone" since before I left for college four years ago. Depressing? It would seem so, and I was mildly sad when it dawned upon me about five days ago. And being that I am the type of person that thinks about things to the point at which my eyes begin to bleed, I had one of those moments that everyone has, when they slap their forehead and realize that they are not the only person in the universe and that everyone has problems, and everyone feels alone at times. What boggles my mind is how I began to feel alone, when I have friends that care about me.
And I figured it out, mid blog, that the reason people write their feelings on the internet is not because they want attention, but because it feels good on occasion.

On another subject, Jose Gonzalez is one of the most amazing singer/songwriters ever.

Fashion Report: 'Wife' beaters

2006-07-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

First off, let me state that my knowledge of fashion is far from all encompassing. Still, I do find myself at least somewhat in tune with common trends, and I try to at least be mildly fashionable. Which brings me to today's blog: the 'wife' beater, or tank top. A sleeveless shirt made from thin fabric, a beater/top is a unisex shirt with two names that equally represent it poorly. First off, not everyone that puts on a 'wife' beater beats his/her wife, but pop culture, and the show COPS brought that title to the masses. Then of course there is tank top, which is even less fitting; the shirt neither looks in any way like a tank, or can it even compare with a tank in stature. But I digress. Let me state that this top, or A shirt, as the Hanes company calls it, should only be worn by men as an undershirt, since that is it's purpose. Granted, there are exceptions, like relaxing in your home, sleeping, housework, or other work that doesn't expose said shirt to the sun or the eyes of society. If you are a man, this shirt is not to be worn as a main shirt ever. Ever. If you need something, throw another shirt on top, and go get what you need. When you wear an undershirt as anything but an undershirt, you look stupid, almost like an underling of society. Women, on the other hand are more than welcome to wear these shirts on any occasion because women look classy in almost anything. Granted, there are exceptions to the wearing of the top, (like if it doesn't match, or something, I like women and think most times women look great) but for the most part, it is ok to be seen in said outfit.

So there you have it, men stay away from the wife/a/tank top, women go for it.

My take on the world today

2006-07-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

I am not one to write my comments on world events on the internet because they often come off one sided. However, at this point and time, I think that it is alright for me to voice my opinion, and take full advantage of my rights as an American.
If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times: I hate George W. Bush. But that is not the basis of blog today, I just felt like stating it outright. I feel that because of this president, our nation has come to a crossroads both at home and abroad.
History books are lined with the mistakes of great empires, and the war in Iraq will most likely be the mistake that our empire is identified with. The Iraqi Conflict, as I have named it (TIC, like a timebomb of course, but without the k, because I couldn't think of anything) is going to blow up in our face more than it already has. Lebanon and Israel are fighting, and believe it or not, this is just the beginning. Our entrance into the Middle East has caused the tensions between various that were already there to tighten. We were and are the catalyst to what may become World War III.

A war on another front is the last thing this country needs, and I don't think that citizens would put up with it. I for one wouldn't. There would be riots in the streets as troops left for some other desert to fight some war we do not need to be fighting.

I am really looking forward to watching our nation crumble so some scumbags can make some money.

As a society we ask ourselves what kind of devious acts make someone a war criminal: genocide, terrorism? Sure. But what about war profiteering? These people are making money on oil and weapons as people die for no reason.

So what makes someone a war criminal, how many they kill or why?

DOT DOT DOT

2006-07-23T01:43:00.000-07:00

Now that is something I do use in my own writings, mainly in the subject line of my email. Why blog about the elipse? Because I have decided that I am going to make a concious effort to eliminate it during the headings of my email because it just makes me look stupid, as does a blog about writing the subject line in an email, which I usually leave blank. Then again blogging is pointless, but I need to kill some time, as I think everyone on the internet does. From now on, I will be sticking to the facts, not DOT DOT DOT. Either (No Subject) or whatever straight and to the point thing I can think of, no more so I was thinking...

After writing this, I feel my brain is slipping. I must sleep, maybe I will make a blog sooner, and it will be better than this one.

Barracudas

2006-07-04T18:19:00.000-07:00

I was watching Animal Planet tonight and a show about Barracudas was on. These are some freaky looking fish, and apparently they are killing machines. They have sharp fangs in the front, and sharper cutting teeth in the back. The show focused not only on the fish, but the many people who had been attacked by barracudas and their various injuries (an substantial loss of blood). This got me thinking, how can the barracudas threatening our oceans be stopped? Swords.

This is a poor photoshop, but the message is clear.

If scuba divers carried swords with them at all times and were properly trained, the barracuda would no longer be a threat. Many other dangerous sea creatures (see baby seals) could be silenced.

Go to hell Bruce Arena

2006-06-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

I am a soccer fan. This makes me a minority in America, but I really do enjoy the skill and strategy involved in a game of soccer. Which is why I woke up early this morning to watch the United States play Ghana in one of those "win or go home" games. The US will be going home, for a couple of reasons: Poor officiating, and poor coaching. And while I hate that there was a poor call in stoppage time that resulted in a penalty kick goal that cost the US the game, nothing is worse than having a bad manager in the world of soccer. This was the best team we have ever assembled for the World Cup, and Bruce Arena chose to play a conservative game of soccer when we were down by a goal. While many people do not enjoy soccer or understand it, anyone who watches sports can understand the idea of conservative play while losing. It just does not work. If we fire this guy, hopefully we can get a manager that will show the world, and non-soccer fans just how electrifying soccer can be.

Apparently blogging is the new news

2006-06-10T12:08:00.000-07:00

I was reading my friend Vance's (Ninja Disco) blog a couple of weeks ago, and he was touching upon something that has been getting a great deal of attention lately: blogging taking over as a new source of news. Frankly, I don't get it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading people's blogs, but unless I know that I am going to get the actual news, there is no way I am going to trust a random blog. However, since the news isn't really all that truthful anymore I guess that reading blogs makes a bit of sense. At least there is the possibility that blogs are going to call the anti-American Iraqis resistance instead of "insurgents," a label George W. And his cohorts have spun well enough that even the mainstream media is now using it. I don't think that any other propaganda campaign has ever worked as well as that term; the idea that US citizens have eaten that term up makes me laugh. Since when have invading countries struggled against harsh insurgency? They haven't because resistance is too-harsh of a word. People say that the news is only full of negative things, changing words to make them sound better is the raeson why things sound that way. When we sugar coat common fact, things that cannot be sugar coated look even worse. Maybe that is why people are beginning to trust blogs.

Another issue with my "ride"

2006-05-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I went out and met some friends for drinks. As my friend Randall and I went back to my car he asked me when I had gotten into another car accident. Since the housing on one of the taillights on my Ford Tempo is cracked, I assumed that it was that, but when he told me it was something else, I immediately felt my blood pressure beginning to rise. Moving to the rear passenger side of the car, I noticed that I had a large dent on the right rear fender. I don't know when I got it or where, but all I know is that it had to have been a truck or an SUV because of where the dent was. It is just ridiculous that someone would hit my car, leave as much of a dent as they did, and not even leave me a note saying sorry. When did it become so hard for people to be courteous?

Gatorade Rain

2006-05-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

Some say that Gatorade is bland, and tasteless, but those are people who have never had the sensation that is Gatorade Rain. Gatorade Rain has 3 flavors: Berry, Lime, and Tangerine, all of which are amazing; Lime tasting exactly like the green freezies I used to hoard in the back of the freezer so my little brother couldn't reach them. I am not the biggest fan of athletic drinks, and even though I love Gatorade, I am more likely to drink when I am not doing anything physical, because when I run or work out, I like water. This blog is going nowhere, other than making my cravings for Gatorade Rain increase.

On Movies

2006-05-27T19:22:00.000-07:00

I start this blog, my first in a while, with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. What is this chip?? It is mainstream Hollywood. Why mainstream Hollywood? Because they are making shitty movies. Granted, not all of them are crap, Mission Impossible: III was awesome, and I am sure there are a bunch out there I have not seen that are great, but yesterday my friend Paul and I began the summer movie season with X-Men 3: The Last Stand, and all I can say is X-Men 3 sucked, and it sucked hard. It had the two traits that make any movie a miss: a poor script, and poor directing. Granted, movies can have a poor script, or bad direction and be good, but if they have both, they usually end up being a steaming pile of shit. I had to ask myself, how can a movie with Ian Mckellan, Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, and Halle Berry (to name a few) suck as bad as it did. But I don't have an aswer to that, because for some reason, Hollywood can spend 150 million on a bad movie, and then go on to complain that illegal downloading and DVD rentals are killing the money that comes from the box office. Wrong. Bad movies are killing the box office. Movies like X3, and Men In Black 2, and even Wild Wild West are great examples of how to spend a lot of money on a movie, overhype the hell out of it, and have it perform poorly. Granted, there are a ton of other films out there that do the opposite, but those don't get mentioned. A movie like War of the Worlds, which made a great deal of money, doesn't have as many commercial tie-ins as say X3, in that there is not going to be some sort of action figure for a pod, or Tom Cruise. Therefore, when it makes a killing, but not as much of a killing as expected, nobody freaks out about it.
So how can this problem be solved? Simple, stop making ultra priced movies, or buy independent films and market them differently. People will go out and see movies if they don't have big time names in them, if the movies themselves look good. Take Thank You for Smoking for example. Sure, I bet people know the face of Aaron Eckhart, but I doubt people know the name. But the trailer for Thank You For Smoking was excellent, and I didn't care who was in it, I wanted to see it because it looked good. People will go to a theatre to see a movie that looks like it is going to entertain them, that is why people go and see movies like Hostel. Even if I think it sucked, the theatre I ws in was packed, and they were there because they thought the movie looked good. They didn't care who was in it, even if one of the stars was in the prequel to Dumb and Dumber, they wanted to see a movie that looked good. You don't need 100 million dollars to make a movie that looks good in the preview. You only need someone who is a good editor. So stop spending hundreds of millions to make shitty movies, get someone better to edit the previews. Also, stop making bad movies.

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired

2006-05-08T19:59:00.000-07:00

So I have had it. I just cannot take it any longer. I have been writing in this blog for a few months now, and while I am soley against the e-rant, I have had enough. I hate the president and everything he stands for. I hate the fact that everything in this nation has come down to money and religion, both of which seem to be giving each other kisses in the copy room. I hate that everyday I feel as an American citizen I am on a sinking ship (or as Colbert put it, the Hindenburg). We are just like Rome, getting bogged down with politics, expansion, and religion. I am tired of the war on terrorism, because it clearly is not working. Osama Bin Laden has been able to be on the run for five years. How can one guy outrun the most powerful and technologically advanced nation in the world? They spend 60 million in Iraq a day, take one day's spending and offer it as a reward, the guy will turn up. His own people would turn him in for that kind of money. And after that, we can make sure those who take the money don't go buy weapons with it, hell, we can give them a handshake, medals, praise for what they have done, even if they are terrorists; because maybe that would show them that we care just as much as our people as they do about theirs.
I hate that it is not appropriate to talk about religion or politics in public or in the workplace because someone just might get offended by it. Who cares, I certainly do not have a problem with it; in fact, I think that in a nation that is supposed to embrace free speech, talking about politics is probably the best conversation to have. Sure, it makes people feel uneasy, and once in a while people get hurt, but it is just as easy for someone to get hurt or feel uneasy when they talk about random subjects in the employee lounge. Why should we be uncomfortable to talk about the government? I think know why, because everyone knows that it is going bad, and those who used to think that George "God helps me with my decisions" Bush are starting to get a hint that maybe invading Iraq without evidence and cutting taxes during wartime is a bad idea. I would like to ask George Bush how he knows that this mythical figure that he asks questions is right, because last time I checked our "enemies" (read: non christians) also ask a mythical being for advice, so whose advice is the right advice? I personally think neither, but that is another issue for another blog. Because if George is right, apparently "god" condones killing without a valid reason (911, WMDs- no relation to Iraq) , making education cuts, and giving tax breaks to those that can afford to pay high taxes. Sure, I just made a "shitty argument" because George probably prays about seek and finds (I don't think he is much of a Sudoku guy) and ranching, but hey I am making a point here. This man has used religion as a weapon not only against his opponents here, but abroad as well. You should not wear religion on your sleeve, the only thing on your sleeve should be the sleeve. And sure, I understand that some people strengthen themselves through faith but it should not determine who you are at work.
George Bush is just as bad as some oil sultan over in Iran, in fact I would say he is worse. Why is he worse? Because before he took office, oil was much cheaper, much cheaper. How is it that a democrat is able to keep the oil prices down when someone with ties to oil companies is unable to do the same thing? Or, is this one of those questions that answers themselves with, "Oh I get it, this guy wants to eat his cake too!" What disgusts me the most is that people actually voted this guy back in for another four years, so when he leaves our country in shambles, the next guy to come is pretty much screwed. The next president, regardless of party alliances is going to have to pick up the pieces of this presidency, and the pieces are going to big, small and complex: like those Lego Technix my parents used to get me for Christmas, they will only make me pull my hair and ask why I didn't get the space Lagos I had asked for. Because of this, it is possible that our next president is going to be in more of a hole than the wet grave George has dug for himself. But hey, I guess I am making the internet uncomfortable, so I should stop.

Mission Impossible 3

2006-05-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

Regardless whether or not Tom Cruise is some scientology spewing fool, Mission Impossible 3 is amazing. From start to finish, the film never slowed down and was fabulously acted and directed. I have always enjoyed Tom Cruise's films, and this was no exception (that would be Eyes Wide Shut, that was horrible) he, as my friend Chad would say, Got shot up, but he got up. I cannot really put any new perspective onto the film but all I can say is that it was awesome, and J.J Abrams direction was stellar, as were the musical and cinematic homages to Lost. So far, this is one of the best films I have seen this summer.

Jaw Jacking

2006-04-21T00:37:00.000-07:00

Wow. A rather uneventful night at the dive bar I attend on Thursdays got a bit more eventful towards the end of the evening. Around bar close I went out to a friend's car to see his new laptop. As it was turning on, the entrance to the bar seemed to explode and a verbal dispute erupted. I turned to watch the events unfold, and it was a bit like this: 8-10 white men were having an argument with 4 black men. Usually I would not be mentioning race here, but it is important to the story. The argument seemed to be breaking down when one of the white men said: "Go back to Minneapolis." This was not smart, and neither was the N bomb (a derogatory term for someone of African descent) that soon followed. The black guys did not like this, but they still didn't throw any punches, then the white guys continued throwing the N bomb, and then punches started being thrown by white guys who apparently did not like the black guys not like being called racist names. Outnumbered, the 4 spread out, and I watched a 180 guy get tackled by a 300 pound white man who looked to be as old as my father, his eyes blazing with bloodlust. When they slammed the ground another white guy began to kick the downed person, and I pulled him off of him. As I was holding him back, two squad cars showed, and the white men who had started the fight ran tails between their legs into the bar. As the police officers came and told the men to stop fighting, a non fighting African american walked towards the cop with one hand up and the other in front of him like a crossing guard. He was tazed. Evidently, he was a threat. The man took the full force of the tazer in the chest, and proceeded to walk four steps before his massive 300 pound frame collided with the ground. I tried to explain to the cop that it really was not their fault, who would fight when outnumbered like that, but he would not listen. What a joke.
It seems that every other week I watch some guy try and pick a fight (sometimes with me) at the bar. It is not hard to ignore someone. I have done it. If the person is that bothersome, tell the bartender, and they will get them out of there. What a joke.

2006-04-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

I am beginning my training for the marathon I plan on running (this year or next, who knows, it is touch and go) today. Hopefully it goes well.

2006-04-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

It is a rather tepid Thursday morning, but I don't think it is too bad outside. The rest of the U doesn't seem to agree with me though, even though it is only about 50 outside right now, people seem to be having a tought time coming to grips with it after the 9 days in a row that it was 70 plus. This of course makes me laugh because usually when it is this warm out everyone is in sandals and short sleeved shirts. But then again, we have already gotten used to the warmth, even though it has been cold for the last four months.
Nothing real exciting happening today, although I did hear about some guy in New York who was found to have installed an OptiCom (the device that cops and EMT's use to make the stoplights turn green) in his car. I think this is amazing, even if it is a bit unfair to those he was giving red lights. He bought it off of ebay for about 90 dollars. I did a simple search this morning and found one exactly the same for the same amount. Apparently, the guy was fined $50, but he said he had not gotten a stoplight in 3 years. What a great story.

2006-04-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

Why do people walk down an escalator but not up it?

Thanks George

2006-04-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

All I have to say is that we do not need to go to war with Iran. What have they done to us?
Thanks George. Wait, fuck you George, go eat some pretzels.

I have discovered why people hate America

2006-04-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

So here it is, a grill. What the hell is this thing? I guess I don't get it, wearing a what essentially is a a glorified version of those vampire fangs you put in your mouth over halloween, and eventually remove because of the huge amount of drool, seem to be sweeping the nation and becoming fashionable. And I ask myself, why would you want to wear a false set of gold or platinum teeth? For one thing, anyone who has these in looks like a moron, and with these things on there is no way you could handle chewing on some tinfoil. Imagine the pain that would ensue after a quick bite of some Reynolds Wrap. I just wish that people that are willing to spend thee amount of money on covers for your teeth would float some of this disposable money my way. I could put it to much better use than looking like flav-a-flav in thee costume party that is the daily existence of someone who wears these.

Call me Mr. Morton

2006-03-29T10:53:00.000-08:00

I am not one with the ladies, and I never have claimed to be. I don't really know what it is, but picking up on a girl has never really beeen my thing, and in my life most of relationships have resulted in dumb luck more than anything. But I also know what not to say to women, and what not to do. And by this, I mean do not sit around and insult some girl's ex boyfriend. While there are exceptions to this: if youa re dating, if you know the guy personally being just a few, you just don't do it. Why? Because it is insulting to the girl who dated the guy. Sure, this guy was most likely a tremendous dickhead, it is not your right as a guy to tell her something she already knows because it is insulting. The same goes for the current boyfriend, if said girl has some sort of rocky relationship with him. It is just not the way to go. Yeah, their relationship is fading fast, and most men are circling like vultures, but that doesn't mean you eat before the guy dies. You don't take those sort of personal swipes at a guy, like the guy behind me is doing in the student union right now. I may not be able to say anything to a woman that isn't in the realm of friendship, I at least know how to have just a little bit of respect in the midst of my being a jerk like I usually am. People are stupid.

How bad does it get?

2006-03-28T00:14:00.000-08:00

King Arthur, that is how bad it gets. As I am writing this, it is nearly two thirty in the morning, and I am wrestlessly typing away at my laptop after getting trapped into the pile of rubbish that is the most recent adaptation of the story King Arthur. Why is it so bad? There are a wide variety of reasons, but mainly it is that the film murks up the idea of King Arthur. Most people know about Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Lancelot, the round table, and some may even know about Sir Gawain and his adventures with the Green Knight, so it would seem fitting that the film would sort of fit the mold of the King Arthur story. But the film chooses not to, instead, it completely changes the general perception of Arthur, for a more stylistic, Braveheart like aproach. And the film fails at doing this mainly because of poor direction, but also because the script is not Braveheart, and you cannot replace the tenacity of Mel Gibson (the "Mel Zone" is another discussion entirely). Even with an excellent cast: Clive Owen, Kiera Knightley (in all of her beauty of course), and Ioan Griffould (Mr. Fantastic of The Fantastic Four) the film just doesn't work because even with a good cast, it just is no believable. There were more Knights of the Round Table, and I know they said a great deal of them died for dramatic effect, it also seems like they just did not feel like writing any more lines. Merlin was not some crazy forest guy with tattoos, I want to see a guy in a beard who has a staff, and does magic, not some guerilla warfighter who hangs out in the forest with theatrical grease. I know that the bad guys are supposed to be the Saxons, but just because they are bad guys does not mean that they need bad dialogue, example:Burn everything to the ground, make them pay. All of this spoken by an actor that was either unfit for the role, or too busy thinking of the sheer stupidity of the script. Guinevere is not a warrior, and I am not being sexist here, she was a lady. And if she was a warrior, why would she not wear armor? Did medievil ladies say "who cares about protection, as long as the enemy thinks I look hot, I will be ok." Seriously, I am not an advocate for conservative dress or anything, but when rushing into battle, it is in your best interests to wear armor, not two leather straps.
Why did I keep watching? That's a good question, and I kept asking myself throughout the picture even with the bad direction, poor edits, (most likely to keep the rating down, even though this was on a movie channel, it still was the PG-13 version, not the XTREME version they offered when the film came to dvd) and poor script for some reason I just kept watching. And like I said, the edits were shaky, and overall, the film was not too violent when compared to other films that take place around that period, but what I think it was was the story of King Arthur. It really is a nice story of love and betrayal, and I wanted to see where they would go with it. But in the end, it sucked. You don't kill off Lancelot (I just saved you a rental and 2 hours) after a long and drawn out battle scene. It is just not the way to go. The Story of King Arthur is a classic story, and if you ever have the chance to learn more about it, I suggest getting your story somewhere else. I am going to bed.

5k madness

2006-03-25T19:13:00.000-08:00

Most of my blog entries revolve around my stupidity, or the massive amount of irony that fills my life. Today was no exception...Today I woke up at 6:30, because I was supposed to run a 5k around Lake Harriet at 9. I had a fine breakfast of vitamins, soymilk, V8, and I was ready to go. Well, being that I had my brakes replaced on my car Monday, my funds were a bit low for the registration fee, so I decided to run in another 5k that was being held at the U at 1. Unfortunately, it turns out that the 5k at the U with the cost of parking would have cost about the same to run as the 5k around Lake Harriet, which sucks because even though running 3.1 miles is something that I do on a regular basis it is fun to run with a group of people it really is not worth the money to me when I don't have it. To make things worse, since I did not plan on my break job costing as much as it did, I took today off of work, making my already small paycheck I receive every other Friday even smaller. So what did I do? I created my own 5k, at the track from which I shoveled last week. And while it was fun, and I did drop my 5k time by 2 minutes, I will say I was a bit let down overall. Even though I am not in good enough shape to come close to winning, or even competing for that matter, it is just different running with a group of people than it is yourself. I think that it is a feeling or something that is far too deep or self righteous to put into a blog. It just didn't feel the same, even if I was in the sort of mood I get in before running a 5k.

My day up to this point

2006-03-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

Has been boring. And that is saying it in the least. I had a discussion for an English class this morning that, as always flew by, and left me with my usual three hours before my next lab. Usually I spend this time having tea and a scone and writing a paper, but since I lack the funds for a scone, and I did not have the resources for the paper I had to write, I was stuck in the student union, reading a book for another class. And don't get me wrong, I love reading, and the book I have to read is not bad at all, but sitting in the union occasionally drives me insane. Take for example, the delightful fellow that sat across from me today. For those who have not been inside the University of Minnesota's Coffman Memorial Union, the main floor is a large rectangular room with fireplaces on both ends. In the middle of this rectangle are escalator that lead to the floors below. But on each side of these escalator, there are twelve chairs that face each other like this: > <> <. But on with my story. I was sitting there reading peacefully, occasionally looking up to "people watch" when a friend of the guy sitting across from me shows up. This is quite common in the union, so it didn't really bother me. Until they started talking. But it wasn't the how loud they were being or anything, they were actually quite civil, but the subject matter they were talking about. The guy sitting across from me was having issues with his girlfriend. Thats too bad, but guess what? The student union of any college is not the place to talk about your relationship. Sure maybe things are going bad (this conversation centered around a fight about American Idol, and it lasted until 4am) but go and find a coffee shop, or go find somewhere else in the union to talk about this sort of thing. There are plenty of areas a little more private where this conversation could have taken place. What was even worse about the conversation was how inept the guy was about his crumbling relationship. I know for a fact that I have never been that stupid when it comes to my love life, if you are fighting about Americal Idol, you really shouldn't have to think all too hard about where your relationship is headed.
I don't get it, why do people have to talk about things that nobody wants to hear in public? Come to think about it, why do people blog about it?

A couple of back to school observations

2006-03-21T14:15:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day back to school after a long spring break. Since my spring break was rather unexciting, I was rather excited to be going back. I had a midterm this morning that could have went better (mainly because half of the questions were on a book I hated) but the rest of my day was rather satisfying. Other than of course while taking my test in a large lecture hall I had to sit right next to someone and try to take an essay exam, even though the two of us kept bumping elbows, and I thought I smelled bad. Turns out, it was her that smelt. After my midterm I went to get coffee from one of the U's many Starbucks. But before entering I noticed a couple in what I can only describe as a romantic embrace. They were not showing a huge public display of affection or anything, they were just standing there together, romantically. Now, I am not someone who has been jaded by love, but come on! This is not the last time you are going to see your loved one, it is 11 in the morning, and you are going to class, you will most likely see each other in a few hours, get over yourselves. When you are out in public a small kiss is fine, but not holding each other like this is the end of times.
During a break between classes I went to use the restroom, where I overheard two young women discussing a fight that one of them had with a mutual friend. To quote "I said to her, I aint stupid." I can only say, Yes you are stupid.
After this I went back to my chair in the student union, continued reading a book, and ate a granola bar. For which I noticed that not only are my Natures Valley granola bars shrinking in size but rising in cost, but it is impossible to eat quiety when it comes to granola bars. Not they are meant to be eaten quietly, but I think that everyone tries to eat quiet when they are in public. And of course I didn't really do that well. Which didn't bother me this time because everyone around me was loving their ipods (as was I), but once in a while you have to deal with someone who gives you a dirty look for eating lunch. Also while in the commons I watched some student pick some unfounded and unnecessary fight with the guys from campus bible study, which was a bit frustrating, because even though my feelings on god are not a big issue in my life, I don't think that it is okay to badger somone for their beliefs (unless it is politics, then light badgering is okay). I just thought it was a bit classless. Just a couple of observations for my Tuesday, it is not nearly as funny now as to when it happened.

I shoveled 400 meters today

2006-03-19T15:03:00.000-08:00

Suffice to say, it was a bad idea. Yesterday, for some reason, I thought that it would be a good idea to run around the local track. Unfortunately, the foot of snow we had gotten last week had yet to melt, so I pledged that I would shovel myself a path, only to have my friends scoff at me. Well, I shoveled. And it sucked. Being that my driveway is at most twenty meters, another three-hundred and eighty was a bit harder. My back hurt, and since children had seemed to have had their way with the track, parts of the snow were packed down. All I had was my "It's got that curve, so it must be good for your back" shovels, which was entirely made of plastic, and it couldn't do all that much with packed down snow. So after about forty-five minutes of shoveling, I was able to run in the snow. It was a pain in the ass. Even though I only ran a mile in the snow (mainly because parts of the snow filled track were ankle injuries waiting to happen) it was worth it. Hopefully, in a couple of days I can run in my path again, after more of the snow-packed track has melted away. But still, four-hundred meters for one mile of running, I am an idiot.

Are you that guy?

2006-03-18T23:39:00.000-08:00

I went to Barnes and Noble today, for obvious reasons. I am the sort of person who is more than willing to ask for help when lost, and I even though I love reading, and I love bookstores, I often find myself lost inside of them. This is because most bookstores are designed so we as consumers get lost (kind of like grocery stores) so that in turn we stumble upon some book we have been wanting. But since I am the type of person who prefers to find what I want first and then seek help, I asked for it once I need it. Which leads me to my story. I was at the bookstore today, holding onto three books I was going to purchase (Brave New World: for my friend Paul's birthday, The Autograph Man: Zadie Smith, and author who is my age that I love, and The Best of H.P. Lovecraft) and another book came into mind, Brokeback Mountain (insert homophobic joke here). But I couldn't remember who had written it, so I went to ask for help. As it turned out, the young woman behind the help desk was beautiful. Which of course made me happy not only because was she beautiful, but she was working in a bookstore, and one has to imagine that she liked to read, hence why she was working at Barnes and Noble. So I stood there, and asked her who had written Brokeback Mountain, implying that I could find the book myself (not that having her help me find the book would not have been a bad idea, but I didn't want to hit on an employee at Barnes and Noble in that fashion, it is kind of classless). So I stood there as she searched for the book, making a quick comment how I had forgotten the author, when I noticed as a male associate began to lurk over her shoulder, and he was giving me the "male dominance staredown." Immediately, I began to wonder what the fuck this guy thought my intentions were. Was I going to ask this girl at Barnes and Noble if she would like to go on a date with me (I would pick her up in my busted up Ford Tempo) and maybe we would have some casual sex, and maybe the next day she would tell that said guy how nice of a guy I was and this man would be fuming jealous. Seriously, do we really need this type of crap? This guy was walking around like I was trying to steal his woman or something, circling the kiosk like the lead wolf of that pack, trying to tell me to get out. If maybe I was some sort of crazy ex of this said associate, it would have been alright, but I am tired of that guy. The guy who works at a business and "cock blocks" other customers. And what makes me even angrier is that there was nothing for this guy to block. This girl was beatiful, but that's it, one would imagine that it is not my style to pick up femal bookstore employees. No one likes that guy. Not even the girl behind the counter likes that guy. It is one thing to keep your girlfriends from going home with some douchebag at the bar, but lurking around behind some girl, almost raring for a fight is just ridiculous. I am not going to take your shower fantasy girl away from you, I just want to ask where the stuff I am going to buy is, maybe briefly take a look at her and go, nothing more. Stop looking at me and do your job.

When I sell out, it is going to be big

2006-03-17T22:20:00.000-08:00

I am going to sell out. I always planned it that way. Sure, if I could find something that I loved, and I enjoyed doing, I would do it in a heartbeat. But in all reality, that just is not how life works. A job is "work" because no matter what it is not always enjoyable. If it were, it would be called Happy Fun Time, and then of course, there would not be unemployment, or riots, because everyone would then want a job. That of course, is what led me to my entire idea of selling out in the first place. Money is a good thing, and although many will argue that it cannot buy happiness, I beg to differ. We live in a world based off of rules and of course, the almighty credit score. If money cannot buy me happiness, or anyone for that matter, why do people have to have a high credit score to buy a house? If happiness to someone is owning a home to raise their children in, why not give them a house to do so? Because no matter what anyone says, money does buy happiness. So I plan on selling out in order to stimulate the things in life that by default I should have somewhat of a right to. So how do I plan on selling out? There are four main scenarios: 1: Lottery Victory. This of course being the number one option because it involves the least amount of work, and is most likely. Winning the lottery is eliminating the route to the money that will buy the happiness. One could go as far to say that winning the lottery is not selling out, winning the lottery is buying in. 2: Law. This is something I have always wanted to. Why? Because the law is awesome, and can be interpreted in so many different ways, that it gives me a great deal of room to argue (which I really enjoy doing). I would love to go to law school, become a lawyer, and make a great deal of money. It also would help me get to option 4, which is coming soon. 3: Writing. This is the area at which I think I am most likely to sell out in. I love writing, and I could do it forever, but I would also like to write a few profitable books and teach at the college level. College professors make great wages, and basically get to say whatever they want, which is something I enjoy doing. Write some books, sell the rights and have movies made, relax. That would be glorious. 4: President. Why? Because being the President is all about selling out. Sure, it is hard, and takes years off of your life (looking at before and after pictures of presidents is sad) but there would be nothing better than being President. You get to do pretty much whatever you want, get to meet a great deal of people, and are given respect for the rest of your life. That is worth selling out for.
But I have kind of drifted from my point here. I would love to sell out and make money, but because it is necessary. Because we live in the type of world where people need a lot of money to do anything. It costs nearly three dollars for a gallon of gas in Minnesota, and we lack a great public transportation system. Our state government is spending hundreds of millions to make two bridges on 494, when they really only need to make one and keep the one they currently have. Everything is getting expensive, and it is harder for people that don't have much to have anything. So if I have to sell out to live, fine. Say money cannot buy anyone happiness, and I say, stop paying for things. Go over finances and take a look at vanity spending. It costs money to do everything, even walking (a decent pair of walking shoes is going to run you at least 40). So down the road many years from now, if I have sold out, and I am happy, I am only going to keep smiling, because not only will money have bought my happiness, but I will be right, which will be even better.

2006-03-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

I know that when I finished high school, I had hoped to rid myself of most of my past and start a clean slate. I would say that to some extent, everyone tries to do that, even the most stereotypical high school teens try and distance themselves from their high school days. Still, friendships remain, and while people change, it is always nice to run into someone who you haven't seen in a long time, ask a couple of questions and part ways. This "running into" of course changed a bit after the first year of college, mainly because no one wants to answer the same questions annually. But then of course, there is the Facebook, which lets old classmates find each other on the internet. Which leads me to what I writing about today, Leslie Kroschel. Leslie Kroschel passed away last night with her roommate in a car accident This is the link: http://www.chippewa.com/articles/2006/03/06/news/news1.txt Leslie was the perfect example of someone whom I had not seen in quite some time, but was connected to her via the Facebook. And while the Facebook is a bit impersonal, I was still connected to her in someway, and I'm not going to lie, I browsed through her pictures and read her profile (I have a blog, isn't it obvious I spend a great deal of time on the internet) and even though I hadn't had the pleasure of enjoying Leslie's company, in some sort of convoluted way, we were connected.
But even without the Facebook, there is no way that I could forget Leslie Kroschel. Leslie was one of the kindest people I have ever met. And I am not just saying (things like this are common) that because of the tragic accident that took her life last night, but because Leslie was kind. How do I know she was kind? Because I'm not. Leslie gave people a chance, and listened to them, it is something that for some reason I have never been able to do. Leslie always was smiling and had a soft voice that I had not heard in some time, but I imagine it still had the same gentleness. She was one of the few people who always was smiling, and not because she was insecure, but because she was happy.
This morning I made a bunch of phonecalls, informing people of what happened, hearing the same shock in their voices as mine as I delivered the news. I couldn't really fathom what I was speaking about, and I couldn't sugar coat what happened, although I wish I could have. Each phone conversation, or message I sent out had had silence and a resounding thud that made me want to vomit. And while I understand that people die, this just saddens me, and what saddens me the most is that this is not the last of my former classmates who I will get a call about, or who someday will get a call about me. I know that tradgey is something that is supposed to bring people together, but I wish there was anything else but this that could bring so many together.
When I think of Leslie Kroschel, the first image that comes into my head is that smile. I already wrote about it, but her smile is something I will always remember. I think about her family, and how they lost that, and how everyone that had the priviledge to know her (even if maybe for moments) had the priviledge to see. This smile was the first thing that came into my mind as my friend called me early in the morning to deliver the news. A smile so wonderful, and happy that it is terrible I will never get to see it again.

Hollywood doesn't like laughing at itself

2006-03-05T19:40:00.000-08:00

I am currently watching the 78th Annual Academy Awards, and I must say I am a bit dissappointed. Not in the awards themselves, but in the idea that these movie stars can't laugh at themselves. Jon Stewart has been on fire, and most of the night not a single star wants to laugh. But Steve Martin can walk on stage, be completely unfunny, and the crowd is loving it. What is the deal here people. He is funny, they need to get over it.

I made bagels today

2006-03-03T17:07:00.000-08:00

Not that exciting of a Friday. Picked up the tiny paycheck, grocery shopped, relaxed. But that is not all...I am a bagelsmith. Today, I embarked on some hardcore baking. And by hardcore, I mean sitting on my chair watching television and waiting for the dough to rise. So what does it take to make bagels? Patience, which with me is usually in short supply. Making the bagel adventure quite the test. But I figured that if I see bagel shops and bakeries and all of that shit that making a dozen bagels would not be too challenging. And at first, it wasn't; mixing the yeast and sugar, letting it sit and then putting flour into the mixer. That is when things got crazy, and not because the recipe was hard, but because I am an idiot. [i]It is not a good idea to raise the dough hooks to add flour when the mixer is on.[/i] Chaos ensued. Little dough chunks went everywhere, and all I did was stand there like an idiot (my usual stance) let a few explenitives go and got back to work. After that was all said and done, more sitting. After that, making the dough into bagel shapes, and then more sitting. Finally the fun began. I had to put the bagels into boiling water. Boiling water does not feel good against the skin. But in the end my bagels turned out to be quite delicious, although a bit ugly.

Changing names to protect the innocent

2006-03-01T15:03:00.000-08:00

Last night I went out for a friends birthday for the infamous Moose Country Birthday Tuesday. Needless to say, it was a good time, even if I was the sober cab (my usual job). I had a few drinks, went out and made an ass of myself (think weeble wobble) on the twenty by twenty foot square that gets crowded and is right by the bathrooms that Moose Country calls a dance floor the birthday was not the most interesting night to me, nor was the birthday boy's mysterious early exit with a lady. It was another friend, changing his name to Steve when he introduced himself to a lady who he was making friends with for the sole purpose of getting with her friend. I of course managed to ruin this introduction, ever so unknowlingly by slapping him on the back and calling him his real name seconds later. But he did recover quickly, and after that went to dance with the lady, who did have his phone number, with his real name (this incident was a complex one, with a drunk person forgetting the name of the other drunk person who then changed his name). So what am I getting at? Is there anything wrong with this? No. Because it is harmless. If I, John Q Drunkguy go and meet Anne F Drunkgirl, chances are that we are not seeking out a walk down the altar relationship. Granted, that doesn't mean a relationship won't result, but certain people go to the bar to get things. But I digress. In fact, changing one's name seems to be the way to go, even if you are there just to hang out and have a couple of drinks. Keeping your name to yourself gives you power over the person you are speaking with, in that they don't know that bit of personal information about you.
It was also Mardi Gras night, which I had never experienced, and it was not like it is down in New Orleans (some sort of breast showing extravaganza). There were no boobs, just flirtacious women walking about with lots of plastic around their necks, often with complacent looks on their faces (the women with the most beads were usually the ones who looked like they had lost mommy or daddy in the grocery store). Which was funny, in that the lady "Steve" had lined in his sights was one of the top bead wearing women, and she appeared to be the most complacent of them all. She was the sort of woman that had one major drawback, this drawback being teeth. If she had worn a mouthgard maybe she would have been more attractive. Having bad teeth, and by bad I mean a set of teeth that looks like gridlock, is possibly one of the worst things on either sex. No one wants to see someone flash a smile that could kill a baby.
Overall, it was a good time, one I shall not soon forget. As for Steve and the disappearing birthday boy, I only wonder if they remember.

You Got Served 3

2006-02-26T18:10:00.000-08:00

I have decided that I am going to begin writing the screenplay for You Got Served 3, because it truly needs to be made. I am thinking it is going to be an introspective drama about race and class in a genderless society. With a new song by Kanye West.

Walking head first into the future

2006-02-26T17:45:00.001-08:00

And by head first, I mean into a wall. And what is this wall? Simply put, this wall is the best friend shooting, abortion banning, tax cut to the wealthy, gay bashing, false precedent for war-mongering, swindling society being created by those currently snuggling in the peaceful walls of the White House. I am not one for the e-rant (as a former blog of mine stated) but right now I have had it. Watching the current administration putz around and lying to everyone about everything is ridiculous. I want someone to explain to me why Bill Clinton cheats on his wife and almost loses his job, and how George Bush can send over 2,000 Americans to their deaths because of a lie and impeachment is not even mentioned. Is there something wrong with me? Am I the only person that thinks this sort of mediocrity is going to put another nail into the coffin that is America?