Odd favorite lines

I find that there are lines in movies or games that I am strangely drawn to as mantras. In most cases, the sentiment that they are literally expressing is mundane, but there is some hint of a dual meaning, or otherwise. I'll try to compile a list of some of my favorites here:

From Batman Begins:

Bruce Wayne: "You aren't Ra's al Ghul. I watched him die"
Henri Ducard, revealing himself to be the true Ra's al Ghul: "But is Ra's al Ghul immortal? Are his methods supernatural?" (the delivery on this line was good)
Henri Ducard: "You haven't beaten me. You have sacrificed sure footing for a killing stroke."

From No Country for Old Men:

Anton Chigurh: "Let me ask you something. If your rule led you to this, of what use was the rule?"

Actually, that's all I can think of at the moment, but there have been others. I'll follow up if I remember.

Difficulties

The difficulty in forcing myself to write something every day, or more specifically, every work day, is that I'm often mentally exhausted at the time that I'm writing. And usually, the type of humor that I have is reactionary - a glib reaction in response to some stimulus or outside force. But left to my own devices, I can't create new material easily.

Someday I will devote a post to Nero Wolfe, which is the series of books that I have been escaping to lately, as well as to an era in general of an idealized past. I wonder how many other generations looked at the world of their youth, or of their parents or grandparents, and pined for a simpler time - even when times were simpler.

On the one hand, I look forward to some aspects of the future. In my lifetime I think we will reach a singularity, that is some point where suddenly scientific progress is built upon itself in an exponential rate, probably as a result of artificial intelligence that is capable of improving it's own intellectual capacity. I envision a future when society is radically altered - where world hunger is no longer a concern, energy is limitless, work is optional, and immortality (at least the defeat of the aging process) is achieved.

Which leads me to wonder if my generation is the lowest generation - that is, we will have been accustomed to all of modern society's worst ills - isolation, materialism, and moral ambiguity - before the advent of a new age. Most literature and fiction in general, when confronted with the possibility of a utopia, seems to reject the concept outright - the more common story is of a utopia cracking at the seams or Utopian society post-collapse. Which suggests to me that people do not want to believe it's possible to escape their moral failings - perhaps if they're irrevocably tied to them then they are justified in having them.

I'd like to think I can be perfect. Just because it hasn't been achieved, that doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Something clever...

I'm pressed for time, so I cannot offer a full contribution. Instead, a puzzle for any of my readers.

Three men are led into a room. They are each told before they enter the room that somone may or may not have written a funny mark in pen on their forehead, but there are no mirrors in the room to tell whether or not this was the case.

After all three men enter the room, they all begin laughing at the marks thy see. After some time, one of the men, who sees both of the others are marked, realizes that his forehead must be marked as well, and reaches up to wipe his head.

How does he know?

What's fair for Michigan and Florida?

The AP is running a story on the problems that Hillary Clinton is facing for the Michigan and Florida primary votes. The problem is this:

Both states held primaries so early in the year that it violated party rules, and those states were stripped of their delegates at the Democratic national convention. As a result Obama and several other candidates removed their names from the ballots and all of the candidates agreed not to campaign there. Now, the nationwide vote tallies are so close they're looking to see whether or not the votes in those primaries are going to be counted. None of the options look particularly appealing.

The Clinton camp had initially suggested that the votes were to be counted as is, which would not be fair, since Obama was not on the ballot in either state.

The Obama camp has suggested that they split the votes down the middle, which isn't fair either, because Clinton was expected to lead in those states even if he was on the ballot.

State Democratic leaders in Michigan proposed a do-over primary, but the bill has received little enthusiasm and has not been picked up by the state Senate. Florida's prospects look even worse.

The Clinton camp has suggested a mail-in re vote, but the Obama camp has raised concerns (legitimate, in my mind) about the security impacts of that.

So, I'd like to hear from my readers, what approach do you think is best? In the comments on an earlier article, one of my friends expressed disgust with the current state of the votes. In private, he'd suggested that the DNC should apologize to those states and pay for a new primary for both of them.

I'm on the other end of the spectrum. While I would agree that the rules that led the DNC to strip these states of their votes are unfair and need to be changed, I believe that these states knew exactly what they were doing when they moved their primaries up. Even though those states lost their delegates, they moved their primaries forward so that their states would be more influential in the nomination process by getting in early, and expected to heavily influence the nomination in exchange for additional attention from the nominees. The fact that this little strategy backfired gets no sympathy from me. As a member of one of the latest voting states in the union, I'm wondering why these states get should two votes to my one? Whether or not their votes counted towards the number of delegates awarded is irrelevant to me - these states did what they did because their votes were relevant to influencing public opinion of the two candidates.

I realize, however, that I'm probably alone in that view.

I love my wife

My wife got me an iPod Nano video for our anniversary (April 1), which I am now loading up with everything I have, and succeeding nicely. My wife is great in several respects; she loves gift-exchange, as I do, so opportunities abound to get new stuff (although it gets hard to shop for her - she's not addicted to anything that they constantly release).

Her good points are also her bad points; she's very low maintenance. This means that while I don't have to take her out to fancy restaurants to build her self-esteem, I don't get to go to fancy restaurants myself that often. I wish I could convince her of the merits of sushi, but alas, it is not to be.

I love her dearly - she knows very well what I like. If she reads this, which she probably won't, thanks for the anniversary present!

I drank the Kool-Aid

Today I signed up for Facebook.

Seems like a lot of potentially personal and worthless information to share.

Eh, who knows. Maybe I'll find some old friends.

Exposed for what I am

So, beginning to write again, the reactions that I got were a little shocked. These are close friends that I'm getting this from, so I can imagine that anyone who does not know me as intimately might be somewhat terrified.

Perhaps I am a little unbalanced. I need to think more about it. If I do ever lose it completely, there will be a paper trail right here that might say where I went wrong. I made a promise a long time ago to be honest with myself - that is, I never wanted to be one of those people that's fooling themselves. I may have flaws, but at least I'm aware of them.

Looking into the abyss of my soul, however, to confront whatever dark demons lie within, may have taken its toll. I may be too comfortable with my own faults. I always thought that to be really good, you couldn't be totally ignorant of evil - that just made you innocent, and choosing to do good wasn't really a choice. A friend of mine pointed out a Hindu proverb - or just a custom, I'm not sure - which stated the opposite. You should keep your thoughts pure, and it will keep your deeds pure. I always thought that you could indulge in evil thoughts as long as your actions are good, but I wonder if it's wearing on me. It is certainly more of a conscious behavior than I initially thought.

Party Affiliation: Reactionary

I'm beginning to see that my voting preferences are not necessarily in line with my political views as much as they reflect how angry I am with a given party at a given time. If you want my vote, your best course of action is not to screw up while you're in office, or better yet - not to do anything that's flagrantly inflammatory.

Take my political views without any party politics guiding me. I believe in freedom above anything else - the freedom to do whatever I choose to, so long as that behavior does not negatively impact those living in society with me. If confronted with a problem that arises from that issue (I shoot off fireworks, and risk burning down the neighborhood; I speed and run the risk of an accident; I own a gun, and may use it to commit crime) - I am very skeptical of the government saying no you can't - but I don't have a problem with using more severe penalties as incentives to deter these behavior when they cause problems (i.e., I burnt down my neighbor's house playing with fireworks - I am punished for burning down his house, and the fireworks present amplifies the punishment). I do not trust the government with my personal information; I am leery of any government run programs, and think the private sector can do better. I expect bang for my buck; my tax dollars better be used to keep me safe, pay for an army and police, but not to keep welfare queens from working, and not to fund expensive public projects that do not affect me (bridge to nowhere; which I expect state funds to pay for). I'm sure many others feel the same way I do.

So I'm split, usually. Republicans are more than happy to say they want less government, and some of them actually mean it. Democrats are the ones that really get on my nerves when it comes to stepping on my freedoms - it's usually them that comes up with the mantra, "X is shown to be unsafe; it should be against the law". The libertarian chart that they pass around to recruit more members has this to say of the party affiliations, and it tends to be true:

Democrats favor large degrees of personal freedoms and tighter government control on economic freedoms (business regulation).
Republicans favor large degrees of economic freedoms and tighter government control on personal freedoms.

Personally, I see them both grab as much power as they can get a hold of. Now, ordinarily, I would tend to lean on the Republican side of the scale, because, being a straight white male, I don't have to worry about fighting for a lot of the personal freedoms that others have to fight for. I believe in equality for all, gay marriage, and so forth, but I'm not going to take time out of my day to fight for anyone else's rights, except those days I have to vote.

So why don't I vote Republican more often? I would, if they weren't so flagrantly corrupt. It seems like every time there's a fight involving big business gouging the people, it's always the GOP on their side. Whether it's Dick Cheney's secret energy conference, or the tax breaks that oil companies get, or Net Neutrality, or the consolidation of media companies, or the recent "Credit Card Bill of Rights" hearing that was brought before Congress, it always seems that the GOP is on the same side. Which is fine by itself, I suppose, but the tactics they use are always so underhanded - suppression of debate, closed hearings.

And then there's the Democrats. Hillary Clinton is pushing hard, real hard, to do whatever it takes to win the nomination, even if it destroys the party. She wants to get the DNC to take the votes in Michigan and Florida as is (where none of the other candidates even campaigned, because it was against the party rules), which is completely unfair. She has no chance at this point of obtaining the delegates she needs to clinch the nomination, and not even a chance of taking the delegate lead from Obama, which means she's banking on the fact that she can win the superdelegates. And if the superdelegates override the voters on this one - the Democratic is done. I'm never going to support a candidate of theirs again. This momentum they've gotten - all these young voters excited about making a difference - that'll be gone. The best hope I have at that point is that they collapse entirely, and another party will eventually take their place.

Here's hoping it's one that I don't have to compromise my positions to vote for.

My Favorite Artists

I've got a play list of my favorite artists on my computer; I use it when I'm only in the mood to listen to music, and don't want to get thrown off by some of the weirder entries on my machine - especially 8-bit Nintendo game soundtracks (which are all well and good now and then, when I have a bout of nostalgia).



So without further ado, here's the artists who make the cut:

• Alice in Chains
• The Beatles (a few tracks)
• Bob Marley
• Counting Crows (just Mr. Jones, though I should put a few others there)
• Dinosaur Jr. (just Feel the Pain)
• Earth, Wind and Fire (just September; thank you Elite Beat Agents!)
• Failure
• Foo Fighters
• Modest Mouse
• Oasis (a couple tracks)
• Ozzy Osbourne
• Pearl Jam
• A Perfect Circle
• Posies
• Radiohead
• Rush
• The Slip (just Even Rats; thank you Guitar Hero!)
• Spacehog
• Tool

It's interesting, and sometimes a little jarring, to hear a track segue between two completely different artists (Tool to Radiohead comes to mind, although they are both very experimental when it comes to song design).

I suppose this is a cop-out when it comes to this instead of actual content, but I'd like to think my opinions matter, and maybe someone out there will pick an artist of this list and learn to love them, or just take a look at similar song selections and think I feel validated.

I ought to get better at making mix CD's. I had an idea one time, to make a bunch of mix CD's with different moods for each - you know, so you don't get into a certain feeling on one song and listen to something incongruous. Instead of a track list on the front, I'd just put a face that matches the mood of the song. It might open me up to ridicule, though, for a passenger to look through my song selection and see subtle variations of negative emotions - angry, surly, disaffected, ennui, sadness, depression, and nihilism, perhaps with manic thrown in there for fun.

Sick

I seem to have caught a cold. Ordinarily, I would take my anger out on the one who gave it to me, but I strongly suspect that the one who gave me this is a baby, so I cannot justify my anger.

Oh, and Cold-Eeze ruins your taste buds. I'm thinking about going on the Cold-Eeze diet. That's where you take Cold-Eeze right before eating your favorite foods, and then they taste so bad you'll never want to eat them again.

No Haircut for Old James

This is the haircut that I want to get that my wife won't let me have.

When I first heard of No Country for Old Men, I was reading a Time magazine or a Newsweek, and they were making their predictions for what will win the Oscars, and what should win the Oscars. In general, their picks for an Oscar winner were much less pretentious than what they predicted the Academy would choose, but on the topic of Best Supporting Actor, they agreed completely. Javier Bardem, they said, was frightening as hell as the monster in this film, and to back it up, they included an outline of his character (the image above minus the background).

I thought, indeed, that is a scary looking motherfucker. I wonder what the hell this movie is about. So, based on a single image alone, reinforced later by general reviews of the same, I decided to see No Country for Old Men in theatres.

I don't know how, but on Valentine's Day, I convinced my wife to go see this movie with me. I'm very surprised and quite proud of her for going along with this - the title and advertising for this suggests "Western", which I know she hates, and she's not the type to be convinced by the fact that a film gets critical praise and Oscar nods. On the contrary - she sees it as an indication that the film will be boring, wordy, or pretentious.

Now I had to stand in line while the slowest cashier on earth got me snacks, so I missed one of the key opening sequences to the movie. But I know it must've been a doozy, because sneaking in, the whole audience, my skeptical wife included, were hooked. And when Anton Chigurh (the character in the infamous image) made his next appearance on screen, my wife nudged me and squeezed my arm - that's that scary motherfucker she was whispering to me about.

I have to give props to the movie for openly stating it's own opinion of the character via another character's dialog - "So, what's this guy supposed to be, the ultimate bad-ass or something?" - and backing it up; I expect several heads in the audience were nodding in response. I know I was.

So we come back from the movie, and we're all excited, because we just saw something totally awesome, and I do what I usually do after watching a movie I like - go read reviews of it to see if my opinion is validated. Then I stop, and get my wife, because I see something that's totally wrong.

Here is a photo of the actor, Javier Bardem, out of character.

This photo is a lie.

There is no way that this man is the same one from the movie. Look at his smiling face.

This is a trap, people. This man is a stone cold killer. You don't fake that kind of acting. That shit only comes from some demon in your soul - some alien that doesn't understand human nature; that has no empathy for the suffering of his fellow man.

And look at this; this is the acceptance speech Javier Bardem gives at the Oscar's. He says something to his mother in Spanish that causes her to tear up.

Now, I don't know Spanish very well, but I'm pretty sure he just threatened to kill her with a captive bolt pistol if she didn't call a coin toss right.

I'm on to you, Javier. Your tricks won't work on me.

Writer's block

I'm going to make a promise to myself to commit 15 minutes a night to this, at least, so I can at least get the creative juices flowing again.

The last year has gotten me down a bit; not too long after my mother passed followed a slew of pets - the family, . Each death in and of it self was trivial compared to the loss of my mother, and it didn't feel right to grieve over any of them, but the overall effect was a bit overwhelming.

Also, my anger has been relentless and unquenchable. It's hard to follow politics anymore when both sides keep fucking it up. In come the democrats, and I wanted them there, and I voted them in, but the limpdick assholes do everything I don't want them to. If it's important to me, they roll over; if it's trivial, they hold hearings on it. In almost all cases, the strategy seems to be, "let's just run the numbers". So they vote on bills that'll never pass, and they think that because at least they voted, and because the other side is completely fucking evil, I'll think they did a good job. Assholes.

I never realized how much of my adult life would be dedicated to people I despise with all of my soul. I'm not talking about my job - I like my job - I get to tackle interesting problems and help people out with little to no moral objections. No, I'm talking about the people I'm REALLY working for, the reason I get out of bed, to pay off Time Warner and Blue Cross \ Blue Shield and Netflix and every other business that has a hand in fucking me at every available opportunity. I hate them. They charge me for the cable, they charge me for the DVR service, they charge me for the DVR box, they charge me for the ability to charge me to rent movie. I get so angry, I grind my teeth. And then they'll charge me to fix those. In my darkest moments, I wonder just what was in those "mad" writings of Ted Kazinski. I keep wondering - if I were to read them - and I'm afraid to read them, because some part of me deep inside is afraid that I'd find truth.

All this blood and bile in my throat is taking it's toll. I'm just living now to be angry. I try to take my time off - I feel like I repair myself a little everytime I take an hour off to read my Nero Wolfe books - but overall, the strategies I've adopted to turn it all around - more sleep, no coffee, it's all coming down, and I'm just always mad.

The other day, I'm driving out of the mall, in one of those situtations where a long line of cars has piled up to exit the mall, and I'm at the back. Of course, at regular intervals in the parking lot, there are aisles where people are coming out. And I resent those people, because they're wedging in to get out where everyone behind them is only waiting to let more people in. And this goes on for a while - I'm barely moving ahead. And as I get to the front, where there's now only a few aisle of incoming traffic merging in front of me - I'm thinking, I'll be fair, let one guy in, close the gap - two cars ahead of me someone stops to let a car in, and the car right behind them immediately whips out as well.

I think it's probably better that I don't own a gun now, because the scene that played out in my head gave me one. I'd get out of the car right there, and march right up to the door of the driver and point it right at their head. I'd point right the fuck back where they came and shout "GET THE FUCK BACK OVER THERE!". In my mind there's a cheering chorus, and everyone is praising my sense of social justice. And stunned like a terrified deer in headlights, they don't move right away, so I smash in the fucking window, and pistol whip them around a little bit. And the people love me for it. And that dumb asshole backs up their little piece of shit lime green whatever-the-fuck, and the whole line of us empty out of the parking lot, and noone lets that fucker in, because we all hate them.

Maybe I just want my opportunity to shit on the discourteous as well, because that's what really seems to bother me.

Oh, well, fuck-a-duck. At least I have something to write about.