I just got around to listening to this week’s Meet the Press podcast with Tim Russert.  The special guest this week was Ron Paul.  I’ll note that Paul didn’t get the entire hour, like some candidates.

Now I’ve been a fan of most of Ron Paul because he’s the only candidate who truly believes in small government, personal responsibility, and keeping the federal government out of my life as much as possible.  All of the other candidates want more involvement in my life, more laws, and less personal liberties.

But anyway, I was pretty disappointed in the Ron Paul interview.  Finally in a VERY mainstream show with exposure to millions of Americans, Ron Paul didn’t exactly stand out as the “Hope for America.”

Partly it was the format; Dr. Paul didn’t have much time to present his platform or answer questions.

Partly it was the interviewer.  Russert is known  for asking hard questions, but it was fairly clear that he went on the attack even moreso with Paul.  Maybe he didn’t consider him to be a serious candidate and, therefore, not worth the same opportunities to present his platform.  Maybe he is just a biased dick; I really couldn’t tell.

Partly it was that Paul simply didn’t have his shit together.  He didn’t know the number of troops he wanted to bring home, he didn’t know how much tax revenue would disappear if the income tax was repealed, and he stumbled through many of the questions.

I was disappointed.

I will say one positive thing, however.  Part of the awkwardness of this interview was due to Paul’s ability to think and speak outside the current paradigm of complicated politics and double speak.  At one point, Russert accused Paul of not being a strict constructionist because he wanted to amend the constitution to remove the income tax.  Russert, used to people who play the game of politics, couldn’t handle Paul’s logic that amending the constitution was PART of the constitution.  It was just too simple to understand.  For that simplicity, I applaud Ron Paul.

The Texas primary comes around in March.  I have fear that, by that time, there will be no Ron Paul to vote for.  If he continues with performances like this on the national stage, he won’t have a hope in waking up Americans who are fed up with our current system but, like Russert, can’t understand how simplicity would fix the complex problem.

I hate the movies.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the actual films themselves as much as the rest of us.  I just can’t understand why I continually leave the comfort of my home to sit in an environment that makes me hate the human race more and more with each trip.

Not surprisingly, I hate the pre-teens and teens the most.  Where are the parents of these assholes?  Why have they raised them to be such inconsiderate dolts?  And what, exactly, constitutes “assault on a minor” in my home state of Texas?

A few months back, I was attempting to enjoy Pans Labyrinth (it turns out, it can’t be done under ANY circumstance), when the giggling teenage girl behind me decided to answer her cell phone, which had been oozing with the sounds of the most recent My Chemical Romance song since the previews.  I had had enough.  When I turned around to tell her to get off the phone, she looked at me like I was annoying HER.  I had to repeat my command three times before she finally said goodbye and hung up.

I wish this was an isolated instance.

During the most recent Die Hard movie, a 13 year old fat kid decided it was necessary to run through the theater 3 times screaming “The Zombies are Everywhere!!!” Why wasn’t this movie rated R again?   Prior to that, some little prick decided to fake an orgam during Hot Fuzz, much to the delight of his contemporary deuche-bag friends.

But I have found an oasis!  Praise the flying spaghetti moster, I can finally go enjoy a new movie with friends in an atmosphere that doesn’t make me want to murder most of those sitting in my vicinity.

THE ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE.

First, and this is key, nobody under the age of 18 is allowed in.  Yes, there are still annoying jerks in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s (after that time, they are considered to be “senile,” not “jerks”), but they are much fewer in number, and they typically don’t travel in packs, like the pubescent jerks piling in the back of their mom’s SUV.

Second: Beer.  That’s right, they serve beer, wine, mixed drinks, and a full dinner menue.  All of this is delivered directly to your table, so you don’t miss a thing.

Third: Unique selection of movies.  In addition to all the current hits, they play oldies such as Trainspotting, The Shawshank Redemption, and others.  During the week, you can pop in and watch sporting events and even TV shows for free on the biggest screen in town.

Now there are some negatives.  Most obvious is that the screen and sound are simply not up to par with the major theaters.  I wouldn’t want to watch the Lord of the Rings on these screens.   Snakes on a Plane, however (in conjunction with the beer), is perfect in this kind of theater.

If you’re lucky enough to live in a town with an Alamo Draft House or similar theater, go there, give it a shot, and bask in the teen-free atmosphere, as a movie was intended to be.  If not, well…pirate the shit out of Hollywood and buy a bad-ass TV.  You simply won’t find an enjoyable movie experience at the big theaters anymore.

Oh, and here’s another reason to love the Alamo Draft House; they know how to have a sense of humor.

Scott sat at his desk with his feet up and his neck craned to the sky.  His email felt neglected, his TPS reports lonely, and his voicemail…well his voicemail felt downright unloved. 

Scott was too busy to attend to such things as work. 

Scott was busy…counting ceiling tiles.

You see, Scott had just been moved to a new office.  I say “just,” because he got back from vacation a mere 45 minutes ago, only to find a cute, perky, new intern sitting in his office.

The boss liked the perky ones…

17.

He only had 17 tiles in his new “office.”

well, more like 17 & 1/3, but who counts 1/3 of a tile?  Nobody, that’s who.

His old office had 22 tiles and a 3-drawer filing cabinet.  Here?  Only 2.

Dammit, he thought.

“Hey Scotty!  How did the kitchen renovations go?  Crappy way to spend a vacation!” his boss Robert said, poking his head in Scott’s “office” and invading his personal space.  “I hope you’re ready to get back at it, because Debby hsa some urgen project sitting in your inbox.”

Scott was about to reply when he remembered that Bob wouldn’t care; he was only here to make Scott do his trained-monkey routine and work faster.  As if to confirm this, Bob simultaneously winked and “shot” Scott with the thumb & pointer finger international sign of the douche.  He then quickly slithered out the door, leaving only the faint whisper of his polyester slacks in the distance.

So I just had one of those “Holy Shit” moments. 

I’m reading the latest Time magazine (dated May 28), and I see what appears to be a rather pudgy Mickey Mouse…then I read the blurb below the picture.

 It turns out that Mickey is not Mickey - its Farfur, created by Hamas and the star of a weekly Palestinian television show.  The show bombards its audience (young children, as would be expected) with plenty of entertaining songs and skits, and intermixes the fun with praises to Allah and proclamations of Muslim dominance in the world.

Wait, what?

That’s right, Farfur preaches hatred towards Israel and the United States, while simultaneously “Islam’s inevitable and pending world domination” (cited from IsraeliInsider).  Children are taught that Israel and the US is attempting to make the Islamic community dumber, weaker, and unimportant.  His remedy to this is to read poems about children “speaking out” against Israel with AK-47s.

 Now to its credit, the Palestinian Information Minister suspended the show, but it is still being broadcasted by rouge (imagine that) Hamas groups.

This is the kind of thing that we are up against in this world.  By “us”, I mean rational people all around the world.  Whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or Atheist, we must admit that this is just FUCKED UP.  Once extremists (of any kind) taint the children of the world, they simply create more extremists. 

What can we do about shit like this?  This is the information age…can’t we simply give information to these people?  Open up the web and let them find out the truth for themselves?  Nobody, including children, would believe this shit if the real story was at the tip of their fingers, would they? 

I’d like to write a satirical post with some humor… but I’m honestly at a loss of words.  This is just fucked up. 

Listening to Buzz Out Loud (cnet’s best podcast), they mentioned an interesting article on Mashable.com by Stan Schroeder titled: Why Google is Making Us Dumber.

Now before I totally rip into this idea, let me make it clear that I’m not ripping on Mr. Schroeder, as his article makes it clear that he isn’t convinced that this is an absolute truth.  Rather, I’ll just call out the morons who think progress means we are dumber than our parents.  

So some people claim that Google is making us stupid because we can rely on it to give us information; we no longer need to memorize our times tables, how to convert temperatures from fahrenheit to celcius, or what countries border Chile.  We can now simply plug our question into Google and be showered with the right answer.

So does this make us stupid?  After all, we don’t know the capital of Estonia off the top of our heads; if there were ever trivia-savvy terrorists holding us hostage and ready to kill us unless we can spout random geography facts…we would all be fucked (well, that is, unless somebody has a web browser on their cell phone…) 

So yes…this instant-information age has led us to memorizing less information.  Because we do not have to.  Why would I spend my time memorizing the capitals of all 50 states when I can google that information in less than 10 seconds?  I have better things to do with my time (lolcats and askaninja come to mind).

Isn’t the use of Google and other websites considered to be the use of a tool?  Isn’t learning how to use a tool more important to intelligence than memorizing simple facts?  Doesn’t that represent critical thinking and problem solving?  Rote memorization is for parakeets.

Good lord this post sucked.  My brain has shut down (must be all the googleing i’ve been doing).  My apologies if you had to read this…but I think you get the gist.

I almost hit a lady in our parking garage:  three times.  Well, to be exact, she almost hit me twice, and then made me want to hit her a third time…but whatever.

So, a note to this lady, and I’m assuming she is not alone in the world:

 Dear ma’am (also spelled ‘bitch’ in some languages),

When entering a parking garage where you must present a badge or keycard to enter…don’t try to duck under the arm and follow the car in front of you.  It will come down and hit your car.  Then, don’t back up with no warning because you are also too lazy to open the door and step out the 3 feet from your car to tap your card on the sensor.

Also, after tapping your card to open the gate (which you should have done in the first place), don’t gun the gas…especially when you are still in reverse.  Even if you do catch your mistake and hit the brake 1/8 inches from my car, it still pisses me off.

Oh, and when driving through the parking garage in the morning when people are arriving at work, do not stop behind a car with its backup lights on and wait while the person gets OUT of their car and grabs their computer bag.  That car isn’t going anywere.  Fucking move on.

Finally, remember when you took an illegal turn and started heading down the one-way row?  Now remember when you almost hit that guy who was realigning his parking space because he didn’t look for a car coming the WRONG WAY?  Yeah, I wish that his car was a dinosaur, and that it ate you…or better yet, maimed you so that you could never drive again.

 I’m having an “I hate people day” because of you.  And from the way your fat ass looked when you tried to squeeze out of the car, yes…you do count as multiple people.

Bitch.

No time to blog tonight, but I just wanna say, Digg.com is full of political shit today.  Gonzales this, Ron Paul that, Guliana whocares.  Seriously, sometimes I think we’re voting in a new president this year.  Give it a rest, guys, and you shouldn’t care when McCain farts or Obama smiles…let alone write passionate comments about it.

Story: Rev Jerry Falwell, Leader of the Moral Majority, Dead at 74. Rest in Peace.

Digg Comments

Number of Diggs: 1618

So good ole Jerry Falwell is dead, huh? I hate to start off my regular posts with a negative tone, but ya know what? I’d rather be honest than nice. Falwell was a dick, and I can’t say I’m broken up over his loss.

Before you start screaming you head off about “Speak no ill will of the dead”, save it; that line is bullshit. We are all so married to the fucking idea that we will be remembered as somebody special and kind when some of us live our lives like assholes. But those who do live like assholes don’t deserve to be remembered in any kind light.

Falwell was a religious bully who used ill-formed logic (even that is a stretch) to blame the plight of the world on gay people and women. Thanks to cogitocogito for capturing some of Falwell’s most choice quotes:

“If you’re going to mourn for this guy, you’d better mourn for everyone:

“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”

“God has removed it’s veil of protection from America in no small part, because of the feminists and the gays”

““The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country”

“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being”

Now there will be members of the right wing community out there who back up Falwell; perhaps not his words or actions, but his essence. That’s all bullshit and really means that they agree with him, but they can’t in public lest the be chastizd by sane people. There will also be plenty of left-wing nuts out there shouting their joy at Falwell’s decent into hell, trying to rub it in the face of the right-wing crowd; that’s what they too, and those people are also assholes.

The moral of the story? The only good thing that came out of Falwell’s death was his now inability to say things that are so utterly stupid that it makes most people wonder wtf this “holy” man was smoking. The bad things will be the finger-pointing, the resurgence of religious nuts that will build shrines to their fallen hero, and the stupid people on the other side of the issue cheering on satan. This whole thing gives me a headache.

Why couldn’t it have been Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church?

Ok, so I’m like 98% of bloggers…I start a blog, get about 5 posts under my belt, and then just stop.  Even though I feel like I need a creative outlet, I just quit.  Why?  No material.

 So I’m solving that problem.  My goal is to blog every day.  Not to be interesting or gain readership, mind you, but only because I need a frickin hobby.

 So now, when the inkwell that is my brain is completely empty (too often than I like to admit),  I will pick one of the Top 10 stories on Digg and write about it.  My goal isn’t to replace the comment section on Digg (I’m not that brilliant), but only to give my own thoughts on the story and/or comments.  I plan on linking to the original story as well as the comments page so you can either agree with me or call me an idiot.  If I quote a comment, don’t worry, I will cite the comment and link to the user.

 So heck…maybe I’ll stick with this for longer than…a week?  Only time will tell.

What luck!  Only shortly after reading the riveting Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard, the movie shows up on HBO.  Now I’m starting this halfway through the movie, but its bound to be funny.  On with the hilarity!

HA!  Its John Travolta as Terl!!!!!!  That is just too freaking funny.  Is this what converted him to Scientology?

Oh, now this is just disappointing.  All of Johnny Goodboy Tyler’s mining buddies should have Scottish accents!  Man, they must have changed a shit-load of the original story…I guess fitting 1100 pages into two hours might have been a little too hard.  But I was looking for Scottish neanderthals in the 30th century!

Did he just shoot of Forest Whitaker’s hand?  I think so…

Wow…this is such a crappy movie.  Its way too abbreviated and leaves out all the good aspects of the book.  And, it didn’t provide me with much to talk about, unfortunately…just go read the book, you won’t be disappointed.