Monday, March 31, 2014

Playing Grown-Up


 
Obviously true-love here.  Who doesn't love a chipy-munky?

 I don't get why some people are married.  Concept of marital bliss is an easy one to fathom, yet all I see are selfish kids squabbling.  I can barely remember a "good" marriage from anyone's but my own, and mine is without blinders.  I'm very careful to analyze that last point.  I sit, and think, and think alone to make sure I'm not deluding myself.  I'm not.  I'm in a good marriage.  Ups and downs?  Sure, though rather mild ups and downs; milder than I've seen anyone else.  Am I whipped or apathetic?  Nope.  I really spend a lot of time self-analyzing, hence the Virgo's bitter-sweet existence.  As a Virgo f I was insulted by someone in jest, I self-analyze it for about a month or two to think if there's an opportunity for self-improvement.  I learn from it.  I learn from experience and brood over it.  I'm not hurt by it, I use it as useful criticism.  That's how awesome I am, and I don't need any guns to back that up like a recent co-worker trying to sell a $600k house on a dead market who delights in the opportunity to shoot a solicitor and says so in great detail with glee.  Oh, these "heroes" with such low self-esteem never witnessing or partaking in a murder.  Changes you, I tell you what, and you'll never be the same again, and not for the "good".  Never.  Ever.  Ask anyone who's been there.  Not all gravy, kids.  Necessary?  Perhaps, sadly, to chain that albatross around your own neck for all eternity, lest Horus weigh your heart too heavy on that last day?



  Sigh, anyway, so I think my marriage is decent.  One factor is we're not in each other's business all the time, and I attribute that to shift-work.  A little not seeing each other Ladyhawk style is fine, maybe a week or so, as it helps when we meet we have something interesting to talk about as we've both grown in different ways as people, interacting with the Outside.  Another is we have "adventures".  Often more than not our vacations are "adventures" where there's great good and usually pretty bad events too, to create a story: a mixed bag, but that's the balance of Life. 
 
 
 
  I meet these kids mirroring what TV has taught them about marriage and it's pretty pathetic, filled with the wrong kind of drama self-induced.  I was a victim of my own drama that I made-up when I was 19 and living for a summer with a rather fetching girl that ended-up badly (for me anyway) but in the end-end ended-up beneficial, as I learned from it.  From correspondence a few years ago, it seems she too learned from things beneficially, and that's very good!  I'm happy it wasn't for naught.  We're both stronger from the time we spent.  Some of my previous ex'es not so much (in my opinion) and didn't survive my underdeveloped brain of teenage ambivalence.  I sort of cringe when I think what a spazzy kid I was back then, unfocused and passionate.  Definitely a rebel without a cause (or clue, Mr. Petty).






  I know one such couple who regularly cheat on each other.  They've been married a year or so and are having the actual "wedding" ceremony because it's all that pomp and it'll make things "better".  Doubtful.  Maybe for a month or so, then back to the carnage.  I was invited but I'm not going.  I denounce it as sacrilege.  It's broken before it started.  I would go to a "divorce" ceremony, however.  If they proceeded with the "wedding" ceremony as a "divorce" ceremony, the priest asking, "do you, divorce this woman?"  "I do." etc.  That would be something!  At least some progress in the right direction.  I can't be happy for two selfish villains, even if one of them looks like The Hamburgler and the other, a 9-foot snake with a ferret's head.  No sir.  I denounce it utterly, mostly because I don't want a Hamburglar Snake.







 
Kari Sweets says, "I definitely don't have daddy issues. 
Now let's get married, okay?  Oh, did I sleep with your
best friend?  Woopsies!"
  Look, getting married doesn't fix things.  I know John the Baptist did that "baptism" thing to get people to turn-over a new leaf on a physical ritual level (wasted on infants in my opinion, lest the parents maybe focusing on a proper upbringing?)  but marriage isn't going to cut it, ceremony or no.  It's an agreement to self-sacrifice on both parties to help each other survive in this world.  It's not about drama.  It's not about immorality or "settling down" or an answer towards stability.  If you're looking for that, be a monk in a monetary (or a nun).  I'll quote my favorite X-Men character, Kitty Pride from Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men: Unstoppable, "Everything is so fragile. There's so much conflict, so much pain...you keep waiting for the dust to settle and then you realize it: the dust is your life going on. If happy comes along -- that weird unbearable delight that's actual "happy" -- I think you have to grab it while you can. You take what you can get, 'cause it's here, and then...gone."



 Kitty points ot that "stability" doesn't happen.  I've seen dirty-pirate-hookers suddenly "settle down" with plumber-supply salesmen from Sheboygan.  I've seen them "settle down" with nicer-than-sunshine, innocent Master Sergeants, happy to start than nice, new chapter of stability, of being a "mom".  Disgusting.  It makes me ill they bathe in the River Lethe, forgetting their sins without asking forgiveness to anyone, especially themselves, never making any amends, just happily La-La-La'ing on, singing, "Oh, that was how I used to be!"  Uh huh.  I'll quote a little William Blake:


                                                                                                      

The mark is on you now.  The furnace sealed inside your head.
Melting from the inside now.  Waxy tears run down your face.

The whore that never told her tale relives it every night with you.
Far off stands the lamb and waits for the wolf to come and end its life.

Stand inside the temple as the book of Thel is opening.
The priestess stands before you, offering her hand out, she's rising.
Come the dawning of the dead in famine and in war.
Now the harlot womb of death spits out its rotten core.

Serpent on the altar now has wrapped itself around your spine.
So you look into its mouth and you kiss the pearly fangs divine.

Happy that your end is swift, the weeping virgin cries in bliss.
The snake and priestess, they are one. The veil of flesh is ripped undone.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes,
And when sleep takes you tonight, will you wake to see the light?
The burning sweat of poison tears. The river flowing red with blood.
The cradle-robbing hand of death caresses every dreaming head.

Waiting for the marriage hearse to take you to the funeral pyre.
So you burn the family tree?   The generations burning higher.

What demon hath formed this abominable void, 
this soul-shuddering vacuum?
Some said it is Urizen -
But unknown, abstracted, brooding secret:
The dark power, hid.



 Ah, perhaps an unpopular blog, this one, condemning the evil so carelessly?  Perhaps so.  None of us are without evil deeds, but it's for us to fix that, to repent and change before we get married, to confess to your partner, to make amends beforehand, or more importantly, not get married at all, and definitely not have kids to fix and burry that darkness.  Men and women are both to blame.  It's not one-sided.
 
 
  It's okay to be who you are, but first you have to figure that out for yourself.  Usually takes till age 30 I find.  Marriage and kids are not the solution to fix that but instead with emotional, spiritual, and internal self-growth and maturity.  If you burry that seed deep in the ground with marriage, that seed burried will eventually sprout, and your kids will be of that evil genetically I think, no matter what you try, sharing the same spirit.  That marriage will crumble and decay, and the evil that you are will all that will remain, like a wet, quivering, naked, muddy child that you are.  Grow up, Generation Zero.  It's not all about you.  Un-Kay?
 
   I fear for the future, the ambivalent selfishness in these kids trying to play grown-up, playing dress-up like children in adult's clothes standing on weakened shoulders, wavering, with no sense of workmanship or abilities.  I doubt this message will solve anything or make a difference, this "World is Doomed" wooden banner on my body in town like some crazy-man.  I just want a few folks to put some elbow-grease in work they do, in relationships and make them valuable.  It doesn't take that much, just a little sincerity and humility, and maybe a small dash of sacrifice to meet each other half-way.  Sheesh.  Generation Zero sucks.  Grow UP already!
 
 
 

"Sh*t, b*tch, you got dem Skunk AIDS!  Why you stink like you been wit da whole NBA?  Sheeee--it!"

Out.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

AdBlock Plus

 

  So I'm not a fan of "toolbars" though Google's Toolbar is actually handy with auto-translation tools and extra pop-up-blocking abilities as well as some standard Google features as "buttons" you can add, such as "Google News", "YouTube" (Google owns this), GMail, and a better-than-most Spell Checker, as well as a Google Search bar you can type-in things.  For these useful reasons, I approve Google's Toolbar.  It's safe, spam-free, and just plain good and customizable by right-clicking in it as-necessary.

https://adblockplus.org/en/internet-explorer

 
Makin' money the wrong way...
  There's a fairly recent product for us IE11 (Internet Explorer 11) users called AdBlock Plus.  It's free and I've installed it with great hesitation.  Once installed, all those YouTube ads that show up when someone "monetizes" their video is now gone.  No 30-second force-watched commercials.  This seems to work for just about all websites, some less savory than others, now ad-free! 

  It's a little freaky to go to some ad-riddled sites and see just white space where there was tons of ads.  Also, it seems indestructible LiveJasmin is especially thwarted, which is quite nice.  Those that view Yahoo as a browser (I don't) will be delighted to notice a rather comfortably sparse site.  Old sites devastated by ads built in places like GeoCities and Angelfire are now what they originally were, with no ads, not to mention news sites like the "Baltimore Sun" below, which becomes an almost blank page.   It's pretty amazing.



  Now what does AdBlock Plus get in return?  I suspect some data mining in the same vein search engines do, or FaceBook, though they admit they're currently not doing that.  Looks more like they're using extortion to allow some ads through on very rare occasions. 


"Just one.. teeny ad.. once in a GREAT while, okay?" -C.Rice

  ADB is customizable by right-clicking the tiny icon at the bottom of IE11 (it also works for every other browser and there are phone apps for those annoyed by freeware ads). You can click it once to "Disable on this website only" and it saves it as a safe-list.  This website I use for blogger uses a Java script to add the images so I needed to disable it for posts.


 
  So far so good.  If there's any problems I'll keep you posted, but after a lot of research and use, I find it no problem so far, and nothing evil has been installed on my PC yet as far as I can tell registry-wise.  Two thumbs up.

 

Monday, March 17, 2014

The Hollywood Reboot Syndrome

 
"Look, I made a new origin for Star Trek!  I changed everything about it!  F*ck Mike Cronis and 3 billion fans!" -- JJ.Abrams

 Hollywood seems to like to reinvent stories already told, thinking some young director could do a better job, or maybe America forgot about it somehow.  9 times out of 10 this is not the case, the only reboot I can think that was worthy might have been by his own self:  Alfred Hitchcock did a reboot of his own story, The Man Who Knew Too Much 22 years after he already did it, if only improved with more lavish scenes and better suspense shots in details.  If someone's going to reboot a story, I guess it's okay if the guy who invented it started over, though not for George Lucas.  No sir.  You had your chance.  You may not continue.  Put the director's chair down sir!



  I'm tired of it, and I think it's produced for the Generation Zero'ers who can't remember a movie from last year, and a film that was made 5 years ago is considered an old-timey classic.  "Oh, gee!  You remember that old, classic Avatar?"  Yeah.  5 years ago.  Sure.


  I get sick of it.  I know Spiderman's origin.  I've watched it several times already since the 1960's.  Personally I'm not a fan of this new 30-year-old passing-off to be an 18-year-old, scrawny, nerd-wimp.  Doesn't work.  Man that hair is so 1994 Axe Body Spray Commercial dumb.  Why is he coming off edgy-cool-rough when he was a pasty nerd during his origin era?  Oh!  Oh, we need to connect with the Generation Zero-brain-ers!  Yeah!  Make Spidey.. cooool.  Nerds are now cool!  He's so post-modern Andy Warhol spunk splatter cool "hipster" edge.  Yeah!  ... ... no.  Spiderman connected with true nerds, not kids who wear glasses with no lenses for style-effect.  Spidey was the un-hero, the formula of a not-super-human given powers for good.  Nerds are socially retarded, hence the triumph when he finally married Mary Jane in 1987.  I was there.  It was part of my life.  I was that nerd, that introvert with delusions of grandeur (that came true, mostly).  I am no hipster that goes to Whole Foods and listens to Arcade Fire.  I listened to Rush, the un-rock-band throughout. 


I buy my clothes at WalMart because I'm still fashion-retarded (happily so).  I spend no more than $8 on jeans ($6 on sale sometimes) yet I have a nice house, some fruiting trees and a tiny vineyard enough to produce 9 bottles of wine a year, and a cool car in the garage with a sportbike.  Lots of nice things.  I just don't value pop-culture-blandness that is meaningless (to me anyway).  I had an Odyssey2 when everyone else owned Atari and I brought the instruction manuals with me to school to study and got teased for playing Dungeons & Dragons and liking computers.  I wear that badge, hipsters.  When I wear a Star Trek shirt it's because I loved it, not just to be ironic.  You can change my oil now, bullies.  Oh, wait, nevermind.  I'll do it myself.  Now you're unemployed.  Aww.. Enjoy my tax-scraps, bitches.  I throw my d20 at your face, and .. it seems you rolled a one.  Critical fail.  Now sit in your pee-pants.

Um.. duh?

  I think the Gen-Zero'ers don't care about the past whatsoever.  They ignore it utterly.  I'm not sure why.  Is it because there's a gnawing feeling that their generation's efforts are meaningless and without effort, so empty like their own minds?  I myself never had a problem with movies before I was born.  I did not loathe them so readily.  I watched Logan's Run and Bullit and Robinson Crusoe on Mars and Westworld (and it's sequel Futureworld) with no problem.  I watched the original The Day the Earth Stood Still and it didn't suck donkey tails, it was actually quite poignant. 

What I watched in childhood in film: Futureworld

  I don't need reboots.  Society doesn't need them.  Just remaster and re-release them with a very light touch-up and you'd be surprised how well that does!  I don't need it in 3d (I think that's dying-off now, thankfully, like it did in the '80s and even before in the late '50s.. every 30 years it seems).  Just give me good acting and a good story with minimal special effects spared only for content and not razzle-dazzle to distract me from bad directing.  I don't need a spectacle unless it fits.  Like sex-scenes in movies with no purpose just to "get it on film" to hope it's a hook.  Sigh.  No.



  So a few movies are being reboot.  Terminator Genesis is a trilogy that starts filming in a few weeks that's a reboot.  We don't need that.  Not at all.  I refuse to cater to kids too lazy to realize there's 100 years of film to enjoy.  How about we stop all movies for 10 years to let everyone catch-up?  There's some really good work out there.  Start with the Academy Award winners and runner-ups and go from there.  Each decade has something to offer for everyone.  Seriously.  The last 20 years or so have been lacking.  If you read my blog on "Best movies of the 2000's" (which should have won a Pulitzer Prize, btw) There were a scant few to mention: The Dark Knight, Slumdog Millionaire, O Brother Where Art Thou, The Wrestler, Cast Away, and Downfall.  That's about it.  I added a few personal favorites there, but the remaining movies of the 2000's were.. not so good.  Even the Lord of the Rings trilogy was a bit pretentious for those who'd seen the Ralph Bakshi version (which I preferred).  Honestly, it was a "reboot" as well, if you think about it.  Bakshi did it first.  It was my childhood, and it was great.  Today's kids can't defend what "their" generation is offering.

Gandalf in Bakshi's animated masterpiece, Lord of the Rings

  Originals are almost always better, why not just expand on them instead of re-booting them?  I don't need a Superman origin series.  No one on Earth needs that!  Krypton blows up but not before dad sends him to Earth where its sun gives him super-powers and he champions civilians for the greater good.  Sure.  Got it.  Got the T-Shirt.  Bought into that in 1969, others even earlier. 



  I refuse to cater to these no-brain kids because these reboots are more spectacular and less story to satisfy their parents' upbringing by way of shoving TV in their faces with anger and color exploding into their impatient eyes 24x7.  The newer versions are not grittier or cooler and on-par at-best.  I get divorced from concern when everything looks like a video game by way of special effects.  Anyone remember all 3 space battles in the recent Star Wars movies?  You know, the one at the end of Phantom Menace, or the final battle in Attack of the Clones or the beginning of Revenge of the Sith?  No?  You can't explain it in detail?  Now can you remember the final battle in Star Wars (Ep.IV) when they destroy the Death Star?  Yeah?  You can?  Luke flying then shooting the torpedo through the trench during the TIE fighter attack?  What about the Battle at Hoth with the snow-walkers in Empire Strikes Back?  Yeah?  What about the crazy battle with the Ewoks / Vader / 2nd Death Star with the Millennium Falcon with Billy Dee Williams at the helm?  You can?  Well GEE!  It's because those weren't CGI computer-graphics.  You felt engaged in the scenes.  So what happened during Revenge of the Sith space-battle-wise?  Don't remember?  Thought so.  Listen-up, Hollywood.  No one with a brain likes CGI.  Stop it. 

I remember this scene in Star Wars when I saw it in Maine.  This was at the "Academy" as they used binoculars to watch the Star Destroyer knock-out Leia's ship.  It was rather lengthy.  I have a copy of the 4 hour uncut Star Wars now, from Lucas' home vault.  The Death Star Battle at Yavin is a full hour.

Fuckin' Mike Cronis, that bitch!  Ha ha!
And stop the reboots.  Don't get me started on Star Trek now aka Buck Rogers.  Kids these days can't conceptualize dialoge or emotion.  Let's just smash running, frantic colors, and pseudo-science in their faces and dissolve the bold, triumphant works of Roddeberry by pissing all over it.  If I ever see Abrams I'll smack him in the face.  I swear.  I swear.
 

Col. Wilma Deering of the Earth Defense Force asks, "What's wrong with Buck Rogers, bitch?"
Princess Ardala concurs, "You like me now, Tigerman?"

Tweeky, sans Dr.Thadeus, asks Gil, "Whatchya lookin' at, Buck?"   Buck's reply, "Boobs.  Boobs everywhere."

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Get Rid of Money / Hopless Crimea



  So I was at a local fast-food restaurant at about 2am as I'm working nights now and the teller asked me, "cash or credit?"  Well, most humans don't carry actual money anymore in America so I obviously indicated "credit" meaning my debit-card to my checking-account of course.  She informed me that they were only taking cash right now.  Luckily I had a few bucks in my wallet for no good reason.  The line was lengthy and I had to wait about 15 minutes or so.  When I got to be the second in-line the guy in front of me didn't even bother to get their food, just drove onward for whatever reason.  The teller looked at me matter-of-fact as I drove up to the window.  I went to gather the few bucks I had and was going to pay and he handed me a rather heavy bag and said, "Don't worry about it."  I paused and started to hand him come cash and he repeated, "Don't worry about it."  Er..  I had ordered something that included a drink but he obviously wasn't going to give me that.  Instead, I was getting a mystery gift.  Well, I've learned if someone's gonna give you a free mystery gift at a drive-up window, it's best for adventure's sake to just accept, so I did, and said thanks, and drove off.
 


 Inside the bag were about a dozen items, none of which I ordered, but it was interesting a mix of breakfast and lunch items.  Hm.



  Things brings me to wonder why America still uses actual cash money.  It costs the US Mint $826 million annually to make currency, both in coin and "paper".  This includes about 9 liquid tons of ink, labor, cotton (not actual paper), etc.  Money better spent on road repair in my opinion, which I think would give us about 1 mile of I-70 on-the-cheap.



  "Paper" money, and it's annoying coin children are an inconvenience.  Actually acquiring these items is an awkward 1970's method of going to an ATM or an actual "bank" (who's physicality that actually exist is an enigma to me.. who's actually going to a "bank" anymore?) and making a transaction, sometimes for a charge of a dollar or two, though some virtual banks reimburse these costs.  It's an antiquated, silly process.  I guess having physical money makes sense if the "system" breaks down for a few weeks, but there's rarely anything anyone really needs that can't wait.  People can survive without food for over 30 days (I know, I've done this) and tap-water isn't quite deadly these days now that radioactive fluoride isn't shoved through our pipes anymore.  Other than mini-Armageddon it's pointless, and even then could be maintained by a credit-transaction delayed via pen-and-paper once things got up and running again.








  The debit-card makes a ton more sense.  You get robbed on the street for $20, it's pretty much gone.  Virtual money is protected via insurances and you're reimbursed within seconds by a phone call.  Easy peasy.  Places that only take cash should be banished.  It's annoying and inconvenient and a waste.  Get with the 1980's, merchants!  Sheesh.  If your business can't take a debit card, consider yourselves closed.  Thupid Idioths.



  As for Crimea, they're doomed.  Obama will not intervene as he's Putin's shivering Chihuahua with pee-spot underneath, on it's back, neck exposed in a dog-submissive pose.  Many interviews have shown this, and the hour-long phone-call recently between the two yielded a pathetic non-response by America as of late.  Regan would not have stood for that.  Nope.  We won't help, even if begged, thanks to this "I don't wanna get involved with anything international" president (except Afghanistan, what's up with that???).  On a contrary matter,  creating a draft with kids these days would be pathetic as the estrogen in the chicken and beef is so rampant now, most men are effeminatized to be unrecognizable.  Also, the UN should really be involved in this issue.  Unfortunately, the UN is more corrupt than even Putin's regime so it's a mock-defense-force, slow and useless with no honor and no strength like some backwards-knight in Alice in Wonderland.  I'm sure there's a few paladins there, but they're overwhelmed by Count Dooku wannabees.  Sorry Crimea, we hardly new ye.  Good night a-ding-ding-ding-dingggg.

                                                                

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Teaser

 
Here's a little aperitif before dinner, a little teaser if you will.  This is from a "Learning Engrish" book in Japan.  Please note the word and then the translation explanation written in both Japanese and English.  Read all the English on the right pages.  Enjoy.






 There's a bit happening in the last one there.  It reads, "Dad's deadly fart caused our mother to lose her mental balance."  I'm interested in why he's standing naked behind her on the couch.  A lot's going on here for this setup to work.  Firstly, "Dad" is naked.  This is a concern.  Furthermore, he's on the couch behind "Mom" doing.. something.  Did Dad go bonkers?  He seemingly ran up on top of the couch, naked and then butt-first farted at Mom.  Dad's not alright.  Something happened.  He obviously lost his job just now after years of work, only a month before getting a retirement pension, now gone forever.  That or he killed a hooker and he accidentally left his wallet at the crime scene and just remembered.  Either way, things happened for it to get this bad.  Dad's gone zany.

Later. 

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

New Blog Coming



Sorry for the long delay since the last blog, but a few things have happened over the last 45 days:


Some details to come, but probably not.  I'll just take-off where I left off.