Category Archives: Rants

Humor, Internet, Rants

Fortune Cookies, Horoscopes, and Dating Profiles

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The trick with fortune cookies and horoscopes is that they are vague enough to shoehorn the specifics of your life to match them, whatever those specifics may be. It occurred to me that Internet dating profiles are the same way. She says she’s looking for someone who’s fun and has a great sense of humor and likes to travel. That pretty much narrows it down to “human”. Everyone thinks reasonably well of themselves, otherwise they’re not posting a public profile.

Even the part that lists specific requirements like age and height and body type are squinted at until they match the reader. She wants someone no older than 40, but she’s 38, so the 47 year old man thinks, “I’m good enough” (and if she has kids, he’s right). He wants someone of average or slender build and she thinks, “Why, that’s what I put on my profile!” Um, yeah, about that.

Dating profiles are sales brochures and daters are used car salesmen. Honesty is out the window because it would never get you anywhere. If I lived in a world where honesty was rewarded instead of punished, here is the profile I would write:
Continue reading Fortune Cookies, Horoscopes, and Dating Profiles →

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Politics, Rants

How Prop 8 Passed

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Paul Bogan writes angrily yet eloquently about California passing Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriages. One of his points is that Californians could not possibly have misunderstood the clear wording of the bill.

This is East Coast Thinking, which I understand because I spent more time there than here. On the east coast, when someone cuts you off on the parkway, you think, “What an asshole!” But when you get to California, everyone seems so nice. In short order, your perception of your fellow residents changes. Then, when someone cuts you off on the freeway, you think, “What an idiot!” I’ve spoken with a lot of California transplants on this exact issue and it’s pretty unanimous.

This election, I voted no on darn near every prop1, and I did this because I actually took the better part of a day to research them all. However, I think most people do research at the voting booth. They skim and make a gut reaction.

That’s why we voted for a $10B down payment on a train to San Francisco. Yes, people, it’s a down payment! It will cost way more – maybe 2-3 times that! Can’t we start with decent local public transportation first? JetBlue is already doing a fine job flying us to SF. I want a train that takes me from Huntington Beach to the Santa Monica Promenade, Hollywood and Highland, and Old Town Pasadena.2 If you insist on building a bullet train to somewhere cool, make it Las Vegas. San Fran is perhaps the coolest city in America, but it’s crazy expensive. Even with gambling and strip clubs, Vegas is downright cheap in comparison.3

Ignorance and misguided compassion is also why we voted for $980M for children’s hospitals when we just allotted $750M in 2004. Newsflash: we still have $350M of that yet to grant, under the same rules as this prop. This is akin to taking a huge cash advance on our credit card when we’re already knee deep in debt and we don’t even need the money!

I understand how Paul – who is obviously so wise in the way of (political) science – might think Californians could not possibly be dumb enough to vote incorrectly on Prop 8. However, the commercials that called for no on 8 were vague on what you were voting against. They made it clear you were voting against discrimination, but never said of what. I think a lot of people heard prop 8 was the gay marriage bill and thought, “Why, I think Gay Bill’s a swell guy. He should totally have the right to get married. Yes on 8!” OK, maybe not that bad, but just yesterday I heard a guy call into Headline news4 to say that he was not gay, and that he “really, really loves the ladies”, but he thought gays should have the right to get married. Unfortunately, the drafters of said proposition used “confusing language” and he accidentally voted yes when he meant no. Is he the exception that proves the rule? Maaaaaaybe. But I’m often reminded of a quote from the late, great George Carlin:

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

Of course, he also said:

“In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.”

  1. Yes on 11 and 12, if you must know. [↩]
  2. Yes, I realize that in 5 years, through the wonders of “gentrification”, they’ll all be the same place. Like when I discovered that San Diego’s Gaslamp District was a carbon copy of Old Town Pasadena (or vice-versa). Now, the Promenade is slowly remaking itself into the image of The Grove. SoCal is becoming one big homogenized crap factory. [↩]
  3. Probably because because SF has better, more expensive strip clubs. [↩]
  4. Why they accept phone calls now I cannot fathom. It’s not news; hell, it’s barely opinions. HLN: If you need more filler, just show your sexy female news anchors shooting coy looks at the camera, maybe biting their lip a little. On slow days, licking a lollipop or sensuously eating a banana. Ratings will skyrocket. [↩]
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Film, Rants

How To Ruin A Modern Classic

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Perhaps you’ve heard they’re remaking The Karate Kid. Whatever details you’ve gleaned so far, it gets worse.

It’s going to star Jayden Smith, Will Smith’s son who costarred with him in The Pursuit of Happyness. When filming starts next year, he’ll be 11. Yes, 11.

The other bit of ridiculousness is that much of the filming will be in Beijing, where the movie is set. Now how can you have a karate movie in China? The cultural ignorance is staggering. At the very least they should call it The Kung Fu Kid.

This is just another in a long line of Karate Kid ripoffs, like Showdown (starring Billy Blanks) and the recent Never Back Down. In fact, both of those movies are way closer in plot than the new remake. Seriously, who wants to see 11 year olds beat the shit out of each other? I got enough of that in 5th grade.

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Politics, Rants

A note to racists

Now that Obama is on his way to America’s throne, (note throne/toilet double-meaning) I wish him the best of luck with the turd Bush left for him. I personally did not vote this year because I did not like either choice. Playing eenie-meenie-mynee-moe at the booth is nonsense.
I have nothing against Obama, it’s just that I’ve never heard of the guy until the “bandwagon” effect started rolling, and yes I do follow politics. On the other hand I’m not voting for a Bush-clone either.
The fact is, Obama’s intelligent, well spoken, educated…. and black. Don’t try to correct me about his race. The community defines your race, not your blood-line. So as long as the black community emraces him as one of their own… he’s black.

Now here’s my request: Please for the love of humanity, stupid, racist, KKK, Nazi, skinhead, rednecks, leave this one alone. You don’t have to love him, but please just leave him be. My biggest fear is what would happen to America if he was assassinated by one of these kooks.
It will push race relations back 50 years. Riots will break out in every major city. We finally live in a time where whites don’t feel the need to feel sorry for errors of past generations, but this will all be erased if anything happens to Obama. It doesn’t help much that the (to be) Vice President is about as gringo as they come. People will start conspiracy theories about how this was the plan all along.
The fact that 60% percent of Obama’s voters were white will not help our cause. Another black hero dies, and it would probably be a long time before another gets to the same position.
So please gripe all you want if his performance gives you a reason to, but either way lets leave violent racism in the 20th century.

note to FBI/CIA: You’ve probably received some automated alarms related to some key wording I’ve used in this rant, so just to be clear: Neither I, nor anyone I know, is connected in any way to plots, designs, meetings or individuals with intent to bring harm upon any public figure.

But I have been sharing privileged information concerning Roswell.
Suck on that.

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Rants

Public Service Announcements

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Ladies: If you are a woman over 30, and you want to dye your hair red, it is time to switch to shades that are actually known to sprout forth from human scalps. If you are considering colors found on fire engines and lipstick worn by street walkers, keep looking. Or perhaps you’re thinking that the guy who sings for Maroon 5 is hot, and he’d really go for you if you dyed your hair maroon. He will not. I don’t know what magazine is telling you that maroon or any weird shade of dark red found on mid-size family sedans is going to make you look good, but it’s wrong. And your kids are embarrassed, and your husband doesn’t like it, even though he says he does. He just doesn’t want you to get depressed and gain [any more] weight.

The solution is simple. Just go to Vidal Sassoon and ask them to pick any shade of red ever found on Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams, Isla Fisher, Laura Prepon, Alyson Hannigan, or even Lindsay Lohan. I know, you don’t like Lindsay, but I bet she’d have a much easier time getting that Maroon 5 dude, and it’s not because she’s famous and young, it’s because… wait, no, that’s it. And also because she is, at the moment, a lesbian.

Note that if you are under 30, and cute, and listen to cool music, you should dye your hair some unnatural shade of red, or purple, or perhaps hot pink. I will love you for this.

Men: If you are on your crotch rocket, and your lady is on the bitch seat, perhaps now is not the time to split lanes at red lights. You are too concerned she’s going to fall off if you accelerate too fast (which is probably a valid concern), so you accelerate slowly. But the the unspoken rule of red light motorcycle lane splitting is that you gun it as soon as the light changes so that I, in my little WRX, have no chance of hitting you when I gun it. I should not be scaring the bejesus out of you when I floor it, and I find that lately I am doing just that. So stop splitting lanes.

I know you’re not going to boot your lady and drive like a man because my second bitch seat observation (and I’ve seen this multiple times now) is that when she’s all hunched over, her jeans ride down real low, like 3 inches of ass crack low. Which means she considers the bitch seat a panties-optional environment. So… bravo, man. Bravo. And thank your lady for me.

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Politics, Rants

Obama Wins !!! Break out crystal ball.

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Yes, Presidential Election Year 2008 seems to be over.  Or is it?? Read on.

With most polls placing Democratic candidate Obama 10+ points over Republican candidate McCain, it would seem to be a routine slide to November 4th this year.  However, I like to keep things interesting, so here are my top predictions for an Obama presidency:

Item 1: Obama wins. Duh.

But he does not win by the 10+ margin that the polls predict.  I believe that the contest will be a lot closer on Nov. 4th.  There will be a lot of Republicans kicking themselves in the butt for not voting.   Shame on you;  all Americans should vote on this Election Day.  The unexpected vote numbers will possibly be blamed on the Bradley Effect witnessed in the California Gubernatorial election of 1982 :folks did not admit to the pollsters that they would not vote for a black candidate.  When the election took place, the true numbers came out.  But this disparity in reporting vs. reality will result in……

Item 2: Media backlash. 

All of us are aware that the media was in bed with candidate Obama, eg: Saturday Night Live lampooned this phenomenum when they showed reporters asking candidate Obama if he needed a pillow or if it should be fluffed some more.  Candidate Hillary Clinton alluded to this “Obama Effect”  during her own candidacy.  I believe the American people will not tolerate 4 more years of this whore-pimp situation and will strike back against the media by NOT WATCHING.  Expect higher viewing numbers for reality-television shows and Entertainment-Tonight-type programs as news viewership declines.  Same for newspapers, unless they print sale-coupons or cents-off coupons for food.  Which brings us to…..

Item 3: Economy in the toilet. 

Despite Obama’s “efficiencies”  and his research into extracting sunlight from cucumbers1  the economy will continue its slide into crumminess or at best, into stagnation.  There will be an initial bump upwards, due to the change-is-coming effect, but this will quickly be replaced by the cold truth of reality.  Useless investment in ocean wind farms and solar panel cities will not trickle down to other sectors of the economy.  They will not produce enough energy to fuel an economic resurgence, but they will make for an exciting IMAX film coming to your neighborhood soon !!! 2  Which easily leads to…..

Item 4: Blame it on Bush. 

Blaming anything and everything on Bush has become such a popular pastime that I don’t think  it will stop.  Obama got elected by blaming the Bush Presidency and I don’t think he will stop.  Blaming the continuing crisis on 8 Bush years will get pretty old, though, and soon.  The Economic Crisis got him elected, but it will also bring Obama down in popularity and job acceptance poll-numbers.  There will be books written on this period of economic distress, which is why I find it so curious that none will be written about……

Item 5: Big Conspiracy. 

I always connect a big event with the people that most benefit from that big event.  This crisis got Obama elected, ergo, the Democratic Party is behind it.  Now wait.  Before you consign this thought to the rubbish bin section of your brain, consider this:  the crisis was bound to happen, the bad home loans were in place, the banks were running on vapor; but what made it happen just NOW??  Why did it not happen months ago, or on November 5th?  Why was it so fortuitously timed for a particular person to benefit??  Just the timing of it makes my conspiracy-theory-minded Spidey sense tingle.  And trust me, I am not the only person making this kind of fantastical leap: most reporters got their reputations by developing that investigative-hunch-bone that makes them uneasy when things “just happen.”  But the lack of investigative reporting makes me wonder about how far this conspiracy reaches.  Could it be that not only the Democrats but also the Republicans have something to hide in this mess, and they have both managed to keep the press at bay??  Newshounds know that you can’t piss both sides of the political process, or you end up with 4 years of reporting on Libertarian and Green Party issues.  But they can still redeem themselves and avoid Item 2.  It just may not be possible to do so.  Just look at the finger that pushed the first domino in the chain of bank failures, that’s were the fault lies.

And bonus Item 6: 

Obama’s ethanol initiative will pollute the environment in a big way and turn environmentalists against him.  Again.  But nobody cares about this, so please ignore.

Afterthought Item 7: Sarah Palin runs for Presidency 2012.  This year shows that inexperience is not a detractor to the Presidency if you are popular enough.  After discarding the McCain deadweight (sorry John!!), Palin will reject public funding for campaigns and go on to raise prodigious amounts of cash that will take her to the Presidency.  But watch out: her run will encourage Hillary Clinton to also run in 2012, capitalizing on her opposition to Obama since the very start; she will find an understanding American public.  That’s the campaign *I* want to see made into a movie!!3

  1. “Gulliver’s Travels”, Jonathan Swift [↩]
  2. As an engineer, I am actually intrigued by these new power systems; they
    will look pretty cool but will not produce the scale of energy needed by a country the size of the USA [↩]
  3. NOTE to Spike Lee: we don’t want an inspirational Obama film starring Denzel Washington, unless Obama is running a secret war against extraterrestrials on the Dark Side of the moon, with lots of special effects explosions and USA space troopers launching out of the Capitol building [↩]
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BTW, Rants, Technology

New MacBook Pro

So they released the new MacBook Pro, claiming it’s “engineered to standards that don’t even exist yet.” Really? Hey Apple, how about – gasp! – conforming to a standard that does exist? It’s called Blu-ray, and if you want to be taken at all seriously as a video editing and motion graphics platform (or even a purveyor of modern consumer electronics) you’ll get your hardware and OS developers working on it so you can add it to the 17″ model (whenever that gets updated…).

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Film, Humor, Politics, Rants

The Wicked Witch, Hitler and War Criminals

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Quite a title for this article, but it really makes sense.  Trust me.

The Wicked Witch

I was listening to the soundtrack for the Broadway show “Wicked.”  It is based on the premise that the Wicked Witch of the West was really not evil, just a  misunderstood soul.   Wow.  They are taking one of the iconic evil figures from literature and giving her a second look, an alternate-universe history that makes her, well, nice1.   And that’s not right.

Taking this alarming trend to its pinnacle, could it be far behind for Hitler to make a comeback?? 

(NOTE: the following are satirical comments.  Do not mistake them for reality; they are just an artifice to make a point.  That is how satire works.) 

After all, Hitler was really nice to his dogs. And he did put all of the German people back to work on that really cool roadway, the Autobahn.  Did I mention that he created the Volkswagen?? That picture of Hitler and his gang of killers parading around on a convertible Wolkswagen has got to be the coolest, most disturbing image of the war. 2  So except for the 6 million people he killed, Hitler was a really nice guy.  Really. 

(NOTE: the satire has now ended.  Back to reality.)

Hitler’s Beetle

But we all know that the winners of a war write the history books, so they can adjust the facts to suit themselves.  There are many instances of Allied atrocities in WW2 that should have been tried as war crimes.  I am thinking of the conventional bombing of the German city of Dresden, or the firebombing of Japanese cities.  The latter killed a whole lot more people than the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (better left for some other article).  But a lot of terrible things happen during a war; it’s just distasteful to try to justify them as being necessary for a greater good.  It’s so much more honest to say what is really inside: the enemy is inhuman and we’re  scared sh*tless; we need to kill as many of them as possible before the war ends.  Afterwards,  we have to go back to being human beings and play nice again.  Or whatever passes for “nice” between bellicose nations.

So back to the Wicked Witch of the West.  The play does a good job turning the Oz universe on its head.  As with many revisionist works, there are problems with it, since it changes a couple of  really key points that clash with the world that Frank L. Baum created.  Similar to those Star Wars prequels that cannot exist in the same universe as the original Star Wars movies.  But these are nits, and you can still enjoy the Wicked concept if you ignore them.  Just don’t expect me to change my worldview: The witch is still evil. (Don’t forget, she did try to kill Dorothy.  And her little dog, too.)

  1. What is next?? Darth Vader used to be a nice guy that made some  wrong choices?? [↩]
  2. Except for that other disturbing photo, showing thousands of his dead victims from the concentration camps. [↩]
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Humor, Politics, Rants, Technology

No Offshore Drilling; where’s my nuclear car??

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Time to set the record straight:  whatever, whichever politician said that gas prices are not coming down was right.  Offshore drilling is a good idea, but it will not bring gas prices down.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for drilling for oil in our own backyards.  When I first moved out to California, I was enchanted by all of those oil derricks pumping, pumping away in the beautiful hills of Huntington Beach, down along the beach paths and even on the beach dunes themselves.  It made California look like the golden El Dorado that I had always imagined: golden roads lined with cool-looking cars and all of the oil we needed right under our feet.  And yes, I was also expecting bikini-clad girls to pump my gas and sell me my milk from those roadside milk stands (I saw pictures of this put out by the Orange County Chamber of Commerce).  I’m sure the girls and the pumping action of the derricks was some sort of Freudian juxtaposition that made me drive out to California all the faster.

So why don’t I support the drilling now?? Because once the oil is out of the ground, it is immediately put out on the international market where China can bid on it, along with every other gas-thirsty country that is finally making its way out of the Third World.  We would be competing with them for our own gas.  And make no mistake about it: it’s our gas.  It is coming out on nationally-owned areas (offshore or the ANWR in Alaska)  and the oil companies are getting a low-risk, fantastic return on investment.  If that is the case, they can afford to lose a little bit of profit by selling that gas DOMESTICALLY, ONLY.  Does that sound socialistic, the first hints of nationalized gas production?? You bet your sweet light-crude that it does!!  But if you’re going to drill in my backyard, and I own the land and mineral rights, you have better pay me off by at least selling me the oil at a domestically-competitive price.

But I’m also realistic.  Using oil to power our cars is a technological dead-end.  With all of the Chinese, Indian, Polish, Russian, etc. etc.  economies finally coming out of the Dark Ages and increasing the number of privately owned cars, we are going to be running out of oil soon (peak oil production).   So where’s my nuclear-powered car??  If all of those Disney documentaries in the 1950’s promised plenty of energy in the future, how come I have to use my bicycle to go to the library and to the store??

The anwer of course is that we can’t trust the average person to drive a quarter of critical mass around in their engines, waiting for some terrorist to figure out that (4) times (1/4)  equals (1).  Boom.   And I can hardly imagine the bad traffic created when the radioactive cleanup team cleans up the pieces from your average 4 accidents per freeway per day. 

We need to use nuclear power to generate the electricity to provide the hydrogen to run the cars.  Simple enough, please give me my new-model 2010 hydrogen-fueled SUV.  In Earth-Friendly Green,  of course.  And feel free to stick as many oil-sucking straws in the California Offshore until then. 

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Film, Rants

Musings on The Golden Compass

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Well, it’s no secret that I was not a big fan of the movie “The Golden Compass” even before it came out.   I knew that it was derived from a book of the same name, which was part of a trilogy written by Philip Pullman, a self-described atheist.   There was also the fact that the series is known as His Dark Materials trilogy, and that there was a running thread in the books that was anti-religious.   I don’t have a problem with that, but I did have a problem with God being terminated by the series’ young protagonists in book 3.  Pretty intense stuff for a children’s series.

But there’s a couple of things that merit a revisit to this movie.  One is the fact that I was a big fan of “The Chronicles of Narnia”  which is a series that is an unabashedly pro-Christian allegory1.  I did not want to favor one point of view without giving a chance to its opposite.  There was the fact that I don’t want to dismiss an entire series based on hearsay.  Finally, there’s the fact that Roger Ebert had given the movie 4 stars.   I had to check this movie out.

I recently had the opportunity to view the DVD of the movie recently, and I can see why Mr. Ebert admired its production values; they are exquisite.

silver gallery

The concepts were brilliantly illustrated on the screen, and as Roger writes “As a visual experience, it is superb.”

carriage

But I cannot recommend the movie.  As beautiful as it is to behold, it failed its first test when one of my kids asked me when the movie was going to be over.  This is the equivalent of the dreaded looking-at-your-watch syndrome while watching a movie at the theatre.  Now, I’ve been in movies that are slow moving and require extreme patience, so a measured pace has never bothered me.  My issues with the movie lie elsewhere.

Spoilers follow:

Continue reading Musings on The Golden Compass →

  1. see my previous article http://www.crackteam.org/2006/04/23/its-obvious-episode-1-narnia-for-dummies/ [↩]
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