I learned many, many years ago that when a franchise movie is bad you need to just deal with it. It's one of the most difficult things a person has to do when dealing with the reality of an object they love failing them utterly.

So, yes.  The X-Files: I Want to Believe is bad.  Let's have a spoiler-filled look at how this happened.

I don't want to waste a ton of time reviewing the film... or telling you why it sucks.  Actually, the wonderful Alexandra DuPont of Ain't it Cool News does a GREAT job of telling you why this movie goes wrong.  Unless you see me directly contradict something from that review, consider it a great layout of my opinions (right down the comments about werewolves, Robert Patrick, and that God-forsaken last shot).

Six years ago the greatest television show ever went off the air.  Now, I feel perfectly justified saying that.  When it comes to television, there's some sorta crazy formula of quality balanced over quantity that allows you to be "the best".  The X-Files perfected that.  Don't tell me how awesome Firefly is.  It didn't even have a full season of episodes.  It never had to say, "how do we keep this fresh?"  That doesn't mean it isn't awesome.  It just means it can never be as awesome as The X-Files.  Did the show suffer some as it went on?  Yes.  The mythology episodes became very weak in the middle of the show. When I was younger, I thought the show died an awful death at the departure of Duchovny.  Upon re-viewing the show, this is not the case.  While it isn't as great as the heyday of seasons two through four, (where we truly trusted no one, locked our doors a little more securely and feared the impending alien invasion), it's much better than it is usually credited with being.  The reason we hated it then?  We were damn near told to.  Instead of handling Duchovny's wish to breathe (which, after eight years, wouldn't you want to "try something different?"), FOX TV constantly dicked with us.  "IS THIS THE WEEK MULDER RETURNS!?"  Now, I don't know if Chris Carter's "crap, my stars are leaving" plan of a revolving door Law & Order style cast would have worked, but I will say that Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish are both solid contributors to the show, and their presence is SEVERLY lacking in the movie.  No doubt 20th Century Fox said "replace those FBI agents with somebody hip... like AMANDA PEET".  *sigh*

But from the very beginning of the end, Duchovny and others said, "we're down for movies".  A whole lotta missteps later (including losing the outline to the super-secret script), and here we are. On the damned 100th anniversary of the FBI, the show that made the Bureau cool makes its big screen return.  Fight the Future (the 1998 film) is like a warm freakin' blanket to me.  No matter how many fine movies come out in the rest of my life, I'm comfortable saying it will always been in my top twenty-five.  So... how did we X-Philes come to the Alexandra DuPont camp on the sequel?

The Hollywood insider "Movieline International Report" said the following to theaters about what to expect this weekend: The popular TV series and highly successful 1998 theatrical release (10/11/98, $30 million opening, $83 million total) has generated interest with over 25 females who were fans of the TV series. Average or better business.
Now, aside from getting the release date of the first movie wrong (that was the DVD release, thank you), we setup that Hollywood intends for this to be a chick flick.  Now, many, many chicks watched The X-Files, but a cheap, $33 million (the reported budget for the movie) chick flick... no.  Not acceptable.

The movie starts right.  The music.  The scrolling "location" text in that bottom left corner.  The creepy vibe.  Sure, whatever the HELL happens with the arm and what-not at the film's outset isn't exactly the creepiest X-File we've ever seen, but it's an okay foundation.  Here we have the goodness.  Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz truly ask, "what has happened in the past six years?"  And their immediate answer is one of genius.  Scully is finally a doctor, at a Catholic hospital.  She works to save lives, but she is still reeling from the decision to give up her son for his protection.  Mulder has become a bearded hermit, living away from society and clipping out weird stories from newspapers.  He's a sad, sad man... a man who has had everything taken from him.  Both characters are vunerable, lost souls.  And then the FBI comes knocking, offering to drop (bogus) charges (and a sentancing to death) against Mulder if he'll help them find a lost FBI agent.  The PROMISE of this movie is amazing.  Taking a pair of shattered icons on a trip down memory lane.  And they do it SO right.  Mulder can't say no to helping find a missing person, because he owes it to his dead sister!  Scully misses her child, so she immediately hates our weirdo psychic pedophile priest!  Every. Single. Character. Decision. PERFECT.  As a matter of fact, the worst thing to occur in the first thirty minutes of the movie is a tarnishing of the classic Mark Snow musical theme to make the most wacked out George W. Bush joke ever.  I cannot understand this joke for the life of me, and it is NOT a way to reestablish something that IS truly iconic.

From this point on, the "how" of doom starts to become apparent.  The villians aren't creepy enough.  The drama is too soapy.  But mostly?  Chris Carter is the EXACT OPPOSITE of George Lucas.  Now, I know what you're thinking; "that's gotta be a good thing, right?"  Sadly, wrong.  You see, when George returned to Star Wars after hiatus, he said, "I know what's right.  Screw you all.  I am a god."  But Carter has been abused.  The man has barely worked in the past six years.  The end of his show is considered by many a huge failure (and if we're only talking about the HORRIBLE recap episode that is the two-hour finale, then they're right).  I get the feeling that Chris doesn't get his phone calls returned much anymore.  So, he listens to the haters.  "Stand alone episodes are better."  And he makes a stand alone movie.  He listens to the fans.  "Mulder and Scully are truly together."  He listens to the studio.  "Xzibit!"  He listens to everyone.  Because he WANTS it back.  He NEEDS it. 

But there's the problem.  Who are these twenty-five year old women seeing the movie?  They are X-PHILES.  They want to be screwed with!  They want to be shocked and scared!  AND THEY WANT TO BELIEVE!!  There's nobody seeing this movie who doesn't have a pre-formed opinion.  I've heard ten people declare proudly to me since this movie went into production that they had never watched an episode of the series.  They are not gonna see this movie, no matter how many times you tell them it stands alone.  Then there are the people who NEED CLOSURE.  People like me who pray at night that come December 22, 2012 (if you don't know what that date is, sorry) Mulder and Scully will save us from colonization.  And we're split.  We're never getting together.  Example: have you seen the trailer?  There's that shot of the priest on his knees, blood coming from his eyes.  Now, the shot has been darkened in the trailer so that the blood almost looks black.  Like... the black oil, a central part of X-Files mythology.  So, anyone with any background goes, "OH MAN, THE BLACK OIL, SWEET" and is being lied to.  But everyone else is like, "I thought you said stand alone?  WTF?"

And that's where we are.  You can't change that.  You have a fanbase.  I've spent a couple hundred dollars on DVDs.  I'll see any movie that's put out.  And you give me a movie where Skinner only shows up in the last ten minutes, and you replace a role that was probably written for Robert Patrick with Xzibit.  And you do this the week after The Dark Knight so that you get the toughest, highest-expecting critics and crowds possible.  Great freakin' work 20th Century Fox.  No, really.  You have one of the most loyal fanbases in television history... a fanbase that truly helped to shape the show, and you're worried about appealing to somebody else after nine years of faithful viewing?  *double sigh*

As the movie drags on (and it really does drag), you keep wishing for something, anything to happen, but it can't.  The studios don't want it to.  Also, while Carter is in many ways a genius, he is no spectacular director.  Give us back Rob Bowman in the director's chair, please.  We're subjected to so many things that just don't work as this film goes along.  We don't have the money for any action near the film's end, so there really isn't any.  They throw a weird attraction plot in with Amanda Peet that about drives me bonkers.  And while the initial concepts for the "scary" plot are good (both the spiritual and scientific elements) we have to pull them off with crap.  Scully wants to perform an expirimental stem cell procedure?  She has to LOOK IT UP ON GOOGLE.  And then the revealing moment for what the spooky plot is comes from her finding that all of what she found on Google didn't print.  The same lament could be put to the film's romantic plot.  The first moment they show the dynamic duo laying in bed got a gasp from the audience (although for the life of me, I can't figure out why... I mean, are there really people who didn't get the memo that they were sleeping together in the last three seasons?), but then after a decade and a half of working well together they get into an argument and talk like a spat is enough to break them up.  I mean, how I see it, these characters have caused so much pain and grief for each other over the years but gotten through it together that their relationship should be the most solid relationship in the history of cinema.  Sadly this doesn't seem to be the case.

This movie lacks triumph.  You wanna talk triumph?  Watch the end of Fight the Future where a simple TELEGRAM makes crowds cheer aloud as the film goes to credits.  When this movie was over, people didn't know what to do.  They were like, "um... it's over?  Really?  That's it?"  We've been told by this show time and time again to expect more.  And to not give us any indication as to the current outlook on the title's sake (the X-files), is a pretty bad plan as well.  Heck, Amanda Peet's dialog reminding us of how many WAY COOLER psychics we've seen over the years of the show doesn't help anything either.  There's so much "meh" at the end of this movie, it's hard to describe.  And the epic-bad final shot.  I don't know what the demographic that needs to see Mulder and Scully row off into the sunny world is... but fuck you, demographic.  I mean, seriously.  I want these characters to be happy as much as the next guy, but that's a load of crap.  THEY WAVED AT THE CAMERA.  Like some damned fan fiction joke. 

I think the most painful thing about this movie was how much I needed more.  If I thought "The Truth" (the series finale) was a bad ending to a masterpiece... I Want to Believe is a doggone AWFUL ending.  It does not address the items that need addressing.  There is no triumph.  There is no victory.  Heck, I'd even take despair!  But there's nothing.  "And... we went on vacation".  No.  Screw that. We need another movie.  We need to get some of the old writers involved.  And we need to push for something more.  The X-Files damn near FOUNDED the current era of good science fiction TV and movies.  And it should go out with a bang, not a whimper.

Hello! First of all, I am good. I leave Boston next week (kinda makes me sad), the area is nice. Well, I don't enjoy the taxes, and sometimes it feels like if the people here don't have a law to regulate something they get confused. Other than that, though, it's pretty spiffy.

After that it's back to the ATL for a few days, then to wichita for some wedding action! whoo!

I feel bad that all I do is post like.. politicy or debate-able type stuff. I'll correct this. BUT! Since Mike hasn't gotten off of his ass to do this himself (I prefer his rants about politics to mine. Perhaps he can add better comments or more links in the comments (HINT). Or just use some admin-fu and edit this thing himself.

To start, I think the biggest problem with the whole global warming debate is not that people have bad data from actual physical tests. I can't deny the actual, physical changes. However, it's the cause and effect relationship of the climate that I put into serious question.

A good example of this is in an excellent summary of the research being done, alongside a pretty good discussion of how conclusions about cause/effects are determined. (all links pop to new window)

Also, this link contains a story (and another link to a paper you should check out), the also questions the IPCC's modelling methods.

It's becoming clear that the cause/effect of greenhouse gasses and global warming are not correlated. Remember kids, correlation does not always imply causality, but non-correlation does imply non-causality.

So, what is the cause?

It appears the sun, a pretty big energy source, is probably to blame. Coincidentally, the sun is slowing down, and we are seeing the effects of that:

Now, what I'm not going to do is completely espouse the sun theory (although it seems pretty reliable). I feel more in line with that theory because the cause/effect matches up better. Because, even at face value, greenhouse gas theories are slightly flawed. The theory is based on how much energy the gasses trap... but they don't generally consider the source of the energy they are trapping!

I just want to avoid the bandwagon mistake that is probably going to cost us $$$ and do funny things to the economy. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for research into more efficient vehicles, better materials, cleaner burning engines, alternative fuels (removes dependence from foreign sources), etc. HOWEVER! I think that those efforts are valuable on their own merits. Efficient vehicles are generally driven by material science, both high temperature and high strength to weight alloys/composites. I think that money should go into that research, but not for flawed reasons.

So yeah, add links/data to whatever viewpoint you hold.

My mom called me earlier today. She invited me over for dinner. I went, and afterwards she said she had a surprise for me. I was thinking clothes, since it was coming from a mom. But, I may be, as I'm typing this, typing it on my brand new laptop. details after I scope it out.

After all the monumental glory that is E3, I (believe it or not) am in absolute awe. There was only one game that absolutely did not blow me out of the water.

Let's start with the press conferences.

I am not a Wii fanboy, I think they have a solid system and were definitely a leap ahead with their controller, but I didn't watch their press conference because it really didn't interest me.

Between the PS3 and Xbox 360, I have to say that PS3 had the better conference. They seemed to have keynote speakers that were more prepared and organized, and produced some good hype for their big budget hits for the next year. Xbox announced some new features for live that were just meh. Both conferences left me wanting, I started to think that maybe this year would kinda suck.

Then G4 moved on to the exclusive demos and interviews with game creators. There were of course the ones that have already had huge hype. Fallout 3, Mercenaries 2, Resistance 2, and so on. All of which look great and sound like immense fun. My eyes are glued to Infamous. Psi-ops on xbox introduced me to the use of lightning and telekinesis (sp?). which were immense fun. After I realized how cool that was in a game, I tried out a couple of star wars titles, all of which really left me wanting in the "mind powers" department. Half-Life 2 did an incredible job with the grav gun (the blue one at the end), but hell you only get to use it for less than about half an hour, so it was amazing but extremely short lived. But Infamous brings it back in full unadulterated glory. I really can't describe how awesome it looks so you have to go see the trailer or online demo or something.

I mentioned Mercenaries 2 also as one of the big budget titles, and it looks like it. The first one was a good solid game, but lacked overall visually, too dark and gritty. This time you're in the rich and vibrant Venezualan jungle, armed with over 30 different vehicles, including tanks, helicopters, APC's, boats, etc. And a very wide arsenal, including some kind of nuclear bomb, which is b-e-a-utiful.

The rest of the games exclusively covered all looked great except for two. Spore and Mortal Combat vs. DC comics

Spore didn't look great. It looked FUCKING AMAZING! Will Wright has definitely outdone himself. The only qualms I have about it are how the overall Spore community will interact seemlessly on an galactic scale. And the new Mortal combat game just made me sick to my stomach, I don't care too much for the series anymore, I kind of moved past that whole genre after 8th grade, but to combine those to worlds in one is to me just an excuse to make money hand over fist and ruins the whole damn thing. Especially having superheroes fight normal guys, because thats what for the most part mortal combat characters are, human beings, some demons, some mixed, not super in any way.

úøBEWARE♥Ω

there are robots posting on the tempest.

           

osuretheymaybeofferingyoufafsadiscountsbetterairfaredebtreductionandmoar
butyouwillnevergetthesefinebenefitsfromourrobotoverlordsyoufackingnewbs 

∏λΣ

ASDFGHJK

CBMQRTI

/discuss

“Hell No: A look at why Hellboy II let me way down”

 

“Oh crap.” –Hellboy

 

When you go to a movie, you’re entering a conflict on defense.  A group of people is going to come in front of you and display something to you, and you react.  Now, there are different kinds of movies, and many different expectations.

 

“Hellboy II” has an interesting mess of expectations going for it.  It’s based on a brilliant and reliable comic book, but the first film was at best “loosely” based on the comics.  Instead, it took some of the look, characters, and ideas and threw them somewhere fully different.  Hellboy doesn’t hide from the public, he isn’t madly in love with Liz Sherman, and he’s a lot more… mature in many ways.  Now, about that first film, it’s a good movie.  It sure isn’t great, because it has one of the most anti-climatic third acts EVER.  The movie deflates, imploding upon itself in a painfully dull fashion.  Which is a shame, because most of the movie was interesting enough, and it really does have some great moments.  And those moments are very well visualized by Guillermo del Toro.  His name brings a lot of expectations with this new film.  You can’t help but bring expectations based off of “Blade II” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” to the film.

 

So, with the offensive line revealed, let’s be blunt: “Hellboy II” is overrated.

 

I do not, at all, understand this heaping of praise coming at this movie.  I keep hearing things about “Star Wars”, and I just want to say to everybody making that comparison, you can shut the hell up before I shove a proton torpedo up your rear.  About the only two things those two movies have in common is a lot of cool real-world effects and a scary lack of black people.  Yes, “Hellboy II” looks cool.  If you liked “Transformers”, you may like “Hellboy II”.  But, if you saw “Transformers” as the vapid piece of junk it was… well, let’s have a discussion. 

Here come the spoilers.

 

Half an hour into “Hellboy II”, I was pretty sure I was in for some suck.  This was for three reasons:

 

1) We had zero “development”.  None of the characters had looked at each other long enough to evoke anything more than a passing conversation.  And the reverse-development of Manning (Tambor) and Hellboy (Perlman) with their working relationship from the end of the last film was baffling.

 

2) There was a scene where people argued in front of a council.  Let me give anyone out there who wants to make a movie a tip-- council scenes are VERY HARD to pull off.  George Lucas can’t do it.  The Wachowski brothers can’t do it.  Peter Jackson did it ONCE, and that was because 50% of the people in his council have some pretty serious acting skills.  Anytime you stick a bunch of important, stuffy people in a room to have an argument, it usually launches into one guy giving a speech and getting pissy, and ends very blah.  Even though this council scene ended in a bloodbath, I was still not amused.

 

3) They had already told me, rather explicitly, how the movie was going to end.  Much, much more bitching on this point later.

 

So, half an hour in, I’m sitting there pulling a Hellboy.  “Oh crap.”  And watching this movie play out is a damned train wreck.  It’s like Del Toro made a list of stuff that has an interesting idea, and then made it boring and didn’t explore it.  Don’t get me wrong here and defend him on this by saying, “oh, that’s the point- to make these extraordinary things common”.  I’m gonna lay some money down that I’ve probably read more Hellboy than you, and I understand the way “absurd” works.  Demons lamenting that they’ve lost an acolyte to pancakes is awesome. 

( http://www.brandonbird.com/photos/pancakes.jpg ) Pancakes are normal things.  A demon eating them is funny.  But the real home run comes from the “oh no” factor of the other demons realizing that they have lost one of their crew because he ate pancakes.  The emotional pay-off’s.

 

The EXACT opposite of this scenario takes place in “Hellboy II”.  About fifteen minutes in we’re told Liz Sherman is pregnant.  This gives us a TON of potential for pay-off!  There’s the “you’re carrying the child of a demon” thing, the “how does this affect your relationship” thing, the “I’m a working woman, how will this affect me” thing… and what do we get instead?  For NINETY MINUTES we get this instead:

 

“Hey, HB, I need to tell you something.”

“Sure, Liz, what’s up?”

*explosion, distraction*

 

“Oh, Liz, did you have something to tell me?”

“Yea, I--"

*explosion, distraction*

 

Taking ninety minutes to tell the title character something I’ve been told in the audience… this is not a good plan.  And when they DO tell him, it doesn’t really DO anything.  It’s sloppy.  Just like Liz knowing at the very end of the movie that she’s having twins.  HOW DOES SHE KNOW THIS!?  There are loads of unresolved, unexplained bullshit-- all of it set to bad music.  The bad guy talks about uniting his elf people for war.  We see his elf people at the council of suck.  And then… no more elf people.  Apparently, this royal elf is basically the prince of a machine army and nobody else.  I don’t understand this.

 

There’s so much wrong with this movie.  I mean, sure, I laughed some.  And yes, it’s nice to see a movie do effects that aren’t all CGI.  But I can’t like it.  Maybe someday, somehow I’ll get dumber.  But for now I just can’t grasp what the hell Del Toro is thinking other than that he wanted to make puppets.  Some people are really harsh on “Blade II”, and I understand why.  It’s a little disjointed.  Something about it doesn’t quite flow right.  It needs a couple more character moments, a few more breathers, and needs to try a little bit less to be cool.  But ya know what?  The basic plot of that movie is a few small shifts away from identical to this… and it was far and away better.  Because we see Blade and his crew experience some stuff.  Feelings happen.  Choices are made.  As it stands, I'm not looking forward to "The Hobbit", but then again, I was only fully devoted to the first "Lord of the Rings" movie, and more dedicated to screaming in rage throughout the second film.

 

“Hellboy II” happens.  And it doesn’t make sense.  I don’t understand why the previously human-run BPRD sends in someone new from DC to command its main office who is definitely in the “freak” category.  I don’t understand how any of the relationship struggles “resolve”.  I really, really don’t understand what the hell ANYONE was thinking in dismissing Marco Beltrami and his brilliant, quirky theme from the last film for an unceasing assault of Danny Elfman giving us his very worst. 

 

But most of all, I do not understand the telegraphed pass.

 

There we are, the defense, the audience.  Maybe you don’t have all the expectations I do.  You haven’t seen this offense before, you don’t know its moves.  But within the movie itself we are told at the very beginning “there is an army, and you can challenge the leader of the army… hey, are you listening, Hellboy?”  Hey, did anyone notice the fact that the bad guy has a twin with a physical wounding bond?  So… like, if you hurt one, the other would go down!  So, we know what’s coming.  We know what the third act is.  And that’s fine.  That’s more than fine, that’s great.  Because at the end of the movie, you SHOULD know what has to happen.  John McClane is gonna have to blow up the bad guy.  Neo is gonna end up being the One.  The great movies know this.  But when you telegraph a pass, you HAVE to do one of two things:

 

1) Fake us out.

 

Or

 

2) Throw that pass while doing a backflip to a receiver who just barely gets their feet in-bounds before scoring. 

 

Don’t do these things, and your audience gets BORED.  I WANTED the movie to end.  I did NOT feel the need to keep sitting there.  As filmmakers you either have to hit us in a way we aren’t looking for, or you have to make what we knew was coming so out-of-this-world amazing that we want to hit the instant replay because it was just THAT GOOD.  Anyone out there remember that title game in football between Texas and USC?  And near the end, you see that Vince Young is gonna run the ball himself.  And you knew it was coming.  You knew he was gonna do it.  But the way, and the confidence, and the finesse is just so amazing that you wanna re-watch it.  Yea, Hellboy doesn’t end like that.

 

It just ends.

I returned yesterday from my firework selling expedition I told ya'll about. We left Thursday and made the drive up. Nothing really special to say about that, just a 5 hour drive and setting up all of our fireworks and other supplies. Friday we opened at 6 AM. Ya, fireworks at 6 AM. We stayed pretty busy all day, did around 10 grand in business (keep in mind throughout this post that the town we were in had a year round pop of about 7000, but was located on a big highway). We closed around midnight and were asleep by about 1:30. Woke up again at about 6 AM and did it all over again on the 4th. Back to back 18 hour days, plus the 4 for setup and the 4 for tear down. Dutton and David made about $1200 a piece off of $16,500 in sales, while I was sitting on a pretty $300. The reason that I made 25% of what they did was because I wasn't actually hired by Jake's to run the tent. Dutton and David paid me out of their pocket to come help them and I figured well if I don't do this I'm just gonna end up spending money and it's better to make money than to spend it.

The only thing that really sucked about all of it was not being able to shower and sleeping on a matress pad on top of concrete. Our tent was only a two day tent, but the people at the ten day tents went through the same conditions, and that is insane to me, I could not go that long without a shower, I just couldn't do it. The matress pad was actually comfortable considering my alternative, the only thing that sucked about that was the night of the fourth it rained, and I mean hard. I thought I was gonna wake up in the middle of the parking lot with the rainwater carrying me away in a river.

I really didn't realize how fucking crazy people go over 50 cents worth of paper, plastic and gunpowder. The people that bought the most money in fireworks were the poorest. We had people driving up in brand new 2008 gas guzzling trucks that bought $20 in fireworks. Then we had the people that didn't even have a car and walked up spend at least $100 in fireworks. Dutton said one guy he helped actually told him he was gonna have to decide between fireworks and feeding his kids I'm not fucking kidding you.

But I think I've finally found something that interests me. This was one of the, if not THE, hardest jobs I have ever done, but the money to be made off of it is just un-godly. I'm going in a week from monday to see about working the warehouse in town and maybe getting in on the christmas tents in Louisiana. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

A few random goings on in my life IN THE FORM OF A LIST OF FIVE THINGS!!!!

1) I am currently unpaid but still working. My last paycheck that covered the period till June 14th has been deposited 
last week. Since then I have been sitting in my office, prepping for my class, doing some research work, and all without 
payment. So that's good! I'm hoping this will correct itself soon, since I need money. You'll see why in a bit. 

2) Still haven't heard about a grant that my adviser and I applied for. Getting it would mean a solution to Item 1 and it would mean I get trips to NASA Ames to go see pretty airplanes! Possibly. If the grant giving board approved such expenditures. Hope so, that would mean I get to poke the folks at Ames whose equations I fixed.

3) The honeymoon is paid off! And I am poor! Sonnofabitch! St. Lucia, here I come! But what if I want to scuba down there...

4) SCUBA LESSONS!! Scuba kicks ass. Emily and I are taking lessons to get our Open Water Certification. We don old 
BCD's and regulators and jump in a tiny pool and learn to breathe underwater. It's a bit freaky at first, until you practice
a bit. Not the most normal thing to tell your body to use your lungs when your face is underwater. It's a bit easier when
you switch to the regulator that actually supplies more air instead of having to suck it hard. That's right, suck it hard. 

5) I look so hot in a wetsuit. Seriously. I do. This was reaffirmed by the underage girls in the class constantly 
staring at me. Creepy. Can't blame them though.

That is all.

- Mike 

::EDIT:: Some lines didn't soft return when I was typing this. In an effort to inform, shift+enter will line break 
without skipping a line. 

Ok, so I'm going to preface this post with the statement that I hate politics for the most part, and I find myself generally annoyed with the election in general, however, as an American I need to vote and participate.  That being said I also know that on this site I am EXTREMELY out numbered in terms of how I will end up voting in November, although I won't really be voting "for" anyone.  I will be voting AGAINST Obama, because I feel that he is against everything that America stands for and is built upon, and that he is a racist.  However, that unfortunately leaves me with John McCain or Ralph Nader...I think I'll just write in Charlie Daniels...but I digress.  I did decide however to look up some stuff so I can make an informed decision, and here are some of the things I came across. 

  About a year or so ago:
    1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high;
    2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;
    3) The unemployment rate was 4.5%.

Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we have seen:
    1) Consumer confidence plummet
    2) The cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3.50 a gallon
    3) Unemployment is up 5%
    4) American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity valueevaporate (stock and mutual fund losses)
    5) Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars

America decided we were sick of the Republican Congress is 2006 and voted the other way, and we got some change I'd say.  Everyone blames Bush for all the problems in this country, but he can only work with what he's got.  However, I do think it's interesting how high gas prices are and that it's very convenient that Bush has all his money invested in oil, but anyway, the Congress has A LOT of say in things and has A LOT to do with our economy and how this country is run, so I personally don't put ALL the blame on Bush. Moving on now to taxes

 www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.HTML

Both Obama and Hitlery have stated that they will repeal all of Bush's tax cuts if they're elected.  I don't really like that, and people say that Bush's tax cuts are one of the main reasons we're in such enormous debt, I don't entirely agree with that, I think that the fact we're in a war that no one supports has more to do with it than that.  I also believe that Democrats know the economy a lot better and know how to manage money a lot better than Republicans, Roosevelt did a great job of pulling us out of the great depression after all.  So I don't really know a whole lot about that, but I did look up those differences, and I personally like the lower numbers and I think that tax increases aren't going to help pull us out of anything, if anything, they're going to make matters worse.  As for our spending defecit and how far in debt we are as a nation, I think these next stats are gonna piss yall off, cause I sure as hell know they piss me off, and I'm including the URL's to prove I'm not making it up.

1.  $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.  Verify at:   http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2.  $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and freeschool lunches for  Illegal aliens.
Verify at:  http://WWW.cis..org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.HTML

3.  $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.  Verify at:  http://WWW.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.HTML

4.  $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally.  Verify at:  http://transcriptsCNN.Com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.HTML

5.  $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.  Verify at:  http://transcripts.CNN.Com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML

6.  $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.  Verify at:  http://transcripts.CNN.Com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML

7.  30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.  Verify at:  http://transcripts.CNN.Com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML

8.  $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and social services by the American taxpayers.  Verify at:  http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9.  $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.  Verify at:  http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10.  The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens.  In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.  Verify at:  http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11.  During the year 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border including as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries.  Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U.S. from the Southern border.  Verify at:  Homeland Security Report:  http://www.house.gov/mccaul/pdf/Investigaions-Border-Report.pdf 

12.  The National Policy Institute, estimated that "the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of  between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period."  Verify at:   http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13.  In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin.  Verify at:  http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14.  "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States."  Verify at:  http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

 

The total cost is $338.3 BILLION A YEAR!!!!!

This is total BULLSHIT.  We spend that much money on people who don't deserve ANY of the rights that this great country gives.  This is one stance I am completely conservative on and am not willing to budge an inch on.  George "Open Borders" Bush failed MISERABLY in his presidency at securing our borders, and now we spend that much money on illegals.  I'm sorry, if you're in this country illegally than you should be treated as what you are a CRIMINAL.  You should be given no rights as an American would get, you should not be entitled to anything in this country, and if you are found you should be deported.  But as it is, we are spending 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS every year on these people.  The war in Iraq is why we're in debt, Bush's tax cuts are why we're in debt...BULLSHIT the money that those are costing us pales in comparison to what we spend on illegals.  Congress fails here too, they don't do anything to protect the border, hell they along with Bush incarcerate (sp?) 2 border gaurds for shooting a drug dealer who was trying to sneak across the border for the something like 8th time, they get jailed for doing their job!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!  REDICULOUS.  It's absolutely disgusting.  I don't care who wins the next election as long as it is not Obama, but whoever wins sure as hell better do something to change those costs, because that is absolutely rediculous.

"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world, 
I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it." -- Barack Obama

Ok, so this might look really bad. I apologize for any typos, but IE hates LifeType(TM) it would seem. All I see when I type is little pipes like this guy: '|'. Here's to hoping my touch typing skills are as good as I hope they are.

This story was on digg/reddit/fark/somepostingsiteorwhateveriforgetatthisratetheyalllinkthesamedamnthing.com:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030798/Muslim-outrage-police-advert-featuring-cute-puppy-sitting-policemans-hat.html

My gripe is such. If you live in a country that has freedom of speech then you can gripe all you want about whatever. Such is your right. However, barring a reallly good reason (and even then, it'd have to be a REALLLY good reason), I don't think that anyone should ever be asked to undo/recant/remove from sight anything deemed 'offensive'. I mean, there are plenty of things that are offensive to tons of people. However, given that we live with freedom of speech, people have been given the right to say what they want. I mean.. if there is an article or something that insults my faith, or gender, or something that I associate with, I may be very unhappy. However, I do believe that someone has a right to say those things. Because, if I start removing certain people's rights to free speech, then I inevitably lead everyone down to only one allowed thought path, which will be the one that makes no one unhappy or uncomfortable.

The tricky part of about free speech is the definition of 'speech'. Is censoring a billboard a violation of someone's free speech? Also, who do you allow to redefine the rules of free speech? Can a community do it? A private entity (like a business)?

Let's go to the 'extreme' of allowing everything. What if there was a billboard or a commercial on TV or a show on TV that was pornographic in nature? Does a community have the right to have an 'offensive' billboard removed? Let's say one person wanted the billboard up, and 100 wanted it down. A simple "needs of the many" argument could decide that more people should be happy with it down than one person with it up. Is this in the spirit of free speech? I dunno.

I'm interested in hearing some thoughts from all of you. I can think of good arguments either way. One the one hand, if everyone can say whatever they want and in whatever medium they choose, then everyone is just gonna get angry. I like the idea of some legal (or civil) course of action to take into account how a community feels about something. Take that to the extreme and you won't be able to allow anything. Should the line for what is allowed or not be constantly re-drawn according to the desires of the voting populace (which makes sense since this is a democracy) or according to an unwavering standard that is based on some basic prinicple of rights/etc. (which would seem to be the most 'fair')?

What about how a free country can foster different services (such as TV stations) for people who don't want to watch something offensive? That capability changes up alot of free speech on TV arguments, but what about when a person does not have a choice to look or not (like a billboard)?

I guess my current stance (subject to change in the next 5 minutes, though, so this isn't a "Oh yeah that james guy said this what a loser" type of statement) would be:

I believe that when people have a choice in what they view (newspapers, TV, internet, etc.) that regulations should be limited. However, an important basis for many laws is that a person doesn't have the right to violate someone else's right. Defining what a 'right' is tends to be a bitch, though. So, even though you have a 'right' to free speech, I may have a 'right' to not see porn on a billboard while I drive. Do we have to decide which right is more important? It's easier to make laws based on violating rights when the action is not itself a 'right'. For example, the pursuit of life is defined as a right, so killing me isn't a 'right'.

At this moment, I lean more toward the preservation of the rights of the whole. I would rather have people be unhappy than have a loud minority define the rules of the system. Which brings me back to the article (finally). I think that a muslim has every right to be unhappy about being given an ad that depicts something offensive to them. HOWEVER, I believe that the right of the police (or any entity) to advertise in a certain way outweighs the offense. If a company adverstises in an offensive manner, let boycotting take care of the 'problem'. Do something (nonviolent, of course) that displays your unhappiness. You are free, you can do that. Don't let the government write exception after exception to the rule. Eventually, the system will stabilize if you leave it to its own devices. Restrictions only cause more friction.

James

Well I'm sorry to disappoint James, but there wasn't really much else to tell on the Iowa trip. I did learn that Ankit has absolutely no music ability or background, even the most basic songs from the 90's, he didn't know, I found that funny.

I had a family reunion today, my mom's side. I always find those funny. Not because her side of the family is filled with funny people, but because that even in a small family reunion (about 50 people), there is a serious class struggle.

Compare it to highschool. At one end of the gazeebo we were in, there was the uneducated, underpriveleged farmers, druggies, and alkies. In the middle were the people that started like that then actually did something with there lives, and last but not least there were the people that came from something and continued it or the select few that were real successes in life.

I really started to wonder what this meant for the midwest. This kind of situation is not new in any part of the world, but how much longer will it continue? The key to a good life is a good education, I believe that with all my heart. And with all the programs in place to help people get a free or almost free education ( I have yet to pay for a single credit hour, and I get loans for my books) Why do people resist to making their situation work for them?

Also, I got the invite to the wedding Mike, thanks for sending me one. I'm not sure what my plans are for a hotel room and what not, but I am RSVP'in, I will definitely be there. And I am going to be in Concordia, KS selling fireworks over the fourth, which means I will not be able to get a good nights sleep, eat a good meal, or even shower for almost three days, but it's good money, so wish me luck.

So there's a big buzz on the internets (A SERIES OF TUBES!) about throttling and paying per bandwidth usage. I'm going to lay down some of my thoughts, but I'm curious to know yours. My views aren't necessarily 100% right now, but I'm going to talk it out.

Throttling

So comcast and other providers have been killing torrent transmissions for a while know, and if you read Digg or Reddit even once per week, you've probably heard of it. Consumerist and Gizmodo have some good stuff on it too. Also, Azureus has an app that lets you tell if your service is being throttled.

This kind of stuff makes me unhappy. I guess I'd have to check the contract with comcast to know for sure, but I'm pretty sure the business agreement is that I give them money, and they give me internet. Not regulated internet, not port blocking, but straight up internet. I can do whatever I want on it. In return, ISPs should have legal immunity for the things done over their network simply because they provide the network and nothing more. You don't blame the person who builds a street when someone gets in a wreck, do you? Of course not! For ISPs, you don't blame them because the method of information transport and the information being transported are not the same thing.

I can understand if they want to save money by reducing their bandwidth usage, of which a large portion is probably due to torrents. (With youtube, hulu, and pr0n in a tight race).

This leads into the issue of paying per gigabyte kinda thing. I experienced this in lawrence with Sunflower. Let me say this. Sunflower blows. The speed was always pretty bad, and I had some reliability issues. It was 'pricey' for metered traffic too, and it metered both up and down bandwidth combined.

But, I think that metering bandwidth is an intelligent decision on the part of the the ISPs. This is something that we are used to with every other utility. Phones, water, power, gas, etc. are all metered. So why should internet be any different? While in the physical utilities, the companies have a limited resource, but the ability to transmit is fairly unlimited. For internet, the resource is unlimited, but the ability to transmit is limited and costly.

It should follow, then, that people pay by usage. Here's the reasoning. Some people pay alot for internet and use it very little. Others use it like crazy and pay less per gigabyte on flat rate plans. Don't get me wrong, I like unlimited internet, but it just doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint. Before streaming video was the name of the game and not everyone had internet, an ISP could handle traffic with no problem. Now that their resources are being strained, they need to put something in place that ensures that pay for what they want.

It should lead to cheaper internet for people who don't need lots of data downloading capability as well. However, since getting TV and movies over the internet is becoming more popular (and a business plan I can get behind. I really don't mind the commercials on hulu, I am fine with them because I get legal, high quality, on demand video) I wouldn't be surprised if this whole argument won't end up breaking down at some point.

I would contend that, in the short term, the people who use more should pay more. Traffic jams have been shown to be reduced by increasing tolls during peak hours. Why? Because people who don't HAVE to use the toll road will accept a longer drive to avoid a toll cost. People who need the path are more willing to pay more. In that way, pricing on a valuable item forces the system to operate based less on shortest path and more on the most effective path. The same, I believe, would be true of internet. If you start throttling usage with an intelligent pay scale, people that don't need as much will be encouraged to use less. In that way, the total amount of bandwidth being used may decrease (or it may stay nominal, I guess I can't really say).

Ultimately, though, the path to increasing the capability of an ISP is through technology advancements.. and that means $$. Why shouldn't they be allowed to ask for more money when demand for bandwidth is so high and the supply is limited? It's simple resource allocation.

The big caveat to all this is that the ISPs should not do this by limiting the TYPES of content I can view. It should only be the amount. I can argue that since they are private companies they can do whatever the hell they want. However, if that were to be the case, then I would need to have more competing options for internet access. That way economic forces would then cause companies who limit the sites you can visit to go out of business.

Here's the summary:

ISPs throttling specific kinds of traffic = lame

ISPs charging per gigabyte = probably a good decision in the long run

ISPs limiting content access by URL = oh dear lord hell no

Ankit and I returned yesterday from a trip to Iowa. Why? He wanted to buy other peoples back taxes so they could pay him back what they owed plus 24% APR. In certain states they have tax lien auctions in which private investors or banks buy peoples unpaid taxes, and if they don't get paid back the full amount plus interest, they can foreclose on the property and keep it as their own. Too bad Kansas doesn't do anything like that, all we have are deed auctions where you can buy the property outright for less than half its appraised value.

So thats what the point of the trip was, let's move on to the trip itself. We left Saturday afternoon for Atchinson, which is just north of KC. Apparently with all the horrendous weather the exit to Atchinson was blocked off, so we had to make a detour through Platte City and Leavenworth. For those that don't know in Leavenworth there is an Air Force base and a Federal Maximum Security Prison. (I cap'd that so you'd appreciate how fucking serious that is.)

As we pass the Air Force base, there really wasn't that much to see. Barb wire fence and on the outskirts a few army wife houses. But the front of the prison and sides were as clear as day, and I about fucking lost it when I saw that. It was almost the most singular scary thing I have ever fucking seen. I kept thinking to myself, "If you're this fucking scared just driving by it, imagine what it would be like to know you're going in there for years on end or even the rest of your life."

We also stopped in Independence, MO to see the Truman Presidential Library. It was pretty cool.

Ok I'm going to have to make the rest of this post quick because I'm at the library and somebody CAN'T KEEP THEIR FUCKING PERSONAL GAS TO THEMSELVES!!!

We get to Iowa, meet John and his family, which are all very cool people. Do the deed and come home, that is all. And Ankit almost hooked up with two good looking girls.

OMG I think I'm gonna vomit.

There are a few times that I wish I had a large amount of television channels for only those one or two channels that I need to enjoy more soccer games. I missed practically all of the Champion's League competition, save for a replay of the final game. Luckily though, for the Euro Cup 2008, ESPN2 has been picking up a lot of the games! Although, if the interwebz provider here at work would provide ESPN360, then I could just watch all the games on the interet. Like that's going to happen.

So what's the good news from Euro 2008? Portugal is into the second round of play after winning their group. Turkey makes it in as well after the most amazing second half of soccer I think I've ever seen, coming back from a 0-2 score with Czecheslovakia on top. Did I mention they did this all within the last 15 minutes?

Today's big games are Germany vs. Austria and Croatia vs. Poland. Germany hasn't been performing as well as most had thought, and it'd be a big upset to see them not in the second round of play. They have to win to go on, since Austria will overtake them in points if they beat Germany. 

What about the US Men's National Team? Well I'm glad you asked. After winning the CONCACAF Gold Cup by beating Mexico in the final, the team has been looking pretty good. Just the other week in a match with Argentina, they managed to end the game in a draw. Not bad, considering Argentina is FIFA ranked no. 1! Just yesterday the US MNT trounced Barbados 8-0 in the beginning of World Cup 2010 qualifying matches. They'll play them again in a week or so, and then move on to various other Central and South American national teams. In the mean time, the US Under-23 team is in the Olympics in a group with Japan, Netherlands, and Nigeria.

There's been a lot of maturing on the team, along with some great additions. The goalie's have always been fantastic, with them coming from such notable clubs as Manchester United and having participated in multiple World Cups already. I'm sure many of you have heard of Landon Donovan, and he's come a long way. He passes the ball more and is less showy, which is good. Now I yell at my tv less. But then we've got Freddy Adu, who's helping the Under-23 team kick some Olympic ass. Demarcus Beasley, Bocanegra, Dempsy, Ching, Conrad, and Johnson have all come a long way since last World Cup. 

So my hope is that in two years I'll be enjoying some fantastic World Cup play from a much more developed US team where they can finally reach the success the US Women's Team has been having for quite some time.

-Mike

R. Kelly has been acquited of all child porn charges

 http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/13/rkelly.closings.ap/index.html

Ever since the Rodney King beatings, something has happened to America. Are we now afraid of doing the right thing because some assholes MIGHT be upset? In all fairness the police officers in the King beatings deserved to be punished, they used extremely excessive force. But it seems now to make up for it, we are letting other black people off the hook. Wouldn't that be reverse racism, being nice to the whole black community because of one incident?

It doesn't matter to me what your personal feelings are, he fucking did it, and they both know it. So now instead of a fair and balanced system, which in todays society is almost an oxymoron, we have to be overly nice and look the other way when Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, and O.J. decide to be dumb asses, or just do it on purpose cause they are mentally deranged.

Am I the only one EXTREMELY FUCKING PISSED!?