This will be a post on more than one topic, so I will try to break it into chunks if you want to skip one part or more.

Topic #1 - Redbox DVD Rentals.

I am almost quite certain that this is a well known thing, since they now have one in the Wal-Mart in Pittsburg. For those that haven't tried it out, I would highly recommend it though. Imagine a Blockbuster, with only the new movies, without clerks or always-in-the-way-of-the-movie-you-want customers. The process is simple enough, touch-screen interface in which you browse the catalog of available movies, select desired flick, swipe credit/debit card, and recieve movie. One day=$1 per movie, plus tax of course. I find this route of recieving movies preferable to netflix or any other online/real world movie rental site for one reason. Money. In the real world I pay for a 5 day, or in the case of new releases significantly less days, but same price, viewing fee. Why? I will watch the movie once and send it back. Same for the online services. It is my understanding that for those you pay a membership fee, then go through the hassle of mailing the stuff back and waiting on your next selection to arrive. Maybe I'm just weird, but that sounds kind of like a pain when I could just pay a $1 for a movie I will watch that night and then return the next day.

Topic #2 Wedding/float trip.

Thanks again for the wedding invite Mike. I had a blast, and thanks to Riley's inability to stop using pronouns, laughed histerically for like 20 minutes. I could've used some hard liquor and "of age" women that weren't afraid of just dancing with guys, but hey, now you know what to look forward to if I ever find a women insane enough to marry me. The next day I was awake at 7:30 AM for one last float trip of the summer, and I was able to take out my drunken everclear rages on Jim and Nancy Evans canoe. Let me fully explain. We started off the day great, drive up drinking beer and listening to Rodney Carrington. We arrive at Noel and I decide to mix the half pint of everclear I have with a 2 liter of Coke. This will come into play later. Since we arrived late we had to miss the full 12 mile float and they set us up on the 8 mile float. I decide that I shouldn't pace myself and finish the two liter in about 45-50 minutes. I got schwasted. After about 3 miles the Missouri Water Patrol pulls us over. I started to laugh histerically because the time that I actually get stopped I am 21, and that is a miracle in itself. It wasn't a miracle though for the three people that got M.I.P.'s in our group, all of which will remain nameless so they don't bite my damn head off. And Robert got a $50 littering ticket for losing a beer can in the river (they were watching us for a while). Now because of my everclear induced drunkennes, my memory of the rest is a little fuzzy, but there is one part that clearly stands out. I had fallen off of the raft I was on and the assholes in that raft decided it would be a hoot if they just kept on floating. Jim and Nancy Evans decided to take pity on me. They pull up in their canoe and tell me to get in, I tell thim this is a very bad idea because I know what will happen. They persist, and I tell them "Allright, lean very hard to the left." They did not lean very hard to the left and I procede to drunkenly throw all of my body weight onto the right side of the canoe. Needless to say it capsized and we then procede to drag the canoe to the side for draining. I tell them that I was sorry and sarcastically tell them to use more left leaning. Jim seemed to be ok and laughed with me about it, Nancy was seething, SEETHING, anger, and I still feel bad about it.

Topic #3 me being a racist

I mean really. Me? I strongly realize that I have some views that some people might consider racist. But at the same time I wonder why I am labeled as one. A Racist discriminates against all people of a certain race, no matter age, sex, or social stature. And normally a racist thinks their own race is superior to one, many, or all races. I don't think that the white race is superior to any, or in reality that any race is superior to any other. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and maybe, NOW JUST MAYBE, those strengths and weaknesses are exhibited in the vast majority of people of a certain race. I just think that sometimes using a persons race in an argument against said individual is appropriate based on what point you are trying to make. Like in the R. Kelly argument that Nolan linked to. Allright when I wrote that I was pissed, and rereading it now I may have made some grammar choices that were not benficial to the argument as a whole. But the point I was trying to make was valid. Race was a factor in that case, Just like O.J. Simpsons case. And the argument of the team of high-priced lawyers confusing the jury is a valid one to, because it is a possibility. I'll just leave a link to kind of state what I am trying to say, but says it better. LINK

You cannot tell me if you watched the whole video that the white people were not pissed and the black people were not ecstatic. There was not one single white person on a camera with a smile on their face unless it was a lawyer and it meant payday. Thats just the point I try to make when I bring up race in an argument, that it still plays very strongly in all of our day-to-day relations with other people, whether we admit/realize it or not. But if I am a racist, who am I racist against? I still am in contact with my black friends from Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Jefferson City, MO, and the kids from the abused children shelter in New Orleans that I took a mission trip to in highschool, most of which were black. I am friends with Ankit, the Arruda's. I've hung out with people of many different races, and didn't judge them unless I actually got to speak with them. I don't judge any situation unless it is just extremely blatantly obvious that race played a part, then I might let slip something racist in anger, but if it's a racist situation, then by God it deserves racist remarks.

Topic #4 Vantage Point

This is the final topic and actually deals with the title of the post. I used the Redbox DVD rental service to check out this movie. I had only seen the trailer and it looked like it would be worth the view. Nolan said it great in these three lines when describing the telegraphed pass in a movie.

"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."

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those that still want to see this movie you can skip the rest of the article because I ruin it

Vantage Point threw the be-all end-all hail mary 99 yard bomb in the first 10 minutes of the movie. And it almost works. It starts off with the President getting shot, a couple of bombs, and what would appear to be the makings of a great movie. They then over the next hour of the hour and a half  movie show that same scene not 3 or four times, but more than double that (I lost count after six because I quit caring). The whole point of the movie was that the first ten minute scene was the whole point, and that different people who saw different things or that had different "Vantage Points" had to piece together what happened. It would have really worked if it had not been for the presentation. Explosions are alot of fun, but you can't show me the same god damn explosion more than six times in a movie over the course of an hour and expect me to be as interested as I was at the beginning. In the last 20 or so minutes they try to get me reinvested with a car chase and some good shooting violence, but it was way too rushed and just seemed like they tried to overwhelm me instead of win me over. All in all, if they had done the tarantino time jumps, and not shown the same god damn thing but the intro and outro to the same god damn thing, it would have given me plot without boring me to tears, and it would've worked. But they didn't and I'm out a buck. Oh well.