Did I hear a sniffle over there?? Or was it a cough????
SWINE FLU! SWINE FLU! THE PANDEMIC IS HERE! EVERY BODY RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! NO WAIT, STAY IN YOUR HOMES! DON'T GO ANYWHERE, OR THE SWINE FLU MIGHT GET YOU! STAY OUT OF PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES! JOE BIDEN TOLD ME SO!
I'LL HAVE THE BLT, BUT HOLD THE BACON! THAT SWINE FLU IS GOING AROUND AND I'M NOT TAKING ANY CHANCES! THE W.H.O. IS REPORTING 236 CONFIRMED CASES WORLD WIDE FOR GOSH SAKES! THAT ONLY LEAVES SIX OR SEVEN BILLION MORE TO GO BEFORE WE'RE ALL INFECTED WITH IT! THE END IS NIGH!!!!
Or maybe we should just calm the hell down and stop acting like IDIOTS! Yesterday morning the headlines screamed 156 dead already in Mexico. By days end it was, well, maybe, only seven actually. Egypt is massacring pigs as fast it can kill them. Russian has halted all meat imports from north America. The Japanese are trying to spot fevered travelers on thermal scanners in their airports. This is the most ridiculous media driven hysteria I've seen since global warming began in the 1980's. Perhaps it's a just another super-secret test by the infamous Trilateral Commission to gauge just how stupid and gullible the human race has become, or maybe not. Maybe we're all gonna die and we should just give it up now. I mean, if you really think about it, nobody gets out of here alive!
I happened to have a perfectly ordinary head cold this week, without exception, everyone I met had a pig wisecrack and acted like I left the house with blue hair and no pants, for god sakes. Unfortunately in our society today, blue hair and no pants is becoming fairly normal. Exercising the smallest modicum of common sense is becoming extraordinary. Normal hygiene practices and common courtesy will go a long way in defeating this menace the the survival of all humanity. Cover when you cough, wash your damn hands after blowing your nose, and stay home when you are sick. Stores are already running out of that hand sanitizer goop, so some folks must be getting it. If this irrational paranoia doesn't abate they'll soon be running out of duct tape and plastic sheeting.
Everybody needs to calm down, wash your damn hands once in a while, and give your pig a hug! No kissing of course, at least not until this crisis has passed. It should probably be OK by sometime next week, when the next crisis gets here.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Will Atlas shrug?
I am often astounded by the vision of authors writing what is referred to as near-future fiction. I wouldn't know whether to call it a gift or a curse to look at what is happening in you're day and age and be able to extrapolate that into a vividly frightening picture of that same world a few decades down the line. Ayn Rand did so in 1957 in her fourth and final fictional work. While I won't recommend it as an entertaining read, it is however packed full of teachable moments that relate directly to the news of TODAY! In it's thousand-odd pages you will learn about an America where the “achievers” in society, business owners, entrepreneurs, scientists, and inventors, simply stop. These “men of the mind” as she has tagged them go "on – strike", withdrawing their efforts from the rest of society. They bear a different label in today's America, it is a term used with revulsion by everyone from school children to news anchors to those in the highest echelon of our government. We now designate them the “Rich” and the regime of Barrack Obama has begun it's plunder of of the products of their minds.
Ms. Rand saw her world for what it was and where it was heading, right blinking Here! Through our own actions we have moved from a society that lauds and admires excellence. To one where envy and jealousy of what someone else has worked his/her ass off to achieve leads us to declare them the villains and ourselves victimized. The Government that we vote into power erects obstacles to success that most of us simply will not or cannot overcome. But because these people, Americans just like you and me , somehow manage to hurdle them all to achieve what is the real American dream, (financial independence and the freedom to enjoy it) we despise them for it. The wealthy have done themselves few favors with some of their frivolous and ostentatious spending habits. It tends to make many of them very easy targets. A prime example could be the Boca Raton Fla. couple that spent $155,000.00 on a clone of their 5 yrs. dead Labrador retriever. It is their money, and it would be highly hypocritical of me to suggest they spend it to my specifications, and I won't. Many of the people I know, and work with would of course feel no such restraint. Nevertheless when I read the story viewing it from my economic perspective, I still found myself screaming good god, its a frigging dog!
The flip side of that coin is that all of those people who made this seemingly silly expenditure possible, (the research scientists, the business owner, his stock holders, their accountants, legal teams, and executive assistants, the technological practitioner, the lab technicians, and the people who clean the floors and empty the trash) all benefited to some degree from that one rather substantial check. Hmm, that does look suspiciously like normal economic activity. I'm equally certain that our benevolent Government taxed the hell out of it as each penny changed hands. Had they spent it on a luxury car or a small yacht instead, the net effect would have been the same. Little people, those who haven't the drive or wits to earn the kind of money it takes to buy their own cloned puppies, have work to do that allows them to live and thrive in America. You've heard of it I'm sure, it was once called the "land of opportunity." Today we can no longer seem to control our fits of child-like envious rage. We would rather reduce those who have more than we down to our level. It gains us absolutely nothing but a hollow emotional satisfaction that at the end of the day makes for some damn thin soup.
With frightening speed the “Change” so many of you voted for is bringing Ayn Rands fictional reality to our everyday reality. I'd like to try my hand at a bit of near future fiction for a few paragraphs. An experiment so to speak, just to see how hard it really is.
What a backwards, twisted society we have created. We revile success, while finding ways to legitimize and reward failure. We routinely hold up the worst of us, not the least but the very, very, worst as victims in need of our sympathy and support. The duly elected President with an eagerly obedient congressional contingent is operating perilously close boundaries that will mark him throughout history as a dictator. He is of course only doing our bidding by stripping the wealth of our society to be used only for Governmental purposes. Unfortunately he will eventually reduce the available wealth to levels that will no longer sustain the spending he insists we elected him to do. Then he will be coming after you and me, he will have to. When the first murmurs of our resistance begin to gain some traction, like those dissenting voices we now only read on the Internet or hear on our radios, he will move to still them.
Again, he will have to. The control and dissemination of news and information is a major component in his overall program. The major media is already acting as a propaganda arm for his regime even though they are beginning to crumble under the weight of their own hypocrisy. When that happens, as it must, the Government will step in to operate or subsidize them to the point where they don't dare offend he who controls their funding. It will be done as a public service to ensure reliable news and information will reach to every American home. It will most likely be as badly handled as the conversion to digital broadcasting that we have been told about almost continuously since 1996. You know, the one that was recently delayed for six more months because some 5% of the American people just weren't ready yet.
When all of those cards are in place the public will be offered obfuscated poll results as hard news showing the success of his policies. Surrounding them will be stories of victimization at the hands of the greedy idle rich, along with human interest stories about, you guessed it puppies. Perhaps before the end of his first term, he will turn an altruistic or patriotic sounding public organization into a paramilitary group where ideological purity will be the true measure of qualification. Funding to expand their rolls will be diverted from defense budgets which never seem to really shrink despite a steady decline in equipment and troops. This neighborhood organization will be charged with helping those who do not realize the value of helping the downtrodden until they too become one of their growing number. Citing a ground swell of public support that no one will ever have heard of, the sale of firearm ammunition to the public will be curtailed by executive order, leaving the second amendment completely untouched.
Sometime during his second term the 22nd amendment will be declared null and void due to a 1951 clerical error, ending the bar to his serving more than two terms. In his third term the sale of gasoline to the public will be banned as an immutable danger to the planet. When electrical power usage rapidly overtaxes a distribution grid degraded by neglect due to a lack of resources left in the hands of the operators, only Government owned housing and essential services will be allowed access to that grid. Food will start becoming more and more scarce and a villain will be found for all of us to hate. The shortages will be explained are due to those illegally making ethanol to power personal electric generators and vehicles. Each one caught whether real or imagined will be held up as an example of the selfishness of individual action to improve ones life. We will be reminded that actions with the collective good at their center are the only way we can ever expect to move forward as a society.
Due to increasingly damaging viral attacks of a terrorist nature across the globe, the Internet as we now know it will have be shut down. It will be restructured with the aid and consent of Google. It's new form will render it inaccessible to computers with local storage capacity, the purported source of all of the viral activity. The public will only be allowed access by using a dumb terminal with "view only" capability. No one will be allowed to add anything to it with out accessing a government controlled portal. Your website choices will be limited because your access level will be based on an ID code that will be issued to you by the Federal Communication Commission. Finally, taxes will no longer levied against your income, but before you start cheering this one read further. You're income will be forwarded directly to the Government. They will reimburse to you, eventually, your fair share. This will be based on the size of your family and calculated against the property you already posses.
Scary enough for you? I could go on but its easier than I thought and its starting to depress me. Primarily because some of its already well on it's way to happening. Barrack Obama has with a few strokes of his pen wiped out all of the gains made since 1980 intended to restrain the reach and power of the Government. Nearly thirty years of slow many times painful progress wiped out in the blink of an eye. Much of that was made possible by the suicidal movement to left by the Republican Party. Seeking to be more inclusive and “Moderate”, they are "RESPONSIBLE" for stupidly blurring the lines between what it meant to be a Democrat or a Republican. That idiotic movement endorsed by "THEIR" standard bearer, allowed a malevolent vindictive "cult of personality" rise to the highest pinnacle of the American state. Now President Obama's been at it for a MONTH! Can you imagine the havoc he will have created in four or eight Years!
Most truly conservative Republicans are anxiously looking everywhere for the next Ronald Reagan. Ladies, Gentlemen, I'm afraid I have to tell you it's already much too late for that. Not even the real Ronald Reagan could fix the kind of mess the hard left is making of our country.
I think the time has come for us to start looking for John Galt instead.
Ms. Rand saw her world for what it was and where it was heading, right blinking Here! Through our own actions we have moved from a society that lauds and admires excellence. To one where envy and jealousy of what someone else has worked his/her ass off to achieve leads us to declare them the villains and ourselves victimized. The Government that we vote into power erects obstacles to success that most of us simply will not or cannot overcome. But because these people, Americans just like you and me , somehow manage to hurdle them all to achieve what is the real American dream, (financial independence and the freedom to enjoy it) we despise them for it. The wealthy have done themselves few favors with some of their frivolous and ostentatious spending habits. It tends to make many of them very easy targets. A prime example could be the Boca Raton Fla. couple that spent $155,000.00 on a clone of their 5 yrs. dead Labrador retriever. It is their money, and it would be highly hypocritical of me to suggest they spend it to my specifications, and I won't. Many of the people I know, and work with would of course feel no such restraint. Nevertheless when I read the story viewing it from my economic perspective, I still found myself screaming good god, its a frigging dog!
The flip side of that coin is that all of those people who made this seemingly silly expenditure possible, (the research scientists, the business owner, his stock holders, their accountants, legal teams, and executive assistants, the technological practitioner, the lab technicians, and the people who clean the floors and empty the trash) all benefited to some degree from that one rather substantial check. Hmm, that does look suspiciously like normal economic activity. I'm equally certain that our benevolent Government taxed the hell out of it as each penny changed hands. Had they spent it on a luxury car or a small yacht instead, the net effect would have been the same. Little people, those who haven't the drive or wits to earn the kind of money it takes to buy their own cloned puppies, have work to do that allows them to live and thrive in America. You've heard of it I'm sure, it was once called the "land of opportunity." Today we can no longer seem to control our fits of child-like envious rage. We would rather reduce those who have more than we down to our level. It gains us absolutely nothing but a hollow emotional satisfaction that at the end of the day makes for some damn thin soup.
With frightening speed the “Change” so many of you voted for is bringing Ayn Rands fictional reality to our everyday reality. I'd like to try my hand at a bit of near future fiction for a few paragraphs. An experiment so to speak, just to see how hard it really is.
What a backwards, twisted society we have created. We revile success, while finding ways to legitimize and reward failure. We routinely hold up the worst of us, not the least but the very, very, worst as victims in need of our sympathy and support. The duly elected President with an eagerly obedient congressional contingent is operating perilously close boundaries that will mark him throughout history as a dictator. He is of course only doing our bidding by stripping the wealth of our society to be used only for Governmental purposes. Unfortunately he will eventually reduce the available wealth to levels that will no longer sustain the spending he insists we elected him to do. Then he will be coming after you and me, he will have to. When the first murmurs of our resistance begin to gain some traction, like those dissenting voices we now only read on the Internet or hear on our radios, he will move to still them.
Again, he will have to. The control and dissemination of news and information is a major component in his overall program. The major media is already acting as a propaganda arm for his regime even though they are beginning to crumble under the weight of their own hypocrisy. When that happens, as it must, the Government will step in to operate or subsidize them to the point where they don't dare offend he who controls their funding. It will be done as a public service to ensure reliable news and information will reach to every American home. It will most likely be as badly handled as the conversion to digital broadcasting that we have been told about almost continuously since 1996. You know, the one that was recently delayed for six more months because some 5% of the American people just weren't ready yet.
When all of those cards are in place the public will be offered obfuscated poll results as hard news showing the success of his policies. Surrounding them will be stories of victimization at the hands of the greedy idle rich, along with human interest stories about, you guessed it puppies. Perhaps before the end of his first term, he will turn an altruistic or patriotic sounding public organization into a paramilitary group where ideological purity will be the true measure of qualification. Funding to expand their rolls will be diverted from defense budgets which never seem to really shrink despite a steady decline in equipment and troops. This neighborhood organization will be charged with helping those who do not realize the value of helping the downtrodden until they too become one of their growing number. Citing a ground swell of public support that no one will ever have heard of, the sale of firearm ammunition to the public will be curtailed by executive order, leaving the second amendment completely untouched.
Sometime during his second term the 22nd amendment will be declared null and void due to a 1951 clerical error, ending the bar to his serving more than two terms. In his third term the sale of gasoline to the public will be banned as an immutable danger to the planet. When electrical power usage rapidly overtaxes a distribution grid degraded by neglect due to a lack of resources left in the hands of the operators, only Government owned housing and essential services will be allowed access to that grid. Food will start becoming more and more scarce and a villain will be found for all of us to hate. The shortages will be explained are due to those illegally making ethanol to power personal electric generators and vehicles. Each one caught whether real or imagined will be held up as an example of the selfishness of individual action to improve ones life. We will be reminded that actions with the collective good at their center are the only way we can ever expect to move forward as a society.
Due to increasingly damaging viral attacks of a terrorist nature across the globe, the Internet as we now know it will have be shut down. It will be restructured with the aid and consent of Google. It's new form will render it inaccessible to computers with local storage capacity, the purported source of all of the viral activity. The public will only be allowed access by using a dumb terminal with "view only" capability. No one will be allowed to add anything to it with out accessing a government controlled portal. Your website choices will be limited because your access level will be based on an ID code that will be issued to you by the Federal Communication Commission. Finally, taxes will no longer levied against your income, but before you start cheering this one read further. You're income will be forwarded directly to the Government. They will reimburse to you, eventually, your fair share. This will be based on the size of your family and calculated against the property you already posses.
Scary enough for you? I could go on but its easier than I thought and its starting to depress me. Primarily because some of its already well on it's way to happening. Barrack Obama has with a few strokes of his pen wiped out all of the gains made since 1980 intended to restrain the reach and power of the Government. Nearly thirty years of slow many times painful progress wiped out in the blink of an eye. Much of that was made possible by the suicidal movement to left by the Republican Party. Seeking to be more inclusive and “Moderate”, they are "RESPONSIBLE" for stupidly blurring the lines between what it meant to be a Democrat or a Republican. That idiotic movement endorsed by "THEIR" standard bearer, allowed a malevolent vindictive "cult of personality" rise to the highest pinnacle of the American state. Now President Obama's been at it for a MONTH! Can you imagine the havoc he will have created in four or eight Years!
Most truly conservative Republicans are anxiously looking everywhere for the next Ronald Reagan. Ladies, Gentlemen, I'm afraid I have to tell you it's already much too late for that. Not even the real Ronald Reagan could fix the kind of mess the hard left is making of our country.
I think the time has come for us to start looking for John Galt instead.
Friday, January 23, 2009
A Bull in the Presidential China Shop?
Well now we have it, the “Change” everyone has been clamoring for has been sworn into office, twice to be exact. Without so much as taking a breather to recover from the dozens of celebratory balls and inaugural events he was obligated to attend, President Barrack Obama has been swinging his pen at executive orders with all of the finesse of a lumber jack felling an old growth pine forest. One of his first Axe blows landed on “Club Gitmo”. The Guantanamo bay detention center for captured Al-Qaeda fighters, Taliban insurgents and terrorists bent on killing American soldiers on the battlefield or otherwise harming the American people in any way possible.
They are held there in the belief that under Article 4 of the third Geneva convention they are not entitled to the protections therein. They are also held there because they may have some intelligence value and therefore should not have been shot on the battlefield. Unfortunately they may indeed fall through one of many cracks that the Geneva convention had not anticipated at it's adoption in 1949. These detainees did not wear a fixed distinctive sign, (uniforms w/ insignia) that could be recognized at a distance, they did not bear arms openly, nor do they abide by the rules of land warfare. The Bush administration labeled them as “unlawful enemy combatants” and properly so because they were not part of any recognized military unit being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates.
Enter the US Supreme Court and a petition for a writ of habeas corpus by Osama Bin Laden's chauffeur which the court decided it had to hear. On November 7th of 2005 the court handed down its controversial decision in Hamdan Vs. Rumsfeld. The court justified its majority opinion by cherry picking portions of article three and article five in the Geneva conventions to support a deeply flawed ruling. It effectively ended the use of military tribunals to give the detainees any sort legal process to end their indeterminate stay in the Caribbean. Following this ruling, on 7 July 2006, the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners will in the future be entitled to protection under Common Article 3.
But the complaints from international human rights advocates and domestic civil libertarians went merrily along, all making specious claims of abuse and torture at “Club Gitmo” right up to this day. Detainees there are getting more regular meals than many have ever had at home, all in keeping with the traditions of their special religious requirements. They received better more frequent medical care than most have ever dreamed of down home on the poppy farm. They were also supplied with appropriate religious texts and supplies that many of them never possessed outside the walls of Guantanamo. As a result of our horrific treatment many have gained as much as thirteen pounds during their confinement some even more.
Well thank the Lord we elected Barrack Obama and he has already changed all of that! I feel so much better as an American today. He took his first decisive steps in undoing detention policies of his predecessor. He also used this opportunity to rewrite American rules for the detention of our terrorism suspects, without specifics of course. He wants an immediate review of the remaining 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But what to do with them next? Should they be transferred? Released? Or maybe they should be prosecuted?
The details for accomplishing this minor miracle of Presidential revisionism are still a bit sketchy. However, there are a few things we do know about those still held in Guantanamo. Between 50 and 60 of them have already been cleared for release but they cannot be sent back to where they came from. They would be immediately detained pending a first class execution by the countries from which they originated. That wouldn't be very nice now would it? Those already released from Guantanamo have had an unfortunate tendency to turn up elsewhere as you guessed it terrorists. The pentagon recently released a report stating that some 61 released Gitmo detainees have "returned to the fight." The trusted completely unbiased Non-Governmental group Human Rights Watch has already poo poo'ed this claim saying the Pentagon isn't telling the truth about these reformed terrorists. Nonetheless the possibility that these nutbags could resurface to haunt the United States exists, and it is a very real very scary possibility.
As evidence of this I give you Said Ali al-Shihri. He was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2007 because they promised not to immediately lop off his head at our request. Instead they sent him through a Saudi rehab program for terrorists. As testament to the effectiveness of treating these fine folks as human beings, Good old Said Ali al-Shihri wonderful fellow that he is, has if not turning over a new leaf has at least relocated his business to a more receptive location. He is now suspected to be the deputy head of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch and was deeply involved in a deadly bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen in September 2008.
That leaves “The Great One” with another potential problem in closing down “Club Gitmo” in the next twelve months. A majority of the remaining detainees are Yemeni nationals captured elsewhere. Yemen does not have a rehab program to deal with these returnees not even one as flawed as the Saudi program. The Saudis have claimed that none of the graduates of their program has returned to terrorism. Said Ali al-Shihri would seem to provide an argument against Saudi claims of perfection. The previous administration continued to hold these individuals because they saw two potential problems in releasing them to Yemeni custody. (One) they could immediately be released and return to their previous activities. (Two) They wouldn't survive until sunset with their heads still attached to their necks. Neither outcome looked like a winning proposition for the United States of America or the detainees, so that evil genius George W. Bush stood pat until something safer for us, and more humane for them would emerge to settle the issue.
I can hardly wait to see how our new President deals with these little details in his grand plans to begin ridding America of the stain of George W. Bush. Will he decree that the name George W. Bush never be spoken aloud again, and that the name George W. Bush will be stricken from every monument and obelisk across the land. So let it written, so let it be done? Personally I think he will find that signing his name to a piece of paper the best part of making Presidential decrees. When the aftermath of these acts comes crashing down around him, and it will, he will find that being President is a whole lot less fun than running for that exalted office.
If he continues with his bull in a china shop executive orders to satisfy special interests he will find his popularity with average Americans plummeting at previously unimagined rates. Could it be after this whirlwind of triumphant celebrations that the man is running somewhat on auto pilot allowing his staff direct him on policy decisions of this kind? I don't think so I see arrogance and anger in mass quantities oozing from every pore of this neophyte on the geopolitical scene. One might think that a few of his first steps would be tentative, perhaps even colored by fear. At least in small measure it would even be understandable if he were completely paralyzed by the fear of screwing up. He should be, with all of the unrealistic expectations being heaped on his shoulders. They would be a monumental load for anyone to bear, least of all someone as ill-equipped as he appears to be to handle the office he now occupies. I almost feel sorry for him. No one, save the almighty himself could possibly fulfill the wishes of all of those who have elevated him to where he sits today. Those who now await the miracles of good fortune that he is expected to shower onto them will turn on him in a nanosecond if he fails to deliver. Good luck Mr. President, you're going to need an awful lot of it.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
2008: A year worth Forgetting
Wanting to say something positive about the recently expired year and being able to, wasn't quite as easy as I had hoped. The best I could come up with was, “Hey Global warming still hasn't killed off all the penguins and polar bears.” That's a good thing isn't it? Oh wait, they were never really threatened by Global Warming were they. O.K. Try this, “Hey China Pulled off the Olympics with out a single puppy being eaten within sight of a westerner. But wait, they've probably been eating the little nippers ever since, and that was back in August, Damn! Well maybe the third times the charm, “Hey the United States finally elected a black man to be President.” Oh yeah, before his feet ever graced that famous blue seal on the rug in the oval office his administration was already beset with a major scandal. More to follow?
Oh hell I give up! Wait, Wait, I want to give it one more try, 2008 is the year we found out that we had actually won the war in Iraq! Yeah! Of course we were winning all along we were just never told about it by our wonderfully free press establishment. They were much too busy trying to help that the black guy get elected. But hey, that's good thing but maybe......Not so much. Awww Poop! I do hate to quit so one more try? O.K., O.K. Try this, 2008 is the year we all found out that Al Gore was a liar, Global warming doesn't exist, and all of the hand wringing and new laws passed by our politicians to combat it is wasted effort! Yeah! Yahoo!!! I got one!!! But wait! If that's true then why are passing more laws and forcing people to keep doing stupid things to beat a problem that isn't happening? You'd think they'd be satisfied with decimating the US auto industry, but I guess we're all going to pay for it, Oh Damn! and Double Damn!!
Alright, alright already, 2008 sucked! There I said it, happy now?
2008: The year America saw gas prices at the pump climb to over $4.00 per gallon for the first time, just before that market collapsed.
2008: The year America saw home foreclosures increase by 70% by the middle of the year and home prices tumble by nearly 20% nation wide.
2008: The year America saw it's sitting President (a so called “Moderate Republican”) declare to the press that, in order to save the US economy from collapse, “He had to sacrifice free market principles.” (Ahem, There just might be a lesson to be learned there you Republican's, best learn it, and quick!)
2008: The year America saw 4” of snow fall on Las freak'in Vegas! Go ahead! Try and tell anyone there that global warming is a problem.
2008: The year America saw New York's Governor deliver a budget proposal costing that state $121 billion. That was after massively cutting health care costs, cutting funding for schools, and shutting down seven state agencies resulting in 521 workers being laid off permanently. Oh I almost forgot he also wants to institute 88 new fee's and taxes on everything from downloaded I-tunes, to movie tickets, to taxi rides. His wish list goes on from there to include soda, beer, wine, cigars, even your end of a hard week trip to the massage parlor would suffer a hit. (Good God! Is nothing sacred to that Man!)
2008: The year America saw the stock market which more Americans than ever before look to for their future financial stability dumped roughly 28.57% of its total value. Those affected may have to push their retirement dates backward by as much as a decade.
Last but certainly not least,
2008: was the year that Santa Clause wiped out his wife and most of her family before fire bombing her parents home. After completing his murderous rampage he finally blew his brains out. Sorry kids no Santa next Christmas...
Yeah O.K. I agree 2008 blows but what to do? Well one can always sit back hoping that 2009 won't suck quite as much. I prefer to approach things a little more pro-actively, and when things turn to crap I try to find something to laugh at. Thank God for my email inbox! Some of the best laughs I get all year long show up in there.
What, you don't believe me? Alright try this on for size...
In the "Recycling gone wrong" category I give you the apparently thrifty but misguided store employee that decided to restock an empty display for a shoot'em up movie with this one.
Yes it's the one all the children have been patiently waiting for....
What I really want to know is...
Was this clerk just a total airhead?
Or...
Was he/she a truly demented psychopath hellbent on terrorizing the kiddies?
Not good enough? O.K. well try this... completely unrelated picture I got a while ago. It came captioned,
“Bambi suffers the ultimate indignity”
“First this guy blasts me with his bazooka when I wasn't looking, then I'm gutted from my neck to my nethers, and now this? Hey is it Monday? It has to be freak'in Monday!”
Too Gruesome?
Well maybe this one will help paste a smile on your sour mug. (actually this is a new feature here at Blogger and I really wanted to try it out so here goes...)
This one is for married men who do dumb things to their wives, and live to tell the tale...
Most of funny emails end up in one of two folders that I have set up on my hard drive. One is set up to catch the jokes and pictures I deem worth saving. The others, mostly silly video and sound clips go into the second. When I'm feeling down because the world seems to be going apeshit all around me I dip into my “Humor” files for a bit of relief. I recommend it highly. It's so much more cost effective than large bottles of anti-depressants and if 2009 isn't a ton better than “aught eight” I'll be spending a lot of time in there.
The Best of Luck to you all in 2009. Just remember find something to laugh at, because depression is really...well...depressing.
P. S. If things get really bad and you're in desperate need of a quick laugh press the mental health Panic button below. I defy you not to smile! If you do find that you can't even grin at this, then get to your doctor immediately then proceed to the nearest comedy club ! The pills may not be enough, and most comedy clubs are staffed with trained professionals determined to make you laugh!
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Hollywood strikes again.
Why can't Hollywood leave outstanding alone? Some author works his bony arse off writing a really compelling, well-crafted, novel that millions have come to love. Then Hollywood gets a hold of it and the knives come out and the butchery begins. It's happened twice now to two of my all-time favorite novels.
First it was “Point of Impact” a fantastic story about a beaten up Vietnam war veteran living alone with his dog and his rifles in the Ouachita mountains of deepest darkest Arkansas. The former marine sniper of considerable note gets drawn into a secret plot to kill a Latin American bishop who is causing trouble for a CIA front group. The soft spoken but crafty “Bob lee Swagger” doesn't co-operate with their plan which includes his being shot to death and serving as their patsy. He survives their Machiavellian scheme only to rain ruin on them up close and personal and from a great distance in his quest for vindication. Do you recognize the movie from the description I've just given? No? Remember Shooter?
That was the movie the Hollywood geniuses came up with from one of the best written, most thoughtful, and truly complete stories available in contemporary fiction. It had it all, fabulous character development, great locations, antagonists that were truly evil. The good guys while seriously flawed were good enough to prevail against staggering odds. The story itself had a historical anchor that most Americans could relate to but that wasn't good enough for Hollywood, they had to update and destroy even that linchpin of the novelist's vision. O.K. I'll admit that Stephan Hunter's backside may never be described as bony but he does know how to write one hell of a story. I've read most of what he has published. With the exception of his last two which seamed forced and thematic, he resides firmly as number two on my all-time favorite authors list.
The character Bob lee Swagger was described in the novel as being raised in the hardscrabble Arkansas back country, thin as a rail and lanky. When he squinted his flinty, hard to read, squirrel shooter eyes in your direction you knew he was a force to be reckoned with. From that Hollywood gives us Marky-Mark? WTF? They didn't just blow the casting there, Danny Glover who could barely shpeak around the capsh on hish teeth was cast as Colonel? Who the hell is Isaac Johnson? He didn't even appear in the novel. What? The name Hunter assigned the bad guys leader wasn't good enough?
Julie Fenn the blonde female love interest in the novel who lived in Arizona and was actually a nurse. Some how in Hollywood became the saucy red-headed Sarah Fenn a school teacher from Kentucky who performed invasive surgery to remove a bullet from Swagger on film. Why? Dr. Dobbler the discredited Boston psychiatrist was described as doughy, always frightened and curly haired with glasses and a goatee. The character in the movie was not only shaved smooth but painfully thin and was never even introduced as a psychiatrist. They turned Nick Memphis a dedicated veteran FBI agent who fell into bad situations through no fault of his own, into a neophyte rookie who squealed like a little girl when the bad guys kidnapped him off the street. Hell they couldn't even leave the damn dog with it's original name. Had I never read the novel I might have been able to enjoy the movie, in this case ignorance might really have equaled bliss.
The latest sacrilege against the written word came to the small screen a month or so ago. I had been eagerly anticipating the arrival of the series based on Terry Goodkind's “The Wizards First Rule.” I loved the first two installments of his seemingly never ending the sword of truth series of 11 novels. Or was it 13? Hell I can't remember even after reading every damn one of them. I figured that with the expanded time frame enjoyed by a Television series they could really do this complex and interesting story justice. The entire story is laced together by the mysterious forces of magical powers of the characters and creatures from the novels. So the sky should be the limit of what they can do with this series, Yes? Sorry no, the Hollywood long knives came out and they butchered another well written novel like a helpless spring lamb.
Of course the name couldn't survive, the series is called “The Legend of the Seeker” and that was only the beginning of the carnage. So much of what they ignore is comprised of small details. To a devotee of the novel they would have been both simple to follow and are immensely important to the identity of some of the main characters. Kahlen Amnell the mother confessor, her hair is supposed to be much longer than any other woman. It's a symbol of her status and importance to the stability of the Midlands. The men who are hunting her are called a “Quad.” Get it? Four, a "Quad," simple enough.
In the opening scenes of the show she is being pursued by a team of six men. Then there's the “Sword of truth,” one of its most notable attributes is the distinct ringing peal whenever it is drawn from its scabbard in anger. It heralds the seriousness of the Seekers intent and his power to act on what he perceives to be good or evil. The seeker is a law onto himself and the magical power contained in the sword of truth makes the Seeker virtually omnipotent in his pursuit of the truth, hence the name. In the series every other damn sword dragged out for battle makes the sound and the sword of truth shows up silently and kinda glows like a weakening cyalume lightstick. Ooh that's intimidating.
Chase the formidable Boundary Warden that no one in their right mind would contest in the novel, has become “special guard” to the first councilor. His strange gift for relating to children who don't seem to be at all intimidated by him, is completely ignored and much of the charm of his character is lost with it. The special effects are at times brilliant, at others monstrously disappointing. Mis-casting and character assassination aside they could have easily followed some of the well established points already laid out in the novel. Instead they felt the need to ignore, insert, or substitute their own Hollywood misjudgment.
There is virtually no chemistry between Richard and Kahlan. Their budding relationship and unrequited love for each other drives the entire story and is absolutely critical to it's resolution. Her magical power is so ill described and portrayed in the series I'm not at all sure what the hell she can do beyond turning a bad guys eyes black and then without explanation he turns to attack his own men. In the novel Richard Cypher is a very capable young man who makes the right decisions even when others don't understand why. He dislikes the position he's been placed in, and the storm of anger that drawing the sword of truth ignites within him.
In the series Richard becomes a pouty, whinning boy that runs around with the sword of truth clutched in his paw throughout three quarters of every episode. Zedd, (Zeddicius Zul Zorander) is the oftentimes surly, First Wizard of the Midlands, with a reputation for asking searching, penetrating questions. He's supposedly the most powerful of the remaining Wizards on the planet and is portrayed as a clumsy marginally competent oaf, who never shuts up!
Not long ago I found the strangest thing in this “Hollywood destroys everything it touches” equation. They can do it right! Remember the Davinci Code? Ron Howard found a way to do it, and almost perfectly duplicated that O.K. novel on film. Unfortunately most directors haven't a thimbleful of his talent or wisdom when it comes to celluloid. They just can't seem leave well-enough alone! Another of my favorite authors Nelson DeMille wrote a decent novel years ago called the “Generals Daughter.” It was made into a movie that followed the story in places, deviated in others but overall wasn't too damn bad.
I happened to watch it on a rented DVD and made the mistake of investigating the special features menu. In the list of “deleted scenes” I found nearly every bit of the novel that was omitted from the feature film. I immediately felt betrayed and instantly hated the damn movie I'd just watched. The idiots filmed it correctly, then screwed it up in the editing room. The directors explanation for committing such a criminal act of theatrical stupidity, “we decided to remove these scenes primarily for time considerations.”
Personally if the story is good enough I don't give a damn how long it takes to tell it. With the advent of video tape and now DVD's these Hollywood dumbbells should do it right at least when it is not headed for the theater. Theater owners that want shorter run times to pack more buts in seats are killing their own industry and the Hollywood types are helping them do it. Perhaps without ever knowing how or why it's happening. The old-line communists had a favorite saying, "Quantity has a quality of its own," this seems to be the model the the entire cinematic industry is following.
It is not working and theater revenues show it. They keep trying to re-tell previously successful stories with new updated special effects and horribly mangled plot-lines. In the end they are failing miserably. They simply have to make the movie follow the story they already have in hand and let the theater owners deal with the success. The same applies to TV shows, they used to be called serials. Why? Because they did not resolve the story every damn week. They made you "tune in" to find out what happens next week.
At this point I don't know whether to claw my own eyes out so that I never read again, so I might enjoy the bungled movies or TV programs Hollywood seems bent on producing. Aw crap, that won't work! I kinda like my eyes the way they are anyway. Maybe I should just throw out my TV and DVD player, and enjoy the story as written by the author. If Hollywood should ever get a hold of the rights for Anne McCaffery's Dragon's, my TV is definately headed out the window and I may just follow it out myself. I can't imagine how they'd carve up my All-Time Favorite story, it's a fate I don't even want to contemplate...
First it was “Point of Impact” a fantastic story about a beaten up Vietnam war veteran living alone with his dog and his rifles in the Ouachita mountains of deepest darkest Arkansas. The former marine sniper of considerable note gets drawn into a secret plot to kill a Latin American bishop who is causing trouble for a CIA front group. The soft spoken but crafty “Bob lee Swagger” doesn't co-operate with their plan which includes his being shot to death and serving as their patsy. He survives their Machiavellian scheme only to rain ruin on them up close and personal and from a great distance in his quest for vindication. Do you recognize the movie from the description I've just given? No? Remember Shooter?
That was the movie the Hollywood geniuses came up with from one of the best written, most thoughtful, and truly complete stories available in contemporary fiction. It had it all, fabulous character development, great locations, antagonists that were truly evil. The good guys while seriously flawed were good enough to prevail against staggering odds. The story itself had a historical anchor that most Americans could relate to but that wasn't good enough for Hollywood, they had to update and destroy even that linchpin of the novelist's vision. O.K. I'll admit that Stephan Hunter's backside may never be described as bony but he does know how to write one hell of a story. I've read most of what he has published. With the exception of his last two which seamed forced and thematic, he resides firmly as number two on my all-time favorite authors list.
The character Bob lee Swagger was described in the novel as being raised in the hardscrabble Arkansas back country, thin as a rail and lanky. When he squinted his flinty, hard to read, squirrel shooter eyes in your direction you knew he was a force to be reckoned with. From that Hollywood gives us Marky-Mark? WTF? They didn't just blow the casting there, Danny Glover who could barely shpeak around the capsh on hish teeth was cast as Colonel? Who the hell is Isaac Johnson? He didn't even appear in the novel. What? The name Hunter assigned the bad guys leader wasn't good enough?
Julie Fenn the blonde female love interest in the novel who lived in Arizona and was actually a nurse. Some how in Hollywood became the saucy red-headed Sarah Fenn a school teacher from Kentucky who performed invasive surgery to remove a bullet from Swagger on film. Why? Dr. Dobbler the discredited Boston psychiatrist was described as doughy, always frightened and curly haired with glasses and a goatee. The character in the movie was not only shaved smooth but painfully thin and was never even introduced as a psychiatrist. They turned Nick Memphis a dedicated veteran FBI agent who fell into bad situations through no fault of his own, into a neophyte rookie who squealed like a little girl when the bad guys kidnapped him off the street. Hell they couldn't even leave the damn dog with it's original name. Had I never read the novel I might have been able to enjoy the movie, in this case ignorance might really have equaled bliss.
The latest sacrilege against the written word came to the small screen a month or so ago. I had been eagerly anticipating the arrival of the series based on Terry Goodkind's “The Wizards First Rule.” I loved the first two installments of his seemingly never ending the sword of truth series of 11 novels. Or was it 13? Hell I can't remember even after reading every damn one of them. I figured that with the expanded time frame enjoyed by a Television series they could really do this complex and interesting story justice. The entire story is laced together by the mysterious forces of magical powers of the characters and creatures from the novels. So the sky should be the limit of what they can do with this series, Yes? Sorry no, the Hollywood long knives came out and they butchered another well written novel like a helpless spring lamb.
Of course the name couldn't survive, the series is called “The Legend of the Seeker” and that was only the beginning of the carnage. So much of what they ignore is comprised of small details. To a devotee of the novel they would have been both simple to follow and are immensely important to the identity of some of the main characters. Kahlen Amnell the mother confessor, her hair is supposed to be much longer than any other woman. It's a symbol of her status and importance to the stability of the Midlands. The men who are hunting her are called a “Quad.” Get it? Four, a "Quad," simple enough.
In the opening scenes of the show she is being pursued by a team of six men. Then there's the “Sword of truth,” one of its most notable attributes is the distinct ringing peal whenever it is drawn from its scabbard in anger. It heralds the seriousness of the Seekers intent and his power to act on what he perceives to be good or evil. The seeker is a law onto himself and the magical power contained in the sword of truth makes the Seeker virtually omnipotent in his pursuit of the truth, hence the name. In the series every other damn sword dragged out for battle makes the sound and the sword of truth shows up silently and kinda glows like a weakening cyalume lightstick. Ooh that's intimidating.
Chase the formidable Boundary Warden that no one in their right mind would contest in the novel, has become “special guard” to the first councilor. His strange gift for relating to children who don't seem to be at all intimidated by him, is completely ignored and much of the charm of his character is lost with it. The special effects are at times brilliant, at others monstrously disappointing. Mis-casting and character assassination aside they could have easily followed some of the well established points already laid out in the novel. Instead they felt the need to ignore, insert, or substitute their own Hollywood misjudgment.
There is virtually no chemistry between Richard and Kahlan. Their budding relationship and unrequited love for each other drives the entire story and is absolutely critical to it's resolution. Her magical power is so ill described and portrayed in the series I'm not at all sure what the hell she can do beyond turning a bad guys eyes black and then without explanation he turns to attack his own men. In the novel Richard Cypher is a very capable young man who makes the right decisions even when others don't understand why. He dislikes the position he's been placed in, and the storm of anger that drawing the sword of truth ignites within him.
In the series Richard becomes a pouty, whinning boy that runs around with the sword of truth clutched in his paw throughout three quarters of every episode. Zedd, (Zeddicius Zul Zorander) is the oftentimes surly, First Wizard of the Midlands, with a reputation for asking searching, penetrating questions. He's supposedly the most powerful of the remaining Wizards on the planet and is portrayed as a clumsy marginally competent oaf, who never shuts up!
Not long ago I found the strangest thing in this “Hollywood destroys everything it touches” equation. They can do it right! Remember the Davinci Code? Ron Howard found a way to do it, and almost perfectly duplicated that O.K. novel on film. Unfortunately most directors haven't a thimbleful of his talent or wisdom when it comes to celluloid. They just can't seem leave well-enough alone! Another of my favorite authors Nelson DeMille wrote a decent novel years ago called the “Generals Daughter.” It was made into a movie that followed the story in places, deviated in others but overall wasn't too damn bad.
I happened to watch it on a rented DVD and made the mistake of investigating the special features menu. In the list of “deleted scenes” I found nearly every bit of the novel that was omitted from the feature film. I immediately felt betrayed and instantly hated the damn movie I'd just watched. The idiots filmed it correctly, then screwed it up in the editing room. The directors explanation for committing such a criminal act of theatrical stupidity, “we decided to remove these scenes primarily for time considerations.”
Personally if the story is good enough I don't give a damn how long it takes to tell it. With the advent of video tape and now DVD's these Hollywood dumbbells should do it right at least when it is not headed for the theater. Theater owners that want shorter run times to pack more buts in seats are killing their own industry and the Hollywood types are helping them do it. Perhaps without ever knowing how or why it's happening. The old-line communists had a favorite saying, "Quantity has a quality of its own," this seems to be the model the the entire cinematic industry is following.
It is not working and theater revenues show it. They keep trying to re-tell previously successful stories with new updated special effects and horribly mangled plot-lines. In the end they are failing miserably. They simply have to make the movie follow the story they already have in hand and let the theater owners deal with the success. The same applies to TV shows, they used to be called serials. Why? Because they did not resolve the story every damn week. They made you "tune in" to find out what happens next week.
At this point I don't know whether to claw my own eyes out so that I never read again, so I might enjoy the bungled movies or TV programs Hollywood seems bent on producing. Aw crap, that won't work! I kinda like my eyes the way they are anyway. Maybe I should just throw out my TV and DVD player, and enjoy the story as written by the author. If Hollywood should ever get a hold of the rights for Anne McCaffery's Dragon's, my TV is definately headed out the window and I may just follow it out myself. I can't imagine how they'd carve up my All-Time Favorite story, it's a fate I don't even want to contemplate...
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