Yeah, Happy New Year to you, too!
When I left for work this morning, I discovered the remnants of one of our outdoor Christmas decorations scattered about on our front lawn (no snow here in northern CA). Why in the hell would someone steal and trash such a thing? It was a grouping of lighted trees and snowmen for crying out loud. I’d understand if it was one of those evil, intolerant, forcing one’s own religion onto others nativity scenes, but snowmen and trees? Come on. They didn’t even get all of the pieces. If you’re going to steal something, at least do it right. In modern day America I guess we can’t expect excellence even from our own thieves. We had our outdoor timers reset about nine hours behind a few days ago and I just blew it off as a teenage prank, but theft is another ball game. I suspect older kids or teens are the culprits, although I can’t prove it of course. This is reason #205 of why I don’t have or desire to have children: to subject my community to miscreants created from my loins who terrorize for pleasure. I had no tolerance for this kind of behavior by my friends as a kid and even less tolerance for it now. It just costs me money because these little punks have to prove their mettle to each other. Maybe they should just give themselves an award. It keeps those immature narcissists in Hollywood out of trouble for the most part.
Don’t miss Scott’s latest missive – the man’s on fire!
Have a safe and pleasurable New Year!
But I already know the ending!
Make sure to check out the 12/28 and 12/29 entries from the great and all powerful Überblogger and behold the great pearls of wisdom contained within.
One of the things I really dislike about this time of year is the year-end rehashing of events, movies, music, celebrities, politics, bowel movements, etc. I know that instead of participating in the mind-expanding exchange of ideas, I’ll be forced to endure yet another me too Top 10 best/worst list. Please enlighten me about something new instead of waxing nostalgic over events and vapid personalities who are usually more superficial fluff than substance. What’s even worse is the knowledge that this is also the time when Hollyweird begins the celebration of its own self-importance. Just like the vast and unbridgeable chasm of perspective existing between workers and management, the plastic people in Tinseltown dwell in an isolated cosmos wherein they create vestiges of graven imagery for them to behold and to bequeath mementos of their efforts amongst each other in order to help ebb their insatiable narcissistic appetite.
But I did save a lot on my car insurance (really).
Here’s something that’s just cute and appropriate for today (recovering from another tannin overdose).
L'chei-im
Hope everyone had or are still having a good Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, or whatever (no sarcasm inferred this time).
Last night we spent the evening at our friend’s annual Latkefest, featuring the Jewish dish, latkes (potato pancakes) traditionally served during Chanukah. There were roughly sixty people of all ages in attendance. Besides just general partying, the predominantly Jewish group of people also performed the ritual of the lighting of the second candle on the menorah and sang many traditional songs. A couple of things immediately struck me. First and foremost, everyone was truly celebrating the holiday and all were having a ball singing the songs, even the teens and older children. There was an abundance of smiles and good cheer everywhere. As I mentioned before there was a huge cross section of people’s ages represented. During the lighting and singing, everyone - young and old - participated in earnest. It was really neat to observe traditions being handed down and enjoyed by the younger children.
I was born and raised Presbyterian, but have veered into the agnostic realm (sorry, Mom and Dad) in the past decade or so. My wife was raised Mormon and like me, is also mostly agnostic these days as well. Personally, I had never really celebrated my faith - which may explain my contemporary agnostic leanings. I enjoyed the people I went to church with of course and studied my religion’s teachings, it’s just I don’t think I ever really enjoyed going to church and participating in the rituals and traditions as much as I should have. I went out of obligation mostly, not because I honestly was expressing my faith. I don’t really think that I have some poignant message here to distribute to the unwashed masses, other than it was a simple pleasure to be a fly on wall and witness a group of people celebrate life and their faith.
But it's only just a living wage...
The NY Transit strike is the fuel that is prompting my rant today, but maybe not in the way you may think. I was listening to a local talk radio show (because the music radio stations in the SF Bay area SUCK ASS!!!) and the topic at hand was the transit worker strike in New York.
DISCLAIMER: I’m not the biggest fan of modern unions for reasons that may be disclosed at a later time, but I don’t think that my bias will be relevant in this instance.
While listening to the talk show a few thoughts came to mind. Most callers and the host agreed that the workers deserved more money because they’re just hard working folks trying to support their families. Fair enough and I agree. Sure, everyone wants everyone else to make a decent living, BUT as usual, we as a NIMBY society want someone else to pay for it. What do I mean? We want our teachers, fire fighters, cops, janitors, waiters, gas station attendants, and cashiers at our fast food restaurants to make a fair wage. The problem is that we are not willing to pay the taxes required, or willing to pay $15 for our burgers, or $10 per gallon of gas in order to pay the desired wages for these workers. It’s a whole lot easier for people to protest indignantly about the plight of teachers, transit workers, etc. It means they care (shallow and symbolic – see 12/08/05 rant below) but when it comes time to pay for the remedies, they’re often the first ones who complain when their taxes are raised, or train fares increased, or whatever.
As a society we don’t put our money where our collective mouths are. I agree that we don’t properly value and compensate the persons that have a real affect and contribution to our community, like those that educate our children, pick up our garbage, or defend us from harm. Instead, we support and overcompensate those that (superficially) entertain us. Why else would an entertainer (professional athlete, actor, musician) be able to make so much money as compared to their contribution? It’s because the market (you and me) will support it.
Right or wrong, that’s the reality. Either we should readjust our priorities or we should quit bitching about it because it is getting tiresome, which leads me onto my next thought.
I’m getting extremely fed up and bored with the constant whining from those that don’t feel the right groups of workers aren’t compensated fairly. We all have a choice of our professions. For example, most everyone thinks that teachers are underpaid. If you choose to go to college to be a teacher, you know damn well beforehand that you’re not going to get paid as much as a doctor, so quit bitching about it!
I have little sympathy for those that are blind or naïve when entering lower paying professions and then complain that they should be paid more. This isn’t a communist country (yet) - you are free to LEAVE your job and do something else!
All I’m saying is that we should have a realistic perspective when it comes to compensation when we enter the job market. You shouldn’t expect to be able to support a family of four working part time at the local grocery store. You choose to get married, have children, buy a house or certain car, or live in a certain community. Just because in 1955 a family could easily afford to have a stay at home spouse and a vacation home doesn’t mean that we’re entitled to the same lifestyle in 2005.
Every year, every election cycle, it’s always the same groups of people complaining and whining. Honestly, as time goes by I have more contempt and less pity for these people. They are always portrayed as oppressed and helpless to do anything for themselves. Hey, I have to pay more and more for my own healthcare, mortgage, and food. Why is it unfair or unreasonable that everyone else does as well? Why should certain groups be exempt from the realities of the economy? Is it because they apparently are incapable of helping themselves? That’s a very elitist and condescending view of your fellow citizens.
Too much of the Halfling's brew
We had our Christmas party this Saturday and everyone had a great time as usual. Great grub and mucho vino was ‘el drunko (don’t a$k), but we made sure designated drivers were arranged and we encouraged a lot of water consumption toward the end of the evening. On Sunday morning we were awakened to high winds and thunderstorm warnings on TV.
After some minor cleanup, the wife and I decided that today (Sunday) would be a fine day to recuperate after all the hard work of preparation for our party and last week’s cul-de-sac progressive dinner party. It was really crappy outside anyway and we didn’t have any other pressing matters that required our immediate attention. What did we do? We snuggled into our comfy oversized chair built for two with our electric blanket and watched all three of the Lord of the Rings extended cut DVDs back to back. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! We’ve seen them before, but it’s such a decadent treat to dedicate an entire day to watch the trilogy undisturbed. We had numerous nappy visits from our cats and some great leftovers from the night before. All in all, just damn good stuff.
Since it’s now Monday and we’re all back to work I’m sure something will pop up that will shake up my little Pollyanna world soon enough. For now I’m quite content to be ignorant of the stresses and goings on of the rest of the world.
And now for something completely different...
While I was internally brewing in the endless minutia of domestic and global tumult (and working at my normal job, BTW) I experienced an olfactory Eureka! Huh??? OK, so we’re hosting our traditional Holiday Christmas party tomorrow and my über multitasking wife (who works from home –
shameless plug time –
www.theheirloomstudio.com) was doing some food prep for the party. While sitting comfortably in my office upstairs surrounded by a couple of laptops and some righteous tunage from Symphony X, the heavenly odors of her efforts wafted about my nostrils - both of them, in fact. This immediately awakened my cranial 40-watt illumination device that is typically dormant. The thought that immediately burned small neural skid marks across my synapses was this:
I have such an amazing wife! The world can be going to hell in a hand basket, but as long as she is here with me it doesn’t matter that much. My perspective got a much needed realignment.
Homework for the day: Tell your spouse or your significant other how much he or she means to you and how much you appreciate the things that he or she does for (or to) you.
It's a quagmire!
** WARNING: Political commentary below. Do not read if you are easily offended by a point of view that may possibly differ from your own. **
Iraqi Voter: “Anybody who doesn’t appreciate what America has done and President Bush, let them go to hell”
‘nuff said...
Well, maybe not... I have been disappointed and appalled at the way the mainstream media has reported the entire Iraq situation. It is common knowledge that the press is by and far more liberal representatively than the general population. That’s fine with me, just don’t pretend that your personal views on the war do not affect the way you report (or don’t report) on the war and the current state of affairs in Iraq. I would rather have the press be honest with me and to either disclose its personal bias (one way or the other) or just tell me the truth and let me decipher what is happening and what it means to me. Love or hate Fox News, there is a reason that they (along with talk radio and bloggers) have increased their audiences as much as they have. Millions of Americans now have a source of information that they think they can trust will give them a more accurate picture of what is probably going on in the world. You may vehemently disagree, but many people are getting tired of the mainstream press constantly framing the news using the subtle lens of “America is evil”, or “Anything the Bush Administration does is wrong”, or “Republican=bad, Democrat=good”. While this may sound a bit excessive and paranoid, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t true at some level. It has come to the point where I have a difficult time trusting anyone’s information (from the right or left) without first trying to filter out their personal agendas. Just give us the truth. We aren’t fragile. We can handle it. Unless that is what they’re afraid of...
I don’t intend to paint the media with such a large brush, it’s just that I think the majority of the mainstream press has let their personal views cloud and subtly skew their reporting on many stories as of late. I also think that over the past few years they’ve gotten lazy. What do I mean by that? More often than not they aren’t doing their own investigating and reporting anymore. Instead, they are usually restating what has already been reported by the AP and Reuters and putting their own spin on it. Opinion is fine, just don’t pass it off as being objective journalism. Another thing is that I think most journalists (those that interview anyway) don’t do their homework or are afraid to challenge the people they interview when their current answer conflicts with a previously stated position. It’s fine for a politician to change his or her opinion on an issue, but at least the journalist should, A) know that it is a different position, and B) challenge the politician as to WHY he or she changed his or her mind, not just always give them a free pass. If a politician says something outrageous, the journalist should immediately ask him or her WHERE is the PROOF of such an allegation? Again, most journalists just let these statements go unchallenged. Researching a person’s previous positions, questioning why, and asking for proof are some basic things that I thought were part of the job of an objective journalist.
Please raise your hand before you speak
We have these mysterious and evil mechanisms in this country affectionately know as RULES. You know, those inconvenient little impediments in life that keep you driving on the proper side of the road or not burning down your neighbor's house solely because you feel like it. For a society to survive with some decorum of civility, it requires a social contract amongst its citizenry, resulting in a general agreement between each other so that we can predict each other's behavior. Otherwise, there is nothing stopping you from driving on the wrong side of the road or stealing your neighbor's car.
Rules exist to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior that a society deems important and the consequences for exceeding as such. If you break the rules and get caught, guess what? You must pay the penalty for incongruence, fair or not. Our system of justice, although not perfect, does allow people options for proving one's innocence. When those chances are exhausted, generally because the initial thesis was correct the first time, the final debt to your fellow citizens is paid. The ledger is balanced as well as it can be.
While you may or may not agree that terminating someone's life for egregious infractions is warranted or bad form, currently those are the RULES. Just because you said you're sorry for pulling little Brittany's hair, doesn't mean you no longer have to go to the principal's office. If you don't like the rules, do what you can to change them. Or else buy your own island and make up your own rules to manage your domain, but don't expect all of your island's inhabitants to follow yours either, mister always color outside the lines rule-breaker.
Me 24/7 and Let me tell you how you should...
One of those bees I was referring to yesterday concerned something I think is one of the most poisonous and degenerating attitudes which permeates throughout our culture today and that is best expressed as ME, ME, ME!!! Think about it. To decipher the core motivation of almost anything or anyone you could use the age-old axiom of Follow the money. Now you should also inquire, How does this affect ME? or How does this benefit ME? or Does this hurt MY feelings? or Does this offend ME? Adding these new filters to your investigative arsenal may make it easier to get down to the real root reason why something happens the way that it does.
Most laws and policies are motivated and passed by those who will financially benefit from their implementation. Money is a cold, simple, and easy motivating factor, but now it seems that many things today are driven by warm and fuzzy selfish emotional reasons, such as it makes ME feel better to have this implemented or I am entitled to this . Think about many of the modern laws and policies affecting education, the environment, children, and businesses. How many are based on logic, fact, science, and research, and how many more are based on emotion? Decisions made through the lens of emotion, which is by definition irrational, aren't generally good ones long term.
One plowshare of modern life is the increased amount of free time we have since we're not out working in the fields 18 hours a day anymore. A vile new form of life emerged from the primordial spooge filled with baby boomers - the BUSYBODY. Their intentions are usually masked by the façade that they care, but don't be fooled. It's always more about them than you. They know more than you, know what's better for you, and how you should live your life according to their view of the world. It's more about their control of your life and that they feel better about themselves because they made a difference in a shallow and symbolic way, ignoring the fact that no one asked them to butt their nose into society's business.
Busybodies infest all factions of the political spectrum, not just the Religious Right and Secular/Progressive Left. I'd wager a very large percentage of state and federal government bureaucrats are these same overprotective and caring creatures, breeding themselves more and more committees, panels, and special commissions created solely to keep themselves gainfully employed by the dim-witted taxpayer and occupied conjuring ways to further control every facet your life. They dismiss the detrimental effects on others and vicious attacks on our freedom caused by their incessant meddling, as long they feel better about themselves. Hey, you live the way you want, but leave me the hell alone!
Sure, there are many people around who do things for others who are truly not motivated by selfish reasons, but it's not the norm anymore. Gone are the days where people just helped each other and didn't hold a press conference afterwards to pat themselves on the back. The generous way America responded to disasters like 9/11 and Katrina gives me hope that all may not be lost. It could also be that I have lived away from the Midwest for too long and my perspective has been cynically skewed. It could also be the cultural differences between the major population centers and flyover country. Or maybe I'm just full of selfish crap up to my eyeballs.
Sorry for the odd trajectory of my rant here. Bees don't travel in a linear path.
Don't forget
I had a few bees buzzing 'bout me bonnet today, but they are inconsequential compared to what happened over 60 years ago on this day and what sacrifices our brave soldiers made then and since protecting our freedoms we increasingly take for granted every day. Freedom isn't free. We would have a better appreciation for what we DO have in this country if we wouldn't forget that.
A great ending to a great beggining
I finally got around to watching the last Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, on DVD last night. Wow! A great closing to a fantastic story, just enough loose ends tied and plot transitions into the original middle three movies. The special effects are pretty much taken for granted anymore so they're easy to gloss over or even ignore, but every once in a while there will be a scene or two that realigns your senses and returns you back to the visual masterpiece of the world that George Lucas created for us almost 30 years ago (boy, ain't I getting old, dangnabbit!). I'm still at the mentally euphoric and chaotic level after such an intense experience that there are so many things I want to comment on, but can't really express them in a cogent manner, so I'll just mention a few initial thoughts and observations that are securely pinned to my cranial bulletin board at this time:
I thought the acting in this installment was first rate, especially Hayden Christensen's portrayal of Anakin/Darth Vader. I remember many people were critical of his work in the last movie and of the poor chemistry between him and Padme/Natalie Portman. Fair enough, but after watching this last movie, my wife mentioned that this was the way it probably should have been portrayed, not as some fairy tale love story, and I couldn't agree more. My wife hadn't seen the previous movie (she's a fan, too - how cool is that!) so we watched Attack of the Clones before Revenge of the Sith, so we were able to get a good feel for the continuity of the actors' performances.
Anakin was a very sympathetic character. You could almost see how he was pactically pushed by the Jedi into the evil beast he had become. He did what he thought was right and per their "code", only to discover that the Jedi weren't always lily white and their code was sometimes used more as guidelines than rules (ala, Pirates of the Caribbean). He kept on going back with warnings and information, and they just basically said, "Great, thanks, now go away and sit in your corner, shut up, and be a good boy." As time went along, I would blurt out loud (as Anakin) "Screw you, and your little Jedi club, too!" My respect for the holy Jedi order slipped a few notches. The clear line between good and evil got a little fuzzy. The Empire did restore peace. If they were so powerful and all-seeing, why was the elite Jedi council so clueless as to the great evil that was going on around them?
As I said before, I liked how a many loose ends and transitional questions of story continuity were answered. Besides the obvious big story lines, many potential subtle holes in the story arc were handled, such as why C-3PO know didn't who Obi-Wan Kenobi was is Episode 4 (because they erased his memory banks in Episode 3). Unlike many series ending movies or shows, this one offered to me a peaceful semblance of closure, especially since we all know what happens next.I finally got around to watching the last Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, on DVD last night. Wow! A great closing to a fantastic story, just enough loose ends tied and plot transitions into the original middle three movies. The special effects are pretty much taken for granted anymore so they're easy to gloss over or even ignore, but every once in a while there will be a scene or two that realigns your senses and returns you back to the visual masterpiece of the world that George Lucas created for us almost 30 years ago (boy, ain't I getting old, dangnabbit!). I'm still at the mentally euphoric and chaotic level after such an intense experience that there are so many things I want to comment on, but can't really express them in a cogent manner, so I'll just mention a few initial thoughts and observations that are securely pinned to my cranial bulletin board at this time:
I thought the acting in this installment was first rate, especially Hayden Christensen's portrayal of Anakin/Darth Vader. I remember many people were critical of his work in the last movie and of the poor chemistry between him and Padme/Natalie Portman. Fair enough, but after watching this last movie, my wife mentioned that this was the way it probably should have been portrayed, not as some fairy tale love story, and I couldn?t agree more. My wife hadn't seen the previous movie (she's a fan, too - how cool is that!) so we watched Attack of the Clones before Revenge of the Sith, so we were able to get a good feel for the continuity of the actors' performances.
Anakin was a very sympathetic character. You could almost see how he was pactically pushed by the Jedi into the evil beast he had become. He did what he thought was right and per their "code", only to discover that the Jedi weren't always lily white and their code was sometimes used more as guidelines than rules (ala, Pirates of the Caribbean). He kept on going back with warnings and information, and they just basically said, "Great, thanks, now go away and sit in your corner, shut up, and be a good boy." As time went along, I would blurt out loud (as Anakin) "Screw you, and your little Jedi club, too!" My respect for the holy Jedi order slipped a few notches. The clear line between good and evil got a little fuzzy. The Empire did restore peace. If they were so powerful and all-seeing, why was the elite Jedi council so clueless as to the great evil that was going on around them?
As I said before, I liked how a many loose ends and transitional questions of story continuity were answered. Besides the obvious big story lines, many potential subtle holes in the story arc were handled, such as why C-3PO know didn't who Obi-Wan Kenobi was is Episode 4 (because they erased his memory banks in Episode 3). Unlike many series ending movies or shows, this one offered to me a peaceful semblance of closure, especially since we all know what happens next.
