Recently in media Category

Then                                             and                         now

TV  itself may need to spend some time on the island. Be seeing you .

 

I have been  pretty good  in my  reduction of TV over the past two years but then again I always was more in love with the radio. That’s were I first came across David Lawrence, whom I’ve previously said some very nice things about. There’s no need to change that here. What  I am happy about is that  I get to be some kinda human,  how so?   Well there’s always these nagging doubts that schadenfreude was  an inescapable part of my make up since I really do find other people’s  misfortune, specially when it’s   heading towards  Greek tragedy , amusing.   If there’s a church bus and cliff involved  I’m set for the day,  the driver swerved to avoid a tortilla   with the Image of Mary and you may have to medicate me down:)  So it’s  gratifying to see that  three people that I know well enough to have  lunch with, occasionally see working ,are doing so well for themselves based on 

 

 working  at what they love, yeah that  old cliché:) . More important though I think about the only sane  advice that I regularly hear within new media  is nicely laid out here.  The source ,  someone else I admire,  seems to have the same qualities  which kinda hit me between the  “what the hell am I doing and when will I wake up” eyes:)   Anyway  writing more won’t help,  just  watch. 

From Tim Street

One of the original cast  for Now never funny, er Never not funny ( buy  season 1 disk it’s really good  )started a podcast sixteen episodes back.   I forgot to mention it to people.    If you don’t like casual vulgarity , talk of violence towards those that deserve it .

If things like

“I’d stick my dick in a fence just to get it away from Lucy “ 

re Lucille Ball   in  a made  up piece re “the joker”" Cesare Romero  trying to hit on Desi.  His mind doesn’t just wander, it books cruises and  circumnavigates the Earth. 

The show iss deeper than this of course but  I’m  trying to make the point that  if you believe that truth can only  be found in civil company with no naughty words then  please avoid this and go back to your Marmaduke comic collection

 

Mike Schmidt Comedy - Podcast

I can see a JoCo song  / mashup for this little guy.   But I digress.

It’s really going to be the future soon.  Wall-E  is one future but let’s me just say that  I have nothing to add to the   97% rating that he’s enjoying over there on Rotten Tomatoes.

Why this movie works for me.

Wall-E has more character than the prior Pixar incarnations because you come to him pure, he doesn’t need to fit into car shape, rat shape, fish shape or any of the pre existing personalities from the toy box. 700 years of exposure to our ephemera and the worst that happen to him is show tunes. ( maybe the right wing folks had a point;) )   Wall-e  being seen as  antithetic  to the humans that made him is a point made in many  reviews  has been annoying me.

I  have to be simplistic here and claim that the  US division of thought  falls into right /left wing ideologies ( basically the same fundamental idiocy that reaches divergent conclusions on how it’s best to steal from others for their own benefit, a setup you may  know  better as democracy.) 

This movie has been seen as  a massively pro environment/ anti capitalist movie  by both ends of the moebius strip  so I find myself on familiar ground  in the contrarian position that both sides are wrong.

So in my usual  Socratic ( that means avoiding having to actually solve shit;) )  manner  I have some questions and observations about both side.

1) How is this movie anti capitalist?  The  monopoly position is not practically achievable in capitalism without the intervention of the state and BnL didn’t get that way without help.

2)  How is Wall-e not a reflection on those that created him, how can we be the bad guys in this piece?   Humans  made it to  space,  they made a fricking society that looks pretty close to socialism ( cradle to grave all needs met)  and it pretty much looked like what the  left has wanted to sell us for decades.  They also tried to solve the problem. 

3) The bit I really don’t like.   Farming. We get to the stars  I  and the idea that  we circumvent millennia of improvements to go back to  nature. As if to think that  farming is a default human condition.

I was brought up on a farm have a non romantic view of animals(  unlike the Welsh) and have managed to escape the daily need to hunt food, shelter and the myriad other niceties of living pre dentistry , pre anesthesia  and pre Tetris.  The environment, would it help to call it location? in Wall-e is a background and necessary for his existence, character development.  Basically the framework isn’t built to hang your ideas of the world on and  both sides do this movie a disservice by trying.

To end on a rant.

People that find this liberal really need to get a dictionary and perspective. The root of conservative means what again? It's more than a greeny trope and can just as easily be seen as an indictment on a socialized system that keeps people stupid , fat and reliant on the state ( corp) from cradle to grave. Seriously politics are what's stopping most of you from enjoying one of the more touching love stories/ characters in the last few years.

Why bother saving our place on this planet if this is the kind of thought that we're preserving?

Ah yes I remember this game, Mikrogen's "everyone's a wally" but not everyone this weekend was a Wall*e as Wanted took down some serious money too. Interview with director on ,Daywatch, his prior movie {seesmic_video:{"url_thumbnail":{"value":"http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/YwsQw7epV7_th1.jpg"}"title":{"value":"Wanted "}"videoUri":{"value":"http://www.seesmic.com/video/LPxLZ2nr1k"}}}

There's 182 thousand cheap people out there that need their head examined. Seemingly the point that most people miss here, and one which I will make sure you do not miss is this!    It's not the state that makes you safe, in fact they abrogated that responsibility to the people that you want them to protect you from.   So we pay more money  to protect ourselves  to the people that say, nah we trust you . go on knock yourself, and your customers out.  Maybe without so much "regulation" there would be enough money to make cars that work  right the first time:)

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- General Motors said it will recall 181,516 Chevrolet HHR wagons Wednesday after finding that some of the vehicles don't meet government standards for protecting occupants from head injury in a crash.

Chevy HHRs not equipped with optional roof rail-mounted airbags and sold between 2006 and 2008 failed GM's side-impact tests, said GM. Roof rail-mounted airbags are designed to reduce the risk of head injury in the event of a side-impact collision.

GM to recall more 181,516 Chevy HHRs due to side-impact risk - Feb. 13, 2008

One of my more reckless discussions is that of questioning how effective DUI  and other drug laws are when enforced.  Is the cure worse than the disease?  While many of these questions are   not  designed to provoke or offend  ( I assure you the theological stuff is )  and   are  training wheels for my arguments which  usually I'm 90 percent sure I can justify  to myself.  I'm just trying to get to the other 9%. ( I have to leave 1% open  after all)

Statewide holiday task force reports 2,828 DUI arrests "A total of 2,828 DUI arrests were made during a statewide holiday drunken-driving task force .... 6 percent more than the 2,663 arrests during a comparable period in 2006."," In the latest effort, authorities stopped 36,901 drivers and issued 11,361 citations for traffic offenses other than driving under the influence, Mulleneaux said."

Here we go again. In Arizona about 7%  of those stopped are charged DUI  93%  are not.  Despite figures showing that  police looking for dui via traditional patrols is more effective than the roadblocks and assorted gimmicks it just doesn't play as well to the cameras.   From Tennessee. Roving patrols took about 19 hours per drunk based on observed behavior.  Checkpoints based on the suspicion that you are driving a car on the road the checkpoint is on took 29 hours. 

Sadly roving patrols aren't as photogenic as a checkpoint. They don't tell the people that aren't infringing just what they are doing about dui , but making them wait, stop and interact with the nice officer  certainly  gets that point across.

I am not saying these checkpoints are not stopping people from driving, study after study shows they have an effect ... but  at the expense of more effective methods.  About 10%  of the people arrested for DUI are caught at checkpoints during the holiday crackdowns then why not stop the  PR crap and actually get down to the effective keeping of the peace?

This is not a local phenomena.  Check out the experiences in  Florida, Ohio and an aggregate of studies conducted.  Same message from state to state.It's not about their effectiveness as primary enforcement it's the appearance to be seen to act rather than acting effectively that's annoying me.  While you shouldn't be trading safety for security it would be nice at least if we were getting what we thought

So please don't pretend you care about DUI yet insist we need to haul over anyone making a trip just to get 7% of those stopped. Oh and the 4th amendment you have to toss out too for your safety at the expense of the rest I'd rather keep. 7% arrested doesn't equal convicted either. The real numbers could be a lot less

K? Thx Bai.

I really don't get this level of mental illness being seen as normal. Let's get this straight.  You have ever lasting life, you never die yet that's not enough?  Jesus -, no really. The only thing funnier is the State that runs the lottery is investigating those preying on the less fortunate's desperation.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

"I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them," she said. "I'm angry and bitter about it.

Believer bitter over 'prosperity' preachings - CNN.com

The Sweeney Todd aka flying squad   in the UK were an "elite"   police unit designed to address the most serious, at least serious to people that like money and property, crimes. It's a fitting name given the corruption at the core of Sweeney Todd is the apparutus of crime and punishment.

Out of the terrible tale of Sweeney Todd comes a question that  seemed to  I'm assumming you know the basics of the story , and did so prior to the recent movie, but there's quite a few versions of the tale that predates the musical and movie.   Todd in this incarnation is set up and sent to Australia  by the corrupt judge and the local enforcers for the crime of marrying a woman that the judge has the hots for.  This is the part I have to stress the seriousness of.

Having just read a book about the  British system of transportation to Australia , the Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes, you need to appreciate that this wasn't just a  playful gambit by the judge in a game of romantic one upsmanship. If Barker( Todd prior to name change) was to survive at all it would be after a journey that the majority did not survive on the earliest boats, to be  worked to death , flogged,  fed rotten food when there was any.      To then have Pirelli  threaten to unmask him to those people was a  very real and present threat to his life and livliehood which he dealt with by what most in the audience, judging by their laughter at the mititagion of this act as being  akin to " he was blackmailing me", " Oh well, then that's different"

At this point I think there's a strong case for his actions that I would defend in polite company.   Then , then there's the rest of story. This is very much  in the style of Chris Rock's OJ riff.  "i'm not saying he should have killed her but.. I understand"

I'm coming around to the idea that it's not the police, the judges or even the politicians to blame but those that support them.  I'm taking Sam Harris's  theory that the religious mild are the largest danger to our evolution being that the give a framework for the truly commited to operate in.  It's the same with the state.  There's no way clowns like the Judge could get away with this if the population didn't want it to occur. We have our own clowns here in Arizona  but the population just like to think that something's being done.    So when Todd gets all pie eyed at revenge on a world that he see as sanctioning the horrors that befell him  how much truth is there in that?  Like I said  I'm not saying he should have done it but I understand.

The Question is

"Things I need to avoid a heart attack"

 Wot  ish  ashprin ye gaping  eejit 

 

"ye fell on yer arsh Trebek."

Alex Trebek has heart attack - CNN.com