The MSU Party!

I think I have attacked Liberals enough (wow, TWO whole posts in about two months! I’m out of control!) I have a few more anti-Liberal posts that I have been working on, but I want to talk about this.

The Republican Party is referred to as the “GOP” or Grand Old Party (even if the Democratic Party is older). I think it should be the “MSU Party” or Make Shit Up Party. To me, it seems like Republicans or Conservatives just make up things to use as arguments. In essence, they perfectly represent “Truthiness”.

We had Palin make her Paul Revere gaffe. She said that he sent “those warning shots and bells” to warn the “British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms…” To be fair to Palin, we were technically British, but the way she said it, it sounds like Mr. Revere was warning the other British, the ones we were about to take our guns, that they were going to take our guns. I’m not sure how firing guns and ringing bells in the dead of the night to secretly warn people would be a good idea. Sarah’s fans are so graceful when their idol makes a mistake that they actually started vandalizing Paul Revere’s page on Wikipedia to make her correct. That’s right Conservatives, change history to make it fit to your beliefs! Anybody else thinking of 1984? Of course Palin did not admit she was wrong and claimed she was caught by a "Gotcha" question (even though she wasn't asked at all about Paul Revere...)

Speaking of which, remember the Texas School BookControversy? Jefferson was actually a right-wing Bible thumper and Joseph McCarthy was an unsung hero of the 1950s! Why should Historians determine history when it can be done by a dentist? (To be honest, you can teach Jefferson Davis’ Inaugural alongside Lincoln’s. It would be a good way to compare and contrast the different causes of the war (although I doubt that was the plan here)).

I guess it doesn’t matter what your argument is, because it doesn’t mean it was intended as a factual statement. Representative John Kyl made the statement that “over 90% of Planned Parenthood services are abortions”. When it was revealed that it is only 3% of what PP does, his office replied “his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a[n] organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions”. So nice to know that when you quote statistics to make a point, they don’t have to be accurate!

 Yes, this clip again...

Kind of like the economy and budget crisis. Republicans like to keep claiming that government spending crowds out private investment and by cutting spending, private businesses will boom! I could point out that 11 of the top 25 richest counties surround the District of Columbia or that Conservative Economists don’t even agree with what Republicans are saying… You can be the economic master Michelle Bachmann and just claim everything the White House says is just scare mongering (unlike those 'Death Panels' from the Healthcare "debate") and that we can easily just cut $1.5 Trillion from our budget overnight to pay our bills, even if every economist, left or right, is predicting bad things and major bond rating agencies are thinking of lowering our bond rating…(do I need to provide a link?)

You can keep claiming that you have a mandate from the people to kill our fiscal future, if it even existed...

Do I need to even get started on evolution?

Republicans, just keep making shit up. Don’t listen to reality, facts, science, logic, experts. Your gut filled with shit is all you need. Just keep speaking out of both sides of your mouth!

Racism! Where?

Is ignorance bliss? When it comes to race and racism, maybe it is.

I feel like I am the ONLY person in the world who didn’t cry “racism” after seeing The Phantom Menace. Maybe it was because I was 10 or 11 at the time and I was an innocent child. Maybe I wasn’t obsessed with trying to find racial stereotypes in everything to get bent out of shape over it.

We get all up in arms when we see classic cartoons or shows depict a racial stereotype of the time. Yes, the direct stereotype is a problem (having an actual black person act like an idiot), but when a five year old sees a group of uneducated crows, they’re not going to think “These are depictions of Black people!” They are going to think this is what these specific crows are like; that is their personality. Like with Jar Jar Binks, the Neimoidians, and Watto, I didn’t see them representing an entire race (of people), I saw them representing themselves (or their alien race). Jar Jar is annoying. That’s how Neimoidians look and sound. Watto is a scrupulous businessman. I didn’t see African-Americans, Asians, or Arabs.

(It probably doesn’t help that the accent for the Neimoidians was someone’s attempt at a Thai accent…)

Oh, and nobody mentions those things in Harry Potter, as Dan O’Brien calls “tiny accounting monsters”? Those creatures whose main occupation seems to be banking/accounting, are short and have big noses? NO ONE CRIES ANTISEMITISM???

Cracked brings up how Hollywood whitewashed the movie 21, making most of the characters, who were originally Asian, Caucasian. I’m sorry, but wouldn’t we be crying racism if we (accurately) portrayed the math team as mostly Asian? Isn’t “Asians are really good at math” a stereotype? “Oh I get it! The math team is made up of Asians! Racist!!!” Yes, the Asian characters they did have could have been more than the stereotypical “goofy sidekicks” they were written as. And yes, Mickey Rooney’s performance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is horribly offensive.

  The Horror...

We try to raise kids to see beyond racism, but then constantly point it out to them. How are we going to progress when we keep shoving stereotypes down their throats and make them walk on eggshells their whole lives fearing to death that they are going to say something offensive? Congratulations! You just created the White Stereotype!

Is this a time in which forgetting about our past would be a good thing? How are we going to heal if we keep remembering the unfortunate past and we let it open old wounds? In response to the line “We need to open the wound to begin the healing”, Hank Hill said it best, “A closed wound means the healing has already begun.”

I don’t want to see Jim Crow laws return. We don’t live in a post racial society. We are still going to get white police officers acquitted of violently beating a non-violent African-American suspect and a mostly African-American jury who will acquit an African-American man of murder. Instead of constantly reminding us of the horrible things that have happened and the stereotypes, let us use the blank slate of the children to raise them race neutral. Instead of reminding us of how different we are, maybe we should focus on our similarities. Or maybe we can admit that racism is never going to go away and focus on groups like the KKK instead of George Lucas.

(P.S. I have no idea why the font changed for absolutely no reason. This seems to happen a lot.)

Do YOU want to be a millionaire?

During my lunch break, I would watch Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

The show has changed since it premiered in 1998. There are two rounds; in the first round, the questions and monetary value are randomized (meaning the hardest question could be first and worth the least). You add up the amounts that you have won ($10,000+$100+$7,000=$17,100). The second round reverts back to classic Millionaire with difficulty and money increasing with each question and you don’t add the value of the question to your previous winnings. If you get the $100,000 question, you have $100,000.

If you get a question wrong in the first round you lose all of your money and only get $1,000. If you walk, you get half of your money. In the second round, if you get it wrong, you go home with $25,000. If you walk, you get your bank from round one.

There are three lifelines; two “Jump the Questions” in which you skip answering the question and give up the money behind it, and “Ask the Audience” in which the audience votes on which answer is correct.

I’m glad they got rid of the “Phone a friend”. You have 60 seconds to tell your friend the question and possible answers only for them to be silent for 15 seconds and then ask to hear it repeated, only for you to never hear from them again.

If my explanation of the rules confuses you, go here or here.

Watching the show so much, I think I can offer some tips on how to win or do the best you can. I’m such a nice guy, I won’t write it in a book and sell it to you on a late night infomercial!

1) Try to reason a question out. Look for clues in the question. Just think! Now that there is no stupid clock, you now have time to think. “It sounds French, and France is an option…”

2) When they randomize the questions, look to see where the easiest and hardest questions are. Don’t get caught up on an easy question because it is at the end. One contestant was struggling on the easiest question because she thought it was harder than it was.

3) NEVER ask the audience on a really hard question. They won’t know either. Only ask them on a pop culture question or something to do with modern movies or TV shows.

4) If you just don’t know, skip the question. If you can’t reason it out and have no idea, it is better to skip than be wrong. The only time you should ever guess is when you have less than $1,000 in your bank and no lifelines. As $1,000 is the amount you get if you are wrong, there is no risk (you can walk away with a grand if you get it wrong and have $600 in your bank!)

5) If you just don’t know, and have no lifelines, just walk. Only guess if you have $1,000 or less (because walking will give you half your earnings. You can be wrong and leave with a grand or walk and get $500. Better to guess).

The next few have less to do with the game and more about improving your knowledge.

6) Look at a map. A US map. A world map. A physical map. A political map. Know your geography! So many people just don’t know where things are.

7) Watch every episode of The Simpsons. There have been so many questions that I knew simply because The Simpsons made some random reference to it. For example: One question was “What unusual place did Mary Poppins have a Tea Party?” I have never seen the movie (somehow) or I don’t remember it. HOWEVER, I remember the Simpsons episode with Shary Bobbins¹ and how she was trying to get Lisa to stop watching TV by “having a Tea Party on the ceiling”. ‘On the ceiling’ was the correct answer. There have been countless other times where remembering random lines from the Simpsons has helped me answer the question.

8) Know your pop culture. Read every tabloid. See every movie.

9) When all else fails, just buy as many trivia books as you can and memorize them.

This should help you if you ever find yourself on the show.

¹ The title for this episode really bothers me: “Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious”. Why the f*ck do they add the direction in the script (annoyed grunt) instead of the actual phrase “D’oh!”? The point is to make a pun, and they screwed it up. This isn’t the only time they do this too, but they do favor using the actual word instead of “Annoyed Grunt”

Lawsuit Happy.

If you believe all of your emails, the nation is a lawsuit happy place.

Fortunately, most frivolous lawsuits are either entirely fake or missing a few key facts that show that yes, someone was criminally negligent and should have paid for it.

Don’t get me wrong, there are frivolous lawsuits. The judge in DC suing a dry cleaner for $54 million because they lost his pants. Some criminal named Jonathan Lee Riches suing things such as the Eiffel Tower, Pluto (the dwarf-planet), and the book Mein Kampf.

But I would not be surprised to see so many lawsuits, or threats of lawsuits, as it is the only way to get anything done.

In the sixth grade, my father did not want my sister and me to ride the school bus that serviced our neighborhood because of a few problems with our neighbors. (My sister was threatened by an asshole her freshman year on the bus. The school did nothing because I guess it wasn’t in their jurisdiction or some BS. We went to the cops and filed a complaint but nothing came from it as they misfiled the paperwork and dropped the case without informing us). My father requested that another school bus that went by our neighborhood to pick us up so we didn’t have to deal with all of the idiots. My father asked the district about a week before school started. By the first day, no response. He took us to school. Second day, no response. He took us to school. On the third day, my father wouldn’t be able to take us to school because of work. He told them that if they didn’t get us a bus for the next day, he would bring his lawyer. Sure enough, they arranged a bus for us for the third day. (To be honest, the bus that did pick us up was filled with equally as big dicks and when I rode the local neighborhood bus as a freshman, there were no problems).

More recently, my coworker that used to give me a ride into work was having some family problems. Her sister’s daughter was seeing an asshole skinhead and she had the guts to leave him. He started leaving messages on their phone like “I will kill your family in their sleep” and “I will burn your house down”. Now, most people would consider these messages as threatening as he has a past history of violence and his racist little buddies may be involved with the disappearance of another person. The mother instinctively saved all of the messages and took them to the police.

“Sorry, there’s nothing we can do” said the local police.

The mother being a very smart and strong woman told the police officers if there was any way that they could document their meeting, so that if something bad happened, she would have proof that she tried to contact the police and they refused to help her.

The police immediately put a detective on the case and the detective said there was more than enough evidence to arrest the little asshole.

Why are so many police officers so lazy that they will not do their jobs unless they are sued, threatened to be sued, or are given bad press because they did nothing? What do you mean there is “nothing we can do?” You can do plenty! You have evidence! This person is clearly violating a law!

My family got this a lot when people would ride their ATV’s on the street or in the field behind our house (clearly against the law) and we tried to call the police. The police had to catch them in the act. I guess if a burglar fled into the night after stealing some stuff, there was “nothing they could do”, as they hadn’t caught him in the act. I guess opening a file is out of the question.

Also, we got the same response when kids would ride their bikes on private property. The police told us to get proof. When my father got a camera and got pictures of them trespassing, they called the cops on my father claiming he was taking pornographic pictures of minors (even though they were fully clothed and were not in any sexual position). Fortunately, my father was not home and my mother explained to the police officer why he was taking those pictures (the police TOLD him to!) and that they weren’t sexually explicit. Of course, the kids didn’t get in trouble for calling the cops for a false report.

Looking back, all that ATV and bike trespassing crap seems so stupid and not worth the energy to get angry over. The ATV’s were annoying, but who cares? The fact that the police kept giving us excuses for why they can’t do anything was probably the worst part of the experience. It didn’t seem fair when we got in trouble for not displaying a building permit for a fence and that our fence was against the building code because you couldn’t see through it and that might lead to all sorts of illegal happenings behind the fence while another person had a fence you couldn’t see through! (Of course it doesn’t matter if you can see something happening as the police have to catch you in the act of committing a crime!). I don’t think our town knows what the purpose of a fence is.

Free Pass

Should we ever give someone a free pass on something just because of who they are?

I’ve seen some scathing attacks on the movie Transformers 3. The most common response to these negative reviews is,

“It’s Michael Bay, what did you expect? It isn’t going to win an Oscar. It’s not Citizen Kane for crying out loud!!!”

Should Michael Bay be given a free pass to make a lousy movie just because he can’t make a better movie? If Spielberg or Scorsese made a bad movie, people would be up in arms. We shouldn’t expect something great, but we should at least expect a decent story with decent characters that focus on the title characters. Movies like Die Hard, The Dark Knight, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, were all good action movies. It wasn’t just about shit blowing up; there was an actual plot with characters.

Yes, we shouldn’t expect Citizen Kane, no one ever did. But should we lower the bar?

While I’m on the topic of defending bad movies, The Hangover: Part 2, is another movie in which fans and critics disagree. Fans say, “What did you expect? It’s The Hangover! It was as funny as the first one!” (Apparently, fans think all critics expect movies to be really good and compared to the classics) Critics point out that IT WAS A CARBON COPY OF THE FIRST MOVIE. What should critics and fans expect? Something a little different; not a blatant attempt to milk more money out of the first movie. Of course the jokes were funny; they were the same ones from the first, which means they shouldn’t be as funny. As Eric Melin said,

The reason [the first one] worked so well was because of the unique concept and the mystery structure. Now the concept is familiar and the mystery isn't engaging. [This is] the very definition of a lazy, pointless sequel.

The first movie relied on the element of surprise. Seeing how this is the first movie, there are no surprises.

If we stop watching bad movies, they will stop making bad movies.

Organizing

I’m not in a very festive mood this holiday due to the budget impasse. And now we have less than a month to raise our debt ceiling and prevent a major financial problem from occurring (or a minor inconvenience which will allow us to be free from evil big government according to Republicans). I really REALLY want to discuss this but I can’t coherently write down my frustrations. All I can say is that I think Republicans are acting like dicks because of some narrow/rigid ideology of insane paranoia against government and they are using this crisis to forcibly shrink government because they have misinterpreted the results of the 2010 midterm elections. If I continue to think about this, I will go crazy.

So moving on, sometimes I think Middle and High School conspired to ruin my grades. Yes, I was a slacker at times and procrastinated on assignments. That ultimately prevented me from getting the best grade that I could. Unless of course it was math and no amount of effort could make me good at it (except for 7^th grade in which I somehow was really good at it).

What bothered me the most was when teachers graded us on organization. Every stupid paper handed out during the quarter (or trimester/hexmester in 8^th grade. I’ll go into more detail on that later…) had to be put in order in your binder. You had to hold up the binder and shake it; if any papers fell out, you failed. Or you had to surrender you binder at the end of the quarter and the teacher would go through every page of every student’s binder and check off which ones you had. Or they would just come around to your desk and look through your binder asking you where each handout was in each divider. Those yellow dividers with plastic tabs used to separate your papers? They told you what to label them and in what order (i.e. in French class: Verbs, Culture, Homework, Nouns, and one section never used, etc.)

I am not an organized person. I was always very messy. When I got a paper, I threw it into my backpack. I would always end up with a huge stack of papers from every subject in my backpack. I would always struggle to find the right handout or homework assignment, causing me to freak out.

Why did they need to grade us on organization? What does that have to do with my knowledge of science, math, French, English, etc.? It was a pain for teachers to have to grade about 100 stupid binders, on top of all the other work we were doing.

This is one of the few times in which I think applying “Free Market Principles” is the right approach. I am a messy person, but I have limits. When my room gets too messy, I start to clean it. When I get frustrated that I can’t find my homework for the hundredth time, I start organizing. If my grades are suffering because I am losing my assignments, I will take some personal initiative to fix the problem, or my parents will notice my report card and force me to start organizing. Of course I was told in study hall (or one of the many stupid alternate names they kept giving it) that I was not doing real work by going through my papers and separating them by class and should stop organizing and do real work. You know what? If I am going to be graded for my organization, then it is ‘real’ work. Don’t complain that I am not organized and then yell at me for organizing.

Also, why did they dictate HOW we should organize things? What if I or someone else wanted to organize things by date not subject? WRONG!

This brings up something on a related note. When we had to do research, we had to do it their way. I’m not talking about online only research versus book research. I’m talking about how we took notes. We HAD to do it their way AND we were graded on it. In one class, we had to write the bibliographical information of one of our sources on a note card and give it a number, making it a “source card”. On another card, we would actually write the notes on it (i.e. “The industrial capacity of the US grew rapidly between X and Y”) and put the number of the source card on it, meaning that note/information came from source 1.

I hated it. It may sound complicated, but I just suck at describing things. It wasn’t hard, but knowing me, I would misplace the source card. Why couldn’t we just take notes our own way? I like writing in a notebook. I place the bibliographical information on the top, write notes below it and beside each note, I write the page number. Nope. Their way or the highway.

I thought the purpose of education was to learn, learning to do things one way. Maybe in China, but not here. (Stop comparing us to China. China forces facts into the heads of their students through memorization, but the kids have no idea how to do anything if they are not taught how to do it. There is no thinking.) People are different. People learn differently (supposedly. I thought I heard that was BS but I’m not sure). Allow kids to learn their own way and find their own path at learning. Don’t force one method on kids and tell them it is the only right way of doing something.

On a side note, how many writing no-no’s were shoved down our throats in school are practiced by successful writers? Incomplete sentences, sentences starting with ‘and’, passive voice? I remember learning how one word sentences were bad, then immediately meeting the author of a book we were reading who used them a lot.