The Speech I’d Like To Hear Obama Make

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.  A few years ago, an unprecedented thing happened.  Republicans in Congress risked the full faith and credit of the United States of America by threatening to not raise the debt ceiling.  The debt ceiling is an imaginary number that, in the past, has solely been used for political grandstanding of the highest order with the full realization of all involved that the debt ceiling MUST be raised lest America suffer the gravest of financial catastrophes.  I say to you now that the debt ceiling will never again be used as a weapon to be brandished to force political concessions like it was in 2011.

Congress has two choices before it.  Raise the debt ceiling.  Repeal the debt ceiling.  Nothing will be given in return for either of these options.  It’s time for Congress to prove that it can be part of the solution and not just part of the problem.

Regardless of Congress’ action or inaction on this issue, I promise the American people this:  The debt ceiling is the gravest of National Security concerns.  It affects our government’s ability to function and our ability to effectively defend ourselves.  I will do everything in my power to protect America from this crisis.  As this crisis looms ever closer, there are many options available to me and I promise to use any and all of them to ensure to America and the world that the full faith and credit of the United States is sacred and shall not be infringed.

Thank you and good night.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

This Is The Way The World Ends, Not With A Bang But A Jellyfish

Subtitled: No One Ever Suspects The Jellyfish.

You need to read this article.

Many years ago, I was in Boston walking across one of the bridges.  If you looked down to the water below, you’d see a very large population of jellyfish hanging out in the shadows of the bridge.  It was kind of beautiful.  Various sized blobs of goo pulsating in the water.  Lately, that beauty has turned into horror.

It turns out that jellyfishification is totally a thing!  Our oceans have been getting much warmer and much more acidic than is good for the biome.  Coral reefs for example are experiencing a massive die off because of it.  One sea animal is totally fine with it.  The jellyfish!  The conditions have caused a population explosion of jellyfish to occur around the world.  The scale of this explosion is massive beyond belief.  The phrase ‘breeding like rabbits’ may need to be replaced with ‘breeding like jellyfish’.  Jellyfish are taking over the world!  Prime beaches have had to be closed.  Ships are getting disabled from traversing jellyfish blooms.  Fisheries are reporting losing entire catches because of scooping up thousands of pounds of jellyfish.

This is the stuff or horror movies, folks.  It is very possible that we could be looking at the extinction of fish (and mammals) and the oceans reverting to a time long ago when simple animals were the only occupants.  It may get to the point where it is unsafe to swim anywhere in any ocean.

There is one tiny, tiny bright side to this.  Jellyfish are edible.  I hope you like them because you may be eating a lot of them.  Jellyfish is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey’s uh, jellyfish-kabobs, jellyfish creole, jellyfish gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple jellyfish, lemon jellyfish, coconut jellyfish, pepper jellyfish, jellyfish soup, jellyfish stew, jellyfish salad, jellyfish and potatoes, jellyfish burger, jellyfish sandwich. That- that’s about it.

Movie Review: Prisoners

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Showed lots of promise.  Too long.  Some ineffective storytelling.  Some stupid detective cliches.  Great acting.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone to see a movie that I was actually looking forward to seeing.  “Prisoners” was such a movie.  The concept is excellent.  Children disappear and signs point immediately to an individual.  When the individual proves to be too stupid to have committed the crime and there is no evidence to tie him to the crime, the police have to let him go.  He is soon thereafter kidnapped by the parents of the missing children and “enhanced interrogated”.

The movie starts really promising.  The introduction is crisp and clean.  You get an immediate feel for what kind of person Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) is.  Hope for the best.  Prepare for the worst.  Do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.  All of this sets him up perfectly for the events that are about to occur.  More importantly, you believe him capable of the actions he performs to get his daughter back.

Fifteen to twenty minutes into the movie and the girls are already missing.  And the race begins.  Judging from the intro, I was expecting a taut, effective search for two missing girls filled with agonizing decisions and dead end leads and the all around effective storytelling that comprised the opening half hour of the movie.  What I got instead was a bunch of overly long, occasionally plodding scenes that bore no resemblance to the introduction.  At 153 minutes long, I was worried that we would be shown an hour long saccharine view of the family life of two girls before their disappearance even happened and the search for them would be shallow and perfunctory.  Now I wish that the movie was like that.  It is desperately in need of a good half hour more of scenes thrown to the cutting room floor.

A lot of the problems with the movie surround Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal).  It is quickly established that he is a great detective and that, in true movie cliche fashion, he has solved all of his cases.  Why then does he not make a painfully obvious deduction that links two of the characters together?  Why do they use another pathetic detective cliche of throwing things around in a fit of rage only to have a valuable clue stand out from the mess?  This is sloppy storytelling of the highest degree.

On the plus side, the acting is really top rate all around.  Hugh Jackman really brings to life a man who is all about control and completely loses it when that control is threatened.  Maria Bellow plays his wife as exactly the kind of wife you’d expect a control freak to marry.  Terrance Howard and Viola Davis play the parents of the other missing child and beautifully provide both the enabling of Hugh Jackman’s actions and the only voice of sanity.  Paul Dano and David Dastmalchian play incredibly effective creepy guys.  And Melissa Leo, oh I loves me some Melissa Leo.  No one plays earthy characters better than she does.  She is one of those people that makes me want to see a movie regardless of how good it is just because she’s in it.  If I had my way, she would be in every movie.

 

Why The American Disdain For The Poor?

Have you ever been trying to merge on the highway and you’re doing everything right but there’s this person who very purposefully speeds up so you can’t merge between him and the car in front of him?  It seems to happen quite often.  It’s as if the offender is trying to prevent a stranger from taking advantage of them in some way.  In the end, they gain nothing and they actually risk injury by driving recklessly.  This is similar to how many Americans seem to view the poor.

This view was highlighted beautifully by the surreptitious recording of Mitt Romney telling a gathering of rich people that 47% of the population are moochers.  This is an incredibly galling statement coming from someone who made his fortunes by trying to create as many of those “moochers” as possible by taking over companies and firing people and then selling the companies.  It’s like when your big brother grabs your arm and punches you with your own arm and asks you, “Why do you keep hitting yourself?”  But he’s just one unconscionably rich person who has spent his entire adult life devoid of any contact with poor people.  There were millions of others in the United States who were nodding sagely at Romney’s comments, though.  Most of them cannot use Romney’s excuse of studiously avoiding poor people.

The problem, I think, stems from a pathological belief that everybody you don’t know is out to take advantage of you in some way.  They just know that there are tons of moochers on welfare living off of their hard earned tax dollars despite not personally knowing a single one who is actually doing so.  This makes no statistical sense.  If the people you know who are or have been on welfare are using the system as they should, where are the moochers?  And if you do happen to know a moocher or two that are taking advantage of the system, why aren’t you turning them in?  “But I just KNOW that they’re out there somewhere!”, you might intone and you’d be right.  It’s not that there isn’t waste in the system because there assuredly is.  No system, governmental or private, has zero waste.  The problem is that there is no proof that the welfare system is more corrupt than any other system in existence.  And yet we have demands for more oversight and spending more money on rooting out waste when that money would be much better served just being given to the vast majority of welfare recipients who very temporarily need the money.

The House (and by The House, I of course mean Republicans) recently voted to cut food stamps by $39 billion.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this will cause 3.8 million people to be dropped from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) next year.  Most people on this program have jobs.  The jobs our economy can provide them do not even meet the lowest standard of living.  Thus the Supplemental portion of SNAP.  Our society is so afraid of poor people right now that we elected 217 people to represent us who think providing the minimal amount of food subsidies to those who actually need it is too much for government to do.  Who are these people?  How did we get to this point?

Welcome to the United States of America where the only thing we seem united against is the poor.  And we are all the poorer for it.

If Studs Terkel Were Alive Today…

First off, I have to say, wow is Studs Terkel an American treasure.  I don’t think I have ever read anyone that is so in touch with the American experience.  Maybe Walt Whitman or John Steinbeck.  Besides having the coolest name ever, Studs also has a way with prose that is both folksy and deep.  His words flow off the page and my mind gobbles them up like candy.

I’m currently reading “Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression”.  It was written in 1970, but the edition I am reading was released in the late 1980’s.  As with many new editions of old works, this one contains a foreword by Studs.  In it, he documents the great divide between the realities of poor people and the headlines declaring stock market boom times during the late 1980’s.  I was struck both by how little has changed and how much worse things are now.  Back then, all the good manufacturing jobs were starting to leave Chicago for points Chinese.  Occasionally, a few jobs would become available and hundreds of people, mostly blacks, would line up for a chance to get that job.  Now, the manufacturing jobs are all gone.  Nothing is being offered and no lines are formed.  We have gone from a country of hope to a country of desperation.

For a good segment of our population, there is no such thing as a good job anymore.  The choice is between starvation and eking out the barest of existences.  There is still a ladder to climb, but the rungs that can get you from lower class to middle class are missing.  If you started below the gap, you’re stuck there unless someone reaches a hand down to give you an opportunity you wouldn’t otherwise have.  If you are middle class and you slip a rung, you find yourself suddenly far below where you once were, overqualified for any job that is available and shunned by the keepers of the jobs they are qualified for because of lapses in employment.

These are the people you are fighting against if you are against Obamacare and Medicaid and Welfare and Food Stamps.  The people that use these programs are not moochers and thieves.  They are human beings trying to get by.  These are not socialist programs enacted by people trying to destroy the American way of life.  They are missing rungs inserted back into the great ladder of progress that maybe, just maybe, can be used by people to reach up as high as they can to the next rung and pull themselves up to a modicum of safety and security without the need for help from the government.

Robert Reich was on “The Daily Show” this week talking about how he thinks we’re repeating history and are on the cusp of another Progressive Era like we saw in 1901.  I hope he’s right because there are still more rungs to be replaced and we owe it to our society to replace them if we are at all to be the moral people we pretend to be.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences: Obamacare Edition

Fast food is bad for you.  Very bad for you.  It is mostly high in calorie, high in fat, and low in nutritional content.  Most people “know” that fast food is bad for them, but much of the actual information is completely hidden from the consumer.  Obamacare has changed that.  Chain restaurants of, I believe, 20 stores or more are now required to post calorie information on their menus.  It’s a small step, but it provides consumers with needed information to make a healthy decision.

Or at least it should.  Then psychology comes into play and all rational decision making goes right out the window.  In this case, the psychology comes in the form of advertising.  And it’s kind of brilliant.  McDonald’s is taking lemons and turning it into artery clogging, heart attack inducing lemonade.  Some of their restaurants have a sign for their sausage muffin breakfast meal and they display the calorie count of over 1,000 calories in the biggest typeface and the under $5 price in smaller typeface.  The implication is look at how many calories you can get for this low, low price!  Your average McDonald’s patron does not have the time nor the inclination to do a detailed analysis of what’s good or bad about the meal they are about to purchase.  They know that they need around 2,000 calories a day and look at this, they can get half of those calories for only $5!  What a deal!

All advertising is deceptive.  That’s kind of the point.  It makes you feel you need something that you really don’t need.  This McDonald’s advertising campaign is so deceptive it would make satan blush.  Bravo, McDonald’s, bravo.

Book Review: Dubliners by James Joyce

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Forty years into my life and I have finally tackled a James Joyce book.  Sadly, I picked the worst time to do so.  My mind being occupied with disparate thoughts, I found it very hard to concentrate on what I was reading.  The rating reflects my state of mind more than the lack of talent of the author methinks.  That’s too bad because even with my severe lack of concentration I caught moments of brilliance like this: “She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed; and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male.”  And this: “She was tempted to see a curious appropriateness in his accident and, but that she did not wish to seem bloody-minded, would have told the gentelmen that Mr. Kernan’s tongue would not suffer by being shortened.”  And this: “Her faith was bounded by her kitchen, but, if she was put to it, she could believe also in the banshee and in the Holy Ghost.”  Brilliant stuff, that.

“Dubliners” is a series of short stories that follow various characters in and around Dublin.  I found this to be quite clever and wondered if Joyce had ruined the titles of many a collection of short stories by being so popular.  That is the only reason I can think of for there not to be a plethora of other similarly titled books: “Chicagoans” and “New Yorkers” and “Parisians” and “Lake Titicacans”.  I’m sure there are notebooks and hard drives full of similarly themed short stories in the filing cabinets and computers of many an English major just longing for a non-Joycian title.

I very distinctly remember really liking some of the short stories but cannot for the life of me remember which they were.  Everything just blended together in my mind like word salad.  Joyce is certainly not the easiest of authors to read and should certainly not be read by an individual who lacks the necessary concentration.  At some point I will have to reread the book and give it the review it deserves, but until then on to lighter fare.

Movie Review: This Is The End

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

After seeing an absolutely hilarious rated R preview of “This is the End”, I couldn’t wait to see it.  Sadly, time and schedules got in the way and its time came and went.  Then, shockingly enough, there is “This is the End” showing in theaters once again.  I’m not entirely sure how that happened (pushing for an Oscar, I’m sure), but I was sure going to take advantage of it.

How disappointing.  I likely would have liked the movie more if I didn’t have such high expectations going in.  It was still pretty funny, but I kind of wish that I had just watched the preview again.

The concept is solid.  Everyone plays themselves and the rapture happens while they are all at James Franco’s house party.  Nobody at Franco’s party gets raptured and most of them soon die horribly leaving James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Jay Baruchel, and Danny McBride to fend for themselves in Franco’s house.  Much of the movie is spent trying to figure out what happened and then, after coming to terms with it, trying to figure out how to get into heaven.  Chaos and some hilarity ensues.

I don’t know if you would call something a cameo when everyone is playing themselves, but there were many good cameos in the movies.  These include Michael Cera as a coked out sex fiend, Emma Watson as the butt of an actually funny rape joke, and Channing Tatum as, well, you’ll see.

I was surprised at how much effort was put into the special effects.  It’s not quite what you’d expect from a comedy, but the demons and monsters are quite well done.  There are a few effects that come off as a bit cheesy, but other than that they are quite effective.

I think the biggest problem with the film was the middle portion where it kind of dragged and I got a bit bored.  The beginning was excellent, though, and it picked up again near then end.  So I’m going to say that this could have been a better than average showing if it had some of the fat trimmed.

This movie also features what has to be the biggest dong ever shown in a movie.  No, not that one.  Wait for it.  Wait for it.  Yeah, that one.  I also found myself wondering what happened to Emma Watson at the end.  Not that the dong and Emma Watson had anything to do with each other in the movie.  It was just a stream of consciousness thing.  I’ll shut up now.

Movie Review: Percy Jackson And The Sea Of Monsters

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

I went to see this movie because my brother really wanted to see it.  He greatly enjoyed the first Percy Jackson movie, “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief”,  and was looking forward to the second.  He gave me the DVD of the first movie to watch before going to see this movie.  It was enjoyable as was this one.  It is not necessary to see the first movie before seeing this movie, but having a familiarity with the main characters does help some.

Imagine if Greek Mythology were real.  The gods are real and they sometimes descend from Olympus to play on the mortal plain.  And by play, I mean make with the sexy time with mortals and produce offspring.  Percy Jackson is such an offspring, a demigod, the child of Poseidon and a mortal mother.

After coming off of the high of a successful quest to save the world from Zeus’ wrath, Percy has settled down to a life of mediocrity in his demigod training camp.  He’s definitely one of the better demigods, but he never seems to be able to win at any of the demigod games.  He worries that he may be a one hit wonder and will never be able to complete a quest again.

All that changes when the tree that provides the magical barrier for the camp is poisoned and a mechanical bull runs amok in the camp.  Without the barrier, the demigods are defenseless.  The tree must be healed and the only thing that can cure her is the Golden Fleece.  This calls for a quest!  Percy Jackson to the rescue!  Oh, wait, no, they pick someone else to go.  Percy and his friends, of course, go anyway.

The action in the movie follows a very basic formula: travel to a location, discover a mythological wonder, do something with that wonder, repeat as necessary.  It’s basic, but it’s enough.  Well, it’s enough if you like Greek Mythology like I do.  It’s doubly pleasurable because they actually seem to care about the mythology, at least to the extent I remember from my college Greek Mythology class.  This makes the Percy Jackson books and movies a great introduction to mythology for children.  I saw a girl on the train reading a Greek Mythology book and immediately wondered if we had Percy Jackson to thank for it.

I certainly have my quibbles with the movie.  Like how the whole thing with poisoning the tree ends up being a completely useless action with the sole purpose of creating a reason for the quest.  But you know, it’s a kid’s movie.  These things can be forgiven.  I think kids would find the movie very enjoyable and there’s enough to entertain mythology loving adults too.

That Moment You Realize You Are A Talentless Hack

(via)

Well, at least compared to Tim Blais.  You need to watch this video.  It’s an a capella explanation of string theory set to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody.

[youtube http://youtu.be/2rjbtsX7twc]

I mean WOW!  I cannot even begin to imagine how much time, effort, and creativity went into making this.  Too bad people like him are wasting their time trying to figure out the fundamental reality of the universe and not ruling the planet.

Back when I was in college taking quantum physics I remember having a barely tenable grasp of what was being taught to me.  Much of the math beyond collapsible wave functions was lost on me.  Never once did the professor bother to mention that even the people that did this stuff for a living didn’t get it either.  It wasn’t until years later that I realized this to be true.  Quantum physics makes no sense but it exists.  It is experimentally provable but we don’t really know why it is.  I like that Tim actually admits this at the end of the video.  Science is awesome.