Bad Taste in Movies

Dredging the movie bin at Wal-Mart for cheap movies is a nasty vice of mine. This is mostly because I have distinctly bad (but discriminating) taste. I love movies that most people think are utterly horrible, and this is just the kind of fair that one finds in the crap bin.

So, yesterday I ended up walking away with these delights:

• Grandma's Boy -- juvenile, wacky stoner comedy featuring the guys who've played minor characters in most of Adam Sandler's movies; almost every other line is quotable: "Who wants to hear about my STD from the silent film era?"
• American Psycho -- a very disturbing piece of literature turned into a dark comedy (at least, I think it's funny) about a psycho serial killer
• Tango & Cash -- the epitome of 80's buddy/cop action flicks: after blowing up a forty-acre drug/weapon smuggling compound, killing Jack Palance, and rescuing Teri Hatcher; Kurt Russell and Sly Stalone exchange witty banter and end the movie with a high five
• Double Feature: Road Warrior & Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome -- pre-Jew-hating, psycho-Christian Mel Gibson battling post-apocalyptic road rage ... plus Tina Turner

You can keep your Oscar-winning blockbusters. I'll stick with cheap entertainment.

Diversity -- Just Another Word for Racism

A long quote from a short piece, "Racial Balance" Programs: The New Racism, by Debi Ghate:

They insist on branding a student by his skin color and dictating what school he will attend. They insist on enforcing quotas and counting students like barnyard stock. They insist on creating a new kind of injustice--a new kind of racism--in the name of eliminating the old.

Just Asking

The following is an email chain that went out to everyone in my department last month. Supervisor was in charge of collecting money for some Adopt-A-Family charity that some people in the office wanted to give to. Employee is one of the donors.

From: [Supervisor}
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 11:47 AM
To: [All Records Staff]
Subject: Adopt -A-Family

I want to thank everyone who contributed 
to the Adopt-A-Family program. We collected 
$164.00 dollars. Thanks for such a 
fantastic effort!!!
 
 
[Supervisor]
[Firm]

---

From: [Supervisor]
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 11:50 AM
To: [All Records Staff]
Subject: FW: Adopt -A-Family

Correction . $170.00. - [Supervisor]

---

From: [Employee]
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 1:12 PM
To: [Supervisor]
Cc: [All Records Staff]
Subject: RE: Adopt -A-Family

Will everyone that gave be recognized some 
way?  Just asking.

Is it just me, or is this bitch a huge douche-lick?

Perhaps this is sort of a "you had to be there" or "you have to know the bitch" situation, but I think if you carefully examine some of the subtler points of Employee's response, you'll be able to see just how douchey she really is:

1. In a supreme act of humility and genuine charity, Employee asks if she will be rewarded (beyond her bloated self-righteousness, that is) for her philanthropy.
2. Not only does Employee reply to Supervisor to ask for recognition, but she copies all of her co-workers. In the case that she won't be recognized for selflessly giving to the less fortunate, she'll be recognized for recognizing those that did.
3. Employee "just asks" if the donors will be recognized, and does not at all imply that they should or deserve to be heralded and praised for their generous contributions.
4. In the true spirit of giving, Employee asks for something in return ... for "everyone who gave," of course. She's looking out for everyone else's best interests.

Moral of the story: Give because you feel like giving, not because you want to get a pat on the head.

Thinking Versus Doing

Hard work and determination never got anyone farther than the end of the day. Innovation and ingenuity will get you to the end of the day by noon and the end of the week by sunset.

Some people revel in martyring themselves in the name of a dirty job. And other people believe that a long, hard day's work is always good work. I imagine that these people also think that anyone who says something to the contrary is just looking for the easy way out or is just plain lazy.

But, in my opinion, lazy is not taking the time to find the simple way around a difficult chore. The hardest part about hard work is thinking, planning.

And that's what it all comes down to: thinking versus doing. The hard worker prides himself in doing, and scoffs at thinking as an idle, wasteful endeavor. But the thinkers -- inventors, entrepaneurs, scholars, leaders -- pride themselves in thinking, and hire the hard workers to do the bitch work for low wages.

The Golden Dumbass

Apparently, there's some hullaballoo about the movie The Golden Compass within the Christian community. (I'm not sure where the complaints were when the book was published.) The claim against is that it is anti-Christian because the book was written by an athiest.

My advice to all Christians up in arms about this: Don't believe everything you read and don't read everything you believe. Don't believe the crazies that say a children's fantasy novel is going to corrupt the children and cause the downfall of your religion. And don't read only the novels that say everything you already believe. Your faith won't grow stronger by petting it. Stretch it, scare it, flip it on its head; your faith will grow stronger by challenging it.

And most of all, don't take offense at every novel and short story that comes along. You've got your own book that's offensive enough for everyone.

Thanksgiving in Washington, DC

backseat menagerie

Take a look at my photos from my Thanksgiving vacation in Washington, DC.

Business Is a Trip

Here's a entry I wrote back in August but for some reason never posted

I went on my first business trip a couple weeks ago. It was nice. I got out of the office (Well, I got out of one and went to another.), I got to wear casual clothes, I got to move around a bit (We sorted through and moved two hundred-some boxes of files.), and I got to stay in an expensive (by my standards) hotel for a few nights. All in all, it wasn't a bad experience. So, I'm actually looking forward to the copious amounts business traveling I will be doing in the next few months. [Author's Note: Now, a few months later, I look forward to sleeping in my own bed for a few days in a row.]

This talk about my job reminds me that I haven't mentioned on this blog what it is exactly that I do (nor have I mentioned it in person to some of you). So, here's a little bit about my job:

I work at a the headquarters of a large law firm in downtown Kansas City, one of the biggest in KC, in fact. No, I'm not a lawyer. (If I could turn a B.A. in English into a five-year degree, think how long it would take me to get a law degree!) I work in the Records Department. My title is 'Records Analyst' which isn't a job description at all and means just about nothing.

What I 'analyze' is the firm's record management system (RMS, if you're hip to the lingo) -- the software we use to track records, the policies and procedures we've made to govern record use, creation, and disposition according to the law, and the staff that handles records daily.

Further than just analyzing the system, I also perform quality control. I help test and update the software we use to make sure it is doing what we want it to. I try to field questions from both Record and legal staff on how to properly handle records. I find and repair lost or inaccurate data.

In addition, I teach new staff what the Records Department does, how the RMS functions, and how to use the software. I am also supposed to be developing and rewriting the existing educational material, but, what with my other duties and traveling to the satellite offices, I've found very little time to work on that.

An odd caveat about my job, though, is that I work with one of my once-and-present roommates. It is strange riding to work, sharing a cubicle wall, having lunch, being in meetings, riding home, eating dinner, and watching movies, all with him. We spend more time with each other than any two humans should. But we've managed to not hate each other, yet. [Well, maybe just a little bit of hate.]

Overall, it's an interesting job. It keeps me busier that my previous job, and is much more thought-provoking than the job I had before that. Hopefully, I'll keep this job longer than current record of six months. [Well, it's been six months now, and I haven't quit.] I think it will be much easier, though. The duties I have are varied, from mundane data entry to helping identify and solve system-wide problems. There is always something to keep me occupied. [And there is always something to keep me annoyed.]

The Source of Evil

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

--Joseph Conrad

Take What You Deserve

What people are given and what they deserve is grossly disproportional.

What people deserve and what they have is roughly equivalent.

Screw Starving Children

I wish there was a charity that I could donate money to to prevent Diane Keaton from making any more movies. If we all contributed, we could see the end of her estrogen-enduced, weepy vag-fests in our lifetime.

Sometimes I imagine that the only thing keeping Ms. Keaton moving around and talking are her ovaries. I'm not sure what keeps her career alive, though.

Drama!

There was apparently some hullabaloo about a recent post by new blogger-friend, Robb Olson. I was asked to weigh in on the topic, so I wrote this all-too-long response.

What to Read

If you've ever found yourself at a loss for what to read next, you should join Goodreads. You can use it to track all the books you want to read and all of them you've read. And, if they join, you can also peruse your friends' lists of books they've read, along with their ratings and reviews, to help you decide whether or not to read that old classic that you've always been meaning to read or discover a new book that you've never heard of.

I suppose, if you were clever, you could also look through a friend's list of books marked "to read" to get good ideas of what to get him as a gift, say for Christmas or maybe his birthday next year or maybe just because he's a good friend.

Sad Admission

I love whole milk. It is obviously the most superior of milks. I think 2% doesn't have enough of a milk taste, and skim milk might as well be water with white food coloring. And soy milk? Don't get me started on this lactose-lacking, faux-milk wannabe!

I find no shame is proselytizing for whole milk, and I ignore those detractors who claim that I "might as well be drinking cream." All other milks just won't cut it; they will not sate my milky appetite.

However, I was just reminded how much I like cereal with soy milk. The Magster is lactose-intolerant and chugs soy milk like it was Gatorade, so that's all she has available. I usually scoff at this mockery of milkiness. But poured over my cereal it is quite delicious.

KC Renaissance Festival 2007

catch a dandy ...

I uploaded pictures from this year's Renaissance Festival. Of note are these photos:

• rawr 1
• surrender the booty
• kansas city in the distance 2
• bugs 1

Wise Words from a Wise Man

If you're going to waste your time, at least jack off.

--Jaysix Usaustin

Wrestling Is Fake

I watched several episodes of A Haunting the other day with The Magster. Each episode of the show is a re-enactment of a "real" haunting, interspersed with interviews of the people that experienced it. I watched an episode about a family whose house was a portal to the netherworld. Another episode was about a couple struggling to keep their marriage together while living in a haunted house.

It was all very interesting to me, but The Magster seemed a little confounded by my enjoyment of the show. I'm sure this is for one or more of several reasons:

• She hates scary stories, scary movies, scary pictures, scary thoughts, and the scary faces I make at her.
• I often make fun of her infuriatingly horrible taste in television as she watches America's Next Model, so she wanted revenge.
• I, as a person who scoffs at any conclusion not made by deductive reasoning or by using the scientific method, contrarily lap up these improbable stories of the fantastic.

I am to spooky tales of the supernatural the equivalent of what WWE fans are to wrastlin. No professional wrestling fan (over the age of 7) actually believes the combatants are truly fighting; they don't have to believe it's true to enjoy it. They enjoy it because they like the storylines, the machismo, the occasional scantily-clad woman, and the stylized violence.

Similarly, I enjoy watching pseudo-documentaries on the paranormal, not because I particularly believe that they're true, accurate interpretations of unusual goings-on, but rather because I enjoy being creeped out by the possibility of them being true.

I also enjoy stories about aliens and bigfoot. I think the probability of them existing is minimal, but I enjoy the stories anyway because it's fun to believe them, even just for a little while. And, seriously, wouldn't it be sweet to see a ghost bigfoot from outer space?

Anyway, if you don't believe in spirits and such, watch this convincing ghostly video, and see if it doesn't change you're mind.

Never Wear a Brown Belt with a Black Bible

I think the Bible Belt should be renamed something like the Cravat of the Willfully Ignorant.

Pope Benedict XVI: That's Not a Dunce Cap

This Christian fundamentalist seems to actually have some sense!

Accidentally Artistic

Union Station

In addition to pictures of Mel's wedding, I've also uploaded some random pictures from the last two months. I tried to get artistic with some of them. And by that I mean that I'm taking undo credit because some of my snapshots didn't turn out nearly as cluttered and haphazard as my pictures usually do. So, here are the rare gems:

• purple flower at dusk
• two purple flowers at dusk
• bridesmaids through a wine glass
• shutter-fucked

Stellar Wedding

Hands

I finally uploaded all of my photos from Matt and Mel's (now Mrs. StellarTaylor) wedding.

You can see me in action as a bridseman, check out some crazy dancing, hotel partying, and the coolest wedding cake topper ever.