Brad Bird Part Deux

Note: Believe it or not I wrote most of this entry over a year ago and then saved it as a draft. I completely forgot about it until I was reviewing old unposted blog entries and found it sitting there. However, the rant is still apt and can be applied to lots of situations: It is too late to rant a lot or say much of anything, so just a short one. Tonight, I watched Iron Giant, Brad Bird's 1999 WB release. You can see where he started out experimenting with a lot of the stuff he did in The Incredibles. Iron Giant is, on its own, a great movie too. But, that makes things terribly frustrating. Primarily for "The Incredibles", but also for "Iron Giant", I see a lot of teen and twenty-somethings braying about how they are all "overrated" and even going so far as to say they suck. Odd, since I thought Lizzy McGuire and The Princess Diaries pretty much sucked, being that they were teen feely-goody recycled crap. There is nothing original in these reused Wonderful World of Disney / ABC Afterschool Special loads of manure. I hate to say it, but they show their complete lack of experience and knowledge of pop-culture of their childhood when they rag on The Incredibles. The whole movie is spoof, an homage - that is the point. Then, watch out if you call them on it, because you will get a double barrelled load of immature insecurity and angst launched back at you. One dipshit actually put me on ignore on the IMDB because he was losing a debate, making himself look like an ass, and blaming ME for it. It was hilarious. I remember being that age. I don't ever remember being LIKE that at that age though. The things kids have today as reference sources are astonishing, however, they seem to think that because all of this stuff has been around for over 10 years now they are somehow more "worldly" than the real adults in the world, you know, the ones who have been around for more than 2 decades... Wow, I cannot believe I am saying this, I really AM old. If you don't get The Incredibles and you are between 13 and 29, then forget it. Otherwise I have to tell you to go watch all the Moore/Connery James Bond movies, the original Star Wars trilogy, and every hero/superhero and sci-fi movie made before 1990. Then I have to go tell you to get off the Internet and read a book. A comic book, that is. Because if you don't get the Watchmen, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Batman Marvel, DC and myriad of other references (aside from the obvious that you have to be in some way mentally deficient to not understand a comic book) then you won't get something like The Incredibles any more than you would "get" a movie about Shakespeare without knowing who Shakespeare was. Just because the Internet has been around since you were a teen or a kid does NOT mean you know everything.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?

Pamela Anderson has lost her fight with the Kentucky state government. What was this epic struggle about? She (as part of her PETA “activism”) demanded that they remove the bust of KFC founder Harland Sanders from their Capitol building. Although arguably she may be an expert on the removal or replacement of busts, let’s put aside this is a Canadian born “actress” who has made her living on the fact that she gave a beer company executive a woody during a CFL game… and does not live anywhere NEAR Kentucky, nor have anything to do with the state… we won’t even get into the other astonishing MYOFB aspects of it... Her statement about Kentucky Fried Chicken, her “raison d’etre” in this conflict, is that KFC is a company "that mutilates God's creatures". Perhaps the hypocrisy would be easier to take coming from someone who:

1. Hasn’t had numerous plastic surgery procedures, installing and removing implants and so on
2. Doesn’t have tattoos covering any percentage of their skin
3. Didn’t make movies like “Barb Wire” and so on, involving violent portrayals of killing PEOPLE

Who the fuck does she think she is exactly? Possibly one of the greatest living examples of the celebrity penchant for “mutilating” themselves with surgery and “mutilating” people by committing assault and murder is telling the home state of one of the more successful businesses in the western world that they can’t pay tribute to a man who helped bring their state out of obscurity and made it into a household name? Oh wait, I get it, she doesn’t consider herself one of “God’s creatures”. She only believes in “God” when it is convenient to her whacked-out PETA agenda. Shall we even get into the number of “chickens choked” thanks to the thousands of males who viewed her Playboy pictorials or homemade porn movies? Oh, Pam… please stick to mutilating your own body and don’t worry about what might happen in the production of those covered with traditional 11 herbs and spices. We’re all heartbroken to know you don’t eat greasy, disgusting KFC (Please note: This does not mean I have any endorsement for KFC, nor do I agree with the way they treat livestock – it is the hypocrisy of Ms. Plastic Breasts that I find amusing). Now STFU.

Nooooooooooooooooo...........

House of Crap buys Bastion of Brilliance...   I guess it makes sense in a way, considering the only decent thing to be distributed by Disney in the last 10 years has been anything done by PIXAR. Since they were in danger of losing that source of revenue, they more or less had to buy it.   On the bright side, it means we will probably get movies like The Incredibles 2. Unfortunately, it will be a direct-to-video release piece of crap with no remnants of the original voice cast, director, or brilliance.   I think I just threw up in my mouth a little...

Ban Stupidity, Not Baby Walkers

I've seen this once before, but today it was emailed to me by my Mom. I just thought it belonged here as an expression of EXACTLY how screwed up our "western culture" has become...   TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's:  First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. We rode in cars with no car seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.  We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.  We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on (or when dad whistled). No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.  We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.  We did not have Playstation, Nintendo, X-box, or home computers - no video games at all. No 99 channels on cable, no video tape or DVD movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no Internet or Internet chatrooms... but WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!  We fell out of trees, got cuts & bruises, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.  We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.  We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!  The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law (or a window) was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!  We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!  You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.  Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?

Can't Get No Satisfaction...

But... this could help...

Cognitive Dissonance

Ahhh, politics. Socially-sanctioned hypocrisy disguising itself as democracy. Here in Canada it is almost Election Day. Our elections don’t take place in the same way as some other countries. It is usually up to the government itself to call an election, or in the case of a minority government (as has happened this time) the opposition decides to make a motion of non-confidence in the government and force an election. I personally despise politics. Why? Because it brings out the worst in most people involved in it, even the most well-meaning people. I really believe that most politicians, no matter how morally bankrupt they may have become, started out with a genuine desire to help people. They really wanted to make things better. Problem is, once they got into the process, and the longer they are in it, the more they realise that they can’t help everyone. And, of course, that means they are left with 2 choices in those situations:

a) Be honest and say, hey, I can’t help you. Sorry. b) Tell them you WILL help them but then do diddly.

Human nature being what it is, choice a) leads to the thought that if they don’t help people, they won’t get re-elected and, depending on the person, either worries about losing the power of being in such a position or concerns about NOT being able to help at least some people any more. There is always a little bit of arrogance involved, I mean, most people are completely incapable of admitting that someone else might be able to do their job better. So, most politicians choose b). And once you start lying, it becomes really difficult to stop. You may not have meant it as anything but a little white lie to help someone feel better, but it still virtually ALWAYS leads to bigger lies as the pressure builds. It is the nature of the beast. I have found it astonishing over the last few days to see how selective memory plays a role in the mind of voters. Let me just preface any further comments with this: my political beliefs are quite libertarian. I honestly had no idea what that really meant until the last few years. I didn’t know there WAS a political view defined by how I felt. So, I am not a Liberal. I am not a Conservative, Progressive Conservative, or Reformer. I do not support or believe in the New Democratic Party of Canada. My views are not from my Progressive Conservative upbringing or inspired by religious beliefs that colour how I think OTHER people should behave. I believe we as a society should support the sick and elderly because compassion is critical, so there is a little bit of socialist in me – but the rest of the time I think that the government needs to leave well enough alone. So, here it is. I know that there are going to be lots of politically partisan hacks who will dispute my observations but this is how I have viewed the last 30-odd years of Canadian government. As a kid, I was surprisingly (disturbingly?) aware of what the government was doing – I remember getting pains in my stomach every time the Liberal government brought in a budget with a deficit in the 70s, knowing who EXACTLY was going to have to pay for all this borrowed money. Trudeau and the Liberals in the late 60s to early 80s basically created the national debt. Sure, we owed money as a nation here and there at times but for the most part, wiser budgeting then – instead of using overspending on social programs to attempt to buy elections – would have prevented much of what was to come later. It really was the Liberals who started the mess in the first place, at least for those in power in my lifetime. Good socialist ideas governments had implemented became what the voters EXPECTED, even demanded, to have. When the country came to its senses for a short time and elected a minority PC government in 1979 based on their promises to reign in the runaway spending, the Conservatives of Joe Clark blew it, showing that typical arrogance present in politicians. They handed power back to the Liberals in 1980, believing to the bitter end that they would just win a majority government in a new election to replace their minority. That led to 4 more years of Liberal financial irresponsibility. That led to more political backlash on the part of regular Canadians, leading to the election of the Brian Mulroney led PC party in 1984, in which they were given a HUGE majority - the 2nd largest in Canadian history. However, in spite of this mandate, the attempts by the Mulroney PCs to reduce the deficit were hindered by the fact that the Canadian Senate (which consists of political appointees who were largely from the party who had governed for the last 20 years) was dominated by Liberals who fought the conservative government at almost every turn. That is not to say that there were not problems with the PC party. After being out of power, many old-school Conservatives expected political patronage appointments for their years of loyalty to the party in opposition, and some got them. There were a few incidents which demonstrated that the Liberals were not the only party who liked to hand dollars over to their friends, but from my perspective the level of corruption was less a problem than the inability to impose controls and standards over their huge parliamentary majority. The 1988 election reduced that problem – the PCs still retained a comfortable majority (almost 60%) of the seats in the House of Commons and garnered over 43% of the popular vote because people hadn't yet forgotten the Liberal corruption and mismanagement of the previous decade. Then came the recession. It was not a CANADIAN recession, it was worldwide. However, there are still those who blame the Mulroney government for it. It is completely foolish to do so; all countries were in the same boat. If anything it was admirable that the PC party did not do what the Liberals did in the same situation – ignore it and spend more - but the cuts and changes they were making were difficult. As much as many voters CLAIM they don’t want to dump debt on their children, the fact is that almost the entire Baby Boomer generation has been raised with an attitude of entitlement so when it comes down to it they don’t want debt passed on to their children AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT COST THEM ANYTHING. At this time the Mulroney PCs also introduced the GST. The GST was NOT a new tax. No, you idiot, yes you, the one jumping up and down over there, it wasn’t. The GST is a 7% tax that replaced an 11-13% manufacturer’s tax. The manufacturer’s tax was applied on all goods manufactured in Canada which meant that Canadian exports were taxed before export, and therefore were more expensive than other countries goods right from the get-go, making us less competitive in the world economy. The GST is paid on all items whether of Canadian manufacture or otherwise equally. It is a fairer system. But – in one of the worst PR debacles in history - the PC party was unable to clearly convey this to Canadians. Of course, most of them weren’t listening – all they saw was that the government was taking 7% right at the cash register. MANY retailers took advantage of the situation, as well – in spite of the fact that the cost of what was being delivered to stores was reduced by the manufacturers tax, they did not roll back prices. Instead, many padded their profit margin by the 10%+ difference and then blamed the government. So, Canadians hate the GST. Never mind that it is fairer, it is a good excuse to bitch and piss and moan about what an asshole Mulroney is. Yeah, the same guy from Baie Comeau everyone loved, the same guy that was elected to 2 consecutive substantial majority governments – suddenly he is the most despised man in Canada. He resigns in 1993 because who really wants to be the most hated person in Canada? He drops the whole mess into the lap of the new PC leader Kim Campbell. Campbell was, to say the least, not exactly prepared and fumbled around like a tuna on a trawler. In spite of the fact that the PCs were finally in a position to balance the budget after their economic initiatives were working and get Canada back on track, the Liberals were elected in 1993. Not based on any level of competence or ability. Not because they were a different group of politicians who Canada had tossed out of office for corruption and mismanagement less than 10 years before. Oh, no. They were elected because they promised they would abolish the GST. Kim Campbell's floudering campaign and numerous gaffes didn't help any, either. The PC party was virtually obliterated, winning only 2 seats and losing official party status. Much of this was due to vote splitting, since the Reform party had appeared as a right-wing alternative and culled a substantial number of PC votes – but it was still largely because of the voter’s selective and short memory. Forget how much the Liberals had run the country into the ground from the 60s to the 80s; forget it was them who created the deficit in the first place – NOW they say they will get rid of that pesky GST. The Liberals didn’t balance the budget right away, nor did they eliminate the GST. They took 3 years longer to balance it that the Conservatives (or their own) projections, and they actually tried to fool us all by merging the GST with provincial taxes so they could say they got rid of it. In the end it was as much an improvement of the economy that led to balancing the budget as anything, something the Liberal’s actually had little to do with since it was the initiatives created in the PC years before, INCLUDING abolishing the MST, that were making Canada’s economy stronger. But, of course, it would not be politically astute to be honest and admit that you were handed the ball while you were already standing in the end zone. Just dance around like a fool screaming, "I scored! I rock!" The Liberal’s entire mandate over the last 12+ years has been rife with financial scandals and waste. They have cut funds going to the taxpayers and the provinces but continued to hand over funds to their cronies. They cancelled purchases initiated by the PC party but then spent TWICE AS MUCH to get half of what the PC deal would have delivered. They have repeatedly weathered controversies and disposed of MPs who have stood up for what is right, and despite any logical conclusion that they should be tossed out in the next election, keep getting returned to power. The level of greed, corruption, and entitlement has been astonishing, making the Mulroney government and even the Trudeau Liberals leadership look like that of Charlemagne, Churchill and Alexander the Great. Should I even get INTO the whole Mike Harris provincial PC thing? The fact is they were elected by the middle class based on the idea that they were going to kick all those lazy, good-for-nothing welfare collectors out into the job market and make them pay their own way. Yep, let’s cut down on government spending by victimizing the most vulnerable element, after all, they are the drain on our society. It never occurred to those voters that if those assholes were willing enough to take from the poor they would be MORE than willing to take from those who weren’t in need. He wasn’t elected only ONCE but TWICE. The thing is, they did EXACTLY what they said they were going to do. They were the most honest politicians to come along for ages. But now, selective memory has turned them into sleazy lying corrupt demons. No, folks, you elected them based on what they said they were going to do. They did exactly that. Then, the Liberals came along in the last election and lied to you and said they were going to do things better. So, you elected them. Even when it was obvious late in the campaign that they had no intention of following through with many of their promises, you elected them. Now you hate them for lying. But you hate the other guys before them for telling the truth and doing it, so honestly, what do you expect from politicians? Let’s sum it all up this way. The Liberals are the same Liberals they have been for over 30 years, provincially and federally. They have gleefully taken everything they could from taxpayers because we keep letting them. Every time someone notices this fact they employ the “Hey, look over there!” tactic and then run away. They are sleazy and corrupt and drunk from years of power. Their entire CAMPAIGN this election has been a smear campaign, citing half-truths and out-of-context quotes. They have lied and lied, and then, to cover the lies, they lie some more. The Conservative Party is, for all intents and purposes, a bunch of political rookies with no clue how to govern. There is nothing much left of the “old guard” of the PC party. Some of them are right-wing fundamentalist nitwits who have no place in the Canadian governmental system because they can’t grasp that we are a multicultural society with many different beliefs and values. Some of them are America-lovers who don’t understand Canadians for the most part do not WANT to be part of the U.S.A. The old green blood of the Reform Party runs through much of the Western portion of the new Conservatives, that same party that was caught on several occasions spouting bigoted and racist propaganda. They will trample on YOUR rights to do what you want to do because THEY don’t think you should do it, even if it is none of their business. That whole Charter of Rights thing is a big inconvenience to how they want to govern. The NDP is a bunch of clueless Union reps, who throughout their recent history have lost touch with reality: that‘s the one where if you run a company out of business trying to greedily get more and more for yourself, YOU NO LONGER HAVE A JOB; the same one where if you have a government job you are there to do the job, not to whine about how overworked you are and demand pay raises while all other taxpayers have to foot the bill. The New Democrat’s brand of socialism sounds nice to this disabled Canadian on the surface, but if you actually dig into what would be involved in implementing their ideas, you realise that all they are is a bunch of idealistic turd-polishers. All other parties involved aren’t even running enough candidates to govern even if they had ALL of them elected. So if you are trying to elect a government as opposed to a candidate, you must vote for the 3 fantastic choices above. So, honestly, where do you put your vote?

Get Out My Striped Suit, Dear...

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.   It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.   In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.   This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.   "The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."   Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called "Preventing Cyberstalking." It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy."

[Follow the title link for the rest of the article]   Wow.   I am going to do hard time. If I was American. Oh wait - aren't we all American? At least, when it comes to the law, that's what the USA thinks...   Obviously, they added the "real name" part so that Dubya would not be subject to doing hard time every time someone quoted him in a 'net article.

PWN3D!!!!

CNN... you assholes...   Let's review now, for those of you who failed journalism school, which appears to consist of your ENTIRE staff of high school dropouts:

As a reporter (or news agency), it is your job to VERIFY THE FACTS BEFORE you report them.

It is NOT your job to scoop everyone and get a FALSE story out first.  It is ALSO not your job to spend the next 24 hours after a tragedy trying to COVER YOUR ASS BECAUSE YOU FUCKED UP!!!!  Un-fuck-ing-be-liev-a-ble. 12 miners dead, and all you are worried about is who to blame because YOU DIDN'T DO YOUR FUCKING JOB RIGHT.  It is January 4, 2006. The clear winner, already, of asshole of the year, is CNN.  Also, understatement of the century, a quote from Anderson Cooper, who sums up the collective intellect of CNN:

"I'm completely stunned"

Oh, yes. You are!