The Things...

After the next Academy Awards in March, we'll start seeing movies in contention for next year. I have not seen "Avatar" just yet, but I'd like to, because I'd be showing support for some quality filmmaking, as well as watching a good story. I saw "The Hurt Locker" and was definitely taken with it. Tough story, well done.

There are a few things I'd like to see changed in the movies going forward. Some tired, old items I could really do without, in theaters and TV.

Let's retire these things and see if we can keep the creativity flowing:

• Do we really need to have closeups of people drooling in their sleep?
• Stop with the ridiculous shots of guys in Speedos. It's been done to death
• Bodily-function humor. That stopped being funny in about the 3rd grade. Enough already
• Vomit. We get the point without sharing the whole experience

I'd like to see some scary movies that are actually scary, not just a compilation of cool special effects. Thrillers like "Silence of the Lambs" were such a great experience. Think about what goes into the story, not just how you can hang the ending in order to set up 300 sequels.

I know that my particular demographic isn't the most attractive to Hollywood, but there are some attempts in Hollywood to make a film like "Shutter Island" worthwhile for adults. I hope they can get a trend going: Well thought-out, written stories that are great from beginning to end. These kinds of films make for some great viewing.

I love movies, and have always considered them among my favorite pastime. I once was an avid collector of pop music, with a ridiculous amount of albums, tapes and CD's in my possession. I cannot remember the last time I bought a CD. I mostly pick and choose from single tracks on iTunes because I can't recall one entire CD I'd be enticed to own. I don't want this to be the case with films.

Driving Through Church

I wouldn't normally think of driving on the highway in the same frame as going to Church. Although with all the busy people out there leading such busy lives these days, can Drive-Thru Mass be next?

I digress.

I've come to realize that Sunday Mass and a Sunday Drive are opportunities to see a lot of what's gone wrong with us. Really!

First off, where is the hell is everyone going in such a friggin hurry? Speed limits are a thing of the past, I know that, but why the hell does everyone need to drive like they're escaping a tidal wave?

And if you want to see where courtesy has gone, just watch roadway etiquette these days. I've seen people who'd rather die than let someone merge in ahead of them. It might hold them up 15 seconds to let the guy in, but then what would one do to make up that lost quarter-minute. Good god no!

Used to be, if you were one of those idiots who insisted on latching on to the left lane like Bin Laden to a cave, you were open to tailgating and flashing lights. Now all you have to do is be on the road. HEY, GET OUT OF MY WAY! I'M A BUSY GUY YA KNOW!

Being a rude, idiot driver makes no logical sense. But yet...

And Church...Sitting through a service these days is a test of human endurance. I watched a woman come into Mass recently, carrying a Starbucks bag. She proceeded to unwrap a coffee and I what I believe was a blueberry muffin and eat it during the Mass. And seeing a moron on a cellphone during a Mass is so commonplace these days that it's barely worth mentioning.

People show up dressed in their Sunday Worst; they show up whenever they want. At Sunday's Mass, the priest was wrapping up after Communion and there were still nitwits showing up. My friend, the Future Criminal, was there today, tormenting his parents. I'm not sure what the fuss is, though, because he was no more disruptive than a typhoon. But people don't remove obnoxious children anymore because people assume it's their right to inflict their little Plagues on the rest of society unimpeded.

And I think nothing says it better than what I experience first-hand these days. While I'm hardly a helpless cripple, I am sufficiently handicapped to the point that I must walk a bit slowly, and with a cane. More than once, recently, I've been shoved past by someone on their way into Church. I can't walk too quickly, but I can still fight, and my handicaps provide me with a nice heavy weapon. But my Christian upbringing was at least good enough that I know it's not a good thing to club someone on the Church steps. Even ignorant morons who don't realize how lucky they are that we are, in fact, on hallowed ground.

Anyway, I'm finished with my amateur pyscho-babble.

What's your take?

Respect?

It's something I hear all the time: people demanding respect. Oh they want it, demand it, do everything but earn it.

Somehow, in this society we've been transformed into thinking that we can get pretty much anything we want if we yell loud enough, or are obnoxious enough or just plan anti-social, "Squeaky wheel gets the grease" type of thinking. But it's our own fault now, that we have to deal with these loud, annoying, half-witted morons. We've glorified them, made celebrities of imbeciles who should better be slapped and sent back home. We've allowed them to equate "attention" with "respect".

I think that's part of the reason we have so many people on medications. They're raised to believe they're entitled to anything they want, and when the real world catches up with that illusion, they need to medicate. It's not depression, or anxiety, it's "slap in the face". Let's face it folks, we have as many commercials encouraging self-medication as we do for laundry detergent.

And the same goes with the whole respect thing. There are so very few people I know who've actually earned my respect. There are a lot of people who have my attention, or get it; there are a lot of people I might even like, but not a whole lot on my list for those I respect.

I don't equate respect with power, either. Powerful people in this country seldom earn their positions anymore. Power is bought and sold (particularly in NJ) like a cheap commodity these days; respect is like platinum in my view. In fact, the people I respect the very most are not what we'd typically consider people of "power". They've gained respect by acting respectful and being respectable.

Being respectable: it's a pretty simple concept. It's the best way to earn respect.

Ad-on

I'm just curious about something.

We've all become too familiar with Internet advertising. In particular, the ads that pop "under" the page you're currently viewing, rather than pop "up". I see ads for Screen Savers and the like, whenever those pop "under".

What I'm curious is, has anyone ever actually made a purchase in response to an unsolicited ad that appeared on your screen? Not just screen savers, but any product at all?

Nothing is the New No?

Is it just me or have manners gone completely the way of the wind...all gone. Is there no decorum anymore at all? I'm not talking about occasional bouts of rudeness, I'm talking about an entire segment of our population going without any kind of social mores at all anymore.

If my Grandmother asked me if I wanted any steak & kidney pie when I was a kid, I simply said, "No, thank you." I didn't go and hide and hope she would go away. If someone called to ask me a question, I answered the phone and answered the question. I assume it was the same way for most of you, too.

We've scheduled a number of interviews lately. We made the appointments on the phone, and confirmed the times and *poof*, they simply don't show up. No call, no contact. Any attempt to follow up is met with complete silence. Is it cowardice, maybe? Are we becoming a culture of spineless jellyfish? For all the bravado about how "we" don't take crap from anyone, "we" are not afraid of anything, I see a lot of gutless behavior these days.

A friend was having a charity dinner. She sent out invitations to a pretty large group of people, with the usual RSVP request. 80% of the people she invited simply said nothing. No response at all. What happened to simply saying, "Sorry, I can't make it,"?

I don't do anything important via email or text because people conveniently "don't get" those messages. I call or see the people face to face. But that also led me to learn that people lie. Why? No one is threatening them, coercing them.

But what happened to people to make them adopt this "I'll just hope everything goes away" posture? Where did integrity go?

Believe me, if someone asks me to do something I don't want to, or cannot do, I say so. I don't string people along, and I certainly don't just ignore their requests.

Have any of you seen this behavior?

Wow

I sometimes wonder if these maniacal reactions we see from people, when they're faced with disappointment, really are an indication of some sort of mental disability, or just another sign that we're doing a really lousy job raising our offspring.

When people aren't equipped to handle situations, they either fight or flee. Maybe we can add "totally freak out" to the occasion. There have been a slew of movies like "Fatal Attraction" the past few years, but they don't have the same appeal or attraction because a lot of us know people like that. Still scary, just not so unusual.

They had a series of raffle drawings for the kids the other night at my church. Just pulling tickets for a bunch of toys, etc, no big. But when they finished and announced the last prize, I saw three different examples of just what I'm talking about. There was one boy, big enough to know better, who absolutely threw a fit because he hadn't won anything. He began flinging the folding chairs as he stormed out of the gym. Another girl, also big enough to know better, began to scream and cry that she "wanted something", refused to leave or quiet down, and essentially had to be dragged out by he mother. The last one was another boy who was a little young, so I'm going to pass on that one. Future psycho will suffice.

Life disappoints sometimes. We don't always get first prize. It might be a good idea to stop the BS of the last 20 years and start informing our little charmers that no, not everyone wins every times. It sounds like common-sense thinking, but I'm starting to believe common sense isn't so common anymore.

The "better" we get as people, the worse off we seem to be. Unrealistic expectations only increase the bad feelings that come about when disappointment hits. Soft-soaping, sugar-coating, rationalizing, it all sucks in my opinion, because the first time these charmers get hit, they're down for the count, and it's up to the rest of us to pick up the slack.

That's ungood, to say the least, huh?

Very Corny

Now that it's becoming more apparent that the Ethanol Mandate is probably going to go away, The Corn People are going to have to stop trying to shove their product in our tanks.

So now they're looking to start shoving it down our throats instead. How funny is this site?

So Here We Are...

I can't believe how fast time goes by when you're not checking the clock. I don't want to write all that stuff about "how busy" I am, I've been, because sometimes that sounds like you're trying to make a hero out of yourself, when in reality, it's more likely that I'm just a lousy time manager.

Another year has gone by since my friend took her life. I liked to write about her every year, and I missed that opportunity this time around. I promise her a beautiful, lengthy memorialization next year.

I'm making a go of the new career. I'm not knocking the cover off the ball by any means, but I am following the right path, it seems. I just attained my first promotion. The promotion doubled my pay scale, so that means it really matters. I look at my kids, every night. Every single night. And while they are lying there sleeping, it reminds me of just how much they depend on me, and also reminds me of the responsibility I absolutely have to to live up to. So there's no time for the "victim" mentality. Things took a wrong turn, and I was feeling wronged. Yeah, and that will buy about half a cup of coffee and little else.

So that means a lot of hours, a lot of work, a lot of aggravation. And only a little blog time. It's funny how much you can miss that.

Some other things I miss:

• Music. Music I looked forward to driving to; music I couldn't wait to buy. This isn't the lamentations of an old fool looking for the Beatles to come back. I was always a huge Popular Music fan, very progressive, always on top of the latest. What we're being fed now is crap. Pure, adulterated techno-tweaked garbage. I can't wait for the next "movement."


• French Fries. Fresh sliced potatoes (ok maybe frozen, alright?), deep fried in vegetable oil. And that's it. No sprayed-on seasoning (I'll do that myself pal)and better yet, no sprayed-on starch or whatever the hell that gunk is. It turns the fries into finely seasoned styrofoam. Yuck, barf, whatever you want to interject there. Gimme potatoes and oil and maybe some salt. I'll worry about my own arteries.


• Human face-to-face conversations. You know, the ones that aren't interrupted by cellphone calls. See, if we're chattin', and that call comes and is more important, that's your prerogative. But I'm done and I'm walkin'. These damned things have become like baby pacifiers for grownups. People can't seem to be off them for more than a minute. Technology isn't always great, I guess. I see them lining up outside Walmart every morning here, so they can get inside and start making their cell calls. Just friggin' stupid, in my opinion.

So what else is going on...? I don't think my interest in a Presidential election has ever been this low at this point. I hope it gets a little more engaging before November. I don't want another vote of mine to be cast for the lesser of two evils.

Oh, and, I think giving someone a "self-help" book is somehow contradictory, don't you? There's a group of folks I spend time with, and lately they've been on this whole "improvement" kick. I don't think that's bad at all. Heck, none of us is a finished product. But one of the ladies was talking about it, how she was going to fix a lot of things about herself. She then listed all these traits, habits, etc., about all these other people, and how they annoy her. And while she stated that she was going to be sure not to do any of those things herself, I couldn't help but think there was just one more correction she might want to consider, you know?

Hmmm...I'm also having a problem with the commercials from the drug companies lately. There's one where the woman is discussing an asthma drug, but she's a silhouette. You can't see her face or anything. She's like a spectre. Kinda like those idiotic Charles Schwab commercials, where they turned everyone into cartoon characters. And this other commercial, for some fibromyalgia medicine; they have probably the most annoying woman I've ever encountered as the spokesperson. I wonder if that's how they cross-market drugs? You'll need to buy the company's tranquilizer after a few viewings of the fibro drug commercial.

Oh alright, it's not all bad, ok? I'm just letting loose a little. I would love to ask you this: Is being feminine and exclusive trait? I mean, if a woman is all feminine, pretty and elegant, does that somehow detract from her other qualities? If she has pretty hair, can she not be smart and strong? Is femininity a bad thing to admire?

I'll leave ya with that. My many self-improvement categories include one for talking to much. I'm working on it.

Brain Seeds

Lots of idiocy to talk about, I'd rather just sow it all right here in one article.

One of the kabillion things that annoy me is this: I really don't mind doing laundry. Really. What I don't like is the fact that when everything is washed and dried, it needs to be folded. And what bugs me there is, as I go through the basket, everything is inside out. Everything, every time.

Enter The Genius. In an effort to combat this time-wasting problem I devised a strategy: as I took my clothes off this week, I would turn everything inside out. Only took a few seconds a day.

So today was the day I hit the washer. Everything in, inside out. And then into the dryer. I brought my smug, righteous self down to the dryer when I heard the buzzer, prepared to be all proud of my ingenuity. I grabbed the clothes in one heap, dumped them in the basket, and carried them to the table to fold.

And there, lo and behold, was every garment. Inside out.

I give up.

And there was a damned sock missing, too.

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10 3/4 ounces of canned corn doesn't seem like much. Unless you drop that can on your foot, and you don't have a shoe on when you do that. Then it's a Sherman tank.

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The Idiots at Blogger still think I'm a Spam-bot. I have to do one of those idiotic word verifications every time I want to Blog. Maybe if I go there and shake one of the losers around like a windsock, they'll get the idea that this is at least a humanoid?

The funny thing is, I have another Blog here on Blogger, and I saw that a bot had posted an entry there.(I think Nancy saw that, right?) So for all the bullshit precautions these morons take, the Bots still get their work done. And humans have to do word verifications.

If they don't fix it by August, I'm shutting down and Blogging elsewhere.

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I'm going to miss the late, great George Carlin and his humor. Funny guy.

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Curious...

I just wonder about something. When one gets hired to go to work on a Tech Support desk, do they take you inside and do something to your brain?

I mean, imagine you are choking on a chicken bone...you race to the hospital and when you get there, they treat you by handing you a book of chicken recipes.

That's really the level of response that seems to come back every time I contact a "Help" desk.

I once thought about becoming a Help Desk Analyst. I figured I'd have to be studying a long time before qualifying for that job.

Maybe not?

Hillaryyyyyyyyyyyy

So Hillary Clinton, that Standard of Righteousness and Honor, apparently didn't get the facts quite right about a little visit to Bosnia. She told people that her aircraft made a "corkscrew landing", and that she and her party had to run off the plane under sniper fire. Well, the film footage shows events a little differently than she described. As in, no corkscrew landing, no running (in fact she was seen posing for pictures with different groups, including a bunch of 7th grade girls) and no sniper fire.

I keep reminding myself that this woman is supposed to be honorable.

This whole thing is like me recounting my tale of falling off Mount Everest, when the truth is, I rolled out of bed onto the floor.

Pants on fire?

The Things We Don't Think Of?

A friend posted an entry about her laptop going on the fritz. She was ok with it, because she was covered by a warranty. However, she was told that it would be up to 3 weeks before the work would be done.

That happens a lot. No matter what you want to get done these days, "3 weeks" seems to be a magic number. It takes approximately 12 hours to build a computer, start to finish. The whole thing. So what exactly goes on there that it takes them 3 weeks to replace 1 part?

Someone suggested, however, that the 3-week period is caused by the sheer volume of repairs. Yayyy, there's a great advertisement for your product, huh? "Our Stuff Breaks Down by the Thousands!"

I noticed something else that has me curious. I needed to buy something for my kid's science project, and the product (a very simple item) was tagged with "ships in 2 to 4 weeks".

So, when an order hits the warehouse, do they print it out and tie it to a snail? I mean, the dumbest guy I know could take an order off a printer and find the item in less than a week. I think about the actual dynamics, you know? What happens between today and 4 weeks from now, you know, like step-by-step?

And don't get me started on the whole "Same Day Service" thing...

Moronism

You wait until you get home from the supermarket to inspect that carton of eggs, only to find you now have a dozen pre-scrambled eggs.

Makes you feel like a moron, right?

Like it or not, we all have a little bit of "moron" in us. It can't be helped - it just happens. We've all locked the keys in the car (me), or forgotten where we parked that car in a 10,000-car parking lot (me, regularly), or paid $2000 for Hannah Montana concert tickets (not me, not this time!). Moronism is everywhere, (just take a look around the next time you're driving on the highway) and it can't always be avoided. It's part of our nature. Some of us have a little extra share of moron going on, but those folks are typically holding a political office, or acting as CEO's of major corporations that lose countless billions on things like bad mortgages. We all make boo-boo's, and "moron" is the word you use insted of the one that will get your mouth washed out with soap. And like that other word, "moronism" happens, you know?

Sometimes though, moronism is a passive thing. Something happens that we have no control over. I stood at an ATM the other night, and after answering the 40-page questionnaire, I waited as the machine began the process of dispensing my cash. I waited, and waited. I could hear the machine whirring and whirling, and I figured one of two things was going to happen: 1) the machine was going to tell me it was out of order, or 2) I was about to receive $3 million in singles. I felt like a moron, but it really wasn't my fault, you know? (and the outcome was Number 1, I'm not a new millionaire)

• Note: moronism should not be confused with insanity. Moronism is wearing your shoes on the wrong feet three days in a row; insanity is repeatedly trying to get useful assistance from the Microsoft Help Website.

While people don't like to admit out loud that moronism is a lot more prevalent than we'd care to know, we do acknowledge its existence. It's why we have to post a speed limit of 40 mph so people will slow down to 90. Or why television advertisers have to flash that "Do not attempt this at home" warning when they have crazy stunts in their commercials.

We all have it in us, it's just a fact of life. So tonight, when you take off your shoes to see one yellow sock and one green one, remember...it may be moronic, but, you're not alone.