This is only a test. Had this been a real emergency, you would have read a decent blog entry with more information and (hopefully) some humor… technically, I guess this is a “real emergency”—I have to write a paper for a class that’s coming up in 13 hours, so I don’t have time for a decent blog entry. This is only a test…
Taking candy from unemployed babies
I try not to delve into politics too often on here—I’ve seen enough on TV and the Internet to know that it usually only leads to closed minds and closed fists. However, there’s a video I saw online recently that I think a lot of people have been misinterpreting.
I consider Michelle Bachmann… I wouldn’t know where to start. I have no idea where she comes up with her personal or political ideology and she’s a complete whackjob as far as I can tell. How she’s been elected into the House of Representatives multiple times is beyond me. That being said, this is one of the most recent soundbites for which she’s being vilified:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsMrd6YpUFEThe negative reaction I’ve read on the Internet (and the title of the video on YouTube, for that matter) is that Michelle Bachmann doesn’t want people to eat! She thinks poor people should starve to death! More food for the rich! EEEEEEEVILLLL!!!! Well, maybe that’s blowing it a bit out of proportion, but you get the idea.
My interpretation of the speech is that she’s being pretty straight-forward: Lazy people shouldn’t be given handouts. If you’re willing to put in a solid day’s work, you should receive a solid day’s pay. That’ll put food on the table and it’ll help the economy or whatever she was trying to promote during her speech. It’s an honorable sentiment, but it’s also incredibly naive.
There are plenty of people out there who can’t put food on the table. Some are indeed very lazy, but some have been laid off, some can’t find work, some are underemployed… honest to God, I’ve heard of a lawyer who needed government assistance (I don’t remember if it was food stamps, welfare or both) because she did so much pro bono work and rarely got paid by her clients. Just because people want to work doesn’t automatically mean they can work, so if Bachmann gets elected and slashes funding for some of those programs, want-to-be-hard-working people may go to sleep hungry at night.
Is there a good solution? Hell if I know. I haven’t looked at any charts or diagrams or statistics to show me anything about the current economic situation. Not that they’d actually show me anything—ever hear the quote about “lies, damn lies and statistics”? What I do know is that if we’re going to start solving some of these problems, people are going to have to take off their blinders and look at everything, not just what they want to look at based on their political affiliation. Open eyes, open minds, open hands? Just a thought.
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Systems theory = shit happens
Systems theory is the subject of the hour (because this is the hour when I’m doing homework… or at least the hour when I’d be doing homework if I wasn’t writing a blog entry). Basically, everything is related to everything else in some form. Ever hear of the butterfly effect? Six degrees of Kevin Bacon? We may not know how each thing connects to the other—what the interactions might be—but ultimately, you can always find a chain that leads from one point to another and all of those chains can relate back to their source (albeit by different means). Consider:
In baseball, Alex Rodriguez hits lots of home runs for the New York Yankees. Hitting lots of home runs leads to a bigger paycheck. A bigger paycheck gives A-Rod more money to buy steroids. More steroids leads to him hitting more home runs. It’s a reinforcing cycle that will probably only end when he retires. Or if George Steinbrenner runs out of money, which ain’t gonna happen, so probably when A-Rod retires.
So there are reinforcing relationships and then there are balancing relationships. In politics, Democrats and Republicans almost never accomplish anything for the sake of the citizens. The citizens don’t like what one party does, so they elect members of the other party. Nothing gets accomplished after that, so they elect members of the other party and the cycle continues. It’s a balancing relationship that leads to stasis, not progress. So maybe the title of this blog entry should be “Systems theory = shit doesn’t happen.”
I imagine there’s a long chain of potential factors as to why I don’t get my homework finished several days in advance, but this blog is probably one of them, so I should probably reinforce my relationship with my textbook and bury my nose back in it.
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Valor’s Kids is awesome!
And not just because I have a tiny role in the movie! (Mind you, it’s an animated film and I’m the voice of Viper Soldier 2, but still…)
Valor’s Kids is being screened on Thursday evening, which means I can’t be there because of school. However, I figure if I promote the movie on here, maybe I can get a couple people to take my place. It’s being done as a fundraiser for The WaZoo! Show, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with this mission statement:
The WaZoo! Show’s mission is to produce original video-based comedy shows for the general public while providing a fun and creative opportunity for members’ professional growth in the areas of writing, directing, editing, acting and post-production.
I’ve been a member for nine or ten years and it’s been a blast, but I don’t want to get off-track here. Part of the reason for the screening is to benefit WaZoo!; tickets are $5 apiece and $2 of that goes directly to the show (i.e., that amount is tax deductible).
And did I mention that the director is 15 years old? Hmmm… nope, doesn’t look like I did, so I’m mentioning it now. Kai Mariah started the project waaaaay back when she was 12 and put on the finishing touches earlier this year. I guess that between ages 12 and 15, you sometimes find things you want to change and/or improve upon. Go figure.
So if you’ve got 93 spare minutes and five bucks for a ticket (they’re only accepting cash) at 7:00pm this Thursday, November 10th, please honor Kai with your presence at the Plaza Maplewood Theater. Here’s the address with a link to Google Maps—you can get specific driving directions from there:
Plaza Maplewood Theater
1847 East Larpenteur
Maplewood, MN 55109
Title: Valor’s Kids
Time: 7:00pm start
Cost: $5 per ticket ($2 tax-deductible)
Why: Because it’s awesome
Oh, and if you’ve got a Facebook account, there’s an event notice that covers pretty much everything I’ve mentioned here. I wish I could see a bunch of you there, but since I’ll be in the middle of class, I hope Kai sees a bunch of you there instead.
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Temptation, thy name is Best Buy
I went out for dinner and a musical theater performance tonight with a couple friends and it was expensive. Not the dinner and theater part—that was pretty reasonable—the problem was with all the extra time we had before meeting at the restaurant.
I was carpooling with my friend and he wanted to pre-order the newest Call of Duty game that’s coming out this Tuesday. He was excited about it and we had about an hour to waste, so we went to Best Buy so he could get in his pre-order. That by itself would have been fine, but once he finished with that, we stayed in the store and I just knew that wasn’t going to be fine.
I ended up wandering around in the music section for the first time in a couple years, I think. I know it’s been a long time because I was walking through the aisles thinking, “I like this band… and this band… and this singer…” As I had those thoughts, my hands reached out—seemingly of their own volition—and grabbed the CDs off the shelves.
When we finally left the store and I regained my senses, I had a very large pile of music and a receipt showing a final tally of $135. Ouch. (Maybe if I pretend it’s a late birthday present to myself, I won’t feel quite as guilty. Maybe.)
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Sleeping days is better than sleeping forever
It’s starting to feel like I’m becoming nocturnal. Not necessarily by choice, mind you. I was ready for bed… I don’t want to say “fairly early”, but early enough that I’d get a decent night’s sleep before noon. For some reason, I couldn’t fall asleep. I felt wide awake, so I ended up surfing the internet for a couple hours until finally turning off my laptop and passing out.
If I was still working down in Faribault at that call center—30 minutes away—this kind of sleep pattern would kill me. Well, that or one of the pissed-off callers who kept yelling at me would deal with their frustrations by smothering me with a pillow. Either way, I’d be dead. Something tells me that even though I should be sleeping when it’s dark out, my current situation is probably better than that alternative.
