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You Better Watch Out

I went to see an Expressions show tonight in downtown Lakeville, mostly because three of the actors in this play were also in Mind Over Matt. I had a good time, it was cool seeing the guys again and a bunch of us had fun chatting at Applebee’s afterward. However, I had a question for the director about the end of one scene that took him completely by surprise.

It took place on Christmas Eve at a bed and breakfast with a handful of people staying there, one of whom was Santa Claus. The owners had invited her father for the holiday, he had turned into a big old grouch when his wife died and Santa wanted to instill the Christmas spirit back into him. During the first act, we see the wife and her dad continue a family tradition of lighting candles, putting them on the mantle of the fireplace, then letting them burn until they go out on their own.

An actual tradition I’ve never heard of before—the director told me about it at Applebee’s—is turning down the lights before blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Thus, at the end of a scene (after the candle lighting), one guy looks around, turns down the lights, starts quietly singing “Merry Christmas To Me” to the tune of “Happy Birthday”, then blows out the candles and leaves the room.

A very important note about the stage setup: the light switch is behind the coat tree. To turn the lights down so he could blow out the candles, he had to reach through a bunch of coats. When he did, one of them moved. Then he walked away from the coats singing “Merry Christmas To Me”. Basically, what I saw was this guy singing because he just gave himself a Christmas present: a wallet that was in someone’s jacket pocket. And boy, if that was Santa’s jacket, you’re damn right you better watch out.

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Merry Christmas! Love, Walmart!

Today, I decided I want to hunt down the Walmart executives and strangle them with Christmas lights. Why? Because they’re continually moving the winter holidays forward. Perhaps they weren’t the ones who started playing Christmas music in October, but they’re the ones responsible for the pain in my stomach when I was reading the paper this afternoon. (I sincerely doubt it was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich…)

On the front page, there were a few paragraphs about Best Buy now accepting electronics with screens for free where they used to charge people ten bucks. It attracted my attention because I have an old computer from the 90s that doesn’t communicate with other computers anymore. Seriously. I’ve tried to put stuff in the USB ports and the old computer doesn’t understand what the hell the thing is, just that it’s being violated. So now it’s all unplugged and sitting in my room: tower, keyboard, mouse and big monitor.

The paper said the article continued on another page, so I delved into the business section, read the last few paragraphs, then looked at the other page and discovered how Walmart is celebrating Thanksgiving this year. They were the first ones to start Black Friday at midnight. This year, they will be the first ones to start Black Friday before Friday. On Thursday at 10:00pm, they will begin selling toys and clothes, then everything else starting at midnight.

I cannot insert enough curse words to explain my frustration. This reminds me of the late night TV struggles a year or two ago when NBC wanted to push The Tonight Show back to 12:05am, meaning it would technically be The Really, Really Early Show. Things ended poorly there, but in Walmart’s case, no one’s going to stop them. No one can stop them. They’re a retail monster. Hell, this’ll probably get other companies to start opening on Thursday just to stay competitive. Regardless, if they ever start playing Christmas music before my birthday—October 19th—I’m gonna hunt down some Walmart executive and teach my old monitor how to communicate with his head.

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This is only a test…

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…

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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=DsMrd6YpUFE

The 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.