My Own Private Tarrentino

My daughter found some app and has been making movies on the ipad.

They're surprisingly funny and good. Most involve an ongoing war at our house between the Kingdom of Calculators and the Kingdom of Oranges. I've noticed a continuing theme where the Oranges seems to get killed whenever the director is hungry and the calculators get killed right after math homework.

I've encouraged her to branch out and come up with an entry for a local " 60 second film festival". I told her to come up with a few scripts, we'll review them, and then I'll help her put a movie together for submission.

I came home from work last night to chaos. Apparently my daughter, excited, went into school and started recruiting classmates as actors and sharing her plot idea. Those kids, excited, went home and told their parents they were going to be in a movie. It all sound good, right ?

The working title of the movie...." Colored Girls".

Apparently its an examination of racial strife ( and fashion) in suburbia, as seen through the eyes of a 9 year old girl. And already there's quite a buzz about it.

the new math

4 days + 500 volleyball teams + 10 hours a day, + 350 miles traveled + 2 metro transfers each way + 9 14 year old girls, all on their period = no blog post today.

Actually the final part of the equation was pretty much enough.

On a positive tip

For all my ranting and complaining I have never lost notice that this country continues to provide tremendous wealth, opportunity, and freedom.

And in Lancaster/Central Pa we're especially fortunate to be surrounded by a beautiful landscape and a community that takes advantage of those benefits in some amazing and often simple ways.

As a reaction to the increase in domestic and world tension and division, I've noticed more people are dropping out. Sometimes it manifests itself in small ways, such as buying habits or choices in media consumption. Other times it takes form in more aggressive approaches...people homeschooling their kids or quitting their jobs.

And I don't mean to suggest that these folks are dropping out in some sort of fearful way, or that they're hostile or paranoid. I'm suggesting that they're coming to a realization that the "system" is bullshit, that it can't be beaten on its terms, but that the best way to beat the game is just not to play it. And once that's been realized, it brings with it great relief.

I outlined an example of that in a post that I made last year sharing the video of Johny Knoxville in Detroit.

Those example are popping up all around us closer to home.

They include places like Sterling Farm The Farm is run by a young couple with two kids who are organic farming on a County sponsored cooperative. They supply . 22-24 weeks of fresh, chemical-free produce for $450 for a full share/$250 for a half share.



There's Mike Wann. I guy who two years ago was a financial analyst disgusted with the system and inspired after helping his son with a kindergarten art project. That turned into THIS.

and this:



Even within the system we have companies such as Two Dudes Painting in Lancaster who contribute their space, money, time an influence to starting projects such as Lancaster Bike Works The idea is simple: create a bike repair shop, fill it with unclaimed bikes, and give youth in the city a great work experience, while providing some sort of bike library to the community. Check out a bike as needed, return it. Take your own bike to the shop for a repair, and help out around the shop for a few minutes in exchange.

And those example don't even touch on the churches and non-profits who have been quietly and selflessly maintaining this community for years without seeking any attention except for the causes and the people that they help. Places like Milagro House, Philhaven, and the Water Street Rescue Mission.

There is a balance between what's essentially entertainment and the real world consequences of national politics. But ultimately, I'm starting to realize that its our own actions and the relationships within out local communities where are energies are best served.

That being said, fuck Santorum. muahahaha.

Santorum

Santorum is against birth control because its harmful to women and society and because it encourages young married women to have sex out of marriage.

Somehow he overlooks the fact that there are, in fact, married women who use contraception. He might also be surprised to find that, with or without contraception, people have been having sex out of wedlock for quite a few years now.

Most ironic is the view women using contraception are " irresponsible".

The again, this is the same Opus Dei member who blamed Catholic priest raping boys on Harvard liberalism when he said it was "no surprise that the center of the Catholic Church abuse took place in very liberal, or perhaps the nation's most liberal area, Boston."

And he's the same guy who was proposing legislation limiting malpractice suits to $250,000 while his wife sued ( and he testified on her behalf) a chiropractor for $500,000. His excuse is that he doesn't always agree with his wife.

I'm less surprised that a self-serving douche like him runs for president than I am that he somehow garners the support and attention of more than 2% of the population.

Anyone have any idea on how easy it is to emigrate to Iceland ?

not to be a bummer...

...but its quite simple.

The decisions on how to best spend your tax dollars and how to manage this country are being made by a group of people ( meaning the lawyers and banks that support the candidates/politicians) who work within a different paradigm than you and I.

There's some saying that I can't remember, but goes along the lines of 'if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail'.

If you're a bank that deals in municipal bonds, then your solution to a budget deficit isn't to decrease the budget. Hell, your solutions isn't even to raise taxes. Your solution is to refinance the existing debt.

If you're a land sales attorney, your solution is to have the municipality sell of their assets ( ie privatization of the turnpike, or sale of the incinerator)

I tend to think that the world isn't nefarious as much as its pragmatic. Everyone works in their own self interest.

The balance to this is supposed to be the voting booth. Instead of the being beset upon by the lobbyist, the politicians are supposed to be lobbyist themselves, working as advocates for their own constituency.

In an interesting twist, I had a chance to meet a high powered political consultant recently. He said, " I'm usually referred to and introduced as a political consultant. But to be accurate, only 20% of my income is derived from consulting with politicians. I've found it to be much more effective to go right to the source. 80% of my time, money, and efforts are spend on shaping public opinion. The public is far easier to influence, at less cost, with longer lasting results. Why am I going to spend my time courting congressmen one at a time ? Once I have the public, then I get all the politicians".

Oh yeah.....I met the guy because he's in town working on behalf of marcellus shale drillers.

The Machine

Today, I met with FEMA for the 4th time in a week to review a reimbursement form for a disaster that occurred in August.

Basically, this guy's job is to fill out boxes on a 34 page form, so that they add-up from left to right and up and down. He then gives the boxes to a woman who gives them to Ellie.

Every time he's been back here he tells me, " Ellie found a problem with the numbers", " Ellie rejected this form", " Ellie wants you to redo the numbers".

And all of the stuff he's bringing back is picky bullshit stuff and I'm starting to get more than a little frustrated. So I told him, " I'm about done with this bullshit. If this doesn't work, rather than have you drive back here again and us do this shit over and over, how about I come to you, I'll meet with Ellie and we'll hash this out."

He and the woman with him looked at me like a dog that just farted.

It turns out Ellie is E.L.L.E. its a computer.

These people go into the field, gather information, take it back to a building, and a fucking computer tells them if they've done their jobs correctly, and every morning the computer gives them an assignment sheet telling them where to go and what to do like their own private god.

Once ELLE accepts their data, it pats them on the head and then takes care of the rests of the process of releasing the money etc etc etc. The only human role in the process are these minions who scamper around mindlessly filling out boxes without any though or consideration of their accuracy....only that they don't get rejected by ELLE.

They talk about the computer like its their boss and have a distinct fear and reverence for it.

That is some freaky shit.

Weekend roundup

Finally saw Drive. I think it will take me 2 weeks and one more watching to know exactly what I think. All I now so far is that there's something to the movie, I'm just not sure what.

Far less time to form an opinion about Sex is Comedy. Great movie.

I had someone land on my foot during basketball this weekend. I finally got my answer to the age-old question " what's under your toe nail". Some things are better left unknown.

Why is MIA's little finger obscene, but the half naked teen girls humping the floor behind her ok ?

I'm not sure what all the hub-bub about Whitney Houston is. Yeah, she had a great set of pipes, but except for one album 20 years ago, and one decent rendition of the national anthem, what had she accomplished ? To me her death is just another indication of unfulfilled promise.

And I don't get the freaked out singer chicks in general....Whitney, Mariah, Any winehouse, Britney, etc. These chicks aren't even creating their own music. If you have a nice set of pipes and are easy to look at, all you need to do is show up, sing a few songs, then arrive at an awards show is a tight dress once in a while. WTF is with all the drama. Take a look at this list. You've got to go all the way down to Joan Baez before you find someone who hasn't died and/or lost their friggin mind.

All I have to say is thank god for Adele.

naked chicks and graffitti

Tumblr is almost entirely comprised of naked chicks and graffiti. I can, and have, looked at naked chicks and graffiti all day long.

I rode the trainer at the gym so hard last night that one of the people next to me left. I can't really blame her.

I went skiing over the weekend. I ski like I downhill mtb...terribly. I know that I need to look further down the trail and relax, but I always feel like I'm on the bad side of the groove. In between sessions, I laid in bed, aligned my body symmetrically, tried to determine where I was out of balance, and then relaxed those areas so both sides of me were evenly balanced. I got up, went out and killed it. Twas very cool.

About ten years ago Adam Myerson told me that he considers organizing bike races to be performance art. I JUST go it, and he's right.

I know some of my friends aren't going to like this

you may not agree, but this is at least worth reading.




The war on democracy «

anticapitalist:

Since the Second World War, the United States has:

1) Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of them democratically elected.
2) Attempted to suppress a populist or national movement in 20 countries.
3) Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
4) Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
5) Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

In total, the United States has carried out one or more of these actions in 69 countries. In almost all cases, Britain has been a collaborator. The “enemy” changes in name - from communism to Islamism - but mostly it is the rise of democracy independent of western power, or a society occupying strategically useful territory and deemed expendable, like the Chagos Islands.

The sheer scale of suffering, let alone criminality, is little known in the west, despite the presence of the world’s most advanced communications, nominally freest journalism and most admired academy. That the most numerous victims of terrorism - western terrorism - are Muslims is unsayable, if it is known. That half a million Iraqi infants died in the 1990s as a result of the embargo imposed by Britain and America is of no interest. That extreme jihadism, which led to the 11 September 2001 attacks, was nurtured as a weapon of western policy (in “Operation Cyclone”) is known to specialists, but otherwise suppressed.

While popular culture in Britain and America immerses the Second World War in an ethical bath for the victors, the holocausts arising from Anglo-American dominance of resource-rich regions are consigned to oblivion. Under the Indonesian tyrant Suharto, anointed “our man” by Margaret Thatcher, more than a million people were slaughtered in what the CIA described as “the worst mass murder of the second half of the 20th century”. This estimate does not include the third of the population of East Timor who were starved or murdered with western connivance, British fighter-bombers and machine-guns.

These true stories are told in declassified files in the Public Record Office, yet represent an entire dimension of politics and the exercise of power excluded from public consideration. This has been achieved by a regime of uncoercive information control, from the evangelical mantra of advertising to soundbites on BBC news and now the ephemera of social media.

It is as if writers as watchdogs are extinct, or in thrall to a sociopathic zeitgeist, convinced they are too clever to be duped. Witness the stampede of sycophants eager to deify Christopher Hitchens, a war lover who longed to be allowed to justify the crimes of rapacious power. “For almost the first time in two centuries,” wrote Terry Eagleton, “there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life.” No Orwell warns that we do not need to live in a totalitarian society to be corrupted by totalitarianism. No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake proffers a vision, no Wilde reminds us that “disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue”. And grievously no Pinter rages at the war machine, as in “American Football”:

with this, good night.

every day the news is the same
via anticapitalist

great images

Stairwells strewn with debris and walls crumbling slowly to dust, it is the island that New York forgot for 50 years.

Now, in a series of extraordinarily eerie pictures, the lost world of North Brother - quarantine zone, leper colony and centre for drug addicts - has been brought back to life.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094823/New-York-leper-colony-Eerie-pictures-inside-abandoned-world-lost-island.html#ixzz1lEfWDGKT



abandoned New York leper colony

Lovin the Tumblr

but I think its making me lazy

flicklives tumblr