"How fortunate for governments
that the people they administer don't think."
-Hitler-
"Only two things are
infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the
former."
-Albert Einstein-Old
Updates....
1/7/20 (21:17)
spent the last few nights
working constantly on updating my movies webpage. i haven't updated it
at all since last january so there's a lot of catching up to do.
also been working on my
yearly best of lists (which i haven't done since zoe was born) and my best
of the decade list (made harder since i didn't keep up on the yearly lists).
also been working on organizing
the garage and getting little jobs knocked out.
also had the crew over
last week and again tomorrow to help me with my deck. should be able to
get most of it finished tomorrow with just the stairs and railing left
to complete.
not really a new year's
resolution per se, but having a few days off has helped kick start this
stuff at home and the end of year/decade stuff just comes with the timing.
hopefully we'll have the
deck done by the end of the month and then we can move onto the bathroom.
having the garage more
organized has really been nice. finally built my worktable base and been
cleaning up a lot of clutter and labeling things.
doing so many different
kinds of work means i have so many different tools and materials...it all
just takes up a ridiculous amount of space.
for the past year my biggest
real concern with Trump has been on the Iran issue. it looks like he's
really ramping this shit up and it's legitimately worrying because it'll
probably be effective in rallying the votes. I'm not real hopeful that
this will shake out well for us.
There's been a noticeable
rise of the use of the word "y'all" in the last five years or so. I see
it a lot on the internet and hear people saying it more and more. It used
to be made fun of as a southern thing, but not it appears to be ubiquitous.
Vern says it's gender neutral so maybe that's why it's more popular. "You
all" or "you" are also gender neutral. "You guys" isn't technically, but
I always considered it neutral, just like "dude" is often neutral. Times
are changing I guess.
Is it possible to be a
transnational person? Transgender is a thing. Transracial is sort of a
thing. Can someone say that they feel like they should have been Japanese
because they like anime and Japanese culture? They don't feel comfortable
in their own country. Their own culture feels repulsive to them. They hate
America because it bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and they wish America
was gone and that they lived in Japan. Should the UN allow these people
citizenship to wherever they feel they truly belong? Just like many can't
envision a world in 100 years where transgender people aren't accepted
as their preferred gender, can you really envision a world in the future
that still has borders? I await my Nobel prize.
In order to defeat Trump
I think you have to attack him as a rich elitist who is out of touch with
the common man. He doesn't care about the working class. Instead it seems
that the Democratic party is obsessed with issues of race and gender. If
they lose I think they'll have to take a hard look at the factions of the
party that chose identity politics and socialist policies over common sense
economic appeals to the working class. I heard recently, and I think it
make sense, that Americans don't like Democrats or Republicans, but they
fear the Democrats just a bit more because they are typically the ones
who are doing things to the public. Whether it's 100% true or not doesn't
matter so much as the appearance that the Democrats are the party of bigger
government and government programs. Those things mean more taxes, more
laws, more restrictions, more changes, etc. Democrats have a long way to
go to reform their image. Meanwhile Republicans still have the image of
less government is better. Their image should be more of a dumpster fire,
but the less government thing seems to be more sticky right now.
Native born Americans seem
to compare their lives to the life of the average German. Recent American
immigrants compare their lives to the life of the average person living
in the native country. The recent immigrant is much more thankful. The
native person is much more entitled and likely to complain about all the
things they don't have. Working with immigrants is a much better experience.
I've worked with both kinds of people and, generally speaking, people who
are new here are hard workers who want to take advantage of the opportunity
the country offers. People who were born here are much more likely to whine
about every little microaggression, Karen in accounting, not getting post-partum
massages for free, etc. Whiny little bitches. Send more immigrants and
ship some of the lazy native born people to Germany. Fine by me. My criteria
for immigrants is that they work hard and respect the laws and culture
that is here. Other than that I don't think I care much.
Not sure if you heard about
this
debate in SF, but it centers around a mural that depicts Native Americans
as slaves under George Washington. I really don't understand how people
are offended by this...here's what the NYT said: "But to Amy Anderson,
a member of the Ahkaamaymowin band of Métis who has been a catalyst
in the campaign to remove the murals, they represent “American history
from the colonizers’ perspective."" and "Virginia Marshall, president of
the San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators said Arnautoff’s paintings
remind her of “my great-great grandfather and great-great grandmother who
were beaten and hung from trees and told they were less than human.” Paloma
Flores, a member of the Pit-River Nation and coordinator of the school’s
Indian Education Program, said Arnautoff’s “intent no longer matters.”
The murals “glorify the white man’s role and dismiss the humanity of other
people who are still alive,” she said. Joely Proudfit, director of the
California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center in San Marcos, said it
is not worth saving the art if one native student “is triggered by that.”"
So that's the argument
I guess, but I heard one person talking about it and found their quote
to be rather funny. He said that he "knows the horrors of slavery first
hand from the stories his father told him." So, it sounds like he knows
the horrors of slavery second hand (at least). These aren't rational arguments.
These are feelings expressed by people who are overly sensitive, but we
have to take everyone seriously lest we upset them. Inmates are running
the asylum when you have kids telling administrators to destroy or cover
up 100 year old murals because they show George Washington as a murderer
and slave owner...because THAT ISN'T WOKE ENOUGH. haha, I've seen everything
now.