This blog goes political (sort of)

(but only for a short time... by no means am I turning this into a politics blog. Don't worry. You can keep tuning in to see my ramblings about tv shows and the like)

So. What a debate. More in groan-inducing why can't this election be over already, but anyways. As you know, our favorite guy with the eyelashes is a Republican. A conservative. A right winger. (At this point I don't know other ways to say Republican) So, naturally, I don't agree with him on political stuff for the most part. But at least he doesn't support Donald Trump. However, I was watching a clip from an appearance he did on tv after the debate offering commentary/analysis on Donald Trump's performance. The guy with the eyelashes thinks that Donald Trump won the debate last night because he managed to not completely self destruct. Which I have to respectfully disagree with. I don't think that the fact that he managed to not completely self destruct means that he won the debate. Sure, he could have done worse but the fact that he didn't do worse =/= won the debate. Sorry, guy with the eyelashes. I think you're intelligent and probably a decent person, but I have to disagree with you here. (not that it really matters, I just felt like spouting this all out even though there's hopefully 0 chance that the guy with the eyelashes reads this because if he did how embarrassing would that be? Especially given my other post all about eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes. Although that was a couple of months ago at least.) 

But I still like you for your eyeballs and eyelashes. Please don't ever trim your eyelashes and/or get brown colored contacts. 

Types

Apparently, I have two types, it seems. Or let's say, three. In no particular order:

Type 1: middle aged (30s-40s or so) men with graying hair to some degree (in some cases this degree is completely white) and blue-gray eyeballs. Think the guy with the eyelashes (who will remain unnamed even though that certainly hinders the use of him as an example) and Anderson Cooper. Oh, Anderson.. Note: this does not, I repeat, not, include George Clooney. I think he's an idiot although I will admit that he has aged rather well. But I still think he's an idiot.
Type 2: delicate male model types. I apparently have a particular soft spot for blondes. Tall, thin, pale, delicate and sort of European looking, if you will.
Type 3: actors, particularly British ones and/or ones with last names like D'Arcy / D'Onofrio (or rather, how he looked about 15 years ago... yeah, I know I'm shallow) / DiCaprio (he also kinda looked better at least 10 years ago than he does now. Again, I know I'm shallow).

I just thought I should put this out there.

We'll stay forever this way...

This is not a post about Titanic even though the title is a line from the song My Heart Will Go On (which maybe is stuck in my head a little bit at the moment or something). 

This is a post about tv shows. Yay, more musings on tv shows. 

I'm about to reach the end of the three original seasons of Arrested Development. The fourth season (and now, apparently a fifth?) was added on years later on Netflix. I'm not sure if I'll watch it. I assume they intended for the show to end after season 3 and therefore any additional ones are kind of... iffy. If that makes sense. This can also apply to the Millennium Trilogy and how recently a fourth book written by not Stieg Larsson has been published. And it also applies to the final (10th) season of Law and Order CI. All three things ended, and then were revived later. (4th season of Arrested Development, 10th season of CI, book 4 in the Millennium series) 

I figure, I enjoyed the original run of these things so why possibly let the later additions to them be possibly disappointing? Hence the "We'll stay forever this way..." title to the post. I'm going to purposefully avoid consuming the post scripts, if you will, or perhaps you can call them epilogues... well, you get the idea. That's how I consider them, at least. So that I don't have to worry that the additions won't live up to my expectations. I'm okay with how the things originally ended so I don't necessarily need to watch the epilogues and see an additional ending. 

Although of course perhaps I wonder what happens to the detectives, or the Bluth family, or Salander and Blomkvist after their respective original stories ended, I'm okay with just leaving it at that. The fear of disappointment is greater than the desire to know what happens in the post scripts. 

Also, an update on Criminal Minds: haven't been watching that since I got into Arrested Development, but seeing as I only have like two more episodes of that left, perhaps I'll start back into watching Criminal Minds. I think I'm in the middle of season 6 or so. Maybe like 1/3 into that season. Something thereabouts.

Notebooks

Tonight I was in the grocery store and looking at the books and magazines. In particular, the knitting magazines, but the 4 or so they had all cost at least $7 which I didn't feel like spending on a knitting magazine. I can find knitting ideas/patterns online if I so desire. In this aisle there is also a small selection of notebooks/notepads/journals/whatever you want to call them. I saw one which was small and the cover had pink and white stripes. It was your general little spiral notepad except the spiral was at the top, which maybe isn't the most common position as most journals/notebooks are bound at the side. 

On one matter, I completely prefer spiral notebooks over composition ones. For some reason. I just like how the pages turn on the metal spiral coil, I guess. This applies to regular sized notebooks for school as well as small notebooks/journals that I mostly just write random lists and stuff in for personal use. For personal use notebooks/journals, the paper has to be the right kind (a little nicer than the texture/kind of paper found in your standard spiral notebook for school) and the ruling has to be the right size. If the lines are too close together I won't get it even if I particularly like the design on the cover or whatever. I'm rather particular about these things. 

On a slightly different matter, I was watching Law and Order SVU today and in this show the detectives can be seen taking notes occasionally in little notepads they carry in their jacket pockets. These notepads are always the top spiral kind which is... interesting, in a way. Why top spiral? Why not side bound? Is there some reason? And if so, what reason is it? These little notepads, as far as I've noticed, usually have plain colored covers. I guess perhaps the style of notepads (fictional, for this matter, although perhaps also real ones since Law and Order is sort of realistic? as realistic as a tv show can be, I guess. Any tv show will have some degree of unrealisticness, some more than others. And I've felt that the Law and Order shows have erred more on the side of more realistic than not, but again, it's a tv show, and even if it's more realistic than other shows, it still can be unrealistic to some degree compared to real life) detectives use is regulation? Do they buy their own notepads or are they provided by the police department? Big questions. If I were theoretically a detective, I think I would use a snazzier looking notepad. With a job like that, you've gotta add a little bit of... color and whimsy where you can. It would be ever so slightly in the vein of Penelope Garcia of Criminal Minds. I wonder if my theoretical detective colleagues would frown upon also taking the notes in colorful pen inks (think purple! or a sparkly gel pen color!) aside from your usual black or maybe blue. I think it's very possible they might. And/or just not take me seriously. Again, all theoretical. But wouldn't that be an interesting job? (read: I have been watching way too much Law and Order. Speaking of which, in a couple of months it'll be my 'one year anniversary' since starting to watch the show,or rather, the CI variation.. is that something maybe I should celebrate? [probably not. I think you should get a life, maybe. Just a suggestion.])  And my theoretical detective note taking notepad would probably be side bound, unless, upon becoming a detective I learn that there's some justifiable reason they use top bound ones.

Again, too much Law and Order. I think I might also really enjoy being a set decorator. Although to my knowledge the aforementioned notepads count as props and therefore would be under the responsibility of the props person/department and not the set decorator. Although maybe set decorators and props departments work closely together? Depending on the show, costuming could be interesting too. Guess I'd better start studying movie/tv production or something along those lines.

You would think that I've gotten my day's serving of true and fictional crime (via watching some episodes of SVU and reading posts on /r/unresolvedmysteries) but at the time of writing this, around 10 pm, I think I could still be up for more. More episodes of SVU or some other Law and Order. Maybe not Unresolved Mysteries. Those can get a little unnerving to read late at night sometimes. Although I recently read a bit on a serial killer case that (surprisingly?) I was not familiar with. And I'm at least sort of familiar with a number of serial killer cases. (let me seduce you with my knowledge of serial killers!)

And with that, we'll end this post. Although... come to think of it! The requisite Vincent D'Onofrio related content. So today, I 1) read an article about the Marines that was quite reminiscent of the events in the first portion of the movie Full Metal Jacket, which Vincent was in way back in the 80s and 2) watched a video that was a short analysis of the new western movie he is in. Watching this video solidified my decision to not see said western movie featuring Vincent D'Onofrio. From the scenes/clips shown in the analysis video, the movie seemed to me to be rather cheesy, as I guess western movies tend to be? I wouldn't really know as I don't watch western movies. Although then later after I had watched this video and was thinking about western movies, I realized/remembered that a couple years ago or so I did watch this one western/scifi movie. Which was because it had Daniel Craig in it and I admire his performances as James Bond. For some reason, a number of the times I've watched something "because it had (insert actor here) in it" it has not ended up with me watching a movie I enjoyed. Well, actually, the only two examples that come straight to mind are Full Metal Jacket and this scifi western movie with Daniel Craig, so I guess I can't say that whenever I watch something because it has a certain actor in it it always turns out in me watching some movie I end up thinking wasn't that good, because a number of movies that I've watched because they have some actor that I like in them have actually turned out to be movies I enjoyed. But a couple of them have been ones that I didn't particularly love. Although I didn't particularly love Full Metal Jacket, it does seem to have stuck with me. Mostly the topics of the Vietnam War and the Marines evoke memories of the movie Full Metal Jacket in my mind. Although then I feel the need to remind myself that there's more to the Vietnam War/the Marines than just what was portrayed in Full Metal Jacket. (Also Apocalypse Now. Although I would say that movie was less a movie about the Vietnam War than a movie based on Heart of Darkness that just happened to be set during the Vietnam War.) And by the way. Heart of Darkness was not a book I enjoyed. I read it because it was for English class. I watched Apocalypse Now in the hope that it would give me some enlightenment regarding Heart of Darkness, but alas, it did not. And I wasted like three hours watching that movie. And for some reason it's a classic famous movie. Which I will have to say, I don't really understand. What do/did people see in it? I would assume obviously they got more out of watching it than I did. After seeing both Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now, I decided that I would not watch any more war movies in the future. Except maybe Saving Private Ryan since that one is supposed to be really good. It has Tom Hanks in it. 

In retrospect, this post should probably be titled "Notebooks (and a long aside about Vincent D'Onofrio which goes on tangentially from there) 

For reference, here is the article about the Marines I read. If you are familiar with the movie Full Metal Jacket, I'm sure you'll see the similarities. 

Law and order and Donald Trump

Three posts in one day! A new record! 

This one is about the matter of how Donald Trump claims himself to be the "law and order candidate," stuff like that, and the ironic fact that in many people's minds (or at least mine) the words "law and order" evoke the idea of a tv show about (dedicated) detectives who investigate crimes and district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.. These are their stories.. (episode begins). [I just had to.] 

I was on the New York Times' website where I saw a link to this article, which is about the history of the use of the term "law and order" in the political world. It's rather interesting. Of course, I had to take a look at the comments. This one struck me as particularly amusing: 

Television cop shows have gotten much more violent each decade since the days of Dragnet, Adam-12, and Andy Griffith! 
Starsky & Hutch and Miami Vice upped the violence significantly, as did Streets of San Francisco and 21 Jump Street.
Barney Miller and Columbo showed lots of petty and domestic crime, but were never in the violence range compared to the modern CSIs and Homicide: Life on the Streets, as well as NYPD: Blue, Hill Street Blues, The Shield, and The Wire. 
So maybe the television violence is indeed actually higher these days contrary to this article's premise. So maybe they should heed calls to bring back television's Law and Order series which blended police procedural and courtroom drama created by Dick Wolf. The series ran for 20 seasons on NBC, from 1990 to 2010, with 456 episodes, spawning four American spinoffs and a movie.

Also, see this article here, titled, "If Donald Trump Were the Real Law and Order Candidate." This one I also found quite amusing. It even has Donald Trump photoshopped into various screencaps from Law and Order. 

The (un)ethicist, part 1 of ?

Recently I decided to go look up the New York Times' Ethicist column because I hadn't read it in a while. There is supposed to be a column published each week where the Ethicist answers two or three questions that people have sent in about their ethical quandaries. It's an interesting column and can be worth a read sometimes, although some believe that previous writers of the column did a better job of it than the current Ethicist. Firstly though, a sentiment that I expressed in a text message from 12/22/15 at 10:31 pm (apparently): "Also, I don't get why the Ethicist can only turn out one column per week. It can't be that hard to think of ethical answers. Anyways, if he wrote more columns, he would get paid more, presumably. (fixed ratio reinforcement!)"*
Again, it can't be that hard to think of ethical answers. Perhaps the reason there is only one column a week of two or three ethical answers is because there is a dearth of ethical quandaries being submitted? I wouldn't know. In the event that that is indeed the case, I invite my probably very few readers to submit some ethical quandaries for the Ethicist to ponder over. They don't even have to be real ethical problems that you're actually dealing with in your life. Make something up! Use your imagination. The contact information for submitting an ethical quandary (I like that word) is here, taken directly from the NYT's website: To submit a query: Send an email to ethicist@nytimes.com; or send mail to The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018. (Include a daytime phone number.)

So now, with that information in hand, go on and send in some ethical quandaries! I look forwards to seeing some of them possibly published and answered in future columns. That was a pretty lengthy introduction. So now, on to the actual subject of this post. Because I had been looking at Ethicist columns earlier, I began to wonder if there were perhaps in existence somewhere an Unethicist, who answers questions with the "wrong," unethical answers instead of ethical ones as the Ethicist claims to provide. I did find some things from nearly 10 years ago, and something from more recently that wasn't exactly what I was looking for. This is supposed to take after the thing I found from nearly 10 years ago, in which someone answered the same questions that had been published in the Ethicist column, but with unethical answers instead. I have always wanted to become an Ethicist, although I don't believe the NYT is hiring for Ethicist positions at the moment. So I will take the next best thing that I can get, which is publishing on my little-read blog a parody of sorts of the NYT Ethicist column. I think maybe if I were the NYT's Ethicist, I would make an effort to provide a larger amount of ethical answers compared to the measly two or three per week that the current Ethicist provides. 

(Un)ethical answer number 1: "I used to work for an online publication where my salary (which was minimal, as it was more of a part-time hobby) was based on the percentage of the site’s hits that my articles garnered. From time to time, I would open up my articles in new tabs to rack up extra hits. I know that other writers did the same. Was it ethical for me to give myself the mildly dishonest advantage that others were giving themselves? S.K"

Yes. Of course. It was completely fine. In this cutthroat capitalist society, one must give themselves any and every single advantage that they can get, no matter how small or insignificant. Although the amount of money you got paid because of those extra clicks was probably rather small, every cent counts in today's economy. Those few cents could be the difference between... well, there isn't much you can buy these days for only a few cents, but it certainly is nice to have more cents (even if it's only a few) than fewer cents. 

Here is the link to the column that today's question was taken from: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/magazine/when-a-friend-cheats-often-on-her-husband-should-you-keep-quiet.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthe-ethicist 

*fixed ratio reinforcement is a term from a psychology class that I was taking at the time of sending that text message. It has to to with behavior modification/conditioning. If you want to know more, look it up for yourself. 

BONUS ethical question for you to ponder: Is it ethical to send in fictitious ethical problems to the Ethicist? Or should the Ethicist's advice be left to only people with actual (presumably) ethical problems that they are trying to deal with in their lives? 

After looking through a number of Ethicist columns, it seems that it is kind of hard to find ones that would be well suited for unethical answers. So it's possible that I may take some questions from Slate's advice column and give bad answers to those as well, even though that column is just a generic advice column rather than one centered on ethical problems. 

Disclaimer, in case perhaps I am afoul of some kind of copyright law(s), or something: the questions answered in this post are taken from the NYT's Ethicist column. I didn't come up with them. I don't intend to be committing some kind of plagiarism or something. Please have mercy on me. 

Murder shows

Finally, a new post!! Wow! 
This post will cover the subject of murder shows. "Murder shows" is my affectionate name for a series of crime dramas/procedurals that involve, well, murder, usually. However, these shows are not of the Dexter/Hannibal type, where the murderer is in a way, the protagonist. Sort of. I guess. I've never watched Dexter and only have watched a little of Hannibal which was not too recently. But regardless. You probably get the point. These shows depict some variety of law enforcement trying to solve the murder(s) and obtain justice (in the case of the Law and Order shows) for whoever has gotten murdered/is the victim of some other type of crime during the course of an episode. 

Over the summer, which is defined as the time period between late May (sorry for not having a specific, exact date) to August 28, 2016, I watched, to the best of my calculations/knowledge, 118 episodes of various murder shows. The shows I watched include Law and Order SVU, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Law and Order original flavor and Criminal Minds. I did probably watch a very few episodes here and there of other crime shows, but those are insignificant. Over the course of about 90 days (three months), I managed to watch 118 episodes. This ends up being a little over one episode per day. Some days I didn't watch any episodes and other days I watched many episodes, so the actual watching was not spread out nice and equally as one episode and some per day. 

I think it was sort of interesting to have kept track of the episodes that I watched since it isn't really a thing that a person would think to keep track of, unlike, perhaps, how many calories they eat in a day or something like that. I sort of wish that upon starting to watch these shows from the beginning that I had kept up a count of however many deaths occurred in each episode, but alas, that did not come to my mind months ago when I started watching Law and Order. It would be interesting though, to have a list of how many deaths/murders per episode and perhaps the method of each murder so after having the data for all the episodes, I could analyze what the most common method of murder overall is in the show and also perhaps if some seasons ended up being more homicidal than others. I did once read an article that compared the fictional murder rates in a few shows set in New York City to the actual murder rate that year, and that was interesting. The fictional murder rate was much higher than the actual murder rate. 

An aside is that I feel that I may sometime in the not too distant future grow bored of the show Criminal Minds. It doesn't have the depth of the Law and Order shows and is rather poorly written in some places/episodes compared to Law and Order. The characters in Criminal Minds seem to somehow lack a quality that the characters in Law and Order have. I can't quite put my finger on it exactly, but I think it's something having to do with the occupational chemistry of the characters in their respective groups of people they work with. I can't really say exactly. I wonder if other people who have watched these shows as well have also noticed such a thing. I've gotten to the middle of season 6 of Criminal Minds and I'm not sure that I'll be able to finish it and watch all the way through the... 11? 12? seasons it has in total. We'll just have to wait and see.