Blargh

In other words, even more political stuff. For whatever reason, I get the urge to respond here on this blog to the stupid (or more nicely, things I disagree with) things that eyelashes guy says. In this post election period, such things have grown in quantity. I don't want to say exponentially, because it might not truly be exponentially even though it is a nice word to use for dramatic effect.
Today's stupid thing that eyelashes guy said is that he disagreed with the ideas put forth in a Slate article entitled "There's no such thing as a good Trump voter." I think I read this piece within the last week although I did not go back and refresh my memory of it before writing this post. In any case, for me personally, suppose I discovered that someone I knew/was decently acquainted with at the least, had voted for Trump. This would cause me to reconsider/reevaluate my relationship with said person. Like I think I said in a previous post, voting for Trump indicates that a person condones (or at the very least, doesn't consider to be too abhorrent) the various offensive things he's said about numerous groups of people. This, for me, is a mark of (negative) character, which goes back to the title of the Slate article. I understand eyelashes guy's position, I suppose, seeing as (like I mentioned last post) his mother who I assume he holds dear voted for Trump. So it makes sense that it would give eyelashes guy some *cognitive dissonance* (there's that term again!) to be faced with the idea that all Trump voters are bad people. But like I said earlier, a vote for Trump, in my opinion, is an implicit endorsement of the (unacceptable) ideals that he has hawked throughout his campaign. Which brings me to another point - eyelashes guy thinks we all should give Trump a blank slate and a chance to be successful. I covered this topic in my previous post.
Another topic that I plan to write a bit about at a future date is the idea of liberal bias in the media. That's it for now, but as long as eyelashes guy says stupid things, these posts will continue!
How are you liking my political opinion pieces? I fancy myself a real (liberal, obviously) political commentator now.

As a parting thought, it seems that eyelashes guy has gotten me to think/consider a bit more deeply the whole politics thing. Particularly eyelashes guy is a conservative voice/perspective that in the past, I will admit, I never (would have) paid attention to. My little ideological bubble has... somewhat popped. The only reason I pay attention to eyelashes guy though is because of his eyelashes. I do think he's intelligent even if I don't agree with his political position.

More political stuff

Yay. 
This post again is related to eyelashes guy a bit although not so much about his eyelashes. As mentioned in the past, he is a conservative political journalist/commentator who I only began paying attention to due to his eyelashes; they are very long and noticeable.
In any case, today he put out an episode of his podcast in which he interviewed a family member of his that had voted for Trump. This family member lives in central PA, apparently. (For the record, I never liked PA anyways. Awful bumpy roads and nothing to see. Philadelphia was kind of a disappointment as well, even. I'll take DC or NYC any time over that. To people reading this who may happen to live in PA, I apologize for my negative opinion of your state.) So, this person said that they voted for Trump in spite of the offensive comments he made about groping women. They described those comments as an example something that people say that they're not proud of, but the comments still did not dissuade this person from voting for Trump. The comments are more than just things Trump said that he's not proud of. They are an indication, along with other things he's said and done over the years, that he does not respect women. This, for me, is one of the many things that disqualify him from being a suitable president of this country. 
Towards the end of the interview (it was about 15 minutes long) the family member of eyelashes guy mentioned some things that would seem like they could have come out of the mouth of Donald Trump himself, one of which was the phrase "make America great again," among other things. During the interview, eyelashes guy asked his family member about their opinions regarding immigrants relating to Trump's comments/positions about immigration. They mentioned that they had encountered (Latino) immigrants in public where they live and had amiable interactions with them, yet they still voted for Trump. They claimed that Trump's comments about Mexicans being rapists only applied to a certain group of Mexicans. This family member of eyelashes guy does various charitable works in their community, which seems to have been mentioned to prove that this person isn't an entirely horrible person. I crocheted angrily while listening to this podcast because a) podcasts bore me if I'm not knitting or crocheting while listening and b) the things said in the podcast angered me. 
That is about all that I have to say for now with regards to things related to eyelashes guy, but stay posted because undoubtedly I'm sure there'll be something in the future that he says that I'll feel compelled to write a blog post responding to, probably because I disagree. As usual, eyelashes guy will remain unnamed because I think it would be weird if he happened to stumble upon my blog posts about him. 
The end. (for now)

Killed by Drones

(Title inspired by the Muse song Reapers which has that as a line in it)

I write satirical stories because they're cathartic for me. 

Obama paced around the Oval Office worriedly. The prospect of Trump as president struck fear into his heart, although he put on a face of feigned amicability and cooperation for his first meeting with the president elect. He had to come up with a contingency plan. Various ideas came to his mind, but none of them he thought were good enough. Until finally, it dawned on him. Drones. 

Donald Trump and Co. were out celebrating his election as the next president with a round of golf at one of Trump's own golf courses. Even though it was November, the grass was as green as ever due to the use of industrial strength fertilizer as well as green spray paint in the places the fertilizer wasn't enough. The runoff from the golf course had badly polluted the nearby waterways, but Trump didn't care, as long as his golf course grass was as green as a freshly picked leaf of kale. Trump prepared to hit his golf ball, which soared into the air yet was wildly off course and landed in a sand pit. His next attempt was no better; this time the golf ball was nearly lost in the leaves of a tree. Finally, Trump managed to get the golf ball into the hole. It took him 5 strokes from the green to get the golf ball where it was supposed to be. Donald Trump and his entourage were nearly ready to play the 18th hole when a noise from the sky was heard. A swooping aircraft rushed overhead. Something dropped out of the sky. It was a bomb. It landed directly in the middle of Donald Trump and his political cronies, including but not limited to, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, etc. They were wiped out immediately. Obama was updated on the success of his drone strike against Donald Trump and Co. He smiled and ordered his staff to put out a press release that blamed the Russians from the drone strike. Indeed, it was a coverup, but who could blame him? Sometimes the end justifies the means. 

Acknowledgements: To my first satirical story, where a golf game was a minor plot point. Also to one of my former teachers, Mr. Elgin (not related to the Elgin clocks people), who is a big fan of golf and has good fashion sense regarding ties and golf pants. I thought of him because of the golf aspect of this story. I am pretty sure that he is honest when he plays golf and doesn't cheat like Donald Trump has been said to do. 

It seems that my satirical stories have the tendency to end in some kind of murder. Maybe that's from all the murder shows I watch.  

Update re: eyelashes guy

Well, it was bound to happen eventually - eyelashes guy saying something stupid. I sort of liked him, you know, but...
(For those who are not familiar with eyelashes guy: he is a conservative political commentator on CNN and I refer to him as eyelashes guy because what drew my attention to him was that he had really long, noticeable eyelashes. I refer to him as eyelashes guy as well because I kinda don't want him to stumble upon my blog posts fawning over his magnificent eyelashes if he happened to google his name or something because that would just be weird. See the latter half of this post for elaboration on eyelashes guy.)
The stupid thing that eyelashes guy said today is that he thinks/hopes Trump will be a good president. It's stupid because that's what many people, namely conservatives like eyelashes guy, were saying (... no pun intended) throughout the course of Trump's campaign. That he was eventually going to change and start being more presidential. As we saw, that did not happen, so what reason does anyone have to believe that suddenly now that change is going to happen? That is why I think that what eyelashes guy said today is stupid. He still has nice eyelashes, but this is definitely another thing I disagree with him on. Which I suppose isn't particularly surprising seeing as he is a conservative and I am definitely not. Eyelashes guy hopes that Trump is a successful president, which... is not something that I can conscientiously agree with, because it would mean that many of his absolutely abhorrent and appalling policies that he's proposed would be put into action and that the things he stands for (racism, misogyny, xenophobia, ad infinitum) would be normalized in our society, which is something that we just can't stand for. But I guess it's easy for eyelashes guy to say what he said since, well, he has a lot less to lose with Trump as president, being a straight, white man.. :p he doesn't have to worry about racism, misogyny, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, etc because they don't directly affect him as a  straight, white, man.

Song review: Still Breathing

Here is another song review, sort of similar to the one I did awhile back about Barbarism Begins at Home. Which, as you may remember, was not a positive review.

Today's, or rather, tonight's song review is of a new song by the band Green Day. I don't have any particular strong opinions towards Green Day; I only know a few of their more famous songs, American Idiot and Boulevard of Broken Dreams (another song that I particularly like, even more so than any Green Day song I know, that has "boulevard" in the title is Stars and Boulevards by Augustana) being some of them. 

This song is from a new album they recently released called Revolution Radio (I think?). The song is called Still Breathing. I listened to it because I saw a link to an article about it. It was a decent song, not particularly irritating or anything, but rather safe and bland and not particularly profound or anything. There is an excessive use of similes in this song. Speaking of which, there is a sort of similar thing going on in the song Ash and Ember, another one by Augustana, with comparisons/descriptions of events that are relevant to the themes in the song, but Dan manages to do it in a way that does not involve excessive use of similes although there is some use of metaphors and one simile in the chorus of the song - "like a phoenix rising up from ash and ember." All in all it is a very good song like many other songs that he has written over the years. But I digress. 
Back on topic now. 
This is no American Idiot, or Citizen Erased (a song by Muse that is like 7 minutes long and quite something) or Demolition Lovers (a My Chemical Romance song that just happened to come on shuffle right as I'm writing this, after I listened to Stars and Boulevards which I felt like listening to because I mentioned it earlier on in the post) or Bullet with Butterfly Wings (a song by another band, the Smashing Pumpkins, which I don't even like, but that song is... it's... it has a certain edge to it). I don't exactly have a ton more to say about this song. It wasn't particularly impressive or anything. It might grow on me a little bit, but that's not going to change the fact that it's a bland, and dare I say, cliche kind of song. It almost feels insincere in a way. For some reason. I never thought of Green Day as the epitome of songwriting (Dan from Augustana is the epitome of songwriting, for me), but I expected a little better than this. It's a rather generic pop-type song. 

I may possibly listen to other songs from that album, but probably not the whole album. Maybe there's another single from it, I don't know. If any new opinions about this song pop into my head, I might add them here but I can't guarantee that new opinions about this song will come to me.   

As an afterthought, I decided to attempt a bit of an analysis of this song. I have taken some of the similes and other important phrases in the song and looked at what I associate with them. Some of the things are paraphrased from how they are in the song. These are just some very roughly thought out ideas, straight from brain to screen (rather than paper) so they may not be the most coherent but I haven't bothered to clean them up into a clearer form. 

child looking at horizon - hope, naivete, wonder, innocence
ambulance with sirens - sense of urgency 
son without father - lost, identity crisis (sort of), loneliness?
struggling mother - desperation 
addict getting clean - hope but also the possibility of failure, a difficult task 
gambler losing the last of their money - also desperation 
soldier coming home for first time / dodged bullet and walked across landmine - brush with death, relief, emotional attachments to people (family/etc)

find home for restless - not finding a place to belong 
 bleeding from the storm? - chaos, have I survived it unscathed?
above the rain and roses - ?? rain -> sadness; roses: thorns? Things that are beautiful but also have a more unpleasant side? 
shine a light into the wreckage -  
are you scared to death to live? 

The count: (like in that one post I did about eyeballs and eyelashes)
times I made positive/glowing remarks about Dan/Augustana (even though this post is supposed to be about a Green Day song): 3

Movie review: Born on the 4th of July

First things first, I think the real question is why do I keep subjecting myself to war movies that are almost inevitably weird? With that in mind, I went into watching this movie thinking that it would probably be at least a bit weird like Full Metal Jacket (as you can see, that movie has stuck with me nevertheless) and Apocalypse Now, which was even weirder than FMJ. And again, also didn't have the virtue of having Vincent D'Onofrio even though he was fat and unsightly in FMJ. 
In any case, this movie that I just watched has Tom Cruise in it. I have no particular strong opinions towards Tom Cruise but I think I like him a bit more than George Clooney and even Brad Pitt. The movie was based on events that happened to a real person, and apparently said person wrote a book so I think I may have to try and read that sometime. Incidentally, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now were also based on books (The Short Timers and Heart of Darkness, respectively, both of which I have read). The plot is about a young man who joins the Marines (which were also featured in FMJ, however this movie did not have the boot camp scenes like FMJ did. I saw a jelly doughnut the other day and thought about FMJ) to go fight in the Vietnam War. Initially, he is enthusiastic about serving his country as he had always dreamed of doing such since he was a young boy. However, in Vietnam he ends up accidentally killing a number of helpless civilians as well as a fellow soldier (also accidentally). In short order he gets shot through the back (in the scene, you can see a huge bloody hole in his back) which leaves him paralyzed. He returns to the US and spends time in a veteran's hospital which is decidedly unpleasant. These events eventually cause him to become disillusioned about the war and become an anti-war activist. 
Similarities and differences:
This movie took a different approach than FMJ; in FMJ the main character(s) - Joker and Private Pyle who meets an unfortunate end at his own hands - are kind of just thrown into the whole war thing - they are more passive than Tom Cruise's character in Born on the 4th of July. FMJ also takes place entirely before and during the time that Joker goes to Vietnam; it ends with a scene of him still in Vietnam reflecting on the events that have happened since the beginning of the movie. It's sort of an interesting final scene, very stark; as I remember it, they are marching through somewhere with flames in the background, it's dark and they're chanting ironically a children's song. Joker says that he is "no longer afraid." Reflecting on FMJ, I begin to wonder what happened to Joker after the end of the movie. I don't remember if the book went on to describe events after what were shown in the movie. For some reason, I feel like what happens to him is that he eventually gets killed in Vietnam. 
The movie reminded me a bit of the scenes in Forrest Gump where Forrest fights in the Vietnam War as well as what happens after that, in that he (Forrest) has a lady friend (Jenny) who is a hippie and involved in anti-war protests. A similar thing is seen in Born on the 4th of July - Tom Cruise's character has a lady friend who is also a hippie and an anti-war protester. However, Forrest Gump has a much lighter tone than Born on the 4th of July. 
In FMJ, there is a scene where Joker is in a helicopter and watching another soldier shoot at civilians on the ground. Joker asks of him "How can you shoot women and children?" In Born on the 4th of July, there's kind of a similar scene in that civilians get killed but it's different than the one in FMJ. 
Incidentally I feel like I should mention that there was a lot of profanity in this movie. I wasn't particularly bothered, but there was a lot. So maybe don't watch this movie around other people if they would be bothered by the profanity. 
In any case, I was quite surprised that this war movie was NOT weird. Perhaps that was because it didn't take place entirely in the war zone, like the other ones I've seen. It also made me wonder if there are such things as pro war movies, seeing as this one and FMJ can be considered anti-war movies. Tom Cruise did a good job of acting in this movie, I think. I would be inclined to watch other movies that he's been in, perhaps.

Further reading: 
Here is an interesting article that offers some additional relevant commentary on Born on the 4th of July; mainly (tl;dr here) that it is prescient and still relevant to today's society; unlike other Vietnam War movies like FMJ and Apocalypse Now that are more bound to the times they were made in. 
Here is an article with some trivia about the movie.

Ponderings about a Law and Order DVD

Today I happened to go to what some might call a thrift store, but I don't consider Goodwill or the Salvation Army to be thrift stores. A thrift store I feel is a slightly fancier establishment where you go to find *vintage* outfits. In any case. At Goodwill I was looking at the DVD section where there was a bookshelf of DVDs. The selection was more interesting than what you might find at a regular store like Target. The selection was more eclectic and it included things like Zoolander and seasons one and three of Arrested Development, which I would have gotten but that show is on Netflix. Zoolander used to be on Netflix but it isn't anymore. There was also a movie with Tom Cruise called Collateral which looked kind of interesting. And Syriana which I don't really know what it is about but it has George Clooney in it, which made me not want to get it because I think George Clooney is an idiot. They had an interesting assortment, definitely. One thing that caught my eye was the DVD "Law and Order Crime Scenes," which features 8 episodes "personally selected by Dick Wolf." I am looking forwards to watching them sometime hopefully soon. This, by the way, is the original Law and Order and not Law and Order CI, which I refer to by just Law and Order since that's the one I watch the most even though it technically is Law and Order CI instead of just Law and Order. (I really kinda doubt that people care what I refer to the various versions of Law and Order as.) Of course, encountering this DVD made me start having some wonderings. Obviously, some person residing presumably in the county (seeing as I assume someone from outside the county would go to a different Goodwill in their county that presumably would be closer) didn't want their Law and Order DVD anymore. It makes me wonder why though, why they decided to donate their DVD to Goodwill. The DVD is from 2003 as on the back it mentions that the show had been on for 13 years. This means the DVD is rather old, comparatively, and could perhaps sort of be referred to as an antique. In a way, I guess. I feel like DVDs weren't all that common in 2003 and it almost would make more sense for it to be on a videotape. They had VCR players at Goodwill too for the record. What were the thoughts running through this person's head when they decided to get rid of their Law and Order DVD? Who was this person? Was it a man, a woman, and how old? What were their personal thoughts about Law and Order? I feel like they must have liked the show a decent amount because they sprang for a DVD of 8 episodes personally selected by Dick Wolf. That's just my inference and I could be wrong. Perhaps they were cleaning out their basement or something, wherever they happened to find this DVD and thought they ought to donate it. Maybe it belonged to someone they knew/lived with who liked Law and Order but had passed on and now this person was going through their belongings. I don't know but I really wonder. Was the DVD loved and cherished by someone who decided it was time to let go of it? Or was it someone who bought it on a whim and didn't even really like Law and Order and maybe never even really watched it in full? Who knows! I just really would like to know the whole story behind the previous owner of this DVD and why they decided they didn't want it anymore. I think it's a rather snazzy DVD case design - it has on the front over a black background (like the screen that says EXECUTIVE PRODUCER DICK WOLF at the end of every Law and Order episode) the title of the DVD in a medium gray color that doesn't stand out a lot. That consists of the Law and Order logo and a subtitle underneath it in a different font, Arial Narrow or something along those lines that says "episodes selected by Dick Wolf" except in all capitals. I think it's a nicely designed cover and not too garish although garish things certainly can have a place in life. Along the spine is a yellow portion that extends slightly onto the front and back with the words "CRIME SCENES" in black, like how it would look on police tape and superimposed over that is "Law and Order Crime Scenes" in a smaller font. On the back there is a little summary and a list of the 8 episodes featured on the DVD. My mother thinks it's not natural to wonder so deeply about the story behind a used DVD, but I still wonder. She thinks it's as simple as that someone didn't want it anymore, but I want to know the whole story behind it. I'm curious to watch the episodes and try to see why Dick Wolf decided to pick these 8 to go on the DVD.