Thoughts on The Apprentice

In a... I can't think of a good adjective to put here turn of events, I decided to watch the first episode of Donald Trump's reality game show The Apprentice. I think it was in hopes that it might offer some kind of insights of some sort into how he operates. The first episode was... decent, not horrible, with all the trappings of a reality competition show. The only other show of that type that I'm sort of familiar with would be America's Next Top Model hosted by Tyra Banks. I guess they are kind of similar except ANTM is about modeling and The Apprentice is about business. However, both Tyra and Donald are rather prominent in their industries, at least at the peak of their shows I'd say. 

I can't say I have a ton of insights just after one episode, but I think I may watch more in the future. However, knowing a bit about how reality competition shows work allows me see the inner workings of them a bit - for example, on one season (or rather, cycle) of ANTM there was a particular contestant who was quite obnoxious but in being so, made for 'good television' or in other words, caused (intendedly entertaining) drama with the other contestants. So, it was unlikely that this contestant would be kicked off early in the show because their personality made the show more 'entertaining.' And the same went for this first episode of The Apprentice - I could tell that one person was unlikely to be fired because there had been a bit of a focus on the things they said which happened to be... 'entertaining.' I'm not a huge (or rather, yuge?) fan of reality competition shows, so obviously this is not exactly a show I'd usually watch, but I'm watching it anyways. 

In somewhat related matters, I have come up with yet another idea for a story. One of my longer ones involved Donald Trump getting arrested by the (fictional) detectives from some of the Law and Order shows. This newest idea involves the show The Apprentice, except one of the contestants is Michael Bluth of the show Arrested Development. I think that would be interesting and it would actually kind of fit for him to be a theoretical fictional contestant. I'm not sure if I'll write such a story, but the idea is there. 

Teeth

Here is a quick little post about... teeth, as is mentioned in the title. While we await the publication of my upcoming newest short story, there is this.

Teeth. I was pondering about the band Green Day and thinking how their album American Idiot is a concept album (apparently; I haven't listened to it in full to see what exactly the concept is for myself) like how the My Chemical Romance album The Black Parade is also a concept album (about death). That album, although I haven't listened to it in full, I've heard enough songs off of it to get the general idea that the concept of it is death. Which may seem rather macabre but the songs I know from that album are pretty good. I think it's interesting that they're about death, like how it's interesting that a number of Muse songs are about apocalyptic stuff or dystopian-ish stuff. In any case. Green Day and their concept album led me to think about MCR and their concept album which then made me consider the topic of Green Day vs MCR and which one I think is better/like more. I have considered that in the past but I was considering it again just now and I decided that I like MCR better. At least partly because Gerard (the lead singer, or rather, the former lead singer since they disbanded a few years ago) seems to be a nicer person than Billie Joe. And then I remembered, Gerard has cute little tiny teeth. Which is another reason to like MCR better. Maybe Billie Joe also has laudable teeth, but I haven't paid any particular attention to his teeth so I wouldn't know.

Of course, while talking about teeth, I have to mention that one time I complimented Dan on his teeth. I said "You have nice teeth" right out of the blue. It was after a show, which gives it a little more context because he had been singing which means his mouth was open and his teeth were on full view for a good amount of time, especially for those right in front of the stage like I was. So I happened to be looking at his teeth for a good part of that evening. And they were quite impressive. Very nice and straight and even. So naturally I ended up complimenting him on them.

Also, some more teeth trivia about various other people...
Apparently, Brandon Flowers' current teeth are all fake because they rotted away when he was a kid. So he had to get tooth replacements or something I guess. I read that somewhere within the past couple of years.
Vincent D'Onofrio (ah, here he pops up again) used to have ever so slightly crooked teeth (not really noticeable unless you look carefully) but then got them fixed sometime in 2001 or so. In some of the very first episodes of Law and Order, you can notice his ever so slightly crooked teeth but by the later half of season 1 they had been fixed. Interestingly enough, in one episode before his teeth got fixed, his character mentions getting his teeth fixed while talking to someone he's trying to get information out of. I wonder whose idea that line was and if it was at all influenced by Vincent's own ever so slightly crooked teeth.

Now, onto a particularly loathsome person's teeth. Donald Trump. His teeth are weird. Especially when he talks. You mostly see his bottom teeth. And between sentences, his mouth hangs open and his bottom teeth are just jutting out. It looks so weird. I don't know if it's the shape of his teeth or his mouth or a combination of both. If I leave my mouth open in a natural way, my top teeth show.

And finally, let's finish this with my teeth, in detail. I think they are small. I feel like maybe they should be longer/more rectangular instead of square, particularly the top teeth. They're not abnormally small I guess, but I feel like they're a little small. Also they're kind of crooked but not horribly crooked. It's mostly the bottom ones that are crooked. I should get them fixed. And also get tooth extensions or something. If that's even a thing you can get.

Clearly, I think about teeth a little too much perhaps. Don't even get me started on you know who's eyelashes.

Dreams (and eyelashes guy!)

This post is about a dream I had last night. It was a strange dream. A very strange dream. It involved, somewhat surprisingly although on the other hand, also somewhat unsurprisingly, eyelashes guy. He was in fact the main character. I wonder how weird it is that I dreamed about eyelashes guy. I wonder if other people have ever dreamed about him, other people in the sense that they watched him on CNN and for whatever reason (maybe that reason is that they noticed his spectacular eyelashes) began to pay more attention to him and think about him and read the (sometimes stupid) stuff that he writes columns about or posts on twitter. That is the case for me. Although I mostly just like him because of his eyelashes. But I will say that I think he's intelligent even if I don't agree with all of his political opinions. Anyways, now that that is out of the way even though it is kind of just a repeat of sentiments I've expressed previously. On to what happened in the dream.

Eyelashes guy was in a car accident. The accident caused him injuries and he became paralyzed. So, sometime after the injury, after he gets out of the hospital presumably, he goes to an event of a fake doctor who claims that he can heal people. I'm not exactly sure how he gets himself to this event seeing as he had become paralyzed, but somehow he's there. It takes place somewhere where there is a stage and the event is broadcast live on CNN. The fake doctor lifts eyelashes guy up into a standing position and does the "healing" even though he is just a fake doctor and can't actually heal anyone. So when he lets go of eyelashes guy, eyelashes guy falls to the floor and shouts "help me!!" because he is still paralyzed.
Sometime after this, his wife divorces him because the stress of dealing with his paralysis is too much for her. So, at the end, eyelashes guy is left sad and lonely and on top of that, still paralyzed.

This was a strange dream, no doubt about it. It seems to have taken some inspiration from the Tom Cruise movie Born on the 4th of July where Tom Cruise's character gets shot in the Vietnam War and becomes paralyzed. The other part of the inspiration is watching CNN and paying particular attention to eyelashes guy. On one hand, it would be kind of interesting to tell eyelashes guy about this dream that I had, but on the other hand I think it would also be very weird for eyelashes guy to have knowledge that some random person (to him) has been dreaming about him and in particular, had this dream about him.

Vampires (and Tom Cruise!)

The movie Interview with the Vampire happens to be on tv at the moment. I had already seen it a couple years ago but now that it's on again I'm thinking about it. Stephanie Meyer obviously took a bit of inspiration for her Twilight series from the book this movie was based on. Which makes me wonder, what if Tom Cruise had starred in the Twilight movies as Edward Cullen? Imagine that! It could have been interesting. He was interesting playing a vampire in this movie 22 years ago, which, when you think about it, is quite a bit of time. He was pale and had longish blonde hair in this movie. It took place back in the olden days (1800s?) so he wore outfits with billowy white shirts. Incidentally, the whole combination was kind of hot in a weird way. Brad Pitt was in this movie too, but I didn't find his appearance to be kind of hot in a weird way.
Also, I wonder what it would have been like if he ever guest starred in an episode of one of the Law and Order shows.

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.