Lifetime Value

As an analyst lifetime value means something rather different than what is generally brought to mind.  Lifetime value is a calculation of the expected value of a converted lead from a specific marketing campaign.  In plain English that means the amount of money a company that advertises some manner of product or service can expect to gain when they sucker in the consumer.  What we assign valut to is an odd thing.  Money is assigned value, strict mathematical value in fact.  Its written on the stuff in fact.  But while a dollar is a tangible thing the value behind it is not.  It can be argued there is value in everything just on differing scales. A Picasso is not of the same value as a five year old’s painting.  Except maybe to that parent.  That picture in thirty years time will mean a whole hell of a lot more than that expensive Picasso.  But I can’t assume all parents might feel that way.  As there are plenty of assholes out there who value stuff more than emotion or memory.

My meandering point has to do with the value of life.  Is the life of an animal worth something?  I’ll answer that for you with yes.  If you argue that’s fine and you are indeed entitled to your opinion.  You’re a fucking monster and wrong but you’re entitled to be so.  But in certain cases I do differ to Harlan Ellison the famous Science Fiction writer who said in his documentary  “No, schmuck, you are not entitled to your opinion.  You are entitled to your informed opinion.  Without information it’s just babble, hot air, and farts in the wind.”  And yes there are people who are too damn stupid to be allowed to voice an opinion.  Hell there are people out there who are so stupid and willfully ignorant they should hardly t be allowed to take in air in case it overtaxes plant life.  But where there is opinion is what value does the life of an animal have in comparison to that of a human.  Fuck you P.E.T.A. stay out of this.  You left your sanity and moral a long time ago. For those of you who think P.E.T.A. is just an organization that supports people to take better care of their pets and like to harmlessly protest a lot I say do your homework.  They are not sane people and the image they project is not like their beliefs.  Now I love animals; I’ve had dogs my whole life.  I’ve only cried a few times as an adult and probably the hardest I’ve ever cried was when we had to put down my sheltie Radar.  I won’t route for my old football team the Philadelphia eagles because they hired Michael Vick.  Not as moving or touching as the other story but ratification of my ferocity in appreciating animal life.  P.E.T.A. is crazy on if Mel Gibson had a baby with Donald Trump level.  Probably a bit less racist but basically very egocentric, self promoting bag of shit.  And what irks me is they hide their crazy so they can bilk innocent housewives out of their money.  And P.E.T.A. hats pet ownership they think all animals should be free.  Because obviously no dog would want to stay cooped up in a nice house and fed regularly and played with.  Obviously not.

But back to value of life.  Obviously, or at least to me, a human life is of greater value than an animals.  Even an asshole with bad toupee and shitty casino line has greater intrinsic value than, say, a donkey.  But it should be argued that animals have value and there has to be reason for them to suffer or die.  Food is an excellent reason for animal death.  I admire vegans and vegetarians and their decision.  I especially admire that decision when they don’t brag or talk about it.  I only on occasion brag about how awesome I am so shut up about not eating bacon.  For you vegans and vegetarians out there if you want I’ll bite the bullet and eat extra meat for you guys then tell you about wonderful it is.  You can thank me in the form of clever dirty limericks or large checks.  I accept and appreciate both.  But I have pretty decent sized problem with food industry and the awful things they do in order to get that food to my mouth.  To counter this I try to by food that is farm fresh or raised humanely.  The food industry, sadly, has not so many regulations put on it when they use terms like free range.  It doesn’t necessarily mean chicken that just walk around in open air doing whatever the hell it is chicken do for a couple of year completely unmolested and happy until the day they shuffled off this mortal coil and prepped for consumption.  They just can’t be cages their whole life.  It doesn’t say how much time they need to be outside the cage or if they can’t be grouped together in such a crush its practically like being in a cage.  I can only hope the animals were actually raised humanely.  Notice the word used to describe ethical treatment contains the word human.  It like we can’t deign to say something is treated well unless it treated like us.  Man are we egocentric as a species.

I don’t mind experimentation on animals.  Now I’m not talking about testing cosmetics on animals with no tear ducts so they can’t cry off makeup.  I’m taking about injecting animals with horrible deadly diseases in order to advance important medical science.  If Bobo had to die to save some orphans with an incurable disease I’ll inject that poor monkey myself.  I’d hope that Bobo was and asshole too and see that his widow had an appropriate banana tree fund set up.

But there are cases of animal cruelty well outside necessary.  This is the part of the article where it gets a bit disturbing and depressing.  If you are super sensitive I suggest against reading further.  You’ve been warned.

The Chinese have a very different set of customs and beliefs than we do.  Nothing exactly prophetic or profound in that that statement.  We can pick apart a nation or groups customs and find the parts we find terrible or lacking and criticize them but the whole of the society is responsible for both these bad bits and the rather awesome bits.  I am martial artist and I love it.  I spend around ten hours a week with Kempo and second art I study (it’s a family style yet to be named).  That’s a lot time I could be wasting playing video games.  I like video games.  So I have a vested interest in some of the culture of China (Kempo sprang from Northern China by way of Japan and then Hawaii).  But the Chinese do have an odd fascination with traditional medicine.  Traditional medicine here pertaining to what we in the West often (and sometimes erroneously) label as bunk.  Sadly to fulfill the need for components the Chinese result to rather awful means.  Like bear farms.  And no I’m not talking about gay men roaming the countryside growing food.  Or the even more awesome idea of bears planting crops.  Then fighting.  Always fighting.  No bear farms are disgusting, bad places.  They lock up bears and remove their bile by sticking needles directly into their gall bladder.  They at least anesthetize them.  Not sure if that is for the bear or for keeper safety.  They cram them in cages and harvest this bile regularly and in case they need to make extra money they lop off a paw or two.  Link to the article below but beware they start with a picture of a bear and it’s hard not project the emotion of terror onto it.  There are arguments that animals do not have true emotions and we simply place our interpretations of expression on them and they simply rely on instinct only.  I rebuff these people by stating they are douche bags.  And yes that is an emotional not an intellectual response.  I choose to believe animals have emotion.  It is “[estimated] that about 20,000 black bears are kept on about 100 bile farms in China.”  So this is not a small problem.  You might say after finding out the reasoning form the extraction that maybe there is no other way to grant such relief.

“Bear bile is prized in traditional Chinese medicine for its alleged ability to relieve muscle aches, joint pains, fever, migraines and hangovers, as well as being a curative for impotence, gallstones, cirrhosis, even cancer. Synthetic compounds are just as effective for many of these ailments, but many Asians, especially Chinese and Vietnamese men of a certain age, favor fresh bile."

So fuck that.

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/finally-outrage-in-china-against-bear-farming/

Don’t think animal cruelty is a strictly Chinese art.  All manner of countries are getting in on this crap.  Hey remember those elephants.  I do.  Remember how we keep spending money to stop those fucker from dying out.  Again yes.  When was the last time you actually heard about the atrocities of ivory poaching…. I’m think maybe the mid nineties.  Probably around the time Captain Planet was cancelled.  Another reason to dislike poachers.  Well maybe not.  But yeah I haven’t thought about elephants being killed in a bit and it seems like poaching isn’t getting any better.  Just ask Cameroon (I know this might be odd but I every time I hear Cameroon I think of Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy on the train in Trading Places).  Three hundred elephants were recently found killed.  And you don’t need to kill elephants to remove their tusks.  But you don’t need to be a horrible person to be a poacher.  Wait, yes you do.  Poachers are bad people.  But they do this becuadse its reasonably easy and profitable.  It come back to crime being profitable and, sadly, reasonably easy.

“Observers in Cameroon have been blaming the raids on poorly trained and ill-equipped park guards, who are pitted against professional gangs of poachers.”

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/20/world/africa/cameroon-elephants-killed/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

But, hey, two out of five continents being reasonable awful to animals isn’t so bad.  Australia can’t be awful to animals as they have a strong union and they are god damn terrifying in that country.  It’s like evolution had a date with fucking murder movie and got worse.  Then they added spiders.  Fuck you Australia.  Fuck you so hard.

But, hey, why not add the United States?  But if we are talking Amurika we should be talking reality tv.  They are growing synonymous.  I wonder if election voter rates would increase if it was linked to reality television…. Sadly, why I know this parody it might actually work.  I can’t tell if that’s hopeful cynicism or just bitterness or something only the Germans have create  word for.  Those Germans do create some wonderful words.  Schadenfreude.  I say relaoity television because there is a show my mother would often watch called Aniaml Cops.  Which was basically awful.  You see neglected animals and bad people who own them and then later you see these animals get better and adopted.  Usually there is the occasional dead animal or animal so messed up they can never let them be adopted.  I can never be adopted as I’m food aggressive… that may have been inappropriate.  I coat sadness and disappointment with humor.

So there is this:  “Nearly 100 dogs were found abused and in deplorable condition at the site of an animal rescue group in Wingo, Kentucky that was set up to save them and give them a chance for a new life.”

http://www.care2.com/causes/100-dogs-saved-from-abusive-animal-rescue-group-slides.html

And we come full circle with this bullshit.  I’m especially disturbed that this place is a rescue group and its committing this bullshit.  So we are toping cruelty with hypocrisy and we don’t have cultural difference to explain away the awful.  Ah, America you’re number one.  Did the italics for sarcasm work?  I’m not so sure.

Ben

Valorous Attempt

I was having some difficulty deciding what to talk on today.  Having the Oscars on in the background I figured I would stick with film again and talk about the last movie I saw Act of Valor.  There will be spoilers below but the plot really wasn’t all that important for the movie.  I’ll still announce when I’m disclosing something important to the plot.  I’ll try to be socially conscientious again next post.  Act of Valor, for those who don’t know, is a film with actual on duty service personnel using true military tactics.  It’s kind of confusing as this was essentially a mash up of military reality, bad 80’s action movies and modern video games.  It didn’t always quite work.  At times it felt like we were present at a real extraction, a real mission but the problem is that you can’t do reality all the way in a film.  Anything a producer or director gets their hands on has to be better than real, it has to be hyper-real,  an imitation of real but better.  The problem is you can’t do real but better if you are going for real.  The movie felt truly confused at times.  And that’s a problem.  We, as an audience, can grasp a direction.  It doesn’t take much for us to understand that when there is cheesy music, bad one liners, thousands of bullets poured at the hero but he miraculously remains unharmed even through his muscles take up the whole of the camera frame that we watching something absolutely silly but fun.  We expect silliness and explosions and over the top action.  But if all of sudden it turns sour and they interject a serious plot line about a love interest dying from cancer we are not quite ready for this switch.  This film couldn’t quite choose what direction it wanted to go in.  It had serious moments, it tried for the buddy comedy moments but Marines just aren’t funny.  Scary, intimidating, yeah, but funny when forced to recite someone else’s lines not so much.  And that was part of the problem.  We saw correct tactics, correct gun play.  Squeezing the shoulder when they were behind to silently announce position without noise.  But it’s a fucking movie and we want more than looking like the subject we want to attach emotionally to a character.   Navy Seals don’t emote so well for the camera.  These fuckers kill shit and protect freedom.  They don’t act.  Not well at least.  They can strut around and wave guns and shoot shit.  That they do well.  But the second they talk it’s like when the jocks in school were called to read a passage in a book.  No inflection, no correct pauses, just monotone speech and trying to get through it without being laughed at. They knew they shouldn’t have been called on the teacher immediately regrets and everyone decided not to speak on it again.  The smart kids got a moment to snicker and the theater kids roll their eyes in cool condescension.

I wish the guys could emote properly.  But the problem is the film was such a rah-rah go America movement that it seemed no one wanted to show fragility, fear or vulnerability.  I saw Restrepo and I saw fear, saw emotion, saw damn tough men cry.  There was too much coolness, too much control even when shit, predictably, went south.  There was death, there was injury and they weren’t indestructible but there was this presence like America itself was fighting the bad guys not this collection of men.  We never felt fear as an audience for this group.  Only at one point in the movie did I feel true suspense.  And sadly that moment was relieved before it played out properly.  Suspense is integral.  It’s that thing that makes you actually question whether the hero will make it out okay.  Like the suspense I had watching the Oscars.  Not about who would win but if Angelina would ever eat again.  Seriously I’m worried the lady might actually be a mummy with flesh wrapped over her.  She looks like she has a tape worm or something.  No wonder she adopts, sex might break her brittle frame.

So we have bad acting.  I can forgive this, it is an action movie.  We have bad pacing and stilted dialogue that’s okay too I guess.  But the problem is there were moments that were really impressive mixed in with moments of garbage.  SPOILERS.  There was a torture and abduction scene.  The abduction scene was ugly and scary and fast and horrifying.  It was cold, evil and frightening.  Everything it should be.  The camera work was  great in this part.  And the torture scene was painful without being too gory.  It hurt and you related to this pain, you related to the character.  Something, sadly, that lacked from other parts.  There was a lot of shock and awe and braggadocio.  So many other parts of this movie were basically action movie rip offs.  The opening scene was all quick camera work and exposition.  Some good but all predictable typical action nonsense.  The bike part was a nauseating for no good reason.  They had quick cuts that introduced the angry, mysterious villain, the nervous female, the cute kids in a school, and the local flavor of the foreign nation.  Other scenes, in between our brave service men kicking as and taking names and emoting like fucking animate rocks, we had a stock villain curl his lips exaggerate his expression and wide eyed drop a grenade from the floor above.  And I wanted this movie not to be awful or at least only awful in a certain way I suppose.  If it wasn’t so obvious that it tried so hard to be good then spectacularly failed at some things and surprised at others.  I could be angry at the film, indignant even, what a waste of money!  But I can’t.   I mean I can be angry at the shitty plot and slapped together nature.  I can be angry at the mixed feelings and the scenes and the deflated suspense.   Actually I am pissed at the fucking interrogation.  It had a few moments of being awesome but like so much it waffled.  It deflated too quickly it was just too fucking easy.  Just the spector of America folds the bastard quickly and we come out looking nice.  No hands on the fucker, just cool condescension.  Fuck that.  I can’t believe that shit.  I want to see the bastard kneecapped at the start of the interview and a thumb in the wound.  Ugly, angry patriots taking justice into their own hands is what I expect.  I’d still root for that.

The worst offense is the video game bullshit.  If you saw the tremendous pile of hot garbage called Doom you might remember the five minute first person bullshit scene where the camera is the protagonist and it goes about looking just like the game kicking ass  The Rock and all his bulging muscles could do nothing to save that waste of celluloid.  They pulled this first person nonsense too often, in Valor not Doom, and it worked at times but the overuse was just unpleasant.  And worse still is the ripping off of the modern warfare series with the man going down after being shot and redeeming himself with red vision pulling out a hand gun and shooting bad guys as he loses consciousness.  Video games have a been a struggling medium vying for respect and credibility and they slowly over the years have gained acceptance through art shows and concerts as the generation who have played them have grown up.  But video games emulate movies.  Movies have not really emulated games well.  They’ve tried for years but rarely turned the built in audience into cash.  The Mario Brother disaster still haunts me.  Hel the stars on the set of the movie were drinking heavily as they knew the tremendous mistake they were perpetrating on our poor unsuspecting eyes and ears.

But if they make another one of these I’ll sit through it.  Because, let’s face it, it’s still better than The Expendables and god damn do I want one of those fucking miniguns they used, that shit was undeniably cool and its mere sight raised all the audience members testosterone levels to professionally wrestler level.  America… Fuck Yeah.

Ben

Legal quandary

It should come to no one’s surprise that there are a few issues with the justice system in the United States.  Essentially shit is fucked up.

I’m going to tell a quick story and you should think about what the person should be charged with.  Even better totally ignore our legal system and just imagine yourself as judge jury and executioner.  Decide on your own moral and justification what you think should be the punishment for the set of circumstance I lay out.

There’s a  big party with some underage drinking.  Our culprit is twenty and getting reasonable drunk.  Some of his buddies, mostly harmless low level criminals and idiots and getting drunk with him.  During the course of the night they joke about robbing this girls house.  The culprit know they aren’t straight arrows but doesn’t actually think they’re going to do anything.  Later on during the night they ask to borrow his car.  Intoxicated the culprit agrees knowing full well they might actually rob this girls house.  He also knew they might knock her out if need be.  Maybe you can see where this is going.  Bad stuff happened and the buddies, when committing a felony for the robbery, accidentally killed the girl.  So I ask you what punishment should be meted out to our culprit for lending the car to his friends who went out robbed somewhere and them killing them in the process.  We will get back to this before the article is over I promise.

Part of the reason things get so tricky in law is this whole common law bit.  Common law like so many parts of our culture came over from England.  Common law basically works off of legal precedents.  If there is a case and there other tried before it than have similar circumstances you can refer back to it.  There were certain precedents set.  With each case being different and having certain mitigating factors you can refer back to all manner of cases with varying amounts of similarities.  When we break new ground and broach subjects that have no precedent we are able to set important and new precedents.  Right now things like privacy, information and all sorts of copyright law due to the proliferation and new uses of the internet are springing up.  Because the internet is a beast like no other it’s difficult to draw conclusions off past cases.  There is another system of justice that operates not off of precedent but off a strict code of laws – the civil system – and that’s what Louisiana uses because they wanted to be different and its difficult to argue with people with swamp dialects and win.  Actually it’s because of the prevalence of the French as we get that system by ways of France and Spain though its roots are in ancient Rome.  The Romans loved them some strict laws.  Just ask Cicero.  But I suggest against it as he won’t answer being very much dead for a long time.  So we’ve got this common law thing which is at times arcane because you know sometimes we don’t get new precedents and the standing ones aren’t terrible new.  This can be a problem with some laws that may or may not be morally troubling.  One such law which can in certain interpretation be at best morally murky the felony murder law.  Now I assume we can agree that murders and felonies are bad. 

According to a free online legal dictionary* (obviously the best choice for all knowledge) The felony murder law is “A Rule of Law that holds that if a killing occurs during the commission or attempted commission of a felony (a major crime), the person or persons responsible for the felony can be charged with murder.”  Now you might wonder well why the fuck would we need that.  Isn’t killing someone always a murder.  No you argumentative fool.  Stop arguing and being all foolish.  It makes you look bad, and ignorant.  And you smell.  Well maybe not smell but anyway… killing someone could result in several different charges like manslaughter and some other stuff I don’t feel like researching.  I’m an analyst you’ll have to talk to other people I know for actual paid for their knowledge level of legal advice.  So what this law does is take any killing, and this we can assume include accidental/unintentional killing as well, and makes it a charge of murder (generally not a good charge to have) when there is a felony involved.  Even more disturbing is the bit below from the same site.

“Generally an intent to kill is not necessary for felony-murder. The rule becomes operative when there is a killing during or a death soon after the felony, and there is some causal connection between the felony and the killing.”

Maybe you can see where this is going.  Reread the casual connection part.  My mind screams that’s some scary inclusive shit.  I don’t like that.  Here might be why: “punishing accomplices as though they had been the actual killers is perfectly appropriate.”

Remember that what if scenario that I gave at the beginning, well, that was real.  And the punishment?  A charge of murder and a conviction with life in jail without the possibility of parole.  For lending a car and making a bad decision when drunk.  Here’s the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/us/04felony.html

In this article the author notes that Canada, our neighbors above who do silly things like play hockey and provide free and equal healthcare, abolished the law,  “In 1990, the Canadian Supreme Court did away with felony murder liability for accomplices, saying it violated “the principle that punishment must be proportionate to the moral blameworthiness of the offender.” ”

If this doesn’t scare you a little think about your friends.  Now think about your idiot friends who you wouldn’t trust to watch your dog.  Now imagine being held culpable because of “some causal connection.”  I’m already nervous enough in general without having to worry about being responsible for my idiot friends’ actions.

*http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Felony-Murder+Rule

Ben

The War on Drugs

When I think of the war of drugs I remember Nancy Reagan’s skeletal frame wandering into camera and blithering, with no charm or inherent personality, “to just say no.” Like it’s that fucking easy. Yes mister addict all you need to do is say no. Once you’ve removed his half burned spoon from your eye and yellowed fingers from around your neck it will be difficult to start an adult conversation again but fuck you for opening with just say no. D.A.R.E was such a goddamn cluster fuck too. A cop would come to your school and give you a bogus lecture about the evils of drugs. All it did was give us young suburbanites a piqued interest into crap we didn’t really care about. Consequences are not part of a ten year olds understanding. Ruining your life didn’t exist. There was getting in trouble and not getting trouble.

Part of my problem with this ‘war’ is the incompetency and simple lack of human compassion with such base tactics. Just say no is not a good solution on its own. This is stating that everyone has the willpower and ability to ignore and or kick the problem but you’re probably just too stupid to do so. Or you were never told that drugs are bad. Drugs generally are bad. I highly doubt anyone will stand up and say, “Meth is fucking awesome and it’s good for your teeth and complexion.” Well they might but they’d be half insane from meth and you don’t listen to those people. If you need D.A.R.E. training for that you might have bigger issues than drug dependency. And yes there are people out there who are so stupid they might need this aid, and are here-to-with referred to as criminally stupid because they are obviously a danger to society at large.

So the message was stupid and oversimplified and treated people like incompetents. I also take offense that it was delivered by people who obviously have no real interaction with drugs. You know what people respond to? Real fucking stories not 'marijuana will ruin your life' delivered by some bored social worker. Not after school specials where Helen Hunt throws herself out of a window or Ben Affleck pretends to get roid rage and starts lifting (and while taking steroids shows no visible change in muscle mass). Yes, those are really crappy school videos and yes I saw the Ben Affleck one and I wish I could forget. So does Mr. Affleck. You know whose stories I would listen to and actually shut up for as a small person real people with horrible tragedies that fucked up their live that I could relate to. About the kid who is in jail for the rest of his life because he broke into someone’s house for drug money and then killed the owner. He didn’t mean to or want to and was scared the whole time. But he killed someone while he was high scrounging for stolen good and now he will live out the rest of his life in jail. I’d shut up for that. Or a kid who went to foster home after foster home after her parents blew themselves up in a home Meth lab explosion. Or the dozens of terrifying real life tragedies from drugs that people don’t think about. Because that shit seems so far away from us we can’t relate to it. You want to actually scare kids show them a teen prom queen who got into drugs. Show before and after pictures. Or worse yet poor Lindsay Lohan; she’s twenty five and looks like fucking Donatella Versace.

So we’ve got bad message and bad delivery.

During Prohibition the United States had no legal production or sale of alcohol. Our neighboring countries, like Cuba, Mexico and Canada had no such issues. This is when Canadian Whiskey started to come into vogue - how fucking shocking. Obviously during this time there was no violence or illicit wrongdoings caused by this stance. Oh wait, fuck, I forgot about Chicago crime bosses, the bootleggers and the horrible crime that ensued which gave the Mafia such a great foothold into this country. You know those guys we still have issues with today that we created by giving them such a lucrative business opportunity because people need their goddamn booze and fuck you I’m buying it. And yeah maybe we wouldn’t have bitching movies like Scarface(the first one in 30’s and the Tony Montana one in the 80’s) or The Public Enemy with James Cagney and a grapefruit (the grapefruit won best supporting actor) but I think it’s okay to give those movies up for lessened crime activity but that’s just my opinion. So Prohibition caused a metric asston (because a Royal asston would be confusing and not divisible by ten) of crime and destabilized whole parts of the country put money into some not so nice people’s hands and caused the government to recant some time later. So we had some not so good crime from 1920 and the Eighteenth Amendment to 1933 with the twenty first Amendment which repealed the Eighteenth. The nineteenth and twentieth amendments were for agreeing that no one should fuck with Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson respectively. That shot got passed unanimously. So we increased some crime, a bunch of people got hurt and then we said fuck it lets back off. They realized the futility and danger of keeping alcohol away from the populace. But not so with the war on drugs because obviously we haven’t done anything as nearly bad or wide reaching. No, not really, shit is fucked.  Take some of the follwoing with an enormous grain of salt or, barring that, enough grains of salt to equal a large one as it come from interent research and articles.

“… transit countries facing some of the highest homicide rates in the world…”


“Latin American leaders have joined together to condemn the U.S. government for soaring drug violence in their countries, blaming the United States for the transnational cartels that have grown rich and powerful smuggling dope north and guns south.”

“We speak of a drug-trafficking route that moves about a hundred billion dollars a year, culminating in the world's largest market and biggest consumer of these substances, the United States,” said El Salvador President Mauricio Funes, who added that the United States had a “moral responsibility” to do more.”

“All the money, regardless how much it is multiplied, and all the blood, no matter how much is spilled will not stop the drug trade as long as the north continues consuming,” said Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/latin-american-leaders-assail-us-drug-market/2011/12/16/gIQAjyy63O_story_1.html

That’s some serious shit. Hey, you know how Mexico can be a bit of a shithole and dangerous. Yeah, that might be our fault. Or those cocaine cowboys down in Columbia, our bad, oops. And obviously we aren’t spending any oodles of money infiltrating, fighting and funding armies to ruin that shit we may have helped create.

Ok, so this drug war is fucking up our neighbors. And killing people and giving not so nice people money. But, we’re okay, right? Right? Yeah, maybe we aren’t crowding our jails with people on drug related charges. Maybe it’s mostly murderers and rapists not drug related criminals.

“In 1970, 16.3 percent of all federal inmates were imprisoned on drug-related charges; in 2002 that percentage had risen to 54.7 percent.”

http://www.pbs.org/now/society/prisons3.html

Shit. Now assume half of those people might be violent, which means half are not (fuck you math I used logic there, and don’t tell me they are related fields or I will punch you in your smug face). And these poor bastards, the nonviolent drug related criminals, equal 27.35% of our prisoners. Shit. But at least we aren’t overcrowding the prisons or some shit like that.

“Although local jails are generally operating under their stated capacities, all state and federal prisons are overcrowded -- some as much as 33 percent higher than their official capacities.”

http://crime.about.com/od/prison/a/bjs040720.htm

Fuck. Well, at least it's not... you know I’m not even going to ask another question because the research will depress the shit out of me. I mean, you do wonder how much this costs...

“All told, it costs an average of $129.04 a day to house an inmate in the prison system. Although these figures come from California corrections, it is slightly lower in other parts of the country, but not by much.”

http://www.ehow.com/about_5409377_average-cost-house-inmates-prison.html

Damn it! And that includes touching on things like:

· Security and Administration

· Health Care

· Operations

· Rehabilitation

· Inmate Support

Those are kind of reasonable and important. So if some poor bastard gets caught with enough weed to be tried for intent on selling a felony and gets ten years that one guy who probably just wanted to hang out with his buddies and watch Shrek and eat some chicken wings (yes, I have watched Shrek and housed some chicken wings under the influence) that could cost you… $470,996.00. Well, that’s not depressing at all. So this shit is expensive on our prison systems. Plus think how much we spend on prevention or you know the whole wing/organization of government created for drugs, the D.E motherfucking A. (or if your lame dea but fuck you my way is better) Hell, alcohol, tobacco and firearms altogether only get one organization.

So maybe this whole drug war isn’t a good idea. In that case I can only hope our government is really good with having an exit… strategy… man, I am totally setting myself up today with this.

But one thing I want to impart is that drugs are generally not so good. I remember thinking I was going to die alone in my college room from a heart attack and breathing problems while I thought my closet was rotating unnaturally. I was seeing things in almost a kaleidoscope. That was a bad day and I learned my fucking lesson real quick. Bad panic attacks will do that. However, I am in favor of decriminalization as it will, at least I think, save lives, save money, save relationships with foreign countries and in general improve things. Violent drug crime will go down. We’ll have fewer prisoners. And no more D.A.R.E.. Eat that Nancy Reagan or at least eat something you look way too skinny. And no, I am not ignoring the plethora of other problems with allowing drugs in this country. Crime will still occur and violence will still occur stemming from drugs. I’m not such a rosy tinted optimist to think it magically solves all the problems. But I really do think this strategy is an inexcusably expensive, monstrously bad and an unenforceable stance that causes worse problems than it tries to solve. But hey logic and politics are not great friends it turns out. Who would have guessed?

Ben

Piracy and Plagiarism

I was asked not long ago why they were making a sequel to G.I. Joe, they being Hollywood.  My friend was not exactly a fan of the movie.  I, however, was able to enjoy the movie as I turned off the part of my brain that access to higher functions like logic and analysis.  I simply focused on the shiny lasers and pew pew noises.  The sequel demonstrates the care Hollywood has for its moviegoers.  Not much.  The essentially took all the protagonists away and replaced them with more famous people and additional ninjas.  This, in my opinion, is not a bad thing.  However, as a sequel you normally have a bit more continuity than that.  It’s like the second matrix movie they dropped Neo and Morpheus and just added the Rock and more ninjas.  Strangely, I think I might be okay with this movie as well.  But this isn’t a true sequel.  It is using a brand name that has some value and cashing in on it.

Hollywood makes bad movies not because they lack originality (although that helps) but because bad movies make money.  If bad movies didn’t make money they wouldn’t keep making them.  If the only things that made money were films by Nolan we’d see a whole lot more cool shit.  But sadly both Avatar movies made a bunch of money too.  Avatar 1 being blue dances with wolves which is a crappy white apology movie and Avatar 2 being a really bad reworking of a decent character driven children’s show with original ideas and well thought out mythology.  Avatar 2 the cartoon worked not because it was unpredictable (I knew how it was going to go down somewhere around season one end, as a film major I could spot narrative structure and device) but because it made sense and followed a logical progression with real characters who never betrayed the rules and limitations set on them.  What I mean by betraying the rules and limitations set on them is that if you’re character is a braggart there is a reason for this.  They don’t suddenly become modest after a lesson in one show which demonstrates the good of low key behavior, no they have character arc and they progress and regress and act, you know, like fucking human might.  Hell, the flying bison had a more convincing plot line and personality than character in the first G.I Joe movie.

Austin Powers is not the epitome of high intellectual humor.  The first movie was charming, small, and had some subtle moments that took chances and did not patronize the audience.  It never winked at the audience and said, “Hey, the joke is coming in a moment.  It’s about me being fat, because holy Christ I’m fat!”  By the time the third movie lumbered in subtlety was gone.  Jokes were repeated ad nauseum.  It was safe and profitable.  The movie made by these movies went up considerable each film.  The originality, nuance and respect for the audience went down.  Yet we slapped down money at the counter and demanded to fed this crap.  It’s our fault.

So that explains sequels, sort of, and also a whole lot of shitty predictable safe movies - a lot of these are called high concept, if you see a movie that explains the whole of the plot in ten seconds of the preview and spend the remaining time showing pensive characters, its high concept.  Now rip off and remakes.  This has been going on forever.  The Terminator is a kick ass movie with an intentionally wooden Schwarzenegger killing stuff and being awesome.  Sadly the story line was outright stolen from two stories by Harlan Ellison (an impressive Science Fiction author who has been involved or inspired much of the important bits of the genre).  The original films at the turn of the century, when Hollywood was yet to even be a thing, were retellings of popular tales.  Filmmakers stole consistently from each other as patent, copyright, and intellectual property were not yet defined for the burgeoning media.  If you watch very old pieces you’ll see signs in the background that served to prove who actually created the film reel in question so no one could steal/reshow that movie without incriminating oneself.  Film was based off stealing, borrowing and reworking.  Hell, noted authors have stated that are only a few basic archetypes for all narrative just a few different tweaks.  Spanish telanovas, yes I am god damn going here, basically follow only one plot line.  A pretty poor girl goes to work for a wealthy family.  There are two sons.  One is very good and one is very bad.  Insert drama and romance.  Change little bits around.  Fuck, I’m putting together a treatment right now for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in that.  And yes it should still be in Spanish.  And don’t think this is only film.  Shakespeare, the Bard for fucks sake, added a reworked version of Romeo and Juliet into A midsummer Night’s Dream and had the mechanicals foul it up for comedic effect.  And Shakespeare had sequelitis worse than George Lucas (but a much worse rights deal).

So Hollywood steals, remakes, retweeaks, tell unoriginal or bad stories.  But there is one thing Hollywood is good at (besides making money and marketing, I should have said three things and then listed what I’m about to say after but that would fuck with the flow so back off man).  Hollywood kicks ass at giving money to important people.  They are awesome at being litigious.  They rock at attacking the internet and our freedoms.  They do this because they can and they do this because they have money.  They also do this so that they can avoid adapting to the new model of the internet properly.  Anyone remember the writer’s strike?  Reminder they weren’t getting paid for content on the internet which Hollywood profited from.  Here is a link from Peter Sunde (Pirate Bay) on the sidestepping of the evolution of the industry.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-02/13/peter-sunde-evolution

ACTA, SOPA, PIPA

These things are scary.  This is legislation pushed through by older men and women who don’t quite understand the issue at hand, or worse still remain intentionally and willfully ignorant -  or worst of all the people who do understand but don’t care – backed by entrainment industry protecting themselves not by being better in content delivery or behavior and ,you know, encourage legal and profitable use of their products, but by ruining our freedoms.  Yes, this would not come about if people weren’t working the system but the internet is here and it’s staying.  Work with this beast not hack at it and make it angry.  If we could get the public to get as angry over other issues like they did over SOPA and PIPA we would be in a much better country tomorrow.  But most likely our elected officials will continue backdooring in policy without us noticing and hoping we go along with our live blissfully ignorant to our plight.  But, hey, we all share responsibility for this and taking action is hard and stuff.  I might miss my show.

In short support business like Netflix and Gamefly and say fuck you to Hollywood as much possible.  And to the assholes who griped about Netflix when they split up their services and started charging more I say, “Shut up.  Do you want sit to go back to the way it was with Blockbuster and the other rental chains?  Five bucks and late fees.  Fuck you.  Unlimited streaming free goodness.  And legal.”  Actua;;y don’t say fuck you to Hollywood.  Go to movies just please go to good films and maybe just maybe festering piles like Twilight will stop being made.

Ben

Dinosaurs Didn’t Go Extinct They Were Just Cancelled

Certain things were way more awesome when I was a kid.  Dinosaurs was one of them.  And if you say otherwise so help me Kyle I will smash that chocolate pudding in your chubby little face.  Depending on your field of study everyone seems to have a different idea on why they they’re gone.  Geologists might talk about the soil consistency during that period being tainted by soot which trends towards meteorite impact and a poison cloud or some bullshit.  Biologist might argue evolution took hold and the dinosaurs never died out they just changed  Because apparently biologist are boring and hate fun.  A theologist probably has no thought on the matter as dinosaurs weren’t covered in any holy book.  The Bible would be so much more awesome with dinosaurs (Also light sabers).  I like to think of it more in the Jules Verne sense.  It got too cold and they just went inside.  Then when they went to see if winter was over they saw us and said “Fuck it, we’ll stay in these intricate cave systems.”

I wonder if dinosaurs came back, could they be domesticated?  How the fuck would PETA dael with that?  How bitching would it be to ride to work on a triceratops.  Fuck you traffic.  Hey, is that Kyle?  Fuck up his car.  Jousting would be so much more awesome with raptors.  I would, however, feel bad for the T-rex with all the short arm jokes that would go around.  But, honestly, if you don’t see the humor in a five year old berating a goddamn T-rex and humbling him it to tears over arm length I don’t want to know you.  But what next?  Would dinos become like us?  Would we have an anorexic Dilophosaurus?  Note here the dilophosaurus is already the douche bag of the Paleolithic as they have built in faux hawks.  I would pay good money to see a stegosaurus read the Talmud with a kippah and a tallit. Maybe we could tape some fake payot (think Jewish sideburns) to his head.  I assume it’s a he, hence the male sideburns, but I think it might be rude to ask.  Also will they wear pants or maybe act like cartoon characters and just wear a shirt.  I imagine Utah raptor’s would wear popped collar polos and designer sunglasses.  Will I say anything about it to them, no.  Damn it scientist ignore Jeff Goldblum and get on making some fucking dinosaurs.  Life finds a way, right?  Make me some fucking T-rex then.  Imagine the dog whisperer spin offs we could have…

Ben

Educational Woes

Hey continuity and following up on a promise from an earlier post, what more could you ask for?  If you ask for lucidity so help me I will hippopotamus milkshake.  Any who, lets attempt a modicum of intelligence.  The education system in the country is under attack.  It has changed drastically from when I came out of it about twelve and a half years ago (fuck, math again).  Not that change is a bad thing.  Change is inevitable.  Inevitability, of course, does nothing to prove it being good or bad.  Death is inevitable and that is generally agreed upon to be not so good in the scheme of things.  Slightly off topic but relating in the end nonetheless a name some important things that have been discovered in the past hundred or so years.  I’ll start:

• Automobiles
• Flight
• The Internet
• Microchips
• The Blooming Onion
• Moving pictures
• Some vaccines and shit

A whole bunch of those were due to what I call the ingenuity of curious and intellectually hungry Americans.  The smart asses among you will know that film was ‘discovered’ in the 1890’s by Frenchman (lumiere brothers)* but most of the discoveries afterwards that expanded a process that only allowed about sixty seconds of black and white grainy silent film to what we have now were discovered by Americans.  Like that asshole braggart Thomas Edison.  His greatest claim was as the first patent holder on being a douche bag.  This intellectual curiosity, this thirst for more very much seems to be missing.  Perhaps due to things like cinema and then every increasing trend towards sitting on your ass watching television or playing video games.  I like those things.  They constitute part of my happy time.  Along with other activities like eating** and vocally disliking things.  I think to an extent this country has been anti intellectualism.  We don’t reward curiosity and knowledge like we could.  We don’t elevate the importance of intellectual growth.  Socrates would be very upset.  That is after the whole transitional period where he intones “holy crap, I’m not dead” and “Why didn’t I think of pants?”  I’m not sure how he delivered “an unexamined life is not worth living” without wearing pants and people took him seriously.  I assume it was the beard.  If your generation’s claim to fame is better video games and boner pills we might need to change our priorities.  Boner pills.  I just wanted to write that twice sorry for interrupting pacing.

So there has been a culture shift or “dumbening” as it were.  But there is some much more bullshit to blame before I’m done.  As a patron of the internet it is imperative I lay blame at the feet of a whole bunch of people who are not me.  Let’s relate this to me.  Because fuck you I’m writing this.  In middle school we separated certain classes.  It was expressly stated but the classes were as follows; dumb kids; normal kids; kids with glasses.  We did this for math and English.  It was fucking awesome.  This meant if you were a fucking idiot you didn’t have to try and rub your five brain cells together and go at the pace of the rest of class.  Also if you were smart you didn’t have to read boring shit.  I was in the smart reading and writing class and normal math class.  Now I understand separating kids into this three categories or regular remedial and advanced might not be the best thing for fragile egos but middle school sucks.  It sucks for every damn person involved.  Its fucking miserable.  It much less fun than elementary or high school for the kids, parents and teaching.  You voice changes and cracks, pimples, raging hormones (why is it always raging? how about seething or head banging), boobies (well, that part was ok except for the fact they were inaccessible because of the pimples voice cracking and hormonal stupidity) and generally things are much more awkward.  But everything sucks at this time so fuck sheltering egos.  Is it really worth cramming all intellectual levels into one class and teaching at the lowest level.  Not a way to foster intellectual growth.

Here is some information on teachers.  They are not fucking babysitters.  It isn’t their job to discipline your unruly shit heads.  It’s their job to teach.  But bullshit rules and regulations are so tight teachers are expected to calmly take the abuse of these vile demon children.  You might say, or think, “Ben, not all children are vile or demon like.”  And I would say” yes, person who is talking to me in a manner prescribed to move this along, you are correct.”  But you only need one dickhead to derail everything.  We all know people like this now who are grown up and ruin everything,  all the time with amazing consistency, even in a large group settings.  The only really surprise here is why we keep hanging out with them or get surprised when the same shits happens.  It’s easy to blame the children here (and fun too).  But I generally find it not worth to lay blame at minors.  They aren’t really old enough to know yet how fucking stupid they are or the true consequences of their actions.  Realizing your own stupidity takes far more years than it should (self-deprecated humor redacted on account of awesomeness).

So the kids are unruly and teachers are neutered in their responses.  Some of that is good.  I’ve heard stories about people I know who aren’t that much older being paddled or smacked with a ruler.  And yes these stories involved nuns.  And no it was not kinky, you twisted monkey you.  But too much is obviously bad.

These guidelines come from somewhere.  Oh yes, our good friends the administration and the political machine.  Nothing bad comes from then!  I wonder if that italicize equals sarcasm bit would be a helpful thing to adapt here.  Oh, well, that would more editing than I want to deal with currently.  So we have neutered teachers, unsupportive/idiotic administration, bullshit political douche baggery.  NO child left behind was awesome!  (Did the italicize work?)  On an unrelated note I am sad that spell check has no appropriate response for douche baggery.  It does state that douche and bag should be separate but I think when using baggery it might be best to squish them together for maximum effect.  Douchebaggery.

Now perhaps the biggest offended in the whole thing.  Parents.  These are the assholes who should be instilling some manners into their little mouth breathers.  But instead they get upset when the teacher fails their child.  “All he did was cut class, disrupt class, fart musically,  swear like a pirate stubbing his toe (I use his toe as statistically there have been only two recorded cases of female pirates and roughly a metric fuckton of reported not female pirates), disrespect the teacher, not turn in assignments on time, not turn them in at all, cheat, lie, light shit on fire, and make rude sexual remarks to the opposite sex.”  I only wish this list was entirely made up or that parents were not surprised when their child didn’t pass because they put forth not effort.

The following anecdote is off topic but not.  I played this game called Rygar on the NES when I was a kid.  I wasted a large amount of time on it.  It was a game with only one life and no continues.  You missed a jump and fell game over.  Doesn’t matter if you put twenty hours in.  No passwords, no backsies, nothing.  I got good at it through dogged determination and the understanding that if I fucked up a little I had to start over.  I still have night sweats about this game.  Battletoads gives me full on night terrors.  I could get to the final boss after hours of laborious, but fun, game play and then get smashed piteously by the last boss.  Who you had to fight after going through all the previous bosses again one after before facing him.  There was punishment for failure.  Now look at Skyrim: Elder Scrolls V.  I can save as much as I want, whenever I want.  Death just puts me back a few moments.  Death is only a problem if I didn’t save a few minutes ago.  There is no punishment for fucking up.  I can keep running in to any room full of whatever level enemy with no fear of repercussion.  You can meta play this sonofabitch.  And just steal and kill or do whatever the hell you want and blithely scream fuck you narrative direction while you run around in pajamas.  Yay freedom.

That same sense of no repercussion of failure is present in modern education.  We aren’t failing kids.  Failure isn’t totally bad if you can learn from it.  We should be concernce only with what is best for the child right now, it is what is best for their future.  And sometimes that is telling them, “you fucked up and now you have accept the consequence of staying back.  Maybe next year you won’t snort salt up your nose.”  (Sadly I knew someone who did this on dare... with no money involved... in college.  Before you ask, no, it wasn't me.)  If there are ‘social promotions’ and a rampant lack of personal responsibility and little to no punishment for failure can you really blame kids for blowing off studying.  I hated school often.  But I’m damn glad I didn’t totally coast by the whole time.  I’m glad I occasionally got challenged and was forced to think critically.  It is our job as adults to make sure the next generation isn’t full of fucking idiots.  And we do this by fixing our education system.  Otherwise the list of inventions for the next hundred years will be decidedly un-American.

Ben

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumiere_brothers

**Note on eating.  The greatest collision of awesome and food is this:  The preference method for eating is punching the food item and licking your fist.  Not recommended for all food or those who hate being awesome.

Fuck you Florida

I don’t hate Florida.  I don’t know it well enough.  However, some of my friends who know Florida better loathe it.  But let’s find the point it’s around here somewhere.  Oh yeah, drug testing for welfare.  This pisses me off.   I could make a quick list of why it pisses me off and it would look kinda like this:

•       Asshatery
•       Bullshit rich people do to poor people
•       People have been attacked by empathy vampires
•       Fuck humidity

I just wrote that to amuse myself, mostly I find writing "fuck humidity" vastly enjoyable.  Here’s a bit more of an appropriate attack on the issue.  This does not repeal welfare, it just limits who gets it.  Now I understand being frugal be you a person, a family, a corporation or a government.  But drug tests are not free.  The cost of these tests  (at least ten tests, possibly a few million tests, my math is hazy on the subject)  have to be offset by enough people being on drugs and denied money.  Cost of test = x.  Number of people applying for welfare being tested = y.  Price saved through denying poor bastards on illicit drugs = z.  x*y must be greater than z.  If not you are spending money to be an asshole and are basically  telling all the other states, “Hey, we don’t like poor people but hey we have Disney right, that’s pretty cool, oh and Miami, people still like Miami right?  It has Cubans and shit.”  According to the first article I pulled up on the internet*, and the internet is obviously the most trusted news source around (should I italicize sarcasm, I wonder, to emphasize?), only 2% of people tested positive.  I think the formula up there is trying sneak away and pretend it wasn’t written.  This makes me happy in many ways.  One it means Florida’s government wasted money on a bogus political move and we can hope there is enough embarrassment and shame to stop similar actions – newsflash, it won’t.  I am not happy that the state’s money is being wasted.  But I can only hope this serves to stop such spending after.  Two, it means that the unspoken assumption, that the people on welfare must be on drugs, has been proven false.  Being poor is not a crime and it doesn’t make you a drug fiend.

I see these issues as a long line of attacks on the have-nots. And I don’t mean the have-nots as just I’m so poor I’m hungry far too often I’m talking about an enormous cross section of this country.   One major problem is that the have’s are growing to be a much smaller group and the have-nots is slowly seeping into that bourgeois populace.  Obviously bloody revolution is silly and, well, just plain uncouth but when it’s only a few thousand people with an asston of money it isn’t that hard to implement some manner of nonviolent social justice.  Internet math:  Aston of money = 90% of America’s wealth or there about.  The way welfare is built is people who don’t have enough money regardless of their education background, ingenuity, integrity, values, morals, religious affiliation, skin color, gender, sexual preference, and a whole slew of other groupings,  are viewed as important enough to be given some amount of charity so they can afford basic food and shelter.  As they are adults how they spend that money is up to them.  We as humans have an intrinsic value.  You know life liberty and the pursuit of freedom.  The French thought up that shit first but being French they used words like fraternity ,meaning ‘brotherhood ‘not ‘date raping binge drinkers’ I don’t know the French for that and I fear the Google result, I’m looking at you rule 34.  But can’t we expand this concept  as people are worth enough that they deserve, no matter how fucking stupid or annoying they are, some food and shelter along with the inalienable rights.  I’m not talking nice food, but at least six steps above worm encrusted and probably twenty or below a nice filet mignon.  I don’t do math if possible, I was a film major for fucks sake.

So how do drugs impact a person's worth or whether they deserve a handout?    And yes you 101 philosophy class takers I am talking about intrinsic value of humans. Well assume you are poor.  Being poor is no fun.  ‘Starving artist’ is only fun as an image in your mind.  The starving part is no fun.  Last time someone told me they forgot to eat I looked at them incredulously.  I never forget to eat.  I might not have time to eat occasionally but I’d never forget to eat.  Hell, I’m hungry right now and it’s past eleven at night.  Now think you are poor and some douche is saying you can't get money because you smoked weed.  Here’s an easy formula (fuck, math again, it didn't work out last time): poor leads to higher chances of depression leads to higher chances of depression leads to higher chances of drug uses.  Maybe.  That two percent says otherwise.

I think I might have lost point somewhere.  I’m tired and my rage is subsiding.  It’s possible some logical conclusions  as well have drifted away like  a Viking boat funeral procession.  Damn it, this is economic policy and class warfare why am I think about burning ships and Viking funerals?  It is kinda awesome, Viking funeral not class warfare.  Class warfare is decided not awesome.  Back to the point.  Stop putting conditions on charity.  Its charity.  You are giving money to people whether they deserve it or not.  That’s the point.  We can only hope they spend it properly.  This is just  downright mean political machinations to pander to assholes.  So don’t support crap like this.  America is better than this.  I hope.  Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.  Or something like that, my apathy might be kicking in.

Oh, here is a quote from the internet article and please research don't rely on my word or a singular article truth being in the eye of the beholder (insert D&D joke here).

"The full cost of the drug testing program has not yet been calculated, but it is likely to be higher than the meager savings of denying benefits to 2 percent of applicants who tested positive for drugs."

I changed my mind, fuck you Florida

Ben

*http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/08/98_of_florida_welfare_applicants_pass_newly_implemented_drug_tests_discrediting_governor.html

Manifesto?

It’s easy to say a generation is full of failures.  “This generation is full of failures.”  That took about ten seconds.  Maybe less.  I don’t know my exact words per minute typing speed.  This generation isn’t full of failures, or failure as it were.  I do feel my generation is full of lost opportunities.  Due to apathy partly but that’s too easy an answer.

Here’s a quick story that I feel encapsulates some of the emotion of the age.  When I was in high school we had after school activates.  One trimester (yes we had trimesters, it was a progressive private school that shunned convention, which isn’t always good but more educational woes another time) I signed up for community service.  There were only a few us and we were bursting with smug hope and energy.  I say smug because we were teenagers and teenagers can’t help but be that way.  Getting upset at a teenager is like getting upset with a movie villain for trying to kill the hero.  They can’t help it; it is simply part of the way they’re built.  But we were presented with a problem.  We had to take the steps in actually doing something all on our own not just applying our youthful optimism and energy.  We had to produce results on our own, figure out a plan to act on our own.  Or at least build a proper plan and then the teacher would help us act on it.  This of course stymied the hell out of us.  I grew agitated as hell.  Partially because the other kids in class were whiney assholes and I’d rather be in a play than deal with those idiots.  What would have been great is if we had seen the opportunity for growth it was and taken a stab at making a difference.  Instead we folded up and stuck to bickering amongst ourselves blaming each other, acting like children or quitting.  Read into that as you will.  It makes me happy how much I’ve grown up.  Of course it agitates the hell out of me that I was that big of an idiot.  But age and experience brings wisdom.  Unless you’re just an idiot then it just brings back pain.

But I’m not upset at failure.  Failure is ok.  Not learning from failure is where I grow angry.  At least seven steps below hulk smash angry but at least two above stubbing my toe in the dark when it was really easy to turn on the light and I knew the room was really messy and full of stubbable (I know it’s not a word so don’t say anything) items.  And yes I am aware that makes me have at least ten levels of anger.  I get angry a lot; I’m working on it though.

Ben