Happy holidays and Merry Christmas one and all!
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Monday, December 12, 2016
Star Warz Rogue hu?
What in the friggen world is Hollywood thinking? Must they go out of their way to be "edgy", to "interweave a larger narrative into the prevailing context", to take a dump on anything that is considered traditional?
Apparently Hollywood did not learn their lesson with the flop that was the Ghost Busters remake. Nope. They want to try again with a new slant on Star Wars.
What? Like isn't that the entire point of Star Wars? You have the good guys (the light side of the Force) and the bad guys (the dark side of the force). Heck, the bad guys even call it "the dark side"! They blow up entire planets to make a point. You literally CAN'T get any more clear cut than that.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is different. The first film of the Star Wars Anthology Series, hitting theaters Dec. 16, sidesteps this Jedi Manichaeism almost entirely.
Um, isn't like the main point of the entire Star Wars franchise that you have this "stuff" called "the Force" and some use it for good and some use it for bad and that those that use it for good are called Jedi? So you have created a Star Wars movie that does not focus on those at the center of the Star Wars franchise? Isn't that like having a zombie movie but making it all about cats and not have any actual zombies in it?
But I think a more modern, realistic viewpoint is that no one's good, no one's evil, and the only real way we're going to stop wars is to understand each other better, come together and empathize with them.
That quote is from the film's director, Gareth Edwards. WOW. That is some nuclear grade stupid right there. Sorry to burst your lefty safe-space but there really is actual "good" and actual "evil" in this world. There is gray too but the fact that gray exists does not mean white and black don't also exist. As an example, it is never OK to strap a explosive vest on a kid and send him into a crowd to blow everyone up. It is never OK to stone a rape victim to death. It is never OK to toss a gay man off of a roof. It is never OK to fly a plane full of innocent people into tall buildings. There is NO possibility of mutual understanding in those cases unless the folks doing those things truly come to fully understand how very wrong they are AND stop. You don't compromise with evil. The best you can do is show it the error of its ways in whatever way it takes.
Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and men's rights activists plan to boycott Rogue One on the grounds that the Empire is another casualty of the "liberal media."
I am sure that all 12 remaining Neo-Nazis and all 8 of the official white supremacists (I believe that figure includes David Duke) left in America plan to boycott the film. I am also sure that a whole lot of "normal" Star Wars fans will also boycott this film because they might be a little tired of their "stuff" being messed with by some self-important, new-age, preachy liberal director that thinks he "has an important" message to share with the world versus telling a good story within the existing franchise framework that has been supported by the fans all these many years.
The reviewer (Lili Loofbourow) is also one very "special ray of sunshine, open-mindedness, and tolerance". You can tell when she gives us this little peek behind her mental curtain:
One can certainly see why: White supremacists — or the "alt-right," as it prefers to call itself these days — would prefer a return to the status quo.
So, conservatives, those that want a smaller Federal government ARE not only the "storm troopers" in the latest Star Wars film but are also white supremacists! Also, the "alt-right", who might be more accurately defined as a slightly more militant version of the older Tea Party movement are JUST LIKE white supremacists! Just like. No difference! So they must be Nazis too since we learned earlier that White supremacists and Nazis are the same so if the alt-right is the same, they must be Nazis too.
Not happy calling half the country white supremacists (a.k.a. Nazis), she goes on to completely get her main premise wrong by claiming:
"darkest, most nuanced Star Wars movie — the one that expressly aims to humanize the Empire even more radically than The Force Awakens, which makes John Boyega's character Finn, a former stormtrooper, a sympathetic figure - is being boycotted for not catering enough to neo-Nazis."
So this Mensa member thinks "white supremacists" don't want to see the new "darkest, most nuanced Star Wars movie" because the Neo-Nazis think the film goes too soft on the Nazi stand-in figures (the Empire) by making them too empathetic?
Interesting...
So who is Lili? Let us check her bio...
Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.
A special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books. What does that even mean? What is a "special correspondent" for book reviews? She is also editor for a series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Do these people just string words together? What does that even mean? I tried googling that as I am not familiar with that phraseology. The only thing I could turn up is its use in an interview that hints that it has something to do with nonfiction. I gave up searching after reviewing three pages of results. Lili apparently writes for such literary greats as The Guardian, Salon, NYT, and Slate.
If her condescending article is in anyway representative of the attitude of the movie, I fully expect another critically acclaimed box office flop. Folks are getting fed up with being preached at by the ignorant elite. People are starting to push back. You are paid to entertain us, not preach or shove your politics down our throats. Not sorry if that means you get your feelz hurt.
Apparently Hollywood did not learn their lesson with the flop that was the Ghost Busters remake. Nope. They want to try again with a new slant on Star Wars.
What? Like isn't that the entire point of Star Wars? You have the good guys (the light side of the Force) and the bad guys (the dark side of the force). Heck, the bad guys even call it "the dark side"! They blow up entire planets to make a point. You literally CAN'T get any more clear cut than that.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is different. The first film of the Star Wars Anthology Series, hitting theaters Dec. 16, sidesteps this Jedi Manichaeism almost entirely.
Um, isn't like the main point of the entire Star Wars franchise that you have this "stuff" called "the Force" and some use it for good and some use it for bad and that those that use it for good are called Jedi? So you have created a Star Wars movie that does not focus on those at the center of the Star Wars franchise? Isn't that like having a zombie movie but making it all about cats and not have any actual zombies in it?
But I think a more modern, realistic viewpoint is that no one's good, no one's evil, and the only real way we're going to stop wars is to understand each other better, come together and empathize with them.
That quote is from the film's director, Gareth Edwards. WOW. That is some nuclear grade stupid right there. Sorry to burst your lefty safe-space but there really is actual "good" and actual "evil" in this world. There is gray too but the fact that gray exists does not mean white and black don't also exist. As an example, it is never OK to strap a explosive vest on a kid and send him into a crowd to blow everyone up. It is never OK to stone a rape victim to death. It is never OK to toss a gay man off of a roof. It is never OK to fly a plane full of innocent people into tall buildings. There is NO possibility of mutual understanding in those cases unless the folks doing those things truly come to fully understand how very wrong they are AND stop. You don't compromise with evil. The best you can do is show it the error of its ways in whatever way it takes.
Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and men's rights activists plan to boycott Rogue One on the grounds that the Empire is another casualty of the "liberal media."
I am sure that all 12 remaining Neo-Nazis and all 8 of the official white supremacists (I believe that figure includes David Duke) left in America plan to boycott the film. I am also sure that a whole lot of "normal" Star Wars fans will also boycott this film because they might be a little tired of their "stuff" being messed with by some self-important, new-age, preachy liberal director that thinks he "has an important" message to share with the world versus telling a good story within the existing franchise framework that has been supported by the fans all these many years.
The reviewer (Lili Loofbourow) is also one very "special ray of sunshine, open-mindedness, and tolerance". You can tell when she gives us this little peek behind her mental curtain:
One can certainly see why: White supremacists — or the "alt-right," as it prefers to call itself these days — would prefer a return to the status quo.
So, conservatives, those that want a smaller Federal government ARE not only the "storm troopers" in the latest Star Wars film but are also white supremacists! Also, the "alt-right", who might be more accurately defined as a slightly more militant version of the older Tea Party movement are JUST LIKE white supremacists! Just like. No difference! So they must be Nazis too since we learned earlier that White supremacists and Nazis are the same so if the alt-right is the same, they must be Nazis too.
Not happy calling half the country white supremacists (a.k.a. Nazis), she goes on to completely get her main premise wrong by claiming:
"darkest, most nuanced Star Wars movie — the one that expressly aims to humanize the Empire even more radically than The Force Awakens, which makes John Boyega's character Finn, a former stormtrooper, a sympathetic figure - is being boycotted for not catering enough to neo-Nazis."
So this Mensa member thinks "white supremacists" don't want to see the new "darkest, most nuanced Star Wars movie" because the Neo-Nazis think the film goes too soft on the Nazi stand-in figures (the Empire) by making them too empathetic?
Interesting...
So who is Lili? Let us check her bio...
Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.
A special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books. What does that even mean? What is a "special correspondent" for book reviews? She is also editor for a series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Do these people just string words together? What does that even mean? I tried googling that as I am not familiar with that phraseology. The only thing I could turn up is its use in an interview that hints that it has something to do with nonfiction. I gave up searching after reviewing three pages of results. Lili apparently writes for such literary greats as The Guardian, Salon, NYT, and Slate.
If her condescending article is in anyway representative of the attitude of the movie, I fully expect another critically acclaimed box office flop. Folks are getting fed up with being preached at by the ignorant elite. People are starting to push back. You are paid to entertain us, not preach or shove your politics down our throats. Not sorry if that means you get your feelz hurt.
Dual realities
It seems that more and more we are living in a twilight zone episode where half of the country lives in one reality and the other half lives in another, all the while being able to see and interact with each other.
Exhibit A: Make no mistake, Trump’s cabinet appointees embody the most rabid possible opposition to policies and positions of President Obama and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. A unifier Mr. Trump is not.
In this reality, President Obama was and is the savior of the country (and the planet) and Hillary was his expected proper and correct successor to carry on that great legacy. In this reality Obamacare is not a disaster. ISIS is a JV team on the run, the Government did not attack the producer of a video and throw him in jail to help cover up the Government's culpability in the deaths of four Americans at a US embassy by terrorists. The DOE did not throw higher education into complete disarray over a bogus statistic that 1 in 4 women in college get raped. The EPA did not pollute the drinking water of dozens of communities by releasing mine toxic run-off into a river. Nor did the Government attack and alienate half of the population of the United States by calling them racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and Islamophobic.
Nope. In this reality (dare I say a community based reality) all is good. The unemployment rate is under 4% and not the 10+% that the rest of us see. The economy is BOOMING and is not the stagflation that the rest of us see. Needless black lives are lost at the hands of a racist police versus police related fatalities being not only at their lowest levels in dozens of years but that (in actuality) more whites are shot by police than blacks as is shown by actual FBI and Government crime statistics.
In this community based reality, Trump is a homophobic racist and all of his supporters are a "bag of deplorable". They also cling to their guns and religion, or so I was told by the worlds greatest orator. In this view of reality, Obama was NEVER a divider, the Democrats in Congress never rammed through the largest overhaul of healthcare using procedural shenanigans and on a pure party line vote. When half the country supports the Democrats and they win, the Republicans are the dividers. When half the country supports the Republicans and they win, the Republicans are the dividers. See how that works?. The left is all about protecting everyone from hate speech and they never use divisive rhetoric, all is unicorns and cupcakes.
Exhibit B: 6 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Is The Best Presidential Candidate Ever
There are actually a LOT of people that see this as reality. That Hillary Clinton was not only eminently qualified to be President but was the absolutely BEST qualified EVER! Mandatory CAPS and exclamation point. To disagree is to prove one's self a misogynist of the highest order. In this alternate reality the 30+ years of scandals just does not exist. Hillary did not webonize the IRS to go after her opponents. She never covered for Bill's various bimbo eruptions, because there were none. The White House was not looted of US treasure by Hillary and Bill. Hillary never used the FBI to investigate her enemies. She never firing everyone in the White House travel office as political payback to donors. Hillary absolutely never ever kept a private, unsecured email server on which she conducted Government business for the proposes of soliciting and collecting bribes for her foundation from foreign governments and individual.
Exhibit C: Man made global warming is not only very real but is also a very imminent threat to the world
Let us ignore for a moment that the entire global warming "issue" has been completely called into question by the release of the Mann emails that show there was a concerted and deliberate effort to silence and discredit dissenters as well as "massage" the data to get the outcome they wanted. Let us ignore for a moment that the climate models used to "show" how bad things will be in a dozen years can't even accurately and reliably predict what the weather will be in 60 or even 30 days. Let us simply look at those that are pushing man made global warming the most, say Al Gore. Does this "champion" of AGW live a pious life or does he instead live in a massive and energy hungry McMansion? If you answered B, you would be right! Though he has made some changes to improve the home's efficiency, he also recently purchased another home, a $8.875 million ocean view villa in Montecito, Calif. with a less than stellar energy record of its own. If the "greatest living protector of the planet" does not care enough about global warming to live in a energy efficient, 1600 square foot home, give up flying private jets all over the world, and get a Prius, why should anyone take it seriously?
I could go on but I think you can see where I am going with this. It indeed seems at times that we as a country are living in two distinct but overlapping realities, one of which looks to be drifting away from actual reality at a faster and faster pace. This will not end well...
Exhibit A: Make no mistake, Trump’s cabinet appointees embody the most rabid possible opposition to policies and positions of President Obama and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. A unifier Mr. Trump is not.
In this reality, President Obama was and is the savior of the country (and the planet) and Hillary was his expected proper and correct successor to carry on that great legacy. In this reality Obamacare is not a disaster. ISIS is a JV team on the run, the Government did not attack the producer of a video and throw him in jail to help cover up the Government's culpability in the deaths of four Americans at a US embassy by terrorists. The DOE did not throw higher education into complete disarray over a bogus statistic that 1 in 4 women in college get raped. The EPA did not pollute the drinking water of dozens of communities by releasing mine toxic run-off into a river. Nor did the Government attack and alienate half of the population of the United States by calling them racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and Islamophobic.
Nope. In this reality (dare I say a community based reality) all is good. The unemployment rate is under 4% and not the 10+% that the rest of us see. The economy is BOOMING and is not the stagflation that the rest of us see. Needless black lives are lost at the hands of a racist police versus police related fatalities being not only at their lowest levels in dozens of years but that (in actuality) more whites are shot by police than blacks as is shown by actual FBI and Government crime statistics.
In this community based reality, Trump is a homophobic racist and all of his supporters are a "bag of deplorable". They also cling to their guns and religion, or so I was told by the worlds greatest orator. In this view of reality, Obama was NEVER a divider, the Democrats in Congress never rammed through the largest overhaul of healthcare using procedural shenanigans and on a pure party line vote. When half the country supports the Democrats and they win, the Republicans are the dividers. When half the country supports the Republicans and they win, the Republicans are the dividers. See how that works?. The left is all about protecting everyone from hate speech and they never use divisive rhetoric, all is unicorns and cupcakes.
Exhibit B: 6 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Is The Best Presidential Candidate Ever
There are actually a LOT of people that see this as reality. That Hillary Clinton was not only eminently qualified to be President but was the absolutely BEST qualified EVER! Mandatory CAPS and exclamation point. To disagree is to prove one's self a misogynist of the highest order. In this alternate reality the 30+ years of scandals just does not exist. Hillary did not webonize the IRS to go after her opponents. She never covered for Bill's various bimbo eruptions, because there were none. The White House was not looted of US treasure by Hillary and Bill. Hillary never used the FBI to investigate her enemies. She never firing everyone in the White House travel office as political payback to donors. Hillary absolutely never ever kept a private, unsecured email server on which she conducted Government business for the proposes of soliciting and collecting bribes for her foundation from foreign governments and individual.
Exhibit C: Man made global warming is not only very real but is also a very imminent threat to the world
Let us ignore for a moment that the entire global warming "issue" has been completely called into question by the release of the Mann emails that show there was a concerted and deliberate effort to silence and discredit dissenters as well as "massage" the data to get the outcome they wanted. Let us ignore for a moment that the climate models used to "show" how bad things will be in a dozen years can't even accurately and reliably predict what the weather will be in 60 or even 30 days. Let us simply look at those that are pushing man made global warming the most, say Al Gore. Does this "champion" of AGW live a pious life or does he instead live in a massive and energy hungry McMansion? If you answered B, you would be right! Though he has made some changes to improve the home's efficiency, he also recently purchased another home, a $8.875 million ocean view villa in Montecito, Calif. with a less than stellar energy record of its own. If the "greatest living protector of the planet" does not care enough about global warming to live in a energy efficient, 1600 square foot home, give up flying private jets all over the world, and get a Prius, why should anyone take it seriously?
I could go on but I think you can see where I am going with this. It indeed seems at times that we as a country are living in two distinct but overlapping realities, one of which looks to be drifting away from actual reality at a faster and faster pace. This will not end well...
Thursday, December 1, 2016
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