Richard – Page 81 – RichWatch!

Using war as population control

While getting some fillings done at the dentist, the assistant and he started talking current events. Politics where touched upon, but nothing ideological – just some reporting that they both have been hearing a lot of buyers remorse from people who voted for Obama and are disappointed that his promises about foreign policy, the war on terror and the economy were not fulfilled. The dentist said that the economy is headed down a path that is not likely to be revived soon without a war.

The effect a war can have on an economy is uneven. World War 2 (and not any of FDR’s economic policies) got us out of the depression for instance, but the war on terror helped nudge us in the opposite direction for instance. The reason is because in a situation like World War 2, the government issued mass production of war making devices. This can work as a quick pick-me-up, but unless its followed by a 1950’s era of continued production and growth, then all you’ve done is create a ton of jobs creating a ton of products that you then dumped in the ocean and blew up in the skies. Obama could do that today with any field. He could open a new government wing that will increase paper clip production by a million percent and that would bump the economy by creating jobs, but then slump it when we’re met with no way to profit from the paper clips.

My mouth was propped open with a dental damn over it and mental objects prodding around my Novocaine induced face, so my engagement in the conversation was limited to a Frankentien like eeehhhnnn uuuuhhhnnnn grunt here and there.

Then a 2nd assistant, sitting to chat with the 3 of us but performing no job at the moment chimed in on the heels of the dentists war comment…

“What’s really a shame is that Obama is going back on his promises about the war so now they’re just going to stay there longer and get depressed and killed and have a terrible time when they come home”. I gave the eyebrow signlanguage equivelent to a “wtf” as she continued.

“I think a lot of times they send people off to war just for population control. you know? its not the people making the war who have to go die in it, so I think thats just what they do”.

What in the sh#t? Luckily my mouth was JUST becoming free at that point, so I was able to issue a “no way” response and briefly explain how that theory doesn’t make any frigging sense. I couldn’t go nuclear on her because she clearly was not convinced of the charge herself, nor felt very passionate about it so I gave a reply equal to her initial statement. I’m guessing that she heard the claim made in a convincing way by someone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about, so she brought it up still thinking it was a valid observation.

It’s a frigging retarded observation.

The US population as of 2008 is 304,059,724 (roughly 3 hundred Million).

US casualties in Iraq as of June 2009 have been 4,300 (roughly 4 thousand).

If 4 thousand out of 300 million doesn’t sound like a large percentage, then you probably passed the 2nd grade on your first try. But to really see exactly HOW off base this theory is, you’ve got to calculate what % of our population has been exterminated in this alleged population control.

4,300 is 13 thousandths of 1% of 304,059,724.

In other words: .0000013% of our population has been killed in Iraq.

Does that sound like effective “population control” to you?… If so then you probably voted for Nader.

Did it never occur to these people that perhaps issuing cheap or free birth control, increasing abortion, federally legalizing euthanasia, speeding up wait time for inmates on death row, or restricting health care benefits to the elderly and drug addicted – MIGHT just be more logical, and definitely more effective measures of going about controlling the population? Think those suggestions are just a tad more prudent than risking a political career and reputation to make some shit up about why its a big deal that we have to go fight a war for some reason other than the REAL one which is to get our strongest, hardest willed men and women ages 18-30sent to their deaths, while spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the mean time to train and arm them… just so we can execute them. Really?…

UPDATE: Martin, from a UK e-mail address says:

Take your head out of your ass, its not only americans who die. It’s also not just people in Iraq. There are many other ‘wars’ happening all over the world.

Thanks for that 100% irrelevant notation that changes nothing (he’s just pissed that I used America – the country the person I’m responding to was talking about – as an example because he’s got hater issues).

10 year old girl with cancer too sick to see UP. Pixar flies a DVD to her home. She dies 7 hours later.

“I’m ready (to die), but I’m going to wait for the movie” – 10 year old girl with cancer too sick to see UP. Pixar flies a DVD to her home. She dies 7 hours later.

When Colby Curtin saw the Dream Works 3-D movie “Monsters Vs. Aliens” she was impressed by the previews for “Up.” “It was from then on, she said, ‘I have to see that movie. It is so cool,’” a family friend told the OC Register:

Two days later Colby’s health began to worsen. On June 4 her mother asked a hospice company to bring a wheelchair for Colby so she could visit a theater to see “Up.” However, the weekend went by and the wheelchair was not delivered, Lisa Curtin said.

By June 9, Colby could no longer be transported to a theater and her family feared she would die without having seen the movie.

At that point, Orum, who desperately wanted Colby to get her last wish, began to cold-call Pixar and Disney to see if someone could help.

Pixar has an automated telephone answering system, Orum said, and unless she had a name of a specific person she wanted to speak to, she could not get through. Orum guessed a name and the computer system transferred her to someone who could help, she said.

Pixar officials listened to Colby’s story and agreed to send someone to Colby’s house the next day with a DVD of “Up,” Orum recalled.

She immediately called Lisa Curtin, who told Colby.

“Do you think you can hang on?” Colby’s mother said.

“I’m ready (to die), but I’m going to wait for the movie,” the girl replied.

And she did…

“When I watched it, I had really no idea about the content of the theme of the movie,” said Curtin, 46. “I just know that word ‘Up’ and all of the balloons and I swear to you, for me it meant that (Colby) was going to go up. Up to heaven.”

Pixar officials declined to comment on the story or name the employees involved.

The content and theme of the movie, consequently is about death, loneliness, unfulfilled dreams and drive to complete long time ambition before your life is over.

Brief synopsis of this item in the first few seconds of this clip from the Register:

THE MOVIE

At about 12:30 p.m. the Pixar employee came to the Curtins’ home with the DVD.

He had a bag of stuffed animals of characters in the movie and a movie poster. He shared some quirky background details of the movie and the group settled in to watch Up.

Colby couldn’t see the screen because the pain kept her eyes closed so her mother gave her a play-by-play of the film.

At the end of the film, the mother asked if her daughter enjoyed the movie and Colby nodded yes, Lisa Curtin said.

The employee left after the movie, taking the DVD with him, Lynch said.

“He couldn’t have been nicer,” said Lynch who watched the movie with the family. “His eyes were just welled up.”

After the movie, Colby’s dad, Michael Curtin, who is divorced from Lisa Curtin, came to visit.

Colby died with her mom and dad nearby at 9:20 p.m.

Among the Up memorabilia the employee gave Colby was an “adventure book” – a scrap book the main character’s wife used to chronicle her journeys.

“I’ll have to fill those adventures in for her,” Lisa Curtin said.

myadventurebook

In UP, 78 year old Carl Fredrickson buys a plane ticket for his wife and himself to visit South America like they always promised each other they would some day, but she dies shortly after the purchase.

UP is the story of Carl going to extreme lengths to fulfill his promise to his late wife after finding her “Adventure Book” from their childhood, so he may fill in the blank pages with the adventures in South America they never got to have…

Benders BIGGER Score: Futurama RENEWED (again!)

26 NEW episodes coming in 2010 to Comedy Central!

And FOX could option them since they own the rights and allowed the cable deal, but WHO CARES – bottom line is FUTURAMA IS RETURNING TO TV NEXT YEAR!

futurama renewed

Not a day after I finished my marathon of all 72 episodes of the Futurama series followed by the 4 direct to internet pirating DVD movies do I go to youtube for an embed code to blog about and see a commenter claim that the series is coming BACK. and what’s this? the comment is only minutes old?

Sure enough, the claim is true. The NY Times reports: Past Emmy winner “Futurama” got axed by Fox network in 2003 after five seasons, but it’s developed such a strong cult following since then on DVD and TV reruns that Comedy Central has picked up the show.” – I immediately called my source at Viacom (parent company of Comedy Central) to ask about this and they said that Cartoon Network tried to grab it but lost a bidding war and also it is not out of the question that FOX, who owns the rights to the show, could air these new episodes on the Fox Network first before sending them to Comedy cable.

“A spokesperson for 20th Century Fox Television confirms that the cable net has ordered 26 new episodes of Matt Groening and David X. Cohen‘s late, great animated series to air beginning in 2010,” reports Mike Ausiello at EW.com

Project Natal Live Demo with Jimmy Fallon

The first edition of Jimmy Fallons takeover on Late Nite was the episode with the clip below, which is pretty cool:

David Downs at The Examiner also watched:

Check Jimmy Fallon playing a game of “break the boxes” with some Project Natal developers. Some people have no shame.

Let’s start with the red jumpsuits. Interesting sartorial choice. Wondering if we all have to don these janitor suits before we play “store room clerk mime”. Now, let’s move to the lame, flailing game mechanic – yeah that looks sexy. Now, the icing on this goofy cake: it’s the Jimmy Fallon show – the whipping boy of talk shows. What, Judge Judy decline? Jimmy Fallon is to tv shows what the Sega Dreamcast is to consoles.

Project “Mime” Goof-Score: 99/100.

Partly Cloudy

Preceding Pixar’s UP, a movie about lonliness, death and unfulfilled dreams, is a short toon called Party Cloudy, a movie about an abusive relationship by baby making cloud gods and their avian slaves.

SYNOPSIS: All day long, cheerful cloud people in the sky make baby boys and girls, kittens, puppies, and other creatures and give them to storks for delivery to the expectant parents. However, one lonely gray cloud named Gus sees all of his creations turn into dangerous animals, despite his best efforts. His delivery stork named Peck gets the worst of it, being bitten by a crocodile, butted by a bighorn sheep, and pricked by a porcupine. When Peck sees that his next delivery is to be a baby shark, he grows irritated and more than a little fearful, and flies away. Feeling rejected, despondent, and angry, Gus unleashes a brief thunderstorm, then begins to cry with rain pouring from below him. To Gus’s surprise, Peck soon returns with a football helmet and shoulder pads, created for him by another cloud to keep him safe, proving to the gray cloud that he wasn’t going to be abandoned. Gus instantly cheers up and gives Peck an electric eel to deliver, which still shocks him despite the protective equipment, except this time, Peck remains in fairly high (though slightly frazzled) spirits.

O-Raptor-tang escapes from Jurassic Zoo

RAPTOR. From Jurassic Park:

GRANT
Do they show intelligence? With the brain cavity like theirs we assumed – –

MULDOON
They show extreme intelligence, even problem solving. Especially the big one. We bred eight originally, but when she came in, she took over the pride and killed all but two of the others. That one – -when she looks at you, you can see she’s thinking (or) working things out. She’s the reason we have to feed ’em like this. She had them all attacking the fences when the feeders came.

ELLIE
The fences are electrified, right?

MULDOON
That’s right. But they never attack the same place twice. They were testing the fences for weaknesses. Systematically. They remembered.

APE. From Real Life:

AN ingenious 62 kilogram orangutan short circuited electrical wires and climbed a fence using a makeshift ladder in an aborted escape attempt from Adelaide Zoo today.

The elaborate plot by 27-year-old Karta got her to within metres of the public, and resulted in the closure of the zoo on one of its busiest days of the year.

The alarm was raised by a member of the public about 11am.

Zoo curator Peter Whitehead said Karta had twisted a stick into hot wires that encircled her enclosure, short circuiting the wires and allowing her to enter a vegetated area near the concrete and glass fence that separated her from the public.

She then piled up sticks, grass and plant roots and used them to climb onto the fence.

Disney Templates

Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, pre-recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.

TimesOnline tried to get Disney to comment on this, with no luck.

A Disney spokeswoman refused to confirm that the movie giant used the technique today, telling Times Online that “it’s not something that we comment on”, but the company is thought to have used the tracing technique for decades.

South Park slams Disneys teen sex marketing

In the recent episode of South Park, titled The Ring, Kenny takes his new girlfriend to a Jonas Brothers’ concert where they each get purity rings. Somehow this turns into harsh criticism of Disney that went completely over my head, which makes me think it was bullshit since not much goes over my head besides hats and maybe a fez on a Sunday afternoon.

I thought the episode was misplaced satire, even though I don’t know very much about the band. The thesis appeared to be that Disney is a big hypocritical fraud by promoting a band whose members don’t have sex, yet are sexually appealing. Huh? Where exactly is the hypocrisy beef? Did I miss something? They don’t prance around without a shirt (like I do) or have suggestive lyrics in their songs and I’ve never seen the brothers hump the air or pump around suggestively like the South Park versions of them did.

south park comedy central jonas brothers

So wtf? The South Park guys seem to just really hate the idea of teenagers not having sex whenever they feel like it. I’d get it if the Band appealed primarily to 17-23 year olds cuz then I’d be all duh – screw the purity ring and screw me. But aren’t the Jonas Bros 10 to 14 year old territory primarily? And eh… Isn’t this a group that maybe should probably not be encouraged to banging? Why is role modeling a no-sex policy to kids and young teens such a bad thing to deserve scorn and ridicule? The South Park kids are in 4th grade.

Combined with what I said earlier about the secondary charge against the Disney Corporation who peddles these sexy no-sex boyzes not making any more sense to me than targeting kids who aren’t having sex – wtf was with this episode? If it was all just an excuse to show Mickey Mouse beating the fuck out of someone and cursing then okay, fine, but we’ve come to expect a little more depth and meaning behind the crudeness of South Park gags.

This episode seemed 8 years too late and should have been about Britney Spears. She was much more obviously marketed on a foundation of sex from her outfits to her music videos to her orgasm moans in every other song. But the Jonas Brothers? really? It seemed like South Park was just attacking them simply because young girls like them. Therefore something sinister is going on behind the scenes? Maybe I’m missing something but it didn’t make any sense to me.

Parody War: Beck vs Colbert

Two weeks ago, Glenn Beck turned a Friday edition of his show into an hour long special titled the “War Room“, covering possible disaster situations and how we would/would have to/should deal with them. The full show is here below, and a decent watch, but if you’re only interested for purposes of the Colbert relation then hit play and then you can move along after the first minute.

Naturally, Stephen Colbert thought it was over the top and parodied it with his bigger, scarier alarmist special: the “Doom Bunker“. (go here if the video below becomes unavailable)

SO… in what is a unique occurrence – a parody reply to a parody reply – Beck parodied Colbert parodying HIM with Beck’s new faux segment with the shows “Fear Consultant” coming to him live from the “Doom Room” (a padded room within the Doom Bunker). I loled…

Black Holes are “crushingly dense sucking things, like giant Paris Hiltons”?…. Dude… Colbert’s been zinged with funnier writing…by FOX NEWS…..

Norm Macdonald on wiley Leno

Play by Play from the WasPot, cuz I’m too lazy to type something in a video contained in the same post, especially when someone else has already done it for me:

“I had to come back to show the respect, man, because I started ‘Saturday Night Live’ the same year you started this show,” MacDonald started.

“That’s right,” Conan answered.

“Yeah. . . . we’d all watch and go, ‘I don’t think it’s gonna work,’ ” MacDonald continued, warming up to his subject.

“It’s not gonna work,” Conan echoed.

“But then, it worked and it was great and we’re all really proud,” MacDonald continued. “And so, that’s great. And also, it’s stunning how Jay Leno outfoxed you again.”

“Yeah, he’s good,” Conan said, laughing uncomfortably, as the story started to veer off-script.

“He’s very good. . . . He’s the shrewdest guy,” MacDonald continued, in re Leno. “He outfoxed — you’re in good company — he outfoxed Johnny Carson, David Letterman. Every 10 years, some redheaded rube shows up,” MacDonald plowed on.

“I’m like some clown off the bus with a cardboard suit: ‘Gee, golly! This is going to be great!’ ” Conan joked-but-not-really.

Here’s where MacDonald broke into his Leno imitation: ” ‘Yeah, you can come after me!’ And you go, ‘Hey, thanks, Jay!’ ”

“Uh-huh,” said Conan, still not looking completely happy.

MacDonald is now in high gear: “Your agent is like, ‘There’s good news and bad news. You are doing “The Tonight Show,” it’s true. But remember that discussion we had when you said, “I will never have to [:O] follow Leno again?” ‘ ”

More Conan laughing uncomfortably while the audience cheers and applauds.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s so nice to have you back, Norm. It’s so very nice to have you back — and you bring joy to so many people,” Conan said, and then he tried clumsily to change the subject: “And, you know what, I’ll tell you something, Norm. These are tough times, people need to laugh now. Because — it’s the economy.”