You Didn’t Build That

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I was not going to write about this. I was going to let it slide. I was going to ignore all the jackasses whose only mission in life is to ruin the remainder of the day for the rest of us. Not that there are very many of the rest of us left. Everyone is either a conservative or a liberal and they’re all nuts.

I consider myself to be neither. I do not blindly back democrats or republicans. Conservatives may plant their lips on my right ass cheek while the liberals are busy making mouth love to the left one. I am a realist. The second you step foot to either side of that imaginary political boundary you lose sight of reality. Unfortunately, that includes almost everyone.

Anyway. There has been a lot of horse shit floating around about the president’s speech involving small business owners. Horse shit that has mainly been propagated by the media in a transparent assault on what little remains of the integrity of the medium. The primary method is clever use of video editing. They cut out the parts that are actually important and you’re left with “You didn’t build that!”.

The fact of the matter is YOU AREN’T GETTING THE FACTS OF THE MATTER. The president is trying to celebrate the environment that has been created by all of us as a nation, the things that have happened over the last century to empower small business owners and give them the chances they need to survive, and in rare occasions, thrive. He was not trying to say that your business succeeds or fails based on the federal government’s whimsy, that your hard work means nothing. He was asking us to look at what we’ve created together, small business and government.

Unfortunately, the average American is too fucking stupid to bother looking up the facts. They just assume that the major news broadcasting corporations wouldn’t dare lie to them. Here’s your news: the media lies. The media probably lies more than the government ever has and ever will, yet assholes still glue themselves to the television and pretend that what they’re hearing is the truth.

I suppose it’s most upsetting to me because there are a number of people I know–knew, grew up with, would still like to maintain friendships with, etc–who are among those aforementioned asshats who can’t be bothered or don’t want to know what the facts really are. No one cares about the truth, they only care about what they believe, or what they think they’re supposed to believe. They will then hold onto that belief in spite of anything that points to the contrary. Gravity, love, and stubborn ignorance. These are the most powerful and mysterious forces on Earth. Be afraid.

Maybe if the news aired impartial commentaries to help educate the public about current events we would have fewer slack-jawed mouth-breathers jamming their heads up their own asses by repeating what the paranoia machine tells them. And maybe I shit gold nuggets every half cycle of the moon.

Take this guy, for example:

He’s so proud of his business that he hangs a banner outside for everyone to see how much of a dipshit he is. I don’t even have to meet this person to know that they lack the capacity for cognitive reasoning. This is not someone I would be capable of having a conversation with because deep down I already know they’re just too stupid to help.

I challenge you to find the president’s unedited speech and watch it.  Understand it.  Then tell me the media aren’t just trying to blow smoke up our country’s ass to make people like Ray Gaster look like a fool.  Maybe he is a fool, or maybe he’s just as gullible as the rest of us.

The Hunger Games (2012)

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Shaky cam for the loss. Nothing pisses me off more than shaky camera work. We spend millions of dollars on research to figure out how to film movies better and then we hand a camcorder to some asshole and tell him to run around with it while filming. Okay, so it’s not as shitty as Cloverfield was in terms of camera stability, but it is still really bad.

Every scene is as zoomed in as it can possibly get, which sucks an ass because there are so many awesome costumes and outfits they have the characters wearing and you never really get to see them. It makes me wonder why they bothered hiring someone to make costumes in the first place if they were planning on filming the movie this way. If you thought Transformers sucked when seventy-five tons of steel roared by the camera and you couldn’t tell what the hell was even going on, you’ll be right at home hating this movie. Same god damn thing–characters roll past the camera and you can’t tell what’s happening in the scene. I assume the filmmakers thought it would lend a certain sense of urgency to the action–IT DOES NOT! It lends a certain sense of I just wasted money wanting to see this raging pile of shit and thanks to poor decisions by the creative staff I can’t even tell what I’m watching to begin with.

There was also zero character development outside of the primary actors. The little black girl who dies? I couldn’t have cared less because they didn’t bother to develop her character into something I gave two shits about. You literally get to see her twice for a total of ten seconds prior to Katniss saving her ass and then promptly not saving her ass five minutes later when she dies. Who. Cares.

My final complaint is “May the odds be ever in your favor.” Tag line, right? Seems fine. It’s used twice within five minutes. Then more as the movie goes on. The overuse of the saying reduces it to the realm of campy and stupid in a movie that’s not trying to be campy or stupid.

On the up side, Stanley Tucci was awesome, but that doesn’t surprise me and it shouldn’t surprise you either. The movie really is a shame because I could see what they wanted to do with it, they just never got there. The acting is decent and had the cinematography been worth a damn I would easily give the movie an above average rating. Unfortunately, someone didn’t get fired in time to save this mess and the movie descends into the realm of hard, unrelenting suck because of it.

One star.

The Birth of Grumblecakes – Oh, and a Rant.

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Well, here it is, at least until we’re done designing the site ourselves – Grumblecakes.  I hope to post daily or at least a few times per week, and I hope to see some readers and comments at least that often. ;)

And on to the rant.  Cut to the chase.

I’ve been doing research recently about nutrition and dieting.  I’m sure some of you have gotten wind of an annoyed post or two I’ve made on Facebook about it.  It all stemmed from a conversation I had with a friend of mine about obesity being so prevalent in the United States.  We are, of course, the #1 hot spot currently for obesity and diabetes in the world, based on percentages of the population.  Not really surprising.

But WHY?  What causes obesity?  My friend insisted that it was carbs.  Well, I doubt that carbs alone are causing people to become so unhealthy.  I eat them, and I know people who eat them, and they are not 400 pounds or diabetic, and neither am I.  So I delved deeper.  I researched some very common fad diets and “life plans” for weight loss, and came to a relatively quick and simple solution:  people are LAZY.

Everyone wants to lose weight without effort.  They don’t want to walk more or get outside more.  They want to sit on their asses and watch the pounds fall off!  And, logically, there are some people who take advantage of this factor consistently.  Cut out all carbs and you’ll lose weight!  Cut out fat and you’ll lose weight!  Eat only spinach and you’ll lose weight!  Take this pill and you’ll shit all the weight off!!  But unfortunately, these premises all adhere to the same principle – if you cut something out of your diet, you will lose weight.  Well, d’oh.  Of course you will.  But are you ready to cut that something out for the rest of your life?  Because as  soon as you put it back in at the rate you were consuming it before, you will gain the weight back.  Hasn’t anyone noticed that MOST people who try fad diets continue to try different ones in succession?  Could it be that THEY’RE NOT WORKING?!!

People want to lose weight FAST.  They don’t want to portion themselves, watch what they eat, and exercise daily.  Are you kidding me?  Laziness is what made you fat in the first place, you know.  Continuing to be lazy is only going to cause more issues.

I challenge all of you to try just six things –

1 – Drink a ton of water and stop/limit drinking soda.  You might as well drink some sweetened battery acid.  Mmmmmm.

2 – Exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes daily (speed walking, sex, gym, jogging, DDR, calisthenics, etc)

3 – Cut your portion size down to about the size of your hand.

4 – Eat 4-6 meals at that size instead of two or three huge meals.

5 – Eat only one “dessert” per day and amp up consumption of fruit whenever you crave sugar.

6 – Make your own food.  Stop eating out, or when you eat out, stick to the portion size rule and bring half of it home.

And yes, amazing, those six things take some work.  They require some changes.  But you won’t get sick, you don’t have to purge or binge, and you actually end up feeling BETTER from the daily exercise.  Seriously.  Try it.

Get off your ass.