Just Thinkin’: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot???

fb_img_1477456130352Ok, I’ve seen this a few times and call me crazy, but aren’t most of these CHORES? Those things you do because you have to learn to be a responsible human being and not wallow in your own filth? Like, stuff you do even when you AREN’T in trouble (and in fact, might get in trouble for NOT doing)? The one that isn’t a chore looks like things you do just to be a decent human being, something you should be doing anyway (and again, may get in trouble for not).

THIS is why there are so many special snowflakes in the world who think the world owes them something: Mommy and Daddy snowflake confused responsibility with punishment. At the risk of sounding older than I am, back in my day, I did a lot of that because my mother said to do it and my father backed her up. If I was grounded, it was because I screwed up somewhere somehow and I was STILL expected to complete my chores as well as serve whatever punishment was deemed fitting, including *gasp* loss of privileges or restrictions! Oh the humanity!!! And I was spanked. I now suffer from a psychological condition known as “respect for others.” Horrifying, isn’t it?


Just Thinkin’: We’re Painting the Roses Red

So, I’m trying to watch Pitch Perfect on Disney’s ABC Freeform (formerly ABC Family, but even they couldn’t keep a straight face for that one anymore) and it’s somewhat maddening when they dub over the more crass/sexually explicit language. They’ve also switched up some of the camera shots to avoid what is presumably considered partial nudity.

Am I the only one who sees the absolute hypocritical irony of a channel with shows about lesbian parenting (The Fosters(), underage/gay sex (Pretty Little Liars, at the very least) and fathers becoming transgender “women” (Becoming Us) dubbing over/bleeping out words like “fuck” and “boner”? Seriously? It’s like shooting up heroin but feeling morally superior for not smoking. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is wrong with these people? It’s an R rated movie and, catchy tunes aside, it’s pretty crass. It probably shouldn’t be on a channel supposedly for under-voting-age kids and family entertainment, all bleeping aside. But, since they’ve already made themselves a temple to depravity and deviancy, why are they wasting their time worrying about language? language

(Yes, I understand the concept of FCC regs, but that only emphasizes my point about hypocrisy.)

There are days I feel like the White Rabbit kidnapped me and I’m being held hostage in Wonderland. “We’re painting the roses red, we’re painting the roses red…”

painiting roses red

Just Thinkin’: Liberty, Good Faith and Donald Trump

Obama pisses me off, no two ways about it. It’s been eight years of inept quagmire under him. But if I had to choose, I’d choose a quagmire of ineptitude than tyrannical efficiency and the authoritarianism that will come with Donald Trump. Of him, I’m actually wary.

Liberty is only ever truly protected by good faith between people. It is civil contract and what good is a contract if not honored? Trump does not deal in good faith and his supporters are too stupid to realize it. In the name of supposed vengeance for the last twenty years of bad politics and policies and in the name of a hollow victory, they will happily allow Trump to operate in bad faith and violate the social contract upon which civil society is founded and through which liberty is guaranteed.

Yes, of Trump and his mob, I am very wary.

Just Thinkin’: Collapse BLAST and the American Economy

So, I was up, playing Collapse BLAST!, a free game app on my Kindle Fire, since I couldn’t sleep and I was getting ridiculously frustrated. I was using the game coins to buy the high level power ups, like the Thunderstack and the Rainbow bomb, both of which are about 400 coins apiece, trying to beat my high score. Well, for 800 coins, I got one Thunderstack, a red bomb and a green one. That was it, for 800 hard-collected coins. The point of Collapse is find three blocks of the same color that are adjacent to each other and “collapse” them by touching them. You keep getting new rows of randomly sequenced blocks and over the course of one minute, you have to keep collapsing blocks so the rows don’t build up to the top of the screen. If they get that high, it’s game over. Bombs will blow out all the blocks of a corresponding color on the screen and there are other power-ups too, like things that will take out whole rows or columns, etc, but the best is supposed to be the Rainbow Bomb.

With that thing you’re supposed to get bombs of all colors and while it is technically random, you usually get more than two bombs in a game. A Thunderstack will rearrange all the blocks on screen so they grouped with their color, making it faster to clear them. After three games of 800-coin purchases for the Rainbow Bomb and the Thunderstack, usually a dynamite combination and getting bupkis, I really started to feel cheated. I don’t get the bang for my buck in the real world and now I can’t even get it in the game world. I have since been advised to spend 600 coins to buy a red bomb, a blue bomb and a green bomb: 200 more coins than the Rainbow Bomb and you don’t get yellow. While I finally managed to beat my high score, I still spent more coins for less.

Not getting any bombs in the game didn’t seem all that different from going to the grocery store, or to buy gas: more money for less product. Then, as I watched a column get too close to the top of the screen (they start to wobble dramatically) and I frantically scrambled to clear some blocks, I realized that it kinda looks like America’s debt. It keeps building up and up, the average person has less cash to circulate and what they do have gets them less. All the while, Congress petitions the game to raise the ceiling so one more row can fit in, rather than clearing some blocks. Eventually, it will hit the roof and that’s game over.