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sonofabird
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Name: Justin
Country: United States
State: Missouri
Metro: St. Louis
Birthday: 9/21/1983
Gender: Male
Interests: i like places and most things. people i can take or leave. wait, that might've sounded bad, but i think we all know what i meant.
Expertise: the futility of the chicago cubs,
2nd tier television of the 90s,
american politics and history,
obscure boutique religion,
the history of and writing for film,
support staffing at law firms,
inappropriate humor,
ironic/sarcastic assholery,
notice how none of these things actually benefit me in life?,
u of illinois sports,
intermediate hack piano playing,
americanized italian cooking,
northwestern university/evanston, il,
obnoxious intellectualism,
basic geekism,
the hilarious fun of central illinois,
meeting odd strangers,
occaisional self loathing,
erotic seduction of the right hand
*******wow...that list was mostly honest...(except the last one, that was a joke - it keeps turning me down!)
Occupation: Other
Industry: Other
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  jhagan83
Member Since:
11/7/2003
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| rant 240: what happened to you, child stars?
I remember Dickie Roberts with David Spade. Not that it was particularly funny, but it was inevitably considering the sheer number of child stars who wound up with, shall we say, "mixed" careers. Everything that's happened with Danny Bonaduce, Gary Coleman, etc. just sort-of built up this wonderful Hollywood machine:
Phase 1: be adorable.
Phase 2: receive adoration
Phase 3: shatter the reputation by growing up
Phase 4: act like the problem is that you were famous and made millions while other kids just shattered their adorability without being in the spotlight.
Phase 5: profit.
Bonaduce, Coleman, Mackulay Culkin, Drew Barrymore, Ralphie from A Christmas Story, the Olsen twins, Haley Joel Osment, Corey Heim - hell, I would even argue Malcom Jamal Warner (nothing criminal here, just a messed-up role on Weeds) - all set the bar pretty high (or low).
But now we have Kirk Cameron. Instead of drugs, Kirk is giving away copies of Origin of Species with a creationist introduction at colleges. Um...praise Jesus, I guess? The only thing dumber than this is that the news article I read felt compelled to actually interview a Professor about it.
What's next for his publishing company? Ben Franklin's Autobiography with an introduction arguing Franklin was really a stand-up Christian? The Kama Sutra with an introdution about the importance of Christian marriage? Thus Spake Zarathustra with an introduction by the pope? Principia Mathmatica, with interspliced reminders that it's only true if God wills it? This is not why we have public domain.
I don't know about you, but I prefer my child stars overdosing on heroin instead of overdosing on Christ. I'm Christian. I think religion is a great thing. Selling warped copies of a classic with half-baked science isn't.
Give me Jody Sweetin's self-destruction over Candice Cameron's Christian home-schooling any day of the week. Better yet: a child star who turns out completely normal.
Anyway, life ticks on. School is lousy. Here's to striking it rich before I have to find a job in 3 years.
We got our TV hooked up today. It stormed for the first time in weeks and we lost the reception. It's like getting a really cool present for Christmas you can't play with for an hour at 6 pm. On the bright side, I didn't have TV yesterday to watch the Illinois game.
I did, however, find enough time to catch Pawn Stars on the History Channel. I hate when I see something and think "man, that would be a cool," because they show these guys buying up all sorts of cool stuff. Of course, in real life you have be certified and have a buttload of capital and inventory, not to mention a willingness to be ripped off and possibly shot at. I know the neighborhood I live in. Still, it never fails when I see something cool on TV I think "man, that wouldn't be bad to do at all." I think the right show would convince me being a sewer maitenence worker or gravedigger would be totally awesome. "...and Chester has never had to buy a suit because he just waits until the right size comes along!"
I can't believe I spent a good chunk of this rambling about child stars and their extremes. I might as well start watching Grey's Anatomy.
9 minutes of youtube fun, now with patriotism! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZW3TazHW3E (skip to 4 minutes)
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| rant 239: no, stan, i did not start 9/11
So with another 9/11 passing - this is my 8th, how about you? - I can't help but notice that the conspiracy theories are still alive and well kicking on the internet, including none other than Charlie Sheen:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4559472852690653060#
Weird, isn't it? My response to this is threefold. First, for an intellectual response, see this, including the Noam Chomsky video:
http://www.debunking911.com/massivect.htm
For a simple, eloquent, and honest response, watch this:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103766
There's so much genuine retardation in 9/11 conspiracy discussion it's really not worth time. Controlled demolition? Are you kidding? They take massive amounts of manpower to set up, and Newtonian physics explains pretty much everything you need to know about why a giant tower goes "boom-boom-boom-boom" and falls vertically. Yeah, there was probably some misinformation floating around on 9/11/01, which makes it exactly like every other major multifaceted news event in history. Sheesh. Put your time, and your Nobel-quality physics degrees, towards something truly useful, like fixing our shattered banking system or getting a health care plan that sha-zams its way into paying for itself while beating free-market capitalism.
Anyway, last time I mentioned the joy of riding through the elevated train system through parts of town a non-college educated person would call the ghetto. But since I've read Marx and American Apartheid, I think "fruits of institutionalized racism and class-ism."
Either way, I've noticed some of the clothes poor blacks/Mexicans/heroin-laced white people (I'm sorry if this sounds bad, but really, there's no tactful way of putting it without being dishonest) wind up with are like a mini time-capsule. Case in point would be that in the last two days, I've seen a Jordan USA 9 jersey (obviously faded and not a rebuy due to the HOF election) and a Sammy Sosa jersey. To some, it's a 90s flashback; to others, it's what one could wear that beats the stuff from the resale shop. Tomayto, tomahto.
Between the daily dose of sociology and a few select law cases we've been reading, it's made me think again that all the crap we've done to try and help people from the 60s-on has been a giant ball of wishful failure. And now we're going to have cheap, easy health care for all. Yippee.
That's too much politics, but there's a lot of shit being thrown around right now. Now for something fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DStIMJ9_8_c
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| rant 238: welcome back to illinois
So I'm now back to being a resident of metropolitan Chicago, this time west of downtown, so I have a new el line, a new batch of middle class-suburban stores, a new Target/Home Depot, and a new zip code strangely like my old one. Best of all, I no longer live in St. Louis. It has its charms, but it also has severe drawbacks, most of which rest in that it has both the disadvantages of being a small city like Champaign or Bloomington (there's very little in the way of interesting) while also having the disadvantages of being in a big city (polluted as hell, crime, poverty, and a corrupt police department) without fully getting the advantages of either. Also, it might be the worst pizza city in America.
I "started" classes this week, even though they had us go through 3 classes during orientation week. I actually blew off a bit of orientation to do reading assignments so that my normal life of going to large stores and watching movies wasn't otherwise intruded upon. I also find it amusing that, according to a required book, law school orientation is supposed to give you enough motivation to get through three years, but I didn't really want to go on the third day because I was sick of listening to people tell us the same things over and over again ("it's a good idea to read your email!")
The last two days I've been reminded as to why I love the el vs. listening to NPR or 70s rock.
News radio hilarity: "Oh my gosh, the announcer totally said Robert Kennedy died of a brain tumor!" Not much to work with here, right? Granted, NPR has their humorous funny moments, but they're always couched in that left-moderate, pbs-friendly chuckling tone, the "I'm so clever I must have written for Atlantic Monthly once" or "I have a master's in something very important."
Train hilarity, Day 1: I saw a 60-year old, straight-laced businessman reading Rolling Stone magazine. I think I've written before about how far Rolling Stone has fallen, but how in the hell can you claim to be the relevant voice of 20-something rock and roll rebellion and be read by 60-year old Chicago Loop businessmen? Isn't that a fundamental violation? If it's not, I found it amusing nonetheless. No wonder Reader's Digest is doing poorly - they're losing audience to want-to-be hipster 60-year olds. I guess that's what you can expect when you're a music magazine and your most notable writer is your wholly mediocre 55+ year-old film critic.
Train hilarity, Day 2: The green line runs from downtown to the United Center to Garfield Park to Oak Park. If you don't know Chicago, that means you get a wide swatch of humanity. Anyway, I happened to sit in the back of the train and watch this nice, elderly, voted-for-Obama-'cause-it's-proper woman sit near the door. The next stop a Dave Chapelle look-a-like, a Fat-Ablert look-a-like, and Elwood Blues' balck cousin got on with copious uamounts of McDonalds and expletives. You know you're in for good conversation when 2 of the first 5 words spoken start with "n-i-g" and it's loud enough for the whole car to hear. It's even better when the wise-crackin' elderly black guy gets on and they start telling stories about people being stupid. The best is when they mention a girl they know and "I wish that bitch would croak so we could roll her ashes in a blunt and smoke it" while the elderly white woman just keeps the same look on her face the entire time.
God, I missed the trains.
As a closing note, my mom brought me a "copyright infringement notice" that was sent from their internet company dated from when I was staying at their house. I'm not going to lie - I download movies. I won't bore my many readers with why I believe what I download (which is not, mind you, hot new releases or current TV shows) is both legal and moral, suffice to say that I know most courts and legislatures disagree with me. They have a right to do so. They're wrong, but they have a right to be wrong.
What isn't right is claiming copyright infringement on a work in the public domain. From the Mediacom notice:
Name of Work: Charade (1963)
IP Address: xxx.xx.xxx.xx
Date: 2 Aug 2009 07:19:34 GM@
Reporting Agency: NBC UNIVERSAL
Um...yeah.... From IMDB:
"This film is public domain due to the failure to put the then-required copyright notice in the released print. The supposed copyright notice in the film failed to include the text "Copyright", "Copr." or "©", as was needed by pre-1989 US law (only the year and supposed copyright holder were listed)."
Furthermore, it's been released by multiple different companies over the last decade because of this (which a simple Amazon search reveals).
If someone has claimed copyright infringement when I was sharing Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, fine. You'd be legally correct, I suppose, if you're immoral. But you can't claim infringement if you have no more ownership of the copyright than I do. Fuck you, Jeff Zucker.
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| rant 237: let's be honest...
Those "evony" ads that are on here and elsewhere are hyper-annoying. Every time I see one I can't help but remember that at one point in time the online game company was going to call it "civony" but they were sued promptly by Sid Meijer and his Civilization games. I also can't help but think that attractive lady saying "it's ready, my lord" is selling sex to people who are interested in playing online video games. Let's face it, that only works in Leisure Suit Larry, and that's only because it's funny, although the poker games where you reveal naked chicks sure were a hit in the mid 90s.
As a kid I always wondered why people didn't move more. As I see it, there's 10+ areas of the United States I'd love to live in. Having to pick one and hang there for fifty years seemed boring. After moving my stuff yesterday, I'm ready to not move anymore, or perhaps give up all my possessions. I think people who live with the intent of having no money are naive idiots, but I could totally see cutting my possessions under the right circumstances. But let's be honest, this is probably because most of my stuff is worthless junk. If I owned a Renoir or a Steinway, you can bet your ass I'd cart them around.
Speaking of hippie lifestyle choices, I'm annoyed at Starbucks even though I don't drink coffee. Apparently, Starbucks has opened a Seattle "independent" cafe. That is, Starbucks owns it and reaps its profits and supplies its stuff, but it has completely removed its name from the establishment (the website, streetlevelcoffee.com [cute, right?] has a GMAIL address). Basically, what Starbucks is doing here is trying to get business from those silly people who hate Starbucks. They're apparently testing the idea now and plan on opening other "stealth" cafes if the one in Seattle is able to pull in enough suckers off the street.
I can't be the only one who's annoyed by this, can I? I understand they want to reach out to people who have formed opinions about what Starbucks is and why they prefer locally-owned stores. I just think there's ways of doing that without trying to pass yourself off as exctly what you aren't, which is what a GMAIL address does. I don't think corporate America or even Starbucks are evil, I just think it's dishonest, insulting, and shameful to not put your name on a product so as to dupe people who have formed political/cultural opinions about you. If you have that bad of an image problem, change yourself, don't try to hide behind a mask. What if Toyota started selling trucks under the name Smith Motors in the 80s? Or if Wal-Mart set up Mom-and-Pop shops and paid Pakistani couples to "man the store" while stocking it with Wal-Mart's stuff and hiding the fact the profits are going to Wal-Mart? I have nothing against these companies, it's just an underhanded, immoral practice that crosses any respectible boundary of marketing.
Well, I'm out. Literally - I'm going to go outside and try and break in my own house so I can claim to be a victim of profiling when arrested and get a free trip to Washington D.C. AND a free beer (Bud Light? Seriously, Barack? That thing I drink because I'm young, poor, and cheap? If you're going European, at least get a Heinaken. Otherwise, get a Fat Tire, or better yet, an Old Style, or better still, crack an old can of Billy Beer, I'm sure there's a case in the House somewhere). Also, I can't wait to point out the irony of two wealthy, well-known, powerful, and influential black men teaching the blue-collar white police officer who teaches a racial profiling course that we have a long way to go on race relations, all while suggesting they have a commercialized cheap beer at a mansion with a full-service 5-star chef and a wine list second to none.
It's hard for three people to collectively botch an issue multiple times in multiple different ways, but I'm pretty sure they did it.
Youtube zen: I finally wound up watching Brokeback Mountain, which means things like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uwuLxrv8jY) are now mildly funnier, although I think th sheer number of parodies on youtube is incredibly lame.
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| rant 236: oh, lifelong dreams are never appreciated
Today I fulfilled a lifelong dream/goal and quit my job. It wasn't nearly as dramatic as Kevin Spacey's in American Beauty, and I even took the classy route of notifying them in advance. I also ate my good person wheaties and sent a nice email to the completely incompetent contacts at this one specific client I can't stand (thank you, your new contact is..., best wishes, blah blah). It beat the alternative: "I can't believe 15% of the country is unemployed and someone as fucking stupid and lazy as you somehow is holding a job."
I feel like I have a lot to do before school, but I really don't when I start to think about it. I have a book to read. And somehow I have to find medical records that the doctor's office can't find to prove I've been immunized and I'm not running around carrying rubella. This wouldn't be worth mentioning at all except for which doctor's office happened to misplace them...
I was a pretty good worker at my job, but occasionally I found things to do that didn't involve work. One example would be that when I started training others and our activity fell slightly I found a text copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (as opposed to Ernest Hemingway's Pride and Prejudice, where all five Bennett daughters have miscarriages and Darcy runs around talking about how God is dead because his genitals were blown off in a training excercise) and read all 61 chapters off-and-on over a two week period. I wish I had done this earlier, because it's not like I was any less productive than before, and now I've read a classic of English literature. What else could I have read? Vanity Fair? David Copperfield? The Notebook?
Anyway, one of my favorite things to do was create crazy dialogue-based scenarios. Yesterady, Melissa and I were talking about Microsoft and how Bing.com's bird's eye view on its map page is like a one-up from Google's street view on its maps page (these are the kind of lame things you notice when your internet is restricted).
Google person 1: Damn, we must come up with an answer to bird's eye view.
Google person 2: How about Google People? We get in our car and take a picture of every man, woman, and child and index them on google!
Google person 1: Great idea, I'll get the company hybrid!
Google person 2: Hehe and marharhar! I love road trips. Let's get some udon noodles from the cafeteria!
~~~~~
Microsoft person 1: Damn, we must come up with an answer to Google People.
Microsoft person 2: How about BingInside? We get Bill's ultra-xray camera and scope pictures of everyone's house, naked or clothed, and put it online!
Microsoft person 1: Why don't we just use the company's private archives we've been storing for a decade? We've already got pictures inside every house. Remember the project to secretly hardwire every desktop to Microsoft HQ?
Microsoft person 2: But I wanted to use the camera...
~~~~~
Google person 1: Damn, we must come up with an answer to BingInside.
Google person 2: How about Google Organ? We get in our car and force everyone to do a full-body MRI and X-ray, and then we put them in an online index searchable by disease, organ quality, blood type, etc!
Google person 1: Great idea, I'll get the company MRI van!
Google person 2: Hehe and marharhar! I love road trips. Let's get some endive salad from the cafeteria!
~~~~~
Microsoft person 1: Damn, we must come up with an answer to Goggle Organ.
Microsoft person 2: How about BingDead? We do everything Goggle People and Google Organ do, but we include dead people as well!
Microsoft person 1: Great idea, I'll get the company time machine.
Microsoft person 2: But I wanted to dig for bodies...
Yep, this is one of the small reasons I made it through 10 hour days. Some people do it by standing aroudn the coffee-maker and talking for 30 minutes that pass by inconspicuously. Meh, to each his own.
As a closing note, apparently there is a large contingent of Harry Potter fans who are upset because the latest movie differs dramatically from the book. Hoenstly, what did you expect? The books are like 500+ pages long. The movies are a completely different medium, and with who's in charge of the movies, you should be lucky all the main characters are still there. It's the nature of the beast that when you sell the rights to movies you often get a different story. It's really hard to do direct adaptations of detailed literature. Watchmen tried and the result wasn't nearly as good as the original. If anything, HP fans should be lucky the movies seem to correlate well to the books.
Anyway, I'm out. Enjoy this blast from the 90s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi3YjJzjz5Y
Favorite quote from said clip: "this is the 90s. it doesn't matter anymore." Also dig the Joey Buttafucco reference at 1:20 or so.
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