Craig's Blog : 'Lusions

Merry f***ing Christmas

craigg75 — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 00:01:00 GMT

I hope this kind of crap goes away like the feminism attack on the language back in the 80's when we no longer could say “businessman“. Went to Kenzie's xmas concert at her school and yes they sang “We wish you a happy holidays“. Lovely... that's teaching our kids to learn how to bend over and take up the tailpipe, screw your culture, nobody is allowed to hurt anyone else's feelings. Please read Mr. Vonnegut's sarcastic short story Harrison Bergeron for where we are headed..

Motivate People!

craigg75 — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 12:30:00 GMT

Jesus doesn't like Imax films

craigg75 — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 21:10:00 GMT

I think I need to add a Religion category to this blog. I seem to be blogging on it a lot lately. But 'Lusions is such a good meta category for it.

I picked this up off of slashdot today:

"The New York Times is reporting that a number of Imax theatres are passing on science-themed films that might provoke controversy among a handful of religious fundamentalists. Films that are having their distribution impacted include '"Cosmic Voyage," which depicts the universe in dimensions running from the scale of subatomic particles to clusters of galaxies; "Galápagos," about the islands where Darwin theorized about evolution; and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," an underwater epic about the bizarre creatures that flourish in the hot, sulfurous emanations from vents in the ocean floor.'"

First off, everyone has to remember that Imax theaters are in the business of selling tickets, and not delivering education. They make money off the "wow" effect and tie in some education to make it presentable at science museums. So they are bowing to some kind of perceived market force.

Secondly there's always room for a competitor to test out the assertion that, what I like to call the "jesus fundies", can really effect ticket sales. Or do the theaters have an ulterior motive?

I feel like this country is reverting back to the Reagan era where jesus fundies had a lot more power. Like Chris said, they ended up selling their souls to the neo-con movement and eventually were left on the road for dead when their usefulness had expired and the public rejected them. Like the movie line “theeeey are back!”. Like all good shows, it never really dies, it just returns in a different time slot. I read a good sig the other day “May God protect you from his followers“.

Poping

craigg75 — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 19:29:00 GMT

So does anyone know who the next Pope will be? Anyone want to put up odds on when the pope will finally release his mortal coil? I put it at the end of this year, around xmas time, should boost Catholicism somewhat in the world. He's a good pope and will die at a profitable time.

Latest news from the Vatican is that some pinheaded cardinal is requesting that all Catholics abstain from reading the popular book The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. It's been a best seller for almost 2 years now and is expected to be for some time. I read it and enjoyed it very much. I learned a lot about Catholic history. Of course I'm sure some of the historical events were fabricated to make the story more appealing but the element of mystery in the church's beginnings was intriguing. In fact it's so popular that Tom Hanks will be playing the protaganist in an upcoming movie based on the book. Anyway back to Cardinal Pinhead. I had to laugh at his request seeing how it's lent and the Catholic church always seems to enjoy telling it's members what not to touch, look at it, listen to, etc. The interesting point in the news is that this guy is being considered as the next pope. Wow. Will they ever learn?

Iran and nukes

craigg75 — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 21:02:00 GMT

You know I'm all for letting a country decide it's own future. In the case of Iran wanting to pursue nuclear energy I say leave them alone. The rest of the world is of course worried since Iran isn't .. well they don't really have a good record as being a country of nice people. So my question is this -- how come a country that sits on top of most of the world's oil reserves wants to pursue a dirty potentially hazardous form of energy like nuclear fission? Why does any oil rich country need nuclear energy? Why not just say “look having the bomb protects our sovereignty, so we plan on figuring out how to make one” and be done with it. I guess they have to play guessing games in order to obtain the necessary fissionable material for “peaceful purposes”. You know the NRA says if everyone was given a gun before boarding a plane, we would never have hijackings. Happiness is a warm gun...

Getting a piece of the action

craigg75 — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 14:16:00 GMT

Looks like the state of Ohio is going to force people who sell on ebay regularly to fork over license fees in order to auction. Well I guess somebody has to finance all the pork barrel projects in that state such as those useless highway signs informing drivers that there is traffic up ahead while they are sitting in traffic.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/07/technology/ohio_ebay/index.htm

Sheeple

craigg75 — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 13:57:00 GMT

I watched Dateline over the weekend and they reported on this televangilist preacher named Benny Hinn. It's the same tape, just rewound and played again. He claims to have healing powers, begs for money for his ministry, pockets all of it himself, blah blah blah. The most amazing thing is people still go for this shit!? After all of these years, all of the scandals and exposes in this, what I call, “line of work”. If only Jesus knew how much his good name would be abused by the thousands of scam artists to come. You see you do a good thing and it becomes perverted the second you turn your back. Humans....

A Company of Soldiers

craigg75 — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 16:03:00 GMT

PBS will be airing what is being billed as an important documentary on the Iraq war seen through a group of US soldiers. It's a Frontline show, whose journalism I find to be well done. Anyway since this is a real life, gritty realization of the kind of shit our soldiers go through to police the cities in the Sunni triangle, there is a fair amount of curse words uttered. Since everyone is afraid of the big bad wolf, FCC, Frontline has an editted version where the cursing is editted out. This is to be distributed to the more “conservative“ areas of the country or where the Parents Television Council (PTC) will be watching. This group should of course be nuked but since private citizens are not allowed to nuke each other we have to deal with these assholes. According to this article the number of FCC complaints hovered around 350 a year until the PTC figured out to manipulate the system. In 2003 there were 240,000 complaints, of which 99.8% of them were from these nazis. So is this democracy? A pinhead small minority is dictating to us what we can and can't view? I looked at the PTC website and I can't believe the content. They actually have streaming video available to ANYONE regardless of age of what they consider the worst tv clips of the week. Un-fricking-believable! What a bunch of hypocrites! In any case this is show about war, where people die and are maimed in real life, it's rough and it's real. Anyone offended by cursing will probably not be watching this, nor do I expect children to sit down and watch a news program about war. It's a relative thing folks, not absolute you ninnys. You know the ironic thing here is that Americans claim to love tv reality shows, yet apparently some of them don't really care to watch real reality. What does that say about us?

Diamond cam

craigg75 — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 03:40:00 GMT

Ok I found this article on CNN about Fox installing tiny eraserhead sized cameras on the football field in time for the superbowl this Sunday. Similar to the “Diamond Cam“ they had during the baseball playoffs. Please tell me who wants to see an ant's viewpoint of homeplate? Much less the 20 yard line? Am I missing something here? Are people becoming braindead to the marketing fools at big TV stations like Fox? Is this the best that Fox can come up with this year? Hey everybody, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

Merry Christmas

craigg75 — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 18:18:00 GMT

I'll start out on a good note. Merry Christmas to the handful of people who like to read this blog. It's been a fun year ranting and everyone putting up with it, especially you Chris :) I hope you all get laid a lot this Christmas and have a great 2005!

<rant>
Here we go. I am so sick and tired of this bullshit about the word Christmas. Every year the political correctness gets worse. Singing Christmas songs in grade schools is not going to corrupt some kid's belief system. Hell he doesn't have one! And if he does then he needs to get out and play more and his parents need to get some counseling. As for those fuckwads at the grocery store who don't want to hurt customers and decided to make the big switch this year and now tell us “happy holidays“. Well Merry Fucking Christmas to the whole lot of you. The 1% of customers who would be offended, well fuck them, let them go shop at Rubensteins or Zeus's. Have some balls and stand up for tradition. Those are the same customers who complain that you don't carry enough ethnic food or get pissed that you won't double their 50 cent coupons. Now I'm not in anyway religous, I don't believe in any supernatural make believe father figures or follow the writings of sand soaked Bronze Age nomads. I'm also fully aware that Jesus Christ was not born on December 25th, he was born in the spring time. The last Roman emperor Constanine decided to blend pagan and Christian beliefs and celebrations together to make Christianity a better “sell“, he wanted to market this new religion to help tie his dying empire together. So he basically put the celebration of Christ on the same day as the major pagan holiday of yuletide, which celebrates the first day of the sun returning. It's not an accident that winter solitice (Dec.22) and Christmas (Dec.25) are so close together. Fast forward 1500 years. A small minority of people have decided to end the public tradition of Christmas. What the fuck?! Sorry folks but this is the big one for Christians everywhere, they fucking own Christmas, December 25th, regardless of your creed, religion or race. Now put up with their bullshit for one fucking day out of the year. There's something to be said for tradition and this is a good one that expresses all the good things in the Christian religion. Must we live in a world where everything is homogenous and nobody gets offended? Shit we need that push and pull to keep things interesting.
</rant>

Mary and aliens

craigg75 — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:23:00 GMT

Here's something that came floating into my brain last night while watching the Catholic channel. I sometimes get a kick out of watching propaganda, let's leave it at that ok ;-)

It seems the Virgin Mary always makes her appearances in grottos. Now a grotto is pretty much a garbage dump, place of refuse. More than likely she also shows herself to young women or girls who are dirt poor (who else would be found wondering around garbage dumps?). There is definitely a pattern here.

It seems that most UFO encounters are made by rednecks far out in the woods. Its not a suburban thing or city craze, it's something that happens out in the open spaces away from lights and at night time.

I'm not sure if there's a connection here or not but there is definitely a pattern for these supernatural events. When humans recognize patterns they start to lend more believability to them. It's a natural response really. What if somebody claimed they got probed by aliens while coming home from the mall? Or some rich slob like Donald Trump saw the Virgin Mary sitting next to him in his limo? Nobody would believe the claim. What does that say about the “real” claims then?

Neandertal souls?

craigg75 — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 16:10:00 GMT

So I've been reading this book Hominids by Robert Sawyer. As usual he's put together a good story. About a parallel universe in which the Neandertals became the dominant Homo species instead of us. So one them gets transported over to our universe with a wave of the scifi author's magic wand and so ensues the story. The part I just read about was the Neandertal's discovering religion since his universe had no concept of religion. So my question is this -- If we all agree that all life evolved from self-organizing molecules, who was the first human to have a soul? Did the Neandertals (in our universe) have souls? If so why did god allow them to go extinct? So I guess we need to agree on what a soul is. My guess it is something only human beings have apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. So maybe it has something to do with self-awareness, foresight, enlarged cerebral cortex? Or maybe it has a lot to do with our godspot, our ability to perceive a god? I don't see too many dolphins going off to church or praying to the almighty oil tanker. So are souls another made up fairy tale that most religions like to espouse? So what if you were the first caveman to have a soul. You end up in heaven with god and ... well nobody else is there ... yet. Dang all of these clouds and angels, what am I going to do to pass the time? I'd rather be in hell, at least there I'd have something to do..haha. Which reminds me of a joke. Bill Gates dies, goes to heaven and god gives him a choice Heaven or Hell. Even better he says heck you can have a 30 day trial version of each. So Bill checks out Heaven first, seems to be nice and comfortable and well ..a bit boring. So he checks out Hell. Wall to wall babes, a sunny beach, women's sand volleyball, tropical drinks. Great he says, I choose Hell. So god says okay, and sends him to Hell, where he ends up being tortured endlessly by devils and the whole works. So god checks in on the fallen angel and Bill screams “hey this isn't what you showed me!”. God replies “oh hi Bill, sorry but that was the beta version”. Waw waw waaaaaaaw!!!

12th post!!

craigg75 — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 19:38:00 GMT

Well this blog entry is to just make it to 12 posts for the month of September. A new record!

Chris has been having issues with our method of electing political leaders in this country for a few months now. Chris is a really fart smeller.. err .. highly intelligent person and I guess it's hard watching inefficiency go on in front of him especially when it's a process that's important to our future. Anyway the topic of the upcoming presidential debates came up on my end. They are not debates but rather commercials for the candidates. A true debate is a dialog between 2 or more people (except in the case of schizophrenia, you can debate with your selves) where ideas and opinions are defended. The process is to show the opinion for what it's worth. If the observer thinks an opinion is poorly defended then he may think this opinion is not worthy. That's the purpose of debates, to hammer an opinion and see how well it survives. It's not about right vs. wrong opinions but how well can it stand up on it's own. There's a lot that can be learned from a debate. I've often taken an viewpoint that I don't agree with just to create a debate and see how well I can defend it. In some cases I've almost changed my viewpoint because I was able to defend the opposite so well. Anyway the presidential debates are more what I call a “forum”. A chance for each candidate to air his opinions on subject matter. For the most part these opinions are canned speeches and really give the observer nothing. I saw a report on CNN the other day how each candidate's election crew argue over camera angles, lighting and even how high up their candidate stands behind the podium. This goes on all the way up to an hour before the debate. It's a commercial people! Lights! Camera! Action!

The Entertainment Century

craigg75 — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 14:00:00 GMT

Got an email from Lou with a link to Adam Curry's (of MTV) blog. Adam's been listening to Michael Crichton's book Timeline audio book and thought this rant from the book was quite telling of our current society. I thought so too so I've copied it here without copyright permission for everyone to read and think about --

"Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time. Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet list and animated graphics, so executives aren't bored. Malls and stores must be engaging, so they amuse as well as sell us. Politicians must have pleasing video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear. Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of television. Students must be amused--everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society at the end of the century.
In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved or freed or educated. but in our century they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused.
But where will this mania for entertainment end? What will people do when they get tired of television? When they get tired of movies? We already know the answer--they go into participatory activities: sports, theme parks, amusement rides, roller coasters. Structured fun, planned thrills. And what will they do when they tire of theme parks and planned thrills? Sooner or later, the artifice becomes too noticeable. They begin to realize that an amusement park is really a kind of jail, in which you pay to be an inmate.
This artifice will drive them to seek authenticity. Authenticity will be the buzzword of the 21st century. And what is authentic? Anything that is not devised and structured to make a profit. Anything that is not controlled by corporations. Anything that exists for it's own sake, that assumes it's own shape. But of course, nothing in the modern world is allowed to assume it's own shape. The modern world is the corporate equivalent of a formal garden, where everything is planted and arranged for effect. Where nothing is untouched, where nothing is authentic."

Of course the rant goes on to “sell” time travel and the only authentic product for sale today.

Just a bump in the road

craigg75 — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 18:39:00 GMT

News story

Norm: Say Martha did you feel a bump in the road?

Martha: Why yes I did, I just figured it was some old roadkill.

Norm: Mmm.. ok. Say did the minivan's microwave oven finish popping my corn yet?

Martha: Why yes it did.. sorry I was too busy watching my movie on the dvd player.