Nel, c'mon...

My mother's state-funded housekeeper for a couple years there -- who eventually got herself fired by slacking off and then making baseless accusations toward my mom -- used to listen to conservative talk radio a lot.  One of the ones I often got the pleausre (cough, cough) of hearing was Neal Boortz.  The guy would go on endlessly talking about people's mistakes.  Not society's mistakes, not a mistake that some celebrity was making that nobody wanted to admit was indeed a mistake, but just mistakes of random people.  He talked about some student who attends some no-name college who was demanding something or other from the dean of the college.  This was information he was apparently using to draw a parallel to the Occupy movement that eventually dissolved because they had absolutely no strategy for accomplishing whatever it was they wanted, which was for life to be peachy, apparently.
  Even his little sidekick lady was confounded by that one.  She even said "Where do you find these people?"  Some guy called into the show criticizing Neal Boortz for being too negative.  Neal then countered that by saying how he's always talking about positive things -- getting Obama out of office and getting a Republican back in!  The guy was kind of stumped by that and he simply said "That's your opinion".  Neal basically responded saying "Yeah, well it's my show".  Which is entirely the point.  If you don't like the show, don't listen to it.  My question is mainly why do people like the show?  What do people really gain out of it?  I ask because I've known at least two people -- out of a very small group of people I've ever spent a significant amount of time with outside of school -- who seem rather grumpy much of the time.  Their sense of humor is intact, but often snide.  1)  My mom's former housekeeper 2)  A guy I knew several years back during my high school years.  He listened to conservative talk radio for like 3 hours of the day at least, and it really seemed like was just bitter.  He acted like he was justified in that because of the mistreatment he suffered from his ex-wife and the existence of Democrats.  He'd probably deny all of that, saying he told me about his ex-wife because I somehow indicated that I wanted to know, and I don't have a problem with people sharing their sob stories.  I have a problem with people holding grudges and taking them out on other people.  He told me that he knows some people who are ready to make Michael Carneal, a semi-local loner who had come to the end of his rope and opened fire at school, wish he was back in prison if he ever got out.  His argument for the death penalty was that Murderers Are Evil.  I don't think the story of Cain & Able was put in The Bible so that mankind could piss on the grave of mankind's first murderer.  If it were, God would have struck down Cain.  The Bible is a source of wisdom, but you have to take the time to understand it.  He said The Bible supported zealously denouncing homosexuality.  The Bible supports preaching The Good News.  It supports getting people to understand why The Good News is important and encouraging them to keep on the righteous path once they discover The Good News and all of its splendor.  The Bible says we should rebuke each other for our sins, but do so in love, and that when Christians are persecuted, we will be a witness to God to the people who are persecuting us.  Ex-communication is a last resort and something The Bible encourages.  You can't ex-communicate someone who has never experienced the Word of God -- unless that person is a church goer -- someone who has been going to church for a while -- and has made it clear they have no intention of heeding to The Holy Spirit's will.  That is what The Bible refers to as a Hypocrite --- we are instructed to not share meals with them.

Anyway...not only is Neal Boortz a pipeline of negativity, but he obstructs the truth to justify his opinions.  He said rich people pay more taxes than anybody else --- he proved this by reading a half page's worth of information from some IRS document, either something he found online or, whatever.  If that half page worth of information is the whole truth, why does anybody ever use H&R Block?  If it's so simple, why not do it yourself the same way you stamp and address outgoing mail?  George W. Bush said in a campaign rally during his re-election bid that the shortest tax form takes 9 hours to complete.  This is a rather telling statement.  The guy either is unaware that poor people exist or he has no regard for them as human beings.  I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and go with the former.

I'm still half asleep it seems.  I've forgotten if there was anything else I wanted to say.  Either that or I've said everything I intend to say and have no witty way of wrapping it up.  TTFN

Just when it's finally cultrually acceptable to not hate GHOSTBUSTERS II...

...along comes another new spin on GHOSTBUSTERS.  And the pissing and moaning about the choices the writers made and things that should've been included and shouldn't have been included...as if everyone EXCEPT Paul Feig knew how to make a good GHOSTBUSTERS movie.  The most mind boggling thing I hear is the line "It didn't need to be re-make".  My response is always like "It didn't need to be made in the first place."  I'm glad it did get made, it's a great movie, but what would the world have been missing if some other fun supernatural comedy got made in 1985 and 1984 and all the other years since just didn't see GHOSTBUSTERS?  Now that we know what GHOSTBUSTERS **is**, it's hard for some people to imagine a world without it, but I think it's a lame argument to say "The world needed to see this movie!"  If GHOSTBUSTERS were a fully realized movie to begin with, before it got pitched to Columbia Pictures in 1983, I might be able to see how that line of thinking makes sense.  The script by Dan Aykroyd was far from what we saw on the screen in 1984.  Harold Ramis and Ivan Rietman didn't finish revisions before Columbia Pictures granted $30,000,000 for production.  They weren't trying to give the world some Ultimate Movie or a Savior Of Cinema.  Their motives for making GHOSTBUSTERS were most likely just as much a combination of artistic expression and greed as Paul Feig's motives for re-making GHOSTBUSTERS.  Now, Sony -- who now owns Columbia Pictures & all its properties -- is most likely far more motivated by commerce than art.
I can more or less wrap my head around people thinking nothing good of the trailers that have been released.  I personally think the movie sounds entertaining.  But people have been rallying against this movie as if it's a threat to society.  It'd be one thing if the movie were advertised as being something x person wants to see and then x person went in the theater and ended up disappointed.  But people have been rallying against this movie with such concrete venom since well before any trailer was even released.
 A 3rd Ghostbusters movie was never guaranteed to be anything except a 3rd movie from Columbia Pictures/Sony about people busting ghosts.  The Ecto-1 was never promised, the original weaponry was never promised, the no ghost logo was never promised.  Yet the absence of the original Ecto-1, the re-designed weaponry, the added weaponry and the no-ghost logo itself have all been points of controversy and people say that the reason they're upset about this thing is because it's a re-make and not a sequel and that it's got nothing to do with sexism.  Maybe sexism isn't the reason, but being a nitpicky old fart is still not a virtue of any kind.  Unless your nitpickety old fartyness can accomplish something other than pissing and moaning about every fact, factoid and rumor pertaining to a movie nobody ever offered you the opportunity to (re-)make.

Heart vs Head

"That's what you get for thinking".  My mom's ex-boyfriend (post-marriage) got a kick out of saying that.  I didn't understand the appeal.  I don't know if he understood it either.  The guy was a jerk.  But those words come to mind when I think about parenting and how it naturally has a tendency to lessen the effects of evil.
I, for one, don't feel like I have anything to pass onto a child.  Some people have posted on GhostbustersNews.com Facebook about how they want to pass on their love of Ghostbusters to their children.  Granted, that is something to pass onto a child, but I feel like if that's all you have to pass on, there's really no point.  My sister has a very deep bond with Lord God, and I think that is something worth passing on.  A lot of parents in this country are not Christians in the purest sense, and many have no faith in God whatsoever.  But the ideology of this nation was molded by Christians.  Almost everyone is OK with the concept of "The Greater Good".  Not everyone is in agreement with what that means or how to live by it, which is where going back to God and seeking His counsel would help tremendously.
But there's also a secondary factor, I think.  I could be wrong b/c it's not like I'm some globetrotter who's seen it all.  I think parents -- men & women, but especially women -- have a built in desire to do what's best for their children.  There are some exceptions, especially in a dying world where mental illness is increasing, but generally that is how things go.  There obviously is a desire to pursue your own selfish agenda and that conflict of interest and how tangled up it is I think is where cultural concurrences come into play. 
The reasoning behind the first murder that ever took place makes absolutely no sense.  It would make sense if there were some reason to think God's opinion of Cain would change due to Abel's absence.  Abel did not die though.  He simply ceased being able to make Cain feel guilty for Cain's own course of action.  God never intended mankind to die.  Jesus rose from the grave to demonstrate this.  We are all given the opportunity to be children of God as Adam & Eve were originally built to be because of the illustration he drew in His resurrection.  The resurrection obviously has other implications and meanings, but just as Jesus did not speak on his own accord, Jesus did not act on his own accord either.  God gave him the power to perform miracles.  God gave him the seed of life to be birthed by Mary husband of Joseph, and God gave Jesus the power to submit his spirit to Him, and God gave Jesus the power to rise and greet the world again.   If God can raise Jesus from the dead, he could do the same to anybody.  It is a relief to me to know that this life of struggling to trust and obey will someday fall asleep and be painted over with by the most beautiful colors -- colors so beautiful that any bad things that happened in this life will be rendered invisible.
I think what started this cycle of distrust and disobedience was a very key thing that mankind has since been forced to eat daily -- Adam & Eve started thinking.  Thought is extremely over rated.  It's necessary to understand something so out of this world as The Bible, but if we weren't so in deep with dishonesty in various forms, we would not need to use our noggins to the extent that it causes a splitting headache.  That is where The Holy Spirit comes in.  You are not alone in this battle.

Ugh...be damned whatever these 0's are

I remember seeing an item page for a book on Amazon, the title of which I don't remember...it was supposedly about how Google has pretty much censored the internet by way of "personalized" search results.  They of course don't look at it as censorship...they look at it as being helpful.  By way of censorship.

Really really BAD

I decided the easiest and most sensible thing to do is unleash my mini LP copy of BAD from its plastic sleeve and keep it.  The OBI would be nice to have, but this item is obviously not worth very much to anybody.  It's apparently still in print --- Amazon LLC is still offering it, and their price (brand new) isn't too bad either.  The only real concern I have as of now is the bright white cover-art printed on cardboard could fade rather easily.  Oh well.  I'll cross that bridge when I have to, if...
I copied the disc to my computer and then transferred it to a thumb drive.  If the thumb drive goes kaput, I'll just have to do it again.  It's kinda cumbersome to get the disc out of the case -- which is inside of a sleeve, which is inside of a different sleeve.  Many times I've thought I was in the mood to listen to it, and then I realized I wasn't.  Then I have to  start putting it back into the sleeve, and then put the sleeve into the outer sleeve and then back in the case.  You can't just slide the sleeve into the case either; you need to keep from damaging the other myriad of inserts that are included in the package.