sleeping in public...is illegal?

I wonder how many people have to sleep in the street because they were fired from their job amongst all the other thousands if not millions of people companies decided they didn't need...seems like a lawsuit in the making, except you need a lawyer to argue your point in a manner that a judge can legally acknowledge...and lawyers cost a ridiculous sum of $.  It'd be a hand over fist profit if someone had the money to do that, but nobody does.  Time spent in court eats at the time you could spend at work or looking for a job.  It's illegal to steal the money, it's illegal to make your own money, even if it's in a different currency, but if nobody's willing to hire you, it's not an automatic win to say "I HAVE TO SLEEP SOMEWHERE!".
Aaaaaa!
I mean, why is it a crime to begin with?  Sleep is natural, it is necessary, it's not condemned by any religion I'm aware of, there's absolutely NOTHING WRONG with sleep.  So why is doing it in front of everybody illegal?  I seriously don't get it.

There is no Lauren Mayberry, only ZVVL

I just out that the band Chvrches have a song called "Zuul", except, just like their band name, the song is spelled "Zvvl".  So...when I was looking to see the contents of the RECOVER E.P., I was like "WHAT?!" then moved on...I thought maybe it was some African or German word that English speaking non-multi-linguals aren't meant to pronounce...but then I saw an interview with Lauren Mayberry and Ian Cook where Lauren Mayberry cited a fan yelling out "There is no Dana, only Zuul!", and judging by the wording of the answer (?; not sure who compiled the questions...), I'm assuming that the title of the song was indeed taken from GHOSTBUSTERS.

Rock on, CHVRCHES!

Cameron Crowe has big plans for China

Two pieces of mail I had been expecting to be delivered today have the same status they did two days ago.  They're in St. Louis, which is only a 1.5 hr drive from where I live, so I don't know what the hold up is.  I was thinking maybe today was Memorial Day, even though the bulletin at the church said it was the 23rd or 22nd or something...turns out there is no USPS holiday that falls on today, May 18, 2015.
However, I did find this interesting bit of info...

http://www.usps-holidays.com/p/whe.html

The humor comes at the bottom of the page, where every letter is presented in BOLD.  It makes more sense to wonder if "singles day" is a USPS Holiday than it does to wonder if Cyber Monday is a USPS Holiday...I see that note under the list of USPS observed holidays and I go "WHAT?!".  But then again Black Friday is also on there, which I don't get either...if black Friday had ever been a USPS observed holiday, I could see the USPS trading it out for Cyber Monday, but that would also make no sense since mail men can shop with their smartphones during a lull in the day (or lunch break...) and still get paid.  Seriously, people!  A national day of shopping?  At least Christmas is disguised as being a day to "celebrate Christ's birthday".  Which for avid shoppers I guess was a bit of a downer before the internet came widely available, but now that it's so easy to access the internet, (and more or less affordable), you can drive by boarded up stores AND shop till you drop!  Unless you drop easily, that's not possible for most brick  & mortar stores, btw, since they usually close no later than 10pm.  WalMart and a handful of other retailers regional and otherwise are open 24/7, not quite but almost 365 days a year, but I for one despise WalMart.  They treat their employees like dirt and play dirty to buck the competition.  I don't trust Target infinitely more, now more than ever since that data breach that could have been prevented, but I do trust them somewhat more than WalMart and I've always liked shopping there a lot more than WalMart.
But as I was saying, shopping 'til you drop at a brick & mortar store is for the weak.  Amazon.com's doors are never closed.  (Ditto for WalMart.com and Target.com, fyi...I prefer Amazon over all of 'em, but maybe I'm ignorant of a very good reason not to prefer Amazon over the rest...which wouldn't too terribly surprise me, since I don't really shop from them enough to have been burned by them very many if any times.  I do hear what I perceive to be rather serious complaints about their PRIME shipping plan, which would be extremely worrisome to me if I needed anything to be delivered in two days tops & had signed up for Prime expecting that...)

Value Of Nothing

I don't have a date tonight, nor tomorrow night.  I'm not intending to hand out food to starving villages in Africa or study to be a doctor or a nurse.  If those are the only things that make a person worthy of not being euthanized, just kill me now.
My lust for life could be confused with my abundance of optimism.  However, I find my days are often uneventful to the T and I am often very disappointed in this fact.  Music and movies don't light my life like they used to and I have not adopted any friends or other interests over the years.
On the other hand, I am often angry.  Nobody seems to comprehend the reasons for it.  So, on the contrary, my lust for life could be confused as being non existent.
I always hope things will come along and make me happy.  I don't plan for them.  They come by on accident 99% of the time.
If all of these things make me worthless, then kill me now.
If I am not worthless, then I do not expect to be dragged around, tied down and forced to wade through untold hours of boredom.  If you have no interest in doing me a favor, then say so.  If you have any interest in doing me a favor so long as a punishment for my not having a date tonight is included, then I do not want it.

Alan Soble's vision for Skynet (?)

I kept thinking about the phrase I kept hearing as a teenager "Women aren't objects".

I was reading Lauren Mayberry of CHVRCHES' social commentary published in THE GUARDIAN (surprisingly you don't need to pay to read it), and some of the comments and one person used the term "objectification", and I did a web search for the word and according to Wikipedia, the definitions of the term, apparently invented by philosophers, correspond to what I've been taught about how to be nice and treat people respectfully.

For some reason, this quote by Alan Soble was include as an argument for one of the Wikipedia-referenced philosophers:  "The claim that we should treat people as ‘persons’ and not dehumanise them is to reify, is to anthropomorphise humans and consider them more than they are. Do not treat people as objects, we are told. Why not? Because, goes the answer, people qua persons deserve not to be treated as objects. What a nice bit of illusory chauvinism. People are not as grand as we make them out to be, would like them to be, or hope them to be"

I had to do a web search for the definition of "reify" ("Here's your sign").  Anyway; the sentiment makes perfect sense.  However, I don't think a person's utility should be reduced to a sex doll.  I think we all have utility.  We as people, pieces and wholes, have the ability to serve and the right thing to do is to use those abilities.  A world of entirely self serving people is vile.  I admit I'm a lot more self serving than ideally I should be.  I've posted about that in the past.  Anything further would require my psychiatrist's input, which I haven't asked for (she has a heavy Indian accent, which makes it nearly impossible to understand the answers to the questions I do ask her, plus she's very busy and very underpaid.  From a religious standpoint, I don't know if she'd be any help anyway, because her job is to treat illness via RX, not prevent or cure it...).

A petition of mercy for Ernie Hudson...

His dismay over the female GB reboot was over the proposal.  He probably thought "oh, dumb gimmick", but now that it's shown to actually be happening and it's going forward, one can only hope it's as good as it should be.  This is explained in an on the spot interview by TMZ seen here:

As for fans' raving about how bad Paul Feig is, I personally don't think BRIDESMAIDS and GHOSTBUSTERS go well together, which is maybe why Dan Aykroyd and Ivan Reitman are there, so if Paul Feig needs any advice or has any questions, they can help.  Hopefully they'll also be authorized to tweak the script to tailor it more to the universe that Reitman and Aykroyd (along with Ramis) had envisioned more than 30 years ago.  I didn't think an all female GB was a smart move either, but the more I think about it, the more I've accepted it and am hoping for the best.  If Ernie Hudson were a screenwriter, I'd brand him a hypocrite, but his job, like any other actor, is to be a screenwriter's puppet.  If the screenwriter says "jump", the actor jumps.  Some intuition is preferable, but requires good acting and not just acting school acting, not that Ernie Hudson isn't a well seasoned actor, that's just a side statement, my point is actors are not hired for their creative input.  That is the job of the scribe and the director.  Imagination et al are not required to be part of an actor's resume.  So when some actor or guy on the street says female GB is a bad idea, even seeing that Paul Fieg is dedicated to making a genuine/good quality film, they are not the final word on the matter.  The final word is when it's done and the film is seen and heard.  That's not to say I'm confident it will be good.  I don't expect Hollywood to do anything right because they seldom do.  And yes, the original was perfect and they should leave it alone.  I haven't heard any plans to George Lucas-ize it, so fans have nothing to worry about in that regard as far as I'm aware. 
As far as the old criticism that Hollywood is nothing but sequels and re-makes, I say a good re-make is better than an original idea sewn together by a talentless hack.  I can sew a pair of pants.  But they'll need another sewing soon after.  A good mender or tailor can make something that will last a lifetime.  Art may go through phases, new things will arise and light the world in amazement, but only the most shallow people can look at a classic work of art and slam it for not being "in".  How may "original ideas" that Hollywood  has put out over the last 20+ years stood the test of time?  How many of them truly captivated and excited people that aren't in grade school?  Probably not the best examples, but the label of "re-make" being there didn't didn't stop LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and...um...others (my mind is a little fogged at the moment, I'm sure there's less icky and better quality examples...) from being somewhat original in their execution and striking people as works of art all of their own.  The problem with Hollywood IS: the disposability of so much of its output - it's like music on vinyl vs CD or Coke-A-Cola in glass vs. plastic; the tried and true methods can certainly be altered if it feels right, but when money is the sole motivator and the word "art" becomes almost a dirty word, you lose out.  Coke in plastic tastes OK and CDs sound just fine if you're listening to them on a budget sound system, or even an "audiophile on a budget" sound system with less than impeccable hearing, but to see where Hollywood was and is now, it's just sad.  The newcomers of the world who didn't see a lot of the good films that came out in the late '50's- early '80's have no idea what they're missing. 

Internet 101 -- "It's like pure concentrated evil!?"

I was reminiscing about the way Michael Jackson used to make me feel when he was fad, but then my internet started scheming against me and all desire and hope has left me...the moral here is: grunge killed Michael Jackson.

Is HOT PURSUIT that bad or...IS it REEALLY that bad?

Rotten tomatoes' sampling of 67 critics says HOT PURSUIT, this year's comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and some actress I've never heard of but looks a little familiar..., surmises that if you like this movie then you're a freakin' weirdo.  SIX PERCENT of them like it.
Rotten Tomatoes sampling of 32 critics say Kevin Costner's breathtaking epic THE POSTMAN, by now pushing 20 years, is a steaming pile of crap.  Only 2 of the critics listed have anything good to say about it.
Is this new film another lazy attempt by Hollywood to push something out and hope to make some money off of it or is it one of those off instances where the film studio wants someone fired so they create an excuse to get it done by tainting critics perspective of a movie by telling them that it stinks before they see it? 
Not sure if I'm allowed to do this, but here's what an Amazon.com customer going by the name(username) of Thomas Plotkin posted as a "comment" on one of the Amazon customer reviews for THE POSTMAN (1997)

"Always distrust film critics when they behave like a herd to kill a movie -- usually the response has been orchestrated by the studio itself, mainstream critics' true masters, who for political reasons seek to sabotage their own product and punish errant employees (head of production set up for ouster, director whose development deal has become burdensome) by starting whispering campaigns that a film is a dog pre-release, predisposing the geniuses in the press to echo them, Pavlov-style. No-one is lazier than a mainstream journalist, and the folks on the arts beat are the worst offenders of all."

So.......if I were to risk being accused of inciting illegal activity, I might suggest "borrowing" the movie, then paying for it, either rent it for the standard price that most video stores charge for it, or, if you got buckoos of money, maybe buy it at Amazon or Target for the full $15+?  If you wanna rent it at Redbox, it's your $1.50's funeral...it sucks that Hollywood is forcing me to hesitate renting movies that I would otherwise feel fine renting, because video stores, some of them well meaning operations, have no recourse but to take the bullet with the film studios that put out this junk.

Oh well.  I guess time will tell.

No Use For His Claws

I had this crazy disturbing dream last night.  It started with the premise that me and my mom had been using small pieces of my sister's cat Bear to make coffee with, 'cause, ya know, it's a fact that cats taste like coffee...--that's sarcasm, btw: DON'T DO THAT! (I would put that in parenthesis, but I don't want someone who may indeed find that bit of information helpful to skip it b/c it's in parenthesis).  And then I got lazy and just decided to heat Bear in the microwave, not knowing or forgetting temporarily that animals can't survive in the microwave.  At the 10 second mark, I saw what I thought was pain(dying?), but was unsure weather or not to take him out because I didn't know if was too late...weather or not I'd have successfully made a cup of coffee I can't imagine even having been a concern by that point...I guess it was about the 30 second mark, I was yelling for my mom's presence & medical knowledge (knowledge in general...I don't use my brain for practical purposes much).
It was a really disturbing dream not just because he wasn't my cat to cook, but also knowing how sweet Bear is.  He's not big enough to fit in a microwave (either that or "the dream microwave" was a lot bigger than the one we actually own), in the dream he was the size of a piece of chicken, as if he never grew out of his kittenhood.

Hmm...

18 and i like it

I have $18 left for the remainder of the month...yes, I know that's Bill Gates cast as a homeless man money, and yes I know I still have 26 days to the month.  I mean, I have more than that, but $10 goes to milk (in theory, it ultimately depends on how fast I go through the current gallon), as well as $4 for pancake mix, $4 for pharmacy co-pay, $2 for dr co-pay (I have a check-up for my asthma stuff on the 14th), and a few other dollars here and there...as for stuff I "Just gotta have" but don't know I need or want yet, $18 is for that.
I almost bought E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL on digibook BD/DVD combo for the 2nd time.  As for the total # of times I'd owned the 30TH Anniversary Edition of E.T. on any particular form, the total # of times is at least 3.  This would have been 4.  I cancelled the order before it was charged to my card.  The digibook is noteworthy for having the same cover-art design as the original 1988 VHS (The movie came to theaters in 1982, but Speilberg didn't think it was right to put it on video, or something...).  Also, there's a nearly identical item, except I'm sure the barcode is different - it was a BestBuy exclusive back when the 30th A.E. first came out in late 2012.  This one I'm referring to was released summer 2013.  I ended up buying it from Sears dot com b/c I had some points and they weren't charging an arm and a leg for it like a lot of retailers were at the time.  CDBaron at Amazon is offering it for under $9 w/ S&H in "used - like new" condition.  I've ordered from CD Baron in the past and they've almost always disappointed me with their understanding of that grade.  It might be in OK condition if I received it in the mail from them, but I'd be very surprised.  Aside from eating up half of what I have left, I just don't want it that badly.  I've bought the 30th A.E. of E.T. BRAND NEW twice already.  I don't see any personal gain from buying it again.  Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment have already gotten their share of my wallet's contents past and present.  The future may be another story if they give me something I haven't owned before that's equally worth it.  Speaking of which, still looking forward to JURASSIC WORLD.  As well as TERMINATOR GENISYS (did I spell that right?  Does it matter?)  I'm a little hesitant about T1v2(?)/T5 (what exactly is this film?  A reboot?  No?  A sequel to T-SALVATION or.......????), b/c apparently John Connor is the bad guy...?  Maybe there's more than meets the eye...idk...
Netflix has THE EXORCIST on streaming finally once again.  It's the original version without all the gimmicky visuals and re-mixing...I missed church yesterday b/c I woke up at 4am and felt like I'd pass out any minute by 9:45A.M.   So I called my ride (Gramma) and told her not to come pick me up and laid down and took forever falling asleep.  When I finally did, I woke up 40 some odd minutes later (!!!!!).  I'm mostly caught up I think...I still went to bed at 10:30 or so last night and woke up at 5am, but I got a couple hours of sleep around 7:30-9:15 (not exactly two hours, but somewhat close enough).
I had THE EXORCIST playing while I was asleep.  The cinematography in that film is so comforting.  I guess I'm morbid.  Well, I know I am.  I'd like to think there was some way of rising above all the muck of my personal interests, but I don't think there is...maybe if I had enough love and appreciation in my heart, I'd be courageous enough to step up and do something bold on the name of God and that would erode my morbidity (woah, spell check didn't see anything wrong with that?  I didn't know for sure if that was a real word...heh, could have been goofy and said "morbidicity"...)
Anyway.
With $18 in my pocket and the pressure of Sunday morning and evening and sleep vs. no sleep etc. etc., idk...I feel pretty good today.  Me and my mom went to Starbucks this afternoon and then I got a few groceries from Schnucks and ALDI, then we got some dog food for my mom's two doggies.  I'm not entirely sure, but I think we'll be OK on cat food the remainder of the month.  I got a Michael W. Smith CD coming the mail.  It's titled WONDER.  I also own SOVEREIGN, which is a really good CD.  I like the style and the melodious of it.  I only have like 20 or 30 CDS, the only other Christian CD if LIFE WILL RIGHT THE WORDS by The Rocket Summer.  If this MWS CD doesn't look like someone threw up on it, that'll make #3.  If it looks like trash, I'm not keeping it.  You just never know with Hastings Entertainment / GoHastings dotcom; sometimes I buy from them in their brick and mortar store in Cape Gr., MO and b/c they put this thick cellophane on their used merchandise, it's hard to tell if the item is in the condition I'd like it to be in.  But buying on their website, it's almost impossible.  Asking CS doesn't help.
Not sure what else to say.  Guess I'll end it here.  G'day all!
 God be with you.