credit card trudgery

 Finally deciding to get serious about paying down my credit card debt....kinda.  I've been paying on it in spurts as I see money sitting in my account not in any real hurry to be spent.  A few dollars or a few dimes here and there...  This past month I've managed to pay off about $30, well before my minimum payment ($28) was due.  I just got November's money today, so I was able to buy a $25 book and an $8 concert video without really adding to my credit card debt.  Except that's not entirely true.  I'm expecting some refunds over the course of this next week and much of the available funds resulting from those will be going toward my credit card.  My Amazon credit card, I mean.  I also have $68 paid down on my WalMart credit card, $18 of which will be used to bring my debt down to the credit line.  Anoter $12 or so will go to interest generated toward the middle of the month and the rest of it will go toward the principle balance.  yeeks.
Anyway.
...
It's weird b/c from late Sept onto today, including the book and the concert DVD and everything I bought this past week, I only managed to add $55 of debt in total.  I paid down $20 of the stuff I bought today and the remaining $35 will be paid off closer to the middle of the month after all the refunds etc. smooth over.  And I'll still have roughly $18 remaining which I may or may not put toward the Amazon CC.  I should probably put that on the Walmart CC so I'll be better equipped to buy an Xmas gift for my Gramma this year.  I don't want to get her something small because I've been kinda neglectful toward her the past couple + years.  I don't even know for sure if she'll make it through the end of this year.  I'm all the more doubtful about 2021.  I don't think the rage people are feeling is going to be fanned any time soon.  It'll probably continue to get worse.  My Gramma will either be carried away with it and cause her health issues to be exacerbated or she'll be heartbroken by it and that won't help her health either.  And even if things do look up, her health just isn't what it could be.

Anyway.  It probably won't be until January or even March before any real evidence of stability in my credit card charging decisions becomes evident.  I have so many funding sources all scattered about at the moment waiting to come in and until they do, things will continue to be in dissaray.  And by the time December comes and goes out, I still won't have paid very much on either of my two credit cards, at least not compared to what I'm faced with paying off in total.

Heck, even by March I don't expect to have more than $200 paid off ,and that's a high figure.  I owe over $1,200.00  $200 is a drop in the bucket on paper anyway, although it's actually something like 20% which is not a bad #, but it's going to take a good while to get to that point.  Or at least it'll seem that way to me.

WHAT???

 https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/familyhealth/jonny-mccambridge-after-36-years-i-finally-realise-that-ghostbusters-is-terrible/ar-BB1aqDJt?MSCC=1603822895

Ghostbusters was not a kid's film!!!!!   Kids enjoyed it so merchandising was offered for kids to ask their parents to buy them.  It was not marketed as a kids film.  Ghostbusters toys were not distributed to kids during Christmas 1984 or even Christmas 1985 for that matter.  The cartoon was developed after kids saw the film and enjoyed it immensely.  

Smoking was not a big taboo in society back then (although it was beginning to become one at roughly this time).

Also, since when is seduction considered sexist?  There was no neck nibbling as described in the article.  

The only thing that can be said against the film is the sfx were not the sfx to end all sfx nor can anyone say with certainty that everybody that watches the film will like it.  Some material may be unsuitable for young viewers.  Parental guidance suggested.

aigg-2fer

 Was thinking the other day about that movie A.I., after I'd watched collectively over an hour of this past week, not yet finished with it.  It was a really great movie about the purity of True love.  It draws attention to the incompatibility of love to the propensity to doubt and to feel distrust and, later in the film, hostility and hate.  I don't think any non Christian will appreciate these parallels.  Maybe I'm wrong.  I wasn't only not a Christian when I first saw the film.  I was a true non believer aka atheist.  I had no problems with Buddhism because it didn't pose any sort of threat to my existence.  That is one of the reasons I don't believe Buddhism provides any substantial life change.  It gives "hope" of a life after this life, but I don't see people fleeing evil in order to appease Buddha or to get a shot at a better life.  The same cannot be true of Christianity.  Sure, there's a lot of people, mainly in places like The United States, that claim to believe in Jesus and have no willingness to obey Him.  And of course it's a fine line between being disobedient and being willing to obey.  I guess I sometimes straddle that line myself, often losing sight of how it really is, beyond the confines of my skull.  I do Hope to get better at that and I'm very thankful for the friend and counsel I have in a certain person who I don't know if I should name.  He is the pastor at my sister's home church and I've been gravitating to his preaching over that of my pre-COVID19 home church pastors', especially given the weakness of my old home church pastors' preaching in recent as of preCOVID19 weeks.  I was considering making my sisters' church mine but now I don't really go to church at all with COVID19, so I'm still needing to get to the ability of doing that and then discuss with people.  It doesn't look like my preCOVID19 home church really needs me and I don't do much with them outside of church anyhow.  I don't visit anyone or hang out with them except for lunch bunch which is only one time a week immediately following church and usually costs $8 minimum.  (sometimes up to $30 if I was generous toward myself on the food, depending on where we were planning to go x week).

Anyway.
I was certainly able to dismiss my hostility to Christianity as being based on counter logic, but I never was able to be content with that counter logic.  And now I see a whole world of beauty that I was never able to perceive when I read God's word.

On a different note, I don't have the URL and I can't find it doing a general web search, but Google showed me a news story from the WAPO about a cop that got fired for shouting support for Trump over a loudspeaker during a Pro-Trump vs Anti-Trump protest.  Ex-mayor Rudy Guilioni (sp?), who was present as a bystander, was saying he envisioned the scene being a campaign ad consisting of something to the extent of: 'What do we want for the next four years?  These nice Jewish people riding politely in their cars or a bunch of vulgar crybabies?" or something to that extent.  That got me thinking; A) President Trump is a not Jewish nor polite.  B) The raging foul mouths are not going to disappear and they are not all Democrats. 
Something else the article highlighted was the seriousness the NYPD was giving the cops' behavior in being political during his work shift.  WAPO was like "Well, they still support Trump, so why do they care?"  It couldn't possibly be the NYPD takes their job seriously, could it?  I mean, they're all a bunch of racists, so....
Ug.  Really ticks me off when someone tries to be a servant and gets backlash for it.  I'm sure NYPD has its' docket of racism to contend with, even violence/murder that stemmed from it, but does that really need to color the entirety of the PD?  I honestly can't speak knowledgably of the NYPD's integrity but I do know that not all police departments are steeped in racism.  Maybe a great deal of them are.  I know far too many people than I should being alive in the 21st century, creeping in on the middle part of it, who are subconsiously racist.  My brother in law and my gramma are two and neither of them have any real reason to be racist.  My gramma wasn't born in the south.  She does live on the very edge of the south, almost on the border of where the Union territory began, and has lived for some time but why does that contaminate her thinking?  I can only assume it's the influence factor.  Other people in the area have informed her thinking.  People she hangs out with and hears talking.  It's probably the same kind of thing in many/most police departments.  It's sad.  I don't think cops are knowingly racist.  White people do get shot by police officers, too.  It's not that black lives don't matter.  It's that life is not deemed precious by many these days and black people are perceived as a bigger threat than white people.  So while a white person who does a raised hand gesture with a higher octave might get shot by a police officer, a black person doesn't have to completely raise their hand even before getting shot.  That's probably an extreme oversimplification, but that's what I conclude based on the information I've read here and there.

Sorry to all whove been without my wowsings.  Not that anyone is really complaining, but....idk.  I had something a few days ago I wanted to post but I was either too tired or not at the computer..i don't even remember what it was.
sooooooo....idk.  Um...guess that's all for 2day.  Maybe...

He's much shorter in person

I decided to open it.  I bought a 2nd one.  He's still in the package.  It was so cool to feel free opening it although a lot more challenging to actually get him and his accessories out of the packaging than I had any recollection of.  I was afraid I was going to break the proton pack.  Finally got it tho.


 

2021: A Ghostbusters(TM) Odyssey; OR the Return of Ghostbusters merch done right!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hsTK7r7y2g

 

 Finally, someone who knows how to make Ghostbusters toys is doing so. So much of the Ghostbusters marketing has been concentrated to pretentious hipsters. This is where it all began. Glad to see Kenner's initial series of the RGB line of toys also being re-released. I like how these toys are creative molds and not trying to "pay homage" to the old toys from 1986 etc. 

 

I'm sick of these Funko toys, Funko's Vinyl Idols, Funko's Dorbz, etc.......just because you put a Venkman or Stantz nametag on a toy doesn't make it Ghostbusters.  It's practically plaigarism.  H2Ghost and Bad 2 The Bone Ghost from the Kenner line of toys had no direct link to the movie or the cartoon, but the spirit and joy of Ghostbusters was all over those toys.  You can't stand before Squisher or Sludge Bucket and not see glimpses of the film and/or cartoon in your mind's eye.  Those Funko and Loyal Subjects and even the "film accurate" sculps of the actors dressed in their stuff are not true to the spirit of the film.  Yes, the flight suit and proton pack etc are iconic in their own right and if done correctly can really bring out some of the greatness of the film in action figure form.  It doesn't necessarily have to be Bill Murray or Dan Aykroyd's likeness.  What the actors looked like was not essential to the film.  It was their personalities and some of their physicality did lend to the aura of the film, but, really, Dan Aykroyd is not the only actor in the history of cinema that is capable of playing someone very much like Ray Stantz or even Ray Stantz himself.  You could have any number of random guys dressed in a flight suit & proton pack et al and it'd be OK!!  Maybe not necessarily in the film.  There's more to acting than just wearing iconic gear, but an action figure doesn't actually act (ya know?).

CVS and Walgreens are rumored to have some GB:Afterlife candy stick-wand thingies (I've read they're called candy wands).  They were supposed to be kind of in conjunction with the movie, but the movie is STILL such a long way off and it probably doesn't hurt to remind people that it's coming out soon ish y, especially this time of year.

I do hope Kenner re-releases the Slimed Heroes and I really do hope they also re issue the Gooper Ghosts and H2 & Bad2TheBone Ghosts.  The Screaming Hereos et al are cool but I always felt they were far lesser than the original figures.  The Slimed Heroes were just freakin' awesome.  I love them more now than I did back then, probably because my life was a little difficult back then, with just about everyone I know attempting to push my love for Ghostbusters to the sidelines.  I don't even think I was allowed to watch the cartoon back then although I could be way off on that.  I think by the time the Ecto Glow figures came out (1991), I was not allowed to watch the show.  I don't specifically remember if I was in 1990 or not.  I used to try to say "Well, the original figures are better because x or y", basically just making shit up, but ultimately it's the time they were made that makes them special to me.  There's not much like being 5, but being 2 years old is an entirely different thing altogether.  Occassionaly I feel sensations that remind me of when I was like 2 or 3 years old, and I feel some strange combination of emotions, not just emotions, but, maybe, but emotions that are so strong they almost feel like something, like, perhaps emotions that I'm not de-sensitized to.  Idk.  All that has little to do with Ghostbusters.  Some aspects of Ghostbusters do bring about those senses from time to time if I'm watching it in the right lighting in the right weather etc.....but overall most of those difficult to describe senses are tied to a song I heard, like various songs from Kate Bush's THE WHOLE STORY, or the synth solo in Genesis' "In Too Deep", or driving along the bridge that leads from Ft Ord, California to Seaside, California and hearing Genesis' "Throwing It All Away", or seeing the old K-Mart logo, before they made it more of an actual logo and it just said "K Mart" on the front of the store (this was before K Mart became a walking punchline), or the back cover art of Toto's IV (1982) or Huey Lewis & The News SPORTS (1983)...or sometimes I even think of the cover art of the VHS of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial that originally came out in 1988, or the 1988 VHS cover-art for MONKEY SHINES by George Romero, or Oingo Boingo's SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET.  There is one memory I walk back to sometimes.  Once my mom was offering to buy something for me at Toys R Us and I swore I saw H2Ghost sitting on the shelf further down the aisle.  She swore it wasn't there and I was mistaken.  But she was headed some other direction and wouldn't let me investigate.  There may've also been a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man there as well, which she swore up and down she could not find anywhere after 1987 when she threw all the toys I had away because they weren't being picked up.  I think this was late 1989 or early 1990 I spotted what I'm just about certain was the H2 Ghost.  But just seeing that big wall of Ghostbusters toys everytime at Toys R Us is just exhilerating to even think about.  Really something.

Did he lose his mind or something? / No, he never had one

 Perhaps you'd know if you knew what I knew, knowing what I know,

 that everything was once -- but not always, just sometimes,

 like times that are time but not time, 

kind of like seas that roll over and fall back into their potato chip bag, 

like it never even happened

You would know,

O

but I see 

that you DO know!

YOU KNOW!

I see it

I can see your heart beat faster

Like Ronnie said

I see!  Do not like, to me.  DO NOT LIE to me!

For I see what I see like I see everything

Do you doubt?

DON'T DOUBT THE SEA!

The sea can see you see it's so

So don't be so

so.....so......      Soapy!  

I know what you do.

You do it all the time and you don't even care

Why?  WHY don't you care?  Do you dare?  Don't!  Don't you DARE!  Do not dare deny a denouncement of apathy!

How could you?

A pleasant surprise despite the 39th parallel view to my madness bwahahahaha......

I received a rarity -- out of print -- movie today -- on DVD -- which I had only to pay a little under $9 to get.  It's not even out on Blu ray, nor was it ever, except maybe somewhere overseas.  It's titled L.I.E. (released in 2001 by New Yorker Video).  The only reason I got it so cheap is because you generally have to lower your expectations when buying from decluttr as you don't necessarily know what condition the item is going to be in.  A lot of their stuff is in really nice condition but some of it isn't, and it's all graded as "USED - VERY GOOD".  If I had bought from a more reliable seller the price would have been AT LEAST $3 more.  And the price overall was actually lower at that time than it sometimes is.  A lot of things are that way.  For instance, throughout the last 20 years or so, Starship's debut album KNEE DEEP IN THE HOOPLA has been a bargain bin find.  You don't normally have to pay more than $5 for it unless you simply choose to do so.  I'd seen sellers offering it for less than that -- with s/h included!  But as of the moment here, the LOWEST I can find it for without missing cover art or blatantly damaged cover art is $6.00.  Locally, if I could get a ride to any kind of "local"ity, I'd pay less, but online the price has skyrocketed.  I almost paid $12 for one yesterday or the day before.  Yikes!  Then I decided against it and seriously contemplated paying almost $10 for it.  I don't even really like the album.  Not only is the opening track and lead single a contradiction of itself, some of the songs are just weak (tracks 4 and 9) and the production is very comforting and nostalgic, but it does leave a bit to be desired, like on the hedonistic track 3, (imploring someone to be unwise for the sake of pleasure, encapsulated in the title, "Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight") there's a sequence of synth noize that seems to be thrown in there without any sense of direction, like it was supposed to be kind of ushered in and held up but just kind of zoomed past without any notice, almost like someone emphatically telling an elaborate joke in a room full of distracted people.  It only lasts a few seconds, but whereas in the past I could listen to that and go "OH ya, that's the stuff!", today I just listened to it and was like "Geez!  Wake up, everybody!" (as if telling someone to wake up 35 years ago makes any sense.....but anyway..)

Anyone who read my blogpost yesterday night and actually understood it will notice that the acquisition of this item, which I'd been expecting for at least 3 days now, satisfies the goal I was considering spending $20/ish on fulfilling and also makes that method of fulfilling that goal counter productive, which might need some explaining for those with limited third eye vision.

First:
Here is a comparison.  Again, they both look way better with LG's lighting filter thingy adding some weird pizazz to even the most mundane photographs.

Old collection.

Today's:

Cool beans!!
To clarify for those who think I'm a complete idiot or have some confusion in their own hearts:
This petty desire was NOT wrong to have.  I confessed and asked God for help because I was getting just about ready to manipulate my budget to buy a semi-expensive item ($20 is a lot of money to me) and when I realized I simply couldn't do that, I started whining and complaining like it was a big deal, sounding and being to some extent ungrateful and caring not that I HAVE all the cool stuff that I do indeed have.

But the counter productiveness to buying MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS on Blu ray would be this:

The situation as it stands is I have a string of Blu rays, ending with The Last Unicorn then two DVDS, one titled L.I.E.  and the other being MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS.  Unless I decided to get rid of L.I.E., the peeve I have of having one Blu ray movie just sitting there looking out of place would be replaced by the following scenario, now that I have successfully acquired a movie that I feel some strange tie to:

   row of BDs, then L.I.E., then BDs of MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS and MY GIRL. 

See?  The problem would be all over again!!  Instead of MHO standing out of place it'd be L.I.E.
So................ya.  I like to thank God for that one, even if He didn't do it...which is perhaps a flawed view, since God is aware of everything in one's life, even the smallest details.  My mom has this belittling attitude about entertainment, like sports and movies and everything are all too trivial for God to have even the faintest of interest in, and I just don't think that's right, even though I think subconsciously that attitude has developed inside of me.  It comes out.......anyway.
So boo the wasteful spending I was contemplating and the whining and complaining that I dished out instead and yay to the problem being fixed, albeit sooner than I even realized.......

The 39th Parallel View Into Madness' Steps

This photo looks like I have absolutely nothing to complain about like "woah, he's got a nice stack of movies". That's the lie that photographs make you believe.  Heck, even I can't help but be in awe of my collection because it's presented in a nice little rectangular view.  But when its in front of you for real it's just annoying.
Most of my movie collection is fairly neat and tidy.  Back To The Future should be in Blu ray format, but that movie is just so darn incomparable in its vision and execution, not to mention it makes no sense and yet you can't help but find the beauty in its' optimistic view and thunder-sized comedic moments.
But then I have Mr. Holland's Opus kinda stuck in the middle between a bunch of Blu ray discs.  It sticks out like a sore thumb.  And it's annoying because A) I bought the damn thing and I know that NObody is going to pay me more than $0.25 to take it off my hands (RRR), and buying it on blu ray would be even more expensive -- A LOT more expensive.  Not like out of this world crazy but for someone who just got a credit card less than a month ago and has already accrued apprx $500 worth of debt, $20 seems like a lot to be spending on something I'll probably end up buying again in a proper edition, made by Hollywood, complete with a 4K restoration, and maybe an audio commentary with the director and Richard Dreyfus and some of the other cast perhaps.  (R.D. is still alive right?  It seems like the dudes who weren't all that old back in 1979 are freakin' ancient all of a sudden; I know I was born after 1979, but I feel like I was a bystander during it all, as if I was born 10 years sooner than the mid 80's time frame that I indeed was and I was just a couple or so years away from being born before The Exorcist came out.)

Yea, I know.  I'm awake at 12:32 AM just to gripe about having an awesome movie collection.  I should quit this!!!!  DIE YOU AWFUL NEGATIVITY, DIEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!  

Please, God, Holy one of Heaven, Creator and Sovereign Eye of the Universe, please, take pity on my wretched self, and cast my petty concerns into the deepest pit of Hell so that my face may cease to be obscured by them.  Thank you for the vast multitude of blessings you have showered upon me both presently and throughout my life history as it stands today.  Please enable me to be Your hands and feet.  In the name and by the mighty resurrection of The Beautiful Lord Jesus I pray all of this.  Amen.

Difficult softness

DIFFICULT SHAPES PASSIVE RHYTHMS, SOME PEOPLE THINK IT'S FUN TO ENTERTAIN......

This CD is interesting.  It's like soft rock and AOR combined.  Kind of reminds me of a different take on early 80's Genesis, especially their self titled album.  That one wasn't as laid back as this stuff here is, so it managed to catch people's attn better, but when you consider songs like "Taking It All Too Hard" and "It's Going To Get Better", along with random hodgepodge like "Illegal Alien" and "Silver Rainbow", it's got an interesting parallel.  Nothing on this album has the pounding drum machine heard on the bulk of "Silver Rainbow", or the dynamic rhythm of "It's Going To Get Better".

The song "African And White", I've read, was released as a single and it did sorta OK, but not well enough for anyone you talk to at random to have heard it, and even those who did probably don't remember it.  That particular song is probably the most dynamic driving song on here.  But even that one has this just ridiculously laid back feel, that most people in this day n' age just don't want in their music, regardless of whether it's straight up rock or pop.

Aanyway.  

Was doing great on my The Bible reading for about a week or so.  Then just started letting time slip by right before my eyes yet again.  Need to get back into the spirit(!).  RISE!

Ok, guess that's all.  There was something I'd throught to write awhile back, a few days ago?, but I don't remember what it is.

Censorship

It amazes me how people look at the social climate of the '50s and '60s and shake their heads in disapproval over the kinds of things that were illegal or limited in their existence.

For instance; NAKED LUNCH, by William S. Burroughs, among many other books in that general time frame, had to go through the courts to be legally published.  Under what at the time was legally assumed to be common sense, NAKED LUNCH was banned for being "obscene".  
Now people are asking a publisher, Facebook, to basically judge the content that people post on their website and issue some kind of punishment for repeat offenders.  I don't understand why anyone would read something on Facebook if they think it's so unthinkable.  If someone posts content that you think is harmful, cut them from your friends' list!  If your friends are friends with people who post things that you can't stomach, same rule applies!  I have not read any hate speech or bigotry on Facebook, because I am friends with people who are friends of Love.  Sure, there's a lot of anti-Democrat and snide remarks about the gov't encouraging promiscuity by letting people get abortions for any every reason, and I don't expect all the people on my friends list to post flattering remarks about myself either.  And I don't get how you can be so ardently against Mark Zuckerburg about "Misinformation" -- People always think they know something for reasons other than actual knowledge.  People in school get taught all kinds of stuff and because we feel a need to trust, we assume the things we learn in school are true.  People who witnessed JFK's assasination assume they didn't hallucinate the event, which does seem like a relatively safe assumption given how many of them there were -- assuming what I learned in school and the existence of that Oliver Stone movie and several books on the matter are fundamentally true.  I personally think it's virtually a 100% likelyhood, maybe 1 millionth of a % less than, that those media outlets and educational resources that the gov't has provided are not lying or being mislead by some conspiratorial group of being(aliens?The Adjustment Beareu?)

But my point is that there are tons of facts that go way beyond the simple statement that JFK was assassinated in November 1963 in Dallas, TX.  There are all kinds of facts that surround that situation that many people have been informed of and I'm almost positive that at least 5% of the information that gets passed about JFK's death is purely speculation and quite possibly is not true.  But there are people who are extremely arrogant and / or stubborn and they think they know things because they for whatever reason trust the person who told them, even though the person that told them probably was just talking out of their ass for entertainment value, not having much to say elsewise at the moment.

So of course Mark Zuckerberg's publishing platform is going to have misinformation.  Of course people are going to say hateful things as well as things that express hate toward this or that.  Ignorance, hate and bias are going to be in print just as long as humans roam the Earth.