Shouzer

I want to warn everybody that this post is a sort of random, stream of thought rant…  With that out of the way, here goes.

I’m sitting here watching Rudy Giuliani talk at the RNC as I type.  What it makes me realize is that I can’t stand the Republican party whatsoever these days.  Scott mentioned below that we’re raised to hate the opposing party, and I think that’s true to an extent.  But it’s the Republican’s hypocritical divisiveness that makes me dislike them.  Most of his speech has been bashing Obama and his “lack of experience”, yet he’s going to be followed by Sarah Palin who has about 20 months experience as the governor of Alaska.

He’s talking about how Obama wants to expand the government, but forgets to mention that his party created the Department of Homeland Security, his party created the national ID, his party is for warrantless wiretaps.  More government, more government, more government.

Giuliani talked a bit about how McCain wants to lower taxes to stimulate the economy.  He’s somehow forgotten how well that went when Bush did it.  The economy is doing pitifully, and the national debt is the worst it’s ever been.

Oh, now he’s talking about the “executive experience” that Sarah Palin has; she’s got more than the democratic ticket combined.  Yeah, because the mayor of a town of 5000 really has to make some tough decisions.  Fuck, the president of most universities deals with more people.  Oh yeah, then there was her 20 months as governor of Alaska.  The entire state has a population of like 600,000.  Woohoo!  Yeah!  Sorry, that’s not very impressive when I live 15 miles from Seattle, which has a larger urban population all by itself.  I don’t consider the mayor of Seattle as a viable candidate for president.  I doubt he does, either.  Yet McCain’s focus thusfar has been how “unqualified” Obama is.

There’s always the fact that Obama is a “flip-flopper”.  What’s an example?  He said he’d accept public financing, then he changed his mind.  Right.  My guess is that when McCain got married, he made a promise to be faithful to his wife.  Then he cheated on her.  Talk about “flip-flopping”.  Talk about family values…

Now we get to listen to Sarah Palin.  She points out that Obama can give a whole speech about the war, but not mention the word victory.  Oh, I’m sorry you naive moron..  We haven’t achieved victory there.  Would you rather him lie to you, like Bush did?  You remember the “Mission Accomplished” sign?  That was a few years ago.  Then, only a year ago, we sent 30,000 new troops there.  Oh yeah, mission accomplished indeed.  It doesn’t sound like a victory to me.

I could go on and on, but it just depresses me that people can actually stand this shit.

Over the weekend, Obama announced that he had chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. Biden is an experienced, six term senator from Delaware, currently serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You’d think that’d be a good thing, right?

No, apparently in politics it underscores the fact that Obama isn’t ready to be president.  Why else would he have chosen somebody who had so much more experience than him?  Oh, it also shows that Obama can’t deal with other countries.  That’s why he needed somebody with Biden’s experience in foreign relations.  Mmmhmm.  That’s how it works.

Obama’s selection couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he believed Biden might be the right person for the job.  No, of course not.  Realistically, he probably could have picked somebody who would deliver more votes (ala Edwards).  Instead, it looks like he focused on choosing somebody that deserved to be vice-president (that should not be taken as a shot against Edwards).

This is why politics is stupid.  Rather than focusing on who Biden is and what he brings to the table, everybody’s analyzing the choice and coming to dumbass conclusions.  What a waste.

1. After the Bush administration, the country will have an extremely lopsided election with 100% of democrats and a fair amount of republicans and independents voting blue, no matter the candidate.

Recent evidence shows that I was far too hopeful, and I am still surprised. I thought most people wanted to stop losing lives in Iraq. I thought most people were being hurt by the economy. My assumptions must have been wrong. I now see that there are still many, many voters who want to stay in Iraq, and many, many voters who want the same leadership in the economy. I also thought that universal healthcare would be be a welcome matter, but here again, I was incorrect.

2. People who support Hillary Clinton are doing so because of her stance on issues.

This one is just as big of a surprise to me, because statement #2 is clearly false. If it were true, we would see every single HRC voter throwing his/her weight behind Barack Obama; as far as issues go, they are nearly in complete alignment. However, HRC supporters are taking stabs at Obama, threatening not to vote in the GE, and backing the stance “McCain in ‘08, HRC in ‘12″. Someone please explain this to me. It is utterly inconceivable. It’s like wanting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with grape jelly, but you only have strawberry, and instead of eating the strawberry jelly, you eat peanut butter and mayonnaise until your mom gets back from the store in 4 years. It’s f–king fruit jelly, and you’ll probably never know the difference! Eat that sh-t, so you don’t have to swallow the mayonnaise!

Further, if HRC supporters think that Obama primary voters were sexist, what do they call not voting at all? Is it not also sexist to abstain from voting for a man because you favor a woman?

Someone explain these things to me…

Something about this story just irks me.  Now, before I get ahead of myself, I want to say that I think major athletes are greedy.  Not each individual necessarily, but as a whole.  Strikes, lockouts, sitting through training camp…  What a joke.  Just do your job and get paid your millions of dollars.

Now, what bothers me about this story is that NFL owners somehow thing it’s wrong that the players get 60% of the revenues.  Really?  They don’t deserve a slim majority of the money the league brings in?  How does that work?  Honestly, even if they’re greedy themselves, they’re still the ones out there making the plays and bringing in the fans.  Nobody goes to a game because they love the owners.  What a joke.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-tuition-web-27mar27,0,5136278.story

For the first time, new undergraduates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign this fall will have to shell out more than $20,000 to attend the state’s flagship university.

The cost—the highest for any public school in the state—includes nearly $12,000 in base tuition and fees and more than $8,000 in room and board. The university’s Board of Trustees approved the increase Wednesday. Tuition for the typical new freshman will increase 9.5 percent to $9,242, an amount guaranteed for four years.

It looks like we got out of there just in time. Here’s my favorite part:

Engineering and business students will pay $4,152 more.

To add a completely ridiculous cherry to the top of this sundae, by my experiences, financial aid awards have declined over the past 5 years. So in summation, here’s what they are saying: “We’re making it more expensive for you to go to college, but don’t worry, because we’re giving you less help to pay for it.”

Suppose we are at war, and I take you prisoner. Let’s say I believe you have information that may be valuable to me, but you won’t divulge it with my ordinary interrogation tactics. So then I strap you down, cover your face with a cloth, and pour water on you to simulate the experience of drowning. Is that torture? Better question: how is that not torture? Apparently, though, it is not.

it holds no relevancy to the majority of you, but maybe someone out there can offer up an explanation.

how come everywhere i need to go on campus is on the third floor?

it’s ludicrous. there are five places i need to be on siu’s campus during a given week this semester, and getting to four of them involves taking stairs to the third floor. it just gets old, and actually makes little to no sense.

a secondary complaint to this is as follows: i have now taken six math courses here at the so. ill. u., and a grand total of one of these have actually been in the math building. now, i would understand if the classes were first of second year math courses that needed to be housed in lecture halls, but this is not the case. the course numbers are 250, 251, 301, 335, 352, and 472. guess which one was in the math building. yup, 250. someone explain this to me.

I had a day in the office a few months back, and I was sitting around talking to my TT. This is actually the same TT as the story below. We were joking around, and she was helping me out some with my Thai. At this point, I was learning some words such as handsome, pretty, etc. We had a conversation, once again in Thai, that went something like this:

Me: I’m handsome, right?
TT: No, you’re fat.
Me: Yeah, I’m big.

It turns out, that went you say, “I’m big” in Thai, you aren’t talking about your body. There were about 4-6 Thai girls sitting in the office there when I said that. Needless to say, the word spread quickly.

Road construction up here in Washington (at least around Seattle) is absolutely horrible. I don’t know who thought it up, but they shouldn’t be allowed to step foot behind a car if they think it’s fine.

Basically, they shutdown a lane or two while they’re doing work, which makes absolute sense–I imagine you don’t want the workers dodging traffic. I get that much. That part I’m cool. So far we’re good. But then, then, when they call it a day, they just cover the part of the road they were working on with steel sheets and put up a sign that says “Bump”.

Sound reasonable? Yeah, it might, until you realize that these are no ordinary steel sheets. They’re like fucking eighteen inches tall! Honestly these things might be tough to walk over, much less drive a car over. I swear I’m going to pop my tires one of these times.

And really, when you can see them, it’s not an issue. However, the roads here are pretty hilly, and I think they go out of their way to only do work right on the summits of these mini-mountains. It’s like they’re playing some kind of game with me, except that I don’t get to say, “No thank you”, and it hurts.

If this is how they do road construction most places around the country, they need to take a page out of Illinois’ methods. And geez, believe me when I say that’s horrible, too. Gotta repave a quarter mile of highway, do ya? Well… I don’t know, I figure that’ll take about a year and a half. Yeah, at least.

Tom Brady just doesn’t impress me. Is he a good QB? Certainly. Is he one of the better QBs in the league? Of course. Is he the greatest that’s ever played? Not even close.  (Well, that’s an overstatement, but I’m trying to make a point).

It’s fairly obvious to me, as it should be to anybody who watches the Pats play, that there’s three big reasons Tom Brady’s numbers are as good as they are. A) Wes Welker B) Randy Moss C) 10 seconds every time he drops back with the ball.

I mean, for real… find me a QB who’s decent to begin with, give him two excellent playmakers and 15 seconds to find a receiver, and I guarantee you he’ll look amazing, too. If anything, Brady’s been much, much less impressive this year than in years past. When they played the Dolphins early in the season and blew them out of the water, Tom Brady made nothing but bad decisions. It didn’t matter, though, because Randy Moss jumped up out of triple coverage and came down with every stupid pass.

Put me in the NFL, give me 20 seconds whenever I drop back, and I’ll at least look as good as Rex Grossman. Sure, that’s not saying a whole lot, but I don’t consider myself NFL talent.

This whole HD-DVD vs Blu-ray thing is absolutely pitiful. Here we’ve got a bunch of asshole movie studios, tv producers, etc. refusing to pay the writers who are responsible for everything they make. On top of that, we’ve got mostly the same bunch of assholes who couldn’t come to a decision on a standard to replace DVD. And finally, we’ve got the same assholes suing people left and right claiming piracy costs them over $6 billion per year.

Whatever. Maybe you’re losing money because, as I’ve mentioned already, you’re all a bunch of rich fucking assholes that nobody wants to give their money to. I’ve done my research when it comes to the WGA strike, and the writers have every right in the world to be pissed. What’s more, they were actually willing to work through their current shit contract. It’s not as if they’ve got a contract, and they want to renegotiate. No, their contract ran out, and they’re wanting a new, better one. But the execs aren’t willing to give them anything reasonable. Basically, they’re just a bunch of rich, greedy bastards.

As for the HD formats, it’s hilarious to me that the movie studios ever consider themselves to be for consumers. When I got my TV, I got a PS3 also, because it seemed to suit me best. It would give me access to PS3 games and Blu-ray movies both, which sounded pretty appealing. However, most of the Blu-Ray lineup sucks, and I don’t own a single PS3 game. In the same time, I’ve bought four 360 games. What a mistake that was. Hopefully the games will stop sucking, but as far as movies, I certainly should have gone with HD-DVD. One way or another, two formats is dumb, and it’s horrible for consumers.

The sooner the studios embrace reasonably priced, reasonably versatile HD downloads (and I’m talking 1080p), the sooner I might start to think they actually know what they’re doing. I wanted to buy Transformers in HD, but it’s not on Blu-ray. That’s cool, I figured, I’ve got a TiVo, so I’ll download it on Unbox. Nope, I can only download it in SD. Well, that’s just too bad, now you don’t get my money. And you wonder why your sales are down? Dumbasses.

This story on CNN was just crazy. I mean seriously? People are allowed to get away with this shit? Good thing our government is all buddy buddy with the Saudi royal family.

I’ve got a considerable bit of student loan debt. In addition to the federal loans I took out, I also had to get a number of private student loans to pay for school. I never gave much thought to it, because it was generally just what I had to do. I simply wouldn’t have had enough money for school otherwise.

Now it’s come time to try consolidate, as seems to be the norm. You hear these things all the time about how you can save hundreds of dollars a month by consolidating. My experience so far is that it’s little more than a lie. Federal loans aren’t an issue, but even then I’m not saving hundreds–try tens.

As for private loans, that’s an entirely different story. So far, it seems like the best consolidation loan I would be able to get would give me a higher interest rate than any of my existing loans. How does that make sense? They tried to convince me it was based on credit, but that’s obviously a lie, because so were my initial loans. And in the case of two them, the interest rate they’re offering is actually 2.5% higher. Not only that, but it would be over the course of 5 more years than what I’d currently be paying.

In short, I should have started a fucking bank. Making an automatic 160% percent on every dollar I give out? That’s not a bad deal at all. Yeah, that’s right. I give you $10, you give me $26. Booyah.

I will never understand the propensity for professors to schedule an exam immediately following mitderms.  Now I know I’m on quarters and it’s compressed, but come on!  We just finished studying our asses off and there’s no time for a break. 

I guess I really shouldn’t be complaining.  I did afterall choose to go to grad school.  But still, when your study guide for a midterm is >150 pages, and you just had the test on Thursday, there is no need to have another exam the following Friday.

Ten minutes ago I came to the conclusion that I seem to have mixed up the order of days in the week. I’m almost 100% certain that yesterday was Friday, and to the best of my knowledge, every Friday night that I’ve ever fallen asleep in life I have awoken to Saturday, be it morning or one late afternoon (ie. “You guys are my friends!”) Well today is not Saturday. It just can’t be. You see, I was looking forward to watching some college football in HD, because this is the first weekend since I’ve had my new Philips 32″ LCD with an ATSC/QAM tuner that receives the four major networks’ hi-definition parallels. So I flipped over to my TiVo guide to check out who was playing the 11:00AM games that I have been with me in the central standard time zone for as long as I can remember. No games. What? No games. Noon? No. One? No. Wouldn’t you, too, start questioning the sun and moon at this point?

So I will be left with ESPN and The Deuce (not in HD. Fsk!) for my football until 2:30, when ABC and CBS decide that their viewing audience will have had enough of cartoons and infomercials. Or maybe the weekend bypassed me this week (it is my first weekend as a 23 yo), and this is actually Monday. That’d be alright because then I would get to see MNF on NBC - d’oh! - ESPN bought that. Can we just skip to Tuesday?