Things I Learned From Movies

* Any computer in the world can be broken into just by figuring out the password.

* All buildings have ventilation shafts large enough to crawl through, from any room to any other room.

* Any damaged robot can spontaneously become self-aware.

* Bullets avoid hitting the hero, even at close range.

* Everyone in the world knows kung fu.

* High-tech computers make all kinds of cool sounds while you're using them.

* Classroom bells always interrupt the teacher in mid-sentence.

* Men are uptight and OCD, and women are loose and free-spirited. (This is the opposite of the lesson learned fron watching sit-coms: Women are neat and organized, and men are slobs.)

* Henchmen die from a single bullet or being pushed off a small ledge, but the main villain can only be killed by falling off a tall building, or being blown up by a huge bomb.

* Any vehicle, once damaged, will explode.

* Explosions will not hurt you if you're jumping.

* You can jump across any distance.  The worst that could happen is you'll almost miss and have to pull yourself up by your fingers.

* Slashers will kill you while you are on the phone, standing with your back to a window, standing over him to make sure he's dead, splitting up to investigate, or walking backwards from where the cat just scared you.

* If you're running from someone, you WILL trip, fall, and be forced to squirm on the ground for several minutes before getting back up again.

* The car will NEVER start on the first try.

* Slashers kill people in this order: Black guy, Useless guy, Slutty girl, Jock. The prudish girl survives.  (Modern variation:  For political correctness purposes, the black guy may be replaced with a Hispanic guy, so that no one thinks we're JUST picking on the black guys.)

* Guard dogs don't do a damn thing.

* All intruder alarms use lasers, which become visible for several minutes with the slightest amount of dust or smoke, and have spaces between them large enough to move through.

* Part one of any trilogy is a self-contained story. Part two is a new story, which resurrects the bad guy from the first movie, and then ends in a cliffhanger. Part three just throws a bunch of new shit at you and then hurries to wrap everything up at once.

* No matter how fast you run, and how slow the monster is moving, the monster will always somehow catch up to you.

* There is no such thing as love at first site. Upon first meeting, you always HATE the person you're destined to fall in love with.  (Unless it's a musical.)

* Women automatically assume that any man who talks to her is a rapist.  (This is mostly a 90's gag.)

* Stalking is only creepy if the stalker is ugly.  Being stalked by someone handsome is romantic.

* If the love interest has a boyfriend at the beginning of the movie, he WILL turn out to be an asshole later.

* If a couple is divorced at the beginning of the movie, they WILL get back together by the end, regardless of whether they actually fixed whatever problems they had in the past.

* All rich people are pure evil.

* Cops don't have to follow rules or care about miranda rights, so long as the bad guy ends up dead.

* If you time-travel into the distant past, you will always land in a historically significant place in human civilization, and immediately meet with some famous person. Your actions WILL NOT affect the course of history.

* If you time-travel into the more recent past, you will meet with yourself or your parents. Your actions WILL affect the course of history.

* If you time-travel into the future, the first things you see will be flying cars and people in jumpsuits.

* If someone from the past or the future time travels into the present, the first thing he sees will be a punk-rocker blasting a boom box.

* If you go back in time and alter the past, it may affect you (causing you to disappear) while in the past, or it may change everyone in the future except for you, including their memories, or it may cause affects (as scars) to suddenly appear in the future without people having previous memory of the events.  You may create alternate timelines, or you may become caught up in a predestination paradox, because time is unalterable.  You may have no memory of the new timeline, or you may retain memories of both versions.  These rules are subject to change with each alteration to the timeline.

* In the future, everyone will be an expert in every period of history EXCEPT for today. (They will know every Mozart concerto, but they won't know what rock and roll is. They will be able to identify and appraise a belt-buckle from 14th century Scandinavia, but they won't know what a car is.)

* Scientists can invent anything in a matter of hours, but only if the fate of the world depends on it.

* Aliens are VERY interested in Earth. They either want to take it over, or they want to save it, but either way, this is a very valuable planet to them.

* All alien civilizations are millions of years old, but their technology is only about two hundred years more advanced than ours.

* Everything that happens, happens in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, or a small quiet town where nothing like this has happened before.

* Radiation gives you superpowers.

* Ancient people could see into the future with total accuracy, and could manufacture magickal artifacts. Modern people, not so much.

* Booby traps will still work perfectly, even after they've been sitting around for thousands of years.

* Kids are smarter than adults, and groups of kids will never turn to adults for help.

* All religious leaders are evil, with the exception of the local Catholic priest.  Don't trust the bishop, cardinal, minister, witchdoctor, etc.

* Catholic confessionals are mainly used for therapy and advice.

* If you go to another planet, the aliens will either speak English, or have a universal translator programmed with English.

* The English dialect hasn't changed in six thousand years.  If you meet an English person from ancient times, he will understand every word you say, except for slangs.

* Virgins are the best lovers.

* Teenage virgins are extremely rare.

* It is not insane for people to burst suddenly into a choreographed song and dance routine.

* Everyone is a good dancer, including the guy who just said he can't dance.

* Fat people are very sassy, especially if they're black.

* The most important even in any teenager's life is the prom. Because let's face it, if there's one thing that teenagers love, it's having manufactured fun, at school, with paid admission, with no alchohol, wearing ugly outfits, with chapperones.

* All men are evil, cheating, rapist, domineering, arrogant, abusing, violent, hard-drinking, gun-toting assholes, and women are powerless against them. (This mostly applies to movies shown on the Lifetime network.)

* Everyone goes completely gaga over their love of the brand new (insert sponsor's product name here).

* The hero isn't just doing his job, and the villain isn't just looking out for his interests. It always becomes personal.

* Cops always die just before retirement.

* Whenever there are a whole bunch of vampires, only one of them is the "good" one.

* Animals can talk to other animals... And the cat's a jerk.

* There are about a billion and one different reasons why we HAVE TO save the rain forests.

* Anything that's bad for the environment will make a lot of money. But the corporations are rich enough that they can afford the less-profitable green technologies, if they weren't so greedy.

* All Native Americans are stoic and extremely wise.

* All black people come from the ghetto.

* Whenever you put a black guy and a white guy together, the first thing they will do is argue about the radio. The black guy wants to hear rap, but the white guy wants to hear some lame-ass pop song.

* Wherever you go, there's always exactly one hippie, and he's stoned off his ass.

* Every office has exactly one gay guy.

* All hunters are sadists.

* Dorky guys, with some effort, can win over the hot chick. (You will never see a dorky girl winning over a hot guy, because A, there are no dorky girls, and B, all hot guys are jerks anyway.)

* Africa is full of cannibals.

* No matter how "dead" the villain is at the end of the first movie, he can still show up in an infinite number of sequels.

* People who bury treasure will always leave riddles to show where it's buried. No one ever asks them why they did this.

* And regardless of where the treasure is buried, or how long it has been there, no one ever finds it by accident.

* Every giant weapon has either a self-destruct button, or a vulnerable spot which could detonate it's fuel reserves and blow it up.

* If you can see into the future, you will be right about everything, except the last thing.

* Racists always quote from the Bible.

* Every stand-up comedy club has a bad professional comic doing old hackneyed jokes in a bow-tie and suspenders, and a guy in the audience heckling him with perfect timing and delivery.

* But a novice who walks on stage unprepared and rants about a recent event is immediately seen as a comedic genius, because that's something that no one has ever seen before.

* Any friend of the hero who is injured, will slip into a coma, and come out of it five seconds after the villain is defeated.

* The villain never surrenders, goes to jail, gets a lawyer, and gets an early parole. Instead, he tries to shoot the hero, misses, and gets killed himself.

* If it wasn't for record scratches, I wouldn't know what part of the trailer was supposed to be funny.

* The way to defuse any bomb is to cut the blue wire, usually at the last possible second.

* Your car can jump any distance. As long as it lands upright, it will keep going and suffer no damage.

* Even before there is any hint of real danger, one of your friends will hide, then jump out and scare you as a prank.

* Even before there is any hint of real danger, you will be scared when your friend sneaks up behind you and grabs your shoulder, not as a prank, but just as a way of saying hello.

* If you hear a sound in the woods, one of three things will happen. A, you'll think it's a killer, but it's your friend playing a prank. B, you'll think it's a killer, but it's really a small animal. Or C, you'll think it's your friend playing a prank, but it's really a killer. No matter how many times this happens, you will NEVER guess it right.

* When the villain has the hero cornered at gunpoint, he will NEVER shoot. He'll just stand there talking to him.

* At least 50% of all people know how to pick locks.

* The biggest, meanest-looking black guy in prison, is always a good person.

* Guys are always surprised to find out that the person who just took off a helmet is a woman. (Okay, it's mostly an 80's gag.)

* Preppy jocky guys always cheat at sports, because it's the only way they can beat their dorky athletically-inferior rivals.

* Music in night clubs is always quiet enough to allow conversation.

* In any bar, there is EXACTLY ONE guy with tattoos and piercings.

* If you're a jerk, just hang around with a retarded guy. He'll turn you into a better person.

* All Buddhists have magickal superpowers.

* Prosthetic limbs have superior speed, strength and dexterity.

* Cell phones never work in an emergency.

* The Government will keep everything a secret, regardless of whether they have anything to gain by it.

* If you're framed for murder, and have to track down the real killer, you immediately have better detective skills than the entire police force.

* You can survive a fall from any height, as long as you land in water.

* Teenagers never have acne. In fact, they usually look about twenty-five.

* There is always an empty parking space right in front of the building.

* Asthma can be cured by having a little more self-confidence. You can just throw away that inhailer.

* Nerdy guys and foreign guys will both say the opposite of something cool. Examples: "Easy as cake." "You mean pie?" "Hey, chill in." "You mean chill out?" "I'm in the room." "You mean in the house?" "Something's going up." "You mean going down?"

* Your hat will never come off during a fight.

* Good witches and cowboys wear white. Bad witches and cowboys wear black.

* You'll never get stuck in traffic, unless it's a major emergency, and there's easy access to some offroad shortcut.

* Cops are powerless to stop speeding cars.

* When the scary music starts, get the fuck out of there!

* Wherever you are in Mexico, there is a Mariachi band playing.

* Wherever you are in France, the Eiffel Tower is directly behind you.

‎* Ninjas will attack you one at a time, and if you hit them once, they fall down and roll out of the way.
  

‎* Most people don't smoke, and the ones who do are bad-ass.

* Heros never injure vital organs.

* People cough just before they die.  (The only other time someone coughs is if they just survived poison gas.)

* Airline security personelle are completely incompitent.

* No one knows that real people practice witchcraft. It's a secret that would devistate society if anyone found out.

* You can always catch a last-minute flight. And if not, then there's a pilot with a single-engine craft nearby with no other plans for the day.

* You never run out of money.

* If you need a lot of money in a hurry, an opportunity for exactly the right amount will be brought to your attention almost immediately.

* In a high-speed car chase, the hero's car never crashes into anything. It just causes other crashes to occur in its wake.

* Cars hitting fire hydrants, and causing them to burst open straight upward, is a common occurrence.

* Female action heros are really smug about their independence.

* Cops in blue uniforms aren't good for anything.

* Midgets are funny.

* If you suddenly develop superpowers, your first instinct will be to not tell anyone about it.

* Armor always fits your body's contours perfectlly, regardless of how quickly it was made, from what materials, or in what century.

* People are very skeptical as to the existence of large predatory animals. Good luck trying to convince anyone that there is a (shark, snake, bear, aligator, squid, lion, rabid dog, etc.) in the area.

* Small towns in the middle of nowhere get lots of revenue from tourists, which is why anything dangerous cannot be revealed to the public.

* Crooked CEOs don't think twice about marketing an unsafe product. All they care about is making money. With all their many years of business training and experience, the possibility of losing money due to a lawsuit never occurred to them.

* Sheets come up to the woman's chest, but only up to the man's waist.

* Even after sex, people will still cover themselves up before getting out of the bed.

* In fact, even when they're alone in the house, people will cover themselves up before getting out of the bed.

* Forgein people talk slowly, so the subtitles can keep up with them.

* Teenagers who are metalheads are NOT the cool kids.

* When you're flying through space, you will see stars whizzing past you, even if you haven't hit lightspeed yet.

* The desire for revenge is so strong, that any otherwise ordinary person can come back from the dead because of it.

* Flying a plane is easy. Anyone can figure it out after a few minutes.

* People taking home movies always shake the camera uncontrollably, hold the camera really close to the other person at an odd angle, and point it at their feet when they run.

‎* All guys who look nerdy on the outside, have beautiful hearts, if you just look beyond the face.

* All girls who look nerdy on the outside, have beautiful faces, if you just look beyond the glasses.

* An illogical chess player will always beat a logical chess player.

* Solving crimes is not in the job description of a crime lab scientists. They only solve crimes in their free time as a personal favor to the hero, and would probably get in trouble if their boss found out.

* It always rains during funerals.

* Most Americans are pretty physically fit, and the average woman weighs about 100 lbs.

* The slightest mutation or disfiguring injury will make you want to kill people.

* Vicious animals make a lot of noise before they attack, I guess to give you a head start or something.

* It's nearly impossible to survive stepping in quicksand.

* A really easy riddle takes about thirty seconds to solve.  A completely impossible riddle, about the same.

* On a moonless night away from all city lights, the woods are pitch blue.

* Women don't have a fight-or-flight reflex.  They only have the scream-into-her-wrist-or-faint reflex.  (This mostly applies to older movies.)

* Every crowd comes prepared with lettus, eggs and tomatoes, just in case the speaker says something they don't like.

* Resturants keep an endless supply of pies on hand, just in case a fight breaks out.

* If you look up at the sky for more than a few seconds, you will see a very bright shooting star.

* Most scientists aren't afraid to secretly experiment on themselves.

* Every monster needs about twenty minutes of explaining why it's there...  Except for zombies.  Zombies are just there.

* Tribal medicine men know WAY more than medical scientists.

* Superheros never leave fingerprints.

* All sex results in single simultaneous orgasm, and is usually in the missionary position.

* Interracial couples are a very rare thing.

* You don't have to speak German to infiltrate Nazis.  Just speak English with a German accent.

* Extraterrestrials almost always have two arms, two legs, are between one and six feet tall, breath oxygen, survive in an environment between zero and one hundred degrees Fahrenheit and thirty inches of mercury of barometric pressure, have two eyes in the front of the head, two ear-like organs on the sides of the head, two hands with four or five fingers each, have a genetic makeup which can be classified as mammal, reptile or mammal-like-reptile, and wear clothing which covers the naughty bits.

* Extraterrestrial governments can be classified as empire, monarchy, oligarchy, socialist republic or laissez faire republic, and their religion is nonexistant, classical Pagan, or some variation on Monist post-Christian philosophy (as Deism or Pantheism).

* If a human has sex with an extraterrestrial, even one time, the human will get pregnant with a hybrid.  (It doesn't matter which one of them is actually the female.)

* Cars will fly the future.

* If an innocent person is sent to prison, they will immediately have to fight off a big gay rapist.

* If you encounter a mythical creature of any kind, there is an elderly European man in your town who will be able to tell you everything you need to know to defeat it.

* There is only one copy of the one book that tells you how to defeat the monster.

* If the story takes place on a completely alien world, the hero is the one who looks the most humanoid.

* People fear what they do not understand, and hate what they fear.  This is a serious human failing which cannot be stressed enough.

* Your landlord always comes to tell you the rent is past due, just before your sudden adventure.

* Men who regularly cheat on their wives/girlfriends just assume that all other men will keep their secret.

* Men who "accidentally" cheated just that one time will only get told on by a rival trying to steal his girlfriend.

* A lone hero can always infiltrate an enemy base much more effectively than an entire army.

* The cavalry always comes over the hill in the nick of time.  Or in the more modern variation:  The cavalry shows up just after the bad guy is killed, to clean up the mess left by the hero, who isn't going to stick around.

* No moderately wealthy person over the age of thirty can have sex without a bottle of champagne, a fireplace and a Barry White record playing.

* Old people know everything, unless they're rednecks.

* All roads zig-zag.  If you run in a straight line, you can keep up with any speeding car.

* If you enter the waiting room of a veterinarian's office, you will see one of every kind of animal on earth.

* If someone says the plan can't fail, it will fail miserably, and make the situation worse.

* If someone says the plan has only a one-in-a-billion chance of working, it will work perfectly on the first try.

* Assholes like apples.  (I never noticed this one until I started watching Cinemasins.)

* The solution to a problem cannot be solved by thinking about the problem.  You have to wait for someone else to say a word or a phrase that will make you think of the answer.

* People in wheelchairs are either saintly individuals who can do no wrong, or evil masterminds trying to take over the world.

* The moment you realize you're gay, the first person you're attracted to is also gay.

* All women (including self-described lesbians) are latently bisexual.

* Guns never run out of bullets unless someone was actually counting the shots.

* Women slap men across the face at the slightest offense, and men are okay with this.

* Woman who are hyper-masculine are "empowered."  Men who are hyper-feminine are comic relief.

* Everything in the "good" future is white.  Everything in the "bad" future is dark gray.

* People never inspect the new house before buying it.  Often, the first time they even see the house is the day they move in.

* If you lose or damage your clothes, the only available replacement will be a t-shirt from a tourist shop.

* You will ALWAYS overhear exactly the wrong part of the conversation, and you will never directly ask the other person to clarify any possible misunderstanding.

* No matter what your adventure was or how long it took, the morning after it's over, you'll think it was all a dream.

* Cool guys don't look at explosions:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqz5dbs5zmo
...But cool chicks look straight at them without flinching.

Religions

There are six religions in the world that average people have heard of.  People generally avoid talking about religion in public, they're not allowed to talk about them in public schools, most TV shows stay off the topic, and religious institutions only talk about their own -- and even then, very few people are paying attention.  So we hear about religion through news and movies, and then only under very specific circumstances.  One common idea is that people, and Americans in particular, don't care enough to learn about other belief systems, but I think this is unfair.  If a person has never heard of Sikhism, he's not going to know that he should ask, "What is Sikhism?"  Besides, most people are too practical to do research on topics which haven't come up on their own.  So here are the six religions that the average American layperson has heard of:

* Christianity - This religion, we only hear about with regard to Creationism, gay-bashing, or in the case of Catholicism, pederasty.  We also know that Catholics have sexy schoolgirl uniforms and exorcist movies.  But really, how many people know anything about the specific beliefs and practices of a Mormon, as opposed to a Lutheran, as opposed to a Methodist, an Orthodox Christian, a Jehovah's Witness, a Baptist or a Red-Letter Evangelical?  As far as the general public is concerned, Christians are just a radical sect of the Republican Party, and Catholics are a child-raping subdivision of those.

* Judaism - "So then the rabbi says, I throw my money in the air, and God can keep what he wants."  That's basically it.  People know about Jews through the jokes.  It helps a lot that most of the comedians happen to be Jewish themselves.  Also, we've seen the marketing promotions for Hannukah, which are now integrated into the Christmas shopping season.  As far as the public is concerned, we like Jews, because they make us laugh.

* Muslims - The only time you see Muslims on the news is when they're blowing something up or hijacking a plane... or both.  I doubt that the average person knows the specific beliefs of the average Muslim, but most of us know the specific beliefs of the terrorists (seventy-two virgins as a reward for killing an infidel).  All the non-terrorist Muslims, as far as the public is concerned, is just women in interesting scarves.

* Scientology - They're basically the popular punch-line these days.  People know they believe in aliens, and that Tom Cruise is kind of a nut job.  The general public concensus is that it's a scam to sell books and membership fees.  The Scientologists themselves tend to resent the way they were made fun of on South Park, but look on the bright side...  At least the rest of us have heard of you now.

* Buddhism - Probably everything Americans know about Buddha, we learned from kung fu movies.  So as far as the general public is concerned, Buddhists have mystical powers.  When it comes to the specifics, most of us really can't distinguish between a Buddhist and other similar religious philosophies, such as Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism or Hare Krishnaism.  To most people, it's all just one big category called "Eastern" stuff.

* Atheism - This one is self-explanatory, but I doubt that the average person is well-educated on the distinctions between different atheistic philosophies (e.g. humanism, nihilism, practical atheism, philosophical atheism, implicit atheism, etc.).  Just as the Christians only get on the news when they're bashing gays, or the Muslims when they're setting off bombs, the Atheists only get coverage in the media when they're filing some frivilous lawsuit, like having a Christmas tree removed from public site.  As far as the general public is concerned, Atheists are a bunch of buzzkills.  Also, for whatever reason, people seem to think they have a monopoly on evolutionary theory or even science in general.

...And the rest!  As far as the average person is concerned, all beliefs are basically in one of these six categories, and the ones that aren't, should be rounded off to the nearest one.  Shinto hasn't been made into any movies or been in any major news stories, therefor, it doesn't exist.  Even Wicca, which has appeared in a few movies and television, hasn't stuck around consistently long enough, or in the mainstream, for viewers to bother taking note of it.  As far as the general public is concerned, there are gay-bashing Christians, funny Jews, terrorist Muslims, crazy Scientologists, kung fu Buddhists, buzzkill Atheists, and nobody else.

What's even worse, is that six categories is STILL too much for some people's "black-and-white" brains to handle.  So we draw a line of demarcation.  Americans generally draw the line at something called "Judeo-Christian" beliefs, which basically means those who pray to the God of Abraham... but not the Muslims.  In this way, Christians and Jews can stand on one side of the line, and everybody else is on the other.  This gets confusing, because political affiliations are much more psychologically dominating than religious affiliations, and Jews and Catholics have a tendency to vote Democrat.  Atheists, on the other hand, count the Pagans, the Unitarians, the Deists, the Buddhists, and so on, as being on "their side," that is, the non-Judeo-Christian side of the line.

In Europe, however, the concensus (as far as I can tell) seems to be that the line of demarcation sits between "believers" and "non-believers," which basically means that they divide the world into Atheists and "everyone else."  This means that a Wiccan living in the United States gets lumped in with the Atheists, but the same Wiccan living in Europe gets lumped in with the Christians.

Okay, maybe we can't really educate the public on the nuances of the maybe several thousand different religious denominations in the world.  But at least, can we try to acknowlege that there are SEVERAL religions?  I mean, most people don't know the names, histories, capitals, languages and customs of every single COUNTRY on Earth, but we don't feel the need to "round off" Poland to just "Europe," or Mongolia to just "Asia."  You know what?  Maybe we need flags.  Yeah, maybe if religious symbols had a common shape, the way flags are rectangular, we'd recognize them more easily.  Or maybe if we had something analogous to a map, because world maps are everywhere.  Anyway, just a thought.

We have some useless letters in our alphabet:

A, so far so good. I won't pick on the vowels too much, because I know vowels by nature are flexible.

B, no problem there.

C? Do we really need C? Sometimes it's pronounced like a K, and sometimes, it's pronounced like an S. So why not just use a K or an S? And sometimes, there's a K or an S, and a C that you don't need, just hanging around. "Science." There's already an S there, so why the C? "Duck." Why a C and a K? K is enough. Basically, the only time you really need a C, is when it's with an H. So maybe we should just make C sound like a CH all the time. Then "cyclone" would become "syklone," and "chair" would become "cair." I think that's reasonable.

D, E, F, fine. G is another letter that kan't make up it's mind. Sometimes a G just sounds like itself, but other times, it sounds like a J. So why not use a J? Let's cange "garage" to "garaje." I think that makes sense. Sometimes the G kombines with an H, and just sounds like a weird sort of a breath. Sinse no other letter in the alphabet does this, I'll allow it.

H is okay, when it's by itself, but it tends to combine weird with other letters. I don't blame the H, I blame the letters preceeding it. So I'll let it go.

I is fine. However, the whole "I before E exsept after C" rule needs to go. "Weight," "Einstein," "weird," "science," "neighbor," "seize," "dreidel," "vaccancies," "beige..." Holy shit, this is a dumb rule. Let's kik this rule to the kurb with the rest of the garbaje. The new rule is, "I before or after E, depending on whatever you feel like."

J, K, L, M, N, O are okay.

P is fine when it's acting like a P. But sometimes it kombines with S or N and just disappears. Let's drop the P's from "pnemonia" and "psychology." Other times, the P kombines with H and sounds like an F. Well why not just use an F? People might tell you that "phone" is spelled with a PH, bekause that's the way the ancient Greeks spelled it. And I know that's bullshit, bekause the ancient Greeks didn't have any telefones. (Hey, at least the folks over at Trakfone have the right idea.) People might klaim that PH komes from the Greek letter phi, and PS komes from the letter psi. Well then why don't we just translate the letter phi as the equivilant of the letter F? So let's not stik P's anywhere where they don't belong.

Q is just stupid. In English, the letter Q is ALWAYS followed by a U. So if we know it's koming anyway, why even bother with it? And how would a Q be pronounsed if it wasn't followed by a U? Would it still sound the same? Or would it sound like a K? Since non-English words, such as "Iraq," make the Q sound like a K, I'm going to assume that Q is the same as K, and that QU is the same as KU or KW. So let's start spelling all our Q words foenetikally, and replace all the QU's with KW's, and all the lone Q's with K's. I think I'm being kwite lojikal about this.

R is good.

S is fine. Sometimes it kombines with H, but sinse no other letter makes the spesifik SH sound, I'll allow it. T is the same thing. Nothing else makes a TH sound, so we'll keep the TH. For now.

U is okay. V is okay. W is kind of a goofball letter. It's konsidered to be a vowel in only one word in the English languaje. The word is "cwm," meaning a steep valley in the side of a hill. This is dumb. W is a double U, and it karries a vowel sound, so why not just kall it a vowel already?

X doesn't really serve muc of a purpose. At the beginning of a word, it sounds like a Z. So why not use a Z? Canje "xenon" to "zenon." In the middle or end of a word, it sounds like a KS. So use a KS. Canje "box" to "boks." The name "Xavier" is kind of unusual, bekause the X is at the beginning, but it doesn't sound like a Z. It sounds like "egz." It kould be spelled "Egzavier," but sinse it's a proper name, I think it would be best to kall up all the Egzaviers on the fone, and ask them to judje for themselves whether they feel like canjing it or not. Really, the only time X is aktually useful is when the letter is by itself, as in "X-ray," or "X marks the spot." So those are the only times we should use X.

Y just pisses me off. It's a vowel, it's a konsonant, it's a vowel, it's a konsonant. Make up your fuking mind, Y! I say, Y makes a sound that sounds like a vowel, so let's just kall it a vowel all the time. There is no reason to konsider Y a konsonant. Let the folks on Wheel of Fortune start buying it already.

Z is okay, for the most part. But sometimes, SH, ZS, G or S sound like a ZH, but the only time a word with that partikular sound is spelled that way, is in the diktionary foenetik respelling. I don't see why we kan't just spell a ZH sound with a ZH. Canje "beige" to "beizhe," canje "treasure" to "treazhure," and canje "mirage" to "mirazhe." Maybe even canje "Zsa Zsa Gabore" to "Zha Zha Gabore." Again, I'm fleksible on proper names.

And while we're at it, let's drop all the silent konsonants. We've already dropped the P from "nemonia" and "sykolojy," but now let's drop some of those silent Bs and Ls. Canje "walk" to "wak?" Okay, maybe that's too konfusing, so let's ...add a W, and kall it "wawk." Then seal up your windows with "kawk." I think that's reasonable. Canje "comb and tomb" to "com and tom?" No, those are already words, so we'll need to add a more appropriate letter. I think an extra vowel is rekwired. Canje "comb" to "koum," and canje "tomb" to "toom." "Dumb" and "numb" don't need any ekstra vowels, so they kan just bekome "dum" and "num." Yes, we're definitely making some improvements here, and making the way we tawk muc less dum.

Anyway, those are a few small canjes I would make to the English alfabet. I guess that makes me a vizhionary, who thinks outside the boks.

Demands for the Ninety-Nine Percent

One of the biggest criticisms of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement and its analogs in other cities is that the protesters don't have a "clear message" or a "list of demands."  I find that every time someone tries to propose a clear message, it's more or less dismissed based on the assumption that it's already implicit.  Basically, the message, as is implied, is this:  "Rich people are too rich, and that sucks."  It doesn't really suggest a course of action to resolve this issue, other than to ask the upper 1% to acknowledge that they do in fact suck, and possibly for somebody, somewhere, in some unknown corner of existence, to think of a way to make the world not suck.

I think there's a reason why the protesters are favoring vagueness.  I think that many of them are afraid that if they focus on a clear and specific demand, that the movement might lose support or splinter, from groups who have the same complaint, but a different solution.  As long as the ideology is that we should have a system of "something other than oligarchy," but not specify which something other we want to use, the anarchocapitalists and the socialists can be on the same team.

Unfortunately, the elitists LOVE when the capitalists and the socialists fight with each other.  As George Carlin said, the rich know that as long as the rest of us are busy fighting with each other, they can keep going to the bank.  I say it's unfortunate, because the only way this protest can stay together is by remaining so completely disorganized, that it never accoplishes anything.  The moment it chooses a direction, it loses support.  Also, once it has a specific goal in mind, it becomes predictable, and the elitists can compensate for its presence.  Just look at the way the politicians adapted and integrated the Tea Parties.

So there are our options.  We can either have a disorganized protest that can't accomplish anything, but be a hugely widespread movement, or we can have a few small, but highly organized social factions, which start out by getting in each other's way, and end up becoming assimilated by the corporate-political machine.  I'd choose the former just based on principle, if I thought the world situation was truly hopeless.  However...

As the technological evolution takes us further from the world of television and radio, and more integrated into the world of electronic media, the need for financial backing for mass communication is diminished.  As a result, the people become more equal in terms of power of speech, and thus, political influence.  When Steve Jobs introduced the idea of home computers back in 1984, he made a big production (literally) of the idea that he was in some way taking down Big Brother.  Now, just after his death, twenty-seven years later, I start to get the feeling that he had a better idea of what he was doing than any of us realized.  Just think, through the power of the internet, a political candidate can run an entire campain online for almost no money.  When (not "if") television comes to its end, there will be absolutely no need for a politician to receive donations, which means that the upper 1% will have no power over any politician.  (Consider the impact that the internet had on the campain of Ron Paul, who was often deliberately ignored by conventional media.)

Okay, so in the not-too-distant future, the politicians will be subject to the will of the populus, rather than the elites.  Well, how are the politicians going to know what the people want?  How are the people going to educate ourselves on the political, social and economic issues?  How are the people going to make our voices come together and be heard by the people elected to represent us?  The most effective way, as far as I can see, is to come together into large angry-yet-peaceful mobs, outside where we can't be ignored (not sitting lazily behind some keyboard, like me), and shout out what we like and what we don't like.  Well, we're doing that now.  So in this case, a clear message, even though it could risk splintering the movement, will prepare us for when that tipping point when a moble app reaches more people than the six o'clock news, and every politician turns his attention away from his financial backers and toward the voters.

So what are our demands, specifically?  I can't speak for everyone, so I'm not going to try.  I'll just speak for myself, and tell you what changes I want to see:

• No one shall ever by considered "too big to fail."  All corporations will have the same opportunity to fail as any poor private citizen would.
• No subsidies for companies that the Government happens to like, regardless of how the politicians "think" they will be able to help our economy.
• Criminal act will be punished the same regardless of income status.  If any extremely wealthy person commits theft, fraud, tax evasion, etc., they will be treated exactly the same as anyone else.
• Revise the tax codes.  Ideally, I'd like to see the income tax abolished, but for the time being, I'm willing to settle for closing the tax loopholes which allow corporations to avoid paying the same taxes as the rest of us.
•  Remove regulations which force private companies to maintain stock prices.  This will allow competition from more consumer-friendly companies, forcing larger corporations to adapt their own policies similarly.  Also, it will allow investors to start thinking long-term.
• Because a lack of public insurance limits health care to the wealthy, and a public health option allows pharmacutical companies holding monopolies on particular drugs to extort arbitrary prices from public funding, and thus, the taxpayers, it is important that the Government does not support these monopolies.  Therefore, patents on perscription drugs should not be enforced.
• Any regulations on companies with regards to working conditions or environmental impacts should continue to be applicable to American companies which set up production overseas.  This way, such regulations would not be driving employers out of the country.
• No one should be punished for being rich.  This demand is directed more at the protesters.  We must remember that we are motivated not by envy of others' success, but by a desire for equal opportunities to succeed.  Some say "We are the 99%."  I say, "We are the 100%!"

I've got a LOT of ideas about reforms I would like to see, but these which I have listed apply directly to the general goal of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Sure, I'd like to see drugs and prostitution legalized, amnesty for illegal immigrants, government staying out of marriage, and so on.  However, I do not want to divert this movement from its objective.  A protester who tries to attatch his ideology to an existing social movement is no better than a politician who attatches pork to a bill.  So if I want drugs legalized, I'll start my own protest, but I won't bring up the topic at someone else's.  I think that's a very important distinction.  The Occupy Wall Street movement is for the purpose of addressing the problem of unfair economic advantages for corporations, so all of the specific demands which I have suggested above, are designed toward those ends.

I do realize that a lot of people would like to see a socialist, or possibly even communist solution to the problem of the upper 1%.  I disagree.  I think that unilaterally taxing the super-rich would only discourage companies such as McDonald's or Microsoft which get rich by producing products, and allow non-productive companies such as Goldman-Sachs to simply cover the costs of their higher taxes by inventing new ways to rip people off.  Besides, taxing the rich would be kind of like solving the problem of a burglary by sending a second burglar to rob the first one.  I support real capitalism, but I don't stand in the way of anyone who wishes to be a communist.  In fact, I applaud them for taking such a clear position.

In conclusion, I believe we are on the edge of a new age.  As much as the wealthy elite wish they could maintain the status quo indefinitely, they must realize that change is inevitable.  Let us work together to make sure that change is for the better.

When to stop listening.

Here are some key phrases which will absolutely insure that no one will continue listening to what you are saying:

* My cat did the cutest thing the other day...
* Did I tell you about my surgury?
* I had the weirdest dream last night...
* Let me tell you how you can save a lot of money...
* As a valued customer, we have several offers for you...
* Did I tell you about the new mods on my car?
* Jesus said...
* And another thing that the Jews control...
* According to your horoscope...
* And another thing that the Freemasons control...
* My therapist said...
* I do.

Idea for Occupying Wall Street

You want to really fuck with the Government/Corporate/Media Trinity?  Here's what you do.  Get a bunch of Tea Party Republicans and Libertarians to join the Wall Street Protest in their tri-corner hats and tea bags, and rally in opposition to how the Government uses the people's tax dollars to bail out big corporate banks.  Right now, the media is trying to spin this story as a "Left vs. Right" matter.  It's time to let them know that both the Tea Parties AND the Wall Street Protests are actually "Bottom vs. Top."

I just signed up for Blogger.com

I just signed up for Blogger.com.  That is all.