wascally wogue
Word!
I've decided to try a little variation on the margarita. My first blend was half a can of coconut milk, two bananas, the juice of three limes, and then triple sec and tequila until it looked like enough to me, plus ice. YUMMY. This second batch, though, I just mixed the lime juice and the rest of the coconut milk while nixing the bananas, because Amanda is in bed. I think I like it better without the bananas anyways, but I really dig the coconut milk.
After watching House of Flying Daggers, I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like outlandish martial arts movies very much. I didn't really like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon either. I like the fighting, but when they start with the flying around in unnaturally smooth jumps and leaping through the tops of bamboo it totally loses me. At the end of House of Flying Daggers, it even shifts seasons, starting off like summer but finishing the climatic fight in the snow. Bizarre. I'm better off sticking too the classic samurai movies I like so much. I did watch one I didn't care for though. It came it two parts, called The 47 Ronin. It was a long samurai epic from the early 1940s with a disappointing lack of "samuraiing" as I put it. It was like watching a four hour western where noone gets shot. I don't watch westerns for their lack of people getting shot, and I don't watch samurai movies for their lack of people getting sworded to death. My disappointment with The 47 Ronin, though, was made up for by a movie with a lot of swording to death called Samurai Gold Seekers. Also I have an Akira Kurosawa movie called Rashomon coming up on Saturday, which I am very excited about. I really need to buy both Yojimbo and Seven Samurai on DVD. Maybe by my birthday or this Christ's Mass.
I'm watching Ann Coulter on TV, and sure I think she's nuts. But this raises a larger question. How do you get paid to go on tv and write books giving your own subjective opinion? I have fucking opinions. What is with the news where a bunch of jackoffs (and jackettes) get on tv just to give an opinion? I tend to like fact-based news, myself.
Speaking of politics, I want to say something about a rather unpopular issue. This isn't that important an issue for most people. I am an ex-smoker, though I may enjoy a cigar every now and then. A lot of ex-smoker are the most vehement anti-smoking campaigners around. But I just have a mind your own business attitude, and these smoking bans that are becoming all the rage really offend my sense of liberty. The government has absolutely no place saying whether a business can allow smoking on its premises. People are always free to not give that business their money, and people are free not to work there. I read in the newspaper that Quebec and Ontario had banned smoking in public places, and I thought about the nice little bar/walk-in humidor I stopped at downtown to buy my Cuban cigars in Montreal. I guess you can't even have a bar called a "Smoker's Lounge." I just can't understand this urge to tell people what to do with their health. It's their health, not yours.
And this is not limited to smoking, by the way. I have read talk about so-called "second-hand drinking" talking about the societal costs of alcohol. It's the same sort of puritan talk that lead to prohibition. Unhealthy food are also in the crosshairs, with certain governing authorities proposing "fat taxes" on fast food.
I read that the most promising life extension theapy is called "calorie restriction." In mice it has shown amazing promise. What you have to do is severely limit the number of calories you consume, to around one thousand or so a day. You have to militantly monitor your nutrition, so you get the number of vitamins and nutrients you need on such a low calorie diet. But who wants to do that? Who wants to give up a life time of sugary sweets and cheeseburgers for a few extra years? The same applies to smoking. You and only you have to balance your risk and reward. It boggles my mind how we can give lip service to "freedom" and condone "sin taxes" and what is essentially government-mandated behavioral modivication. People who are unwilling to be told what to eat by the government ought to be skeptical of government efforts to curb smoking, the health nazis are coming for you next.
Bleh. I get really cynical about the government, and the media, sometimes. The price of gas is another issue that bugs me. The oil companies are under no obligation to sell their product at any particular price. Until you pay for the fuel, it is not your property. It seems like everyone wants to make the oil companies the bad guys. But it is regular people who are too lazy to use public transportation, to carpool, and to buy reasonably sized vehicles for transport, who need to bear the responsibility. Besides that, for environmentalists the higher the price of gas goes the more likely a company will come up with better alternatives, since the profitability of such an innovation will go up.
And while I am giving my opinion (unpaid and unheard), I dislike critics of Wal-Mart too. Here in my very own small town, Soddy-Daisy, we recently had our Wal-Mart move and expand. Around the perimeter of the Wal-Mart all sorts of new businesses have sprung up that we did not have access to before, including our new favorite pizza place. I can't see how Wal-Mart is bad for small business, since because it is cheaper on household good, it frees up more money to spend on eating out and other luxuries.
I'm such a Liberterian. Look, government, just blow up some terrorists and leave us alone. Illegal immigration is another funny issue. I noticed today that most of the workers working on an external makeover of the local Chuck E. Cheese appeared to be Hispanics. I'd wager that their legal status might be questionable. But across the nation we have a remarkably low unemployment rate, along with a generally strong economy. So what gives? Are they taking our jobs? Am I going to have to tell my little girl that the strawberry-picking career she was aiming for has been taken by a Mexican? Or maybe we are a country that has a robust immigration system, that has relied on outside immigration to maintain our flexibility and strength.
Bah.
I've decided to try a little variation on the margarita. My first blend was half a can of coconut milk, two bananas, the juice of three limes, and then triple sec and tequila until it looked like enough to me, plus ice. YUMMY. This second batch, though, I just mixed the lime juice and the rest of the coconut milk while nixing the bananas, because Amanda is in bed. I think I like it better without the bananas anyways, but I really dig the coconut milk.
After watching House of Flying Daggers, I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like outlandish martial arts movies very much. I didn't really like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon either. I like the fighting, but when they start with the flying around in unnaturally smooth jumps and leaping through the tops of bamboo it totally loses me. At the end of House of Flying Daggers, it even shifts seasons, starting off like summer but finishing the climatic fight in the snow. Bizarre. I'm better off sticking too the classic samurai movies I like so much. I did watch one I didn't care for though. It came it two parts, called The 47 Ronin. It was a long samurai epic from the early 1940s with a disappointing lack of "samuraiing" as I put it. It was like watching a four hour western where noone gets shot. I don't watch westerns for their lack of people getting shot, and I don't watch samurai movies for their lack of people getting sworded to death. My disappointment with The 47 Ronin, though, was made up for by a movie with a lot of swording to death called Samurai Gold Seekers. Also I have an Akira Kurosawa movie called Rashomon coming up on Saturday, which I am very excited about. I really need to buy both Yojimbo and Seven Samurai on DVD. Maybe by my birthday or this Christ's Mass.
I'm watching Ann Coulter on TV, and sure I think she's nuts. But this raises a larger question. How do you get paid to go on tv and write books giving your own subjective opinion? I have fucking opinions. What is with the news where a bunch of jackoffs (and jackettes) get on tv just to give an opinion? I tend to like fact-based news, myself.
Speaking of politics, I want to say something about a rather unpopular issue. This isn't that important an issue for most people. I am an ex-smoker, though I may enjoy a cigar every now and then. A lot of ex-smoker are the most vehement anti-smoking campaigners around. But I just have a mind your own business attitude, and these smoking bans that are becoming all the rage really offend my sense of liberty. The government has absolutely no place saying whether a business can allow smoking on its premises. People are always free to not give that business their money, and people are free not to work there. I read in the newspaper that Quebec and Ontario had banned smoking in public places, and I thought about the nice little bar/walk-in humidor I stopped at downtown to buy my Cuban cigars in Montreal. I guess you can't even have a bar called a "Smoker's Lounge." I just can't understand this urge to tell people what to do with their health. It's their health, not yours.
And this is not limited to smoking, by the way. I have read talk about so-called "second-hand drinking" talking about the societal costs of alcohol. It's the same sort of puritan talk that lead to prohibition. Unhealthy food are also in the crosshairs, with certain governing authorities proposing "fat taxes" on fast food.
I read that the most promising life extension theapy is called "calorie restriction." In mice it has shown amazing promise. What you have to do is severely limit the number of calories you consume, to around one thousand or so a day. You have to militantly monitor your nutrition, so you get the number of vitamins and nutrients you need on such a low calorie diet. But who wants to do that? Who wants to give up a life time of sugary sweets and cheeseburgers for a few extra years? The same applies to smoking. You and only you have to balance your risk and reward. It boggles my mind how we can give lip service to "freedom" and condone "sin taxes" and what is essentially government-mandated behavioral modivication. People who are unwilling to be told what to eat by the government ought to be skeptical of government efforts to curb smoking, the health nazis are coming for you next.
Bleh. I get really cynical about the government, and the media, sometimes. The price of gas is another issue that bugs me. The oil companies are under no obligation to sell their product at any particular price. Until you pay for the fuel, it is not your property. It seems like everyone wants to make the oil companies the bad guys. But it is regular people who are too lazy to use public transportation, to carpool, and to buy reasonably sized vehicles for transport, who need to bear the responsibility. Besides that, for environmentalists the higher the price of gas goes the more likely a company will come up with better alternatives, since the profitability of such an innovation will go up.
And while I am giving my opinion (unpaid and unheard), I dislike critics of Wal-Mart too. Here in my very own small town, Soddy-Daisy, we recently had our Wal-Mart move and expand. Around the perimeter of the Wal-Mart all sorts of new businesses have sprung up that we did not have access to before, including our new favorite pizza place. I can't see how Wal-Mart is bad for small business, since because it is cheaper on household good, it frees up more money to spend on eating out and other luxuries.
I'm such a Liberterian. Look, government, just blow up some terrorists and leave us alone. Illegal immigration is another funny issue. I noticed today that most of the workers working on an external makeover of the local Chuck E. Cheese appeared to be Hispanics. I'd wager that their legal status might be questionable. But across the nation we have a remarkably low unemployment rate, along with a generally strong economy. So what gives? Are they taking our jobs? Am I going to have to tell my little girl that the strawberry-picking career she was aiming for has been taken by a Mexican? Or maybe we are a country that has a robust immigration system, that has relied on outside immigration to maintain our flexibility and strength.
Bah.