I get the pro-life/anti-choice side in that people should practice safe sex if adults & abstinence if not, but people do stupid things, and they & society are left with the results of their mistakes.

What defies logic is why “pro-lifers” want to ban abortion when they don’t offer a viable solution?  They say you should have the baby and give it up for adoption, but what they don’t understand is that many minority-race babies or unhealthy babies are not adopted and instead wind up in state facilities or abusive and neglected foster care & never get adopted, eventually “aging-out” into the world at age 18 with nobody and no support.  Of course, this is a typical path to homelessness and crime.

They also don’t understand the regret that women who give up their babies feel, some for the rest of their lives, even if they are part of an “open” adoption where they stay in contact with the baby and its new family.  Sure, it’s easy to say they deserve that for getting pregnant, but that’s a heavy punishment to put on anyone in a “punishment doesn’t fit the crime” context.  Studies have shown that women have way more regret over giving up for adoption vs abortion.

Then you have many poor white & black mothers who are single and choose to have more babies they can’t afford so they can make more money off governmental support and not have to find a man to help support them or go to work themselves.  They then wind up eventually living with one of their children who does the exact same thing and helps raise her grandchildren who are all on government support.

There are also the horror stories of foster kids being abused physically, psychologically, and sexually.  That would require a whole separate article.

A human being isn’t truly a human in the effective sense if they can’t function without thought (such as being in an irreversible coma or persistent vegetative state), or don’t have fetal viability — they are simply seeds in the same way that the seed of a tree is not a tree.  The development state of the seed means nothing if that seed isn’t viable to progress to its full state without its host.

Various courts have ruled that a fetus isn’t viable until at least 5 months into its term.  If you’re a woman who hasn’t figured out whether you want an abortion or not within 5 months, and there’s nothing wrong with you or your baby as far as you know, then you shouldn’t be allowed to have one.  A woman typically knows that she’s pregnant within 2 months of conception.

I have no problem with limitations on abortion.  What I have a problem with is unreasonable limitations, and on the flip side, no limitations.  Our political process has devolved into both sides having to fight for extreme positions in order to have reasonable access to their desired rights.  For example, pro-choice women have to fight for unrestricted abortion even though they agree that a third-trimester is unfathomable except in cases where fetal viability or the life of the mother are in jeopardy, because to allow any restrictions may open them up to some restrictions which are unreasonable, or will be eventually as lawmakers on the other side of the aisle attempt to chip away at their rights.  This is why diplomatic negotiators typically start out with a hard line and no offers of compromise — to see how much they can get and what position the other side will take, plus letting them know how committed they are to their position.

My propositions are:

1. Abortions should be restricted after 20 weeks (5 months), which is plenty of time for the mother to make a decision.
2. After that period of time, an abortion is only allowed in cases of fetal viability, jeopardy of the mother’s life or long-term health, or rape/incest.
3. The government should be paying the costs for women to have an abortion.  It’s way cheaper than paying for 18 years of welfare.  But limit it to once per year so they don’t abuse the system & limit it to 2 times total, and also make them attend a classes explaining the facts of life to them, including birth control & condoms as a requirement for getting the help to pay for it.
4. Deny welfare to those unmarried women who decide to have children in the future & can’t take care of them unless they were previously married when the child was conceived.  Phase it out slowly for those who already are on the various programs.  I’m talking all forms of welfare, including food stamps, government housing subsidies — everything.  We all have the opportunity to better ourselves, especially if we have no options otherwise.

We should also do something to increase adoptions of kids who are beyond toddler age.  Many people who want to adopt only want a baby or a very young child so they won’t know they’ve been adopted and so it feels like their child, but there are plenty of children between 5 & 17 who want & need to be adopted.  The problem with paying parents to adopt is you get the same mentality of foster parents who do so simply to make a buck.

We also need more people adopting a child (preferably one that’s not a baby) before they have a child of their own.  It wouldn’t take much to clear out the foster homes & orphanages if we could round up enough support for this idea.

How many times a year do you see “charitable” or “memorial” events and themes like Breast Cancer Awareness Month where everything is pink, or 10K runs for charity, or Military Appreciation day/weekend, or any number of (allegedly) well-meaning events that are nothing more than B.S., including the old MDA Telethon & the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge?

Why are they B.S.?  It’s because they are neither formed to advance the cause they represent, nor do they do anything more than make the participants look better in the public eye, and make them feel better because they think they’re doing something productive & charitable, or they know better and they think you believe that.  Or both you and them are drinking from the same punch bowl of Kool-Aid.

The first target on my hypocrisy range-finder is Breast Cancer Awareness (BCA) Month.  For an entire month, everything turns pink.  People do this because humans are social animals, and due to social media & its deep tentacles, everyone has an eye on each other, so many people go along to keep from being ostracized either privately or publicly.  Many people think that wearing pink or getting involved in any event promoting the idea is good work.  On the contrary . . .

According to the Maurer Foundation, whose mission statement is to promote BCA, breast cancer rates for women under 50 have remained stable since 1985 when the BCA movement started, and breast cancer rates for women over 50 have remained stable since 2002.  There was a spike in cancer rates in the 90’s  simply due to overdiagnoses, which means either finding breast cancer that didn’t need to be treated, or finding something that was believed to be breast cancer, but wasn’t — a false positive.  In every 1,000 women, according to research done in 2015 by a group funded by the Norwegian Cancer Society, appx 200 of them either get a false positive, and up to 50 more women of them either have a cancer overdiagnosed, or are later found to not have cancer after a biopsy is done, and 3 of them get cancer in-between screenings, which means screening didn’t find it as it became visible only between visits & screeening did no good.  That means 25% of women who get screened are not being served by the screenings and will be falsely diagnosed or incur medical bills & a lot of mental anguish for nothing.  Only 2 out of 1,000 will be saved by the screens.

Your first response is that it’s worth it if we save 2 out of 1,000, but what you don’t realize is the physical discomfort & mental stress experienced by the 25% who get diagnoses that don’t help them and actually harm them.  In fact, the regular rate of death by any means would have gotten to those 2 people anyway.

Many people use BCA Month as a means to amplify their own self-worth by acting as troopers in the search for a cure & devoting their time to the cause.  Many businesses use it to pander to the masses to increase traffic & sales.  There are many bars & restaurants that hold annual “charity” event where they get people together in their bar to give money to the cause either by straight donation or by contest raffle, or by auctioning off items given to the event for free by local merchants, or all of the above.  Of course, these participants are eating & drinking at the venue & making them a tidy profit, of which they may possibly not give any away to the charity they’re allegedly “supporting”, or maybe a token gift as a brokerage fee for allowing them to use their name to bring people into the bar for a profit.

Have you ever wondered why BCA takes place in October each year?  Every major sport is operating its season during this time — football, basketball, baseball, hockey, golf, tennis & NASCAR.  They have expanded to Mother’s Day so they can double dip & get baseball involved heavily.  It’s all about marketing and sales, not BCA.  Remember that.

Even the prostate cancer people are learning how to run this game and now they’ve appropriated Father’s Day as their own awareness week.  But prostate cancer awareness (PCA) is another B.S. movement designed to simply part you from your logical reasoning & your money.

A British study in 2018 called CAP & published in the JAMA said that after studying 400,000 men over a 10-year period, prostate cancer rates were essentially the same whether men got screening or not, and that men die from it at the same rate, which is 0.29%; that is 29% of 1%, i.e., about 3 in 1000.  Most men die WITH prostate cancer, not FROM it.  Prostate cancer is a slow-growing cancer, and most men who get it can simply live with it and have a normal live expectancy and die from some other cause totally unrelated, like old age itself.

Another problem is that the gold standard of testing is the PSA test, which is fairly inaccurate.  It may result in the same problem many women have who are screened for breast cancer — overdiagnosis & unnecessary biopsies.  And people who are screened for colon cancer & cervical cancer typically are recommended to stop screening when they reach an age where it doesn’t serve a purpose anymore, i.e., by the time you could get either one of those cancers, you’ll probably die from something else, usually 75 years old.

I have a lot more charitable B.S. I’ll nail to the wall when I get more time . . .  luckily Jerry Lewis is dead or he’d be pissed at my next update.  So will the Armed Forces, as many people don’t know they’re paying for these military appreciation weekends & flyovers & color guards just like advertisement, and the cost is well into NINE figures . . . and it isn’t working except for those who sell the merchandise.

Popular music has been making a slow downhill regression for a century, maybe longer depending on the argument.  We’re just now noticing it, as it tried to be something better for a while, then slowly collapsed under its the weight of its own supporters.

What used to be a contest for the best talent slowly became a race to find the acts that appealed the most to the fans.  Music went from being a contest of talent & artistic expression to a popularity contest, as music quality was eschewed in favor of populism, which meant more money in sales.  Bands who were great weren’t necessarily popular or sold the most, and they were cast aside in favor of corporate greed.  Artistic value is nothing compared to the value of a buck.  How else do you explain a Punk/Post-Grunge band releasing an album called “Dookie” & selling 20 million copies?  Or ignorant thugs who have little to no musical or even singing skills selling millions of CD’s?

Popular music of the day in previous centuries consisted of the greatest musicians/composers of all time, such as the Classical musicians like Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, etc.  By the 1900’s, American popular music was led by musicians who played Ragtime, Jazz & such, but most of them could at least read music.

Popular music made a slight progression of sorts as the 1900’s moved onward.  Jazz greats like Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and their peers raised the bar on musicianship, and even the Pop artists of the 40’s such as Glenn Miller & the Dorsey brothers were talented musicians who could read music & play many different styles.

In the early to mid 50’s, the influences of the black Blues artists & black/white Pop vocal groups of the late 40’s inspired acts like the Moonglows, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis, and Bill Haley to create the genre of Rock-N-Roll.  These acts, like most of the Blues acts, couldn’t read music, and many of them couldn’t improvise even as basically as Blues artists did.  Their music was mostly a 1-6m-4-5 progression or simply a 1-4-5, 12-bar Blues progression.

In the latter 50’s, a few acts progressed the genre beyond its beginnings, such as Buddy Holly & the songwriting team of Leiber & Stoller, and the plethora of Brill Building composers helped the advancement into the early 60’s & beyond.

You also have to look to the Folk movement, as they would eventually provide progress to Pop & Rock as time moved onward.  Artists such as Bob Dylan, The Kingsmen & such inspired artists like The Byrds and The Mamas & The Papas to meld Folk with Pop just as the Beatles were reinventing & creating various forms of Rock music.

The Beatles were the game-changers of all-time.  They brought unique chord structures & harmonies, and they helped advanced Pop, Rock, Folk, and even created prototype sub-genres such as Psychedelia, Hard Rock, New Grass (I’ve Just Seen A Face is a staple with that crowd) and were the forerunners of concept albums.  A large percentage of bands from the 60’s to now were either directly or indirectly influenced by the Beatles.

With the Beatles help, the progression Rock & Pop musicianship leaped tremendously.  By the early 70’s, some of the Rock acts has even fused Classical music into Rock, and many of them could read music.  There were also elements of Jazz & R&B working their way into Pop music, and being a musician in the late 70’s required you to have a good working knowledge of many styles & know how to sing at least harmony vocals if you couldn’t sing lead well.

The 70’s brought about advancements in audio, as massive P.A. systems allowed Rock groups like Led Zeppelin & Deep Purple to play to large audiences with superior power & quality unlike ever before, and home stereos experienced a renaissance period where owning an “extreme” stereo system was critical — it was not unusual for audiophiles to invest the equivalent of $5,000 to $10,000 in today’s dollars in top-notch hi-fi gear.

The problem with this is that some people realized that since many people liked listening to the original recordings, and since audio technology had advanced so well, a club could install a house system & have its own DJ spinning records.  It was cheaper, easier & more reliable than booking live entertainment & people bought into it

It was Disco.  Though the original heyday of Disco was intense while it lasted & didn’t last long, it inspired artists through to today.  It even made the DJ an artist of sorts by creating artistry using other people’s musical creations.  Many clubs nowadays won’t even consider booking live entertainment, and some that do use it as an opening act to a DJ.  There are many club patrons who would prefer listening to a DJ than seeing a live act, which in an of itself is also a response to the poor quality of live music acts nowadays.

The 80’s began well enough.  Although Punk had tried to break through in the late 70’s, it gave way to New Wave & Brit Pop, but there were Rock bands using more keyboards and creating a new Pop-Rock sound, mainly from bands that used to be 70’s Prog & Hard Rock bands who were trying to remain commercially viable without sacrificing too much of their artistic integrity.  Bands like YES, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Ozzy, Journey, Rush & Saga come in & had us thinking that Rock was about to go to a new level where we could have artistic expression and commercialization to appeal to the masses at the same time.

But an act from L.A. called Van Halen changed all that.  It was Led Zep meets Glam.  Eddie Van Halen wasn’t doing anything new — he was simply doing a LOT of it.  Plenty of guitarists had used the tricks he used such as tapping, but never made a song of the tricks or employed them as much or as well as he did.  VH’s popularity, while deserved, also brought about the first downturn in quality of Popular music in mid-80’s as the L.A. power trio bands took over, and power ballads and over-the-top sexism ruled the universe for the rest of the decade from about 1985 onward.

Grunge took us further down the drain.  Many musicians who didn’t have a lion’s mane for a hairdo and didn’t excite the girls and couldn’t play their instruments well were diametrically opposed to everything the Hair Metal bands stood for and did.  The voiced their displeasure by creating music that sounded like equal parts gloom & despair (where are the Hee Haw guys who sang about that?) and they did it knowing few chords, having little or no talent to play a guitar solo, and little harmony.  They were even opposed to song titles that were beyond 1 word & in many cases had nothing to do with the lyrics.  It was a melding of Black Sabbath & the Sex Pistols to some degree.  It appealed to baser instincts, which is why it appealed to the masses.  Young people will buy any message about revolt, anarchy, and simply being pissed about everything because Gen-X youth were raised by the most narcissistic generation in decades (if not ever) and weren’t happy about anything unless it was about them & their feelings.   Although Grunge died fairly quickly, its child Post Grunge still exists to this day and has morphed into a number of sub-generes like Emo.

Rap tapped into the same primal forces that Grunge did by appealing to the masses, and even more so that Grunge, it allowed virtually anyone with little or no musical talent to succeed, as anybody could be a rapper with a weekend of practice.  Many Rap artists simply copied existing records and rapped over them, many times without permission to do so, as it never occurred to them that music rights were owned by someone.  Because Rap is so accessible by the masses, it will probably never die until the masses get smarter & demand more for their time & money, and that may never happen as the audiences get dumb & dumber & dumberer with each passing year.

Electronic music, whether created by producers who disdain any instrumentation other than synthesizers & computers, shove whatever singer they can in front a mic after they create their pastiche of cold electronic sounds that sound nothing like the real instruments their trying to mimic, and they use basic tribal rhythms to lull people into a trance and rehash the same Pop cliches over & over again.  This is actually the closest thing to Pop music now, and it’s sad.

Besides popular tastes spiraling downhill, another big factor in the crumbling of the music business is that people are stealing music or getting it very cheap.  In 1979, an album’s typically cost was $8.999 to $9.99.  In 2018 dollars, that about $50.  Imagine people paying $50 for an album and not being able to buy single songs or download them free or for cheap, or have a service that plays close to what you want to hear on-demand for a small monthly fee, if any.  People balk at paying $1 a song nowadays and won’t buy an entire album.  They have so many options to keep them busy, what with 700 TV channels & a million things to do online.  Listening to music is not as important as it was in the previous century.

Popular music tends to move with the society that feeds off it.  Our society now is filled with 3 generations of people who are narcissists and used to getting their way & putting their two cents in even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.  I suspect Popular music will continue to drift downward until it gets to the point where nobody is making it & nobody is listening because the talent will have vanished along with the money that chased it.

Our world society started out banging on rocks with sticks, then we progressed to basic percussion using hollowed out stumps covered by animal skins, then wind instruments carved from wood & animal bones, then basic stringed instruments & other wind & brass instruments came about and progressed to complicated instruments like the violin & trumpet, then the piano by the 1700’s, and people became very proficient in playing & writing music in the classical era, much of which exists today as the highest form of music.  We then started a slow progression downhill from there, although the talent hung in there in certain forms.  Jazz, though not as technical as classical, still required years of talent to master.  Pop music in the 30’s & 40’s required reading music & having knowledge of music theory.  When Rock first hit, it was very basic & was essentially a ripoff upshoot of the Blues, Folk & tangential forms of those rolled into one.  The Beatles increased the talent level in Rock, and by the 70’s, many acts were fusing Rock with Classical music & Jazz, and at the same time, Rock guitar was split into 3 camps — Punk, which was basic 50’s Rock played by those with little to no talent; Metal, which was basic 50’s Rock on steroids & required more talent, and Progressive Rock, which required even more talent.  When digital technology hit in the 80’s via keyboards, it opened the doors for more people to write & perform music with less talent.  It went from needing a lot of talent to play & sing to needing little talent to do either.  It got worse with Grunge, and then Pop went to Rap & Hip Hop, 2 styles which not only required little talent to do anything other than program digital music, to simply talking fast in rhymes, i.e., no singing talent at all.  A lot of Pop music by the year 2000 didn’t require musical or singing talent.

Eventually, Pop music will go back to the stone age where people simply portray an image that fluctuates between sexy & tough, and they simply talk fast while beating electronic stones with electronic sticks.  I believe that may evolve into farting or simply grunting & screaming.  Thrash Metal already values guttural screaming instead of singing or anything else vocally.

The reason for the decline in music talent is that now we have 4 generations of people who want to do things the easy way rather than the correct way and are addicted to self-aggrandizement, have a false sense of entitlement, and require immediate satisfaction.  Boomers were bad, but not nearly as bad they taught their succeeding generations to be.

I’ve read a number of the arguments for the legality of “assault weapons”.  What are those exactly?  As with anything polarizing, there’s even an argument over what they should be called & what weapons are indeed assault weapons, much less their necessity, but the majority consensus is that an assault weapon is a rifle, not a pistol, although Federal guidelines include them also, and it’s semi-automatic & can fire multiple rounds quickly via magazine.  It can also be modified to be fully automatic or essentially/virtually fully-automatic.  So I will use the term “assault rifle”, and if I refer to “these/those weapons” or “assault weapons”, I’m speaking of assault rifles.  I do not consider a typical semi-automatic pistol like a 9mm or its cousins as an assault weapon and neither should you, but I agree than a MAC-10 and its related pistol submachine cousins like the Uzi, all of which fire pistol ammo are indeed assault weapons.  I’m going to include them in the term “assault rifle”, and I know those latter items can be fired with 1 hand & function like a large semi-automatic pistol.

I haven’t seen any valid arguments for using these weapons in hunting or any other sporting endeavor.  I agree that I’d like to have one if encountering a pair of grizzlies or a pack of mountain lions, but they can also be stopped effectively with a large-caliber, semi-automatic pistol.  I also see no necessity to guard your property with an assault weapon, as revolvers, shotguns, bolt-action rifles & semi-automatic pistols do a fine job of that.

The main argument I tend to see is the alleged necessity for citizens to be able to protect themselves against an invasion by a foreign government or terrorists, civil insurrections & riots, or to fight our own government should it become tyrannical.

Although it would be nice to have a fully-automatic weapon or semi-automatic assault rifle or sub-machine pistol under these circumstances above, I don’t buy into any of these scenarios as making them a necessity, and certainly not enough to continue to overload our landscape with these weapons, making it easier for a lunatic to get & use one.  We will not be able to defend ourselves any better as we’ll be going up against a foe with more firepower & manpower in all likelihood, and as far as small terrorist cells, we can fight back with standard semi-automatic pistols that fit in your pocket, or shotguns & standard rifles.  This is simply paranoid penis-waiving macho bravado.

I believe all owners of assault weapons should have to turn them in for their market value before the banning is implemented, and make owning them as big a crime as owning fully-automatic weapons.  The 2nd Amendment was enacted to stock a militia, not every gun owner in America, and one day SCOTUS will rule that way once enough states get on board with similar legislation.  We’ll still be able to get “standard” firearms, but the assault weapons will eventually become a dark chapter of American history.

Let’s use math & facts to resolve the UFO/alien issue once & for all, assuming you won’t deny the basic facts . . .

Our fastest manned spacecraft (forget smaller probes — we have to transport people/aliens here & protect them, so we need something bigger & more complex) can only travel 25,000 mph tops, as Apollo 10 did when it set the record in 1969.

The nearest planet (which is not hospitable to life as we know it) is appx 25 trillion miles away, which is appx 4.3 light years.  A light year is how long it takes light to travel in a year going 186,000 miles per SECOND (not mph), which appx 670 Million miles per hour (mph) x 24 hrs = appx 16 Billion miles per day x 365 days = appx 5.87 Trillion miles in a year.

So it would take a manned spacecraft traveling to the nearest planet appx 114,000 years to get there at 25,000 mph going appx 25 trillion miles.

Logic tells us that any other civilization like ours would probably have the same constraints we have in travel & technology as most planets would probably have the same chemicals/elements we have, but even if they figured out how to travel 100 times faster, and assuming the nearest planet was indeed hospitable to intelligent life (we believe the nearest one is actually 12 light years away, or 3 times as far), it would still take them 1,140 years to travel here (3,420 years to the nearest Earth-like planet), and if they are lifeforms that require food & water & are susceptible to harm from typical space travel (as most all life is), it would not be able to store enough food & water to make it here or acquire it in space.

In other words, theoretically, there are no space aliens coming here as they can’t physically do it, and all the UFO’s we see are of this world & usually man-made, or are meteors or light phenomena.

I saw an article about a young girl appx 5 years old who had died due to a stupid accident that was the fault of a company who was negligent in their duties, and people donated something in the range of like $10,000 in her memory to build a park for kids to play in.

I can’t fault the family nor those who heard about the accident from doing something that makes them feel better & trying to better the world for those that live on, but I had a couple of thoughts about the comments made & the article itself that make me realize how stupid people really are . . .

1) What good comes of building more children’s facilities in the name of a dead girl if they already have enough existing facilities, which they do — I checked.

2) Whatever they do is not going to bring back the dead girl.  They mentioned that “hope” was “being embraced by the family”.  What good will that do?  No amount of hope or prayer in the world is going to help that dead girl.

3) This really is just a community trying to bring solace to a family who lost a child, but they’re going about it the wrong way.  They should use that money to increase safety awareness among businesses, or spend it on kids who don’t have the basic necessities, but that should be done by the government in my opinion and it’s a never-ending problem that this measly $10,000 is not going to conquer or put any dent into.

4) What they did was go the easy road & raised money to create a memorial to the kid & then moved on.  it makes the family feel a little better & those who contribute get their name in the paper & feel a little better for a minute, and the money is otherwise wasted.  Using that $10,000 to go toward a better solution (whatever that is, if any can be found) and doing it in the child’s name makes more sense, but it’s too much work & isn’t as easy to get behind like simply building a memorial playground that’s not needed.

5) Praying & wondering if your dead family members can hear you & are looking down upon you from Heaven (or up from hell) is a psychological problem that I hope we face & conquer in my lifetime.  There is no God, and religion is a facade meant to control & profit off of an ignorant & scared population. Science has long proven that there is no afterlife and no creator, and if you’d simply open up a science book (an a psychology book), you would see the irrefutable facts laid out for you showing this to be 100% true and no guessing.

I’ll leave you with a snippet you can ponder upon — if there were a God, the laws of physics have proven that in order to exist, God would had to have been created from something, and created by something at least as powerful as God.  Also, just look around this world and think — is this really is the work of a supreme being, or did this really just happen by chance due to science & luck?

After reading for 2 decades now that I should have seen “The Big Lebowski” & that it was a cult classic & that people were having annual Lebowski conventions in bowling alleys, I figured maybe I should give a try.  I’m a big fan of “cult” movies — “Monty Python & The Holy Grail”, “Sling Blade”, “Spinal Tap”, “Best In Show” & “Idiocracy” are just a few that come to mind.

I’m somewhat of a fan of the Coen Brothers.  I loved “Raising Arizona”, wasn’t a big fan of “Fargo”, but it wasn’t all bad.  Haven’t seen any of their other movies, but I’m simply not interested in the story behind them; it has nothing to do with the quality of the other movies or lack thereof.

Note that I don’t automatically like just any movie that’s a “cult classic” — “Rocky Horror Picture Show” was one I was not interested in seeing simply from the trailer.  I remember the trailer for “The Big Lebowski” & it did nothing for me in 1998, and I’ve learned that when a trailer doesn’t make it for me, the movie will suck for me as well.  Trailers help me save a good 2 hours of my life from being wasted.

I tried over the last few years to watch “Lebowski” and both times, I got so bored with it that I stopped it and I didn’t get very far into it each time & deleted it from my DVR.  This time, I told myself I would watch it in spurts so I could come back & resume it at the point where I got bored with it, as it’s possible I wasn’t being open-minded & it may have a slow start.

Well,  after 5 sessions, I finally got through it, and I wish I had my 2 hours back.

Like many things in pop culture & in the mainstream in general, I’m thoroughly convinced that most people, being social animals & thriving upon acceptance by others, willingly pretend to like things that are popular, and some actually convince themselves that something is good or important because a crowd of other people say it is, though in reality, it isn’t.  “The Emperor’s New Clothes” comes to mind whenever I see this and it’s why we have fads & pop culture in general.  “Pop” is short for “popular”, of course, and many things become popular quickly due to peer pressure & sheer lunacy, then take a nosedive quickly, as they never should have been popular in the first place.

First, if you haven’t watched this movie, a major spoiler alert is coming, but don’t quit reading as I’m going to save 2 hours of your life from being wasted . . .

First off, the “hero” of the movie is a stupid, lazy, sloppy, happily-unemployed schmuck named Jeff Lebowski, aka “The Dude”.  He has the same name as a seemingly wealthy & important (and big fat) man named Jeffrey Lebowski whom he meets after being mistaken for him & victimized by mobbish collectors who pee on his favorite rug.  This rich dude is “The Big Lebowski” in case you’re wondering.

I quit rooting for losers like “The Dude” to win ever since I had to wake up & go to work when I finished my schooling.  That screwed the whole movie for me from the get-go, but I thought maybe there’s something here deep within this guy & he’ll prove to be a closeted member of MENSA with natural genius.  Or maybe it’ll just be funny; after all, I love “Beavis & Butthead”.  Wrong on both counts.  This is a movie for those 22 & under at best, and preferably male.  It’s not very cerebral nor funny.

Secondly, his buddies are morons, and one of them is a part-time psychopath (John Goodman’s character).  I don’t mind sociopaths/psychopaths in the movies, but he wasn’t doing very funny things with it.  He was somewhat funny for just being a part-time psychopath & the absurdity of what made him psychopathic, but it wasn’t that good.  It was absurdly funny that he pulled a gun on a guy over a bowling score, but when he started trashing the Vette later on, I knew right away it was somebody else’s car; way too obvious.  And if he really was a psychopath, he wouldn’t have let the Jesus character talk down to him, which is why his character made no sense — either you’re psycho or you aren’t, which is why he’s a part-timer.

The movie did a number of things that made it absurd on purpose, and I’ve found that when you go way out of your way to be absurdly funny, it’s just plain absurd & unfunny.  You’re trying too hard.  The dream sequences were pathetically non-funny.  Also, more than once, “The Dude” mentioned in different scenes that the pissed-on rug tied the room together.  Talk about pounding a joke into your brain, and if it needs pounding, it isn’t that funny.

There were a number of things that weren’t explained, like why was the porno king (Ben Gazzera’s character) pissed & owed money by Bunny, and why was the homework found in The Dude’s car, but it didn’t matter as the whole plot & reason for these things was ultimately pointless anyway — there never was any ransom money (at least any that left Big Lebowski’s pocket – they never showed any money in the suitcase; even The Dude figured this out) & there never was any kidnapping.  They also didn’t explain if the nihilists were working together with Bunny.  Bunny owed money, was willing to do anything for it, was friends with the main nihilist, so why couldn’t she have been in on the fraud? They also never got Big Lebowski to admit he had the money, but you figure that one out based on his responses to The Dude when confronted.  They also left open the fact that Big Lebowski embezzled the money from a charity created by his dead wife that was run by his daughter & she didn’t like him, so why didn’t she turn him in to the cops for embezzlement?

When it’s all said and done, Big Lebowski simply stole $1 million from his dead wife’s charity, there was never a kidnapping, Bunny wasn’t in on anything, we don’t know why she owed money, we realize that Julianne Moore likes to get naked in movies, they also simply created a part to get Steve Buscemi in the movie as he wasn’t crucial to the storyline and used none of his talent in it, The Dude gets no money nor a new rug, his place is destroyed, he’s still a loser, and that’s it.  I can’t imagine anyone leaving the theater thinking their money & 2 hours of their life were not wasted for this.

If a person commits a crime like the alleged crimes that some of these entertainers and politicians have been accused of in the last few years of the “Me Too” generation, and yet they aren’t convicted of the crime, does mean that they should be ruined and shunned for the rest of their life, even though history shows us that hasn’t been the case with many other entertainers?

What about entertainers who committed heinous crimes in their past & are popular today, such as . . .

> Matthew Broderick, who was involved in a car accident in 1987 while on vacation in Northern Ireland when he crossed into the wrong lane and collided head-on with another vehicle, which killed the driver and their passenger immediately. In America, you would typically get charged with Vehicular Homicide & would probably do at least 10 years in prison. But he got off with only a $175 fine & no jail time & went on to star in numerous Hollywood films & hit Broadway plays.

> Jay Z, who stabbed a record company executive in the abdomen in a nightclub fight.

> Comedian & comedic actor Tim Allen, who is a convicted drug trafficker before he became famous. Did a few years in Federal prison.

> Mark Wahlberg, who almost literally beat 2 men to death with a large stick, leaving one of them blind in one eye.

> Will Smith, who was arrested in 1989 (long before he became famous) after being involved in an assault so serious one man was left nearly blind.

> Christian Slater, who was arrested in 1989 for drunk driving, then in 1997 for assaulting his girlfriend while intoxicated, and again that same year after attempting to board a flight while in possession of a loaded gun. Then in 2005, Christian was charged with 3rd-degree sexual assault after grabbing a woman’s butt on the street, which is the same thing that all these guys are getting their careers ruined over.

> Robert Downey Jr, who has been arrested numerous times for drug possession, a weapons charge, breaking & entering (to sleep on a neighbor’s sofa), multiple probation violations, and was a serial addict for years.

> Vanilla Ice, who assaulted his wife TWICE and had a firearms charge against for threatening a homeless man at gunpoint.

> 50 Cent, who was arrested for drug dealing, plus assault & battery.

> Kiefer Sutherland, who has been arrest FOUR TIMES for drunk driving.

> Marilyn Manson, who was charged with sexual misconduct after being accused of rubbing his crotch against a security officer’s head.

> Cheryl Cole was arrested following an altercation with a bathroom attendant in a nightclub. Cheryl was initially charged with racially aggravated assault. The racially aggravated charge was eventually dropped, but Cheryl was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

> OJ Simpson is far from being embraced by white people, but the black community never left his side even though some of them were pretty sure he did it.  And you think supporters of the accused Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore were wearing blinders?

Either go back & reindict these people socially, or let these accused people have their day in court or let them be productive again after a social penalty is imposed & served of the same length of these guys, which was short indeed.

Let’s socially-indict Rose McGowan before she starts throwing stones from her glass house . . .

First off, she’s not an “artist” by even the casual definition of the term. She doesn’t create any tangible art like painting or pottery; only via acting, which is a performance art, and the people who do that are called “actors”, not “artists”. She’s admitted that she’s never had any serious acting lessons or any drama school background, so she’s not a serious actor, nor a good one.

She said in a 2011 interview when she talked about her experience working with director Victor Salva on “Rosewood Lane”, who is a convicted child molester and child pornography maker. She said, “I still don’t really understand the whole story or history there, and I’d rather not, because it’s not really my business. But he’s an incredibly sweet and gentle man.” Keep in mind that Salva was convicted in 1988 & the film was made over 20 years later in 2010, so she knew about the charges & worked with him anyway & says it’s no big deal.  That’s what I call stunningly, and embarrassingly full of shit as George Carlin once said.

I would also find it hard to believe that anyone would be that interested in her sexually to do what she’s claiming Weinstein did as she doesn’t look sexy or even cute. I understand that it’s not necessarily about sex, but power; however, you have to open your eyes & look at some point, and nobody much is harassing or assaulting the old fat cleaning lady, and would anyone in their right mind risk a lawsuit or jail time to have sex with her?

Also consider this about her character — she took money & signed a settlement to keep the accusations about Weinstein secret way back when so that he could go on & allegedly attack, harass & molest other women, then she breaks the agreement & speaks out. She’ll take money to keep quiet & protect an alleged monster, then go back on her word later. I wouldn’t call that activism; I’d call it publicity-seeking & lacking character. Rose McGowan lives not only in a glass house, but it’s full of skeletons as well.

I call bullsh*t on Cole Hamels and his donating his mansion in Branson to charity. He said it was because they moved from Philly to Dallas & decided they didn’t want the home anymore.

This makes no sense from a logistical standpoint — I’m sure it was a financial decision & a bunch of bullsh*t to cover up a bad investment & make them look good & compassionate, and here’s my case . . .

First off, look at the US map — Dallas is about a day’s drive from Branson, whereas Philly is 3 times as far.  Your own lyin’ eyes tell you their statement makes no sense.

Secondly, I believe what really happened is that they decided they didn’t like the 32,000/SF home they built (or the area, who knows) and realized they’d never sell it for what they have in it, as the 3 largest home sales near Branson that year were between $1.4 mil to $2.0 mil, so they instead donated it to charity and can take a charitable donation on the entire $10 mil purchase price vs a possible $8 mil non-deductible personal loss.

We also don’t know if the home has any problems, and considering that whoever built it (assuming they’re from that area) has surely never built a home even a quarter of that size, it’s possible they underbid it & started cutting corners or there are some existing or latent problems due to the size of the job being more than the builder & his subs could handle.  Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.  Keep in mind I’m only speculating as I don’t know who the builder was.

Now what happens? They’ll probably get back over $4 million in tax savings on the $10 million investment given to charity, so they’ll only lose $6 mil vs $8 mil if they had sold it AND now they look like heroes.  This decision makes them look like heroes & saves them $2 million.

And you thought only politicians, lawyers, car salesmen & mechanics were the only ones full of sh*t.