That the fighting scenes from "Power Rangers" were taken from a Japanese show and they dubbed the voices??? Just the scenes where they are all in their colorful uniforms and helmets. Which explains why the pink Ranger had a skirt uniform but the yellow one didn't (In Japan the yellow ranger was a boy)!
That IKEA used forced labor in Cold War Germany... During the 1970s and 80s, political prisoners in East Germany built products for IKEA and were paid pennies (approximately 4% of the typical German worker's salary). IKEA has said they regret that this happened at the time and blame less strict controls than they have today...
That Barry Manilow wrote the "Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There!" jingle
Shel Silverstein wrote "A Boy Named Sue" Suddenly the lyrics and their whimsical flow make a lot more sense, when you know they came from the same guy who wrote "Where the Sidewalk Ends".
Space Jam has a Pulp Fiction reference.
Studies reveal that cussing while in pain actually releases pain-subduing endorphins!F&#^ SH(*
In 2011, China banned movies and TV shows from portraying time travel.
Maybe you didn't know how out of control Photoshop has become..... Which explains the body image crisis plaguing Americans, particularly young women. Look at these Before/Afters. Apparently freckles are unacceptable.
And most of all...
Did you know that pugs serve a purpose (albeit a nerdy Star Wars reference one) in this world?
You know the ones I mean. They happen whether you don't work, or have a full-time job. Whether you are energetic or lethargic or just in-between. Those days when you can't force yourself to seem interested in anything anyone has to say, and you just stand there, eyes glazed over, waiting for them to stop talking. When you search through Spotify but no song can satisfy your mood. When you don't pay any of the bills or make any of those important phone calls. When you make a huge mess (spilled the cereal! Peeled your nail polish off all over the couch!) but you can't be bothered to clean it up. Those days when you did the laundry, and you pulled it out of the basket, but you don't actually put it away. When you ignore the bulbous screaming eyes of the goldfish whose tank hasn't been cleaned in...who knows how long, but it ain't good. When you run every yellow light you hit. And that last one back there might have been red. When you hit "ignore" to all of your phone calls and only answer the funny text messages. Those days when you can feel your brain just falling asleep, though your eyes are still open and you have this sensation that you should be doing something important... oh yeah, you're still at work. And it is only 11am. When you desperately need to go grocery shopping and end up picking up something for dinner and that's it. Until the next night when you come home to an empty pantry and go to the grocery store again. Those days when you put on your exercise clothes and tennis shoes and end up not exercising. And maybe just watching TV instead. When people are coming over and you're too tired to pick up or vacuum so you just spray some air freshener and light a candle. This is just to say, we all get em. DON'T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF. It doesn't mean you are a bad person, or a lazy schmuck (though you might be lazy, who knows? I'm not one to pass judgement on my readers) or a bad wife/husband/parent/sister/brother/child/second niece/employee/employer. It just mean you are human. And probably that you need a rest. So take a rest. Treat yourself. Don't worry about doing anything or thinking anything and just collapse anywhere--the couch, floor, bed, bathtub (just don't drown) and just be. This whole thing has been around since the beginning of time. Every ancient culture and modern one has experienced it to boot. In I Love Lucy they even have a word for it -- "dauncy." Evidence that it isn't just you: "When late morning rolls around and you're feeling a bit out of sorts, Don't worry; you're probably just a little eleven o'clockish." -A.A. Milne "Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired." -Mark Twain “I must be overtired', Buttercup managed. 'The excitement and all.' 'Rest then', her mother cautioned. 'Terrible things can happen when you're overtired. I was overtired the night your father proposed.” -William Goldman “Rest and peace should not be left until you're deceased. They are two vital life incredients everybody needs and seeks.” -Rasheed Ogunlaru "Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit." -Chekhov “Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.” -Jane Austen “Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.” -Walter Kirn
See??? And these hieroglyphics are all about the significance of an afternoon nap in the Ancient Egyptian culture. Maybe.
Apologies, my mind as all ajumble. All is happening so fast. Can you feel your country changing? I do. Can you feel the differences in the modern world? Call me paranoid and dramatic, call me Hunter S. Thompson on a bad trip, but the days Eisenhower and Orwell warned us about are here. ["In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." -President Eisenhower, 1961]
The Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell, has resigned. Coincidence? I think not. Also interesting, considering Patreaus resigned in November.
His replacement is the Legal Adviser to the National Security Counsel and Deputy Counsel to the President, Avril Haines, the first woman to hold this position. And she sounds like a saucy one--she used to read erotica aloud at a bookstore in Baltimore. Is that what we need? A sexy literary nerd turned spy? A sassy-pants lady in charge? I wonder what's going on behind the curtain?
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself." John Adams
"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." Samuel Adams
"Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master." Dwight D. Eisenhower
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." Benjamin Franklin
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Abraham Lincoln
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." Abraham Lincoln
What kind of power do we hold as individuals? As citizens? Are we evolving for good, devolving negatively? What can one person do?
What have we become when we can go to the moon but won't walk across the street to visit our neighbor?
When we have the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect us and our privacy from the government, but it is exempt from these laws?
Are you afraid yet?
From T.S. Eliot:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
...
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Last night Eli and I were lying in bed. He was half-asleep and I was reading my book (Frank Abagnale is such an interesting guy!!!!) and Eli blurted out "I HATE the term 'whistle blower.'"
I couldn't agree more.
This phrase indicates beady-eyed informants, an uptight person low on the totem condemning those above him, perhaps even someone greedy for recognition, compensation, or revenge.
It certainly is not flattering.
I remember being in a talk at a job once about a Whistle-blower's hotline and the speaker reassuring us we would not be punished for calling the 1-800 number to report our superiors and that it is all strictly anonymous, blah blah blah. The guy I was sitting next to in the meeting turned to his co-worker and said "that's what they tell you, but it's certainly different than what happened to Jim."
When I saw those posters in the office, advertising the hotline, I thought who would actually call them? They hang these signs with the phone number over the drinking fountain, as if someone wants to be caught writing it down on a sticky note or typing it into their cell phone...Is it even possible to remain fully anonymous? Anyone could call in and report any company, pretending they work there. You would have to prove who you are and that your information is valid.
And most of all, you have to trust the person on the other end of the phone.
And considering our phone calls are all monitored by the eye in the sky, it is highly doubtful you'd have time to report Big Brother before your house combusted or some mysterious guys came around to pick you up.
Which is to say, I understand why Snowden did what he did, in lying to everyone and leaving the country.
Some people are calling him a coward for it, or doubting his credibility.
A lot of people are comparing him to Daniel Ellsberg (I wrote about him here) and protesting with "Ellsberg didn't leave! He stood behind his story on American soil instead of turning tail.." They do not respect Snowden because he fled.
But times have changed. Ellsberg put out the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s, long before the extensive wire-tapping, satellite, and internet access of today. Ellsberg had his evidence against the government published in multiple national newspapers (back when people read the newspaper) and his story was so prominent that once he had ensured the American people were informed, he turned himself in, and he was too recognized at this point for anyone to "take him out" (you know, kill the messenger, stop the transmission).
But Snowden ran a much higher risk simply because of modern technologies capabilities.
He had less time and higher risk to get the story out while maintaining anonymity. And considering all of the distractions and bullshit priorities of Americans today, it is quite a bit more difficult to turn this leak into a story big enough to get global attention and make citizens sit up and inform themselves.
When we've got Facebook, tweets, and all the other random social media that gives us snippets of the personal lives of others, it is difficult to comprehend the fact that the government is interested in all of this too, though for a more sinister purpose than a little daytime stalking of your friends/crush/co-workers.
A lot of people have trouble reading (and grasping) anything longer than a paragraph update nowadays, let alone an article about a guy revealing just what the government is doing to curtail our personal privacy.
Things working in his favor: 1. the fact that he was interviewed and released a video explaining what he did and why. 2. His age. 3. The fact that he is a "normal guy"-- a high school dropout that happens to be brilliant, has a girlfriend, had a sick pad in Hawaii. He isn't Jason Bourne or James Bond, he has glasses and a goatee and a weird haircut and he probably can't twist someone's neck in one motion so swift and angled that it kills them. Maybe he can't even fire a gun, who knows?
A lot of my generation can sympathize with him. If he were a single PhD-holder in his mid-fifties, this would not have gotten near as much buzz.
The benefit of his age also makes young people go "could I have done that????" and ponder the personal risks for us and when it is worth it to call out a major government organization for the benefit of your country.
Eli and I agree that we don't much like Assange--he is aloof, kind of grotesque looking, and just comes across as this guy with an "I don't have anything to lose and I want attention" attitude.
He does not have a voice. He is slightly unpleasant. His damning record is not too inspiring to his cause either (no, I don't necessarily believe he raped those women, it could have been a gov't ploy to capture him, but he does have a dating record of being a total creeper).
On the other hand, we have Snowden. A guy you could have a beer and normal conversation with.
A guy that has sacrificed so much, possible the remainder of his free life, to get the word out to US.
I think if he had tried to do the same thing while on American soil, he would have had a hell of a harder time and perhaps not have succeeded.
And now that his word is out and has been highly circulated, it amounts to a small magnitude of protection for him. If he disappears or dies at this point, everyone will know why and what it means and it will only make his voice louder.
Remember that the military-industrial complex has the capacity to take out a standing president...they did it to Kennedy.
So no, I do not think Snowden is a whistle-blower.
To me, that term is belittling and too limited to fathom just what this man has done.
So can we just call him what he is--A PATRIOT-- and be done with this whistle-blower nonsense?
Also, some 1984 quotes that ring true today, particularly regarding this issue.
Orwell saw it all coming.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." "When memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested." (it's only a matter of time). "You think there’s no other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself." (We have become so removed for each other and it is selfish self-protection is becoming more and more the status quo). "His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre." (When critical thought and self-expression become demonized, we become sheep that those in power can herd as they will). I think this snipper from Orwell in particular can be directed at Snowden, in countenance of a thank you: Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
