I am Anti-Driving and I am PROUD!

            Yes, it's true,I am anti-driving.  I know it’s a controversial position to take, but I am deeply, sincerely, viscerally against people driving cars when they do not have a legally obtained driver’s license. 

I know what you’re thinking: how can I be so heartless to deny the blessing of driving a vehicle to those who have not obtained a driver’s license.  The process of getting a driver’s license is ridiculously burdensome and convoluted: getting a permit and being allowed to practice ONLY when a licensed person is available and willing to help out; having to study for a test and remember things like who has the right of way at a four-way stop; standing around smelly people in DMV lines for who knows how long; having to drive while being scrutinized and judged by a strange instructor you don’t know while taking the test; having to actually pay money for the license; getting an invariably embarrassing photo taken of yourself for the license.  Ugh, the list goes on and on. Being allowed to drive is essential to surviving in modern America these days.  How are you supposed to get to your work, experience all the regions and beauties of this world, and transport your children to school or activities if you aren’t legally allowed to drive.   How can you be expected to “pursue happiness” as Thomas Jefferson said, if you’re not allowed to drive.  Being allowed to drive on these publicly funded roads is a right, DANG IT!

            And I have to admit, those are all valid points.  But I don’t care.  I am too consumed with hate for others to think they are entitled to drive cars without first having to comply with all the rules and procedures of our corrupt and stupid government bureaucracy.  I support laws that demand people submit to tests to prove driving competency before they be allowed freedom to get behind the wheel unsupervised; you see, this way I can be sure that the broke, the idle, the children, and the blind (all groups that I find repulsive) are barred from driving themselves wherever they wish to go. 

            Now, others may tell you that they support these laws requiring a driver’s license because it can help minimize dangerous driving and accidents on the road by making sure only those who have demonstrated driving competency can drive (or also through the revoking of licenses of those who have demonstrated reckless and dangerous driving).  But don’t you believe a word of it.  They are all like me; they're consumed by hatred and bigotry and want to make sure that the number of people allowed to partake of the joys of driving is kept as small and restricted as possible.  I’m just the only one brave enough to be honest about my feelings.

I’m anti-driving and in spite of my blog's name I certainly don't want anybody "dreaming at the wheel."  Deal with it!

The Legend has Returned!...maybe; Beauty beating up the Beast

Oy, it's been many moons since last I posted here. Not that I was ever very good about frequently updating this blog, but it's been over six months since I put down any new words here. My thoughts have turned to the blog many times, and I've thought of a lot of different topics I could go on about, but somehow I failed to ever actually post. I got married May 7th (so far, still no regrets; I am very, very happy with that aspect of my life) and this past summer also started a one-year grad program to get an Masters in Education. My duties in that program included taking several education classes and interning as a student teacher in the morning. On top of that I still work part-time at the trophy shop. So I have do have quite a bit on my plate.

On the other hand, though...I do still have quite a bit of free time. I still manage somehow to spend hours upon hours of time on the internet (and, of course, blogging here would fall in that category), so obviously I do have time to work on ambitions of mine (another category which this blog would also fall under), but I keep on failing to do so. I want to actually write short stories and novels and get them published (especially now that my brother has self-published his own novel) and I want to do more free-time reading and expanding of my knowledge. And yet I keep on wasting time on this blasted internet thingie.

Well, I guess this post has been kind of aimless, but I wanted to tip my toe back in blogging waters again and hopefully reestablish the habit. I think part of the reason it's been so hard for me to get back to blogging is that I feel compelled to write long posts and any time I had an idea for a post I got intimidated about writing about it from all the angles I envisioned. I'm hoping I can learn to do shorter posts, but more frequently. So, here's a little morsel to chew on for today:

Devin's List of Movie Cliches that Need to Stop Now- Item 1: Anorexic Wisp of a Woman > Man Roughly the Size of a Tank

Alright, I get that, post-feminist revolution, a goal for movie makers and writers is to create empowered female role models who are actively controlling their own fate and not simply damsels in distress waiting for Prince Charming or Mario to come save them. But, I'm sorry, I just can't quite get rid of that itch of disbelief in my head when I watch a girl who looks like she maybe weighs 100 pounds wet holding her own with a 6 foot plus muscleman. Often in movies such female characters are supposed to have had special martial-arts/sword-fighting/assassin training before, but then they end up facing guys who also have had fight training and weigh twice as much as them, which would seem to neutralize any advantage the girl may have had against a regular Joe Schmoe.

It just ends up feeling like lazy feminist pandering to me and destroys my suspension of disbelief. It's not that I don't believe that there are women that could beat up men, particularly if the opponent were to be someone like wimpy me. In fact, I absolutely believe there are tough women out there that could hold their own in a fight; I just don't think they look like Angelina Jolie (see picture above). Seriously! Look at that bone of an arm there! And I'm supposed to believe she's capable of beating up trained CIA operatives (I don't know if she does any hand-to-hand combat in the movie Wanted but I know she does it in the movie Salt).

I do make exceptions if we're dealing with females who are supposed to be superhuman or have magical abilities (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but outside of that it really bothers me, especially now that it's been done over and over and over.

I'm all for strong female characters who are not constantly needing a man to save them, but I have two requests:
(1) Make them capable and active through their cleverness and courage (ala Elizabeth Swan in the first Pirates movie, not the sword fighting Elizabeth Swan of the sequels).
(2) Cast women who actually look like they could throw a punch and make you feel it.

One objection to my objections, though: I have a problem with the unrealistic portrayal of high school cheerleader-petite women tossing around barrel-chested thugs, but I don't have problems enjoying movies where the male hero is able to take on and defeat scores of bad guys in close combat (Bourne Identity) or guys twice as big as himself. These male heroes at least have visible biceps and muscle-definition, but is the latter scenario any more realistic than the first? Am I being consistent?

Food for thought.

PS: Oh, and my idea of doing a shorter post here: fail.

A Plethora of Good Music; Dr. Sowell Explains it All; Plus, thank you, Mr. Janitor

So my sister Jamie and I have both shared for many years the sentiment that the Japanese are a very peculiar people. That said, they have made some great animation, or anime. In particular I love the Hayao Miyazaki-directed films "Castle in the Sky," "Princess Mononoke," "Spirited Away," and "Howl's Moving Castle." However, I have also been tempted at times by their anime tv series. The cool thing that the Japanese peopled do is that they actually do long-form story telling with their cartoon series, with complex story lines that stretch across a season. They also do not relegate animation to just children-targeted stories or comedy. They do any genre, and I mean ANY genre, in their animation, and not just for kids but plenty of stuff for adults. On the bad side though, besides the sometimes bizarre, so-far-over-the-top-you-no-longer-even-know-what-the-word-"top"-means humor, they also may include not-so-Mormon-friendly stuff in their toons, such as nudity, swearing, or graphic violence.

The anime that now most tempts me (but which I shall probably never watch in its entirety) is an (intentionally) one-season anime from 1998 called "Cowboy Bebop." I remember a specific friend in high school really loving the series, but I never looked at it at the time (this was a common situation for me at high school; a number of my friends were big-time anime fans, but I never really got into it). Since then, though, I've looked up some clips from the show, and recently got on a kick of watching tons of clips from it after reading a recent Orson Scott Card-penned column that recommended the show.

It's a cool sci-fi show following a group of bounty hunters as they track down bounties and deal with other problems across the solar system in the late 21st century. It's real genre-bender, with sci-fi, film noir, western, and martial-arts action influences all rolled together. From the pieces I've watched of it, it seems like one of the most artistically impressive shows ever put on TV: the plots, the characters, the animation, and the action are all engrossing and extremely well-executed. However, it does contain some swearing, some very revealing costumes on the main female character (though no nudity), and the violence can be pretty graphic. So I don't know that I'll ever pick up the DVDs and watch it all. There is one element from the show about which I have no guilt indulging in: the music.

The show has "Bebop" (a kind of jazz) in the title, and the music does indeed play a huge part in the show, lending a unique mood and atmosphere to the proceedings. And while the soundtrack does contain a lot of jazz, it also does music of lots of other genres, like blues, rock and roll songs, and even classical-influenced choral pieces. What is so impressive to me about all this is that I think it's all composed and written by one composer: the Japanese female composer Yoko Kanno. It blows my mind at how well she's able to write music in so many different genres. So I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite pieces of music from the show and demonstrate the variety that is on display.

Tank!
This is an expanded version of the opening theme of the show. Pretty dang awesome, if you ask me. I've listened to this over and over.

Goodnight, Julia
Here's another sweet jazz piece, though of a much more somber mood.

Rain
A cool organ-dominated rock ballad from the show. It plays during a lead-up to a showdown between the main protagonist, super-awesome Spike, and a bunch of baddies led by his arch-nemisis, Vicious, in a big cathedral.

Spokey Dokey
Epic country-blues harmonica.

Call Me, Call Me
Just a nice, well-written rock song.

Green Bird
For me, this is such an amazingly beautiful choral-piano piece. It got stuck in my head for quite a while. As an example of how the show likes to juxtapose the actual onscreen events with music, this serene piece of music plays right after a wounded Spike is violently thrown through a stained-glass window. The music plays as he falls in slow-mo, surrounded by shards of broken glass, with random visions of his past flashing before his eyes and as the cathedral-level he was just thrown out of explodes (Spike left the man who chucked him out the window a nice gift in the form of an about-to-detonate grenade).

***

Also, Paul Simon just came out with a new album this past Tuesday: "So Beautiful or So What." Paul Simon is one of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters, certainly in my top-5. I already had two of his albums, "Graceland" and "Rhythm of the Saints," and I intend over the course of my life to purchase several others. I think there are not may songwriters out there that so consistently write songs, from their famous singles to their lesser-known tracks, that I like so much.

I'd been eagerly anticipating this album ever since hearing about it some time towards the end of last year. So I broke down and purchased this one online off amazon, and...at 69 the master's still got it! His songs remain very lyrically and musically creative and interesting. His voice still sounds great, too. I read an interview where he said he's given up smoking, dairy, and caffeine to protect his vocal cords. As such, I think it is time we have some Mormon missionaries ambush this guy. C'mon, he's prime material for baptism now. This album even includes a lot of mentions of God in these songs (though often in kind of a humorous way). Here's two of the singles he released from the album.

Getting Ready for Christmas Day

The Afterlife

So there's some cool music for y'all to check out. Your welcome, America.

***

Here's a dead-on quote from one of my favorite political commentators/economists/philosophers, Thomas Sowell: "Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected."

The whole column that that quote is from is a great read, laying out why increasing taxes on those evil, greedy rich people actually decreases tax revenue, and why the class warriors still want to do it anyway.

***

Also, I should give a shout-out to the really awesome janitor (whose name I sadly never got) who found the labtop that I had stupidly forgotten and left under my desk during my evening Wednesday class, and Fernando, who stored it in his office. For a time I seriously feared my labtop had been lost forever, but these two wonderful members of the human race preserved my labtop in safe keeping till I could come to reclaim it. Perhaps I shall write an ode to them sometime.