About the Xi Move For Longer Political Rule

CVS and Contempt for the Patient in California

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I want to live in a country where the law works to help the patient get their medication.

I have seen a man with ALS who needs his medication to work the next day be denied that medication and go home in pain. Dont tell me this isnt true. I was there. I know what the law says, I know what the pharmacist did. I know the man drove home in pain.

This is the 24 Hour CVS Pharmacy at El Norte Parkway not that anyone cares.

Shorter Posts After the Move

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I hope to spend more time on the blog after the move. The blog will evolve to shorter posts, mere sound bites as it were as that is all I can manage at this point in time. For those who have expressed concern, I appreciate your best wishes. I dont know if things will get better, but surely they will be different. Thats all I want to say in this post. Shorter posts, more pithy, a single point.

Expectations and Black Panther

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I recently saw Black Panther. I expected an important movie about people in spandex, and instead I got a movie that discussed such things as: 1. History is important to understanding a situation, 2. Mistakes made a generation ago that caused injustice will have an impact on the situation today, 3. Subsaharan Africa has nations but those nations are also made up of tribes with their own identity, 4. History has many excellent examples where disaffected ex-patriots serve in the army of a foreign power and come home with that knowledge in a big way, 5. Both the good guy and the bad guy loved their fathers, 6. Some people care about traditional ways of doing things even if those ways do not seem entirely rational to those outside the system.

I could go on.

This is not bad for a superhero movie.

Letter to my Congressman 2/16/2018

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I am particularly proud of this one.

John Wick and the Internet Movie Firearms Database

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For those of you who have not seen them, the John Wick movies are very spiritually evolved movies about a retired assassin whose wife dies and leaves him a dog. Some idiot Russian mobsters steal his car and kill his dog, so John goes on a killing spree.

Its a very gentle movie, one with a lot of value on many levels. I doubt that more than 200 or so people are killed, although I could be wrong. I do lose count.

I am pointing you to a particular sequence listed below. The guy Wick (Keanu Reeves) is after is in the hot tub protected by maybe 30 or 40 Russian bodyguards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-HSoOFdJ3s

But that is not the point.

Reload.... fire.

The point is to introduce you to an extraordinary resource: the Internet Movie Firearms Database. In which most movies are analysed by someone very knowledgable.

So please watch this sequence and then read about it here, and you will be impressed and enlightened, I think.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/John_Wick

Millions of People Will Be Hurt and America is Disgraced

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When I discuss the political situation with friends and others, I try to make two points. The first is that at best millions of people are going to be hurt because of the Trump disaster. The second is that every day that asshole is in office disgraces America.

I am ashamed of America that we have allowed this to happen and for it to have gone on this far.

I am ashamed of America that the Republicans are all traitors trying to destroy America.

So when I meet a Trump supporter online or otherwise I tell them what I think of them. Which is to say, that I despise them, that they are morons or worse, and that they must be destroyed for the sake of America and all our people.

The time for compromise is over, and it was over a long time ago.

Visual Effects and the Art of Explosive Decapitation

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What makes truly great visual effects? Animation, design, attention to detail and many other elements. Rarely does mere story affect the greatest work in the field, as modern technology has proven that plot and story are obsolete and not worth the added expense.

Recently reviewing a much overlooked masterpiece, Pirates of the Caribbean part 18, Dead Men Tell no Tales, I came across a fabulous example of the dedication and attention to the *smallest thing* that can turn merely good work into great work for the ages.

There are few truly great head explosions in the western cinema, and if you look closely at one of the attached frames you will see that "Dead Men" contributes to this canon with a notable entry.

Congratulations to all the artists involved for making our lives that much more fulfilling and enriched through the art of explosive decapitation!

Delusions of Reference and this Blog

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Do you think you are seeing yourself referenced in this blog or on Facebook only not by name? I might say “a very successful friend of mine” or maybe “a very smart friend of mine”. And you think I am talking about you, and get offended or something of that nature.

Well, I have bad news for you, its worse than you think. In fact, there is a pretty good chance I am not referring to you at all, and if I was, you would know it because I would have asked your permission first (whether or not I use your name). Always, every time. Pretty much.

It is possible, even likely, that the person I am referring to does not exist but may contain some indefinable essence of your sacred uniqueness (as we are all unique, dont you know, all God's children, etc) in some sort of composite character that I am creating in order to make a point about society, our lives, our civilization.

And you want me to stop, in fact you demand an apology on Facebook, and after I plead innocence, you tell me that is no excuse and so I end up blocking another old and dear friend. This is a bummer.

But I am not going to stop, and you are going to have to go away bitter in total ignorance of the fact that I was not talking about you at all.

Swine McConnell Sells Us Out to the Russians

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Write your congressman, you never know. Post what you say. Encourage others. Those of you who are rich swine from the exploitation of the poor (present company excepted of course) should also make progressive donations as the great ancient philosophers have said "money talks".