F CPAC

Rather than worry about important things, like, well, the complete obliteration of the global economic machine, nuclear proliferation, several countries that we are currently fighting wars against, my lack of health insurance, blah blah blah, Republicans have spent the past bit at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC for those that like making things sound like pharmaceutical solutions to their daily problems. At first glance, I was all for it. I fooled myself into thinking that the politicians, pundits, and personalities I have absolutely hated for years were going to get together to talk about how they could join current initiatives aimed at reforming corrupt government, fixing economic strangulation, and, in general, helping out people that need help (those making less than $200,000, those without insurance, those who have lost their jobs, those who will likely loose their jobs soon).

I was totally wrong. Rather than join in an effort aimed at helping countless people throughout the country, conservatives got together to talk about how stupid the current path is, and to decide that Mitt Romney will be the best next president ever, and of course some chanting of "smaller government, smaller government, blah blah blah".

1) We're, like, 30 days into Obama's presidency, right? A bit of quick math in my head tells me that about 98% or his presidency is left. Lay off with the 2012 campaign for a bit please, no one cares if you guys think Mitt Romney is the right guy now. Chances are, his boyfriend will force him out of the closet, he'll accidentally not love thy neighbor, and who knows, maybe he'll even say a substantive statement concerning realistic current affairs. Any one of these, let alone all of them, will completely alienate the conservative base and will lead to a most thrilling of 2012 landslides.

2) I'm totally on to you. What Republicans are banking on (that's sort of a pun...wait for it) is that the current approach of bailouts and stimulus packages completely fails. That's all they can do. If they join the current administrations remedy, they won't be able to take credit for the achievements, and won't be in a situation to win any seats in upcoming midterm elections let alone a possible presidency in 2012. If the current plan fails, well, we're all screwed. But, if it fails, and Republicans complained about it the whole time, they could sort of take credit for being the party opposed to the thing that failed (not that that's really an accomplishment, it's sort of coincidental). They'd be the party of at least our bad idea, bound for failure, wasn't implemented.

The moral of the story is that the Republican party is willing to let the world collapse due to a stubborn, antiquated ideology that clearly has no chance of alleviating any of our current economic aches. Why are they willing to let this happen? Either because they are completely crazy and actually believe in what they preach (quite literally preach nowadays), or because they need to keep their jobs, either way, it's silly.

All this lashing, and I didn't even mention all the stupid shit people are saying against proposed carbon trading. wow.

Weird, Actors and Actresses Can't Read

Yeah, I'm a loser. On this lovely Sunday evening, I drove my sister to an Oscar party, I went to a diner and ate cherry pie with ice cream, and I watched the second half of the Oscars. Everyone talks about how long the thank you speeches are and what not. The way I see it, whatever. They just won the best award available to them (sort of like the employee of the month award at the Taco Bell down the street). When they stutter and stammer and cry and fall all over themselves in saying thanks to all the people in their production, it's sort of cute. When presenters, however, have unbelievable difficulty getting through a relatively simple sentence full of commonplace congratulatory adjectives, I can do nothing but laugh my ass off and wonder how much freakin' money I could be making as an actor, or at least, a presenter.

Bandit Love

I don't want to come off like I condone bank robberies, but I after they've stolen so much money from us (both directly through absurd mortgages and indirectly by spending out tax money derived bailouts on monochromatic m&m's, prostitutes, and Lexus's), I think it's not so surprising to see the recent spike in occurrences. Not only have I never seen a guard in a bank recently (let alone an armed guard), the unnecessarily friendly attitude is like that of an insecure friend who does everything in his or her capacity to make you happy out of fear that you will drop said friend at the drop of a hat (unless, of course, they pick your hat up for you).

I, for one, would never have the balls to rob a bank. Women, on the other hand, are increasingly likely to have the balls required to rob a bank. Now I don't want to cause any confusion. Females around the country aren't waking up between Monday and Friday during non-bank holidays with a new set of bank-robbing, testosterone-filled sugar lumps. Rather, they are waking up and realizing their full potential, and using the deceptive and purely adorable tactics they've used on me for years.

I can't bring my miserly mind to recollect the number of drinks I've purchased for women in my life (many of them were completely unprovoked). If I were a bank teller, and a pretty woman walked into the bank (probably with dimples, some sort of punky fringe, and Nina Ricci l'air du temps), I would think to myself, "man, when she comes to my booth for a mundane transaction, I'm going to totally make her day and give her all the money in the vault...." If she had the daring charm to actually ask for all of the money in the vault, well, I'd definitely give it to her and think to myself, "good for her, I like it when women take it upon themselves to make situations rather than sitting around waiting for some sort of chivalrous act from an increasingly less bold masculine form."

So, is it surprising that more and more women (sometimes cute as a Lilly Allen overcoat button) are robbing banks of their worth? Absolutely not. Does it suck that this is happening while I am not a bank clerk? Most certainly. Just imagine how awesome it would be 10 years down the line when I tell my kids about the time I met their mother, "when she put that gun in my face and yelled at me for trying to add a lollipop to the bag of money I was handing her over the counter, I knew we were destined for Chinese takeout, community gardening, a mantle covered in photos of ourselves wearing sweaters and petting diseased animals at petting zoos, we were destined for love."

Stop Confessing

While sitting around the other day, watching my likely-made-for-women television programming (this because of all the tampon commercials), I saw a preview for a new movie Confessions of a Shopaholic. The story is apparently about some girl that loves to shop and ends up working for some sort of economical living periodical (at least that's what I think it might slightly be about). It could be a totally alright movie, maybe not my cup of orange ginger tea, but surely someone out there might like it. I'm not upset about the consumerist dreams that movies like this instill in receptive minds throughout urban, suburban, and forgotten rural America. No, it will clearly be a romantic comedy glorifying the overly consumptive tradition of American culture through somewhat ironic jest. The thing that bothers me is the title. Why does it have to be labeled as a confessions piece? Is the movie really going to be some shopaholic standing in front of the camera listing off their shopping-related confessions?

No, it clearly won't be a list of confessions. The thing is though, in addition to promoting buy-a-philic behavior, it's perpetuating an absolutely miserable movie making habit: making films called Confessions of a Blah Blah Blah.

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
Confessions of a Sushi Addict
Confessions of a Thug
Confessione di un commissario di polizia al procuratore della republica

These movies have three things in common: (1) they all have the same word in the title, (2) I've never seen any of them, and (3) despite not having seen any of them I am unbelievably confident that they suck. Oh yeah, they also aren't really confessions at all. In order to confess to something, it has to be something that brings shame to you (hence the whole confession part) and will most likely leave you broken in a rubble of excommunicated bits and bobs. It's not a confession if, upon disclosing this terribly ordinary secret, you fall in love, or are hugged, or are somehow given a nugget of undue respect.

I'm sure the sushi lover was embraced by his sushi hating stepfather. The thug probably got given a record deal, or wrote a book about the streets. The drama queen probably lived a fairy tale life (actually, she probably got birthing hips, bad skin, and an inexplicable infatuation with small stuffed collectible animals). I can't read Spanish (is that in Spanish). The shopaholic will undoubtedly reveal her true identity at the thrifty financial magazine and fall into the arms of some impossibly dashing jackass (not so dashing when he gets drunk and threatens to kick my ass at a bar for calling him a fascist is he?).

The question is, will you be happy for her? Will you envy her? Will her "confession" have moved you to stop buying all the stupid crap your credit report can't possibly justify? Probably not. It'll probably send you to the coupon section where you'll try to find a deal on something that looks like something you saw someone wear or do on TV once. Luckily for us, your frivolous consumerism is exactly what we need right now.

Celtic Women

I'll admit that I love the Irish. I wash I was Irish. I want a strong Irish jawline and a handful of rowdy relatives to serve in my gang of street thugs, waging war against the neighboring Ukranian community or other continental gangs (the Irish have had a long standing alliance with other island peoples like the Puerto Ricans, Fijians, and those oh so cute Tamil Tigers). So, in addition to this fairytale gang life, the Irish have a fairly absurdly attractive female population with an accent that melts you in love and/or fear. I love Irish women.

All that said, you would have to be a complete tool to pay for tickets to see "Celtic Women". Even if you gave me a ticket and a ride to the show, I don't think I would go. There isn't really a good way to explain my aversion to this unbelievably miserable event. Just watch, it's incredibly alluring, but let me tell you now: these women singers and fiddlers are not peasants from the Dark Ages brought to the future by some Bill and Ted-esque device, nor will they fall in love with you. They work for the Irish Embassy. They know English and Gaelic. That's it. Adults grown in a pound of child stars fed sugar water out of upside down bottles and forced to perform old Irish tunes for treats and for fecal clean up.

Sign Removal

So, I was sitting at Starbucks yesterday drinking a coffee and having a scone (I was given a gift certificate by my sister who was given the gift certificate by my cousin). To my right, a meeting gone wrong. Some overconfident Starbucks regional manager or something was absolutely torching a store shift manager to the point of tears. They both had an unacceptable amount of moose in their hair leaving it overly fragrant, shiny and curly, kind of like a poodle soaked in stripper perfume.

Anyway, to my left were a couple of Latino guys (I was in fact the only white guy in this Starbucks which made for an oddly unconventional experience). These guys were talking about some album they were producing. They were dressed like the type of guys you'd see in commercials that come to your house to estimate the costs of carpet replacement. They were talking about how to appropriately pose, when the light is good for intimidating photography, what they think about this reggaeton song versus that reggaeton song.

As these guys were leaving, they surround me. I stuff my head into my note cards hoping they'll just leave me alone, but no, they stay, and one of them asks, "hey are you that....are you that sign removal man....the man that removes signs?" He did this while holding an imaginary scraper tool and scraping some invisible object that was apparently between us. I said, "no, but keep me in mind for your future sign removal work." I thought the whole thing went well enough, but then it was brought to my attention that this may be some sort of code for some other much less savory.

Is this where we are now in society? Have we gotten to the point where a random reggaeton artist can't ask some random dude about a general service without raising suspicion of his true intentions? Either way, I'm not going back to that Starbucks.