I haven't posted in a while, so here are a few random thoughts:

1. WALL-E is the best movie ever... But why is it that when you love a movie and then decide to acquire the soundtrack, that the music, more often than not, turns out to be not quite so good when there aren't any visuals to go with it? This is especially true with Pixar movies. Amazing movie, amazing story, amazing characters, music, everything! But the music just doesn't seem to work when you listen to it alone. Here I am, listening to the WALL-E soundtrack and there's one good track on it... Which just so happens to be that eerie apocalyptic music that plays at the very beginning of the movie. The rest is far too ambient to be of any real value. That, and the music that does stand on its own is made by none other than Peter Gabriel... That's right. The guy Ubisoft insisted on putting into Uru as a selling point alone. You bet it was for marketing purposes... Not only did it not fit at all with the mood of any Myst game, but they even plastered the guy's name all over the box as if that was a reason for buying the stupid thing.

2. Holodecks in Star Trek: The Next Generation are very odd. On Voyager, if the EMH ever crossed the edge of the holoprojectors, that part of him would cease to exist, period, until he moved back into the projection area. The holodecks in TNG seem to have an interesting residual effect... Holographic lipstick remained on the real person even after they left, and holographic characters leaving the room lasted for several seconds until dissipating, and they insinuate that if you terminate a program with real people inside, that everyone would disappear if you did it incorrectly, as if the real people were also holograms. I think it's absolutely hilarious that the first real look at the TNG holodecks was also an episode where it broke down... You'd think that with such a high risk of deadly faults and susceptibilities that the things would either be isolated and shielded from outside interference or flat out removed from starships. I've come to the conclusion that Star Trek does not age very well at all... I guess this is a fact for most technology-based stories.

3. I'm playing EVE Online again. It started off just as boring as last time, but I did some more research and focused my character's learning on combat skills and now I'm in cruisers and killing things has become far easier. But then a friend of mine in real life invited me into a corporation that he was a part of and neglected to tell me that this particular corporation was at war with other corporations. Actually, there's a main corporation that he's a part of and then there's a training corporation that I'm a part of. New people start off in the training corp first for an evaluation period. The thing is that, officially, the training corp is not related to the main corp. They're supposed to be entire separate entities that each tend to themselves, so the main corp doesn't go out of their way to help the training corp. This proves to be an issue when the REST of the players know that they're basically the same corp, so when the main corp makes someone angry, they declare war on the training corp, too, but the main corp doesn't bother to help the training corp fight because, after all, they're not "officially" the same corp. It reeks of the typical "oh, sure, join our guild and we'll help you with anything you need" and then when the time comes to put the promises to the test? "We're busy, sorry, don't bother us. We can't help. Do it yourself." Right... First, if I thought I could do it myself, I wouldn't be asking. Second, though, they promised to help but are, in fact, not helping after I've decided to give them a shot. I'm debating leaving but, of course, if I do that, then I'm an arrogant fool who needs to learn how to deal with the fact that not everyone can come to my rescue whenever I call... Right. Because that's me to a tee, isn't it.

4. My new computer. After what? Two months of trying to work, I have a grand whopping total of 200 dollars in my bank account. I had expected to have my computer by now, but priorities keep changing around here and the jobs I'm assigned keep changing. First it's mass producing cabinets for some guy we know who never pays us on time, but at least it was a consistent source of income... But, alas, he hasn't wanted us to make cabints for weeks now, so then we had to concentrate on building a new kitchen for someone, but then I was relegated to figuring out how to make spinning wheels. That's right... Like those wool spinning wheels to make yarn? Apparently, it's a niche market with some strong demand in our area, since there's a lot of general backwards history-loving fanatics people who enjoy looking back to the "good old days" re-enacting and such. (Sorry, I'm feeling particularly snarky right now. My area of interest is, quite clearly, looking forward to the next technological breakthrough... Not wishing to live in the wild west.) The only problem with this is that nobody knows exactly how to make a spinning wheel, and I'm left to do a lot of the work by myself and it's taking far, far, far longer than certain people have predicted. I am not at all pleased and I may be looking into mowing yards with my brother. Unfortunately, the average work day is about 10 hours, from 7 to 5, and that will severely cut into my blogging and general "getting online-ness". On the other hand, my brother gets some pretty nice checks, even after taxes (which are taken care of by the employer, I might add). Soon, when college and school starts up again, there will be a shortage of people to mow, and I could probably easily get a job, but it would be from then until the beginning of winter. Hopefully the whole making 2000 dollar spinning wheels plan will pan out and I can make some nice money doing that, but even if we sell them for that much, I don't see myself making as much as my brother, since I obviously won't get all 2000 dollars. I might be lucky to make what I've always made...

5. (Which is the number of Riven, not that anyone remembers Riven anymore. Mysterium? Hah... More like Uru-Fanaticism-Erium, but that clearly doesn't sound as awesome as "Mysterium", nor is it something that people could even pronounce, so I understand why they keep the old name, even if it is misleading.) Anyway, 5 is that I'm tired and I'm going to go to bed now... I could inject something about liberals and Obama here, but I think that if anyone's been reading any news lately, they could easily see what's going on with the "objective" mainstream media and wouldn't need me to point it out. And now, without further ado, I will sign off on a post that could easily be turned in for a day of NaNoWriMo. (Which, didn't you hear, is such an absolutely worthless thing to do? Didn't you hear that it encourages people to write complete crap? Yeah! That's what I've been told... Those of us who actually participate know just how hilariously ironic those claims are, heheh.)

Yeah, I'm going now... Before I overdose on cynical sarcasm and hurt someone's brain or feelings (or both)! Not that, you know... Such a thing would be a bad thing. I mean, it could be, but I'm not lying or twisting the words of anyone. That could be an interesting philosophical discussion. I've already had one about the morality of lying to people to comfort them, but what about using the truth even if you know it could hurt people? Sorta the same thing, but opposite, only not... Guess it would depend on if your intentions are to hurt. I guess it's one thing to intentionally want to hurt by wielding the truth as a cudgel, and quite another to use the truth in a discussion with the intention of being truthful. You could know that it would hurt someone, but you say it anyway, not to intentionally hurt... The hurt would be more like a side-effect. I guess there's some truth to the phrase "the truth hurts", eh? Yeah... See, here I go editing a post I've made in an effort to inject more ideas nobody wants to hear into a post that nobody reads.

I've come to realize that I make massive edits to my posts after I've posted them... I don't know why I do that. I'll post it and read it and then think "oh, I should probably change that". I guess I need to start treating this as slightly more professional. Decide a topic I want to write on and then give myself at least a day to write it, read it and tweak it before posting it. It's interesting how my blog filled with simple posts about random things (that nobody cares about) has evolved into a site of mostly political commentary (that nobody cares about) mixed in with the simple posts about random things (that nobody cares about). Perhaps I should split my site into two sections...

Speaking of commentary, I was debating with myself a few days ago. It's fun! You should try it. It helps exercise the mind. But, there I was, listening to sports radio after The Peter Heck Show, and I thought to myself: You know, Mister Conservative, for all your complaining about bias in reporting the news, you sure don't seem to mind sports reporters injecting their opinions in their articles. And that got me thinking... There are people who report politics. There are people who commentate on politics. There are people who report sports. There are people who commentate on sports. Reporters should only be there to observe and report what happens and relay to the people without tampering or injecting opinions. Investigative reporting would be a little different in the sense that a reporter might notice something wrong with what someone's saying and then they'll go and dig up previous reports (that should have been reports written without tampering or injecting opinions) and compare them to what the person is saying now. That's not injecting opinion. That's you, as an objective reporter, being interested only in the truth and when someone appear to be lying, you go and find proof and show everyone. That's reporting as it should be...

Commentating is the specific process of taking articles (or maybe making your own) and intentionally injecting your opinions. In commentating, people expect you to show your views! You're making comments about it! I have no problem with commentating. I listen to Rush Limbaugh and Peter Heck and I, obviously, commentate on politics based on my own views. I make no bones about it being how I see politics... I don't pawn it off as being objective reporting because it clearly isn't objective. I'm conservative. I'll look at something and go "that's right" or "that's wrong" and then tell you why I think that. That's not the place of a reporter. All they're supposed to do is sit there and ask questions to get the true picture. Sadly, reporters don't do this... They'll ask questions to get the picture they want and leave out information that they think will hurt the image they're trying to paint and then try to tell you "that's right" or "that's wrong". It shouldn't be that way. They should report it exactly as it is so that YOU, the reader, can say for yourself "that's right" or "that's wrong" without any of the reporter's ideologies clouding your judgment.

But there you go... An argument with myself. I commentate, I don't report. They're two entirely separate things, so I am clearly not being hypocritical in expecting reporters not to commentate, because they are, in fact, NOT commentators. When they manipulate stories, like everyone knows they all do now that it's obvious to even the Democrats that they pick favorites (Obama over Clinton... ouch, poor Hillary), they lose all credibility as an objective reporter and nothing they say can be taken at face value ever again.

You know, it's not that we're against moving away from using oil and gasoline to power the vast majority of the United States... We're only against liberals trying to move us away without giving us any viable alternatives RIGHT NOW. They tell us to stop using oil NOW and develop alternatives. The key here is "develop". They don't have usable alternatives right now. We're supposed to take care of that. All they care about is stopping oil, and then they give sketchy theories on how to compensate for the loss of a major source of energy and when the government tries to encourage drilling again, the liberals start pooping all over the place and try to tell us all that "it's only symbolic" and that it'll take 10 years before we start seeing more supply and that we shouldn't bother. What happened to the whole "think of the future" mentality these liberals keep professing? On the one hand, they want us all to think of the far future and stop this whole "global warming" thing, but on the other, they want to drag their feet and tell us that approving off-shore drilling is stupid because nothing will come of it for 10 years. Am I the only one who sees the blatant hypocrisy here? You can't have it both ways. You can't argue to think of the future for your own goals, and then argue the opposite for someone else's goals. That's just deceitful.

What we, the citizens and voters of the United States, want is to have normal energy sources until the time comes when it's actually worth it to switch. We understand that alternative renewable energy sources is a GOOD thing. We just realize that cutting oil out of the picture BEFORE we have alternative renewable energy sources is a BAD thing. If they want us to accept a different energy source, then come up with one that actually and practically works... Don't give us a bunch of theoretical methods that simply aren't viable and leave it up to us to make it work. Wind power? Solar power? We're not stupid. We know that these things are vast untapped sources, but we also know that the methods for collecting these sources are severely limited at the moment. If we want to tap into these sources, fine! Let's do it! But, in the meantime, while we research how to harness these sources in a way that will actually work for the future, we need to keep using oil. A major source of energy we're willing to go for is nuclear energy, but, of course, the liberals and environmentalists (if there's a difference) are all afraid of the radioactive waste that results from it, even though we could probably bury a lifetime's worth of waste in the space of a coffin. If it really bothers you that much to have the waste sitting in a concrete underground bunker in the middle of an inhospitable desert, then maybe we could aim the stuff at the moon. As far as I know, there's no atmosphere to contaminate up there. (Wait, we can't do that... We're planning on colonizing the moon, riiiiight. Well, we have a star nearby. Let's shoot it at that... It gives off plenty of radioactivity already and any spacecraft we send up there will vaporize long before it actually hits the Sun. Problem solved.)

Regardless, depriving us of oil without giving us alternatives that will completely and totally replace it is like going to a coastal region and declaring that fishing is illegal and that they need to find another way to generate revenue. It would economically cripple the region until they establish a new trade... It's not wise. In fact, it's ludicrous and insane. They're not going to be interested in changing on their own, so what you'd need to do is approach them, point out that fishing is bad and then provide them with a WORKING plan to wean them from the fishing market. You would not say "okay, no more fishing, find something else, you could try raising elephants" and then walk away. I hope you realize that's what happened during the Civil War... While I completely agree that racial-discrimination slavery is about as morally low as you can get, I also understand that the Union was almost as wrong to come through, rip out the single method of generating revenue and a stable economy that the South had, and then walk away, leaving the South to scramble around in a severely impoverished state in an effort to radically restructure the way they worked. If you ripped oil out of the picture without giving a working alternative plan, the country is going to HURT and hurt badly. What the liberals need to do is keep up the pressure and maybe pull their weight and use their own money to research alternative fuels, if it worries them that much. They need to slowly, and I stress the word SLOWLY, replace oil with an alternative that can, I must also stress the word CAN, work just as well as oil, if not better. An alternative that doesn't perform as well as oil will be unacceptable. It will take time, but time is something they like to tell us. "We need to go green today to save the planet tomorrow." In one breath, they seem smart, as liberals first seem to be... But in the other, they go off the deep end, as liberals usually turn out to do, and want to crush this country's economy by ripping out the primary source of energy overnight and leave us all to scramble for alternatives while everything in this country comes to a screeching halt. It may be inadvertant, due to their low comprehension of economies, and not due to their raging hatred of the United States. Although some people clearly hate (hello, Michelle Obama), I wouldn't say it's the goal of all liberals to kill the country, but I will say that they don't seem to know enough to realize that's what would happen.

I just think it's amazing that the liberals are all the time harping about preserving the future of mankind and that we need to make changes NOW in an effort to help the FUTURE, but when conservatives do something like pass a law to increase our native supply of oil in an effort to make it cheaper in the FUTURE, the liberals complain that it's not going to change anything NOW. Yes, well, just think of this: President Clinton, 10 years ago, vetoed a bill to allow drilling in Alaska? His reasons were the exact same thing. "It won't help anything now." (This is common knowledge, but I'm sure that if I don't provide a source to support something scathing about a Democrat, I'm going to get raked over the coals, so here's a Google Search link to as many articles about the ANWR drilling veto as you could hope for.) Well, guess what? It's 10 years in the future and we could all really be using that extra oil, wouldn't you agree? But, no! The liberals haven't changed their tune one bit. What's the definition of insanity? Repeating the same action over and over in an attempt to get a different result? I make it my hobby to follow politics and get in the mind of liberals so I can understand where they're coming from, but it's impossible to understand the mind of a party that's simply gone insane. They understand nothing and, as a result, there is nothing for me to understand.

Once again, I missed the boat on Gen Con Indy. One of the the largest gaming conventions in the country and it's only 60 miles away. I don't need a hotel... I could just drive back home every night, it's that close. Four days of gaming bliss and I keep forgetting until the last minute. I need something to remind me of it far in advance so I can put it on the calendar to say "Okay! This is Gen Con... Nobody else plan stuff!"

I remembered that Video Games Live made a press release about their publishing music from the concert and I was checking up to see when they said it'd hit the shelves. (July 22, for the record, according to Amazon.com.) I then remembered that VGL makes a regular appearance in Indianapolis, so I decided to check their tour dates. Sure enough, they had two events for August 15 and 16. To humor myself, I decided to check to see if there were any seats available... THERE WERE. I was torn. I don't like large crowds of people, and I especially don't like sitting next to someone I don't know. Call it the wolf in me. Crowds are bad. (In fact, to side step a bit, we went to my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary and their tiny house was so cram packed full of people that I panicked and hid in one of the bedrooms until some peopel left! Okay... Maybe not panicked, but it was close.) Would I ignore my dislike for crowds to go see Video Games Live? There are an incredible amount of videos on YouTube, one of which is one I added to my favorites list... VGL did the music from the Myst series and it was phenomenal. As much as I dislike the Uru community of elitist hypocrites and the whole influx of people who think Exile is the best game in the series, I'll still always have a place in my heart for Myst. (In fact, to side step yet again, I went out and bought work shoes today and my eyes immediately went to the shoes that looked almost exactly like the hiking shoes you could pick for shoes in Uru. See? I don't dislike Uru or Cyan... I simply dislike the people who each think they're the single most important person in the universe and that nobody else's opinions could possibly be valid.)

Needless to say, it didn't take much to convince me to go. There's a bunch of other stuff before and after the music, so it would probably be a whole day adventure... That, and Nomad was pretty much "duh, there's absolutely no reason for you not to go", and I happened to agree. So I started researching the theater to find out which seats were the best... I think I settled on some seats near the middle aisle on the right side of the theater when facing the stage. Ground floor, near the center of the room. Pretty much as middle as you could get when sitting on the right side. Tickets were kind of expensive, but I thought it was worth it. Of course, I wouldn't go alone, so I needed to ask my brother if he would go with me and do the whole "presenting the idea to the parents" deal... Then I decided to check the calendar for if anything was planned that weekend, which I really should have done first because:

Mom signed us up for a Vision Forum convention in Anderson those very same two days. There goes the whole VGL thing... I didn't want to go before, so I'm sure you can imagine how much I want to go after tonight, eh? There's no word if VGL will be at Gen Con next year. They've been there off and on in the past. I guess I'll keep looking at the itinerary and see what happens. I could always go to the Chicago event, but... Chicago is a mess to drive through. I know how to get around Indianapolis! Bah, I say. At least I can use this as leverage in the future? "You made me go to a convention the same week as a video game music concert in our own state. Do you realize how much I gave up for that? You owe me one!"

So last Sunday, I was attempting to take a look at what our internet access throughput was actually supposed to be and I noticed that AT&T, since the merger, had managed to completely rework the way we check the account information on our services. Of course, the combination of accounts was done in a less than graceful manner and I had to spend hours playing with the system and a plethora of passwords I thought I might have used to make security questions so I could email myself the passwords and generally get things squared away. During this process, I decided to check up on the latest DSL plans... It turns out that our plan, which was actually a custom plan when we first got it, had managed to relegate itself to the lowest plan and two far faster plans had popped up.

Our plan was 1500kbps/384kbps... Or supposed to be. In practice, of course, those numbers were far smaller in the literal sense when you download and upload. Then there was a mid-grade plan, 3000kbps/512kbps and then a whopper of a plan, 6000kbps/768kbps. Of course, my eyes went to the biggest and baddest... The 6mbps. Then the price. Merely 10 more dollars for that plan than the plan we had. I almost died right then and there our of pure joy. 10 dollars to quadruple download and double upload? There was no doubt about it... I was going to check it out. So I did! I subscribed to it and AT&T said they'd adjust the service for me in 2-3 days and to leave the modem on so they could communicate with it. (I wish they didn't use such novice terminology... Would like to know what they're actually doing to the modem, if they only mean leave it on to learn, because my modem does that at boot anyway.)

Then I started reading up on DSL... Advanced stuff like Signal-to-Noise Ratios and Line Attentuation. The stuff that makes or breaks a DSL connection. Honestly, if you can read these two readouts on your DSL connection, you'll learn everything you need to learn about the quality. It turns out that my Line Attenuation was telling me that my strip of telephone cable from house to DSLAM (the device that generates DSL connections) was at the absolute maximum length. At least that's what it said. Attenuation was at 57.5dB, which is what you roughly get with around 4100 meters of cable... 2.5 miles. That's the outer fringes of DSL access. It might be more and it might be less, but I think that as long as your SNR and Attenuation are within acceptable parameters, you could be at any distance. Anyway... My SNR was 16.5dB, which is pretty good. Not outstanding, not bad... Just good. 16.5dB and 57.5dB at just 1.5mbps? The numbers were turning out to be not so kind to increasing speeds. I figured I'd shoot a question off to tech support and see if they could run a line-level sync rate test to see how much signal my lines could support! Enter AT&T chat technician.

I told him that I was planning on upgrading from the lowest DSL plan and that I was wanting to know how much maximum bandwidth my telephone line was capable of carrying. After a lengthy pause, he proceeded to link me to a bandwidth monitor. You know, the kind that only work once you have an internet connection? The kind that only monitors what you're using at the moment? Yeah. One of those. To humor him, I used the thing and ran the numbers and then read underneath that if I wanted to know the maximum possible sync rate between DSLAM and modem that a technician would have to do it with special hardware. So I asked him about it! I used the proper terms and everything... I wanted to know the maximum possible sync rate for my lines. He replied in such an amazingly powerful way that I'm still reeling from the sheer awe of the revelation. He said, and I quote to the exact letter: "Yes." I asked for the maximum possible sync rate and he said "Yes" like he was trying to impress me with a Kosh imitation or something. As I told TW, that's when I very slowly backed away, thanked him for his time, and closed the window... Kind of creepy.

Anyway, so I keep reading about numbers and distance and read charts and examples and I came to the conclusion that I might be able to support around 4000kbps/768kbps based on numbers alone, and that I had to make a decision on to keep paying 10 extra dollars for the 6000/768 plan when it was only going to be 4000/768. The next plan down is 3000/512, so I had to know if losing 1000/256 was going to be acceptable to save 5 dollars. I decided to let things play out... I could, after all, call them up and tell them to lower my plan again if nothing worked.

Fast forward to today: I wake up and notice that the modem had reset during the night. (I keep IMs open all night now, with proper idle time reporting and away message usage, I might add, and noticed that AIM had popped up a window declaring that I was connected from two locations... Just means my IP changes.) I access the modem's configuration pages and VOILA! 4800/768 was what it reported... Up from 1538/384 or something like that. Not 6000, as I predicted, but considerably higher than the 4000 that I did. SNR was 6dB and Line Attenuation remained the same, as I thought it would. SNR of 6? Eh... Acceptable. I read that once you're at 6, there's no point in going higher since the noise is too great. Guess that's accurate after all. I did some funky testing and moved the DSL modem outside to the demarc (the gray telephone box on the side of your house) to see how fast DSL connected there... Cut out all in-house wiring and extra noise generated by it. It connected at somewhere around 5200/768. Wow... I think I need to run a dedicated DSL line, don't you think?

So I do more reading and research and it appears that I need to buy some bulk Category 5E shielded cabling and string it from a DSL splitter in the demarc to either the modem directly, or a wall jack. This will be the heavy duty stuff, too... Someone who knows their stuff, but not quite, will probably come by like they do at forums discussing this option and be quick to point out that Cat5 has more pairs than RJ11 jacks can handle and that you should use Cat3 and blah blah blah. Go away. I'm going to have to crimp my own pinout, I know that... But nothing quite says shielded like Category 5 cables. Only going to use 2 wires, of course, but it's entirely possible. I'm going to have to read up more on DSL splitters and how to install them yourself... That's entirely possible, too, and I would much rather do it myself.

But there you go... I upgraded my DSL connection from 1500/384 to 6000/768 and the condition of my line said I would receive maybe 4000/768 but I managed to get 4800/768 on filters and over 5000 downstream when emulating a DSL splitter. I am very, very happy... I've only had the modem reset once on me so far. I'll have to do some extensive testing to make sure everything is working properly. When DSL connections get too noisy, they like to disconnect and reset. It's annoying and the only thing to do is slow down the connection speed, but I've always had random resets... I'm used to it and accept it as a quirk from being so far away from the DSLAM, but I'll have to see if the instances increase with faster speeds.

But I went from 150KB/s sustained (160KB/s peak burst) to 480KB/s sustained (500KB/s peak burst). That's a speed increase of around 320 percent for 10 more dollars a month. Not bad, eh? AT&T might not be so bad if they don't manage to abuse their monopoly again and decide to keep these nice low-priced broadband solutions. I'm officially impressed with DSL technology.

Well, it's that time again. The time where I finally amass 2,500 points on my Amazon.com Visa card and I get a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate! This time, I have a few things to pick from, but I don't know which ones to pick, meh... Five things come to mind:

1. Deep Space Nine Companion - $18.99
   Capella told me that this was a really amazing book with a ton of behind-the-scenes information. I've been watching Deep Space Nine a lot lately and I'm currently on a Star Trek high. I love these kind of books and I love Deep Space Nine... Can't go wrong with this one.
2. Super Mario Galaxy - $49.99
   Of course, what list wouldn't be complete without a Nintendo game on it? Been wanting to play this, sort of, but I haven't gotten around to it. I keep hearing amazing things about it, so I just need to go out and buy it... Could this be the perfect time to get it?
3. Contact Harvest - $10.17
   A while ago, I heard that a new Halo novel was being written... And that reminded me that I haven't purchased the current latest one: Contact Harvest. I don't care if you don't like first person shooters, the story in Halo is amazing and I've been collecting the novels and they're REALLY GOOD.
4. Ratatouille - $19.99
   I also collect Pixar movies. It doesn't matter what it is... If it's Pixar, I buy it. I haven't bought Ratatouille (that's two for two on correct spelling on the first attempt) yet, so this is a serious contender, but it's one of those "I haven't got around to it yet" things.
5. Gilligan's Island - $73.99
   This is a childhood TV show of mine and I just discovered tonight that they've bundled everything into a single series package... Really difficult for me not to buy it right now and completely forget about everything else. I would watch this over and over and over and over and...

As you can see, some of these aren't all $25... I'll probably team a couple of things up if I get something below $25. DS9 Companion and Contact Harvest, probably... Books, ahoy! Or, uhm... Maybe DS9 and Ratatouille? Ratatouille and Contact Harvest? Ugh. More decisions. Or I can get a game I've been hearing really good things about, but, to be honest, I've really not been interested in playing it, mostly because from what I've seen, it's just another Mario 64 or Mario Sunshine and I don't want to play another "let's do the same level 8 different times" Mario game. Or I can get Gilligan's Island! Oh... Man... Gilligan's Island. I'm telling you... That's a major upset in the list right there. None of those can hold a candle to Gilligan's Island... Not even Pixar. Maybe WALL-E can.. Hmm.

Anyone have any ideas? I'd like to order in the next week.

Got four things to mention today! One is from The Peter Heck Show (well, technically three, but I saw two of them myself earlier today) and one is from Tay, who has given me the heads up on things like this before! First up, Tay's thing:

Basically, it's more about how blacks are severely overcompensating for racism... Down in Texas, there was a county meeting and people were discussing how to better handle traffic tickets. (Google News link: HERE.) It seems that bureaucracy is at its finest in Dallas and paperwork would get misplaced and completely lost in the offices through which traffic ticket payments would travel through... A white commissioner said the office was a black hole. You know, those astronomical anomalies where stars are theorized to collapse in on themselves and create a gravity well so powerful that not even light can escape it? A term that a lot of people use to describe something that seems to drain resources. But, I mind you that I said this guy was a white commissioner. Okay? White. There were other commissioners in this meeting, of course, and one happened to be black, and now you can see how this exploded into a racial controversy:

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

Wow. Talk about a stretch. See what I mean about blacks LOOKING for ways to cry racism? Now, I'm going to be perfectly blunt here. He was either joking, which he was clearly not, seeing as how the judge in charge of the meeting ordered Mayfield to apologize, or he has absolutely no idea what a black hole really is. If he doesn't, then, I'm sorry... But he need to go back to school and learn what black holes really are. Also, there are theorized "white holes". It is what it sounds like... the polar opposite of a black hole. These are things that spew matter from their event horizon instead of sucking matter in. Clearly, a while hole does not describe the condition of the office losing money... In fact, government, as a whole, could never be described as a white hole. Money would never spontaneously appear in a government office, now would it? The whole story? Absolutely amazing... Thanks, Tay!

Next up on the agenda is a shocker of an article that Peter Heck showed us. It has to do with the effect of global warming. Remember my post a while ago about NASA using satellites to monitor the biosphere? And how they noticed that greenery has been on the rise? And that more plants means more animal life and that means, in general, that the planet is doing just dandy? Well, in case you don't want to believe NASA scientists, there's a story from Germany that has corroborating evidence! Scientists have, in fact, learned something incredibly shocking... Something nobody has understood for millennia: Plants... Like... Carbon Dioxide. (Google News like: HERE.) I know! It's unbelievable! According to their findings, increasing carbon dioxide to farm crops increased their yield by 10%. Of course, he tells everyone it's not an argument to curb the tide of rising CO2, and while I agree to an extent, I think it shows that reports of catastrophic global warming are greatly exaggerated. Actually, in the spirit of my never-ending search for taglines, I have created a great line for a bumper sticker:

PREVENT WORLD HUNGER: INCREASE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

There. I have now pulled a common liberal tactic and turned my stance of "the planet is not getting catastrophically hotter" into an emotional position of "you're depriving the hungry children in war-torn countries the food they need by decreasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." Not a bad position to take, if I do say so myself, eh? Now... Please understand that I agree that pollution is bad. I have no bones about cutting back on pollution. I hate it when I talk to people about not believing in catastophic global warming and they show my pictures of China pumping great billowing clouds of soot into the air. That's not proof of catastrophic global warming... That's proof of pollution. I know there's a pollution problem in some places and I'm all for it. Catastrophic global warming? The kind where the entire planet is doomed? Nah! In fact, that leads me into the third article:

Here's another article about global warming. It's from NewsBusters, but here's the Google News link if you're really dead set against treading on those dastardly conservative sources. I'm going to show you a headline used to describe an article supporting global warming and I want you to exercise your logical mind and see if there's anything wrong with it, okay? Right! Ready? Here it is:

Global warming causing California glacier to grow, scientists say

Read it very slowly so you can get the whole idea. Scientists are telling us that ice is getting colder... Because the planet is getting HOTTER. They go into a whole thing about how the ocean is getting hotter and making more moisture that moves inland and then falls as snow. (Actually, you really oughta read the NewsBusters article, because they grace you with an article where NASA says the oceans are, in fact, getting COLDER.) They say 90% of Earth's mountain glaciers are getting smaller in an attempt to make everyone scared to death about melting ice. (Pardon my novice skills in geology, but aren't there glaciers that AREN'T on mountains? How are they doing?) 90% of mountain glaciers are melting but one in California is getting bigger because the whole planet is getting hotter? Yeah, maybe not the whole planet, eh? It really doesn't get any better than this when it comes to showing proof AGAINST catastrophic global warming. Yes, pollution is a problem... Yes, the planet's climate is changing. But I'm 100% against the theory that the ENTIRE planet is getting hotter all at the same time and that we're all going to die unless we stop pumping oil and burning coal and testing weapons and whatever else they say causes global warming. And speaking of "whatever else" causes global warming... I saved the best for last:

This article is also from NewsBusters, because I like the way they lay out the article. They do, of course, share many links to different sources, and, as always, here's the Google News link if you want to check out as many sources as you want. People who make fun of the idea of man-made global warming would sometimes casually ask "well, what about cow farts?" That question is now in the process of being answered as a group of scientists in Argentina are drilling hoses into cow stomachs that lead into a big pink bag strapped to their bags in an effort to find out just how much gas a cow produces. It is absolutely HILARIOUS. They talk about emissions like they would talk about car fumes... In fact, the scientists were so shocked at the amount of gas produced and preliminary numbers say that 30% of Argentina's "carbon footprint" is caused by cows because methane is apparently more "destructive" than plain carbon dioxide.

Well, folks... I have a news flash for you. Living things pass gas. They breathe, they eat, they burp, they fart, they poop... They contaminate the biosphere every second, every day, every year for the entire lives and then they die and leave their rotting corpses all over the place. Even if we just limit the theorizing to just burps alone, I wonder how much carbon is actually the natural consequences of eating and NOT businesses pumping fumes all over the place.

So let's recap, shall we?

Black commissioner doesn't know what a "black hole" is and is immediately offended when the term is used in a proper context... It turns out plants actually like carbon dioxide (no kidding?) and that increasing carbon dioxide makes them grow more (I would grow more, too, if I ate more)... It turns out that the a California glacier is getting bigger BECAUSE the planet is getting warming, and that it's getting warmer because cows all over the world are burping and farting all of us into total annihilation.

This... All in just a single week. What a world we live in.