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Has anybody else noticed that Barack Obama sounds just like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson?
I'm waiting for the day to come when Barack says "I'll lay the smackdown on your roodie-poo, candy ass!" to somebody.
Congratulations Mr. President Elect, Barack Obama.
You ran a clean campaign and the people have spoken. I wish you the best of luck in your new position.
I do have one favor to ask.
Please don't fuck up.
It's time. GO VOTE!
If you didn't get to take advantage of the early voting then get out there today and VOTE!
Vote Democrat. Vote Green. Vote Independent. Vote Republican.
GO VOTE!
Friday afternoon my wife and went and voted. It took us about 15 minutes from the time we arrived at the Supervisor of Election's office to get in, cast our votes and get back out. I hope you vote and that you consider voting for Obama for President.
For the first time in my life I found myself voting mostly for Democrats. I hate that. Well, I don't hate that I voted mostly for Dems. I hate that I realized I was voting mostly for any one party over any other party. I'm not a fan of political parties in general. It just seems to me like too many politicans worry about "what is best for the party" instead of "what is best for the people." You cannot win a major election without the financial backing of one of the big political parties. One person has come close in my generation but he bailed out towards the end. Keep in mind that he was filthy rich and could afford all of the expenses involved.
So why did I vote mostly for the Dems? Because I found myself agreeing with more of the things done and said by the Dems candidates in my voting districts than I did with the others.
I'm sure some of you are still sitting there undecided on some of the issues, I can understand that. You may not even know what all of the issues are, I still don't myself. There is one issue though I want to point out if you are voting in Florida. Amendment 2 is on the polls and we don't need it. Not now, not ever.
Amendment 2 in Florida says: "Inasmuch as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized."
My objections to the Amendment start with my view that marriage is an institution of religion not law and should not have any legal impact or standing. I do not believe two people should be forced to agree to a religious ceremony/right to be able to express their love for each other and enjoy the legal benefits of such a relationship. There's that word "legal" again. Sadly the religious institue of marriage has become a matter of law in our country. I don't care if the two people are both men, both women or a man and woman. If you can find somebody in this world that loves you as much as you love them then you have done something right. You shouldn't need a 'marriage' to make it 'ok.'
The big problem with this amendment is the line "...no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent there of shall be valid or recognized." Jack and Joan have worked hard all of their lives to provide for their families. In their later years Jack lost his wife to breast cancer and Joan's husband died in a tragic automobile accident. By chance they happened to meet at a formal dinner party and felt a connection. Over time they realized they loved each other and wanted to spend the time they had left together. Having spent so many years in wonderful marriages they decide not to get married to each other because they don't want to tarnish the memory of those they lost. Instead they decided to file for a legal domestic partnership so they can take care of each other should anything happen. They sell their homes, pack their bags and move to sunny South Florida. Things were great for the first couple of years but then it happened. Was it a heart attack for Jack? Did Joan have a stroke? I don't know. Sadly one of them wound up in the hospital and the other one could not legally speak on his/her behalf. Perhaps Jack had a great insurance policy provided through is retirement and he added Joan to it, now those benefits to Joan are gone. Maybe the property was paid for in Joan's name, now Jack has none of it. Look at that last line again. See how it could have a negative impact on Jack and Joan?
There are two groups out there on Amendment 2.
One is opposed to it: http://www.sayno2.com/
One is supporting it: http://www.yes2marriage.org/
Before you go vote in Florida's elections take the time to hear both points of view.
When I got home after voting I found an interesting piece of mail waiting for me from the Republican Party of Florida. Take a look at the picture below:
Isn't that exactly what Osama, the guy in the picture, has done? He has run and he has been able to hide. Hell, we haven't been able to find him for the last seven years. I think that makes him the Hide & Go Seek champion of the world!
In March of 2002 President George W. Bush held a press conference where the subject of Osama bin Laden was brought up by reporters. Only six months into the war in Afghanistan President Bush indicates he has given up on finding the guy in the picture above. You know, the picture the Republican Party of Florida is using to say the search for Osama bin Laden won't be given up. My source for the quotes below is: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html
Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --
THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.
Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.
So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.
And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.
Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.
But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.
And we've got more work to do. See, that's the thing the American people have got to understand, that we've only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don't know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it's going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I'm not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Sounds like there might be some communication issues in the party.
Monday my wife wasn't feeling too good and by Wednesday she was just miserable. I started feeling the effects of this nasty little thing Thursday night and yesterday was no walk in the park. Friday after work we went to see our doctor and he gave us some antibiotics to help get rid of this thing.
So what happened with the haunted walking tour I wanted to go on? My wife and I went! We made it to the Pensacola Historical Society Museum about 650 thinking we would go on the 700 Red Light Distrct tour. Wrong! The earliest tour we could get on was the 800 tour. Luckily that was one of the RLD tours. I never knew Pensacola had an unoffically designated red light area. The area was in operation from the late 1800's through the late 1920's. Thirty years after the district had been cleared out by the city parents would still tell their daughters "Don't go South of Government St" because they didn't want them to be mistaken for working girls. The tour lasted an hour and we really had a great time. We didn't see any ghosts but it was very entertaining. If you're wondering why I went on the red light tour the answer is simple: I just didn't want to deal with screaming and/or silly kids.
At the end of the tour we learned something we didn't expect to learn. There is a peep show in downtown Pensacola! If you head down to the Pensacola Little Theatre on a show night you might get to see more than you expected. The PLT is showing The Rocky Horror Show to celebrate the season and the fans are showing up in costume. Watching the "maids" show up was quite entertaining, but that wasn't the peep show part. The PLT was the last stop on the walking tour. Because we couldn't go into the building we stood across the street and listened to the story of the haunted stage. It turns out that in the past the town gallows stood where the stage now stands. Creepy. While listening to the story the people in the tour noticed that windows on the second and third floors on the left side of the front of the building were frosted. We quickly learned these windows are frosted to provide privacy as they are in front of the ladies restroom on the second floor and a changing room on the third floor. When it's dark outside and light inside the frosting on the windows doesn't hide much. I never realized how many women take the time to cover the toilet seat with toilet paper before they use it.
Click the image below to see a larger version.
Here is today's Halloween Movie Suggestion: Sleepy Hollow!
Didn't I recommend that one already? Sort of. This time I expect you to put the kids to bed and get the Sleepy Hollow DVD staring Johnny Depp out and settle in for a nice scare.
This time around Ichabod Crane isn't the awkward school teacher of old. This time he's the awkward police officer sent from New York to investigate the murders in Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod has some new detecting theories to test and the Headless Horseman is going to give him plenty of opportunities to test them. This is a great take on a classic story. Turn down the lights, find somebody to hold and get ready to scream together.
The movie hit theatres on October 1st 1968. This is significant because the MPAA rating system did not come out until November 1968. What did this mean for the movie? It meant that theatre owners weren't overly concerned about who saw the movie and sold tickets to anybody that had the money to buy them. The level of gore in this movie was unprecedented and nobody really knew what to expect. Young childern that saw the movie were blown away. The following excerpts from RogerEbert.com make this quite clear.
There were maybe two dozen people in the audience who were over 16 years old. The rest were kids, the kind you expect at a Saturday afternoon kiddie matinee. This was in a typical neighborhood theater, and the kids started filing in 15 minutes early to get good seats up front. The name of the movie was "The Night of the Living Dead."
I went to see it because it's been a long time since I saw my last horror movie. I vaguely remember some stuff from the 1950s, like "Creature from the Black Lagoon" or "Attack of the Crab Monsters." They were usually lousy, but it was fun to see them.
But that was 10 years ago. Since then, there's been a lot of talk about violence in the movies, and it seemed about time to see another horror film. The audience for horror movies is mostly drawn from children and adolescents. They usually play in drive-in or neighborhood theaters, and by tradition they're the most frankly violent kind of films. "Night of the Living Dead" seemed like a reasonable choice; it was selected by the National Association of Theater Owners as "exploitation picture of the month."
Well, the kids came early, as I said. There were a few parents, but mostly just the kids, dumped in front of the theater for the Saturday matinee (admission 40 cents). A lot of kids were racing up the aisles on urgent missions, and other kids were climbing over the backs of seats, and you'd see a gang of kids passing a box of popcorn back and forth. Occasionally some kid would get whacked by his big sister because he wouldn't shut up.
There was a cheer when the lights went down. The opening scene was set in a cemetery (lots of delighted shrieks from the kids), where a teen-age couple are placing a wreath on a grave. Suddenly a ghoul appears and attacks the boy and the girl flees to a nearby farmhouse. The ghoul looked suitably decayed, with all sorts of bloody scars on his face, and he walked in the official ghoul shuffle. More screams from the kids. Screaming is part of the fun, you'll remember.
(spoilers removed)
The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying.
I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them. They were used to going to movies, sure, and they'd seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else. This was ghouls eating people up -- and you could actually see what they were eating. This was little girls killing their mothers. This was being set on fire. Worst of all, (spoiler removed).
I felt real terror in that neighborhood theater last Saturday afternoon. I saw kids who had no resources they could draw upon to protect themselves from the dread and fear they felt.
Wow! When was the last time you saw a review like that? Now do you see why I consider this one of the greatest horror movies of all time? At Google Video you can watch the movie in full as well as download a copy for your iPod/iPhone. Simply click here. Did I just say Google will let you download a copy? Yes I did! Due to a mistake made during the titling of the film the copyright notice was left off and the movie has become part of the public domain. You don't even have to go to Google to enjoy the film because I present to you: The Night Of The Living Dead!
