A critical anlysis of your cherished childhood memories

The president wants to send a man to Mars by 2015.

And Captain Planet is nothing but a tool of imperialist, racist global corporate capitalism.

In cartoon form.

How's this you ask? The Captain did so much for the environment, you say?

Not so fast. As if the mullet were not enough evidence, look at the powers all of the planeteers were assigned: there was wind, earth, fire, water, and heart. And what does the Latino kid get stuck with? Heart.

The shittiest power of them all.

While everyone else was out there making floods, and forrst fires, and earthquakes, this kid's stuck in the back standing there like a douchebag with no discernable superpower. No one wants the power of heart. I mean, what could he do? Make people fall in love? No! Only fate and circumstance can do that. A love devoid of free will is no love at all.

So, Captain Planet gave the shittiest job to the Latino kid. It's like the entire American economy, only in scale. Cartoon scale. People complain about Mexicans taking all of our jobs, when they’re not taking the kick ass jobs like doctor, or water; they’re taking the shitty jobs like janitor, or heart.

But they tried to mask the fact that it was racist by including one of every major ethnic minority group as defined by the network legal team. But of course, in their racist conception, the asian girl was a scientist. Obviously they needed a scientist to teach kids about the earth and that type of shit, but why'd it have to be the Asian girl? Why couldn't it have been the Scottish kid, or was he too busy getting drunk and playing golf?

So what's the point of all of this?

It’s called being a critical thinker, asshole. Captain Planet seemed like a harmless cartoon. In fact, it seemed like a good one. It tried to teach our children to love and respect the earth. Instead, it implicitly taught them to be racist tools of global capitalist imperialism. It’s just like this Mars landing. It sound all benign and even wonderful, until you think of the fact that there are millions of peple starving on earth, and instead of feeding them, we’re wasting billions of dollars sending people thousands of light years away for little to no reason. We may as well be searching for five magical rings that combine to form a weird gray superhero.

The kind of thing graduate study in the social sciences enables you to figure out.

Hurrah for education!

Doesn't matter your political views...

Well, I thought it was an urban legend, but it actually exists. The website NowThatsFuckedUp.com actually exists. It's a site where soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan can trade photos of brutally murdered/tortured Iraqis and Afghanis in exchange for access to pornography. Of course, all of the extremely gruesome photos (not safe for work, by the way) have captions such as "That's what you get for messing with the U.S." or other similarly machoistic nonsense. And of course, these mutillated bodies are almost always surrounded by groups of smiling soldiers giving a hearty Lyndie England-sytle thumbs up.

People, I don't care what you think about this war or any other subject, this shit is just about as wrong as wrong can physically possibly be.

Just something to ponder with your "Support Our Troops" bumper sticker.

Mars Volta/System of a Down Concert Review

Out of every show I've ever been to in my short existance, this one undoubtedly featured both the best hair and dance moves. But for a review in full...

Opening Act: Hella

Caught about the last 5 minutes of their set due to a wrong turn (still new to town). But from what I heard of their set and then later heard from musically-trustworthy friends, these guys are worth a listen.

First Act: The Mars Volta

Undoubtedly on of the greatest bands in current existance. These guys are insane musically and dance-illy, which very well could be a word. Throughout their set I couldn't help but think this was about the closest thing I would get to seeing Led Zep perform live. And not just because of the Robert lant-esque bell-bottom suits. The show was electric and insanely high-energy. The kind of thing that shows that good musicians are always better live. Not to say that Francis the Mute was not brilliant (it was) but it was merely one take from some great improvisers. Catch them live while they still exist as an entity.

Second Act: System of a Down

Given their outspoken political views with such side projects as Axis of Justice, I was expecting more political ranting between songs, but this was kept to only one comment from Darin about how we should establish one big purple state. The set was fairly straight-forward renditions of their music, but was notable for the extended intro's Darin performed. Also, more than one song had clearly newer lyrics either to reflect the current political landscape or just because these guys are clever lyricysts (sometimes) and like to show it off. I did question just how long it is until Darin releases a solo albulm, given the fact that he wrote a good 70-80% of SOAD's last albulm and was definately center-stage at the show. Finally, they capped off the show with an extended version of "Sugar" from way back in the day which got the hardcore fans going.

Only complaint about the show:

I do enjoy some hardcore and shred-metal (and I'm only semi-emberrassed to admit it) when it's done well. But like so many sub-genres, even if I like the music, I typically hate the people who listen to it. The best example is that in the exceptionally long line in the bathroom between sets, all of the stupid metal-heads were complaining about how weird and boring the Mars Volta are, which I would have argued about with them if they weren't all clearly on steroids.

Even though, couldn't kill my good music buzz. I must say, it's so nice to live in a city where it's only a 15 minute drive to see good music, instead of 4 hour drive.

Whatever happened to Teddy Roosevelt...

The great trust-buster must be rolling in his grave. Right now, Wal-Mart is applying for a liscence to open a bank in Utah. That's right folks, soon you could be banking at the good ol' Bank of Wal-Mart, presumably with 8 year old Asain girls for tellers. The FDIC is having an open public comment period to get feedback on whether it should allow Wal-Mart to do this or not. Because apparently being the largest employer and private company in the world just isn't what it used to be. For reasons that are far too painfully obvious, a Bank of Wal-Mart would pretty much spell out the apocolypse. Please go here and voice your displeasure and let the FDIC know not to go through with this.

Who's reading Jesse's blog? Part II of never-ending series...

Earlier I made a semi-humorous (or at least attempting to be humorous) post looking at who reads my blog and how they came to it. Most came looking for pornography, which either says something good about my exercise program, or just kinda tells the story of the internet as a whole. But now I've got a new and even more disturbing brand of fan. I was momentarily excited when I found that a recent post garnered a fair number of comments. Upon reading them, I found that 3 out of the 4 posts were actually advertisements for debt consolidation and/or loans. But again, this makes me ponder life. Is it just the internet? Or, have I been so horribly mis-managing my finances that people who don't even know me have finally taken to anonymously posting on my blog in a last-ditch effort to help me? Either way, I'm saddened and just a bit hurt. I mean, if "Sonya" or "blogs r us" really think I have that big of a problem with my finances, why couldn't they give me a call, or tell me over a cup of tea at the Hard Times? And "7472" with the extremely confusing offer of penis enlargement pills after posting half of an article about Orphans International Worldwide? I though I knew you "7472," but apparently we're just not the good friends that I thought. And really, if there's a problem of too many orphans in the world, shouldn't we all try to cut back on our consumption of penis-enlarging pills? I mean, they're not exactly related, but it can't be helping anything.

As always, "I'm not making this up!™"

I don't care about your political views, these people are just assholes

Senator Rick Santorum (the man whose name is synonymous with the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is often the by-product of anal sex) said that those who didn't leave New Orleans should be punished for not leaving (because having everything you own destroyed and half of your family killed isn't punishment...unless you're a pussy) and Barbara Bush pushed the envelope even further by saying that since the people who are stuck in the Superdome amongst dead bodies and raping looters were poorin the first place, they have it pretty good now. She may be right, though. I mean, it's practially like a vacation for these people. They don't have to go to work (because the place where they work is under 30 feet of water), they get free food (possibly), and they get the opportunity to be beaten up/raped and have the few meager possessions they have left stolen from them. Sounds good to me. Especially since the Bush administration response to this tragedy is pretty much the same thing as erecting a Bruce Lee statue to bring about peace andreconcilliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Boy, I'd sure hate to be the president right now...

Here it is, straight from the White House website, posted on August 26th:

"The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing."

Confused? It means the president assumed responsibility for the disaster relief for Katrina before it even happened. But this didn't make him cut short his vacation until 3 days after the storm hit. Would someone kindly explain to me how he's not responsible for the thousands of lives lost because of the entire lack of a federal response in the aftermath of this catastrophe?

Rental stories of the damned...

So I've officially lived in my new apartment (technically a "condo") for a month and nothing has broken and needed to be repaired yet. Yet, being the operative term. But this is actually quite a step up from the previous hole-in-a-basement that I lived in. By the time I had hit the one month mark there, my apartment had already flooded 2 times, the toilet had broken down, the kitchen sink drain had broken, and the pipes in the false ceiling had burst, causing a foul-smelling brown liquid to rain down on everything I own. Good times.

But possibly the best story comes from when the pipes in the wall burst and my kitchen and bathroom walls become little art deco/po-mo waterfalls. So I call the landlord's maintenance guy, who's really nice, but clearly a full-blown alcoholic, and kinda insane. So he comes over at 11 p.m. on sunday night to fix the problem. Not exactly an orthodox time for maintenance work, but such is life. Now, I lived in a one room efficiency, so it wasn't like I could ignore him. I mean, I could go around the corner so I couldn't see him, but he talks loudly to himself, so it was semi-distracting.

Well, he finds the problem, and he now thinks he knows why the pipes burst. He found my bottle of emuratic acid under the sink (my Dad's a chemist, so he can get even cooler cleaning solvents than your average janitor) and thinks that the fumes from this tightly-capped bottle caused the pipes inside the wall four feet away to burst, which makes some sense, I suppose. But not to worry, he comes to me and says "I think it's your acid, but I went ahead and beat the hell outta the whole area with a wrench so the landlord doesn't know it was your fault, but you didn't hear that from me." How nice of him.

But then it turns out that this is too much work for him, so he calls in an associate. The time is now a little after midnight, and I have to work in the morning. It's now like a bad 3 Stooges episode, only there's only 2 of them, and I think they're both drunk. But it gets more entertaining, because I hear snippets of conversation such as:

Dude 1: "Did you turn off the power?"

Dude 2: "Yeah, I already took care of it"

Dude 1: "If you turned off the power, why is the light still on?"

Dude 2: "Must be on another breaker"

Dude 1: "Ok" (slight pause) "Ow! Damnit!" (sound of Dude 1 hitting the floor)

Dude 2: "Oops. Maybe I didn't turn it off."

Or:

Dude 1: "It should be fine as long as there's no smoke"

Dude 2: "Well, I'm getting alot of blue smoke back here"

Dude 1: "Hmmm...well, I don't know what that means, but it can't be good."

Out of sheer curiosity, I round the orner into the kitchen, and my stove is sitting on the patio outside, and they're doing somehting with an acetylene torch. It's now 2 in the morning, and a third person has come over. But this one's a girl, and I don't think she's a maintenance worker, because she's just sitting on my kitchen table drinking one of my sodas and telling dirty jokes. Finally, it get's to be about 4 a.m., and seeing as how I have to work the next day, I tell them I'm taking off to sleep at a friend's house for the night and that they should lock up when they're done. When I get home at 10, they're gone, but they've taken a bunch of food and used all of my dish towels to wipe up grease. Fortunately no valuables are gone.

I consider it a pretty good repair job.

Except for the fact that they removed a very important support for the sink, so it now leans forward so far you have to pull up on the front and bend it the other way to get the water to go down the drain. I thank God I'm moving out of there in a few weeks and go on with my life.

In short, pretty much nothing could happen in this new apartment/condominium that would really throw me.


"Latex condom? I sure wish I lived in one of those"-Abe Simpson

They have the internet on computers now...

It's been quite a light summer for the ol' blog here, but I've finally made the big transition to Minneapolis and graduate school and have my new computer all wired and ready to go. So, I may finally get back to regular blogging. Hopefully. So if you've read this in the past and have quit reading because I rarely updated it this summer and you happent o be checking by chance, start coming back regularly.