I hope you know what you're doing . . .

I spend a lot of time talking about problems I see in other people. One thing that might surprise you is that I’m actually very hard on myself when it comes to comparable issues. It’s one of the things that makes me so awesome.

<waits for polite laughter>

I’ve always struggled with what I’m going to call “DMV Syndrome.” Now, of course, I got that name from the stereotypes of the ladies at DMV offices. You know, the ones who chew their gum and roll their eyes at you because somehow DIDN’T know that you’re supposed to fill out the yellow form and not the light-yellow form, or that you (amazingly) were unaware that you needed two pieces of OFFICIAL mail, not just mail, and then on your return trip didn’t realize that this cell phone bill doesn’t count as OFFICIAL. How on earth could you think that ANY bill is official, and not government mail only? Yutz. I’m going on lunch. Again.

When I worked at McDonald’s (waaaaay back in 1998-1999 – can you believe it’s been a decade?) I would often work the drive-through. It drove me batty when someone would ask to “up-size” their value meal. Seriously? Up-Size? You’re at McDonald’s, the fast food chain that not only invented fast food chains, but invented the value meal and the concept of the “super-size,” and you’re asking for an “up-size”? When I repeated back the order I’d often be sure to emphasize the word “SUPER” to make sure they learn to respect the arches. FACE!

Don’t even talk to me about coupons. No, way, lady. I don’t care if you go to my church of 60 people and are in my Sunday School class and your 3-year-old son adores me. That coupon does NOT discount value meals. Even though the computer will let me do it, it’s the principle of the matter – and that principle is that I like to be in control and I like to say, “No.”

It’s definitely easy in food service. At Steak n’ Shake, your burger would not come with fries. You had to order them separate or ask for a “platter.” (And with the platter, which is your choice of two sides, remember that one of them can be fries, not that it’s two sides AND fries.) In a society that has become used to the words “includes fries,” and would expect that it does since the burger is pictured with fries in the menu, many people do not feel it necessary to mention wanting them (I should mention that the fine print DID say “does not include fries“). Well, I can only handle asking, “do you want fries or any other sides?” and subsequently can only handle answering the question, “you mean it doesn’t come with fries?” so many times in a 10-minute time-frame. So I’ll take the order as you asked for it, and then roll my eyes at you when you’re shocked that  your $4 burger the size of what you’d get in a Happy Meal doesn’t have little fried potato sticks next to it. Hey, that’s GRADE A STEAK in that paper-thin burger, buddy. That stuff doesn’t come cheap. I don’t even get free soda at this joint, and I work here.

In retail it takes different forms, and is the same idea, but this is where we (ever so slightly) approach the realm of “you really, seriously should have known that, dude.” I’ve spoken before of the man who looked like he wanted to murder me and all in my bloodline because I ran his “debit” card as a “credit” card, so “now Visa is going to send me a bill.” Well, many other people misunderstood that same thing, but were quieter with their frustrations, and their eyes did not have a reflection of my bloody corpse in them, so I was able to mock them after they left the store with much greater ease. Also, there’s the ladies who would barge into the bathroom, despite the “bathroom closed” sign that’s been up for 10 minutes, and say, “I cannot wait any longer. I am going. I don’t care if you’re here.” And let us not forget the people that seem to follow you through the tables of shirts and unfold every shirt you’ve just re-folded, and then wad it up in a I’m-almost-trying-to-pretend-like-I’m-helping manner.

Now we cross into that realm . . . that realm where either I just haven’t yet figured out that I should have been better at my job, or those people were seriously lacking in brain capacity.

I worked at Rent-A-Center for a while, and in case you’re thinking of trying out their stuff — don’t. We had some people that would pick out a stereo, a computer, a couch and table set, take it all home, and then not pay for a month (payments were due every week). When we’d demand our money or our stuff, they’d scoff at us and say, “why do you care when you get the money? I said I’ll give it to you and I will. It’ll just be a while.” Or when I went on a service call to fix a guy’s computer. He said the keyboard and mouse didn’t work. Well, I took along extras, but didn’t take them in since I had a suspicion, and was right, that he had plugged them in backwards. For some reason he was very mad at me when I pointed out the mistake. I think his speakers were plugged into the microphone jack, too. He seriously didn’t bother with any trial-and-error. He basically tossed it into a pile and screamed because it didn’t work.

Oh! Oh! Or my FAVORITE one! This family had a HUGE stereo system and they called, complaining that the speakers were popping and the sound wasn’t working right. I went to figure out the problem and saw that they had their surround system hooked up very wrong. Please refer to the below demonstration of my mad skills with Microsoft Paint:

To further explain this debacle: they had the speaker wire coming out of the left front speaker output on the receiver to what should have been the left rear surround, and the wire twisted together to the next wire that led to what should have been the left front speaker, and the wire twisted again to the next wire, leading to what should have been the left front speaker, wires twisted together again, going to what should have been the right rear surround, and the wire twisted to the last wire going into the right front speaker output on the receiver. The surround outputs were unused. Again, the customers were mad at me for telling them their setup was wrong and threw a fit that when I fixed it they “had too many wires” running through their living room,” (one wire to each speaker coming out of the receiver).

To their credit, they got positive and negative correct.

In the “defense” of all those who rent from such places as Rent-A-Center, one has to have a certain lack of intelligence to even buy into such a ploy, so who can really be surprised when their dryer won’t dry because they haven’t emptied the lint tray in 6 months? (Yeah, that really happened. More than once). If you rent from one of these places, I want you to try something. Take that TV back to them, so instead of spending the $40 a week on it, you put that money to the side, and give it about 4 months and see what you can actually OWN.

Nowadays I’m struggling with another manifestation of the DMV Syndrome. I debate daily if I’m justified for scoffing at loan officers and processors who “read” our documents we provide to tell them who to ask certain questions, and then ask the same person everything. Or THOSE . . . . WHO TYPE . . . . . . . . LIK THIS . . . . . . IN ALL THERE EMAILS . . . . . WONDERIN IF . . . . . . . . . . WE CAN TEL THEM . . . . WITCH LENDR CAN DO FL 203K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THNX.

I don’t know if it’s me or them when I tell a branch manager to send identification and resumes with his new hires’ applications three times in a row, and number four comes in with, yet again, no identification or resumes. Or those who are told to re-disclose the terms of the loan they’re working on to the borrower, so they sign all the forms themselves and are shocked that we would say that to do such a thing is against the law. I don’t know if I’m the right one or the wrong one when we ask for 3 forms and they send one and it’s not even complete, and then complain that it’s taking too long to get things done.

Okay, I’m sure who’s right. Me. I was just trying to take an approach of “maybe I’m overreacting, maybe I’m ‘going DMV’ in this situation, to coin a new phrase,” but these guys typically make $50,000+ easy every year and they can’t spell or read instructions.

So, before I run off on THAT tangent, let me bring us back to the subject at hand. DMV-ism. What I find amusing now is that I make efforts to not allow fast food workers or retail cashiers, etc., to get snobby with me. I honestly am not sure if I’m doing as a gesture of “I know where you are – I’ve been there,” or if I’m afraid they’ll spit in my burger. But all the same, I don’t excuse a whole lot – like if I ask for my hot mustard sauce and they forget it. How the heck am I supposed to eat 12 nuggets without any hot mustard sauce?! It’s not that hard to get it right, but somehow it’s my fault for not holding up the lunch line in the drive-through to check to make sure it’s there (which, by the way, I always do now). I’ve allowed myself to troll around some forums before and gotten into debates with people who are obviously me 10 years ago, working at Dairy Queen or Target, as they defend their attitudes and blame us, the customers, for all their issues. I don’t see much of an excuse for it anymore. I look at myself then and want to tell me, “get over it, chump.” Maybe I’ll do that when I’m not in the mortgage business anymore, too. Yeah . . . or maybe not.

For the record, I never spit in anyone’s burger.

When I was a junior in high school, on one particular day, I was browsing through my history book during class rather than paying attention. (Yes, that actually happened more than just once, but we’re only concerned with this specific instance.) That particular day, I came across a photo of one of the Apollo 11 astronauts standing on the moon. It was on page 888. This photo sparked the thought in me that something wasn’t right. You see, the photo was obviously a fake. You could CLEARLY see that a backdrop was being used on a sound stage, made obvious by the straight, horizontal line across the bottom of the distant lunar “hills” and the abrupt color and texture change on either side of it. It mortified me, and it gave way to the thought that maybe the moon landing wasn’t as genuine as I had been told to believe. (For the record, I never completely surrendered to that conspiracy theory, I just refused to put it away for a long time.) Now, try as I might, I’ve never been able to locate that photo anywhere else. I’ve even looked up specific articles on photographic fakery theories for moon landing photos, and not ONCE since 1997 have I seen that picture.

I have since completely turned away from my “consideration” that the moon landing 40 years ago might have been staged all together, because most (if not all) of the things that conspiracy theorists say proves it didn’t happen, actually in fact prove that it did.

(And while I have the thought – you ever wonder what happens to old history books? Like the one you had in 1991 that was 4 years old and showed Presidents in the back, and it came to “Ronald Regan – 1981-Present.” Sure, most of them are trashed or recycled; but somewhere, someone has a collection of out-dated history books. They would be interesting to read, to see how differently things were interpreted in different times (like, for example, the Manifest Destiny).)

Okay – the point. I was Wikipedia surfing the other day and came across the cheery article of the holocaust. I wasn’t really reading much, just doing like I was that day in high school and browsing over the pictures, and reading a sentence here and there. Well, I came across a section of the article that dealt with the experiments that Nazi “scientists” performed on Jewish people. In this section, there was a photograph from the Dachau concentration camp of a Nazi professor and a Nazi doctor presiding over a man floating in an iced water tank, wearing a breathing apparatus. On the right frame of the photo was another man, taking notes.

For some reason I enlarged the picture to take a closer look – and I was shocked to see that it appeared extremely fake. It was so obvious! First, the hands of the two Nazi men were clearly not natural and drawn in post-development. Second, there are clear cut-out lines around the two Nazi men and the note-taker (note the curves on the body and hair). Third, the ice appears drawn into the photograph. Fourth, the light appears to be coming from the right of the frame, but the light is shining from the left on the note-taker. Yet the biggest kicker is that the man sitting on the edge of the tub has clearly been cropped in because THERE IS NO SHADOW UNDERNEATH HIM! (And just in case you’re thinking it, these light problems are not due to a flash because there are no shadows on the back wall.)

I searched high and low on the internet and NO ONE has discussed to the slightest degree that this photo is, at best, doctored. If you look up “cold water immersion,” this photo will come up 100 times, but every time it’s simply someone discussing the inhumane experiments done on Jews – not once do they bother saying anything to the degree of, “well, obviously this photo is fake, but there is documentation of these experiments being performed blah blah blah . . .” Has no one noticed? Is the topic of the Holocaust such that anything handed to us about it must never be questioned, so we look the other way? Please be sure that I am in no way suggesting that anything about these experiments or the Holocaust as a whole isn’t true. I’m not even taking my moon-landing-point-of-view and leaving the possibility open. But I think that someone wanted to show, in the flesh, that these two men (named Professor Ernst Holzlohner and Dr. Sigmund Rascher, left and right, respectively) were  performing these experiments, and put something together to provide that. And now, it appears that everyone just accepts that it’s authentic, which I find humorous because I checked Failblog every day for months, and every day someone would try to point out how some photo on that site was faked somehow. Sometimes I would notice one myself and go check the comments to make sure someone else did, too. Maybe this one just isn’t in the internet-surfer’s eyes enough. That may not necessarily be a bad thing, considering the subject material.

I’ve shown this to a few people. One agreed it didn’t look right, one couldn’t care less, and one proposed that the photo had been poorly edited, rather than created from scratch all together. I don’t know. But I do know that this couldn’t be more obviously fake if the guy in the tank was Ronald McDonald. In color. If it’s simply a poorly-edited-but-real photograph, I want to see the the original. I won’t believe otherwise until I do.

Now, before I conclude, if you want to toss out the opposition that, “Oh, those old photographs – they’re hard to tell what’s what,” let me knock that out of your head by suggesting you 1) study basic physics of light, 2) study the structure of the human hand, and 3) go look up some photos from the 1940’s and tell me if THEY look like they came right out of Photoshop.

Inspired by my wife’s incredibly cute email, 29 things she likes about me, sent on this, my 29th birthday, I decided to take the idea and do my own thing with it. I might later expand some of these into their own blogs.

1. I honestly, truly despise Michael Bay’s work. It insults me to the core. Explosions and special effects are fine, but he’s so unintelligent that he can’t work out a comprehensive story to go along with them. And he makes lots of money doing it.
2. I sometimes wish my wedding ring was tungsten, but when I remember that it perfectly matches my wife’s, I get over it.
3. Candy loses its appeal after one can get some any time, but I still keep eating it.
4. I’m curious if anyone will ever read my blog again after my nearly-year-abscence.
5. My right side of my body is much stronger than the left.
6. I figured out why I didn’t like beer when I lived in Illinois – because everyone drinks crap like Busch and Pabst. In cans. Or worse – aluminum bottles.
7. How about a Mathew Phillips quote? “In order to succeed, you have no choice but to deal with the environment right outside your skin. Some environments are better than others. There is more encouragement to succeed in some places than others. Without the help of others in better environments (that are prospering) the odds may be so impossible that you will not even be able to turn stumbling blocks in to stepping stones to succeed. This is something that even those of us who live in healthy environments should remember.”
8. I have to get back to work to avoid getting busted over-doing my break, but the Word Press clock is off and it says it’s 11:27 p.m. Which means that by the time this is posted it will say it’s July 2, which is NOT my birthday. Maybe I can fix that. Okay, yeah, I fixed it.
9. Even if I had gotten my dream guitar as a present today, it would have paled in comparison to my wife’s email. And I honestly mean that, which means I’m really maturing. Uh-oh.
10. I’ve come to think that a good AM signal is a lot better quality than most FM signals. But I’m not a big radio-listener, so I could be wrong.
11. Tonight I will watch The Prestige for like the 4th time. I like Jackman. I really like Bale. But I loooove me some Bowie. Too bad he didn’t do a soundtrack tie-in.
12. Speaking of old rockers, Rod Stewart’s old stuff is really good. He was very heavily influenced by country music, which I find interesting.
13. I still can’t quite figure out why Michael Jackson’s death shocked me so much. It’s almost as if I had never stopped to think that he WOULD die someday. On that note, how weird will it be when, say, Conan O’Brien dies? Let’s hope that’s long off.
14. I need to watch The Tonight Show more often. Support my Conan.
15. I just found out The Rock was directed by Michael Bay. I’ve never actually seen that movie, and now I never will.
16. I think I’d like to write a novelization of the story from Final Fantasy VI. I think it would be a great challenge and lots of fun. It’s such an incredible story.
17. I’m having spaghetti for my birthday dinner. I requested it.
18. It was very odd being in my in-laws’ home last week and remembering the different stages of my life (and states of mind) which that home has seen.
19. Fun Story: An old boss of mine had once ordered lots of pretty nice wine for a manager’s retreat that ended up getting canceled. All the wine was delivered to our office so she had me and a co-worker take it down to her van. As the two of us carried the last of like 12 boxes of those bottles, she grabbed two from one remaining box and put one on each of our desks as a “thank  you.” Not being one who ever really purchased wine on my own, I decided to save the bottle for a then-unknown special occasion with a then-unknown special someone. I thought it might be the night I would propose to whoever-it-may-be, but turns out that didn’t happen over a dinner. So instead, Dona and I had it with our first dinner in our home on our honeymoon. I’ve saved the bottle.
20. I told my wife about this as I’m writing it and she wants me to write “poop.”
21. I don’t want to promote poor financial choices, or shirking of academic  responsibility, but I don’t regret for a second buying my Fender Telecaster my last semester of college instead of several of my books, even if it did effect my grades.
22. There’s a stack of un-sent thank you cards on my desk. I get the feeling that we’re not the only couple who has done this.
23. I accidentally published this blog before I completed it. Good thing they’re easy to edit.
24. Most of the world misunderstands what Christianity says and is about. More people would be willing to listen if they knew that. But the irony is that those who spend all their time trying to make sure the masses “get it,” even though they don’t believe it, are wasting their time. Those that come to Christ are called by Him, not convinced by argument and exposition.
25. Turns out I don’t like white wine with spaghetti.
26. I have a copy of Boston’s self-titled debut album on vinyl, and the case is in sorry shape. There’s not even a protective sleeve. I got it for like $0.50 at Goodwill a couple years ago. Yet despite all that, it is easily my favorite record that I own.
27. Figuring out and then playing video game music on guitar is not only a delightful and nerdy way to spend your spare time, it’s also great training for the ear and fingers.
28. If anyone wants tabs to the Top Man song from Mega Man 3, ask. I can write some up.
29. Holy crap I’ll be 30 in less than a year.

I was thinking the other day about something that has crossed my mind before . . .

EVEN IF, somehow, everything the Bible says condemning homosexuality has been misinterpreted, making such a lifestyle not sinful in God’s eyes, there is the issue of pride. Pride, it turns out, is a bigger problem all together.

As a Christian, God is the one in control of one’s life. It is completely contradictory to speak of following Christ, while at the same time speaking of your pride as a homosexual. On a personal level, I’ve had to deal with NOT finding my identity in the fact that I play guitar, that I live in Seattle, being a Midwesterner, or in the movies and music I enjoy. Those are all fairly small items, but even my marriage is not something in which I can hang my identity. Although God would never lead me to getting a divorce, even the existence of my marriage is something that has been given to me by Him and is ultimately His. If homosexuality wasn’t sinful, God could still ask someone to give that up. This becomes the main problem with the Gay Pride movement –  the act of homosexuality and sexual debauchery is a big issue, but bigger than that is PRIDE.

What we think we are based on our own conclusions is up for reinterpretation by God, and to accept Christ is to take his definition of who we are over what we think we are.

That’s pretty deep for the morning, but that happens on the way to work. I hope I didn’t write this blog before . . .

And the clock reads 13 minutes. Good job me.

One way to get someone mad at you really quick is to point out their flaws. However, many people’s responses wouldn’t be to the tune of, “why do you have to focus on my imperfections? We all have them,” but instead a justification of themselves (citing extenuating circumstances) and/or belittling you for noticing. It is my belief that such a response is a sign of both narcissism and lack of education.

Recently, the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out. I paid $6.75 at a theater in illustrious Carbondale, Ill. to watch this piece of trash. Thank goodness I saved my additional $3 that I would have spent in Washington; Michael Bay will never get that.

Now, you can go anywhere on the internet to find blogs and reviews of why this movie was so bad, with its poorly edited exposition, gaping plot holes, crude humor, plastic characters, and overall minimization of the title characters. And anywhere you go you will also find a mass of people attacking the reviewer for taking things too seriously, or forgetting that it’s just a movie, and reminding said reviewer that it’s just meant for entertainment “and it did just that.”

What is happening here? It is my opinion that, more and more, people in America today are allowing themselves to become uneducated and are losing their ability to recognize quality in forms of art, or lack thereof. We are allowing ourselves to be stimulated by only our most basic and primal of instincts, and not just leaving our brains at the door but never taking them with us anywhere; so we end up with Michael Bay movies, useless reality television, and music that consists of nothing but the most basic of chord structures, over and over, and poorly written lyrics. And what’s worse is that when someone points this out, we attack them like rabbid dogs. But we’re not really upset at them for not liking that movie, or that show, or that musical artist. We’re upset at them because they’re saying that it was unintelligent, and we are subconsciously denying that we have bought in to such a ploy, and we can never be convinced otherwise because our pride won’t let us.

And on the flip-side, when something requires a little more thinking, or some time and focus to appreciate fully, it is diminished by the masses. This is, at the end of it all, what makes this so concerning. It’s not that we just allow ourselves to be filled with sugar-for-the-brain, but that we also despise that which is truly visionary and creative.

I have no redeeming comments; I’m very saddened by this and hope that when I become a father that  can instill in my children an ability to appreciate that which is good and wholesome.

Well . . . here we are. This whole time I thought this would be my last writing about Terminator, but I read a review of Terminator Salvation in which the author rants about how stupid Skynet was.

Ah, heck. I’ll try to fit that rant into this one.

In Superman: The Movie, a large southern Californian quake (triggered by a missile launched by Lex Luthor) causes a crack in the ground that swallows Lois Lane’s car and crushes her to death. Superman gets there too late to save her, so he gets really angry and flies around the world so fast that the Earth spins backwards and time reverses, allowing him to get Lois out in time and also somehow fixes everything wrecked by the earthquake. By putting this into the movie, the writers opened not only the time-reversal box, but the “he can fly fast enough to go around the planet several hundred times a second” box, so that creates questions such as why couldn’t he fly there fast enough to save Lois in the first place? Why didn’t he keep going backwards for a few more minutes and just stop Lex from the get-go? That is a plot hole, one that is created by trying to write oneself out of a corner. You and I can discuss this one all day, detailing how bad of a story move that was.

Yet it is my thorough belief that when someone nit-picks plot points like this guy, it’s not about the story but about his ego. “Why doesn’t Skynet just kill John Connor when he was in the factory?” Golly he’s clever. Why didn’t Marty go back to the future a whole DAY before he originally left to guarantee he could talk to Doc before he got shot? Why didn’t Frodo just fly on those big eagles over Mt. Doom and end the whole Sauron thing in like two days? Why didn’t the Emperor use some Dark-Side action to trip Vader when he picked him up, or to fly or something when he was thrown down the pit? Why? Because first of all, you wouldn’t have a movie. And second of all, you’re talking about “in retrospect.” Sure, it’s a movie, but these are all things that the characters could look back on and think, “Oh, that may have worked, too,” but it’s pointless for us to debate them because, back to my first point, you wouldn’t have a movie. I believe that when reading a book, watching a film, or even playing a game, you should let the storyteller take you with them, instead of sitting there, bitching about where you think the storyteller should go in a subconscious attempt to make yourself feel smart. At the end of everything, everyone has a right to their opinion on the end result, but just remember it’s not YOUR story.

So what do I like about the Terminator series? Let’s hit a few points.

John Connor and Skynet are a yin and yang. Neither can exist without the other. John exists because he sent Kyle to defend his mother from the first T-800, which led to their short but fertile romance. However Kyle’s defense means that the T-800 is destroyed, leaving a couple spare parts for Cyberdyne to find and reverse engineer, eventually leading to Skynet’s creation. If Skynet were never created, there would be no war, no time travel, and no way for Kyle to meet Sarah at a comparable age. John could not be. If John were never born, Skynet would have no reason to send a Terminator to 1984. Skynet could not be.

When I first saw T3, I thought the idea that “Judgment Day is inevitable” was stupid and weak.. “Couldn’t they come up with something better than that?” I thought. But the more I thought about it- the more it made sense. It made sense because as long as John exists, Skynet will exist, and Skynet will cause Judgment Day. And while I’m here, let me retract a statement I made about “why would Skynet send the T-X to a time when it couldn’t find John?” I believe the quiet reasoning for this is because Skynet didn’t want to risk the delay of Judgment Day again. If it went after Connor at an earlier time, that would clue him in that something still needs to be done to “prevent” Skynet. Instead, the T-X arrives at a time when Judgment Day is imminent – thus ensuring the elimination of its targets without risking its existence. I can’t believe I’m saying this about the third film, but that’s really clever. I wonder if it was on purpose.

John Connor and Skynet are both their own grandfathers. Now that’s something you don’t see every day. Of course John wasn’t the father of Kyle, but he was directly responsible in making sure Kyle met Sarah. Skynet is, in truth, actually its own grandpa, but it’s a computer so it’s really not that gross.

The only way to stop Skynet is for John to wipe out his own existence. This one may seem like I’m thinking a little too far into this, but it’s true. I’ve established that they can’t exist without each other, so the only way to prevent it all is for John to not allow Kyle to meet Sarah. No John, no Skynet, thus no Judgment Day.

Some parts of the story were cleverly left open enough for these new movies. A lot of people have griped about Salvation, and when I saw the trailers I found myself to be skeptical about the inclusion of Marcus. I hate (as I think others should) the re-writing of cannon. Yet when you think about it, nothing about what we know up to 2016 in this fictional universe comes close to excluding the posibility that Marcus was part of the story all along (he wasn’t, but you get my point). In fact, it beautifully develops Connor more – instilling, or re-instilling, in him a willingness to trust a machine.

Marcus was a very deep concept in addition to a new character. The main thing being that Connor gets his heart to survive. It was Marcus’s human heart that kept him on the side of the resistance, and it is that which was given to John. You could say that John has the heart of a machine. That’s kind of deep.

For being a series of movies about killer robots from the future, it seems to be really a thinker’s story. That’s what makes it so great when you pay attention, and what makes it so upseting when they skip details.

But all in all . . . I’m really lacking for a good conclusion. I’m out.