Month: November 2014

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Get Your Veto Pen Ready, Mr. President

…and pray that no Supreme Court Justices decide to retire before the Democrats regain control of Congress, because you'll never get them approved now.

What comes as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention, the pod people took over the Senate yesterday and I suspect that during the coming months the country will slowly wake up to one hell of a "what did I do last November? (or more likely, what didn't I do last November since so many people couldn't be bothered to get their asses out and vote) hangover as the full extent of the amount of crazy elected to office comes to light.

What does that mean? At the very least, two years of posturing, inactivity on any of the issues that the citizens of this country actually care about, religious batshittery and the political circus of Impeachment proceedings against the "black communist Kenyan about-to-unleash-ebola-on-the-good-upstanding-white-christians-of-this-country usurper" (did I forget anything?) in the White House—all the while the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, what remains of the middle class will get bent over and screwed even more forcefully than before.

And though it all, the right-wing fear machine will continue to screech what they've been screeching for the last six years—that everything is still "Obama's fault"—except that now at deafening levels.

As many others have opined today, I agree that in the long run this will be a good thing. By the time 2016 rolls around the country will once again be so thoroughly and completely disgusted with the Jeebus-lovin, bible-quotin' obstructionist republicans, it will all but assure a Democratic sweep. (There's also the fact that Presidential elections tend to bring out a younger, much more progressive voting crowd—versus the mid-terms where it was pointed out the average age of people voting in yesterday's election was over sixty!)

That's not to say the next two years will be without pain. You can count on the Republicans doing everything in their limited time in office to royally fuck over the greatest number of people as possible.

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I Actually Liked It

…a lot more than I expected, considering some of the reviews I'd read.

Disclaimer: I have never read the book(s), and frankly one of the main reasons I wanted to see it was because I think Dylan O'Brien is cute. And at my age I realize that makes me a bit of a perv, even if the guy is 23 years old.

Anyhow…

It was an engaging story. There was plenty of attractive eye candy in the casting and I didn't find myself nodding off, or reaching for my phone to check the time. I didn't leave the theater feeling like I'd been cheated out of $6.50.

Some reviewers had issue with the "ending" (there's a sequel in the works, natch), of the film. Even I found it a bit of a letdown as the expected "it was aliens" storyline didn't pan out, but that's not my beef with the last act.

[Spoilers ahead]

My beef—and it's not something that immediately slapped me up the side of the head while watching the film, but only came to me as a WTF moment when I was thinking about the film much later—comes from the fact that Gally, one of the characters who chose to remain behind in the Glade when Thomas and the others left to find a way out, miraculously showed up in the control room shortly after they arrived there and started to (pardon the pun) put the puzzle together.

So wait, let me get this straight: after Thomas's group dispatched several of the dreaded and deadly grievers in the maze by bringing down the huge stone doors and blocking further access to the promised exit as well as having the only key to open the portals—not to mention the knowledge of the numbers necessary to unlock the final door—Gally somehow manages to recreate all that by himself?

Seriously?

Okay, I realize he was a bit of a dick character from the get-go whose offing wasn't exactly mourned by the audience, and whose presence at the end of the movie was necessary to dispatch one of the more sympathetic players, but still…HOW DID HE GET THERE?

And while I'm thinking about all this, the perv in me keeps asking, "So we have this group of (presumably hormone-addled) teenage boys thrown together for the last three years with only each other for company and there wasn't one instance of bump-bump going on out in the forest or even any romantic pairing? Or more importantly, when a girl arrives, she isn't immediately passed around like a party favor?

I guess I really am jaded.