A Couple More Things
I’m sorry that I keep writing these rant-type posts complaining about things. Unfortunately I seem to be good at bitching, and I need to get it out of my system. I have a list started of upcoming topics, so look for new non-bitchy material soon. In the meantime…
Spaceships
Curse whoever decided that spaceships have to have little glowing engine exhausts. Arrgh!
So you probably wonder why I would care about that. Well, in my spare time, I’m a reasonably accomplished CG artist. At least on a very independent, small scale. Recently I offered to do some CG for a guy making a student film. He’s entered a competition and he’s got some talent, so I figured I’d help him out with some outer-spacey-type spaceship shots he had written into his script. OK, fine. No problem. That is, until the very end when I realized I’d have to rotoscope all the engine exhausts onto the little spaceships by hand, frame-by-frame, one at a time. It took me two days, and when I finally viewed the end result, I didn’t quite have them all lined up right from frame to frame. Well, I’m not doing it over. Screw that. I started over enough times early on when I realized some mistakes I made. Plus I had to develop a whole new complex Photoshop method to do it. I’m not about to throw two days worth of unpaid work away for a couple jittery lights. Still, I do suppose it would be hard to boldly go forth and conquer new worlds and new civilizations when your armada sputters through space with engine problems. Ah well. I call it done.
People on MySpace
Specifically, people who set their profiles to “private” so other people can’t look at them.
OK. I’m only going to explain this once, so listen up. Myspace is a social networking web site. You create a profile on Myspace so you can network socially. By that, I mean meet new people and discover things that you might have in common with them. I met one of my best friends through MySpace, and without her, I’d be insane from the boredom and uber-conservative nature of living in Salt Lake City. I might do something crazy like go out in public on Sunday or drive near the speed limit. MySpace is about meeting people, and when you set your profile to “private”, you’re completely missing the point. “I must be your friend to view your profile.” What is that? How am I supposed to know if I want to be your friend if I can’t view your profile? Sure, you look like a hottie in the one tiny picture I clicked on because you piqued my interest, but I’ll never know for sure because I can’t see any of your other pictures or learn about you in any way. If you have some stalker after you or something, I’m pretty sure you can ban a specific member. You don’t have to ban everyone else. Who do you think you are, MySpace Profile Set to Private person?
Environmentalists
I touched on this in my previous post under the header of “Some of the Things I Don’t Understand“, so I won’t go into detail here, but the Tree Huggers are really getting to me lately. Yes, I’m aware that a giant iceberg broke off the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica, and that the entire shelf is set to go any minute, but you know what? Who cares? I don’t. So what? Shit like this happens all the time. We need to deal with it instead of making up reasons behind it. Bigger icebergs have broken off in the last decade or two. That’s part of living on planet Earth. We humans account for such a tiny little infinitesimal impact on the planet that I’d be surprised it even notices we’re here. Trust me, me driving back and forth to the grocery store in the gas-hogging, pollution-spewing Oldmanmobile didn’t cause the bloody iceberg to fall off. Nor did any of the other six billion people here. It fell off because that’s what icebergs do when the Earth heats up, and the Earth heats up because that’s what the Earth does on occasion, humans or no.
I was reading this blog earlier today where this tool was describing several ways we could “save the planet”. Among my favorites was using the search engine “Blackle“, because apparently using a search engine with a black screen takes less energy to produce a picture than one with a white screen. And that’s good for the environment. Another was not eating meat for lunch. I will quote for impact:
“Many people are not aware that the meat industry causes more damage to the environment than all the cars and airplanes put together. The massive amounts of land that are cleared for farming, the food produced for the cows to eat, the trucks needed to move them around, the gas that the cows fart out… it is all very bad for the environment.”
C’mon people. I am SO not giving up my cheeseburger for your stupid environmental concerns. If I’m wrong, and Burger King is the harbinger of global destruction, you’ll still have to pry the Whopper out of my cold, dead hands while all the oceans rise and the rain forests turn to desert and the Cubs win the World Series and all the other signs of the apocalypse occur. I’ll be over here making spaceships on my computer, blogging with my white-screened Wordpress template, stewing about MySpace morons, and chowing down on a nice juicy steak while giving Al Gore the finger.
Haha. I’ll see you next time.
do with an animal of any kind because you feel some moral obligation toward the creature. No meat, eggs, milk, nothing. I get it, I really do because I personally don’t eat vegetables. None at all. So I kinda know where you’re coming from, and a little bit of how you feel. I’m not opposed to vegetables, and I know they’re a great source of all kinds of good stuff, I simply don’t like them.
I have a friend who used to work the oil platforms down in Houston, Texas. He spent many years doing this, and is intimately educated on the process of oil and oil refinement as it pertains to gasoline. He also keeps up on political issues and is intelligent and well educated. I asked him not long ago how much a gallon of gasoline should cost, factoring in refinement costs and realistic profits for oil companies. His answer, “about a buck.”
Religion is a different topic for a different time. There’s simply too much to say about it for now, so I won’t go into it. I’ll say this though: Isn’t it about time to put away the superstitious nonsense once and for all? I’m not talking about faith or belief or any of that. Worship all the gods you like in whatever fashion you see fit, but understand a few things too. There is zero, and I mean ZERO evidence in creationism and mysticism, and OVERWHELMING evidence in evolution and science. The answer is all around you. You have but to open your eyes (and your mind) and look. This isn’t about faith, it’s about fact. Creationists, I don’t understand you.
The Earth is billions of years old. Yes Creationists, I said billions. Deal with it. In that time, she has gone through all kinds of situations. Floods, fires, volcanoes, tsunamis, ice ages, warming, meteor impacts, plagues, infestations, populations, extinctions, rebirths, continental drift, sunspots, shifting magnetic poles, radiation baths, ozone depletion, poison atmospheric conditions (oxygen), earthquakes, hurricanes… the list is endless. Almost all of these situations are violent to some degree, yet the earth is still here. You could also argue that these situations are also normal and beneficial in their own rights. But beyond that, the earth is just fine. Doing pretty well, thank you. You see, the earth is a vast organism in its own right, constantly changing and adapting and evolving (Creationists, I’m glaring at you). It’s a very organic process, and it’s very balanced. For all the bad things that happen, good things happen too. That’s how it is.
we are causing it. Well, there’s an off chance that we may be exacerbating it by an infinitesimally small fraction of a percentage, but our impact is quite negligible to the earth itself. The earth has been through far worse than us, more times than we can possibly fathom. The earth laughs at our carbon emissions and spits them back in our faces.
Protect the environment. Sure, why not? Do it for us though, and not the planet. Do it the right way too, not with politics or propaganda or rock concerts. We could probably do with fewer giant SUVs hogging the road, and it’s a good idea to discard your trash in the proper and provided receptacle. Still, quit freaking out about it. Quit telling me I’m not “green” and look after yourself. Quit making up doomsday scenarios that you can’t even give justification for in any scientific sense. And stop giving credence to all these Chicken Littles crying out about how the sky is falling. If the earth wants to crush us with falling sky, she will, regardless of however many Toyota Priuses we drive.
There’s a new barber school in Midvale. It’s right behind the jewelry store, and a short walk from my apartment. Having the misfortune of looking in the mirror this morning and noting my amusing appearance, I thought maybe a haircut would be just the trick.