So there’s this thing going on right now whereabouts I live that a local Justice of the Peace is giving parents an option when dealing with their truant kids. They either pay the $500 fine or they spank the kid with a paddle right there in the courtroom. Strangely enough, whether by influence of finance or something else, the parents are largely choosing to whop the kid.
As an advocate for corporal punishment, I think what the J.P.’s doing is great. But now I hear that the J.P. is being sued by the parents of a 15-year old girl. I’m willing to bet that the parents of this little princess never spanked her once in her entire life. Here are the news stories:
Pay the fine or swat your child
Local J.P. Sued for offering spanking punishment
So there’s this guy who opines idiotically about the J.P. being sued. His name is The Truth and he says this:
This judge has some serious mental problems for having a girl be spanked with a paddle in front of guys and other people. At least no one should of seen this, when people think of spanking, they also associate it with sex, i am woundering [sic] about if this judge is perverted or just has some mental problems. Personally, i think any person who hits kids that arent [sic] theres, has a big problem, along with Judges, Police men, Teachers, Principals, people who propose laws to beat kids as a punishment and anyone else who likes to hit kids that arent theres is a discrace [sic] to our society and vigalantes [sic] should take action, or stop hitting kids.
I responded, thusly:
“Spanking”, “beating” and “hitting” are totally different things and no one is doing either of the latter. This is about corporal punishment by parental figures, Truth; there’s no one “beating” kids who don’t belong to them in this story.
And frankly, the JP is right: “it is the duty of the parent to reasonably discipline the child,” and if my parents hadn’t loved me enough to spank me when I was a bad kid, I absolutely believe I wouldn’t have turned out as successful as I have today. There is a huge difference between child abuse and corporal punishment. The biggest difference is the one doing the punishing is not enjoying the act. My dad would go off and cry somewhere after I got my spankings. And my mom certainly didn’t like it. But, damn it, I never did whatever I did that warranted the spanking again.
And man, you have some issues assuming everyone thinks of sex when they think of spanking. I don’t. Does everyone think of sex when people talk about car rides, kitchen counters, plastic bags and duct tape? No! Usually, when people talk like that, they’re actually talking about themselves.
So it’s great that you think spanking is sexy, Truth, a lot of people do, but not when you’re talking about corporal punishment. I’m pretty sure the JP isn’t getting his rocks off having these truant little bastards walloped by their parents in a courtroom with a bunch of adult, professional officers of the law taking note. It sucks! It sucks for the parent, it sucks for the people watching and it sucks for the kid (who is actually more embarrassed than physically hurt).
You seriously need to do your research. Just ask around. You will find that a great deal of the well-behaved, well-adjusted adults in the world (and who also believe in corporal punishment) were spanked when they were kids. They know spanking, nay: the FEAR of getting spanked, works better than harsh words or grounding or time outs. What happens when you tell a misbehaving kid that you’re going to punish him in three seconds if he doesn’t settle down, then you count to three and then you don’t punish him, you just say “I’ll count again, and THIS TIME I’ll mean it”…what happens? The kid just keeps misbehaving! Bad deeds without punishment means the kid will grow up knowing that he can be a total jagweed and no one will do anything to stop him. This is why there’s so many douchebags in this country: parents have wussed out and don’t want to properly discipline their kids out of fear of hurting their relationship with their “perfect little angel” when all they’re actually doing is making the kid resent the parent for giving them an improper childhood: something that kid won’t realize until he’s 40…if people like me let people like them LIVE to see that age. Douchebags…
So I’ve been seeing this girl named Claudia. She’s Laura’s sister who is Catty’s study partner. Catty is Mariano’s wife. So Laura and Catty tried to hook me up with Claudia blind date style. Our first date is at Logan’s Steakhouse, the next week our second date is at La Pampa Argentinian Steakhouse.
Then a week goes by.
Meanwhile I’m calling her and stuff and she’s just not picking up. Then I leave a message tonight that I’ve been sick this weekend and she calls me back because she heard that I was sick and wanted to say hi and see how I was doing. So I ask her when I can see her again. She tells me it depends on how busy she is. I say “ok, ‘cuz I’d really like to see you again.” And she says “well, just call me and we’ll see.”
The point is that she doesn’t pick up. Ever. You figure if she likes you she’ll pick up or at least call you back. I don’t understand this. And then she tells me that she was busy this whole weekend hanging out with friends…and family. And I’m like, I’ve been calling you to hang out with you this whole time and you never picked up. How do you figure these people are getting ahold of her? They’re probably calling her and she’s picking up. Why can’t there be a woman out there who treats a relationship the same way I do? At least, the same way I try to.
Damn it.
She did say that the movie August something reminded her of me because it was about a boy and his music. You know? Because I’m so creative. I asked her if there were anything else that reminded her of me and she paused and said she couldn’t answer that because it put her on the spot. Right.
I’ll probably never hear from her again.
UPDATE - November 11: Well, I tried calling her tonight a little after 6pm (when I normally would call) and it rang once and went to voicemail. She cleared me. I guess that’s her way of nailing the coffin closed. Yeah, I know what “we’ll see” means. Now I know it means the same with her. There was nothing special about her. She’s just like all the rest. Moving on…
…is my post about the cup chicks thing at 80,840…no wait, let me refresh the stats…80,956 hits. I’ll check it again when I’m finished writing this post. This is ridiculous. Why are people so damned disgusting? The post had 4,880 hits YESTERDAY. The second most famous post is the one called My Las Post which had “cup chicks” in the tag.
It’s hits? 1,095.
Third most famous post is the one about my father who passed away recently. It got a grand total of 13 hits. I’m pretty embarrassed about this, actually. At least the original post has only gotten 383 hits (as of right now). That means it’s met a loss of over 4,000 since yesterday. Then again, it’s only a little before 7pm tonight and, as they say, the freaks come out at night. Now that I’m done with this post, I’m going to check the current hit count. 81,036. And I wrote this in about 13 minutes (hey, the World Series is going on behind me). 81,056. That wasn’t even a minute. This is ridiculous.
Jorge pointed me to this on the Rush Hour 3 board at IMDB.com.
Someone said this:
Does it bother anyone else that in the commercials for this movie, its not just Rush Hour 3, its “Rush Hour 3: A Brett Ratner film?”. Uhhhh..? Is Brett Ratner’s resume really enough to demand that? Not exactly Spielberg or James Cameron. Take a peek at his directors credits. What exactly is any good there?
Then again theres also the chance that this movie is SO bad, they are trying to lend it any credibility they can, even if it means bludgeoning us with the name of a middle of the road director.
So I said this:
My thoughts on this subject: Let’s start by looking at what a film is for comparison.
Red Dragon was a “film”.* Rush Hour 3 is NOT a film. Rush Hour 3 is a movie. I also don’t care that Brett Ratner made it.**
Unless you’re Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron or George Lucas, I’m pretty sure that no one cares who you are, Mister or Misses Director, or that you just made some movie. I’m sure you’re very proud of your first feature length epic since film school eight years ago, but if you’re not someone anyone’s ever heard of, plastering your name all over the trailer for your piece of crap isn’t going to make people notice you. Making a great movie will. Trust me: people DO read the credits to movies they like. Up until the producer part, anyway. Like that guy who made Saw? I didn’t care that Saw was a Whatever His Name Is film and I cared even less for it that someone thought the movie could be prestigious enough to be considered a film. I also think it’s appropriate that he couldn’t find work afterwards enough to do anything other than a sequel to his previous work of schlock. F#c& him and his ego.
And frankly, Michael Bay, I don’t care that you think Transformers is a film. Because it’s not. It’s a movie. Transformers is a movie! A schlocky, badly written, poorly coordinated movie. The only reason you look good is because you studied the Ridley Scott method of filmmaking and hired the right people to make you look good. But unlike Ridley Scott, sir, you couldn’t direct piss out of a boot if the script was written on the heel. You’re also childish, petty and dumb.***
Citizen Kane is a film. And I’m pretty sure Orson Wells didn’t run around Hollywood saying it was his. Oh, wait…yeah he did. A lot. In fact, it pretty much ruined him. Stupid William Randolph Hearst making it impossible for Wells to work in that town again…
So, yeah. A Brett Whatner film?!****
*Everything Ratner has done, besides Red Dragon, has been a “movie” — forgettable yet, entertaining, movies. Red Dragon was his attempt to show himself he could make an actual “film”. Ratner didn’t create the look of the movie, rather he emulated the work of Jonathan Demme and Tak Fujimoto to make Red Dragon meld with its predecessor The Silence of The Lambs. It’s interesting that Ratner used Dante Spinotti as his DP for Red Dragon since he was the DP on Manhunter, the Michael Mann movie based from the Red Dragon novel by Thomas Harris and the first time we see Hannibal Lecter.
**I’m saddened that Jackie Chan doesn’t make cool Chinese movies anymore (that I’ve heard of). He actually is a really great actor…in Mandarin.
***I don’t like Michael Bay.
****Incidentally, Brett Ratner is a stupid name.
Then someone else said this:
I disagree! His films are entertaining and this was fantastic.
To which I said this:
This is not to say Brett Ratner is a bad director, just misunderstood. His movies, for the most part are quite entertaining, but that’s not the subject of this thread. The subject of this thread is to point out that Brett Ratner is not well established enough to warrant having his name used to promote a movie as its director.
That sort of thing might pass on the Arsenio Hall show, but NOT HERE, dammit!
…I’m just saying a great director would go on The Tonight Show, that’s all.
I just learned a new word. Grandiloquence is “speech that is lofty in tone, often to the point of being pompous or bombastic” says Dictionary.com¹. I will use my new-found friend as such: “Michael Bay is the master of grandiloquence.” There. Now I feel better about Transformers.
Wait. No I don’t.
¹Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
Why don’t women tell you when they’re no longer interested in you, instead of just ignoring you and not communicating with you as if the sudden disappearance is a message that I should just understand automatically that they don’t want to see me anymore? Whatever happened to communication? Why don’t we do that anymore? Instead of running away from a problem, why don’t women just face it, stand up to it and try to make it better?
Maybe they do and I’m just the unfortunate one to have never met a woman who actually communicates. Movies and television tell me that men are the ones who are afraid of commitment and don’t communicate while the women complain but put up with them anyway. Meanwhile, in the Jasonverse, I’m the guy that’s not afraid of commitment and enjoys communication whereas the women in my life are, well, they’re flaky. It’s like the perfect woman (for me) is a myth; someone that lives in the movies, complaining that they can’t find a guy like…me.
One more girl in out of my life. She should have called me.
Yeah, so Drive has been canceled. That irks me as I’ve fallen in love with the series. I’m going to buy it on iTunes tonight and buy it again when/if it hits DVD. Maybe there’ll be some kind of Family Guy kind of revival. I doubt it, though. First Firefly now Drive. Pisses me off. And that’s because I work for FOX.
So I had a dinner-and-a-movie date with Amanda Rice (aka Twai: yeah, the one from the song) last night. I picked her up at 6:30 and we dined at Casa del Taco in Edinburg then went to Carmike to watch the Night Listener. Robin Williams played a homosexual author who becomes obsessed with a 14 year old boy and his adoptive mother. She’s still not interested in a relationship. That’s fine with me.
… here I am.
I’m single. I’m available. No dates. No girls. No big dinner bills. More money for me. More cash to splurge on photographic equipment. Hmm.
I’m thinking maybe having a significant other, as thrilling an endeavor as marriage sounds, may not be in my best interests at this moment. I still have hobbies to have, bills to pay and foods to eat. I am hungry, actually. Hungry for pasta. I suddenly want buttered-up pasta noodles sprinkled with oregano. Mmm.
So, the idea now is to just stop looking for a wife/girlfriend/date/better half and focus more clearly on the important things; like ice cream and arriving at work on time.
The Cough came with Wednesday’s rain. I think it’s allergies. It always comes about this time of year and doesn’t end until March of the following year. It is accompanied by mass amounts of yellow-ish, green-ish mucus that I must blow from my nose. I feel the stuff rolling down the back of my throat and I cough so much I tend to find blood in my tissue paper.
Cough medicine doesn’t work. I should probably go see a doctor.
All I know is that I’m single and girls ’round here apparently don’t want to help out with that … *cough* Twai *cough*…
Anyway, I’m going to go write a song. It’ll be a sad song. About girls… and their collectively not wanting to go out with me.
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