Life Rant

Penguins.

Freaking penguins.

Everywhere.

American culture has reached penguin saturation. I cannot turn around without finding a stinking penguin staring me in the face. They're in commercials, they're in movies, cereal boxes, juice containers, magazines.... just everywhere, and I've had it.

Corporate America, can you please find some NEW cute thing to use as your basis for the next advertising fad? I'm pretty sure that when I'm hitting the limit a lot of other people must be hitting it as well.

It started, I suppose with the (most excellent) movie March of the Penguins which was a documentary about a typical year in the life of penguins in Antarctica. Really, it was fascinating and even moving. Unfortunately it was such a sleeper hit with such staying power that advertising execs latched on to the concept like pit bulls. I mean what's not to like? They're funny looking, furry and cute (oh, especially the babies of course).

And then we had the devious movie Happy Feet come out, which although for over 6 months all they showed in commercials was a bunch of happy little dancing penguins, turned out to be a United-Nations-is-good-mankind-is-evil-for-destroying-the-environment story. Great message for the wee tykes, thanks. I guess it's ok for penguins to gorge on seafood, but not ok for people to eat fish. Yeesh.

So anyway, too much of ANYTHING is a bad thing and now it's like we're being stalked by the waddling litlle buggers.

Enough with the penguins already!

Posted by Vic at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A video has shown up on MySpace that was filmed recently in Tampa Bay, Florida showing two young African-American (ok... black) boys beating the crap out of each other while adults (parents?) cheered, jeered and otherwise encouraged them to keep going.

You can find a local news story with a link to the video here.

The two boys, who like like they are MAYBE 10 years old, tops, wrestle, punch and basically brawl while a bunch of adults are standing around encouraging them to beat on each other and keep going. The video is hard to watch, and basically made my blood boil.

THIS kind of behavior from adults who are supposed to be role models is the reason that the next generation grows up to be poor, violent and utterly under-educated. So don't you DARE try to tell me that this is MY (middle class, conservative, white America's) fault.

And I don't care how uneducated you are... anyone who views that either in person or on video and is not mentally retarded KNOWS it's WRONG.

F***ing morons (the adults, that is).

Source: Drudge Report

Posted by Vic at 07:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I find it EXTREMELY humorous that the day after the elections, and an overwhelming Democratic victory that any and all news stories, blog posts, etc. concerning hackable/defective/rigged voting machines (Diebold or otherwise) has completely and utterly stopped COLD.

Can you imagine how different things would be right now if somehow (and legitimately) the Republicans had won? HOLY cow what a monster outcry there would be!!!!

What about all that "voter suppression"? Hmm? Guess not.

At least Republicans know how to lose gracefully. No idiotic recount tirades and nary a lawsuit to be seen, which is exactly the opposite of what would have happened had the Dems not won control.

Just a little observation as yesterday I scanned a bunch of news aggregator sites for any new news having to do with voting machine-related stories. :-)

Posted by Vic at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)