Law and Order: SVU

I love how they start with the standard "none of these characters/situations are real" spiel and then the episode starts and it's a very thinly veiled depiction of a recent famous case. Like this episode "Funny Valentine" is obviously Rhianna/Chris Brown (heck the character's name is "Caleb Brown"). An episode I watched a few months ago was about a soccer mom sidelining as a pimp (at the same time that this case was actually in the courts).

The problem with NIMBY

I would probably say that NIMBY, or "Not In My Back Yard", is the number one ailment of society in the US.

If a program truly is believed to be well run and a benefit to the society as a whole, then there's no way that it can possibly be a detriment to the neighborhood that it's placed near or within. Something cannot be both a benefit and a detriment. It's either a brilliant program and therefore a benefit. Or it's a worthless program (or might simply need to be run better) and is therefore a detriment. If it's a benefit, there are no real problems. If it's a detriment, then there is no real value. Anyone who says that it's a "brilliant program" but "not in my backyard", they're lying. They either think that there isn't any real benefit (meaning that they think the program will fail), or they're simply selfish. In either case, they're trying to appear to be better than they actually are.

I was watching a documentary about putting a women's veterans home into a high end neighborhood in I can't remember which neighborhood in Connecticut (it would be the states first home for homeless female veterans). I was sickened by the hypocrisy of people saying, "I'm sure it's a wonderful program, but..." That "but" means that they don't truly believe that the program is valuable because they see it as overall being a detriment to their society. One person compared the effects of the home on home values to a strip club or a sex shop--as though they're actually comparable given the benefits the "generous citizens" were happy to proclaim.

A well run homeless shelter can increase home prices because it shows that the citizens actually care about the world. A well run homeless shelter will also increase everyone's home prices as it removes the dredges of society from society (by helping them improve their lives rather than leaving them to die on the streets). Instead of living in a city of wealth vs. slum, a well run, well integrated homeless shelter brings us together as a society, illustrating that no person is better than another simply because of their luck or inherited wealth. Unless, of course, we really do live in a world where only those who are able to overcome hardship and "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" matter...which, to me, ignores the fact that it usually takes an army of people who care to convince an individual who knows nothing but hardship, oppression, and degradation to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps".

I mean, are there any highly successful people in the real world who didn't have a single person say to them at some point in their life "you can do it"?

Google Adwords

Hmm...while preparing to create a couple new ads through my Google Adwords account, I learned that my previous ad (that directs people here) was suspended because I violate some policy of theirs. I assume it's because of my frank discussions about "taboo" subjects. Undoubtedly my use of certain keywords in describing my posts (or the words I've used within my posts) triggered an internal server to disable my ad.

Oh well, I'm not going to fight it. I should look at it as a godsend because it means that I still have $94 to spend on ads given to me freely by Google for one reason or another (I'm still not sure, but I'll take free money to advertise my views). If you disagree with Google, feel free to send them an email on my behalf.

Book Trailers

I don't think I've ever seen a book trailer that didn't come across like an SNL spoof of a B-rated movie. Sigh.

Don't worry, I'll attempt to post lots of examples. :-)

I love the Dark-Hunters to death, but the guys...they just look silly in their action packed trailers. Or maybe it's the cheesy voice over with trailer-voice-dude. Ehh...I watched the Retribution trailer a second time w/out sound and it was sort of better.

 

Inferno's (which I cannot wait to read) trailer doesn't look so bad, but then it's only got like one line of voice-over.



Annnd...Time Untime  goes right back to the cheese-fest. Hmm...though now that I think of it, does perhaps my love of the story decide whether or not I rate the trailer extra-cheesy or not? 'Cuz I didn't like Time Untime nearly as much as I loved Retribution and to me the latter's trailer just made me want to cry.*



So...I guess the ultimate test is to see how bad Acheron's trailer is...Oh ma gad--that actually wasn't too bad. Wish they'd get a new voice-over-dude. It still smells like SNL or CollegeHumor, which pulls all the seriousness out of everything. I mean, satire is serious business, but real seriousness looses it's seriousness when I can't take it seriously because it reminds me of CHEESE!



And last but not least, I guess I should look up the trailer for Styxx since I cannot wait another 5-6 months for the book...and it does not exist yet. Sigh. Hmm...

Anywho. I'm going to look up some more of the book trailers for the dark-hunters for my own personal pleasure. I'll give them a ranking of 1 to 5 with 5 being cheesy enough for a certain mouse with a big head who owns his own chain of pizza parlors. :-)

No Mercy: 3 wedges of cheese



Uhh...this one isn't a trailer...I don't know whether it's fan made or not, actually. While hilarious, as a fan of Bubba, this isn't really the same guy as is in the book.

No cheese here. Ironically.



This next one is from The League series (same author and similar character personalities). Huh...short and sweet limits the room for cheese.

2 wedges of cheese (the voice) for Born of Ice



By the way, gotta give props to Kenyon or whomever for the choice of actor. Dark-hunter.com puts a real face to all the characters of her books and this character's name is Devyn which I can totally buy. He looks like a Devyn, ya know?

Born of Fire (same series as Born of Ice)is up next:

Well--it gains points for being short (like B.o.I.), but loses them (from me) because she shot him at least once in the book.

2 wedges of cheese.



Alright that's enough of those. Plus I ran out of videos available from this author, haha.

*I'd like to go into detail about why I dislike Retribution's trailer so much--it made Sundown look like a freaking gay porno actor :-(. Especially if you know what happened in that car...poor Andy, hahaha.**

**Clarification: read the book. It's really not as bad as I kind of made it sound just now--it's actually a very sweet story which is why I really don't like that trailer.

And finally, before I sign off--I think I finally successfully embedded a video into my post!! Yay! Given that I didn't change anything in my methods, I think that means that google finally figured out their stuff.