Dear U.S. Army, Stick to Drone Attacks, Not Apostrophes

It is my hope that the misuse of the apostrophe above is the first stage in a weed-out process for the Army. While hopeful, I am aware that this is improbable. We have the intelligence necessary to invade countries, take over economies, and drone strike a country we aren't even at war with, yet we lack a simple grasp on our own language? It's a good thing we're fighting off the bad guys - we wouldn't want's them to impose a reign of proper grammar terror on us.

Purging Asians

Consisting of the two most rampantly racist sentences I have read so far in the one hour I have been awake, this captivating news story even out-racists itself. Behold, the first sentence.

The Bank of Canada purged the image of an Asian-looking woman from its new $100 banknotes after focus groups raised questions about her ethnicity.

I had assumed, wrongly, that the most racist part of this article was going to be that a (probably) super white Canadian focus group thought the woman on the banknote looked Asian, yet couldn't identify which type of Asian she was. Then, I thought to myself, wrongly again, that maybe that wasn't the most racist part. Maybe the most racist part was that after this cracker council decided the woman to be "some type of Asian" the racially sensitive (or insensitive?) government "purged" the image of the "some type of Asian" woman. I'm not sure if the government did not believe that the Asian woman accurately represented the ever-changing face of Canada or if they just couldn't tolerate praising unidentifiable Asian women on their currency. I will go ahead and assume that Canada has an overarching "no minorities allowed on currency" policy. This was only the most racist part until I read the second sentence.

The original image intended for the reverse of the plastic polymer banknotes, which began circulating last November, showed an Asian-looking woman scientist peering into a microscope.

BOOM! Stereotype of "Asian-looking woman scientist peering into a microscope" wins again! White people assuming all Asians look the same? Racist, but forgivable. Said white people removing general Asian face from Canadian banknote? Racist, but government backed. Allowing Asian-Canadians to bask in the glory of being represented on the $100 bill but only if they are photographed adding value to the Canadian economy by doing research? Pure, unadulterated racism. 

Bask in that,
zrox

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/image-of-asian-looking-woman-scrapped-from-new-100-bills-after-complaints/article4485307/

Movie Goers Unite

When the latest Batman movie was released I went to go watch it at the movie theater. Although the movie wasn’t without some flaws, I still found it to be a very enjoyable experience. What I didn’t enjoy was getting bent over and fucked in the ass to have to watch it. You know who bent me over? AMC Theaters, and they and their competitors have been doing this to me for years. In the beginning it was a light ass smack, and then it became genital fondling; now it’s full on rape. Ticket prices these days are outrageous; the national average ticket price has increased from $5.39 to $7.93 from 2000 to 2011 respectively according to the National Association of Theater Owners. These figures amaze me, not because they are so high but because they are so unrealistically low. I haven’t paid less than $10 for a movie ticket since leaving Gainesville, a small college town. If you are living in an urban area, like the majority of Americans, you are going to be paying anywhere from $12 to $25 for a movie ticket.  This is ridiculous. At the high end of the ticket pricing spectrum you could buy a movie on Blu-Ray and on the low end a DVD, this is assuming you are going alone.

Although the ticket prices really frustrate me, it’s the concession stand prices that make me feel violated. I’m going to low ball the prices of the usual items and they are still going to seem ridiculous. Popcorn and soda costs around $5.00 a piece, add or subtract a $.25 for either small or large. So, that means if I want to go to the movies with a drink in hand and some popcorn to snack on it’s going to run me upwards of $20 on the low end, and upwards of $35 on the high end. As a single man I can rarely justify going to the movies and getting the drink and popcorn, so I rarely go to the movies. I can’t imagine how often a family man/woman could justify going to the movies with the kids. If a family of four goes to the movies these days, gets four drinks and shares two popcorns, they will be paying anywhere from $70 to $130.

I can draw two conclusions about what’s going on in the minds of the movie theater executives and distributors from my analysis of this pricing structure. Either they are complete assholes and are knowingly screwing people over, or they think there’s nothing wrong with their pricing model. If the second conclusion is true, then these executives are out of touch with reality and have no business running a company. A monkey could tell you that paying more than $20 to watch a movie is a rip off. And if the first is true, well we need to let them know that we don’t like getting screwed over any more by not going to the movies.  

So, when I read articles talking about how people aren’t going to the movies as often anymore I can’t help but think that the answer to why that is happening is quite obvious. The pricing structure that the movie theaters are using is completely unreasonable and insulting. These prices are not set by supply and demand factors; they are controlled by an association of movie theater executives who have an oligopoly on the market. I would guess that if both ticket and concession prices were reduced by 50%, attendance and purchases would increase more than two fold and the movie theaters would make even more money. Until these prices are adjusted I will avoid going to the theater and encourage you to do the same.

Cazador 

A Preface to El Cazador’s Postings

Often times when I am alone, random thoughts and ideas pop into my head. Sometimes these are meaningful but more often than not they are trivial and meaningless. I have started keeping a log of these thoughts in order to come up with some interesting posts for people to read. There will be times when I will post (hopefully) entertaining blogs about trivial nonsense, but more importantly I hope to write about issues that are important to me in order to improve my understanding of them. I will primarily use this blog as a forum to explore these issues in greater depth through research, discussion and reflection. 

In the past I’ve found that when I am strongly opinionated about a particular issue I am resistant to changing that opinion. I will peruse the internet and find myself reading posts that reinforce my beliefs only to further solidify my opinion. The times that I do find myself reading something that contradicts a position that I hold, I will frequently catch myself immediately criticizing and finding counter arguments to the information while I am reading. It’s as if I have made my mind up about whatever I’m reading without giving enough consideration to the other side.

I have only met a handful of people who are actually willing to change their opinion on important issues. How many times have you heard someone state something along the lines of, “You make several compelling points, I am going to reevaluate my position on this.” One of my goals is to get to a point where I can say something like this more freely, the only person standing in the way is me; I am held back by my own pride, biases and arrogance. Recognizing this I will try to adopt a way of thinking where I actively challenge my own position on important issues and seriously consider counter arguments or alternative perspectives in their entirety.

My goal is to have my posts reflect this kind of flexible perspective and hopefully my thinking and writing will evolve in a way that is crisper, more informed and a more entertaining read for everyone.

I look forward to reading my fellow bloggers posts and I am genuinely excited about this blog.

El Cazador