Jingus

None of my post was simple "rhetoric". I wasn't ever making up contentious statements just to be an asshole or to try to trick you into making a mistake. Everything I said was something that I legitimately believe, and every question I asked was one that I legitimately wanted answered. I'm not trying to pick a fight. I'm just trying to comprehend a system of beliefs which make very little sense to me.

I've heard that Smart Mark Video cuts IWA a part of the money they make selling their tapes, which is apparently a decent amount, so that certainly helps load up the shows with big names.

Jerry Jarrett hasn't owned TNA in well over a year, Panda Inc. are the majority stockholders.

Donatello Hanzo Joe Musashi Ryu Hayabusa Strider Hiryu ...how does a Final Five work in terms of semi-finals?

Not that I can recall, nope.

Where is this now? I want some of these shows... and I'm a broke bastard. (I'd eventually get my own copy from one of the workers, but I'm also impatient and don't really wanna wait that long.)

Firstly, the popular vote doesn't actually decide the election, but it's a much better indicator than the electoral votes of what the actual will of the people is. And secondly, I'm from Tennessee, lived here all my life. TN is a very conservative state, even moreso now than in past decades. There's NO WAY that any Democrat was going to win that state in 2000, period, no matter who he was. I'm amazed that Gore drew as many votes (48%) as he did here. Bush simply sat there and did nothing but read to the children for those minutes. He made no decisions, issued no orders. That is proven and factual. That is not debatable, period. No, I don't have a problem with him freezing up; I might've done the exact same thing. The problem I have is you claiming that it didn't happen. So, you're blaming MTV for... what again? As much as they hype the Rock the Vote campaign, it doesn't exactly bring in millions and millions of new voters. As to the ones they do bring in, why would they be any more ignorant than your average American? Oh yeah, and this part: Firstly, the wording makes that a kinda funny statement. Secondly, I live in NASHVILLE; I can find THOUSANDS of people who vote Republican for no real reason other than that's how everyone else they know votes as well. If you'll read what I wrote, I never once claimed that you were blindly following anything. I was talking about your apparent perception of myself. And how does your grandmother working for somebody I've never heard of or your cousin's political opinions affect this debate at all? OK Sylvain Grenier......................... Well, we have. The USA has done a lot of bad shit in its time; how about the glorified land grab known as the Mexican War? If you think that America has always treated the rest of the world with decency and respect, then go tell that opinion to the millions of indians who populate the country... oops, all dead. (In reality, I do actually agree with you; the idea that the Iraq invasion was done for oil is ludicrous, we've spent far more money than we'd ever hope to make back from the pipelines. I just wanted to make a point about how America isn't always right, and is sometimes pretty damn wrong.) edit: why aren't the Quotes working?

Holy shit, are you serious?! When did this happen?

Uh, what part of that "explains" why anyone would dislike Bush? Because he does stuff? I'd say 100% of American voters would agree that any President needs to do stuff. I wasn't aware that getting about the same number of popular votes as the other guy constituted "choking". Gore hardly pulled a Carter. "highly debatable"? Bush froze, plain and simple. If you'd said "understandable" or even "forgiveable" I would agree, but "debatable" is hardly the word for seven minutes that were very well accounted for. (And I don't think anyone except Michael Moore would actually hate Bush for that.) ...I'm still trying to figure out what your point was here. You're mad that MTV signed up a bunch of young adults to vote who probably wouldn't have otherwise voted? Or are you mad that the Kerry campaign has a bunch of young volunteers? Or maybe you're mad that nobody remembers who John Fitzgerald Kennedy is, apparently some of them "just can't keep pace with it", whatever "it" is. If I had to choose between voting only for Kerry or Bush, I gotta admit, I'd probably go with Kerry. (In case you're wondering, I did vote for Nader in 2000, but then again I was dead certain that Bush was going to win my state. And past a few of his ecological policies and legalizing marijuana, no, I don't]/i\ know where he stood on most issues.) But no, I most definitely don't want Hillary in the White House, EVER. (Although it would almost-ALMOST-be worth it just to have a President who isn't a rich white christian male for once.) Personally, I'd go with President Colin Powell, but that's just me. Oops; did I confuse you by actually, y'know, THINKING instead of blindly following one or another party's line? Hillary/Kerry? You mean that Kerry would try to run for Vice President after failing his Presidential bid, in your prediction here? Or that he and Hillary would somehow end up running against each other? Either way, I'd say it's fairly improbable.

BWAHAHAHAHAAAAAA. Thanks, guys. I've been wanting something hilarious to rib Storm about, and you've finally given it to me. GOLD!

Well, I never really wanted kids anyway. (And I've heard that the stems and seeds cause extra brain damage, not sterility; time to visit Snopes and try to find out the truth.)

I already smoke a pack of camels a day, and alcohol tends to make me get the hangover before I'm halfway drunk, so I'm fucked either way.

Having myself on several droughty occasions packed bowls with chopped-up stems and ground-down seeds, I hear ya brother.

...shit, that was long and emotional. I actually had more valid debate points to make, I'll do those after I take a break.

All right, buckle up and grab a snickers, cuz if you read this whole post you're definitely not going anywhere for a while. That conflicts with my experiences in one weird little way. Over time, I've found that literal interpretationalists tend to be from the more conservative sects, let's say Southern Baptists just to name an example. However, a lot of the right-wing sects prefer the King James above all others, claiming that it is the most perfect translation, and sometimes going so far as to say it's the only one ordained by God. Why do they say that when it's been through an extra generation of linguistic metamorphosis? Just because it's the Bible that their daddies used? But one would assume that, to be Literal Infallible Truth, any Bible must be written with no changes from the original, divinely inspired documents. And, as I've said before, it's more or less impossible to fully and literally translate any language into another while retaining all the subtle meanings and implications that are written between the lines. How can you reconcile this logical impossibilty with the idea of literal truth? They claim the name of Christianity. They have some really weird ideas, but hey, so does Catholicism. What gives any man the right to decide that another is not a Christian? Except for this passage, Genesis 2:18-19: "And the Lord God said it is not good that man should be alone; I will make a help-meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them." Also, I don't know if it's come up in the discussion yet, but has anyone discussed the carbon-14 dating method yet? That's always an interesting one for religious debates. I doubt I'm gonna learn Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic any time soon. Latin was hard enough, and despite spending three years on it I'm still borderline illiterate. That's one problem with a lot of these religious debates: 99.99% of the people arguing have never actually read any of the original texts, and the ones who have tend to be clergymen of some sort who already have an opinion and a bias towards their particular branch of the church. And that right there is one of my main problems with Christianity, if not all religions. "The Bible is true. We know this to be true, because the Bible says so, and the Bible is infallibe. We know that the Bible is infallible, because the Bible says so." It's circular logic, the kind that is impossible to prove wrong, and thus almost certainly categorically untrue. Yes, I know about the Christian concepts of faith, and believing in the unbelievable. But that's my very problem: it's UN-BELIEVE-ABLE. As in, incapable of being believed. I'm a logical, almost mathematical person at heart. This logic tells me that it's highly unlikely that any God (as he's presented in the Bible) exists, or ever has existed. Where, then, does one come by faith in the Bible? I have no idea. Some people tell me they simply read it, and were inspired with the knowledge that it was True; suffice to say that this never happened to me when I read it. Others claim that God has spoken to them; great, but he's never spoken to me. Still others (the most annoying ones) say that, in order to know God, I must seek him out myself, spending my whole life if necessary in the pursuit and contemplation of holy things. My response to them: why the fuck should I? My general thought about any omniscient, omnipotent being is that, if they've got a message for me, it's a helluva lot easier for an all-powerful God to write the message across the sky in mile-long letters above my house than it is for me to spend a lot of time and effort to peer through a long-ass book and try to divine the meanings myself. And another thing: That's my biggest problem with Christianity as a hole. That one concept: Salvation. I am told by Christians that I am dirty and impure. Some claim that this is because of my actions: that I have stained myself by doing things in this life which God doesn't approve of. Others claim that I was BORN into sin, because some bitch ate a piece of fruit she wasn't supposed to. (And let's not even get into predestination, because the whole concept royally pisses me off and generally makes me want to choke anyone espousing it.) The concept of Sin angers me. The concept of Evil disagrees with me. The concept of Satan sounds fishy at best to me. And the concept of Hell enrages me so greatly that I literally have to make myself stop and think of something else, or else I'll start smashing things. (And I don't smash shit for no reason. EVER. These matters affect me that deeply.) The reason for this: according to the Bible, GOD MADE EVERYTHING. God made sin. God made evil. God made hell. God made the devil. Even if he didn't directly construct them himself, he allowed them to exist. Don't deny this: is God not all-knowing and all-powerful? If He wished to simply erase bad things from the universe with a snap of his mighty fingers, could he not do it? If God hates sin, as the Bible states, THEN WHY DOES HE LET SIN EXIST? Or, to put it another way: let's say that, one day, a man named Joe is born. Joe grows up to be a wicked man. He becomes a thief, a rapist, and a murderer. He finally dies, and since he never repented for his sins, is sent to hell. My conundrum is thus: God allowed Joe to exist. He allowed Joe to sin. He never stopped Joe from committing any of these actions. And since God is omnipotent, he knew since the beginning of time that Joe was going to hell!!! One can say that Joe made his own choices in life. One could say that he, like all men, had free will, and excercised it right into damnation. In my view, however, this is as false as false can be. By my own train of logic, God sent Joe to hell, burning in darkness forever, without so much as a how-do-you-do. And finally, what about all those people that Joe stole from, raped, or killed? I've known way too many victims of "Joes" in my life, far too many of my own friends, family, and loved ones who've been harmed, scarred for life, or killed outright by the coldness and indifference of this universe. I don't understand any omnipotent being who, given the choice to create any kind of existence He wanted, somehow came up with this violent wasteland known as Life, where joy and compassion is a treasured rarity and cruelness and death eventually come to all people. I can't imagine any sort of fair, just, merciful, loving Creator who would bury his own creations in dogshit like this one apparently has. I don't understand Him, and I don't really want to. If this shithole is what God wants, then fuck God.

D'oh. Been a while since season 5 went off the air, eh? Yep, I meant Hamilton, thank you.

I saw doors. Not a door, but a whole series of different ones that flashed by for about a second or two until I picked which one I wanted to stare at. (It ended up being a doorway at the end of a hall in the original Resident Evil game.) My mind is highly visual, and I can never really get it to slow down, dammit.

I just used Holden because he was such a close comparison to Caleb: showed up halfway through the last season, had super-strength, kicked some ass, and then got stomped real good. Holtz I didn't include because he's such a strange case. In theory he's a villain, but Team Angel never treated him like one. Why didn't they ever just kill him? Yeah, I know, he's a normal human being and not a demon, his family was massacred by Angelus, blah blah blah. He caused just as much pain and destruction as any other baddie, and simply did not care that Angel had a soul and was fighting on the side of the Higher Powers. In my book, those qualities should've gotten him axed with the quickness. Ilyria was a villain for all of one episode; then, in one of the cooler and ballsier moves I've seen Joss pull, she turned babyface and stayed part of Team Angel til the end of the series. Jasmine I really haven't seen much of, but I didn't like the actress that played her from what I saw, and plus I really hated the idiotic "evil Cordy" storyline that set the whole thing up.

Yeah, the Connor arc was really long, even though it really started more or less in season 3 with Darla's pregnancy. Problem is, well... I always hated Connor. I always thought he was a whiny, ungrateful little brat who (once he got out of the hell dimension) didn't deserve half of what he got. Having two loooooooong seasons focusing so hard on him made the show hard for me to watch at times. He's like Dawn, but with generic superpowers and no sense of humor. And I gotta say that Buffy has Angel beat on the original villain front: Buffy Angellus > Angel Angellus Spike > Lindsay Glory > The Beast Evil Willow > Evil Cordy Caleb > Holden The Trio > The Black Circle (yeah, you read that right)

Bracket A: Graduation Day, Part 2 (3.22) Spin the Bottle* (4.06) Spin the Bottle is almost like a Version 2.0 of Tabula Rasa: they got rid of all the crap that weighed down the idea the first time, so that they could really have fun with the amnesiac Angellites. I realized that I'd made my choice when I thought of the main featured special effect in both episodes. In GDP2, it was a REALLY crappy-looking giant snake; in StB, it was Angel "discovering" his ability to morph into a vamp, and just playing with it for like a minute straight. No question. Hush (4.10) Becoming, Part 1 (2.21) Don't get me wrong: Hush is a damn good episode... but I wouldn't say it's even the best one of its season, and I think it gets too much praise at times. On the other hand, Becoming P1 killed off Kendra. Now THAT is giving the audience what they want. Bracket B: Not Fade Away* (5.22) Shells* (5.16) Like it's even a question. NFA is so damned good it pisses from a great height onto 99% of the rest of the Buffyverse. Becoming, Part 2 (2.22) Amends (3.10) Probably the best season finale on Buffy goes against... the introduction of the all-time lamest Big Bad? Yech. "Close your eyes..." > anything in Amends. Bracket C: You’re Welcome* (5.12) Innocence, Part 2 (2.14) What are these two doing in the top 16? Both are good eps, but there's much better out there. Neither the Judge nor Tattooed Lindsay were exactly all-time great villains. A Hole in the World* (5.15) The Gift (5.22) A tough choice, but I gotta go with Buffy sacrificing herself instead of Team Angel sacrificing Fred. Bracket D: Orpheus* (4.15) Passion (2.17) Orpheus is, at best, a cutesy crossover episode with some funny lines. (True, Season 4 badly needed one of those by that point, but still.) On the other hand, Passion was maybe the first episode of Buffy that grabbed you by the throat, slapped you across the face, and MADE you care about the characters on that show. Yeah, Angellus has done a lot of cold shit over the years, but whenever any character is droning on about his most vicious crimes, him coldly snapping Jenny Callender's neck is the one that always comes to mind. Salvage* (4.13) Smile Time* (5.14) What the fuck are either one of these two doing here? The Body, Once More With Feeling, and Apocalypse Nowish are all out, but fucking Smile Time is still in competition? Fuck that. I go with Salvage just cuz it at least had some cooler villains. A final thought or two about Buffy's Season 2. Some are wondering why people like it so much. I'll explain as best I can: simply put, the moment that Angel lost his soul was the moment that everything changed for all the people involved. Nothing like that had happened on the show prior to that; let's face it, Season 1 and the first half of Season 2 weren't all that different from Xena or Charmed in terms of overall depth or quality. And then, out of nowhere, the rules all change; we find out that the writers are more than willing to turn a good person bad, or to kill off a major character, or to (most shocking of all) give us an unhappy ending for a season finale. It doesn't hurt that Angellus was one of the most sickeningly vicious villains I've ever seen in any fictional medium, featuring the best acting David Boreanaz has ever done; even Angellus's return in Angel Season 4 was a pale shadow of his work in BS2. Hell, most of Season 3 was spent just dealing with the fallout from 2. In short, the last few episodes of Season 2 were what took a fairly average action-adventure show and elevated it into the classic which we know today.

Kind of a weak-looking crop this year. Not as bad as some previous ones (Cabin Fever, Wrong Turn, and House of the Dead were all out around the same time, weren't they?), but still... Resident Evil 2: I was one of those rare people who hated the first one, so I kinda doubt I'll like the sequel any more, especially since it looks like more of the same except without Michelle Rodriguez. (On a positive note, at least Paul "Most Overrated Director On Earth" Anderson wasn't at the helm this time.) Saw: I've never heard this movie described the same way twice. This flick apparently contains enough plot to make up three or four lesser horror movies. On the plus side, most movies with Danny Glover or Cary Elwes aren't that bad. The Grudge: has anyone ever seen a good Sarah Michelle Gellar movie? Ever? That poor girl must have the worst agent in history. (Wonder if he works for Rose McGowan, too.) When you gotta chose between Scream 2 or Funny Farm to pick your best role, that's not so good. Seems like it's trying to cash in on the success of The Ring and the popularity of Buffy, at least from how the previews looked. And speaking of which: The Ring 2: well, at least Naomi Watts and the same little boy signed on again, plus a few what-the-fuck additions like Elizabeth Perkins and Sissy Spacek. However: awesomely talented director of the first Ring, Gore Verbinski, is out; fairly mediocre director of the original Ringu, Hideo Nakata, is in; Ehren Kruger, the aside-from-The-Ring hideously untalented screenwriter is still around. So call this one a toss-up, I have no idea if it'll be any good.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, but I'll say it again: if you're a wrestler, a manager, or any kind of worker on a wrestling show, NEVER TOUCH THE FANS. Ever. I don't care if they yell at you. I don't care if they step over the piece of string or "imaginary line" that serves as a guardrail in many indy feds. I don't even care if they spit on you. Unless a fan actually attacks you and physically strikes you, you have no right whatsoever, either legally or morally, to "fight back" no matter how your honor has been impugned. OK, other than that, sounded like a helluva show. Anyone else think it was weird that damn near half of the NWA-Wildside regular crew was up there on the same night that Wildside had a TV taping? I was at that taping Saturday night, and without Rainman, Sal, Tank, Iceberg, Sexton, and Rave (not to mention part-timers like Sydal, Delirious, and Styles) it felt a little bit like a skeleton crew, especially without good ol' Goodman reviewing the action like always. Weird how bookings go on the indy circuit sometime.

One major problem though: there's no such thing as a perfect translation. Nuances and subtle meanings are lost all the time in translating jobs. Hell, the real title of the Diary of Anne Frank is a word that has no exact English translation (it works out to something similar to "The Secret Annex", but not exactly). Different languages have completely different idiomatic sayings, slang, metaphors, and so on that rarely survive the trip to another tongue intact. Now, apply that to the Bible, where everything has been translated from the original Middle Eastern languages to Greek to Latin to English, and it's easy to see how little errors might've come up. Another point that I've always wanted to bring up to the local Biblethumpers (and there ain't no Biblethumper like a southern Biblethumper) but am usually too chicken to do so: if the Bible is "perfect literal historical truth" like I've heard it claimed to be so many times... then why are there so many different versions and editions of the book?

Weird thing: I only know two people who've been to Iraq. One is a cousin of mine who's still stuck in Falluja, where a bunch of his squadmates were recently maimed by a roadside bomb, and despite having chronic nightmares his return home has been pointlessly delayed by red tape; the other one is an indy pro wrestler who's a friend of mine, and actually wishes he could go back to Iraq, because he's so bored with homefront Army life and "had better internet connection in Iraq" than he does now and spent most of his time playing Halo.

Yeah, but Uncle Joe didn't just say there were KGB spies in the government, which was obviously probably true; we had spies in their government too. He claimed to have a list of 200 names of proven communists employed by the state department. Needless to say, said list was not exactly ever shown to the public.