Jobber of the Week

Yeah, I don't own a car. So yeah, I don't get to gripe about THE PAIN AT THE PUMP~! Though I can discuss urban planning and alternative fuels. If more things went to diesel, for instance, you could even have a similar car to what you have now that's better for the environment and won't cost you as much as unleaded. And Eric, once airplanes get in the air, they don't require nearly as much energy to stay up there. It's like the space shuttle, which spends a lot of energy to get out of the gravity field, but once it's in orbit, can move around a lot easier on less energy.

SF's transit is actually kind of miserable. MUNI sucks and is always late, and BART isn't so bad but isn't citywide (that's what MUNI light rail is for) and isn't something you're supposed to use on a daily basis because there's no monthly pass.

Eric, air travel is a fact of life. It's long range mass transit and it's efficiency sure beats a whole lot of Toyotas and Fords driving across the country. Furthermore, it's a must for cities that are isolated in the middle of nowhere (like mine) and the best speed/price ratio option for those of us for whom driving is not an option. Do planes use up gas and pollute? Yeah, but I don't drive myself around anywhere so I don't think it's too unreasonable that I can occasionally fly somewhere when I need to. The point is that we need to get people to stop thinking of transportation as a personal thing where they go along in their own little vehicle, and more of as a group activity. People like Czar, who seem unwilling to think that transportation should be some personal thing where they take their own vehicle everywhere, are the problem.

He's been surrounded with plenty of scandal, though. Hillary should send him a Christmas card this year. I don't mind Harper for the most part, but I think with a majority government the Conservatives could be damaging if they actually bother to act on their agenda. Things like amping up the drug war, tightening immigration, and privatizing CBC kind of work against what makes me like Canada in the first place. I suppose they're not too serious, though, since all Canadians seem to bitch about his global warming stance, and I'm not convinced that the Libs did anything other than hold press conferences to talk about how they're making progress with this series of press conferences.

It should also be mentioned that Bill Clinton was never known for shying away from speaking at a black church.

That's called taking an airplane. I realize the cost of air keeps going up, but if people took air every time it would work for them instead of cross country drives, gas would be cheaper for the airline companies AND they'd be more able to easily afford it. The other alternative is investing in maglev/bullet train technology. Of course, since Amtrak can't get the Sunset Limited through the bible belt states to Florida, since the track out of New Orleans STILL hasn't been repaired since Katrina, good luck getting money spent to replace slow trains with fast trains. I am with you here. My point is that once upon a time in this country, people lived in cities close together tied by a transit network with a lot of conveniences, or they lived in rural areas where they had less regional amenities but a lot more space. Suburban sprawl has tried to give people the best of both worlds, and it has done so at the cost of consumption and emissions.

What's worse is that they complain about him not further running away from the pastor, but hey, racist grandma? That's cool, why you gotta condemn her racism like that? I read the transcript of the Limbaugh show and in his knee-jerk reaction after the speech was done he talked about how Obama "trashed his grandmother," so I can only imagine that's why there's this echo chamber that Obama hates Grandmas. Hell, I even saw it (with the same phrasing even, "threw his grandmother under the bus") on the stupid blog comments of an ABC New story last night.

I quickly found I had a couple people on ignore though I honestly can't remember why. They must have been especially idiotic or ridiculously leftist/rightist once upon a time.

So basically, Liberal isn't as afraid of losing ground to Conservative so much as it doesn't want to lose voters to other opposition parties for being such a pathetic opposition, but the only way to stop being a pathetic opposition is a road to an election. Do I have this right? (blink, blink)

No, in fact he even said that to ignore it doesn't really solve the problem. This is not just a race issue, this is a generation gap issue, as people who were alive during the 60s when civil rights were being fought for do not entirely understand what blacks who came of age in those times were witnessing. That is where these harboured feelings originate. Some people are inclined to fight the system, because that is where they come from. The more it's ignored or squared away as irrelevant and "out of the mainstream," the harder it is to create a common unity. That alone is hardly the worst thing he said. In fact, it's one of the most divisive, but a lot of people agree that, holy shit, our foreign policy has a ripple effect around the world. The months after 9/11 were like some kind of dreamworld, though, where we told ourselves that our alliances and diplomatic manoeuvres had never made any enemies. This came back to reality with Iraq, where our alliances and diplomatic manoeuvres made the situation worse before we finally turned authority over to an Iraqi-led regime. It is a controversial statement, and not politically viable, but let's not go back to pretending to ourselves that they hate us for our freedom again. You'll get both sides of the story there, for sure!

Did NPR never come to your area or something?

Failures? Do you realize that Americans screaming about the price of gas is a joke in other countries? I'm not saying gas should be the most expensive of all nations, I'm saying it could reach something of a moderate. The failure has, more than anything, been on our part. Yes, gas costs a lot more in Britain and Spain and France and Japan and You Name It. But these countries also developed a lot better, with more urban planning, long-range mass transit (the chunnel for gods' sakes), and more people living closer together in cities. Whereas here, sprawl was invented, public transit is often something considered as a last resort for the poor who can't afford a personal vehicle (except in New York and Chicago), and rather than rural life and city dwellers we've created this bizarre hybrid of suburb dwellers who live on the outskirt communities of a major city and drive a long distance to and from the core.

Outside of Venezuela and maybe Iran, the US has the cheapest gas prices in the world. That's part of the problem with our addiction: We've become comforted to cheap gas.

I'm an Ignorant American. Well, I'm really not, since I hope to go to college there sometime soon and figure I'll hear a lot of this stuff on the news there, but I simply know less about the political system than the average Canadian knows about ours. When people talk about a minority government, they mean that regional elections have changed seats since the last federal election and now the opposition has more MPs, right? Because all I read is "Harper has a minority government, Dion doesn't want to force an election." Why is that? Assuming things stay the way they are, doesn't an election automatically bump Harper out? Or are they afraid they'll lose a bunch of seats again? Sorry if this is makes me sound like an extreme n00b. Our nation is large enough that many of our citizenry don't really need to know how any other system of government performs (and our own is complicated enough that grasping it is enough trouble) or even leave the country.

That's all some guys are good for. In the past this included guys like Val Venis, Mr. Ass, realistically Hardcore Holly should be here but he's protected more for loyalty, and nowadays Santino, MVP, and Matt Hardy. Santino's silly accent will get laughs, but as soon as the guy starts wrestling people stop caring. All these people calling for him to be given this push as being some sort of pedigree fighter with training, etc, forget that he was introduced to us all as Just Some Guy In The Crowd the other year in an overseas tour, and it hasn't been long enough for marks to forget that. It might happen in the future, but he'll have to disappear and emerge after a repackaging.

Not really. Bret Hart is the reason we have the phrase "five moves of doom" and everybody seems to love him. Ditto for Flair, who Mr. Five Moves of all people called out for doing a routine match over and over. I think it's kind of funny, honestly, that you cite Angle's popularity as some sort of out-of-touch IWC phenomenon where technical matwork is appreciated over any other kind of style. I agree this phenomenon exists, and I've often pointed it out as the reason why [Name Omitted] was as popular online as he was (despite little crowd heat most of his WWE career) before he disappeared down the Memory Hole of guys we'd rather forget. The thing isn't just that Angle was technical matwork, the thing is that Angle was just about anything and everything. How many other matwork guys will moonsault off a cage for a pop? How many technicians tough it through a Foley-esque crash test dummy brawl like Angle/Shane at that one PPV? I'll agree that Angle in the ring is pretty lame NOW, but back then he would attempt to get over with just about any type of style and while he didn't move like pre-accident Pillman or bump like Terry Funk, he certainly cleared the bar even if he didn't raise it. He's also the only matwork guy since Bret retired to be really good at the stick, as well. Again, his TNA performances blow goats, but let's not forget that the guy had become perpetually over by the time he was done with WWE. For god sakes, he was having promos about making Jesus tap out, having "wild jungle animal sex" with a black woman, and pointing out that he could say goddamn anything and the crowd would pop, and as if to prove the point all three of those were met with a crowd pop. The only truly boring period charisma-wise was the Luther Reigns, wheelchair-bound Smackdown GM period.

I stopped reading when things got a little too radical.

Okay, this is just bullshit. Look, I see what kind of people come to these events, since I live in Fight City and all. Mayweather is, for all intents and purposes, there, but nobody cares. Every match that's Mayweather VS Some Guy, the crowd comes out in support of Some Guy. I know that part of this has to do with the fact that the cost of tickets are designed to fleece tourists, but you'd think that a guy with an undefeated streak billed from the same town as the event would be SOMEWHAT of a draw, but he isn't. For Mayweather/Hatton, the Strip filled up with Brits. Maybe it's the weak dollar, but you couldn't go into any hotel (and I often do, since I do freelance tourism-related work) without hearing a bunch of European accents everywhere. Off-strip bars with British Pub themes did very good business, and after Mayweather won the top story on the local evening news was the disappointment of everyone who wanted to watch the show. When I saw WWE were using Mayweather in an angle, I thought "oh god, they couldn't have picked a guy who is more invisible." I laughed as the mostly local crowd at the T&M gave almost no heat to the confrontation at NWO until Show gave him a shove. I laughed at that stupid "GO GET THE JET.. I DA MONEY MAN" videoscreen thing and how badly it sync'ed up, and then how the crowd seemed to boo the whole thing for being as poorly synced and as blatantly stupid as it was. The points I have to give for Mayweather for this thing is that he seemed to pick up on the crowd reaction and go with the flow and heel it up, much sooner than McMahon did, since Vince is so damn stuck in his ways of forcing the crowd to accept the booking instead of just booking to crowd reactions. Going through with the heel turn and pointing out the absurdities of the match, the money, etc is about the best they could do if they wanted to give the match some buzz. Yeah, Mayweather came in looking like your typical WrestleMania Celebritiy Participant who is nigh-invulnerable during the match, picks up the easy win, and then disappears back to where ever he came from, but that's sure changed now. I'm guessing he does the job, takes the cash, and this whole gig is forgotten by the boxing world when his match with DLH rolls around.

That's pretty much it. Some guys have big fancy houses, some don't. Benoit did because he had a family. Booker has a nice place but it was originally for his late Mom. Austin has a kind of ranch house thing because he's fucking rich. If you're on the road so much and you don't have a family living at home, well, why spend too much on a place you'll see maybe two months of the year?

This study seems odd to me because it's only looking at females, but they're getting the STDs from somewhere, and it's probably men, yeah?

Damn straight, son. American stars and bars: learn to love 'em or learn to leave 'em. What an attitude. We've gone from the country that questioned anything and was started in a goddamn rebellion for gods sakes to a country where if you don't like the status quo, rather than trying to change things you should leave. Obama did a blah job on distancing himself from the comments, but probably won't the guy because they're personally pretty good friends even if they don't share a lot of opinions. The other thing is that Trinity is being treated like some sort of extremist congregation in the press, but it's considered fairly middle of the road by black church standards. The fact of the matter is that a lot of black churches promote a vision that American society hasn't been good to them. This isn't totally incorrect but at the same time it makes a lot of white people (particularly those in the Stephen Colbert "I don't see colour, everyone looks the same to me" vein) really uncomfortable. Oprah has also been a long-time attendee at this church but the pastor's sermons haven't caused America to turn their backs on her en masse, either.

I think that being in one of the three marquee WM matches, particularly one with all the mainstream media attention, is a pretty good career high for Jamal. I mean, that's way more than anyone ever expected of the guy when he showed up. Send him away to ECW, sez I.

In the past year we've also had in-restroom hidden cameras, only one week after I predicted it because it seemed impossibly absurd. However, all this has something in common which is that they're Vince's angles. It seems like his storylines exist in a cartoon universe outside everybody else's. Probably because he books himself by now and it's not like he's ever been very into the whole Attitude-era development of kayfabe that blurred lines with reality. Comically unrealistic situations and characters have always been his preference. Either that or we're heading into WCW territory where I just have to predict the dumbest and most senseless thing I can think of and then sit back and watch it happen.

MySpace is awful because it encourages everyone to provide real information about themselves, pictures of themselves tied to their name, etc. All I need is somebody's name and maybe a general guess of where they're living now to know more about them than I should. This includes people from my school years, people whose name appear in the news, even local celebrities. There was a kid here a few months ago who got arrested for causing a violent scene at the airport. I saw his name in the paper, entered it into MySpace, and there was a page where he rambled on diary-style about his mental issues. It used to be that people were as private with their identity as possible while online. MySpace has changed a lot of that. It is a stalker's dream.