Patches of Divinity

Do you ever have moments when you suddenly flash to something that happened before, and you realize it because of that incident that you’re in the current moment? I had one of those moments today, and it troubled me to realize that the only use for the past is to provide a constant running accounting of reference points to the future. But you can never know what will be important. You don’t know, when you make a decision, whether it will have some enlarged positive or negative effect in the future. And this is why it is important to try to live consciously every moment of every day, so you keep yourself on the right track to your goals. That includes keeping your thoughts positive and directed to where you want to go. That kind of attention to living can be exhausting. But I think the alternative is much worse.

I learned this today while buying a salad.

RWN’s Blogger Poll About Likes and Dislikes of Famous People

Right Wing News did a poll of right wing bloggers to determine who on the right is liked and disliked. Allah from Hot Air, Rush Limbaugh and Meghan McCain are just some of the names polled. I participated, and except for one answer, I was in the majority of answers. Very interesting, check it out!

Hot Tub Time Machine

Warning: Spoilers. I’m serious, dude, I will ruin that movie for you if you haven’t seen it. I’m disclaimed. Also, it isn’t really a movie review. I just kind of ramble about the parts I like. So you’ve been warned. Mkay?

Hot Tub Time Machine is exactly the movie I wanted to see, and exactly the movie I thought it would be when I saw the trailer. In a word: fabulous.

A total douche – Rod Corddrey – is found in his garage with carbon monoxide poisoning. He is perfect as the unshaven, bald, alcoholic who is too loud, too … everything. You can see a past in him. To cheer this moron up, his two best friends, and nephew of one of the best friends, take off for Kodiak Valley, a place they used to go as highs school pals. They discover the beautiful Rocky Mountain retreat is not quite what they remembered: the hamlet looks run down; the storefronts are boarded up with “Out of Business” spray painted across the plywood-covered doors. At the resort, they encounter a one-armed bellhop – the actor who played McFly in Back To The Future — a fact that could not be mere coincidence.

Clark Duke – the young nephew of John Cusack’s character – stole the show for me. I loved every scene with him; he was one of the most charming actors I’ve ever encountered. When I returned home after the movie, I googled him and discovered that he and Michael Cera are best friends. I love that. It so fits. So perfect. He’s a pudgy, nerdy guy who is so locked into digital culture he can’t quite understand, in any real way, how anyone could have lived without texting, emails, and all the other electronic stuff we use on any given day.

As the foursome get settled into their run-down room, they find a closed up hot tub. Inside is a dead, rotting possum. But after a few minutes, the tub starts boiling, and it looks and smells fresh and clean, and they jump in. The douche – Corddrey – has some illegal Russian Red Bull-type concoction, and a whole bar on him. His alcoholism is actually extreme – I began to notice, after a while, the constant sound of bottles clinking together in his backpack. Anyway, the Russian Red Bull is the key. It gets spilled on the hot tub controls and they suddenly find themselves back in a room that looks slightly different.

And the bellhop has both arms.

Just don’t look right.

They hit the slopes and you immediately see the very intensely bright colors of the skiers and this brought about a smirk from me.

I was still in the low single digits in 1986, so my memory of that time is basically a patchwork of things I learned later. I feel a very strong affinity for that decade (Regan! low taxes! awesome clothes!). But I recognized the joke immediately. If you look around today, everyone’s in nice neutrals and earth tones. Apparently back in the 1980s, people wore color. Who knew!?

The guys go skiing, save for the nephew who awesomely snowboards. And when they crash, they jump up, feeling awesome. I laughed at that. That is something we can all relate to.

Anyway, basically they decide that since they’re in 1986, they must not touch anything. Ashton Kutcher’s “Butterfly Effect” is referenced through-out. You can’t do anything you didn’t do that night in 1986. Turns out a lot of bad stuff happened. Cusack gets stabbed in the eye with a fork. Corddrey gets his ass kicked. So they do allow small exceptions to the Butterfly Effect rule. Cusack talks to an interesting girl instead of the girl he’s supposed to break up with. Later, she breaks up with him, he calls her a bitch, and she stabs him in the eye. Fate got him in the end – no matter what he did.

Corddrey, like in 1986 the first time, got his ass kicked again though he tried to avoid it. This got me thinking about the nature of fate. I wonder if we really do have one path that leads us to where we are today. I hope not. I’d like to think that when I am consumed with guilt for having done one thing, another option would have led to a better outcome.

Anyway, Cusack’s sister ends up doing Corddrey and they figure out that Corddrey is the nephew’s dad. The scene where he’s doing Cusack’s sister is just so funny.

Craig Robinson, from the Office, was also great as the dude who didn’t want to get his dick sucked by Corddrey. And he had a great scene where he sang “Jesse’s Girl.” Awesome. Pure love.

The wardrobe people dressed Cusack in this trench for the last eight minutes of the film:

Brills, I tell you.

Anyway, the plot is silly and frothy and this really is a boy’s movie. But I loved every second of it. I particularly like all the recursive references (like the Back To The Future bellhop and the “In Your Eyes” trench coat).

A happy movie that made me happy. At the very end when the Clark character sees that Corddrey changed his future for the better (he stayed in 1986 and invented “Loogle” and became a billionaire), he says, “These are my parents” in a way that just cut me to the quick. I actually teared up.

I want to live inside this movie. Loved it.

The President’s Guests

Atlas has an insanely detailed analysis of the updated White House visitor’s list. The most amusing, for me, was Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, both of whom visited in February and March. Despite the President’s initial lame attempts to distance himself from them, he’s pretty much given up the pretense at this point. Good for you, Mr. President. Be who you are, see who you wanna see.

Check out Atlas’s post for an eyefull.

Troop Deaths Double In Afghanistan

AP reports:

The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of additional soldiers to reverse the Taliban’s momentum.

Those deaths have been accompanied by a dramatic spike in the number of wounded, with injuries more than tripling in the first two months of the year and trending in the same direction based on the latest available data for March.

U.S. officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise even further as the Pentagon completes its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and sets its sights on the Taliban’s home base of Kandahar province, where a major operation is expected in the coming months.

Where is the anti-war left now? Why aren’t we hearing death rolls every evening on television? Because the anti-war left isn’t principled; because they were anti-George W Bush, not anti-war.

I find it funny – actually laugh out loud hilarious – that the economy is worse under Obama, and promises to get even worse, and the Left utters not a peep, and likewise, the war casualties are not only ridiculously high due to President Obama’s incompetence, they promise to climb even higher.

This is horribly sad. It’s awful for our brave men and women who are far from home, trying to keep us safe, while Obama destroys the economy with nationalized health care. He doesn’t care about Iran having nukes, or the fact that unemployment is at 10%, or the fact that we are in unpayable debt, or the fact that American lives are being laid down for our freedom. His only priority is and was national health care.

Sorry, military. Godspeed.

We Were Gonna Get Married

Literal tears… so funny.

Five For Friday

It’s been a while since I’ve done a nice list of links so this is what I’m reading:

Accidental Dong. A website dedicated to finding the accidental genitalia in everyday items. Deviously, ridiculously addictive.

There I Fixed It. A website dedicated to kludgey solutions to life’s problems. Shows you how lazy people are to hilarious advantage.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Totally addictive sight about romance books. My brain is on fire. Love this one.

Lifetime, Wow! All about Lifetime tv channel. Hilarious.

Self Help Quotes. This one actually is the most addictive – the quotes are funny, political, timely, and lots of other adjectives.

UPDATE

I messed up. John Hawkin’s site, Self Help Quoteswas linked incorrectly. I apologize and it has been fixed. Please check it out – I really like that site.

The New Slavery

Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in Stanley v. Georgia (1969):

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.

Bear with me while I stretch from a First Amendment issue to a “Commerce clause” issue.

If Marshall is correct that the government shall not have the right to “control men’s minds”, wouldn’t it also stand to reason that the US government does not have either legal or moral grounds to control our bodies, specifically with respect to the ObamaCare legislation? The government can not conscript a soldier (though of course, it has in the past, and Democrats floated the idea of a draft for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). They can’t force us to be healthy or to buy anything.

I would even go so far as to say this is slavery. My body belongs to me (as the pro-abortion democrats have long shouted from the screech of bullhorns). My body is not something the US government should have even a whisper of control over. The ObamaCare bill will put my body in the purview of the Government’s control.

This is slavery. This is my body being used, manipulated, and directed by a force other than myself. It is coercion, and it is slavery. I believed we had settled this issue in the USA. I believed that all right thinking men and women assigned that ugly part of our history to the past. But now Obama has made slaves of us all. He will tell us what to eat, where to go for health care, whether or not we are treated.

Obama has reconstituted slavery in the United States of America.

Say no to slavery. Reject ObamaCare.

All Apologies

I admit it: I’m very confused, and right now, completely ADD. I want so much to write political stuff like I used to. Remember when I liveblogged the Republican National Convention in 2004? Remember when I rode on Air Force One and stole the lunch menu and the entertainment menu?

Remember when I covered the TANG scandal (I was totally support on that, but it counts.) My interview with a GITMO interrogator? My film of Tom Kaine saying the Iraq wasn’t important? Those were all good times. And I still love the political back and forth. But lately, the socialism is just SO MUCH. I can’t possibly keep up with it all. I just feel overwhelmed with disgust.

And so to escape, I blog about things like… working out, stupid stuff on tv, and whatever cultural effluvia is around. Anything to avoid the fact that there’s a communist in our White House.

I will get back to political blogging – and quite soon. I plan to start being serious again next week. But for the weekend, I will just write about enjoyable, mindless stuff. I need a period of cleansing after the health care vote; I need a chance to adjust and think and mourn our lost freedom before I jump into the frey again. So I guess this is my apology for being less than a political blogger for basically all of 2009 and 2010. I’m getting back on track, and I thank you for hanging with me. I’ll still do book reviews and all that, but I have some pretty good political posts coming up.

Meantime, since this weekend will be my goof off time, I have a post about Sweet Valley High that I’ve been dying to write. You’ve been warned.

In Praise of Republican Leaders

Eric Cantor, John Boehner, and Jim De Mint have all impressed me through-out the health care ordeal. Their leadership is principled and they honestly seemed to have a plan for health care. Eric Cantor was especially brilliant during that seven-hour round table debate at the Blaire House. I hope he has his sights set on the Presidency.

Another person I’m just not sure about – politically – is Sarah Palin. I can’t get a read on her. I’ve been a supporter in the past and I still am, but I have no idea if she’s planning a run in 2012. In the health care debate, she’s formatted some parts of the debate and put President Obama on the defensive. The term “death panels” stuck (and indeed they are in the bill.) Where does she fit in with Republican politics?

The Tea Party is also changing the debate, forcing socialists to at least acknowledge that they are trashing the Constitution, and making life difficult for those leaders. They immediately took the brunt of attacks of homophobes by calling them Tea Baggers, and showed America what the Left is really all about. They are, in fact, so powerful that they spawned a counter-group, the Coffee Party, which might already be dead.

There are a lot of good conservative and Republicans out there, and I feel surer than ever that they are working hard to protect our Constitution, and the ideals the USA was founded upon. I also believe that most voters feel the same way, and so we’re looking to those D.C. careerists to actually do something in November. Win elections. Kick out the socialists. Restore sanity to the USA, repeal health care, cut spending dramatically, and return student loans, cars, and mortgages to the private enterprises who invented them.