Let me start by saying that I hope that Miguel was being tongue-in-cheek with his most recent post, because otherwise the boy has lost it. I guess I would find it interesting if Miguel would actually expound on a couple of the points he actually brought up.
I’ve had a couple of odd thoughts recently that I’d like to throw out. The first touches upon the remake/re-imagining/movie adaptation of a once popular TV series thing. I’m as sick of all these things as the next guy/gal. But I’m curious if it’s really anything new. This is one point where I hope Miguel was being facetious (whatever that word really means.)
I remember watching “Brewster’s Millions” and “Little Shop of Horrors.” I remember watching “Dragnet” with Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd. And I remember everybody remaking/parodying “A Christmas Carol” to the point that I groan every time I see someone doing it again. Don’t get me wrong. “A Christmas Carol” was a fantastic book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I mean it sort of sucks that he sells out at the end, but you can’t judge the whole story by the ending lest we start thinking M. Night Shyamalan is a good director. I’m kidding. I actually rather like his stuff.
The point is that I’m not so sure that the hijacking of intellectual property is out of control. I just think that there are more studios than ever, and more movies in production than ever, so even if the percentage of these kinds of movies decrease, the number of these movies would continue to increase until the percentage decreased significantly.
In much the same way, I want to call some reason to why we’re seeing more celebrity deaths than ever before. There are more celebrities than ever before, and from more decades since the average lifespan is increasing. That’s all. There is no conspiracy or shift in the alignments of planets.
From there let’s move on to Corey Haim. It was ruled that he did not die from a drug overdose, but rather complications due to pneumonia. Basically his lungs swelled and it killed him. The toxicology tests show “low levels” of various drugs. This is where I’m sort of at a loss. The following is from CNN.com:
“Toxicology tests showed that Haim’s blood did have “low levels” of a list of drugs, including an antidepressant (Prozac), an antipsychotic (Olanzapine), diazepam (Valium), a muscle relaxer (Carisoprodol), a tranquilizer (meprobamate) and THC (a chemical in marijuana).
“Haim also was taking a cough suppressant, antihistamine and ibuprofen.”
When I have tooth pain I take large levels of ibuprofen, aspirin, and Vicodin. Actually the Vicodin I try to keep at a half a pill. Otherwise, I don’t take very many medications. Do I? That seems like such a big list, but is it normal? I’m reading that and I’m like no wonder he died. That may just be me though. Eh, I’m going to overdose on Caffeine one day anyway.
Completely unrelated; Betty White is hosting Saturday Night Live this week (May 8, 2010) and I actually am glad I have Saturday off. She’s so damn funny. I hope the show lives up to her comedic ability.
Next I’d like to deal with Nathan’s post about Arizona’s immigration law. Let me start by putting Nathan at ease. I mostly agree with him on this one. I do have a few things to say about it though.
First of all, I told Nathan to remove his explanation of why he is not racist. I should have been clearer. I explained that he did not grow up in a Mexican neighbourhood (what you don’t like the way I spell neighbourhood, racist?) because if you’re a Mexican descended citizen of the United States you are not a Mexican, no more than I’m an Italian or an Irishtalian. And by the way, Mexico is in North America, so Mexican American doesn’t work either. I told him they were perhaps Hispanic, and that’s what he changed it to. But the truth is that there should be only one way to explain away racism. I’m not a racist because I don’t judge people based on race. Any other explanation is kind of silly. You can have black friends (like Miguel) but that doesn’t make you inherently not racist.
Nathan isn’t racist though. He is right about that, even if sort of unclear.
Here’s the odd thing about the immigration law though. If you listen to the liberal side of the issue, you hear a lot of stuff about birth certificates. For some reason though, when I went to look this up, I couldn’t find anything of the sort. What I discovered is that the birth certificate thing was an entirely different bill targeting presidential candidates.
This is why I recently spoke of looking at an issue from both sides. You discover a lot of weird propaganda shit when you do, and it’s both liberal and conservative.
Here’s my issue with the law. It’s not that I believe it to be wrong as much as I believe it to be unnecessary. It’s basically a law that says, “Hey there are these things that are illegal; fucking enforce them.”
It requires the officer to ask for ID or registration documents. It allows an officer to arrest anyone if there is probable cause to believe someone is an illegal alien (like lack of ID or registration documents.)
So there is nothing new here. It says, “You know this law that we already have, well we’re saying it again. If I have to say it a third time; just wait ‘til your father gets home.” And in this case it allows for tattle tales. Read this:
“SB 1070 also prohibits state, county, or local officials from limiting or restricting “the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law” and provides that Arizona citizens can sue such agencies or officials to compel such full enforcement.”
Imagine a law reading: “It’s illegal to have illegal drugs on you, so if you believe somebody may have illegal drugs on them you have to search them. If you don’t search them then you can be sued for not searching them.”
Imagine a law reading: “It’s illegal to burglarize a house, so if you believe somebody may have burglarized a house you have to detain them until they prove they didn’t burglarize a house. If you don’t detain them then you can be sued for not detaining them.”
So you’re sued if you don’t have probable cause, and you arrest somebody. Probable cause is defined as, “a reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime.” And you’re sued if you didn’t have probable cause but some citizen believes you did have probable cause. It’s no wonder that “Arizona’s law enforcement groups have been split on the bill…”
The problem is that this is a fancy way to institute quotas. It’s saying find illegal immigrants, even if you have to detain some innocent people to do it, and if we don’t feel you’re doing enough then watch out.
It may hit some civil rights gray areas, but mostly I think it encourages shoddy police work. And those of us who get pulled over frequently because we work at night certainly don’t want anymore shoddy police.
Well I don't know how you could not find the majority of my comments to be facetious. I had considered writing a serious review of the movie, but I also had to get in my corny jokes at the beginning. Once I did that, I found it hard to shift gears.