Monday, August 26, 2013

Favorite movies of 2012


 This is a picture of Ben Affleck.

This will not be in order of most favorite to least favorite. It is just a list of all the ones I really enjoyed. No particular order.


The Master:How this didn't win Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar, I don't know. I really don't. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is pretty good in it too.


Mud: A movie about two kids, a boat, and a fugitive. Brilliant performance by McConaughey. I put off watching this one until recently, and I regret that decision.


Flight: Denzel Washington was great in this one. Great acting all around. The airplane scene is really  intense.


Django Unchained: One of Tarantino's best. It had a lot of controversy around it, which makes it even better. That's normally what controversy does ya know.


The Hunt: or Jagten, if you want to be specific. This one will take you for a roller coaster ride emotionally. Hold onto your butt if you watch this movie. It will probably make you pretty mad. I don't know how this film isn't more popular.


The Iceman: If you've read the book on Richard Kuklinski, or you watched those HBO interviews with him in jail, then you need to watch this. Michael Shannon's performance is mind-blowing. It even has Chris Evans and Ray Liotta in it. What more could you want from a movie?


Get the Gringo: Mel Gibson has still got it, man. I was reluctant to watch this at first, but I am glad I did.


The Hunger Games: I don't know anyone who hasn't seen this. Don't think I really need to put anything here, but I am anyway. So yeah


Les Miserables: Caution. Prepare to get every song stuck in your head, and have to search for all of them on youtube. I don't care what anyone says. Hugh Jackman played a great Valjean, and Russell Crowe played a great Javert.


Looper: The first half is great, the second half is slightly less great, but it is still a great movie. With a crazy ending.


Cloud Atlas: I saw some people complaining that this movie was too hard to follow. It really isn't. Everything ties together nicely, and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. Dinosaurs in Tokyo and shit.


Silver Linings Playbook: Living with bipolar disorder is tough, yo. First hand experience.


The Avengers: I almost forgot to put this one on here. Yep.


Pitch Perfect: It might look like a girl movie, but trust me. This movie is fucking great. Super catchy songs and all that jazz.

Just letting it flow

People talk about the golden age of cinema all the time, but most of us didn't get to experience it first hand. You never really hear anyone talk about the golden age of television. We are living it, that's why. You never hear anyone talk about the golden age of anything while it is happening. I just want to let it out, man. Breaking Bad. The show has slowly grown into my #1 show of all time. Most people can still sympathize with Walter even after all the horrible shit he has done. That is such an amazing feat for a television show. To have a character so unbelievable bad, but be so unbelievable fun to like. The background on my computer is a Breaking Bad background, by the way. I do have a feeling the ending will not do justice to the rest of the show though. It feels like they are on a one-way street to having Walt die. Out of all the ways they could have it end, that would be the worst for me. Not because he is my favorite character, and I can't handle seeing my favorite character of a show get killed. It's the fact that it is the easy way out for the writers. Well, anyway. I initially was going to write this post tonight on how hard it is to come up with stuff to write about. Ain't nobody got time for dat. I should come up a big blog post I can do. Something over one thousand words. I feel like that could really bring in the page views. Every thing I could ever think to write a post about has more than likely already been done a thousand times before though. I'll think of something. I could do a top 10 list of movies for each year or something. And give a short review of each? I don't know maybe.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Gun Control



I said this before in a previous post. Gun control is not a gun issue. It is a black youth issue. The statistics for the United States can't even be compared to other countries because of this fact. People bringing up the stats for the US and trying to use it to further gun control saying "countries with stricter gun laws have less crime and less murders and blah blah blah". Different cultures, man. Go look at how low Asian countries crime/murder rates are. Is that because they have slightly stricter gun laws? OR is it because they are a completely different culture? You don't see young Japanese kids running around beating 88-year-olds to death outside of a bar, do you? Except for really fringe cases you don't. It is the culture we have in America that is the cause of our high gun violence rates not our gun laws that are ever so slightly more lax than other countries with much lower statistics.

Is it all that damn rap music kids are listening to these days? Of course not. Is it those violent video games that is desensitizing kids to violence? I really doubt it. I'm not typing this pretending I have a fix for this problem, I don't know man. It just seems like we need to spend more of our time and money into fixing the shitty school systems that have like 30% graduation rates. Those schools are basically pumping out criminals. They are factories for gun violence. Instead of spending all this time trying to stop people from getting guns, why don't we try to stop kids from actually wanting to grow up and use them. That would be killing quite a few birds with one stone. It would not only lower gun violence crime, it would lower all crime. All these cities that are struggling economically have such high murder rates. Detroit and Oakland, and all those other cities we hear about in the news. Just this constant cycle of kids growing up there in that environment and thinking that it is OK to shoot someone just because they "diss" you.

The two teens that killed Delbert Belton(the WWII vet) that is all over the news, they didn't even use a gun. The 3 teens that killed that Australian guy a few days ago, they used a gun. If they didn't have a gun they probably would've just done what the two kids did to Delbert. Both sides of this issue like to pick and choose what facts they bring up, but one thing stays the same in all of them. It is young minorities in bad neighborhoods that are doing the HUGE majority of the violent crimes. Except for those crazy fringe cases, like Sandy Hook.

I am open for debate on this issue. Feel free to comment on whether you agree or not. Just don't be too mean, if you disagree.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The Place Beyond the Pines



I went into this movie with high hopes. The description of the movie had led me to believe it would be a "Heat" type of movie with bank heists and the Rookie cop trying to bring down the bad guy. Well, the description was half right. The first half of the movie starts off great. We have Ryan Gosling playing Luke Glanton. A tattooed motorcycle stuntman with a history of violence. He gets talked into robbing banks by his friend, and the movie is really taking off. I think the movie hit it's climax WAY too early. It peaked and then for the last hour it slowly drained any interest you had at the start of the movie. They kill the main character, and then try to dump the storyline on the guy who killed the main character. It just felt like the movie hit a brick wall. Then you are starting to get to know this new character, slowly get back into the groove of the movie. Then they fast forward in time and try to switch the storyline AGAIN, but this time with TWO new characters. By the time the ending rolled around, I was pretty bored with the movie. I had no interest in any of the characters and really just wanted the movie to end. The ending left me feeling pretty empty. When the credits roll, I want to actually feel something, and this movie made me feel nothing. Except regret for spending the time watching it. I should have turned it off when Gosling died.

Honestly, I recommend watching the first half of the movie just for Gosling's performance. Just turn it off once he dies and read the synopsis on the internet.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Late night ramblings.

Human psychology hypothetical.  Let's say you are about to kill yourself. You are REALLY thirsty. Do you take a drink of water before you finally go through with it? Or do you stay thirsty and off yourself anyway? I'd like to think most people would choose to take that last drink of water before they would do it. I know I would. Humans are such crazy animals. We used to be little more than glorified monkeys and now look at us. We own the world. We have tools that put us at the top of the food chain. Even the weakest members of the species can pick up a gun and suddenly become so much more. Time to move to the next topic of this crazy post.

Gun control. I am a firm believer that gun violence in America is not 100% a gun issue. It is a black youth issue. That might sound racist, but come on now. Really? Can you argue against the fact that black youth of today are far more violent than any other youth in America? Just look at other countries with gun laws similar to the US. They have nowhere near the amount of murders. I could just be talking out of my ass on that last point, I don't know, I would have to google the numbers. Alright well.

Abortion. Why in the world should a whole bunch of old white dudes in congress have any say on what a woman can and can't do with her body? They should have zero say in the matter. The only people who should have any say are the husband and wife, or most likely the boyfriend and girlfriend. I don't see why it is even that big of an issue. I am not even gonna go down the "is it murder or not" road. Just not gonna do it. I might do a future post about it, who knows.

Feminism. Feminists, man. They confuse me. They whine and complain that they want men to treat them equally, but when a dude treats them just like he would another dude, they whine and complain about being a woman, and you can't treat a woman that way. Are they serious? Is it just a big inside joke that they have? There is something I HATE, and I mean HATE. I hate it when a woman is hitting a guy, I mean like abusing them. In public or in private, and the guy is just supposed to take it. But if you take the exact same situation and turn it around, EVERYONE will freak out. And god forbid if the guy actually tries to defend himself when he is being abused. I mean that kinda stuff really pisses me off.


Man, I am really tired. I have a dentist appointment in a couple weeks. Cool beans, right?

Monday, August 19, 2013

Forgetting Edward Snowden






 A large majority of the American people were outraged when the story broke about the NSA. It was the big news story on every major and non-major news channel. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing about all the spying the NSA had done on the American people. When Snowden was being charged with espionage, internet petitions were being signed by thousands of people to grant him a pardon. The NSA hatred lasted for about 2 weeks, and then it went poof. Nobody even cares anymore. I wasn't very upset when all of the NSA spying came to light. It was pretty obvious to most people all of that stuff has been happening for years(even before 9/11). I was more upset about the fact that I knew in less than a month everyone would forget about all of it. It had a shorter lifespan than that whole "WE ARE THE 99%" craze everyone went through awhile ago. America is like a kid with ADHD. As long as we have our news articles about the new royal baby and Keeping up with the Kardashians, we can forget about anything. I'm not the first, and I won't be the last person to rant about something like this.


In the technologically advanced society we live in today, information is at every single persons fingertips. With the click of a mouse you can look up anything you want. I just want to say, really, that I wish everybody could just stop following the herd everywhere. Swim upstream. Take the path less traveled by. All of that cliche stuff. That reminds me of the Trayvon Martin supporters. I should probably do a post about them. /rant off

Friday, August 16, 2013

My experience with survey sites.

 (CC=CashCrate, TT=TreasureTrooper)

I have been using both sites for almost 2 weeks now and I have figured out some stuff. TreasureTrooper might actually be better than Cashcrate. My first opinion was the complete opposite but prolonged exposure to both sites has changed my mind. Cashcrate started off the obvious first choice, but TT has many more ways to make quick and easy cash than CC. Once you figure out the many quirks and novelty feel of TT you start to see why the site has been going strong for over 8 years. Here we go...

Dragon eggs: Dragons egg are a pretty long-term and complex investment, complete with breeding strategies and having to feed and take care of your dragon/dragons. You start off with buying a nest to put into your dragon lair. Each dragon will need its own nest(I think). Then save up your scales and buy the egg. Then you buy the lamps to keep the egg warm, and eventually the egg will hatch. Then you have to feed your little baby dragon and keep it healthy using the medical station thing. Once your get through all of that, you can sell your dragon for money to the Cogg's coop guy, or you can fight other dragons and make how much your dragon is worth go up.

Turning coins into referrals: By this I mean turning the coins into pearls and then using the pearls to buy the pearl bracelet. The bracelet makes the next two people that sign up without using a referral automatically become YOUR referral. Some(might even be most) of the people you get from using this method, are inactive referrals. Meaning they sign up and then don't do anything. You can get coins from offers that give coins instead of cash, and you can also get them for free randomly when Clara gives out her free thingy to you. Or you can just save up the coins and buy an ipod or an xbox. Might take awhile though.

Clara's free stuff: I haven't figured out when she gives out free stuff, but it seems kinda random. I will click on the arrowhead dig site and she will give me a free pearl, or I will click on the daily surveys and she will give me a dragon scale. It could just be on a timer or it could be 100% random, I don't know. I'll probably figure it out in time, though.

Daily surveys: They are worth it, even if you don't qualify keep trying to get one. If you do atleast one per day the rewards the really start to pile up.

The treasure hunt: I've heard horror stories about the treasure hunt. It seems like a huge waste of currency you could spend on other things. The prize at the end is the $100 statue thing, but you will spend ATLEAST a month trying to collect the massive amount of treasure on it. I also read somewhere that you have to make a $30 purchase during one of the steps just to progress further along in the hunt? I don't know, but it just seems like a waste of time to me. If someone has done it let me know and I'll edit this part out.


CashCrate tips.

The Crates Game: When you complete offers and other things you will be given points. These points can be used to buy things in Cashcrate's store OR you can use them to play the Crate game (the option is at the top of the page). The Crate game costs 5 points to play and you have a chance to win anywhere from 1 cent to $1000. So if you get lucky you can make huge amounts of money doing it.

RadioLoyalty: Radioloyalty will pay you $.01 (1cent) for ever 10 minutes you listen to any of their radio stations. Every 10 minutes a captcha will pop up and you have to type it in to recieve you 1 cent and continue listening. It might not seem like anything at all, but if you are just sitting there doing surveys or just want to listen to music and get paid for it, then it is a really easy way to make small amounts of money. Radioloyalty can be found at the bottom of the first page of offers. DO NOT have more than one Radioloyalty open trying to cheat the system. I haven't tried it myself, but I have heard of people being banned for doing it, it might sound like a good idea but just don't. Making money on there is super easy, no need to try and cheat the system and get banned.

Getting points: At the top of the page on CC you will see the Earn Prizes tab, drop that down and still on the Get Points option. Here you will see a few offers you can do for easy points, but the real points lies on the Bonus points tab. Here you will see A LOT of 1 point offers(go to one click offers), where all you have to do is open the page and they will give you the point. Sometimes you have to click play on a video, but you don't even have to watch the video just click play and then close it out.

That's pretty much all I've gotten so far, just keep at it and the money will flow in.