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This Saturday night, the engineer finally gets his shot at the UFC Heavyweight championship.

I had thought you guys had your shit straight and held your elections on the weekend, but I guess not?? Anyway, I thought they were this weekend but I found out today that they are tomorrow, now today, polls are probably just opening.

You’ve had a long run of Labour. The atmosphere feels like you’ve been wanting to dump them out of office for the past few years. Now, you guys have the remarkably wonderful option of voting for an alternative leftish party that could actually win! We have no such option here in the U.S. and many of us are extremely jealous.

The warning: Not long ago we had a nice run of having a Democrat in the White House for 8 years, and there was some scandal involved with him, and so after him, we allowed a conservative to take over – possibly the biggest mistake the country has ever made. A lot of us were only sort-of over the Democrats running things, but BOY, what a mistake all those Bush votes were. Summary? Conservatives can fuck shit up reaaaaalll bad-like. REALLY bad. Actually, that’s what they do. David Cameron is a total politician and an idiot.  If you think Labour needs a kicking in the balls, which fuck it, they might as well, I mean you guys never made them really pay for the unreal mistake Blair made of going along with Bush (still can’t fathom how a social dem & conservative could be in bed like that, *shakes head*), then go for it, but please, vote for the Liberal Democrats. I’d love to see them shake up your political establishment anyway. Don’t mind you copying our televised debates , but you don’t need to have our same two-party only rule.  Vote Lib Dems, don’t let those Tories take over man, don’t let Cameron be your P.M.  I’m tellin you…

You’ve got a great chance to fulfill one of Morrissey’s dreams.

*pulls nose out of your business*

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1. Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
2. Inglourious Basterds
3. Up
4. The Blind Side
5. An Education
6. District 9
7. Up in the Air
8. The Hurt Locker
9. Avatar
10. A Serious Man

I feel like there are definitely some movies up there that are not worthy of this nomination, who’s spots are more deserved by others, such as Star Trek, or (500) Days of Summer.

Finally!  Though I’ll have to try to defer it for a couple months due to the state of work.  Oh well, it’s coming soon

I was looking to watch the new Michael Moore movie this weekend (Capitalism: A Love Story), but the largest theater in Irvine, 21 screens, wasn’t running it.  Wouldn’t want people getting any ideas down here now would we?

Florida’s 8th district Representative, Democrat Alan Grayson, addressed the house a couple days ago about the healthcare issue, saying:

“The Republican health care plan is this: Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.”

Republicans were appalled, and demanded an apology from him, so yesterday he apologized:

“Holocaust in America” is going too far, but otherwise, that’s right.

This weekend I saw No Impact Man, which I recommend.  I thought it was very interesting and I learned quite a few things from it that I didn’t know about.   One of these things is that the meat industry is a larger cause of greenhouse gases (global warming) than all the cars, planes, and ships in the world, combined.  Most of this is from the farming of cows.

In response, I’m further reducing my beef intake by 50%, going from eating a burger/beef product once a week, to once every other week.  That puts me down to 25 burgers/beef bowls per year.  That sounds appropriate anyway as beef is not healthy.

Check this out if you want your mind blown by more crazy stats about livestock and the environment, such as:

If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the U.S. was consumed directly by people, the number who could be fed is nearly 800 million.

I’m happy that the plans for the US European missile shield have been scrapped.  Most of Europe doesn’t want it and we don’t need to further sour relations with Russia or start another arms race.  If Europe wants a missile defense shield, it can build it.  I never liked this idea.  This is actually the type of stuff Bush Jr. ran against in 2000.

I talk about this a lot in real life.  I always get sad when I see the automated check-outs in supermarkets/stores show up, or the APC automated package sending system at the post office so you don’t have to talk with/get to know your postal workers or supermarket clerks, or the Chipotle iPhone app so you don’t have to interact with people to order your food, or the death of the arcades so we can stop meeting new friends there and instead all escape and play video games in our own sheltered homes with either nobody or the friends we already know.  There’s so much technology out there trying to eliminate interaction with other people.  It’s quite saddening to me.

In my life I’ve had a nice friendship with a postal clerk, met a cool friend or two at the arcade, enjoyed pleasant relationships with my supermarket clerks, and I tell ya, I’ve had some absolutely wonderful and stimulating conversations with strangers in line at the post office.  I’ve even gotten a call or two from friends to report a date/great sexual encounter with someone they’d met in line at the post office just a couple days prior.  Surely all kinds of great friendships, relationships, and families have started there.  The APC is ruining people’s lives.  All this automated/do-it-at-home stuff is, and I don’t think most people even realize it.  Oh my god, don’t get me started on online classes.  Do you know how many people meet their significant other in a college class!?  Which college class was your significant other in?  Hopefully not the one that you took online instead. *sigh*  Why are so many so intent on creating ways to avoid other people?  Has society become so misanthropic?  I guess a lot of it is that damn capitalism.  Eliminate a job, save a buck, who cares about the fabric of society, look at this: $$$!

Anyway, I was agreeing whole-heartedly with Jackson Lee, a North Carolina man who told his story of starting his own record store/bike repair shop, when I was listening to one of my favorite shows, The Story, on public radio tonight.  I clipped the part:

…is very shitty.  No public option, yet still $800 billion, and doesn’t even require health insurance companies to not discriminate based on pre-existing conditions until 2013, after the next Presidential election.  Gee I wonder why that is, not hoping and praying by you corporate assholes that some republican somehow wins?  You guys make me sick.  You blue-dogs make me sick too.  I hope this shit goes down in flames.

Why do we have to have THE health care bill?  Can’t we take a more modular approach to this?  For example, even the republicans are willing to make insurance companies take anybody regardless of pre-existing condition and not allow a limit on how much they will cover financially (lifetime limit).  So why can’t we pass a number of smaller bills.  Get that one through first, few will disagree, it’ll pass tomorrow and could be effective immediately.  That’d already be a really good improvement.  There could be a different regulation bill, records-keeping bill, etc.  Pass what can pass.  If we don’t have enough votes in the Senate for a public option, well, what can you really do unfortunately (except pass it in reconciliation).

Maybe just make these changes that we can now, and if the public likes what Obama/dems are doing, we have more Senate seats we could pick up in 2010/2012, maybe if we get 63 or 64 dems in the Senate, then we can create a public health option.  I’m not sure why it has to be all-at-once, all-or-nothing.  Fear of no opportunity in the future and make something half-assed anyway(?) instead of confidence that people will like what we do and reward us?

I don’t know, I’m not a capitol hill expert, but it seems to me the way to really regulate healthcare would be to constantly be looking at it and working on it, not do something once every quarter-century and then let the private industry react, curcumvent, and fester on it’s own until it becomes shitty again.