Career Update

Back in Christmastime 2011 rumors began kicking around town that the company that employed me was getting sold, which sent me into immediate high alert as my cash savings were minimal and the concept of unemployment seemed like a very real possibility in all the reports that I read on the internet news sites.  I had started a financial makeover a few months before and started focusing on eliminating debt and that cleaned out a lot of my cash so I was feeling bouts of serious panic every once in a while.

The company sale became a reality probably a month after the rumors started and during this time, I started bunkering down to extreme austerity measures. I only ate out once a week, I stopped buying anything that I didn't absolutely needed, I didn't go out unless I had to, which cut down on unnecessary spending as well as increased savings on gas.  Lo and behold, about 3 mos. after the sale, I have shored up 3 mos. of living expenses. This was assisted greatly by a year end bonus and my tax refund, of which I saved every penny after setting aside a portion into my 401k.

Well wouldn't you know it. The much anticipated axe did fall about 2 weeks ago and there were massive layoffs.  Although by this time I had heard about the rather generous severance package and by my calculations, I would have been the richest I'd ever been if I had been laid off and received severance.

I'm happy to report that I escaped the bloodbath and emerged safely on the other end and have settled into the new parent company.  What I learned about myself from this recent bout of job insecurity is that I operate best under a constant low level of panic.  It drives a relentless and compulsive need to follow a rigid set of guidelines and goals I set for myself which in this case was a wartime rationing level of budgeting and spending and an obsessive compulsion to check my financial progress and continual retooling of net worth projections.

I practically get giddy when I look at my long term 10-year financial projections I made for myself.  This is something I do often, when I'm stressed or when I'm bored or whenever I fuckin feel like fantasizing about my theoretical wealthy future. Indeed I got so damn high on myself earlier today that I started texting and IMing some gal pals furiously while at work about my fantasy half retirement 10 years from now.  I highly recommend furnishing your get rich fantasies with spreadsheets and formulas.  It feels much more real and eventually it will also become real if you use it as a plan that you execute.  Plus it is a very comforting emotional and psychological tool for when you are having an episode of "FUCK THIS FUCKIN BULLSHIT. FUCK!!" moments at work.

The Hannibal Lecter Entry

Last June I got a nused (new to me, but is actually used) car and one of the tech upgrades that came with the vehicle is a iPod hookup.  Since then I have become a huge fan of listening to podcasts. But this is not a boring story about my love of podcasts and learning of random shit, it is only the medium by which I learned about the Donner Party. To say that their story blew my mind would be understating it because it literally thermal-nuclear-H-bombed my fuckin head. This is a story of cannibalism by people who are drawn by the call of the West from more than 150 years ago.

Instead of going on the well-heeled way of the Oregon Trail, these folks decided to listen to a tip about a shortcut they heard about and got fucked harder than they could ever imagine.  It turns out the guy that published the shortcut had never actually gone on it and was just making shit up.  After going through unnecessary deserts and extremely difficult terrain, they lose their cattle, oxen, livestock and time.  Before you feel too sorry for them, I'd like to add that they chose ignore multiple warnings not to take this alleged shortcut. Also, they are already showing their diabolical side when they pulled stunts like leaving an old and tired man behind to die alone on the trail so that they could all keep moving.

The story gets heightened when they get stranded in the mountains and really just 150 miles away from their destination.  They get snowed in by blizzards and storms that were the worst in recorded history (in my opinion, not very long, the white folks had only started climbing over this mountain range to get to California I am guessing maybe 5-10 years ago) and they are fast running out of food. After spending some time in despair, a group of 15 people  (this includes men, women and 2 Native American guides) decided to strike out and try to make their way out.  They had about 6 days of starvation rations and so by the 10th day the dumb white shits were pretty famished and the solutions they were bandying about became eating each other.  They thought about voluntary sacrifice (no takers! surprise!!!), dueling (they pussied out) and finally drawing lots (they went with this).  They didn't actually carry out the killing of the poor bastard who drew the short stick but he and a couple other dudes died pretty soon afterward from starvation anyway and the rest of the lot roasted and ate the bodies. AND they carved out the organs and packed them out so they could eat them for later.  Only one dude and the 2 Native Americans refused to eat human!

Well, the bastards were seriously lost so they got hungry again and soon enough they were thinking that Indian meat was next on the menu.  One guy felt bad about murdering their guides for their meat and he tipped them off and urged them to run. At first they were in disbelief, but then they remembered that these white fuckers just ate human pretty fuckin recently so then they bolted.  Now records differ on how the Indians met their demise, the survivors claimed that they found the two near death and shot them to put them out of their misery but it was also purported that they just murdered the poor bastards for eatin'.

Meanwhile back at the camp, things were dire as shit. They were eating shoelaces, rugs, cowhides, leather, etc. but they hadn't resorted to cannibalism. Due to the snow shitstorms, the rescue teams couldn't set out until the weather abated.  When the first and second rescue teams arrived, the folks were barely alive, but they hadn't done the truly fucked up act of eating folks (yet). Since the weather was extremely punishing and the rescuers still couldn't take everyone, some people had to stay behind and wait for the next team. 

Unfortunately, a lot of time elapsed between the second and the third rescue team because the Mexican-American War was happening (folks wanted to wrest California away from Mexico) so able bodied men or resources were deployed to battle instead of rescuing emigrants.  In any case, the mountains where they were stranded were getting so much snow that there really wasn't a way to get to them.

When the third team arrived, they see hacked up bodies out in the snow as the survivors had taken to eating the dead. They were able to rescue all but 5 people.  And when the fourth and final rescue crew went up, there were only ONE. This guy was cooking human flesh and bones and frying up human liver even though there was still oxen meat that the last rescue crew had left behind.  His reason was the taste had gone bad on the oxen. I think we all know what happened! He went Hannibal Lecter on everybody cus he developed a taste for the humans! I read somewhere that cannibalism often leads to mental problems. Eating your own species leads to bacterial infection in the brain, kinda like how cattle get mad cow disease cus the feed they are given contains beef.

Is this not the most fucked up, craziest shit????!!!!!!! I can NOT believe that it's the first time I ever heard of this story. My friend said it's cus I didn't go to grade school here and therefore didn't learn it as part of California history.  Maybe it's better this way cus my mind is fuckin pulverized and I'm old as shit now. I would have gone apeshit for several YEARS had I learned about this as a fourth grader. I watched the PBS special online just now, they're all trying to be PC and understanding about "making hard decisions" and giving them excuses and blaming the guy with the bullshit shortcut, but no, cannibals deserve to be reviled as the monsters that they are. I know as humans we do not agree on much but there is ONE thing that we must all agree on and that is: Fuck you, cannibals! and Fuck You, cannibal sympathizers!!!! 

Dubya's Oskar Korner--Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen + Paris + Owen Wilson + 1920 Peugeot = 2012's answer to Doctor Emmett Brown's DeLorean.

Um, yeah. This movie is about a dude who time travels to 1920s Paris and meets Hemingway, Picasso, the Fitzgeralds, Dali, etc.

If that sounds like your cup of tea then go ahead, knock yourself out. The movie's on DVD now. Either way, you now know what the concept is and I saved you a "What the wha~~~" moment. You're welcome.

Dubya's Oskar Korner--MONEYBALL

***SPOILER ALERT--I give away the entire ending PLUS the POSTSCRIPT ***

I had high hopes for this one but it was disappointing. This movie was consists of: talking about stats, talking on the phone, talking to negotiate trading of players, talking about changing the world of baseball  and barely any baseball is ever played. Jonah Hill plays a smart aleck Ivy Leaguer who figured out a way to get a bargain rate badass baseball team and Brad Pitt is the General Manager of Oakland Athletics who hires Jonah Hill to help him run his team.  The movie starts with Brad Pitt's team losing in the postseason, which is exactly what happens again after investing 2 hrs+ in this movie. Yeah, you heard that right.

In the postscript you learn that Brad Pitt's character turned down what would have been the biggest paycheck any GM had been offered to go to the Boston Red Sox.  Boston hired the statistician that actually inspired Jonah Hill's theories, so we are to believe the Red Sox won a few years later using the same ideas. This of course cannot possibly be true because if it's theory alone then Brad Pitt's team would have won and the $$$ offered to Pitt's character proved that the almighty dollar was still very much in play in assembling a winning team. Besides, we all know that the key to winning baseball is steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.

Dubya's Oskar Korner--The Artist

Oscar's nominations announced recently and this year we hit an all-time lameness. They doled out 9 Best Picture nominations and there's not a single one that the normal non-Hollywood civilians care about.  Every year I try and go out to see all the Best Picture nominated films and so I really resented all these duds that I had little and negative interest in seeing. As a public service, I will review the films for you and you can decide whether you should see these flix.

Here are some basics about this movie:

#1. It is a BLACK AND WHITE movie

#2. It is a SILENT MOVIE

#3. It is a movie about making movies (a movie subject I find to be the most tired, even more so than WWII/Holocaust movies)

Any one of the traits above would have made me stay far away from it. That the filmmakers had the gall to combine all 3 of the minuses in their movie means that there was very little chance I would have seen it if it hadn't been nominated.  

STORY:

It is about a silent movie star who goes into a downward spiral as he is overtaken by the advent of talkies.  At the same time that his life is going down the crapper, a pretty ingenue's star begins to rise to super stardom.  

DUBYA'S VERDICT

This was a delightful little movie that warmed my cold cold heart that was dead set against it before the movie even started.  Both the male and female leads were fantastic and the actor Jean Dujardin deserves all the accolades and will probably win Best Actor.  He reminds me of Gene Kelly in many of the shots, not to mention the movie itself has a very similar storyline to GK's Singing in the Rain. JD really nails the old Hollywood acting style down, which normally would mean that the performance is filled with outdated affectation that us modern folk would laugh at.  But this guy brings such sincerity that it just works.  The movie is meant to be a crowd pleaser and has no objectionable material so my money is on it to win Best Picture by default.