Dennis Miller

On Kerry, Bush, and Iraq. Not bad.

This guy is smart, but I don't think he's that funny.

Friends in the Middle East

We have operated under the assumption - on both the left and right - that there are friends to be had in the Middle East, and it's just about sticking with and supporting the right people. Perhaps this is a wrong headed assumption. Perhaps there are no friends to be had there at all. To me, this changes things.

Fair Enough

George Will writes about the lag time between observing a problem and acknowledging a problem in Iraq.

The administration was/is too focused and counted too heavily on the best case scenario, ignoring the worst case of invasion. And of course, we find ourselves much closer to the worst case than the best.

But what I still don't like is this notion that doing nothing about Iraq, and continuing inspections, or going along the pre-9/11 path of containment was some sort of neutral policy. This position, which was tested for 12 years, was not working. Now the clearest argument, I think, is that while the pre-Bush policy was not working in Iraq, Bush's policy is NOT WORKING WORSE.

Look, Clinton appeased the North Koreans and it kept them without nukes. Clinton, through the UN, did sanctions on Iraq and it inflamed anger across the Muslim world. Were these smart policies that contained truly ugly problems? Or were were kicking the can down the road and racking up credit card debt for later generations to deal with? Honestly, I don't know.

Are we right now, making the tough sacrifices so that future generations can be safe? Or are we creating a massive new problem that will cause nightmares for the future? I don't know either.

History will tell.

A Really Great Quote

So true, so true. No one is thinking about what you do or say...

Letterman and O'Reilly

Somewhat interesting.

I dunno. Sure, the Dems make take Congress back. I'm not sure it's anything to get too excited about. Both our parties suck in amazingly different ways. It's a fine time, isn't it?

Most Men Lead Lives of Quiet Desperation

While others lead lives of public desperation.

On A Similar Note...

as my last passage...my screenwriting instructor the other day told a funny story about how he was stressed out, fuming, and trying to figure out how he was going to get all his work done because he had landed three choice writing assignments. But he basically started kicking himself because he's like "This is the exact type of problem I WANT!"

I feel stressed out lately from too much stuff going on...but unlike earlier in film school when some of the projects had seemingly little future or present payoff, most of the things I'm doing now are good. I'm stressed, but it's the good stress, the kind of stress I hope will last.

Firstly, I've been majorly stressed the past week about doing a sitcom rewrite that is at least 3 weeks late. I feel bad, but finally sat down and reworked an outline this afternoon, and I think it could be pretty good. I sent it off and that will hopefully hold off the producer from breathing down my neck for a little while longer. This job will be paid, but I've already put a lot of work into it, and the hourly rate probably won't work out to be that much. But what the fuck, I'm getting paid to write. And that's been my goal. So here I frigging am.

Secondly, the video game project has persistent deadlines and I'm always behind. But I get paid for that work too and feel as though I do good work - for the most part. And again, it's like, you're working on a frigging computer/video game, that's awesome!

Thirdly, my classes - the pitch class and my writing class are loads of work, but it's all about coming up with projects and ideas and hopefully some of these things are the ones that will help my career get started, help get an agent, become my first directed movies, and so forth. So, to me, all of these things are worth the time and stress and because of that, I am able to keep pushing through stress and doing for the most part, good work.

Fourthly, business stuff. Finally, I've figured out what elements of producing I like versus which I don't like, and a way for me to focus on those. I don't love this stuff, but I like it...running SPO and trying to come up with a brand of movies to invest in...both things I'm doing that aren't directly making films, but are tangential to the business. I don't know if this stuff will lead anywhere, but I like it enough to not worry about it too much.

Fifthly, all the things that are on the complete back burner. I simply have no time for the following: Editing my movie from this summer, remixing an electronic music video from Phil's movie, writing a spec script to get a writing job/agent, sending any of my past movies to festivals, searching for a job after December. All these things I want to do, would even like to do, but there's no time...and I suppose, for the moment, that is okay.

DMV

A funny little story about how efficient the DMV has become. I've noticed as well. I scheduled 1/2 day to go down there and get my license renewed. It took 1/2 hour.

While some things in the world seem to be getting worse, others seem to be getting better. Who woulda thought?

Options In Iraq

It seems like we have two options that could help the US achieve limited goals. We of course have a series of other options that probably lead to massive failures.

1. Pull our troops out of trouble spots, keep a bunch of badass special forces divisions around in friendly areas in the West to to kill as many Sunni Islamicists as possible - anytime they poke their heads out too much or threaten to take control of any area. In short, keep the country instable, so that it cannot become a new Afghanistan and can still serve the flypaper theory of killing Islamicists there rather than here.

2. Start over. Bring in 500,000 troops. Completely disband the police forces and militias. Make it illegal to have a gun in Iraq and do what we did with Germany after WWII. Total security. Kill anyone so much as they raise a finger against the occupation. Bring security first and impose upon Iraq a civil society and civil government.

I'm not sure which approach I favor.

My New Favorite Website

Right here.

Friday Night Lights and 30 Rock. I'll be checking out the office and Heroes shortly...and applying to NBC for jobs.

And by the way...Alec Baldwin is my new favorite actor. The guy's delivered more good lines THIS year than anyone in recent history.

"In five years, we'll all either be working for him, or slain by his hand." Who the fuck wrote that?!? Awesome.

10 Year High School Reunion

That pretty much sums up the reunion. And maybe high school, for that matter.

Debate As A Security Issue

An interesting debate going on about the President's recent use of Caliphate in a speech.

Basically what we have surrounding the Terrorism and Islamism issues is a wrecked intellectual security system. We have "experts," plagued by political correctness whose principal goal is to not offend, we have security people completely disinterested in understanding the enemy, and we have an intellectually weak and ungraceful president who can't seem to find the right words to describe the problem he sees.

Last night, Andy remarked on how the rich political debate in the House of Commons was amazing to watch and probably strengthen's Tony Blair's own positions by forcing him to be on his toes. We have debates in this country, but it really isn't the same as seeing elected officials defending their positions, and doing so with a bit of flair and humor.

Maybe what we need in this country is a renewed emphasis on debate and intellectual curiosity, not as an end in themselves, but as a practical way to find solutions to security questions. I would be, as they say, down.

Oh Yeah, That's Why

This is the reason we deposed Saddam Hussein. I'm not kidding.

Why Should CAIR Care?

By what I hear and read this surprises me. But maybe it shouldn't.

This Makes Me Want to Puke

We have a bunch of officials with varying roles in winning the war on terror and they don't know the basics of our opponents.

Jesus.

Consensus

A consensus seems to be building, among generals and commanders on the ground that the effort to secure Baghdad has failed. That sucks.

Has the neo-conservative movement failed? Is it over? It shouldn't be cause for celebration.

Well, I always thought of Iraq like a poker hand...after the flop we had a nut flush and a straight draw, with a bunch of other players in the hand. Maybe a 40-60 bet, but the payoff for victory would have been huge, so the bet was worth it. I'd rather play like that than folding away an opportunities and getting slowly worn down by the blinds.

Anyhow, the turn clearly didn't help us, and here we are, trying to decide whether to stay in the hand or not before the river and facing a huge bet. Are we pot committed? Or do we save our chips for another hand?

Hold It, Everyone!

Kim Jong Il has apologized. Phew. Glad we averted that crisis.

Light to None

Light to no blogging this week, as I will be away from the internet.

I'll leave you with a fun essay on a super fun subject: Iraq.

Torture

If the terrorists ever want information from me and need to resort to torture, they should force me to watch the A's hit with men in scoring position. I'll cave in a minute.

Chrissake, a sweep. That's frigging annoying.

Political Correctness on Campus

I've actively had my eye out for Political Correctness on campus for about three years. Subconsciously, I've had my eye out for it for much longer. In the media, particularly the right wing blogosphere, the common villian is the liberal faculty who instills politically correct values upon the students - sometimes against their will.

Although most faculty is liberal, in my experience, they are mature enough to recognize students for their aptitude, regardless of the students political persuasion. And generally, faculty is open to being questioned on their sometimes silly political beliefs. In general, they are able to have conversations and defend their beliefs, and generally are open to hearing points of view they don't share. After all, that's part of their job.

But where I've noticed a startling lack of originality and sometimes an obtuse political correctness is from the students. Particularly in my interaction with undergraduate students at USC. They seem incapable of discussing some topics for fear of being considered politically incorrect. They sometimes resort to using terms such as racist in complete seriousness to describe what at best, might be a stereotype. Because we are in film school and working with characters, throwing around the term racist to describe a bad character description is not only foolish, but almost purposefully malicious - particularly when it's clear the author did not intend anything hateful.

It is as if these students have never come face to face with real racism in their lives and think mispoken words or poorly crafted characters constitute racism. It's absurd.

A couple of examples:

We were talking about race and I said something like there are five races. This undergrad looked at me like I was crazy. I said "what?" He said, "Dude, that's like, racist." I said, "Why?" He said, "There are totally more than five races. There are all sorts of mixed races and ethnographic distinctions, and blah, blah, blah." And I was like, "Are you kidding me dude: there's white, black, brown, yellow, and red." Those are the basic racial categories. Look at the census." He was like, "Dude, I can't even have a conversation with you, you're ignorant."

Ignorant? For admitting there is such a thing as race? Jesus Christ.

Then there's the example of resorting headshots in our production office. Some students were completely against sorting headshots based upon race because it seemed old fashioned and stupid because no one cares about race anymore? Hunh? The fact is, sometimes people are looking to cast Asian actors. And that, in and of itself, is not wrong. Some students felt like it was our job to encourage people to look at casting outside the race that their characters were conceived as. Hunh? Why would that be our job? The silliness and general jitteriness students have with respect to discussing and breaking down race is absurd.

Anyhow, beware...it ain't all the faculties fault, it's a large part of the students too scared to be perceived as insensitive, too scared to weigh other values than diversity, too scared to think and question those silly red politically correct flags.