I worked as an extra on this past week’s episode of Cold Case. I didn’t see myself at all but I did see my car… waaaaaaaaaay in the back, haha.

A little over two weeks ago I bought Forza III for XBOX 360. I played it for about two hours before I had to go somewhere. When I came home I went to turn on my xbox and I got the dreaded red ring of death. It was quite frustrating to have that happen right after getting a new game, haha. Well I finally got it back the other day and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Forza. I don’t think I’ll be needing a Playstation 3 or waiting for Gran Turismo 5 anymore. It’s awesome.

And now on the topic of thanksgiving. I recently came to the conclusion that rule of law is the most taken-for-granted thing in America. Few people who grew up here know what it is like to live without it. Let me tell you that without rule of law, everything pretty much sucks and nothing can get better.

I’ve seen this first hand in Tajikistan, rated one of the most corrupt governments in the world. It’s a place where any sufficiently well-connected person can seize any kind of private property or business they want and where the most top level government officials funnel foreign investments directly into personal offshore accounts. Even people doing charitable work suffer the consequences. If you want to give something away for free, you’re gonna have to pay a bribe to somebody, somewhere.

So this year I’m especially thankful to be living in a place where we have a working legal system where at least theoretically, no one is above the law, not even the president.

Once again, happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

-Bryan

P.S. Dear Sarah Palin, if you didn’t want your pictures to be used “out of context” (ie. not the context you intended), you shouldn’t have gone and pursued fame. Every celebrity knows that the person who takes the picture owns the rights, not the person in the picture. Ain’t you ever heard of the paparazzi? Or could you not see them from Alaska? Haha. And to everybody else — never take a picture or video of anything you don’t want appearing on the Internet. Words to live by.

P.P.S. Dear Apple, I find it rather weaksauce that Safari’s spellchecking dictionary does not include the word “Tajikistan”, or “weaksauce”, for that matter.

I don’t know anything about macroeconomics but I do know about film making and thought it would be kind of interesting to compare and contrast the qualities of the videos themselves:

Like I said, I don’t really know much about macroeconomics so I’m not really going to try to compare and contrast their competing policies. Instead, I’m going to talk about what I do know about and compare and contrast the quality of the videos themselves and what it might mean.

Obama is probably the most image conscious and media savvy president we’ve ever had. You can tell that people really paid very careful attention to how the video was going to look, from the meticulous composition to the way the intensity of the “practical” lamp in the background is perfectly balanced so as to not overpower the foreground while providing a motivating light source, all signs point to much greater attention to detail than what you’d normally expect from TV news interviews. Steele’s video on the other hand looks more like a high school media club’s parody of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update”.

They both go for multiple camera angles, with Steele doing the classic TV pundit’s “turn and look” for emphasis, while Obama went for the much more cinematic medium shot and close up. And we see Obama going widescreen vs. Steele in the old-school 4:3.

My first reaction to that was to say that maybe this shows that the Republicans are just some old guys who are out of touch with the times, after all, Bush didn’t feel any need to shoot his weekly radio addresses on video, and his TV addresses were very straightforward, shot from just one shot from one angle with simplistic lighting and no editing. Maybe he was spending too much time (doing a bad job of) working to be bothered with getting into make up every week for a radio address?

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if Obama’s videos are looking a little bit too professional, and maybe a little bit too cinematic (or maybe like a commercial?). We are after all living in real life and not a movie, and I wonder if there is any substance behind all of this style? It’s really too early to say.

Even if Obama turns out to be all fake and a complete sham, it looks like the Republicans are failing miserably at trying to keep up in the fake sham game, which is pathetic in its own way. It is as if the Republicans are trying to project an image of being media savvy without actually trying to acquire any of that media savvy– so they just copy what they see the other guy doing. I can just picture a bunch of crusty old white guys sitting in a room thinking, “Hey, let’s get a black guy and multiple camera angles so we can do the multiple camera angle thing too and get some of that MTV generation’s attention!” and just missing the point completely.

So while I cannot tell you which of these two guys is right about what to do about the economy, two things that seem very clear to me are that for better or for worse, Obama is very meticulous about crafting his public image, and the Republicans, for better or for worse, are trying to keep up, and not doing a great job of it, either.

-Bryan

It seems like these things come in cycles. Did the Roarin’ 20′s bring on prohibition? Did the 60′s bring on the “war” on drugs and the Moral Majority?

I’ve been convinced for a while that somehow in the end, McCain was gonna pull it out, and for the first time it actually seems like it could happen. I’m actually pretty scared. I’m afraid of how many more rights we might give up in the name of national security.

But for some reason I just have very little faith in the Democratic party to be able to win an election. I mean, George W. Bush got re-elected. If that doesn’t prove they are inept, I don’t know what could. And now the Republicans have a vice presidential nominee who I personally think is the worst VP nominee in history, and somehow she’s actually helping McCain. It’s amazing.

Republicans seem to be pretty good at winning elections while ruining the economy and destroying the constitution. Democratic party, you have failed. Since I am pretty convinced that all 55 of California’s electoral votes will go to Barack Obama, maybe I’ll vote for a third party or independent candidate, just to record my vote of dissatisfaction with the two main parties, rather than simply not voting for president which is what I am usually inclined to do.

Who on McCain’s campaign thought it would be a good idea for him to go on The View in the first place? And man these guys can just straight up lie on TV and their poll numbers keep improving. So once again I gotta say… Democratic party, you have failed!

So if you’ve been having a great time the last decade and a half or so, enjoy it while it lasts, the backlash could be coming in the form of an ultra-right-wing evangelical Christian made for TV version of sharia law brought on while Sarah Palin goes and “reforms all of Washington” for John McCain!

-Bryan

I was actually somewhat disturbed by John McCain’s response:

Neither. I am a illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get.

In this day and age are you really qualified to be President of the United States of America if you can’t use a computer? Are you really ready to set policy in the information age when technically you’re not even qualified to be a receptionist? Maybe you’ll just rely on your wife to make those decisions for you?

Maybe I’m being a little harsh, you know, for making fun of an old man for not knowing how to use a computer, but on the other hand, my grandmother doesn’t even understand English and yet somehow manages to check her stocks online. We really are talking about the presidency here, and I believe that being savvy about information technology would be instrumental in being able to make sure our nation is prepared to deal with the challenges future!

This was also a disappointment to me because I had once mused what would happen if we had a Civ 4 battle between the candidates to determine who would get to run the county, but I guess Obama would be the winner since McCain wouldn’t even be able to use the machine to play!

-Bryan

P.S. No, this is not me endorsing any particular candidate! I doubt I will even vote, I think we all already know where all of my state’s electoral votes are going.

-Bryan