No Offense

As I’m sure I’ve bored everyone with before, I’m in graduate school. After a year-and-a-half of law school failed to materialize into feelings other than dread, boredom, and fatigue, I withdrew and headed back to a long-standing passion of mine: bullshiting. To be more specific: political science. I thought to myself, “What kind of job could I get where I sit around and debate much like I do in all my nerddom on online message forums?” And with that idea firmly entrenched, I enrolled at my alma mater to earn a Master’s Degree in political science.

Anyway, I’m getting to the point. I met with my academic advisor recently and was informed that usually students take two years to get their Masters. Well, I’m impatient and I’m betting most students didn’t waste a year-and-a-half and blow 41k in law school first, so I’m attempting to get my Masters in one year (by this December). Perhaps it’s too optimistic but I want to give it a real shot. With that in mind, with work and school I’m pretty much working the equivalent of two jobs and trying to catch sleep here and there when I can. This post isn’t to bitch – I just want to say I probably won’t be posting too much this semester, though I’m going to try to as often as I can. So if I don’t comment on any of your blogs regularly, let me offer a preemptive apology and don’t take it personally. I’m not doing it to be an ass. I mean, I am an ass, just not for that reason.

The good news is the conversation I had with my academic advisor led to some very fruitful job prospects. It all started off with me asking what the hell I’m supposed to do with a Masters Degree in political science. Yeah, that’s right – not even grad students in the damn program know what the hell they’re supposed to do with it. At least me, anyway. While I won’t get into specifics, I walked away from his office a very happy man when certain job prospects inside Washington D.C. were brought to my attention. I won’t mention what they are (D.C. Madam), but rest assured you’d all be secure in my hand (job)s.

Also, to all my Canadian, Australian, and British friends: part of my relentless reading assignments for this semester include classic works such as The Communist Manifesto and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on just how pinko-commie you rat bastards truly are, yet just don’t know it.

Wal-Mart, Under Fire, Shows its Mason-Dixon Line to Civil War Critics

An outcry has sprung up In Locust Grove, Virginia, where Wal-Mart has announced its intention to build a Supercenter near Wilderness Battlefield, an old Civil War location that saw a future United States president (Ulysses S. Grant) openly engage Southern military genius Robert E. Lee. The announcement has drawn immediate fire from historians, preservationists, filmmakers, and that guy who won a Pulitzer for John Adams.

Wal-Mart has defended its choice by arguing it isn’t building directly on the battlefield – just across the street, an explanation not good enough for Wal-Mart’s critics. I’m going to have to agree with Wal-Mart from my own personal experience. Location does make a difference. I remember the rolling-of-eyes I received from jumping on a grave directly across from my ex-girlfriend’s during her funeral. It wasn’t like I was jumping on hers. And yes, the above line was a joke, so don’t write me nasty comments or emails. In reality nobody knows where she’s buried.

The point is this: nobody should be surprised by the business decisions of Wal-Mart. Did Wal-Mart back down when it took heat for building a Supercenter at the base location of Mexico’s historic temple-pyramid ruins? Hell no!

And did they back down from suing one of their employees who was hit by a truck, causing her permanent brain damage to the point she has to be told anew every day her son was killed in Iraq because she can’t remember, all while her husband who has cancer works two jobs to pay the medical bills and divorced her because it would be easier on her insurance payments? Well, yes, they did, but only after CNN bitched and moaned about it for a few weeks.

The American public has to get it through their head that Wal-Mart isn’t going to change and they’re going to keep pushing the envelope, and I’m fine with it on one condition: I want in on the action. If Wal-Mart is going to make such controversial decisions, hire me to be your public relations director! I already have a plan of action for the Wal-Mart in Locust Grove, Virginia. Any time a potentially reputation-killing situation arises, a person has two choices: acknowledge the pink elephant in the room and try to spin it or try to hide it. The latter is simply not an option. Here’s my business proposal for Locust Grove:

Build the Supercenter and make it a Civil War themed location. Hire Civil War veterans to be door greeters and hire only Civil War reenactors as employees. Don’t tell me it can’t be done. Hell, how many extras were used in the movie Gettysburg? It’s not like Jeff Daniels has a lot going on. Secondly, have an African-American handing out flyers on sales of guns and bullets while holding a sign that says “At least Wal-Mart pays its slaves, and it didn’t take them 86 years to emancipate us.” A sign like that takes a shot at both the Union and Confederacy, because let’s not forget who the real bastards are. After all, if the Civil War had never taken place Wal-Mart wouldn’t have been building on Civil War grounds.

Other ideas include having a “Four Score Sale” on condoms. And lube. Lincoln strikes me as the kind of guy who had a healthy respect for slippery surfaces. Also, to stop theft, every hour an employee dressed as John Wilkes Booth could attempt to steal an item, drawing the attention of the crowd. And as he began to escape an employee dressed as Lincoln could rise from a coffin and shoot him in the neck, telling all there is no presidential pardon for shoplifting. It may not be historically accurate but I’m sure market research shows the people want to see Lincoln win.

Hire me. I have ideas.

A German Evening

Had the flu not struck me down last weekend I would have done what any person over a Christmas holiday would do: go see a Nazi movie. Instead I had to recuperate and wait until this weekend. And in case you’re unsure of what I’m talking about, I’m discussing Tom Cruise’s latest movie, Valkyrie , a mostly true story involving a failed assassination plot on Hitler’s life that took place on July 20, 1944. In all honesty, despite my nerd-a-rific hard-ons for history (particularly involving World War II) I truly had intended to avoid the movie (my dad talked me into it). The film had been so dragged through the mud that even I was aware of the criticism, and I never pay attention to film critics. My knowledge was limited to this: about a dozen individuals had been injured during filming, Germans were outraged Tom Cruise was selected to play the main character, Count von Stauffenberg, and there were some hard feelings between Cruise and the German Ministry of Defense when Cruise let it be known he wanted to film there, which the German Ministry of Defense claimed would be truly burdensome.

I walked away from the movie wondering what the fuss had truly been about. Cruise played the role well enough that I forgot he’s a couch-jumping, Brooke Shields-hating, crazy sumbitch. And that has always been the litmus test for psychos like Cruise or raging a-holes like Russell Crowe. If I can forget you’re crazy – or in Crowe’s case, that you mercilessly beat a hotel clerk with a telephone – while watching your movie, you’ve done a good job. And Valkyrie seemed mostly historically accurate (which a lot of history movies can’t say…*cough* Pearl Harbor *cough*) and suspenseful enough that there were many times my heart was racing, a sensation that confused me considering I knew how it all turned out (Spoiler Alert: Hitler wins). And like all movies, it had its flaws. Erwin Rommel, one of the most well-known German generals during World War II, was a conspirator in the assassination plot, yet was oddly left out of the movie entirely. Another odd choice was having the actors speak English in various accents. While I understand having them speak English rather than German to avoid subtitles, having a mix of British and American actors and their respective accents was rather amusing. But Valkyrie served its purpose: it was a well-done movie I was able to share with my dad, a massive history buff.

After the movie ended we went out to grab some lunch and talked about what we had seen. We both were in agreement that we didn’t understand the criticisms of the movie, and also of Cruise. “You want to know why I always found the upper echelon of the Nazis so interesting?” he asked me. And I was curious to know. After all, at one point in the movie every member of the top brass of the National Socialist Party was shown and my dad was able to rattle them all off by name at the top of his head instantaneously.

“I could never understand how they were so wildly successful with their propaganda. How was it possible they were able to convince the public to follow so blindly?” he continued.

His comment led to some more debate, and some comparisons to similar strategies that had been used in more contemporary times in a country I won’t name. I’m not going to get into them. This quote should suffice:

“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” —-Hermann Goering, Commander of the German Luftwaffe, Nuremberg Trials.

Upon returning home I researched what it was, exactly, that had left Germans so angry about Cruise and his performance. What I found were rants about his personal character. Count von Stauffenberg’s eldest son told Cruise to “go back to America.” The German newspaper Der Tages spiegel went after his belief in Scientology, saying he may be a rising star in its religious hierarchy but “his image as an actor has been finally ruined.” Another German newspaper, the Die Welt, wrote that Cruise failed because he’s American and best suited to be an American hero, and “Stauffenberg was a German hero, with aristocratic bearing, and Cruise cannot carry that off.”

Maybe all of these criticisms are true. I won’t pretend I know the first thing about German aristocracy. I’ve never been to the country, am not well versed in its culture, and cannot speak the language. But I suppose I walked away from Valkyrie with a different message. I saw a movie about a man who loved his country so much he was willing to kill, to destroy a political belief system that showed complete disregard for human life and religious tolerance to the point it was willing to attempt to exterminate an entire race. He laid his life down for the principles his country had lost somewhere along the way, and the German press has honored a film commemorating the actions of this man by ridiculing Cruise’s religion (no matter how unorthodox it may appear), and engaging in xenophobic libels, branding Cruise a foreigner who could never begin to understand the complexities of German aristocracy.

Perhaps they’re right.

Who’s Your Father(land)?

Yesterday a confusing scenario came to the surface. A routine flight left Amsterdam on New Years Eve when, without nine months of warning, a woman mysteriously went into labor. Being past the “point of no return” the plane was left with no recourse but to trudge onward and deliver the pregnant woman’s gross misinterpretation of “the mile high club.” Fortunately one Dr. Natarajan Raman, obviously a native of Minnesota, was on board and the birth of a new baby girl went smoothly – that is, with one exception.

This new baby girl was born in international waters, an area of the world rarely mentioned. A place where lawlessness, cock-fights, and the popular lyrical stylings of David Hasselhoff reign supreme. Such characteristics are truly the mark of chaos and disorder. Considering the flight departed from the Netherlands, calling this country-less baby a “Dutch bastard” seems only redundant. And after the plane landed safety in Boston, snuggly in America’s arms, the debate raged: where should this baby call home?

Normally such a situation would be an interesting story to me and nothing more, yet this baby is in extreme danger. Canada, in yet another strategic move in its historically aggressive foreign policy, has decided to claim the baby as its own, attempting to produce documents showing the infant was introduced to this world inside of Canadian airspace. This action cannot stand, for it has long been a well understood American axiom that one is far better off being a bastard than Canadian (though this distinction is often confused due to the widespread intermixing of the words “bastard” and “Canadian”).

2009 is poised to be a great year. Let’s not start off on the wrong foot by allowing another Canadian into the world.

Note To The Journalspace Departed:

We seem to be scattering in all directions, and that’s a shame. If you’re interested in staying in contact with me, I can be found at these two locations:

http://cartguy4ever.blogspot.com

And

http://cartguyforever.wordpress.com.

if I don’t see you around, well, good luck to all of you and I hope you all had a Happy New Year. And now, a final goodbye to journalspace: