the search for karma and a good can opener

I haven't done a randomness post in a long while.  I was talking to someone about karma and my disbelief of it.  I used to say I believe in it, but now I say I don't.  I see too many bad things happen to good people, and too many good things happen to bad people.  In fact, I think our society is built for bad people to win.  Ruthless people, people who are willing to win at all cost - they are the victors.  You gotta cut people's throat, throw people under the bus, stab people in the back.  It's a Machiavellian world, and we just barely live in it.  Simple people have their place, but it's a place where you have to be satisfied with internal rewards like a good conscience for what that's worth.  Believing in karma is like believing in God.  If you choose to believe in it, just don't expect any evidence to back it up...Amazing Race's recent episode, set in the French Alps, was just awesome.  It's the best leg in a long while.  The locale and the tasks were spectacular.  It's the reason people go on the Amazing Race, and it's the reason people like me have been fans for twenty-plus seasons.  And it's just been renewed again.  I am so thankful....I am also thankful for Madonna.  I know I go on and on, but I really have been impressed recently by this woman.  She is so defiant.  The more critics attack, the more unapologetic she is.  She could very easily play nice like many celebrities with their PR machines.  But she never backs down.  Where does one get balls like that???...You know what is hard to find aside from someone with balls of steel?  A good can opener...I am trying to figure out how I can afford to move.  Houses around here are now averaging over $1M.  I either have to snag a rich old lady, win lotto, work harder, or concoct some get-rich-quick scheme.  Unfortunately I am not charming enough, lucky enough, disciplined enough, or clever enough.  Damn you, mother (or God)!...Honestly though, I look at other people's homes on sites like Apartment Therapy or Curbed, and I am like, some people really live nice.  I imagine it would be nice to come home to a sanctuary as opposed to come home to a leaky money pit.  It's really my dream someday to create a nice home for myself.  I do notice though white people tend to have better taste about stuff like that.  White people houses are always nicer.  Maybe I need to marry a white lady.  A tasteful, rich white lady...I still haven't finished this year's taxes yet.  I mean, I did and then I didn't.  It's a complicated story that I cannot tell here.  You are not supposed to reveal too much of that kind of stuff on the internet cuz there are bad people out there...What to make of another ISIS attack?  This week, thirty plus people died when bombs went off in Brussels at the airport and on a subway train. Most of us hopefully will never understand that level of hate and evil.  And it is evil, even if the terrorists think it's something else.  If you plot to just kill random, innocent people, it is pure evil, no matter what motivation you have, no matter what you think your God told you to do...I just saw Brooklyn on blu ray yesterday.  It was a blind buy.  It's written by Nick Hornby and it's built as an immigrant love story - I was pretty much sold right from the start.  It's really a beautiful movie.  All the actors are great in it, especially Emory Cohen as Saoirse Ronan's suitor.  Being an immigrant myself, I remember the feelings of being displaced.  A stranger in a strange land, as they say.  I actually still feel that way.  I don't feel like I belong anywhere, not in America and not in Asia.  I know a lot of immigrants feel this way.  You can make a home and a life in a new country, but you still feel like you are on someone else's land.  And then when you go back to your mother land, it feels so changed, or you feel so changed, that you don't fit there anymore.  But then sometimes you cannot reflect on things like that too much.  You cannot constantly be thinking about what life is or could be or should have been.  You just have to live it and do what you do and get up every morning and put one foot in front of the other.  It's like a Lego block - you just start with one piece at a time til slowly you have something, and if you don't, you just adjust and adapt...I don't know what karma is anymore, but I know you just need to be a solid, good human being who try to do the right things.  I don't know what you will get at the end of that, but it's not for me or you to decide.  It might be karma.  It might be God.  It might be randomness.  Regardless, that part is out of our hands.

love will keep us together

I love this song from American Life so much. It was written for Rocco when he was born, and man, is it appropriate now?!

she doesn't want an easy ride

Tomorrow is the last show of Madonna's Rebel Heart tour.  It's been a crazy ride.  The era started with a damaging demo leak, followed by a phased official release that turned out to be a major commercial disappointment, a fall at the Brits felt around the world, and a tour that fans have followed around the world through Periscope and YouTube videos, obsessively wondering each show how late she would start, which songs she would she add or cut, and who would the unapologetic bitch of the evening.  Somewhere in there, we also got the Rocco custody drama, the curious Tears Of A Clown show in Melbourne where she performed deep album cuts like Easy Ride and Intervention in a clown costume for 1,500 fans, and the press sharpening its ageist and misogynist knives and reporting that she was a drunk in the midst of a major meltdown.  Through it all, she delivered what many fans considered to be the most enjoyable shows of her entire concert career.  It's an onstage Madonna that is, for the very first time, personable and chatty and funny and vulnerable.  For all f-f-fuck-yeahs and f-f-fuck-nos, and for all the bitch-this and bitch-that, and for all the nuns and stripper poles, more than ever you can see this is just a showgirl who works really hard to put on a good show. I am so proud of her, for how tough she has had to fight this last year, and really just want to give her a hug. I am sad that this era has come to an end.  I cannot wait to see what the next era will bring.     

zayn-y for zayn

Goodness what is happening to me?  First, I love Bieber's What Do You Mean and Love Yourself.  Now, I am totally obsessed with former 1Der Zayn Malik's Pillowtalk and especially It's You.

It's You is like a more radio-friendly Radiohead, no?

go leo

This year's Oscars are pretty easy to predict, so here goes my predictions for the top six categories:

Best Picture:  Spotlight (my choice - Mad Max Fury Road)
Director:  Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for The Revenant (my choice - George Miller for Mad Max)
Actor:  Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant (Go Leo!!!)
Actress:  Brie Larson for Room (my choice - between Brie and Saoirse Ronan for Brooklyn)
Supporting Actor:  Sylvester Stallone for Creed (my choice - Tom Hardy for The Revenant)
Supporting Actress:  Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl (my choice - Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs)

I really would love to see Kate and Leo both winning tonight.  My heart will go on for those two.

anti-manifesto

Apparently the Una-bomber has written another manifesto about the internet and technology.  I am too lazy to read it, although I am sure it's very well-written and well-thought-out and that there are a lot of things in there that would appeal to the anarchist in me who just want to be contrarian for the sake of being one (once you agree with the masses, you need to check yourself).  But you see, I won't ever subscribe to it or be rallied by it because I am a man of little ambition of effecting the world and also a man of ample cynicism and doubt that the world can ever be changed.  Mankind is what it is - selfish, greedy, power-mad, narcissistic.  We repeat history over and over.  Sure, our weapons get fancier, technology gets more advanced, but we take the same course towards self-destruction every time.  All those people like Ted Kaczinsky (or for that matter people like Ghandi), in their own grandiose way, think they can do something to disrupt that march towards madness, with their thousand page manifesto, preaching how the world should be in their fantasy la-la land.  Well guys and gals, it ain't happening no matter what you do.  So why don't you just join me on my apathetic couch and watch some Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and have a laugh or two instead?  Trust me, the end result is the same, but mine is a less painful path there.

Wait - you think I am hopeless and an example of the worst of human nature - that one should always fight the good fight to make the world a better place, regardless of the chance of winning, that if it were up to people like me, the world would never progress and that we would still be in the dark ages.  I offer you this, if everyone was like me, you wouldn't have any fighting to begin with.  People like me would never hurt anybody in the name of ideology and what's right or wrong, because we never feel strongly enough to fuss over such grand themes.  We know we don't know, and we are cool with that.  Black people - cool.  Homosexuality - sure, why not?  You want the Gaza Strip - go for it; there's plenty of land to go around.  I think it's when people think they've figure it out, that they know what's going to make the world "good" and "right," that's when we get in trouble.  Even ISIS thinks it's doing what's just and right by their God.  If nobody bothers with any of that and just want to watch some tv and eat some chips, then where's the conflict?

So I ask, can we please care a little less?  The evils of technology and internet.  The greed of the Western capitalistic pigs.  The oh-so-white Oscars.  Those pesky Mexicans crossing the U.S. border as if to borrow a cup of sugar.  The barbarism of all Muslims.  Global warming and melting ice caps.  You know what I have to say to all that?

West Covinnnnnaaa!!!


What?  You don't like this? You say you don't like musical comedies???  Now, that's crazy talk.  You are definitively, 100% wrong.  Musical comedies make the world a better place.  Let me convince you...

good luck

Good luck -

Patriots - go beat the Broncos and then the Panthers/Cardinals. 
Leonardo DiCaprio - go get your first Oscar.  Just try to avoid Lady Gaga there.
Madonna - Rocco will come back your way eventually. 
Steven Moffat - thanks for the Matt Smith years and some of the best Doctor Who episodes ever.
X-Files - hope your ratings are out of the world so these won't be the last six episodes we'll get.
East Coast - go dig your way out of snow-ageddon. 

Dang it - the Pats just lost to the Broncos 20-18.  Why Denver?  I freaking hate Peyton Manning.  Go Panthers!!!