Friday, February 18, 2005

Fisherisms

There's a neo-conservative writer here at USD named Chris Fisher. He writes generally provacative things, and people attack him (in print) for it. I disagree with him on what he says, but I'm taking a different approach, I'm going to begin writing a series of satirical articles based on Fisher's ideaology. I will polish them up, and try to get a couple done, before I try and get them put in the Volante. I will post them here, starting today, and try to get one done for every couple of days, and try to polish them up within a week of them getting done. I don't know how long this will last, the guy gives me a lot of material to work with. It's a satirists dream.

"Government should stay out of business

Naomi is a 12-year-old Californian girl who spends her days waiting for her mother to get done waiting tables at Denny’s in order to make less than minimum wage and barely scrape by. She sees her mom doing a lot of work for little money. Naomi wants to help her mom out, but can’t think of how. She dreams of one day being able to make enough money in a few hours as her mom does in a week. Her dream is to be a prostitute, but she is hindered in that because of the United States Government.

The government should stay out of business, and prostitution is one business that they keep sticking their noses in to. If it were merely illegal to have sex with someone for money, that would be simply putting a restriction on the service, like raising the price for a pack of cigarettes. But the government doesn’t stop there; they make it illegal to solicit sex, which is just plain wrong.

Where is the personal responsibility? If prostitutes want to walk around offering their bodies to the right pocketbook, then why should it be illegal? Surely, the services wouldn’t be purchased by a public that knows better. Prostitution is immoral, as it is sex outside of marriage, and as my favorite Volante columnist Chris Fisher has said, “capitalism turns man's immorality into productivity “.

The government putting restrictions on such things is a highly dangerous road to go down, and it needs to stop now. What comes next after prostitution? Will we enforce bans on cigarettes, because they harm people, what about guns? The government is putting an unnecessary restriction on a very profitable industry that, if allowed to be free, could one day employ many people. Did you hear that? Jobs! This is a viable commodity, and it’s time that the U.S. government recognized it.

If you are against prostitution, then you are against free-market capitalism. Sure, it could be argued that prostitution takes advantage of young girls, but if they wanted to go somewhere else for a job, they could. There are many opportunities out there, such as the business world. Which brings up another point that Chris Fisher brilliantly addressed in a previous article, where he said that business people should have “the freedom of an individual to discriminate for legitimate, as well as illegitimate, reasons”, this is an incredibly astute point, but it doesn’t fare well for the would-be prostitute convert. As we’ve seen in the past, when businesses have the freedom to discriminate, female workers have gotten fewer jobs, and less money, and even if it’s a male worker, who’s going to hire a former prostitute?

I guess they’ll have to look elsewhere, but why should they? The market is giving the price for their goods, which makes it practically their duty to give a market with such high demand a quality product. I’ll close with yet another Chris Fisher point, “People take these jobs because their next best option is just that.” Naomi’s next best option is prostitution, and the government should allow it."

Monday, February 14, 2005

http://www.uweboll.com

Just a site I liked. Also, I'm throwing down the gauntlet, and officially challenging Pat to a test as to who can pick the most Oscar winners. Now, I think I've seen more of the contenders than you, Pat, but you're smart enough to guess wildly at them, and hope you're right.

I just got done with my English 101 class. My teacher wrote on my paper, "Good job, but write more specifically about what your going to say in the rest of your paper". Can you spot the problem? My teacher is a grad student, so it's not like it's unforgivable, but it just points out one thing that I dislike about the class. It also renews my faith in the ability of people to dissapoint me. I just keep waiting for that acceptance letter from the U of M. Not the answer to all my problems, but it certainly should help...I hope.

http://www.artbomb.net/comics/disclaimer.jsp

Here's a comic that I saw, and liked. It is disturbing, but well done, which in my mind is better than an untroubling, yet mediocre work. Reminds me of Palahniuk, which I know does nothing for Pat, but I like him.

I saw the original "Insomnia" this weekend, and I have to say, if I were to rate both versions (the other one was directed by Christopher Nolan, and starred Pacino and Robin Williams), I would give them both a 7.9. This was the first case that I've seen a remake be just as good as the original, and the interesting part is that they're good for different reasons. There were parts in the Nolan version that weren't nearly as strong as the ones in the Norwegian version, but there were parts in the Norwegian version that were immensly improved upon in the Nolan version. All of this is really moot, because whenever I think of Nolan, I think of Batman, and whenever I think of Batman, I get excited, and now I can no longer think about "Insomnia".

I'm trying out for "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" today. Problem is, I can't sing. Oh well. I'm going to try though, and I'm doing a song from "Urinetown" called "It's a privelege to pee". It's a funny song, and I'm following it up by doing a monologue from "The Usual Suspects".

Start!

Okay, thanks to Pat for starting me off on this idea. We have our own blog at http://s&p5000.blogspot.com, and I started posting stuff there, that I frankly should have put on my own blog. So here it is. Enjoy