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It’s Official: Hollywood is out of ideas!

There are a lot of bad movies out there. Hollywood loves remakes, sequels, movies based on comic books, and worst of all, movies based on toys. For every original movie out there, e.g., Inception, there are thousands of completely unoriginal ones.

Case in point, and I have to stress that I’m not making this up, but Warner Bros. has bought the option to make a movie based on a comment made on Reddit.

Somebody over at Reddit asked what’s the fewest numbers of soldiers he’d need to go back in time and take over the Roman Empire. (The answer is actually pretty simple, to me at least. One guy with several nuclear bombs… but I digress.)

Anyway, the guy started writing up a story to go with his question. A subreddit was created and the community went crazy on the idea, coming up with graphics, fake movie posters, etc.

Can I just way wow? Wow-fucking-wow!

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The Scales of Justice

Justice is represented in the United States by a woman wearing a blind-fold holding a set of scales. She illustrates that justice is not about revenge, it’s about balance.

My state is planning on changing the balance of Workers’ Compensation law. The article I’m reading in Michigan Lawyer’s Weekly, which is not available online, states that the costs of employers providing Workers Compensation insurance by businesses is too high and needs to be changed.

The article has the following quote: The passage of the original Workers’ Compensation law,

was intended to help injured workers and get them back to work, and nothing else.

That “nothing else” is completely wrong. We as a society did not look around and say, “Gee, there are so many employees being injured at work, let’s create a system to help them.” No one thought that because there was a system in place which helped them. Employees were suing their employees in courts for tort negligence. And much to the employers’ chagrin, a lot of those employees were winning.

The real purpose of workers compensation laws was to give tort immunity to employers.

The employers were getting tired of having to go to court, go through trials, and having to pay the resulting verdicts. The purpose of workers comp laws was not to help employees, it was to help employers.

However, the rich and wealthy at the time could not simply make employers immune from tort liability, there would have been a workers’ revolution and we’d all likely be communist nowadays.

So they tweaked the immunity with a little balance. Employees could not sue their employers and get huge pain, suffering, emotional distress awards, but the employers had to provide de minimis economic stability to workers who were injured on the job.

The employers got their immunity while employees got certainty and peace of mind.

With that history in mind, what does it mean for employers who argue that workers comp costs too much money?

Do they mean that it costs more than removing the immunity and allowing workers to sue for tort liability? Of course not. That would cost much much more. There is no employer in Michigan who is arguing that workers comp laws should go away. They love their immunity from tort lawsuits.

What employers want is to tip the balance of the scales so far to their advantage that they get their immunity while employees get nearly nothing in return.

So for example, the changes that are expected to be made in my state would essentially eliminate workers comp for minimum wage employees. That means that it’ll be completely legal for employers to commit negligent acts and set up negligent and dangerous conditions in the workplace, and injured employees will have absolutely no legal recourse.

So the next time you hear some rich guy complaining that we need less government interference over business, go up to him and say, “I completely agree. Let’s get rid of the tort immunity given to you by the government through workers comp and let employees privately sue you for any torts you commit.” You can be sure he’ll start demanding that the government should interfere and protect him from that.

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Dangerous Protection

I’m not going to argue about whether a person or household should keep a gun for protection. Nor will I delve into empirical arguments that more children die from handguns in their own home than die from invaders, or vice versa. What I’m going to talk about is a particular argument in favor of keeping a gun at home for protection.

I was reading an advice columnist and a new wife wrote in about how her husband is obsessed with keeping a handgun in the house “for protection.”

She countered that it would not be safe to keep a loaded handgun in the house after they had kids.

People in the comments raised the argument that the solution is to keep the handgun unloaded and locked up in a safe.

Think about that. The purpose of the gun is to protect yourself in case someone invades your house and threatens you and your family. If you know in advance that someone is coming to harm you, you can leave or call the police. Therefore, the sole purpose to keep a gun in the house for protection is clearly for a sudden attack.

So how is that gun going to protect you when it’s unloaded and locked up? Are those thugs really going to wait until you run to the room where the key is then run to the room where the safe is, because you obviously can’t keep the key anywhere near the safe, pull it out from underneath the bed or from the closet, get the ammo, load gun, and then use it?

And are you really going to leave your wife and kids alone with those thugs while you run around the house as I described above?

If you want to keep a gun in a house with children, because you like taking it to the firing range and shooting targets… you’re being rational. Your desire to own a gun is a subjective pleasure while your desire to protect children makes sense.

However, locking up a gun intended for protection makes very little sense. The more you try to protect children, the less useful the weapon will be for protection. The more assessable the weapon is, the more likely it will be that children will be harmed.

This is one circumstance where you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You have to make a choice. A useless gun and safe children or putting your children at risk. Please choose wisely.

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Nuts on both sides

I’ve written before about nutty people who buy on Craigslist. But I recently came across a seller who was completely nuts.

I’ve been jonesing for a tube amp for several months. I’ve used solid state amps for decades because they’re more reliable for gigs. But now that I’m not playing any gigs, and will never play a gig in the foreseeable future, I really want a tube amp. Particularly, a 50 or 100 watt combo with 2 12″ speakers.

Anyway, this guy from my hometown is selling a pretty awesome tube combo amp. I emailed him expressing interest and asked for some pictures. His response:

“Not to sound rash but, it looks like an egnater tourmaster.”

I again asked for a picture and wrote back,

I’m not going to drive to someone’s house to buy something without seeing a picture of it first.

He responded,

Im at work so it’s kinda hard to take a picture of it. And last a picture is really a waste.

I responded back,

You’ve seen the amp. You know it looks great. You know there are no tears or dents or missing knobs or whatever. But I’ve never seen it. Your faith in your amp means nothing to me. I’d never show up to buy something used without first seeing some detailed pictures.

His response was classic ad hominem:

You probably can’t even play all that good anyway. Sound like you should get one of those starter amps from walmart. Do you even know how to bias a tube amp

I wrote back:

Calm down. You’ve lost this buyer. But if you’re polite the next time, maybe you’ll make a sale.

Now maybe the guy was having a bad day. Maybe his wife left him and his truck wouldn’t start. But I wonder if he’ll ever sell that amp with his piss poor attitude!

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Voir Dumb

Voir Dire is a part of the jury selection process where attorneys and the judge get to ask questions of the jurors to determine if they can be fair and impartial in deciding the case.

Fourteen jurors are temporarily selected and are asked questions directly. The remaining pool of jurors remain seated in the audience portion of the courtroom and are directed to listen to the questions, but are only allowed to respond if they are called upon.

A juror was called from the pool and was asked by the Judge, “Did you hear the questions we asked of the previous jurors?”

Juror: “Yes, your honor.”

Judge: “Did you hear any question that made you want to raise your hand and respond?”

Juror: “Yes, your honor.”

Judge: “Which one?”

The juror looked back and forth at his hands and replied, “The right one, your honor.”

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Why Breastaurants Thrive when Restaurants Fail

I keep reading articles about how people are surprised that breastaurants such as Hooters are thriving in our poor economy, even as other mainstream restaurants are failing.

It makes sense to me. When an economy is bad, people have less disposable income, so they choose to eat out less. Mainstream restaurants have the same costs they always have, so they have to lower prices and quality to compete. If the prices and or quality gets too low, the restaurant goes out of business.

Strangely, the opposite is true of breastaurants. In poor economies breastaurants have an influx in the “quality” of waitresses to hire.

When the economy is good and jobs are plentiful, it’s easy for attractive women to find employment. Even if they have no jobs skills, when the economy is humming, they can find jobs as secretaries, bank tellers, etc. Men love having attractive women to have around the office.

But when the economy is bad, employers have to cut their staff to the bone, so having superfluous hotties around is no longer a viable option. Employers are compelled to hire qualified or over-qualified desperate applicants versus eye-candy.

This means that when the economy is bad, there’s a sudden glut of unemployed and skill-less hotties who are forced to lower their expectations for employment. While these women might never consider working for Hooters during good times, when a breastaurant offers the best pay per their lack of legitimate qualifications, they’ll take it.

So, even though the economy is bad and our disposable income is less, some men are still willing to spend what they have at breastaurants to see those unskilled, but god and silicon gifted, hotties.

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Maybe Craigslist Buyers are Just Illiterate

I recently wrote about how asinine Craigslist spam is. In a nutshell, every time I sell something on Craigslist I immediately get spam inquiries from, what I assumed were, spam bots. I assumed they were spam bots because the inquiries were utterly ignorant about my ads. Why would someone respond to an ad they couldn’t be bothered to read? It only made sense that these inquiries were sent out automatically by spam bots.

Well, today I got a call from someone who’s interested in buying something I was selling. And despite the fact that he’s not a spammer (unless he’s a spammer with a lot of time on his hands, to call every seller individually) he was completely clueless about what I was selling.

He started asking me questions with the prefix, “Your ad didn’t say, so…” Well, my ad did say so in excruciating detail. So I responded back, “Well, my ad said….” and then answered his question. After a few of these questions, all of which could have been answered if he had simply read my posting, he said he had to talk to his wife and he’d get back with me.

Maybe some of those earlier emails were actually from legitimate, but illiterate, buyers.

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When I was a kid…

When I was a kid, musicians were arrested on stage for inciting riots or for exposing themselves. Nowadays they’re arrested for not paying child support.

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