I have seen a few movies lately and I am going to catch you up on my thoughts of them.

The Departed

The Departed was tense, bloody, and fun. This a a guy movie with enough violence to whet your testosterone laden palette, a great plot and script. The acting was excellent and I really loved Mark Wahlberg’s part. See it. My wife does not like violent or bloody movies and this was a bit much for her, she did however enjoy the plot.

Casino Royale

I enjoyed Casino Royale quite a bit. At first I was not sure if I was going to like Daniel Craig as the new Bond, but in the end I did. This is a new take on who and what James bond is. It is a little darker and grittier and we get some character development to boot. Now that is a welcomed change.

March of the Penguins

March of the Penguins was an interesting and educational documentary on the life of the Emperor Penguins. I am glad that saw it just to be exposed to their life long and dedicated saga to their children. If that does not catch ya, then you will want to see this movie before Happy feet, as it will allow you to appreciate it more.

Happy Feet

Happy Feet is a fun, fun movie with Robin Williams’ voice which is always a treat. The movie has a small statement and there is ‘almost’ too much singing. Almost. It was a great time and a lot of fun. A great movie for kids and adults.

Apocalypto

I might be reading more into Apocalypto that was intended, but here’s what struck me about this movie: It appeared that Mel Gibson was doing a statement movie on cultural evolution. The acting is great. The effects somewhat gruesome, much more so than The Departed from above.

The beginning seems to have been done, and was done well, to allow the viewer to connect with the characters and setting. It shows that even though they are an old society that we are all still humans with human needs and relations, sense of humor, in-laws, and so on. Great job with that. Then through the rest of the movie I see a statement about societal evolution on how it changes and yet stays the same. The same cultural standards it just changes focus or form. This was especially driven home for me with the end.

Maybe I am off my rocker. Most likely. But that is what I thought. This is not a movie for the feint of heart.

Flushed Away

As far as I am concerned any non-Disney and/or non-Pixar film (which are now one and the same’ish) is just going to be enjoyable and not great. That is my bias. Now that this is out of the way… Flushed Away was an interesting movie. The animation good. The plot and script quirky but fun. For me it would be renter, especially if you have kids.

I just found this VLog called the show with ZeFrank. An entertaining guy commentary on politics and life. Mostly politics. Some of it is not politically correct and may not be suitable for work. Check it out. =)

For those of you completely bored check this out. There is a World Rock, Paper, Scissors Society

VLog via Rocket Boom

I want to talk about the Civil Unions and Marriage Ban in Wisconsin from a White Man’s Burden sort of perspective. If you have seen the movie I think that you know where I will be going with this. This is a great statement movie starring John Travolta and Harry Belafonte, where the racial roles are reversed between the African American and White communities. In this movie African Americans are dominate racial force and whites are the minority.

Role Reversal

The majority of people in the world are heterosexual. What if this was not the case? What if it was the other way around? What if homosexual relationships were the norm (we are going to disregard the species perpetuation issues with this, so work with me here).

Being heterosexual in a homosexual world. You are in love with someone of the opposite sex even though the world tells you that you are wrong and you might even have a disease or mental disorder. You are afraid to show your love and commitment for your partner for fear of ostricization or being spurned, not only by people that you do not know, but your friends and family as well.

You get together with your partner and declare you love and commitment together and you want to get married. You cannot due to government laws, and because of this you are not able to get health insurance from your partner, see them in the hospital, make medical and financial decisions for them in case of an emergency, get bereavement leave, and host of other benefits that are taken for granted by the homosexual majority.

How lonely it is. Living in fear and worry that something might happen to your partner and you may not be able to do something about it because the government is trying to tell you who you can love and are trying to punish you for it.

Final Thoughts for Today’s World

How will same sex unions in todays world affect you. Odds are that it will not affect you at all, unless you are in the homosexual minority seeking marital rights for you and your loved one.

Whether or not same-sex unions are allowed will not affect the heterosexual population at all. Same sex unions happen whether anyone likes it or not. These unions currently may not have the force or protection of law but they are still there, even if you do not want to acknowledge it.

Allowing marital freedom, as it is intended, to same-sex marriages will give everyone the peace of mind that they deserve for committing to their loved ones. It will give everyone the safety and security that is deserved for their commitment.

On November 7th go out there and vote against this tragedy in American politics and prevent the destruction of the true meaning of marriage – commitment. Do not let intolerance and prejudice be the cornerstone of your country’s laws. Take back America and let it stand for Freedom.

According to this short quiz my Political Leanings are Centrist. I have never heard of this until now. I have typically put myself on the side of Libertarians, but this might be the closest label to my political leanings. We will see. I have to do more research on this to make sure.

Your word for the day is Compersion:

What is the opposite of Jealousy? The answer is Compersion.

Compersion

is love manifested when a person takes joy in his or her loved one’s happiness with another person.

Google Definition

Wikipedia Definition

Having an over developed sense of propriety or prudishness (depending on how you want to label me), I would normally not post anything about sex, but this is a really interesting article from Forbes:

Your Health: Is Sex Necessary?

I am going to come clean about a few things here. I think what I post here will surprise most of you that know me. =) I do not usually discuss politics or religion to anyone really, mostly due to not knowing what my beliefs are and not knowing enough. I am in the process of developing my political and religious views, and this journey has taken me to some interesting places, of which I will detail below.

Political Leanings

According to PoliticalCompass.org I am a slightly left leaning Libertarian ( I think that I am reading that correct?):

Economic Left/Right: -1.50 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.64

I am not exactly sure what that specifically means, but I think that it shows that I have strong Libertarian views, which I think is close to true.

Micronationalism

In the process of this journey I have joined a micronation called the Republic of Talossa which has been a very interesting experience that has caused me to think about and investigate topics and ideas that I would never have broached otherwise.

Shortly after joining I was nominated and accepted the position of Secretary of State which took me by surprise. In this position I am in charge of the electoral process and the National Register of Law which I completely recoded.

I have also joined their political party called the Union for Talossan Progress for which I have created a simple site for them and posted my modest views and ideas which will be in short form posted below.

World Government

As a part of the Micronational experience I have come upon the World Government site which blows great big HTML and usability chunks. I have taken steps to recode much of the site so that it is usable and standards compliant, but I have more to do. The great thing about this is that it is based on the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is a great thing and I very much support. Take a look at it.

Miscellaneous Views

Here come some interesting views that you may find interesting and/or shocking.

Marriage

Some basic views about the institution of marriage and civil unions:

In short Marriage should be privitized or atleast unrestricted as marriage in-an-of-itself is really a religious and/or very personal decision that the government should have exactly no say in. The government should maintain a database of contracts for those who wish to solidify or contractualize their union; of course, this would mean redoing much of the tax, divorce, insurance, and child custody and care laws. When is hell going to freeze over?

I am for gay Marriage and I support Poly marriages as well. Again this is a personal choice and the government has no place in it. Check out Fair Wisconsin to help stop the ban on same sex unions.

Time and Measurement

I believe that we should be fully metric, using the 24 hour clock and possibly an alternate decimal clock, and definitively using the International Fixed Calendar.

Religious Leanings

Exploring my religious beliefs has been interesting. I do not have very strong religious leanings as no specific religion has appealed to me and my rather liberal beliefs, as you can see from above.

I have a problem with religion in general as some religions are potentially the richest organizations in the world. There may come a point where decisions made within the church are business and not religious ones, or are financially motivated rather than faith motivated. There are stories of churches that require their congregation to tithe via automatic electronic withdrawal and require a specific percentage of your income. Ugghhh!!!

Oh, and the last reason why I am not keen on religions is that many wars have been started due to religious reasons and horrible crimes against humanity committed with fath based justification.

So, with these thoughts in mind I do not have a really great view of religions. Now, barring those issues, churches have done some wonderful things for people around the world: missionary work, building houses, and providing personal and financial support to their members and non-members amongst other wonderful things. Great community activism. Very cool!

I looked to Bahai’ism, but that did not quite fit me. Then my search turned to Unitarian Universalist. I am currently researching this religion and I think that this will be the best fit for me. I am not sure yet. We will see.

I have come to find that Thomas Jefferson was Unitarian and he has created and published the Jefferson Bible where he stripped out the supernatural and tried to boil down the teachings of Jesus into a book of morality, which is something that I have long thought would be best use for biblical teachings.

In closing

In closing I have been thinking and doing a lot of research on these topics and have come to some interesting and unexpected conclusions during this journey. I would like to thank my wonderful parents who raised me to be and conservatively open-minded and understanding.

At this time in my life I was working full time at Sitel Technologies in Madison, Wisconsin and going to School full time at the Herzing College of Technology, also in Madison. I think I was listening to Bob an Tom in the Morning on 101.5 and was just driving into the parking lot at work. They said that a jet had just hit one of the Towers I though that was horrible and very odd. How could a plane just hit a building in the middle of a large city like that? Were the control towers sleeping? I seriously doubted that. Someone would have had to notice this in progress. When I heard that another one was on the I thought that this had to be a terrorist act.

Amidst the tense and disturbed silence and empty cubicles were many people staring with horror on there faces and mouths agape watching the big screen TV’s with the progressing terrorist act on CNN. I could not stop watching just like everyone else. I was horrified and hurt. How could someone do this. I am a Navy veteran of the Gulf War who participated in Desert Shield. I could not believe it. The US has striven to to do so much good in the world. Albeit not always in the best way possible or even with the best motives, but we are the police of the world. How could this happen to us?

Sitel offered us a chance to go home for the day at about 11:00am or so and I took it. My stomach was upset and I was an emotional wreck. I was hurt that someone could lash out at the USA like this; that some how, some where, someone justified the death of so many innocent people. Who could strike at my beloved America and how could they amuse me with their justification of so much blind hatred and irrationality.

I was lucky that no one I knew was directly affected by this tragedy, but I do hope that the ones truly responsible for this horror on American soil are found and punished. Not only Americans were effected that day. The world was affected as there were people of every nationality in the two towers. If these monsters can successfully strike at the most powerful nation in the world then no one was safe.

In two weeks my wonderful wife will be teaching yoga classes on the weekends. She is very excited and nervous about this wonderful opportunity. She has been taking Yoga Teacher Training classes via Kripalu and has been progressing very well. The only real difficulty for her in teaching Yoga is English, as Russian is her native language.

Let us all think wonderful and positive thoughts for her over these next two weeks and wish her good luck! She will not need it because she rocks, but it cannot hurt. =)

Life is strange and can throw you curve balls the likes of which you would never ever see coming. You think you know someone, yourself included, and then ‘Boom!’, your world changes because something has happened and nothing makes sense, or you are thinking things that you have never thought before either about yourself or other people. I have had a few bouts with this last few years. These experiences have shocked, amazed, and saddened me.

What happens when you are brought up to believe and live a certain way and you find out that you truly believe something else which would be much to the chagrin of your parents and family, or society in general. Not that what you now believe is destructive to society as whole or in part (at least in your opinion), but is just against the norm or not societally accepted.

What are some things that might qualify in this situation? There are quiet a few and I will let you mind wander, but think of it. Your life changes. You have this belief or thought that you cannot share or speak freely about because you will be looked down upon or seen as a deviant or crazy person. You feel that it is right and it makes a lot of sense (to you), but it is very much against common societal standards and norm. What do you do?

Which is right? Which is wrong? Because 150 trillion people believe and/or live this way does not mean it is right. Because a few hundred or a few thousand people, or 4 people, believe or think another way does not mean that it is wrong. The world can be kind of lonely without the ability to share these thoughts or beliefs if they are yours and yours alone to bear.

What are your thoughts or beliefs that are yours to bear and what do you do with them or how do you cope? (You may take this as being rhetorical if you like.)

My wife and I spent some cash buying soil, bricks, plants, bushes, weed guard, mulch and flowers to do some landscaping for the house. We finished the first part of our project which is a small are with lilys, silver wormwood (I think), and pansies surrounded with a circular red brick, and covered with a lighter wood-chip mulch. That took us quite a while to finish, but we did get it done.

The last thing that I need to do is finish digging the holes for the two honeysuckle bushes next to the porch. The land around our house sucks! we have about 4-5 inches of soil and then shale or sandstone. I am trying to follow the rule of thumb that I was told for the hole which is 2 1/2 times as wide and 3 times as deep as the plant’s pot is wide. =( This makes for a very large and deep hole. I am almost done digging the first hole. It is not as deep as this rule of thumb would indicate but it is close. I will spend one more day on digging the first hole and then I will plant the sucker and then on to the next one. Ugghhhh!!

I will be glad when this is all done. We just have to make sure that we are able to keep the plants watered or they will die. Not a good thing especially with all of the money and time that we have invest in it. If you have any suggestions for first time landscaper/home owner for this sort of a thing, please let me know.

One thing to mention about all of this is that we have had fun trying to decide on the process. We are quite different in our approaches. I being a geek and not minding measure and following directions have rules of thumb that I want to follow and they seem to make some sense to me especially for the crappy soil that we have.

Tanya on the other hand, having done a lot of similar stuff with her family’s Dacha (Like a vacation/country house that is often times used to grow plants for eating), at least in my perception, wants to just dig a whole and whip them in the ground, which quite contrary to my sensibilities. We have spent enough money on this process that I am willing to spend some extra time to measure distances between plants, follow rules of thumb, and take some extra time to potentially safe-guard our investment. So, this has been an interesting process. I will admit, that of the two of us, she is the only person to have any experience with sort of stuff, and I am sure that she has done a lot of it. I guess I am just a little leery and over cautious because I have no experience and there is quite a lot of money invested! =)

Have I told you that I love my wife? I do! She rocks!

Saturday (May 13) I had Badger
Basements take a look at the basement for an estimate. The Seller gave
me the key and told me to keep it since we knew the closing was coming soon.
Monday (May 15) I purchased an industrial Walmart fan and brought over a
friend’s Dehumidifier and set that up. The humidity levels in the basement
are 75% – not good. After about 2 days of running the fan and dehumidifier
continuously the levels have dropped 5%. At this rate it will take us a bout
2 1/2 months to get the level down to about %40 or so. Uggghhhh!

We received word on Tuesday (May 16) that we can set the closing date for
our house, which will be Friday (May 19) at 16:00 (4:00pm) in town here. We
have moved in some stuff that we do not need right now: the new silverware
and dishes, stuffed animals and books and so on. We even brought over the couch
and got ahold of another one. Katia are Tania looked at it today and have
decided that we need to paint the walls to cover the spackling and other discolorations.They are doing some cleaning today as well.

I have a list of things that I need to do like changing the air filter, find a leak in the bathroom sink, sealing a pipe and a few other things that will keep me busy as well as moving. I will also have to mow the lawn – that will be fun – not! We are also planning on staining the deck this summer. I do not know why they did not stain it before. It would make sense that you would want to protect the deck after you put the work or money in to installing it.

We are hoping to have a House Warming/1 Year Wedding Anniversary party at the same time so we can get both over with. Even with all of this craziness going on we still feel a large part of us is missing. We are not able to share this with our girls who are home in Belarus: Banania, Ania, and
Lena. We miss them so very much and wish we could share these moments with them. =(.

In retrospect my previous post on our home buying process titled "Half-way There" was incorrectly titled.It should have been titled "A Quarter of the Way There". Our work in home ownership is really just beginning. The first half is finding the home you like, have your bid accepted, getting the financing and then close. Once that is done you start the second half by setting up water, electricity, internet, cleaning, painting, staining, and moving and rearranging. Oh, you also have to change you address for your magazines, credit card bills, drivers license, insurances and a bunch of other things. So now, we truly embark on the second half of the home ownership journey…

I received an email saying that there is a low priority message waiting for me with my online banking site. I checked it out and it said that a specific person wanted to talk to me from my bank. I called her and she said that there were some strange charges being posted via my debit card from Ancestry.com. She had been trying to get ahold of me, but the phone numbers on my account were like 5 years old and very incorrect. She had canceled the card and is ordering another one for me. It does bother me that she canceled the card without my permission. I could have been in Europe or another part of the US and needed the card. If my phone numbers were correct this would have be prevented. They are looking out or me and I am thankful for that.

So, next I called Ancestry.com. I told them my story and they assumed it was a Fraud issue. She contacted the appropriate department and then let me know it was taken care of. They were great!

Someone got ahold of my debit card number and that bothers me quite a bit. I am very careful with all of my personal information online. I am a web professional and I like to think that I am more aware of the dangers and how to prevent ID theft. fortunately the people that were running my debit card through did not have any of my personal information and submitted garbled text for the name and so on.