irreligious at best.

so there's this thing about capitalism: business needs to have competition to keep prices down. there's many things about basic economics that seems to be beyond the current administration, so i'm not exactly surprised that they don't get this.

in order to help the ailing housing economy, the current administration has decided to give freddie and fannie 20 mil in housing contracts to the exclusion of other banks and another fifteen mil from the federal reserve to give low and middle level income households a "better shot" at home ownership. the problem with this is that that's not how it works. by doing this they keep housing prices where they are and potentially raise them as more money gets artificially pumped into the system and either way it continues to screw over the low and middle income families by keeping the prices high and potentially increasing them making the low wrung houses still out of reach. nice obama, nice.

original article here: http://www.conservativepunk.com/articles/2187/

somehow there's this break in the time space continuum that i reach every now and again where things line up. this is always a very crazy and chaotic time in my life, and though things never seem like they should be fine, i haven't a care in the world.


right now i'm sitting on my back porch at two am on a friday morning facing the facts that are my life. first off, the most pressing is always money. it's always the most pressing because i never have a lot of it and when i do it's always dog eared for something important. i have a certain amount of money for the month of august and in that month i have many things i want to do and there won't be enough to do them all, and i'm frankly all right with this. i think i never have more money than i need, and if things need to be cut then i don't need them. this is obvious to me because if i needed them there'd be money for them. it's a circular argument to be sure, but as much as i love rationality, some things at some points will never be rationalized.


second is the impending school year. i say impending because it is a year that should never have happened. i used to be able to live life without regrets and unfortunately i have two scars that can't be summed up in any other way than a regret. i honestly regret being a music major for a year and a half. it set me behind of a schedule that i knew was coming together anyway. decisions made on passion alone are rarely good ones, and this one truly bit me in an abnormal way. this year should never have happened because there is no earthly reason for it to be other than a bad choice at a bad time. but that's ok, because college is the time and place to make costly decisions about how you think life should or shouldn't be, to find out who you are and if you don't like it make some changes. sometimes you'll be surprised that the things you don't like at first are the things that you wouldn't change for the world. some things need changing no matter how hard the change is and we know it's good. and there are some things that shouldn't change and when they are changed it can throw a wrench in the works, but in the end it always seems to come down to a roll of the dice at a craps table when you're on fire: it may look bad at first, but through dumb luck it works out.


third is the epiphany that you are finally over someone and it's ok to move on. this feeling is truly strange because if you think about someone in a certain way for years and hold onto hope for reasons best described as inane, you suddenly feel guilty about it and let it go and realize that you aren't missing anything. this is an epiphany that hit me a few nights ago and it was a doozy. after all this time it's true what they say that time heals all wounds to some extent. it's odd for a skeptic to hear, but it's tough to argue with what amounts to personal anecdotal evidence. healing is good, no matter how befuddled it leaves you.


sometimes i think this is why i can honestly say that i am an agnostic christian. i have an incredibly humanistic view of christianity, and it will no doubt come across strong if you ask me the right questions (try the will of a benevolent God or any number of topics involving free will and pain). no matter what evidence you lay at my feet these days it does not seem credible under the eye of skepticism, and i am fairly skeptical of a lot of things these days. but that doesn't matter to me anymore. there is a God. for some reason he's obscured himself away from the bounds of rationality and outside of the realm of human reason. anyone who disagrees with me can explain to me the concept of a wholly just God that is completely merciful. the argument could be made that these are just words that fail to grasp the nature of God, but the concepts are completely exclusionary. if the devil is in the details, then perhaps God is in the mystery.

So it has come to my attention that I am by far in the minority on the issues of digital distribution versus traditional distribution of media. When it comes to movies there is a slow process in the transition from the silver screen to consumers, let alone from television broadcast to consumers.

I have bought several movies through the iTunes shop and have bought far more on DVD and all I can say is that even though I'm a fairly early adopter on this, I think that in some cases picking up something on DVD is still superior to the iTunes store. This is a tough sell for me being an unabashed proclaimer of the virtues of Apple, but it is simply the case that in many ways I'd still prefer to have the DVD.

The first concern seems to consistently be resolution. I finally gritted my teeth and shelled out some cash for a high definition LCD tv and I must say, my DVDs look awesome. In comparison, the standard definition fair from iTunes just sucks, especially with a distinct lack of extra features. There are only a few films that I legitimately want the extra features on, and one of them was the Dark Knight.

Also being an unabashed fan of Batman at a nearly unhealthy level (you will understand in a moment), I knew that my folks would be purchasing the DVD for Christmas this past year. Well, the movie was released in the interim and having seen it three times in theaters I had no choice other than to obtain some copy in some way or another, so I decided to scope out the pickings "on the iTunes" as my folks are prone to saying. To my great happiness it was there, so I bought it and watched it. I have no troubles with the quality of the sound or the visuals, both are great, but once I bought the DVD, I noticed a difference. It wasn't huge, but you could tell that the iTunes version had to fall into certain limitations for the format.

Next is often the extras, which is a simple matter as there are absolutely none on the iTunes version. In this particular example it's no big deal, but in the case of say, Lord of the Rings extended editions, the extras are well worth the time and would be sorely missed. Which is why I don't own a digital copy, I bought the platinum series so that I'd have all twelve glorious discs. So in the case of extras, I'd say if you want them, don't even bother with the iTunes version.

TV's a completely different story altogether. Unless you have a decent sized hard drive, the size of seasons alone will be prohibitive. Extras are a give or take, if you're a hardcore Lostie, you will want them but by and large I don't think many people are into TV DVD extras unless they're particularly compelling to the fan base. The same concerns with resolution apply, although I haven't purchased a TV series from iTunes, I much rather have them on DVD for issues of hard drive space as my DVD shelf is nearly vacant so there's more space there than I'll have on my hard drive for some time.

I have up until now only considered standard definition films, and I will say that if all you want is considerable convenience, portability, and don't give a crap about extras, the iTunes store is more than worth it. When Punisher: War Zone came out I wasn't interested in all the trimmings of the DVD world. To be honest, I am a comic book fan and when it comes to the Punisher and movies like it the key is the movie for me, I don't give two craps about how it was made. So the HD version from iTunes was worth it in that case as it transfers easily to my iPods and looks great when I connect my computer up to my TV for movie viewing.

All in all, the iTunes video section may need some beefing up in the areas of content, resolution, and extras, but I think by and large I don't mind the various setbacks in certain areas. The HD downloads will eventually catch up to DVD and maybe even surpass Blue Ray eventually, but for now there's only certain movies that I will get from the iTunes distribution method.

just got back from the rescue in washington D.C. What an incredible experience. not as crazy as last year, but still crazy. i think that i'm going to head into the harrisburg one tonight. i'm not sure yet, but i really think that it's important to spend at least one night on the streets for this at this time. Just because i've been rescued that doesn't mean that many of my friends who are in the harrisburg site have been and it's important to stand strong together for a cause because it's easy to say i've done my time, but it's important to me to do this. so off to sleep on the streets of hburg!

i've been abducted.

http://therescue.invisiblechildren.com/en/

Ok, so this wednesday will have a real weird line up of links.

First off, the one most out of character. I spent way too much time over break watching some top gear vids (and by too much time I mean a half hour...) and found a really sweet video where they took the world's fastest production car to it's top speed. The car is the Buggatti Veyron, top speed: 253 miles an hour. Long clip, but awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk1t6S737Cs

Briefly, I love music and sometimes have trouble finding a spot where I can check out something new without purchasing things and 30 second clips don't do songs justice. Ergo, I love this place:
http://justhearit.com/

SNL is a bad habit of mine, so here's two. First one's about the idiots you see at parties. Good stuff. Second one is what would happen if Barak had an alter ego like Bruce Banner? Nothing but awesome...
http://www.hulu.com/watch/62439/saturday-night-live-digital-short-party-guys
http://www.hulu.com/watch/61239/saturday-night-live-the-rock-obama

Southwest Airlines is apparently known for having flight attendants who are really creative and are always trying to get around having really boring instructions, so even though my room mate wasn't surprised, I just about fell out of my chair over how funny this is:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1904098

And this one's special to me because it is Lord of the Rings. If you don't get it, look up "Leroy Jenkins" and ask me what is going on. I'm a huge nerd, and even I had to have the first Leroy Jenkins explained to me. But this is what it would have looked like in Lord of the Rings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv35eGa-9gU&feature=channel

Well, that wraps up Funday Wednesday, see you all on Friday.