Growth Of Thorns
Is it just me or is growth perverted? O Face.
I used to think any form of growth was unsustainable. Just like a perpetual motion machine it’s one of those things that’s impossible. (One of my favorite words.) Then, just now, sitting here, one of my brain cells did something. (It can happen.) For lack of any originality on my part let’s call it my latest theory, k?
Tom’s Theory #42 – Societal Asshole Leech Theory (SALT)
The percentage of leech-based humans is growing over time. Or, the more advanced a civilization the higher the amount of leechage.
As far as we know, there is no causal relationship with the number of pirates known to exist, but admittedly further testing is required. This is a work in progress. (I was on a break.)
98% of all email is spam. Of those messages, 98% attempt to deceive or infect. (The rest merely sell growth products like Viagra, the greatest achievement of our civilization and, dare I say, the entire universe and space-time continuum.) My web server is probed and attacked by cyber-terrorists (mostly from China and Russia) 36 hours a day. There’s an entire subset of humanity that does not have jobs and produces nothing of value yet still has food, shelter, cigarettes, pets, cars, smartphones and internet access.
Is this amount of leechage really on the rise or is it merely my touchy empirical perceptions?
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Movie Review: Captain Phillips
Ever since I first heard that James Cameron was down in Mexico building a full scale movie set of the Titanic I said to myself, like every other living thing did, “This movie isn’t going to end well.”
Anyone who’d ever heard about the Titanic knew that, at some point, the ship was going to sink. Or maybe not. In Hollywood “based on a true story” often means very little. Perhaps in Cameron’s movie the ship would avoid the berg, then slowly rise out of the water and fly off into outer space in search of the aliens from the movie The Abyss. Snap! He could have invented the “alternate timeline” cheat long before J.J. Abrams flared his lens all over that shit.
The movie Captain Phillips presents a similar problem. It opens with Phillips as a prisoner, surrounded by pirates wielding AK-47 machine guns all over the place, and our protagonist hogtied and covered with blood.
Has Captain Phillips already been shot? Does he live? Does he die? Is this going to be one of those flashback thingies?
Spoiler alert: He went on to write a book about the experience. The movie is based on the book. Something tells me he’s gonna pull through. So much for the dramatic tension of the opening scene.
If, like me, you’ve been breathlessly waiting for a big screen treatment of what it’s really like on one of those big container ships, you are in for a real treat.
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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