I don't often say this, but fuck this video.

If you're 25, the end of your life is an abstraction and the whole "there's time to change things!" is a nice balm. When you're 55, your death isn't an abstraction, it's a fact of life that dominates more and more of what remaining time you have left. The awareness of impending mortality is insidious once you're passed 50. It creeps into every part of your life and every decision you make.

Let me teach you one of those amazing words the Germans come up with for describing various forms of existential agony: weltschmerz. Loosely, this is a form of sadness when one realizes what is versus what could have been. This is the compound interest of regrets and choices not made, or made poorly. Not only does weltschmerz grow with each year, its very presence amplifies itself because the more you know what could have been, the more you see what the cost of that absence is. Then, if that's not evil enough, that knowledge focuses the mind on the time remaining and how little you can do to negate the harm done, which then re-amplifies the weltschmerz.

You can slap whatever Hallmark bullshit you need on this to get through the day, but weltscmerz never goes away. It's always there. It's there at 3:00am when you wake up in a silent house and look at everything around you as consolation prizes for races not won. It's there when you see your friends succeeding in a million different ways that you didn't. It's there when you look at 6 million lines of text you wrote and realize you're not going to be Hemingway after all.

So fuck this video. I don't need a cutesy animated memento mori, I've already got a wall clock in my death row cell.

Here endth the rant.

(Nick Drake nailed weltschmerz perfectly in "When The Day Is Done". Here's the video to that song:

https://youtu.be/Y2jxjv0HkwM)

ADJUSTMENT:

As the result of the overwhelming enthusiasm for this contest of effortless participation, the parameters of reward are hereby adjusted. if, in the event of this single entrant above flying solo, second and third prizes will receive their choice of consolation.....prizes they will cherish for the rest of the month of January 2013.

This is so *quality (even though it isn't video).

Here's a consolation prize: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kr0xr6w8G4&feature=related

"I think she said feck...."

Hey that's Michael Angarano (the dark haired boy), who shortly after losing this role bounced back with the role of young William in Almost Famous! Not a bad consolation prize.

Also, interesting that Jake Lloyd seems confident and pretty strong in these clips. The script, not so much... hmmm.

Simpson is not a Republican. He is a RINO goofus. Take him home with you as a consolation prize.

When homosexuality can be genetically "corrected" in the womb, most couples will opt for the procedure. I neither condone nor condemn this future technology. After all, it's a woman's right to choose.

Why I like this video and discussion: It exists in an odd moral middle ground between equally ridiculous extremes.

-Should someone be required to keep their property completely safe in case it is stolen, or are they allowed to disembowel an assailant in the street for the slightest infraction?

-If someone neglects basic safety checks in their hurry to willingly commit an illegal act, is their resulting avoidable injury any less their fault because the original owner hoped it would happen?


In these cases, my general enjoyment of the situation is a balance between the irony involved (like) and the severity of the consequences (dislike).

-When someone spends 30 minutes tearing the plexiglas shielding off a wall to get at the $20 bill someone dropped behind it, only to find that it was a fake advertisement for a local church, I laugh. The irony outweighed their loss and disappointment.

-When someone takes a shortcut across a 20ft "no trespassing" zone and loses a leg to a land mine, I feel sadness. The consequence far outweighed the severity of the infraction.

Somewhere between these extremes lies a guy in the middle of a street who was just outsmarted by a bicycle that wasn't his. He was set up on purpose by someone with more free time than sense, but he did it to himself, and as a consolation prize he got to keep a bike that wasn't worth the time it took to steal in the first place.

aahh, poor Stevie... That must suck, but having Michelle O help you up must be a nice consolation prize

LOL!

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
Busted. I'm actually a private contractor, hired by the USMC to boost morale.

And if you extend your enlistment by a mere 6 years, I will be happy to give you 5 more promotes.

Don't wait! Supplies are limited!

ORDER NOW!!

In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
I just updated it. Check it again.

And yesterday I was at work and opened my email to find that someone had promoted like, four of my videos, and I thought it was like a consolation prize for getting the big green weenie.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
De nada.

Hey, I just read your blog post. I hope it all works out for you, bro. Good luck.

In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
Hey, thanks a lot!

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
LOL!

That, my friend, is worth exactly three promotes.

EDIT: And one dupe merge. Sorry. (Frowny emoticon means I'm serious. <==== And the winky emoticon means I'm just flirting with you.)
In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
Just because it's (the other one) still functional does not mean this is the dupe. It was discarded. Discarded videos have ALWAYS been fair game.

Lucky, I DEMAND you make a way to get people to stop whining.

Busted. I'm actually a private contractor, hired by the USMC to boost morale.

And if you extend your enlistment by a mere 6 years, I will be happy to give you 5 more promotes.

Don't wait! Supplies are limited!

ORDER NOW!!

In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
I just updated it. Check it again.

And yesterday I was at work and opened my email to find that someone had promoted like, four of my videos, and I thought it was like a consolation prize for getting the big green weenie.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
De nada.

Hey, I just read your blog post. I hope it all works out for you, bro. Good luck.

In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
Hey, thanks a lot!

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
LOL!

That, my friend, is worth exactly three promotes.

EDIT: And one dupe merge. Sorry. (Frowny emoticon means I'm serious. <==== And the winky emoticon means I'm just flirting with you.)
In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
Just because it's (the other one) still functional does not mean this is the dupe. It was discarded. Discarded videos have ALWAYS been fair game.

Lucky, I DEMAND you make a way to get people to stop whining.

I just updated it. Check it again.

And yesterday I was at work and opened my email to find that someone had promoted like, four of my videos, and I thought it was like a consolation prize for getting the big green weenie.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
De nada.

Hey, I just read your blog post. I hope it all works out for you, bro. Good luck.

In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
Hey, thanks a lot!

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
LOL!

That, my friend, is worth exactly three promotes.

EDIT: And one dupe merge. Sorry. (Frowny emoticon means I'm serious. <==== And the winky emoticon means I'm just flirting with you.)
In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
Just because it's (the other one) still functional does not mean this is the dupe. It was discarded. Discarded videos have ALWAYS been fair game.

Lucky, I DEMAND you make a way to get people to stop whining.

Woohoo! Slow and steady wins the race! Okay, so you lost, and big. So the other guy gets a shiny crown, and you get a dinky 100gold star, but as an additional consolation prize you're continued to be allowed to have a life, as opposed to spending every moment submitting videos.

>> ^NetRunner:
I think when Obama hits the magic number (what that number is between 2025 and 2210 will be decided on the 31st), she'll gracefully step aside, and start helping unify the party.
I don't think there's a consolation prize that could buy her off before that. I think afterwards, she's willing to let the chips fall where they may. She wanted to be President, and she'll likely be too old (69) to run again in 2016, especially since she'd have to defeat Obama's VP for the nomination.


I wish I could agree but I don't think there's any "gracefully step aside" in her. She's jumped on Wright and Ayers like a repub would ignoring her own ties to Wright when he twice visited the White House at their invitation and to Ayers group when her husband released two members of the same group from prison. She has offered to "obliterate" Iran in spite of our own intelligence agencies telling us that if they had a weapons program (and we're not even sure of that) they seem to have ended it. She has been trying since the start to convince voters that both Obama and the party are trying to disenfranchise voters when about 1/3 of the people who actually DID it are to be found in her campaign staff, not his. She more recently shifted to being the "white power" candidate, and last I saw she capped that all off with the very recent suggestion that she'd better stay in because as we all should know RFK was assassinated in California in June.

Now her path to the White House seems to run through another persons grave, and she thinks that's ok to use as an excuse to stay in? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vyFqmp4wzI

I regret any defense I've ever made for either of them, this campaign has put everything through the years in question and hurt them more than they realize. Before we could hope or assume that the bad parts were just blindness on their part and they didn't know better. But in light of new knowledge on how far they'll go if they see an advantage to themselves all of that needs to be reevaluated too. Maybe their critics were more right than we realized all those years. It's either that or too much time swimming in the sewers with that stuff made them forget what was wrong with it, just as an abused kid often becomes an abuser themselves. For whatever reasons though there seems to be little of honor, fairness, clean play or grace left in them.

At this point, I think the real question everyone's asking is "What does Hillary really want?"

The pundits fill the spectrum, but in my opinion, I think she's saying "President or Bust!"

I think when Obama hits the magic number (what that number is between 2025 and 2210 will be decided on the 31st), she'll gracefully step aside, and start helping unify the party.

I don't think there's a consolation prize that could buy her off before that. I think afterwards, she's willing to let the chips fall where they may. She wanted to be President, and she'll likely be too old (69) to run again in 2016, especially since she'd have to defeat Obama's VP for the nomination.

Obama has to be the one who decides the VP. He can't be forced, or it'll weaken his image. Not to mention, Obama's campaign focus is on a "new kind of politics" and Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of the old kind of politics.

I'm dying to know who Obama will pick for VP. I'd love for it to be Dodd, Edwards, or Jim Webb.