Just..so..bad. Why is it so hard to write a good script? A story board? A director who has seen a movie or two? Lets CinimaSins this bitch;

1. opening shot is two shots at very wrong focal lengths, or that hole is actually very small.

2. One would think pre rendered special effects would not have issues with limited fill rates, but this comet clearly looks like its using a smoke trail from a video game on minimum graphic settings. You can count the number of particles on one hand.

3. For a desert nomad in a sand storm, she has an amazingly clean face, also, hoods that pull forward?

4. nomad is pointing at the clear as day impact landing of meteor as if it NEEDED to be pointed out.

5. a fairly large amount of simulated camera shake despite flames being so thin they don't smoke.

6. A horribly done transition shot where the boy is surrounded by smoke, fire, and lava, all except in the direction the camera is pointing.

7. Large tank army that no one notices until it passes them.

8. Physics, or lack of. the entire scene. Those 2 bypeds look like they were motioned captured by a two year old playing with his toys.

9. The expression on the boys face of surprise makes no sense for a robot of some sort who has crashed to the surface of a planet of which he had full intention of kicking ass in. The scowl afterwards makes it even more awkward.

10. what then proceeds is what can best be described as live gameplay from a random indie game from the steam store that utilizes a mostly black color pallet to hide the fact that nothing is texture mapped, low polygon models, and something that only slightly passes as a physics engine.

As well as that from Charles Dickens, who wrote in "A Christmas Carol":

"Oh, Man, look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit, are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. BEWARE THEM BOTH, and all of their degree, BUT MOST OF ALL BEWARE THE BOY, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. AND ABIDE THE END."
(emphasis mine)

Ignorance is a bill that always come due and it comes due like a motherfucker when you will least expect it and can least afford it.

To quote Orwell:

"The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Reality is a motherfucker, too: if ignorance is the fall, then reality is the sudden stop at the end.

That's patently false. It's not racist to depict true personality traits that are popular or common in a culture.

I've witnessed many American couples on many occasions discuss and demonstrate their disapproval about sharing their food. The best example that my wife and I often laugh about was an older couple where the wife was reaching over to pick at something small (maybe a french fry) and the husband with a scowl completely seriously and angrily slapped the back of her hand to stop her.

No, not all westerners or Americans would do such a thing, nor do all have a problem with their partner picking at their food, but that's because there isn't ANYTHING that EVERYONE of ANY race does, except breathe and poop, but it is a common thing in this culture.

I gave this my best scowl but the dog did me in.

The message is a brake-check and the sound of my horn followed by perhaps a scowl, howl, or middle-finger and a bit of shared paint...

Well... they won't actually hear anything but I'm sure the lawyers will scowl silently.

That's exactly why I work in a basement. I call it "The scowling Room".

Right now there's a Disney lawyer scowling at that castle knowing it's just different enough to avoid his wrath.

Stop scowling at the man, for god's sake.

So...
Q: What is red and white and hangs from trees?
A: A baby that got run over by a snow blower...

Sorry, I thought we were testing the waters and telling tasteless jokes...

Q: What do you call two dead babies tied to your feet?
A: Slippers

For some reason, my wife doesn't find these jokes funny - all I get from her is a scowl!

With this damn thing, I would be public enemy #1 whenever I went near it, I always have a scowl and a fuck you face, I am always in a hurry and impatient. Likewise I am not very compliant or cooperative.


SHIT!

It was funny as shit watching Trump get ripped on and him sitting there with a scowl on his face. He had fun my ass, he was hating every second of it. It was so funny that some of those uproarious laughs from the crowd at jokes like 'I thought he was running as a joke', I think even those people felt bad for Trump to Chump.

He is such a massive douchebag. Only republicans could even think of voting for him. But it has made The Daily show even more enjoyable lately.

Look at the scowl on Trump's face. Good stuff.

Yes, LA is really fucked up. So is California in general. And so are my apocryphal firefighters and policemen.

The average pay for firefighters you linked me to doesn't account for benefits and pension, does it? That's just base salary. So, if the average pay for firefighters is just under $44k, then that's pretty much their taxable income because I cannot image what possible expenses they'd deduct, because they have zero financial risk being an employee. And I'd imagine his benefits alone would equal around $15k to $20k. And then of course their pension which is available when they retire at 55.

That's a pretty good deal. And they get women fawning over them and the vox populi calling them heros. Then there's the guy in the private sector, who's painted to look selfish and evil. People like me. But we don't have unions to protect us, give us great pensions and benefits, and we actually create jobs. I created two last year myself. That aside, the real problems with LA and CA are the unions. They were one thing when they protected proletariats from the bourgeoisie in Charles Dickens' England, but they're something entirely different today, especially when allowed to collude with government and legislators.

I grew up in a milltown in the South. You can't get more working class than that. I'm almost 40 and I'm still paying off my college loans, so suffice it to say no one helped me out. Being happy? I know what makes me happy. The same things you mentioned: not having to worry about rent, not having to worry about food, etc. But without getting too personal here, I can safely say some of that worries me right now because of what I owe to the taxman. And probably nine to eight years back I was in a really, really bad place, yet the taxman cometh. I tried to cash a honkey check, but apparently those don't exist. I guess being white only goes so far contrary to modern lib rhetoric.

What I find interesting is if someone like me bitches that the tax is too high, which it is, then some of you complain I'm selfish and refusing to pay my fair share. But isn't it you, the statists who believe in stealing my money to give to others, that are actually being selfish by laying the tax burden so heavy on the middle class? Specifically income tax.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Okay, so LA has a problem. It's not a nationwide epidemic, the average pay for firefighters simply isn't that high. Members of congress get paid $174,000 a year, the President gets paid $400,000/yr. You probably shouldn't be paying the average firefighter more than a House freshman, and the Fire Chief more than the President.

As for your architect, I'm not surprised by that at all. If you want to tell that as a story about taxes, you're probably going to have to at least provide an example of how the math works out so that you make less owning your own business than working for someone else solely because of taxes. I bet it's mostly due to the fact that there's not really a big market for a mom & pop architect out there even in good times, and especially given the state of the real estate market right now. Running your own business isn't easy, and it's certainly not the way to get yourself a stable source of take home income in a depressed economy.

I'm of two minds about your last paragraph. Someday I think I'm going to write some big blog posts about my life, and how it shaped my political outlook. For now, I'll just say I did ultimately have a privileged life compared to most, but not by as much as you seem to assume. I'm no trust fund baby -- and I went to school with enough of those to know the difference. I have a shitload more in common with the poor working class people in the neighborhood I grew up in than I do with the trust fund set I went to school with.

The trust fund set generally felt like accumulation of wealth and status was the primary route to happiness. The more working class people in my neighborhood saw money as more of a means to an end. Happiness for them was being able to not have to worry about whether they could afford groceries, or worry about their car breaking down, or having to borrow to make rent/mortgage payments, or medicine for sick kids. They didn't really care about having the nicest clothes, a nice car, gourmet foods, or who had membership to the more prestigious country club. Those were things my rich friends talked about constantly.

I grew up constantly switching between class experiences. Over time it made me see pretty clearly that money isn't the key to real happiness. I saw lots of unhappy rich people, and lots of happy poor people. Their outlook on life had more to do with things other than money.

Anyways, it sounds like you think you're engaged in a class struggle to try to help the lower classes get a leg up on the rich. If so, great, you and I are on the same side then.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Dude, is it so hard to believe a public employee makes $12,000 a month? That's only $144,000 a year, not $1.4 million. It's possible. Especially since so many groups are unionized in this state.

[snip]

My CPA also told me a story of an architect who got tired of struggling as a small business and having to pay so much in taxes, so he quit the private sector to make more money working for the city. You wanna call BS on my apocryphal architect?

And I do care about the taxes I have to pay. I envy you that you don't. You must've had a great life as a lawyer's son. Always having more than you owe. I wish we all could come from there so we could also take the same sanctimonious positions you do. Only people of privilege seem to say things like, "money isn't everything." As if they scowl at the rest of us for wanting better for ourselves. Now excuse me while I go back to that mom of yours I was fucking when I told you this story.

Okay, so LA has a problem. It's not a nationwide epidemic, the average pay for firefighters simply isn't that high. Members of congress get paid $174,000 a year, the President gets paid $400,000/yr. You probably shouldn't be paying the average firefighter more than a House freshman, and the Fire Chief more than the President.

As for your architect, I'm not surprised by that at all. If you want to tell that as a story about taxes, you're probably going to have to at least provide an example of how the math works out so that you make less owning your own business than working for someone else solely because of taxes. I bet it's mostly due to the fact that there's not really a big market for a mom & pop architect out there even in good times, and especially given the state of the real estate market right now. Running your own business isn't easy, and it's certainly not the way to get yourself a stable source of take home income in a depressed economy.

I'm of two minds about your last paragraph. Someday I think I'm going to write some big blog posts about my life, and how it shaped my political outlook. For now, I'll just say I did ultimately have a privileged life compared to most, but not by as much as you seem to assume. I'm no trust fund baby -- and I went to school with enough of those to know the difference. I have a shitload more in common with the poor working class people in the neighborhood I grew up in than I do with the trust fund set I went to school with.

The trust fund set generally felt like accumulation of wealth and status was the primary route to happiness. The more working class people in my neighborhood saw money as more of a means to an end. Happiness for them was being able to not have to worry about whether they could afford groceries, or worry about their car breaking down, or having to borrow to make rent/mortgage payments, or medicine for sick kids. They didn't really care about having the nicest clothes, a nice car, gourmet foods, or who had membership to the more prestigious country club. Those were things my rich friends talked about constantly.

I grew up constantly switching between class experiences. Over time it made me see pretty clearly that money isn't the key to real happiness. I saw lots of unhappy rich people, and lots of happy poor people. Their outlook on life had more to do with things other than money.

Anyways, it sounds like you think you're engaged in a class struggle to try to help the lower classes get a leg up on the rich. If so, great, you and I are on the same side then.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Dude, is it so hard to believe a public employee makes $12,000 a month? That's only $144,000 a year, not $1.4 million. It's possible. Especially since so many groups are unionized in this state.

[snip]

My CPA also told me a story of an architect who got tired of struggling as a small business and having to pay so much in taxes, so he quit the private sector to make more money working for the city. You wanna call BS on my apocryphal architect?

And I do care about the taxes I have to pay. I envy you that you don't. You must've had a great life as a lawyer's son. Always having more than you owe. I wish we all could come from there so we could also take the same sanctimonious positions you do. Only people of privilege seem to say things like, "money isn't everything." As if they scowl at the rest of us for wanting better for ourselves. Now excuse me while I go back to that mom of yours I was fucking when I told you this story.