Why Nintendo Is Laughing Their Asses Off At Microsoft And Sony

Most "hardcore gamers" (God, I hate that term. Sounds so ridiculous and makes us sound like fanatics or worse...) have written off poor ol' Nintendo for their most recent console, the Wii. And I don't blame them in the least. Nintendo has taken the road less traveled and started appealing to the casual circuit of gamers that weren't getting any attention since around the Super Nintendo days. There weren't a lot of pick-up-and-play games during the Playstation 1 through XBox 360 and PS3 era. And as the graphics became more advanced, so did the controllers and so did the games. Most games were so inaccessible to someone who might just walk up to a controller sitting on the couch.

Now, Nintendo has seen the hardcore market fully saturated by Sony and Microsoft and knew they needed to take a new route. It started with the Gamecube and has now moved onto their enormously popular Wii console. The Gamecube was never tremendously popular. It wasn't the most attractive little box to have sitting in your entertainment center, but it was a great console and I had a wonderful time with mine. But I digress....

So, Nintendo comes up with this fancy little motion controller that you can wave at your TV and it does wonderful, magical things that can only really be explained by studying the Necronomicon or joining Scientology. But it got people off the couch and got people who had never played a video game in their life, to pick up that little remote.

It was a gamble, no doubt. Trying to appeal a console to an entire group that has never been into playing video games. But, as all smart people should, they bet on black and won. And they won big.

Despite what most gaming folk believe, Nintendo has never lost money from any console they've ever made, including the Gamecube. Sure it didn't perform as well as the other two systems did, but they still made a hefty profit while poor little Microsoft's original XBox lost over a billion dollars during it's lifespan. Yep...that's right. A BILLION dollars lost.

I am losing track of where I want to go with this stupid post. I hate that I can never organize my ideas correctly. A problem which will forever keep me from ever writing for a publication that more than 10 people read...ANYWAY!

Why is Nintendo laughing at mega giants Sony and Microsoft? A good place to start would be to check the all time best selling console/handheld games list. Among the top 20 best sellers list, 18 of them are, in fact, made by Nintendo themselves. (The other two being Gran Turismo 3 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) Now I know what you (non-existent) Microsoft and Sony fanboys might say right here. "But Casey. Those probably count all the games back in the NES and Gameboy days when they had no real competition!"

To which I must reply, that of the 18 best selling games of all time, 12 of those games have been made in the last seven years. Now, let's take a deeper look at why Nintendo is laughing so incredibly hard. Take the game "Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Minutes a Day" This silly little game was made to train your brain a little and maybe kinda help you think better, possibly. This fun little game was developed, marketed and shipped on the hefty little price tag of about half a million dollars, total. Selling for $30 a piece, it has gone on to sell 18.7 million copies. And hopefully my math isn't failing me here, but that should add up to about $560 million in profit.

Now we shall take a look at the best selling game of the two mega consoles of this generation, made by studios in their particular house. (As in, made by either Sony or Microsoft) And that game is no doubt, Halo 3. Halo 3 sold a very impressive $8.1 million units. That is exceptionally strong for a console game that sits with a $60 price tag. So, let's do a little quick math here. So, at 60 bucks and selling 8.1 million, the money made from the game comes to around $486 million. But now we must all factor in the $40 million it cost just to develop the game. (not counting TV ads, print ads, packaging, and shipping) So, without all the extras we'll say the game made about $446 million bucks. Not too shabby.

A piece of the Nintendo laugh comes in at the fact that "Brain Age" mentioned earlier is that it's only the 3rd best selling game on the Nintendo DS and 7th overall. The two games above it being Nintendogs and New Super Mario Bros. also made those ridiculous piles of cash. And this is just on their silly little handheld system! Let's take a look at the Wii now.

The top 3 best selling console games of all time happen to be Wii games. Those being Wii Play (27.4 million sold) Wii Fit (22.6 million) and Mario Kart Wii (22.5 million) Analysts have put the cost to develop a Wii game at about $8-9 million or so. Much much less than the $20-30 million per game it costs the Microsoft and Sony consoles. So, we'll do some quick math yet again with Wii Play and Mario Kart Wii (Wii Fit has the balance board in it and costs a hundred bucks. I have no clue how much the balance board costs to make so I don't want to use it in the example) Both of these games sold at $50 a piece. So we are looking at $1.37 BILLION made from Wii Play and 1.125 BILLION from Mario Kart. Subtract out the 8 or 9 million for development costs and hell, take out another 10 million for advertising both games and you still have two games that made Nintendo a billion dollars each. Just two games.

The list can go on and on about how much Nintendo makes on their games. Sure, the system is full of crap games that are made because of the small cost of development and people are trying to make easy cash. But in the world I live in, I always look at scoreboard. And scoreboard says that every single Nintendo executive is swimming around in their own Scrooge McDuck style money vault.

And now, Microsoft and Sony have both seen how large Nintendo's money vaults actually are and how much money they are losing. They really want a piece of that action. So, Sony has developed it's own motion sensitive controller that will be coming out soon and Microsoft is releasing their Natal system that uses a camera mounted on your TV to sense motion. This is a last ditch, desperate attempt to get in on that casual gaming market that Sony and Microsoft had forgotten existed. Only time will tell if these new gadgets will pay off...or if it will be too little too late.

Wow this was written like crap. Oh well, I liked it. Later.

Fannin Eleven

This is going to be a really odd post for me I think. You all are probably going to think I've lost my mind or have finally gone off that deep end you all have seen coming for years now. But I assure you, I'm quite sane (relatively speaking) and whoever reads this thing needs to check out this family. I posted a link to their Youtube channel a long time ago, but I doubt anyone really looked at them. So, the point of this post is to try and show how wonderful these people really are.

Fannin Eleven are a family of 11 brothers and sisters that are very musical. They all sing and most play an instrument of some kind. They have a Youtube channel where they get their family together and sing popular songs. But this isn't just some cheesey group cover they do. The rearrange and cover the songs, making them their own. A number of their videos are full acapella and (in my opinion) are the best ones. Just listening to the harmonies in their voices, the strong leads they have sing the verses, it's just incredible.

The audio quality in the videos isn't that great. It isn't terrible but definitely not great. And for me, this is a terrific thing. When they sing, they sing to the microphone on the camera they use to record and I love it. If they had studio/professional sound, I think some of the magic would be lost by their songs. It has an amateur-ish quality to the sound that really makes it feel real. It's all done in real time. No punch ins (with the exception of the Jason Mraz song. They split it up between the family) and no fancy editing or filter work is done. It's just raw, pure singing of this family sitting around the kitchen table. It's just magical watching a family this close do something so creative and so wonderful.

However, the greatness of these videos doesn't just stop at the singing. The videos themselves are fantastic as well. They very well could just show themselves sitting around the kitchen table and singing and I would be happy as hell. But that isn't what they do. Mixed in with showing them all singing, there are always clips of the family doing some activity together. Whether it be playing Wii or DDR, a hilarious session of them biting into lemons and limes and watching their reactions, to just old family photos or video. The videos are inviting and wonderful and everytime you see one, you wish you were apart of the family.

So, basically what I am saying is....all of my readers, you need to check out this family. Give a song or two a listen and I'm quite confident you'll find the happy and joy that I do whenever I watch one of their videos.

www.youtube.com/fannineleven
www.fannineleven.com

Sorry, even though I've been interneting forever and a day, I still have no clue how to make clicky links. Please just copy and paste into your browser. Sorry I suck!

Television Writing

Here is another pointless post that no one will care about, but maybe by the end, people will give a tiny bit more respect to the hard work that television writers must endure.

I will start by saying I am no expert. All I do is read a lot and I soak in information about things I love and television is easily that. I'm obviously a terrible writer with no ability to write fiction at all but I greatly respect the people that can and try my best to study their craft to the best of my ability.

People do not understand how incredibly difficult it is to write just one script for a show, let alone 22-24 for an entire season. So, let's walk through some of the things that your lowly TV writer has to deal with.

Length: The script for a one hour television show is usually around 60 pages. 60 pages worth of dialogue, stage direction and character emotion. You college people remember how stressed you were when your 10 page papers were due for class? Try 60 pages that will be judged by millions of people. That's rough.

Of course, TV writing is a collaborative effort. Most popular shows have around 20 or so writers on the staff. The person that gets the writing credit at the beginning of the episode is the person that wrote the first draft. After that draft is written, it is combed over by the producers and other writers, taking out things, adding things and refining things to make the story flow as well as possible. Regardless of all the help, that one poor soul has to crank out a 60 page script with a good enough story to not just get thrown in the trash and then watch your work be mangled by 20-30 other people. I couldn't do that at all.

TV Running Time: There are two major areas where the writer has to constantly be aware. One are commercial breaks. There have to be a certain number of commercial breaks per episode and the writers have to make the whole story flow in just a way so that they leave the story in the perfect spot so the viewer can be taken away. You can't just write a good story how you want to. It is so highly structured and so many rules have to apply that it must be maddening.

Secondly, when the show ends. The script has to be written so nearly precise that the show doesn't run longer than 22 minutes or 44-48 minutes. Trying to write a good story, making the pacing just right, writing good, strong dialogue that will keep watchers attention, all with trying to cram it into such a precise space is a problem I couldn't even imagine coping with.

Stars: Many stars have written into their contracts that they have a certain number of lines or episodes that they appear in that season. Hypothetically speaking let's take the show "House" for a moment. (None of this is fact. This is just hypothetical but does tell how every show on TV works.) Let's say Omar Epps has in his contract that he needs about 200 minutes of face time during an entire season...or perhaps he has a line minimum. The writers must work around that, plus every other cast member on the show. They have to make sure that each star's contract is lived up to for every episode, and still construct that great story everyone wants to see.

Recurring Characters: Networks love recurring characters. Characters that pop in during a season and stay around for 4-6 episodes usually. Now the writers must take everything else I've stated above plus write a character that people will see for a long time and make them compelling. Always knowing that this person is only going to be around for...say...5 episodes. They have to write their entrance. They have to write a clever way for them to be interactive with the main cast and write them in a way to make them have chemistry, write through their story arch and then find an entertaining, plausible and non-pissoffish way for them to leave once their run is over.

Writing Time: Let's take "House" as another example. From their DVD release, I know that it takes them 8 days to purely shoot an episode. That is before post production; editing, special effects, re-dubs and things of that nature. That's just 8 days of shooting plus probably two weeks or more of post to get a show ready to air. So, let's take a look at the time we spend here. One episode, 8 days of shooting and 14 days of post production. That is 23 days for one show. And they usually have 22 episode seasons. You take those 23 days for one show and multiply by 22 episodes you come up with 506 days to complete a season.

Now obviously that is impossible seeing as there are only 365 days in a year, plus the show takes a 3 month break every year in the summer. So, obviously episodes are being produced concurrently. So, to take a 506 day schedule and compress that down into (roughly) a 297 day production schedule, writers have to be on their toes and their fingers have to be flying like crazy to get episodes out and ready to be shot.

Overview: Let's write a good episode. All we have to remember is to make an enriching story, that pushes along the show and highlights the main cast of characters. Plus we have to make sure it's about 60 pages so after it's written we have to go to about 3 different table reads to get things right. We have a lot of story to get through, but we have 44 minutes to do it in. Also, the lead star renegotiated his contract for 10% more viewing time so the love story arch between the two supporting characters has to be trimmed down and still find a way to make it believable and make it so the viewers care about it. But damn it, we have Heather Locklear coming in and running for 6 episodes so we have to set up her arch too and find a way to get her out at the end. And I have to do this all in about a week and a half time. SHOULD BE FUN!

The things I just said above are not accurate but relative enough to give you an idea of what it takes to get words for your favorite characters to say.

When you complain about how your favorite show isn't as good as it once was, or that a show completely sucks, just remember what it takes to get the show on the air in the first place. Writing an episode isn't like sitting down to write a short story. You have so many things to juggle all at once that it's amazing to me any people could take up this profession.

There's some time you'll never get back and I own it now. Suck it internets.

PS: Not proofread and written at 4am. Probably mistakes galore. I'm not fixing them. Live with it!

Creative Trainwreck

For the last couple of months I've been on some kind of insane creative kick to where I want to produce something, something that other people will read/listen to/see. However, these ideas never get anywhere at all. I'll get a plan to do something and have no substance to make the plan a reality. This blog was it for awhile, but I know I'm getting no one reading it. No one ever just pops on here to check if something is posted. The very few readers I get are people that feel obligated because I post a link on my Facebook.

This lack of confidence is really stemming from the fact that I'm really not very good at anything. I don't have a special knowledge about anything. I don't really have any real talents or insight into anything that people would care about. Sure, I love TV but there are only about 500 million TV reviewers. I love trance music, but I am so far from an expert on it, and once again, it's very well covered by people a billion times more knowledgeable than I am.

I just feel stuck and in a rut. I want to create something so badly. And maybe creating anything at all, just for the sake of myself should be good enough. But I guess I feel like I want my work to be validated somehow by getting an audience. Putting in hours of work on a project to show no one else seems like such a waste.

Right now I want to start an audio project. Podcastish style I guess. Do a few episodes just for myself to try and get the form down. Figure out how I need to edit it all together and then make some for real. However, I don't have any kind of topic to talk about. There is nothing that I can do remotely well that isn't being done much much better by someone else.

It's frustrating. All this time I spend just dorking around on my computer seems like it could be used for something constructive. However, through my musical production attempts (around 4 years worth) never came anything but amateurish crap that wouldn't have even sounded good in a Super Nintendo game. My writing here which is fine I guess, but no one that ever does read it tells others to check it out. I have no crafting skills. I can't make anything with my hands. I've just never had that ability.

So, basically I am totally lost. I need an avenue to do something. Right now I am doing nothing with my life whatsoever. I need at least one thing to maybe make me think that I'm not a complete waste of space. Something that I can do that might actually matter.

The Simpsons vs. Family Guy vs. South Park

Anyone that knows me even a little bit usually has knowledge about my insane addiction to cartoons and animation. Ever since a kid, I was in love. The terrific shows of the 90s got me hooked and I never stopped. I still watch the kid's shows on Nick and Cartoon Network when I find a show I actually like. However, the one show that took me down a completely different animated road, was of course, The Simpsons.

The Simpsons premiered in 1989 on Fox. (The show. Not the crap filler clips from Tracey Ulman) I watched it and instantly loved it. Even though it was so simple and hadn't even come close to reaching it's potential, the show was amazing. The main cast were easy to relate to. Homer the idiot, Marge the stereotypical housewife/mother, Maggie...the..umm...baby? Lisa the know-it-all, brainy little sister. And Bart, the rebellious little hell raiser that kids wanted to be.

The show progressed rather quickly, and by the third season, it was easily the funniest show on television. By then I was ridiculously hooked and did the best I could to watch every Sunday. However, my parents made that very difficult for me to do. The Simpsons had a reputation in the beginning of being a edgy show. An openly alcoholic father that was completely stupid and a near out of control child that swore at adults, broke the law, and slacked at his schoolwork were just not things you saw at that time. And thanks to President Bush 41, a lot of families did not watch the show, believing it to be a bad influence.

The show progressed however. As everyone knows, controversy makes people pay attention. And people payed an ass load of attention to The Simpsons. As soon as season four had completed, Fox, and everyone that worked on the show made about 320 dump trucks full of money each from the syndication. And the show kept rolling on.

The show came to be known as the height of intelligent, witty humor of the sitcom landscape. During seasons three through about season twelve, every episode were packed with so many insanely witty jokes, that you almost relish the commercial break because your sides hurt so much from laughing. But the people getting those big laughs have a much more sophisticated appreciation of humor than others.

Let's move ahead to 1997. Comedy Central noticed the success adult oriented animated shows were having and decided to jump on board as well. So, two guys named Trey Parker and Matt Stone cut together a 22 minute episode of a show they called South Park. That show was made entirely out of construction paper and shot as a stop-motion animated show. That episode is known as Cartman Gets an Anal Probe. The show went out, people saw it and people laughed. They laughed hard. Why did they laugh, because South Park began to cater to the side of humor that The Simpsons didn't. The youth. The show was full of swears that were perfectly censored so you could pretty much still hear the swear, but enough not to make sponsors of the show pee their pants.

In the beginning, South Park was brilliant in a whole new way. They had a very effective way of delivering outrageous, raunchy, disgusting humor that had been absent since the days of Beavis and Butthead. And the youth ate that shit up like hand fulls of ecstasy pills. This was the opposite of the Simpsons. They used outlandish, ridiculous situations (Barbra Streisand Godzilla for one example) to drive their humor. A long with a long list of creative swearing, anti-antisemitism and plain old gross out humor. The redeeming fact that South Park had was, they always had a moral to the story. Usually very good ones.

So fast forward to 1999. Fox Network is enjoying great success with The Simpsons and King of the Hill. (The Critic was terrific but could never gain any kind of viewer foothold. Still wondering where syndication is for that show. It deserves it.) So, Fox decided to take another chance on an up and coming cartoonist/actor that had a pretty good idea. Seth MacFarlane was given a chance to do a pilot for his show Family Guy. The show was funny. Really really funny and Fox obviously thought so too. So Family guy got picked up for a season and they began to run.

Family Guy filled in the gargantuan gap in comedy styles that The Simpsons and South Park had. The Simpsons were cleaver, witty comedy. South Park was raunchy, shock value comedy. And Seth jumped right in the middle, taking from both. Family Guy had a thin line to walk ask to not get too dirty and had many many rewrites to do from the Fox censors to make the show fit for airing on Fox. MacFarlane's main character is Peter Griffin. An alcoholic, lazy, idiotic man that generally ignores his kids because he has his own adventures to take on. If that description sounds familiar, it should. Peter Griffin is Homer Simpson. Undeniable, complete and total ripoff. A point that The Simpsons have pointed out in at least two instances in my viewing of the show.

Family Guy went through hell in it's run on Fox. There was no Animation Domination block like they have now where all their animated comedies run on one night. Family Guy was bounced around from time slot to time slot and was failing miserably because viewers never knew where to find the show. The show was fantastic and funnier than 90% of the comedy of that decade. They just couldn't get a steady audience. And after three excellent seasons, the show was canceled not once. Not twice. But three separate times and eventually died it's terrible death.

Meanwhile, The Simpsons were still going strong. During Family Guy's run they had gone through seasons ten through twelve. Sure, they're numbers were dropping a bit, but they (In my most expert opinion being as big of an avid watcher as anyone) were still making high quality and wonderfully entertaining shows, and still making those dump trucks of money for the network.

By the time 2000 came around, South Park used up the best material it had. The last episode of South Park I had consistently laughed through the whole episode was their boy band parody episode. From there, the humor died. It was replaced by more and more disgusting situations. More and more taboo topics that were merely controversial and offered very little humor aside from seeing someone get shit on and getting the gross out laughs. From that time on, the fans of South Park (Sorry Dan) were basically idiots. The show still offered their morals to the story, which I always thought were a terrific part of that show. But the humor died, replaced solely by too much swearing, too many disgusting jokes and no humor to drive the story along.

However, the legions of fans South Park had kept following the show regardless of the falling quality. The rebellious nature of the youth of the last few decades is basically what kept a once fantastic show going, well past it's prime. South Park does still come up with some good ideas and funny concepts for shows. However, any episode I watch now is humorless dialogue splashed all over the episodes, only to be broken up for two minute segments of gross out humor. Their stories still push along, they still have some morals to tell you about, but the funny died too many years ago.

Now we'll fast forward yet again to the years 2002-2004. Cartoon Network decided they wanted to start an adult comedy show block later at night. Before, their regular, kid targeted cartoons would run all night long and obviously get very poor ratings due to the fact that the little brats had school in the morning and weren't staying awake watching Dexter's Laboratory. Thus, Adult Swim was created. In the beginning, Adult Swim was populated by many anime series. They figured they could cash in on the Japanese shows seeing as they had unbelievable success with the show Dragonball Z that played in the afternoon. It worked to some extent. There were plenty of anime nerds that enjoyed the shows but they weren't doing too much better than they were running the kid targeted shows they previously had done.

Cartoon Network rallied up their cash and they bought two canceled animated sitcoms from Fox under syndication. Those shows were Family Guy and Futurama. The episodes ran. In the beginning, just one episode of each per night. Then run their anime block after that. Both shows exploded in ratings. Family Guy was much more popular than Futurama was, but they both did indescribably well. On several occasions, Family Guy would pick up higher ratings than the broadcast network shows running their popular late night talk shows such as the Tonight Show and Late Night.

For over two years, both shows ran almost nonstop. Family Guy would run two shows a night. Futurama would run two shows a night. All the success from those shows gave Cartoon Network the money they needed to create their own original adult programming to fill in the block. Hence things like Space Ghost: Coast 2 Coast, The Brak Show and others were born. Later on fueling popular shows like Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and many others.

Side note here. Every single original Adult Swim show is complete and utter shit. There is not one, even remotely watchable series that has ever been created from their adult programming. Any of you that watch or enjoy any of these shows are complete idiots. Don't try and convince me, I'm not buying it. They are all god awful and you should be ashamed of yourselves for supporting such embarrassing shows.

And moving on to 2005. After the wild success of Family Guy on Cartoon Network, then eventually TBS and one or two more Turner owned networks, Fox reevaluated the series and it was picked back up again. And Family Guy has been going very strong until this very day. Sure, the series has dropped in quality a bit. It isn't quite as good as it use to be. However it is fairly watchable and can give me a chuckle or two when I watch.

The Simpsons are now in their 21st season on television. The longest running scripted television show in history. (Gunsmoke ran for 635 episodes but only ran for 20 seasons. The Simpsons have made 456 episodes as of today but are in the 21st season due to expenses now days that weren't present in Gunsmoke's day.) Many cry for the death of the show. It isn't nearly as funny as it were back in seasons 3-12, however, they still come up with fresh ideas every week. No matter what, I will always get a chuckle or two from an episode.

The Simpsons have gone beyond that of a simple animated TV show. It is a dynasty. It's a benchmark of quality that every other comedy show has to live up to, animated or live action. Every comedy writer that really aspires to get places in the world of comedy television always looks for a job at The Simpsons. You take them the same way you take Saturday Night Live or you take The Tonight Show. Sure, they aren't as great as they use to be. But they are pivotal series that mean more and are more than just giggles and chuckles. The Simpsons have carried Sunday nights for Fox for 17 years. It is the perfect lead in show for their new animated series. (God, Cleveland Show, please go away. I hate you so much. Send Cleveland back to Family Guy where he belongs and mercy kill this turd of a show)

Matt Groening has said that the show still makes money. They are still creatively active and still have many ideas to run through. He sees no reason for the show to stop as long as it is still generating viewers and revenue for Fox. Yes, production costs are going way up. Mostly due to the cast asking for larger and larger salaries as the years go on. Not that I can blame them, during the first 10 years of the show each actor were getting $30,000 per episode. That may seem like a lot, but when you compare to things like Kelsey Grammer and the cast of Friends making around $300-500,000 per episode, they really were getting the shaft money-wise. Now each cast member is making 300,000 per show and the cost has gone way up. But if they can still turn a profit. If the the shows that follow The Simpsons are still benefiting from them, then damn it, let the show go on.

I don't really know what happened to this post. It kind of just got away from me and kept going and going. I appreciate any of you that might still be reading after all this insufferable analyzing and oratory about adult animation. It happens to be a huge passion of mine and it gave me something to kill an hour or two with.

Thanks for reading,
Keep it gangsta internets.

Update On Casey

My last few posts have been rants about different things that I care about. I don't want this blog to become to impersonal, so I will give an update about myself.

How am I doing? I am doing pretty weirdly. (Intentionally awesome non-word.) I've been taken off my long term nausea medication that was keeping me semi-functional for many years. I started showing minimal, permanent side effects from the long term use of that particular medication. The doctor immediately refused to refill my prescription of them.

I was off those pills for two full days and both of those days were misery. The only way I can explain it is you (the reader) taking the worst stomach flu you've ever had, and multiply it by about five. I have a massive, irrational fear of vomiting in the first place and not having my pills made it just terrible. I was in a living hell for those two days and I finally had to call the doctor back and tell him what was going on.

He then prescribed me a new medication. An anxiety medication. Due to all my previous medical testing coming back negative, he went to the next logical step and thinking that my health problems are psychological. So I began this wonderful journey with these new pills. And....wow.

My head has been so foggy, it's a strain to put a coherent sentence together when I'm talking with someone. I stumble over easy words, I completely forget conversations I had five minutes before. I walk into a room for something and can't remember why I went in. Friends have told me my personality has changed as well. I'm acting more awkward and unsure of myself.

However in the last few days, I have become more creatively motivated than I have ever been in my entire life. Ideas are coming to me all the time and it's hard to keep track of them. I had to open a notepad file on the computer to write things down because due to my memory problems, I will forget it and never get it back again.

On the nausea front, the pills are effective. I'm feeling pretty well. If I'm having the same or better results with this anxiety medication than I was with actual nausea medication, it pretty much proves that this shit is in my head. I don't know if what I am taking can be taken long term. If it can, I'm not sure I'm going to want to with how fuzzy it's made me. I do like the creativity however. As you can probably tell by the fact this will be my second blog posted in an hour at 3:27am.

Anyway, that's about all there is with me lately. Thanks for reading.

Tolerance Isn't Enough

I just finished watching a Youtube video from my favorite people. During which they were having a birthday party for one of their friends. Two of the people were trying to do a super hard high five while they were filming. A black guy walks through the shot and one of the high fivers said something to the effect of "It's bad luck when a black guy crosses your path!" Everyone gets a big laugh including the guy who walked past and yelled back "Watch where you're swinging that Jew nose Kassem!" Everyone laughed their asses off, including myself.

To any of you that think either of those statements are racist, you are so completely wrong. That is exactly what we as a society should be evolving into. Poking fun at ourselves like that in the company of mixed races and no one's feelings getting hurt is fantastic.

Tolerance was taught to me in school. You don't have to like someone that is different than you, but you need to respect their differences. That is just not enough. Embracing those differences is what is really going to make the human race fully progressive and actually eliminate racism, sexism or any other kind of prejudice. Everyone walking around and pretending like we are all the same is narrow minded and completely counter-productive.

These two friends were able to poke fun at themselves because of their differences and had a big laugh doing so. People need to get past all these insecurities and programming that has been given since...well, forever.

I'm not saying every joke needs to involve race or gender or sexuality. But it shouldn't be something we should have to shy away from either. Humanity should have evolved past things like this by now.