Its December which means time for end of the year donations. Here is the list of my favorite charities and worthy causes.

Child's Play: Most of you know about this one I'm sure. Help give sick kids a Christmas filled with Nintendo goodness.

Fisher House: When our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen are wounded, Fisher House allows their loved ones to stay near the hospital. Also, This Guy will match your donations.

Methodist Children's Home: MCH of NC provides shelter and a home for kids going through bad times.

Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC: Because going hungry sucks.

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: Because cancer sucks.

Testing new software

With the announcement that AIG will be bailed out with taxpayer money, I am now convinced that nobody in government understands how capitalism works. The whole idea behind Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was that people are going to be greedy bastards no matter what, so let's at least reward the smart and greedy and... here's the crucial bit... punish the greedy and stupid. You can't have laissez-faire profit and then socialize loss.

Many a company got greedy and dumb recently, and now its time to give them their Darwin Award. By keeping around the people who thought investments backed by dodgy mortgages was a good idea, you just allow them to continue being stupid. What's worse is that it is being done on the taxpayer dime. Only the narrow worldview of the quarterly report would consider this a sound use of the public trust. Would AIG's failure have a negative impact on the economy? Hell yes it would but sometimes that is a necessity. Let the comet hit Wall St., kill the dinosaurs, and let something better rise up to replace them.

Avatar is over. It was a great ending but my inner fanboy really wanted Toph to just crush everyone.

Trying to figure out what to do with this LJ. Do I try stay current with it again, use it as a dumping ground for my brain, or have it mirror twitter and my semi-pro site.

Damn you zophos, now I have the desire for a zulu king cake from Gambino's. This would normally be a problem as I live far from the gulf coast now. However, you can FedEx a king cake anywhere in the world. FedEx even has special mardi gras boxes for them. It's pretty late to be ordering a zulu though. Who knows, fate may smile and throw beads at me.

Damn. No prosthetics in the Olympiad it seems. I have been watching this with interest for several reasons. I think it would be awesome to have the bionic man competing and crushing the puny humans around him. If the committee really thinks technology as an advantage is an issue, then ban it all. Get rid of the sharkskin suits for swimmers and the hyper-engineered running shoes. Go back to the tradition of the Greek games and have everyone compete in the nude. If nothing else, it'd boost attendance and TV ratings.

But the real reason I wanted this to happen? For all those achievement obsessed athletes who would literally cut off both legs just to win the gold. The Olympic village would start to look like a recovery ward for landmine victims.

I am not well.

I find it unsettling when the real world peeks into the story notes of my current project and then manufactures this. Stupid truth. Always being stranger than my fiction.

Tonight at 2am (yes yes, its technically tomorrow. Piss off) TCM is airing Otto Preminger's psychadelic disaster "Skidoo". I've always been curious about this film (Gleason + Channing + Marx??) but to my knowledge, this is the first time it is getting any sort of wide showing since its initial release.