No walk today because I overslept...

Maybe in another week I can deal with getting up 45 minutes to an hour earlier on the mornings when class awaits, but until then it looks like walking will be limited to four mornings a week.  I can deal with that.

Last night I went and saw two film screenings.  One was a documentary about whether or not Hell really exists, but sadly they couldn't actually interview anyone who has been there to give first-hand testimony.  The other was a teen angst movie about falling in love when you're a senior/junior in high school and the "first time" you have sex.  Neither was particularly brilliant filmmaking, although you need to have at least some modicum of brilliance to understand the arguments being advanced by the theologians in the documentary.  Me, I'd always thought universalism was a philosophy advanced by those who preferred going to Universal Studios over going to Disneyland.

I ran into one of my weaknesses at this particular pair of screenings (showing back to back at the same screening room).  In the basket of candy they put out, there are "Smarties", those hard pill-like flavored pieces of candy that are really nothing more than sugar and flavoring.  I could munch 100 sleeves of those and go back for more.  Fortunately, I could only dig seven out of the basket.

Because of my schedule this week, I've seen no new television at night this week.  Since the one show I follow on Fridays doesn't start its new season for a few more weeks, I'll probably continue the trend tonight, although I plan to be home most of the afternoon and evening.  I confess to missing playing the Friday night Buzztime Trivia game, "Spotlight", but unless and until BT ends the stupid split, I'm mostly boycotting their premium games.

This weekend, I need to go back through my earlier blogs and compile a list of the platform positions of the Centrist Party.  I will try to find a moment to do that.  But a few things have come to mind to add.

1.  The Centrist Party will be gender-neutral.  We will not favor men over women or vice versa in policy, supporting candidates, or membership.  We will not discriminate based on gender, gender identity or gender preference.  The words "all men are created equal" does include women and these words will be a shining star of liberty and equality in everything the Centrist Party does.

2.  With the exception of the estate tax, the policy of the Centrist Party will not include the redistribution of wealth.  We will redistribute income in that our tax systems will not be regressive and will contain some progressivity because those who have more can definitely afford to contribute more to the society as a whole.

3.  We will develop a comprehensive methodology and policy that ensures voting is limited to only the citizens of the United States that will not become a poll tax or a system to disenfranchise minorities, the young and the poor.  It may involve grandfathering everyone who is now over 18 and registered to vote and requiring only those new registrations from this point forward to provide proof of citizenship one time, when registering to vote.  A work in progress.  While voter fraud is an extremely minor issue, we won't ignore it, and we will solve it without disenfranchising one single voter.

4.  On the federal level, we will create policy that those who receive public assistance to ensure they do not go hungry will not be limited in any way other than ensuring this assistance is used for food.  Alcoholic beverages and cigarettes are not food.  If someone wants to drink sugary drinks, or eat prepared foods even though preparing your own food will make your assistance dollars go farther, that's their choice.  We are a free society and we will provide freedom of choice in this area.

5.  We will propose legislation to alter the system of federal employee retirement to make it more like the 401(k) system used in private industry.  We cannot continue to afford to provide guaranteed pensions to government employees as the government grows, particularly when there will continue to be lean economic times in the future.  Future unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities are a ticking time bomb that will explode in the faces of our children and grandchildren.

More later.

The iconic nature of Kevin Bacon is evident from the new "Bacon Number" tool Google is rolling out.  It isn't about how many slices of bacon one has eaten, but all about the "Six Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon" game that became popular years ago and continues to spawn debates over what an actor's Bacon index number is.  Example:  John Belushi's Bacon index number is 1, because both he and Kevin Bacon were in "Animal House", while Eddie Murphy's Bacon index number is 2.  Murphy was never in a movie with Bacon, but he was in "Dr. Doolittle" with John Lafayette", who was in "Loverboy" with Kevin Bacon and so on.  It's very difficult to find a person who was in at least one movie who has a Bacon index number higher than 3.

Baseball player Babe Ruth is only a 3.  Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, who are both long dead have Bacon Index numbers of 2.  Georges Melies, a magician, director and actor who died in 1938 has a Bacon Index number of 4.  The thing is, once one old actor is in a film with Bacon, every actor that actor ever worked in a film with has their Bacon index number shrink to 2.  Eli Wallach, who has been around Hollywood for a long time was in "Mystic River" with Bacon in 2003, so every actor that was in a film with Wallach dropped their index number to 2.  So now, Google has put an end to any debate over Bacon index numbers. 

A final illustration.  My late father, who was in one short film, one time, has a Bacon index number of 3. 

Ever watched "Pawn Stars", yet another entry in the world of reality TV?  It's about the guys who work in a family owned pawn shop in Las Vegas and the unusual things that people bring in to sell and how they figure out what those things are worth.  I drove by "The Collateral Lender", pawn shop to the rich and famous in Beverly Hills, and imagined what Pawn Stars would be like if it were shot there rather than Vegas.  People would make appointments to come in when they weren't filming, to keep their "public" from knowing they were being forced to sell things to get by.

That reminded me of an incident involving a parent back in my days of collecting private school tuition for the school I worked for.  We had one parent who had been experiencing financial difficulties and hadn't paid his son's tuition.  The prior year, he'd auctioned off the fixtures from his business and paid us in cash, but that avenue was no longer available to him.  We had a meeting and he promised to come back in a week with the money.  A week later, he was there with a wad of cash and he paid the final year's tuition.  Something was different about him and it took me a moment to notice it.  The big, shiny gold Rolex watch he'd worn at our last meeting was gone and there was a cheap watch in its place.  Before I could ask, he confessed he'd sold the watch to get the cash to pay his kid's tuition.  That's love, commitment and sacrifice.  His last major asset and he sold it to get his kid through high school.