So for about three years of my life (2009-2012) I worked at a call center for Bank of America. Anyone who has worked at a call center will gladly tell you, it's up there with fast food and retail as one of the worst jobs a person can have. The pay is low, you're basically tethered to your phone and computer. You can get written up for going to the bathroom too frequently and every minute of your day is monitored while you have the oh so fun task of having people scream at you because of what greedy corporate jerks have decided to do.
And yet for all that, taking calls for a major banking institution taught me a lot about people and how they spend their money. Now I'm not going to act like the bank wasn't underhanded with some of it's fees and such, but more often than not, the people who overdrawn or over limit, did it to themselves. Here's just a few of the cases I had to deal with.
Where'd my money go?! I would get something like this at least once a week. Someone would deposit, say $200 in their account on a Monday, call on Wednesday and complain their balance was low. I would then proceed to read through the transactions they made in those two days. Now sure they'd put gas in the car or buy some groceries, but many times I'd see five bucks here for Starbucks, getting a snack at the drive thru and so on. It is mind boggling how people don't keep track of what comes out of their account. Since no one writes checks anymore, no one seems to bother keeping a check register of transactions. That really is where the majority of my angry overdraft calls came from and so many times this could be avoided if people simply took a few minutes out of their day to write down their purchases instead of assuming whatever the computer or phone balance told them.
Dumb college kids. Dumber parents. Too many parents send their kids out into the world with a bank account but don't bother to educate them on how it works or how to use it properly. So what happens? The kid gets overdrawn and the parents call us up asking us to refund the overdraft fees because "they didn't know any better." No, you need to be a f---ing parent! Then again, in many cases, the parent is just as bad. Sometimes we had to bring up their account to do a transfer only to find the parent had as bad a history of overdrawing repeatedly.
"Times are tough! Give me a break." Oh yes, the "economy sucks" excuse. These days if something's bad in your life, blame the government. Of course the people calling us fail to realize that call center agents live in the same bad economy, pay the same hiked up gas prices and deal with the same taxes. And while many times I can sympathize with the single mother or the elderly lady on a fixed income, it's hard for us to feel bad for your tight budget when we see things like $500 purchases at Gamestop or $50 to get your nails done. College kids pulled this line all the time yet we could easily see where they blew all their cash on video games, pizza and beer. Nice try.
People with money complaining about a small fee. The only thing worse besides people with overdrawn accounts trying to get sympathy for their own wasteful spending, is people with tons of money screaming over that $3 charge because they wanted a copy of a check they wrote. Rich people, you're not very well liked right now. We know you got to be rich by being smart with your money as opposed to the previous folks, but when you have tens of thousands in your accounts, you can afford $3, so stop acting like you're a victim. It's about as bad as listening to CEOs complain about paying more taxes or providing decent benefits to their employees. No one feels bad for you.
Maxed out credit cards. Bad credit. Anything credit card related. Believe it or not the credit card customers were often easier to deal with than the bank account customers. Maybe it was because credit cards at the bank's money and yet I'd get calls from people who had multiple cards and all of them nearly maxed out or folks wanting to use one of our cards to pay off another card from the same institution which is technically money laundering and illegal. Also after the big overhaul of credit after the economy went sour, the banks got stricter on a lot of things like not allowing people to go over their limit as well as doing random credit checks and finding outstanding debt leading to a card's limit being lowered or being shut down. Though my favorite was the mindset of "well the payment's due on Sunday and since the bank's closed, I can pay it on Monday and not get a late fee right?" WRONG. The internet and phone service are still available, so that excuse doesn't work. Seriously people, just pay your bill on time and if you can't let us know ahead of time so we can get you proper assistance.
People who still try to float checks. Once upon a time, people would write a check for an amount they didn't currently have and mail out the payment. The idea being the check would take time to clear and by the time that happened, they'd get paid and it would be covered. That does not work today. Thanks to advancements in technology and electronic conversion, most checks are cleared as soon as they reach the merchant. Also post dating checks doesn't work either. Once the merchant has the check, it's theirs to do what they want. Floating a check might work if you're mailing it and know it takes a few days to arrive or if it's too a small business like a church that only goes to the bank once every few weeks but anything written out to a big business is going to come out fairly quickly.
Foreign People who think they can haggle with the bank. Not to sound intolerant of foreigners who come to the country and have their first US bank account, but my God the number of people who I knew were immigrants thanks to seeing both their name and hearing their thick accent thinks America works like their marketplace back home and that you can haggle things like bank fees. Also they don't take no for an answer. I like to imagine these folks at Walmart trying to haggle with the cashier and holding up the express lane line. These almost always end up going to a manager who usually tell them the same thing before they finally give up and hang up.
Online banking with the computer illiterate. My step mom made a joke when she decided to buy herself an Ipod, that stores should have a sign saying "all seniors must be accompanied by a minor when buying electronics." All too often it would be 2 minutes to the end of my shift and as luck would have it, that last call was the 90 year old lady using her computer for the first time. These are the hour long calls that not only make you late to breaks/lunches/going home, but get your manager on your case for taking too long. Yes, on top of being bank tellers and account managers, we had to be tech support too except instead of getting that nice program to log into someone's computer to show them, we have to talk them through the process step by step. "Ok is your computer plugged in?....Ok see that long black cord in the back...." The sad thing is, while these were long calls, they were often the easier ones to deal with as the person on the other end was usually fairly patient.
Forgetting to update their address. Yes, it is amazing how many folks don't update their address with us then call us when they're mad their replacement debit card or bank statement didn't arrive nor did they bother setting up a forwarding address. When I moved I got two cards from the local mail carrier, I filled them out with my new address and they day I'd be moving in and gave them back to the mailman the next day. It's not that hard and it took me all of five minutes.
Crazy people. Actually crazy people was one of the more fun parts of my job. Every so often someone who was just out of their mind would call up. There was a lady who would call us repeatedly from Hartford Connecticut convinced she won the lottery in three states. There was a man who all I said was "how can I help you today?" and immediately started cursing me out because my first words were supposed to be asking for his verbal password yet nothing had loaded on my screen to indicate that. I got a ditzy girl who lost 3 debit cards in a month. I got a guy who was mad because he only had $2 in his account until payday and needed cigarettes. You get the couple/divorce drama of one half of the couple wanting to remove the other from the account which can't be done. My advice there is to go to the bank, take your money out and open your own. People who thought debit cards worked like credit cards and tried to make a purchase with no money in their account. The crazy libertarians who don't like having a bank account because "the government shouldn't tell me how to spend my money!" And sometimes you just get the sweet old people who just want someone to talk to and you get a half hour long call where they talk about their grandkids and their time in the army.
I could go on and on about all the weird people I'd get but I will say despite the lousy job, it taught me a lot about how to be responsible with my money and what to regarding dealing with the bank. The lessons I took away were 1)keep track of what you're spending. 2) Pay your bills on time. 3)Find out what fees can be charged to your account and how to avoid them. 3)Keep your information up to date.
Maybe next time I'll talk more about personal experience working in a call center.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Being a Christian in the 21st Century
A friend of mine shared this article with me and it was really good.
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/when-did-christians-get-so-mean
More and more, I see some folks with a very negative view of Christians, and as a Christian myself, I can't say I blame them. This of course, doesn't apply to all Christians but it's hard not to scroll through my Facebook wall and see some angry post about homosexuals and liberals are ruining the world. If people put as much time into bettering themselves as they did scanning the Internet for articles and memes to make their point, well, I wouldn't be here writing this blog.
A couple weeks ago I was attending my church's Bible Study group. This is something I usually enjoy at least when we're actually sitting down studying and interpreting the Bible, but half the group wasn't there whether they were on vacation or whatever leaving me with a bunch of over 50 folks who ended up spending the entire hour complaining about how homosexuals and liberals were "ruining" everything and how everything was better in the "good old days." You know the 50s and 60s where we were under constant threat of nuclear annihilation and were told you would survive a nuclear blast by hiding under your desk. Part of me wanted to leave halfway through when I was sure we were never going to get to our studying because if I want to listen to a bunch of old people rant, I can watch Fox News anytime I want.
You constantly hear how many people are drifting away from church or religion in general but no one seems to know why or they blame TV or something inconsequential, yet if I was an outsider looking in, I'd get the impression that being a Christian now seems to mean being a xenophobic, narrow minded zealot who doesn't want to hear an opinion that differs from their own. This of course doesn't apply to all Christians, but sadly the most vocal ones like the Westboro Baptist Church folks, are the ones getting all the attention. Apparently if you're gay, like science or vote democrat, you're not welcome.
That's something that really annoys me is when religion and politics start mixing. Folks, politicians say what they think people want to hear in order to get votes. If someone wants the gay vote, they'll say how they support gay marriage. If they want the Latino vote, they'll talk about immigration reform. If they want the middle class Christian vote, they start quoting Bible verses or talk about prayer in our schools. They are saying what we want to hear even if it has no bearing on the issues at hand. As of lately, they also use scare tactics to get your attention and we buy into it because we're paranoid and gullible. Let's strip this thing down to it's bare bones definition. "Liberal Means Large" and "Conservative Means Small." Do you want a large or small government? All that other stuff is just fodder tossed in to get more voters on either side and, for me that's gotten out of hand to the point where there is no longer a happy medium. It's one extreme or the other. George Washington warned us of what a two party system would do but we didn't listen and look where it's got us.
The same applies to religion these days it seems. If you're a Christian who is accepting of the gay lifestyle or thinks that maybe evolution is true but that God created those first single celled organisms, then you're an awful person who's going to hell. I truly think when you die and you're standing in line to go to heaven that St. Peter isn't going to care whether you voted for Obama or believed in evolution, rather he's going to look at how you were as a person and whether or not you were kind and generous to others and followed the Ten Commandments as best you could. You know not killing, stealing, bearing false witness, etc.
This is not being a "cafeteria Christian" and picking and choosing what you want to believe. This is adjusting to an ever changing world. The Bible was written over 2000 years ago and those who wrote it had no idea how things would change in the future. If we don't accept change and adapt to the modern world, more and more people will distance themselves from church and religion in general. People want to be lead, not pushed. Instead of wasting your time behind a screen typing angry things in comment sections or posting random memes on Facebook, go out and do good deeds for others. I'm sure if Jesus existed in this modern technological age, he'd have better things to do than blog about what's wrong with the world. (yes I know the irony of that last statement)
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/when-did-christians-get-so-mean
More and more, I see some folks with a very negative view of Christians, and as a Christian myself, I can't say I blame them. This of course, doesn't apply to all Christians but it's hard not to scroll through my Facebook wall and see some angry post about homosexuals and liberals are ruining the world. If people put as much time into bettering themselves as they did scanning the Internet for articles and memes to make their point, well, I wouldn't be here writing this blog.
A couple weeks ago I was attending my church's Bible Study group. This is something I usually enjoy at least when we're actually sitting down studying and interpreting the Bible, but half the group wasn't there whether they were on vacation or whatever leaving me with a bunch of over 50 folks who ended up spending the entire hour complaining about how homosexuals and liberals were "ruining" everything and how everything was better in the "good old days." You know the 50s and 60s where we were under constant threat of nuclear annihilation and were told you would survive a nuclear blast by hiding under your desk. Part of me wanted to leave halfway through when I was sure we were never going to get to our studying because if I want to listen to a bunch of old people rant, I can watch Fox News anytime I want.
You constantly hear how many people are drifting away from church or religion in general but no one seems to know why or they blame TV or something inconsequential, yet if I was an outsider looking in, I'd get the impression that being a Christian now seems to mean being a xenophobic, narrow minded zealot who doesn't want to hear an opinion that differs from their own. This of course doesn't apply to all Christians, but sadly the most vocal ones like the Westboro Baptist Church folks, are the ones getting all the attention. Apparently if you're gay, like science or vote democrat, you're not welcome.
That's something that really annoys me is when religion and politics start mixing. Folks, politicians say what they think people want to hear in order to get votes. If someone wants the gay vote, they'll say how they support gay marriage. If they want the Latino vote, they'll talk about immigration reform. If they want the middle class Christian vote, they start quoting Bible verses or talk about prayer in our schools. They are saying what we want to hear even if it has no bearing on the issues at hand. As of lately, they also use scare tactics to get your attention and we buy into it because we're paranoid and gullible. Let's strip this thing down to it's bare bones definition. "Liberal Means Large" and "Conservative Means Small." Do you want a large or small government? All that other stuff is just fodder tossed in to get more voters on either side and, for me that's gotten out of hand to the point where there is no longer a happy medium. It's one extreme or the other. George Washington warned us of what a two party system would do but we didn't listen and look where it's got us.
The same applies to religion these days it seems. If you're a Christian who is accepting of the gay lifestyle or thinks that maybe evolution is true but that God created those first single celled organisms, then you're an awful person who's going to hell. I truly think when you die and you're standing in line to go to heaven that St. Peter isn't going to care whether you voted for Obama or believed in evolution, rather he's going to look at how you were as a person and whether or not you were kind and generous to others and followed the Ten Commandments as best you could. You know not killing, stealing, bearing false witness, etc.
This is not being a "cafeteria Christian" and picking and choosing what you want to believe. This is adjusting to an ever changing world. The Bible was written over 2000 years ago and those who wrote it had no idea how things would change in the future. If we don't accept change and adapt to the modern world, more and more people will distance themselves from church and religion in general. People want to be lead, not pushed. Instead of wasting your time behind a screen typing angry things in comment sections or posting random memes on Facebook, go out and do good deeds for others. I'm sure if Jesus existed in this modern technological age, he'd have better things to do than blog about what's wrong with the world. (yes I know the irony of that last statement)
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Why I shop at Kroger instead of Walmart.
So since I moved to a town with a Kroger nearby, I tend to get my groceries there as opposed to Walmart. Yes I know I'm paying a little more and I don't have the convenience of going to a store with more than just groceries but I'm going to list some reasons I do this. Now bear in mind, I do still go to Walmart for some things namely because it's a small town and it's close and sometimes it's the only place open at a certain hour but still I've tried to avoid shopping there when it comes to some things for various reasons.
1) Coupons: I found the coolest app for my phone. Many grocery stores now have digital coupon apps for smart phones. Back in the day if you wanted to use coupons, you had the tedious task of cutting them out of the paper, remembering to carry them with you, risk the chance of losing them or getting to the store only to not read the fine print of what item they applied to. Now if, said grocery store has some sort of customer rewards card, you can simply go into the app, select the coupon you want to use and it loads it to your customer card and automatically shows up when you go to checkout meaning you don't have to wait around for the cashier to enter or scan it in, if they even can. On top of that, if a couple expires, it's simply deleted from the app, so no thinking you had a coupon to use only to have it be expired.
2) Gas Points: Honestly I think the only thing keeping other grocery stores from totally going out of business is their gas point programs. Here's how that works: those customer reward cards will rack up points from your purchases that go towards gas discounts. Most seem to have a system that every hundred points you get, gets you 10 cents off per gallon. I even found even if I didn't have enough points to redeem, just by having the customer rewards card, I got 3 cents off a gallon.
3) They actually have enough registers open. We all complain about this. Walmart has 25 registers and only four ever seem to be open and the ones that are open always have a ten mile line. I like going to Kroger because I almost never have to wait in line for a cashier. When I worked at Lowes years ago, when lines got long they would call for floor employees who weren't busy to open up registers to move the line along. This is something Walmart seems incapable of or perhaps they don't care.
4) I don't have to see stuff like this: www.peopleofwalmart.com
5) Personal reasons. For a lot of people I know, many try to avoid Walmart namely because of the reasons everyone hates them. They drive out other businesses. They treat their employees like crap and despite making billions each year, can't be bothered to pay employees decent living wages or given them decent benefits meanwhile they blow millions on PR stuff to try to show they aren't horrible instead of just, you know, treating employees better or giving better customer service. Now a lot of big box retailers are like this, but some are better at damage control than others.
So yeah, I don't like shopping at Walmart unless I have to and I have found alternatives and many times, I end up saving money by shopping smart and keeping an eye out for bargains.
1) Coupons: I found the coolest app for my phone. Many grocery stores now have digital coupon apps for smart phones. Back in the day if you wanted to use coupons, you had the tedious task of cutting them out of the paper, remembering to carry them with you, risk the chance of losing them or getting to the store only to not read the fine print of what item they applied to. Now if, said grocery store has some sort of customer rewards card, you can simply go into the app, select the coupon you want to use and it loads it to your customer card and automatically shows up when you go to checkout meaning you don't have to wait around for the cashier to enter or scan it in, if they even can. On top of that, if a couple expires, it's simply deleted from the app, so no thinking you had a coupon to use only to have it be expired.
2) Gas Points: Honestly I think the only thing keeping other grocery stores from totally going out of business is their gas point programs. Here's how that works: those customer reward cards will rack up points from your purchases that go towards gas discounts. Most seem to have a system that every hundred points you get, gets you 10 cents off per gallon. I even found even if I didn't have enough points to redeem, just by having the customer rewards card, I got 3 cents off a gallon.
3) They actually have enough registers open. We all complain about this. Walmart has 25 registers and only four ever seem to be open and the ones that are open always have a ten mile line. I like going to Kroger because I almost never have to wait in line for a cashier. When I worked at Lowes years ago, when lines got long they would call for floor employees who weren't busy to open up registers to move the line along. This is something Walmart seems incapable of or perhaps they don't care.
4) I don't have to see stuff like this: www.peopleofwalmart.com
5) Personal reasons. For a lot of people I know, many try to avoid Walmart namely because of the reasons everyone hates them. They drive out other businesses. They treat their employees like crap and despite making billions each year, can't be bothered to pay employees decent living wages or given them decent benefits meanwhile they blow millions on PR stuff to try to show they aren't horrible instead of just, you know, treating employees better or giving better customer service. Now a lot of big box retailers are like this, but some are better at damage control than others.
So yeah, I don't like shopping at Walmart unless I have to and I have found alternatives and many times, I end up saving money by shopping smart and keeping an eye out for bargains.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Bad Disney sequels: Lion King 2: Simba's Pride
I love The Lion King. It really is my favorite movie of all time. Seriously. I love the characters and story and music. I finally got to see the stage musical last year which made me love the movie even more.
But I don't like everything associated with The Lion King. I never really got into the Timon and Pumbaa tv series but I really dislike Lion King 2: Simba's Pride.
Ok, for those who might not know, in 1994 Disney made a direct to video sequel to Aladdin titled Return of Jafar which set off a trend of raping our favorite animated Disney classics with direct to video sequels, midquels and pilots to possible TV series based on animated classics. These were made by DisneyToon Studios who were the team responsible for many Disney TV series hence why most of these look like TV shows and have a TV show-like plot which makes sense as some of these existed as pilot episodes for a possible TV series. But in the end, they mostly existed as a cash grab for Disney to make money off lazy parents who wanted a baby sitter for an hour and a half and as it goes with children's entertainment "who cares if it's crap, it's just for my kids." Isn't it funny that entertainment is the only thing in our kid's life where we settle for crappy or half assed?
But I'm here to focus on Lion King 2:Simba's Pride. Of the direct to DVD sequel dump, this is actually one of the more "liked" ones, or at least not as awful as some of the other ones.
So the movie opens, once again with the animals of the savanna going to see the new "cub lifting" ceremony of Simba and Nala's cub as we saw at the end of The Lion King. The song "He Lives in You" is a decent song as it's the only song in this movie taken from the stage musical. Then the mood is changed when it pans over to Timon and Pumbaa standing there babbling on a bit about "the little guy" only to have Rafiki giggle and say "It is a girl." "GIRL!?" cry Timon and Pumbaa, who faint and cut to the title screen. So this gives you an idea of what kind of tone this movie is going for.
Cut to sometime later when Simba's daughter, Kiara is now a rambunctious cub eager to explore and frolic in the grass but suddenly daddy Simba stops her because now he's the stereotypical overprotective father who's doesn't want his daughter wandering off because of "danger?" At this point it's not specified what's so dangerous out there and the audience is thinking "are the hyenas still around? Just tell her to stay away from the shadowy area. So Simba finally lets Kiara go out and play but sends Timon and Pumbaa to follow her, because they were popular, they were the comic relief and needed something to do. Of course Kiara sees them, there's some stupid scene of them fighting over bugs, Kiara wanders away because they're totally inept and you wonder how the hell they were able to raise Simba to adulthood (Lion King 1 1/2 kind of addresses this). Kiara then reaches the "Outlands." Which is the where the Pridelands end and it turns into desert. I guess this is where Simba ended up after he escaped the brier patch and ran off into the sunset after Mufasa's death. There she meet Kovu, a cub who is Scar's ADOPTED son, which the movie drives in like a wooden steak. They meet up, escape a bunch of crocodiles and start to become friends, when Simba shows up, followed by Kovu's mother(?) and Scar's wife(?) Zira, whose name in Swahili basically means "hate." Subtle. This is where the movie gets really confusing. Zira was a follower of Scar and her group of lionesses were banished from the Pridelands after his defeat. Huh? Who are these guys? When did this banishment happen? Why did Scar not sire any cubs of his own? The same issue comes up in Little Mermaid 2 where we learn that Ursula had a sister we never knew about, but I'll save that for another day. Well obviously Kovu can't be related to Scar because we can't have Kiara falling in love with her cousin. This isn't Game of Thrones. So they part ways, Simba tries to have the wise father talk with Kiara but it's easy to see he's not Mufasa and instead we get the "We are One" song.
Meanwhile Zira takes Kovu back to the giant termite mound her pride lives in where we meet her kids(?), Vitani and Nuka. Now here's what fans have come up with to explain Zira and her lionesses were part of Mufasa's pride and were loyal to Scar so when Simba defeated Scar, they were booted out of the Pridelands. It's believed that Vitani and Nuka are Scar's biological children especially Nuka who looks like a sickly, scraggly version of Scar and voiced by Andy Dick (one of many reasons to despise this movie) and it's thought that Nuka was seen as too crazy and sickly to be Scar's heir and Kovu was some orphaned cub they took in. So that's what most fans can come up with. After Zira chews out Kovu for interacting with Simba's daughter and how Simba killed Scar though we all know, it wasn't Simba, it was the hyenas though this could be explained that Zira purposely lies to remind her pride that Simba is the enemy. As for those hyenas, they get explained off in one line by Nuka, that they just "ran off." At least they got an explanation as opposed to poor Sarabi, Simba's mother who is just not around. It's assumed she died of old age (as I heard her voice actress died). You'd think Kiara would like to spend time with her grandmother but the movie has a hard enough time finding stuff for Zazu, Timon, Pumbaa and Rafiki to do. But getting back to the plot, Zira gets the brilliant idea that when Kovu is grown and trained to be a killer, he'll infiltrate Simba's Pride asking to join, then assassinate Simba from the inside. Zira sings her equivalent of Be Prepared but without nearly the amount of spectacle. No goose stepping lioness parade here.
Then we come to another issue Lion King 2 has. Rafiki. In the original movie, Rafiki was an interesting character in that he didn't speak much, and when he did, it was usually very short and simple and somewhat cryptic and most important, he got to the point. Here, he does not shut up. He's in his tree having a conversation with Mufasa's spirit about Kiara and the rival pride and through the magic of blowing leaves Mufasa shows Rafiki that the way to bring about peace is to get Kovu and Kiara to hook up. A plan that even Rafiki thinks it stupid, but plans to go through with it because the ghost of dead Mufasa told him to?
Fast forward a couple years and Kovu has now been groomed into a cold hearted assassin with one mission: "kill Simba." Their master plan involves creating a fire in the Pridelands, getting Kiara trapped so that Kovu can save her, be accepted into Simba's Pride so he can get close and kill Simba. It just so happens that this is the same day Kiara is going out on her first solo hunt. Wow, that worked out well. Kiara, now grown, asks her father to let her do this on her own. Of course Simba lies and, no sooner, is she out of site, then he sends Timon and Pumbaa off to follow her, you know because that worked so well the LAST time. She only almost got eaten by crocodiles and whatnot. But once again, we went too long without Timon and Pumbaa's signature comic relief I guess. During that time we also see that Kiara is a terrible huntress because she's rustling grass or stepping on rocks and scaring the prey off. Of course Timon and Pumbaa blow their cover, Kiara gets mad and runs off right into the area where Zira and company are setting things ablaze. So, as per the evil plan, Kovu rescues Kiara, who remembers him from that one afternoon when they were cubs. Simba and the gang show up having seen the smoke off in the distance. Simba immediately goes into dickish overprotective dad mode, but Zazu and Nala point out that Kovu did rescue his daughter. Nice to see Zazu got something to say. So Simba resentfully lets Kovu join but won't let him sleep in the house. Kovu does offer to give Kiara a hunting lesson in the morning.
That night Simba has a weird dream about Mufasa's death only for things to change to Kovu shoving Simba off the cliff. The next morning Simba goes for a drink and we see the only time Kovu makes any attempt to kill him only to be interrupted by Kiara for her hunting lesson. The hunting lesson is short as they run into Timon and Pumbaa again and end up messing around chasing birds, then getting chased by rhinos where they all hide in a small cave where Kiara and Kovu sort of touch lips and suddenly they're in love because, Disney. Yep, apparently despite years of harsh military training to be a cold blooded killer, can all be reversed by one day of chasing birds with a cute girl. We jump to that evening where Kovu and Kiara are stargazing and Kovu goes all mopey and emo about Scar meanwhile Simba is spying on them and now torn because his little girl fell in love with "a guy from the wrong side of the tracks." OH MY GOD!! Now I get why this is so popular. Whiny teenage girl. Mopey emo, brooding bad boy. THIS IS TWILIGHT WITH LIONS!! Ok, I know this came out years before Twilight was a thing but the formula has been done to death. It makes sense as the first Lion King was loosely based on Hamlet so this one decided to go the Romeo and Juliet route. But seriously how many movies, books, TV shows have done the good-girl-from-well-to-do-family -falls-for-bad-boy-from-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-and-she's-the-one-who-turns-him-good story? I don't know, but somehow it keeps working.
So Edward lion starts to walk off and almost tells Bella lion what he was trained to do, starts to walk off only for Rafiki to show up, and now he gets a song titled Upendi which does not mean "love" as the song says rather in Swahili means "champion." It's a pretty dorky, sappy song where our teenage lion lovers ride around on a heart shaped leaf boat, eating passion fruit while other animal couples dance around. So along with being a Shaman, fortune teller and medicine man, Rafiki is also the local matchmaker. But hey, during that song, Simba decides to stop being a complete ass and lets Kovu come in the cave to sleep, but I'm sure he wouldn't allow any lion hanky panky in his cave. Of course Vitani is spying on Kovu and realizes he's not going through with the plan and of course Zira's pissed off.
The next morning Simba takes Kovu for a walk through the burned ruins to talk to him and tell him how bad Scar really was, Kovu realizes that maybe he's on the wrong team and everything's going well. Then Zira and her army show up and try to make it look like this ambush was Kovu's idea which Kovu flat out tells Simba, he had nothing to do with this but it doesn't matter, they attack, Kovu tries to help but gets knocked out. Simba gets chased into a dammed off river area, but manages to escape, but not without him knocking down a log that kills Nuka. That's one good thing this movie has. We get to watch Andy Dick die. And after all his annoying shtick ("roasty toasty princess! OW THESE TERMITES!!" Just Shut up!), it feels so good knowing you'll never have to listen to him anymore in this movie. Imagine if that had happened to Jar Jar. Kovu shows up and Zira smacks him in the face leaving a scar on his left eye just to drive in the idea he's Scar's heir. Zira blames Kovu for Nuka's death. Kovu says "f--- you! I'm outta here." Zira FINALLY does what she should've done all along, rally her pride to just go invade the Pridelands and take it by force.
Meanwhile Kovu returns to Pride Rock only to have Simba return to pompus dick mode and boot him out without letting him defend himself. Oh Simba, don't you remember when Scar was trying to accuse you of murdering Mufasa and you weren't allowed to speak? You might be a hypocrite or something. For some reason all the animals of the savannah showed up. I guess they have town meetings periodically and they're there to be the chorus to "One of Us," the song that's sung as Kovu is running away being banished. Kiara makes an attempt to reason with Simba, but of course he's back in dick father mode and grounds her. She yells back "you'll never be Mufasa!" But within a few minutes has snuck out the back door of Pride Rock and run off to find Kovu. And apparently despite all those animals hanging out to sing, none of them saw her escape.
Kiara wonders around to a sappy love song titled "Love will find a way" eventually finds Kovu and they frolic for a bit. Kovu then makes the proposition to just leave and not deal with their stupid parents, but Kiara decides to be mature and realizes it's their responsibility to get their families to make peace and running away won't solve anything. Imagine if Romeo and Juliet had done that instead of committing suicide. So I give the movie credit for taking from the original in that you can't run away from your problems and eventually you have to face up to responsibility.
So cut back to Pride Rock, now at night and raining and it's clear a couple hours have passed and only NOW does anyone realize Kiara is gone. Oh well we had to have another morsel of Timon and Pumbaa shtick fighting over who lost her despite Simba not telling either of them to watch her this time. Zazu, getting something to do, is the one who tells everyone that the Outlanders are coming for a fight and then he's sent off again until the end of the movie.
So now we have our big climatic fight between two warring prides of lions. Remember how awesome the fight with Scar and the hyenas were with the brush around Pride Rock on fire? Yeah, that doesn't happen here. They battle is on some flat rocky plain with the "bad" lions covered in mud so you can tell everyone apart. Instead of using their bowling for buzzards tactics they did on the hyenas, Timon and Pumbaa get one big fart joke and Rafiki's cool ninja monkey skills are absent as he is. Then Simba and Zira face off and they're just about to have a cool slow motion fight like Simba and Scar did when Kovu and Kiara interrupt and stare down their warring parents. Then comes the biggest retcon of a Disney movie moral. Kiara tells Simba to stop this fighting because "they are us! What differences do you see?" The idea being is that they're all lions and they're all the same. It shouldn't matter as long as they're not a bunch of slobbering, mangy, stupid hyenas right? So everyone realizes that war is bad and we should all get along as long as we're the same species. Of course Zira won't let it go and she ends up doing herself in and falling off a cliff into a river. Guess she was beyond redemption despite Kiara's half-hearted attempt to save her. It's also sad that Kovu was more upset over his annoying step brother dying than his adopted mother. Oh well, he's got a new, better family anyway.
So everything is happy. Kovu and the rest of the rival lionesses are fully integrated into Simba's Pride. No one had a baby for Rafiki to hold up but they all get to stand on Pride Rock and roar. Then the clouds part and you hear Mufasa say "Well done. My son. We are one." Why the hell, Mufasa, are you happy with Simba!?" He did nothing!! Where's the pat on the back for you granddaughter?! She's the one who got everyone to make peace!! You're son spent the entire movie being a pompous, narrow minded dickhead!! For someone who was so wise, you sure are stupid in the afterlife.
Still, despite all these complaints, it's easy to see why this direct to DVD sequel is liked more than many of them. The animation is well done compared to the Aladdin, Hunchback, and Atlantis sequels. Also compared to other Disney sequels featuring kids of the original leads, Kovu and Kiara have their own story as opposed to the Little Mermaid and Lady and the Tramp sequels where they basically just recycle the first movie plot with the kids learning the same lesson. Still I think it gets way more credit than it deserves given that it's still the clichéd good girl falls in love with bad boy and turns him around plot and it's easy to see the places where the writers were trying to give the supporting cast things to do. You could remove Timon and Pumbaa from this and not much would change. Even more so for characters like Zazu and Nala. Yet we get a whole bunch of new villains that apparently existed but we didn't know about until now.
At least John Lasseter put an end to terrible direct to DVD sequels but maybe I'll go after a few more. I caught some of them on TV and I would like to rip a few more apart.
But I don't like everything associated with The Lion King. I never really got into the Timon and Pumbaa tv series but I really dislike Lion King 2: Simba's Pride.
Ok, for those who might not know, in 1994 Disney made a direct to video sequel to Aladdin titled Return of Jafar which set off a trend of raping our favorite animated Disney classics with direct to video sequels, midquels and pilots to possible TV series based on animated classics. These were made by DisneyToon Studios who were the team responsible for many Disney TV series hence why most of these look like TV shows and have a TV show-like plot which makes sense as some of these existed as pilot episodes for a possible TV series. But in the end, they mostly existed as a cash grab for Disney to make money off lazy parents who wanted a baby sitter for an hour and a half and as it goes with children's entertainment "who cares if it's crap, it's just for my kids." Isn't it funny that entertainment is the only thing in our kid's life where we settle for crappy or half assed?
But I'm here to focus on Lion King 2:Simba's Pride. Of the direct to DVD sequel dump, this is actually one of the more "liked" ones, or at least not as awful as some of the other ones.
So the movie opens, once again with the animals of the savanna going to see the new "cub lifting" ceremony of Simba and Nala's cub as we saw at the end of The Lion King. The song "He Lives in You" is a decent song as it's the only song in this movie taken from the stage musical. Then the mood is changed when it pans over to Timon and Pumbaa standing there babbling on a bit about "the little guy" only to have Rafiki giggle and say "It is a girl." "GIRL!?" cry Timon and Pumbaa, who faint and cut to the title screen. So this gives you an idea of what kind of tone this movie is going for.
Cut to sometime later when Simba's daughter, Kiara is now a rambunctious cub eager to explore and frolic in the grass but suddenly daddy Simba stops her because now he's the stereotypical overprotective father who's doesn't want his daughter wandering off because of "danger?" At this point it's not specified what's so dangerous out there and the audience is thinking "are the hyenas still around? Just tell her to stay away from the shadowy area. So Simba finally lets Kiara go out and play but sends Timon and Pumbaa to follow her, because they were popular, they were the comic relief and needed something to do. Of course Kiara sees them, there's some stupid scene of them fighting over bugs, Kiara wanders away because they're totally inept and you wonder how the hell they were able to raise Simba to adulthood (Lion King 1 1/2 kind of addresses this). Kiara then reaches the "Outlands." Which is the where the Pridelands end and it turns into desert. I guess this is where Simba ended up after he escaped the brier patch and ran off into the sunset after Mufasa's death. There she meet Kovu, a cub who is Scar's ADOPTED son, which the movie drives in like a wooden steak. They meet up, escape a bunch of crocodiles and start to become friends, when Simba shows up, followed by Kovu's mother(?) and Scar's wife(?) Zira, whose name in Swahili basically means "hate." Subtle. This is where the movie gets really confusing. Zira was a follower of Scar and her group of lionesses were banished from the Pridelands after his defeat. Huh? Who are these guys? When did this banishment happen? Why did Scar not sire any cubs of his own? The same issue comes up in Little Mermaid 2 where we learn that Ursula had a sister we never knew about, but I'll save that for another day. Well obviously Kovu can't be related to Scar because we can't have Kiara falling in love with her cousin. This isn't Game of Thrones. So they part ways, Simba tries to have the wise father talk with Kiara but it's easy to see he's not Mufasa and instead we get the "We are One" song.
Meanwhile Zira takes Kovu back to the giant termite mound her pride lives in where we meet her kids(?), Vitani and Nuka. Now here's what fans have come up with to explain Zira and her lionesses were part of Mufasa's pride and were loyal to Scar so when Simba defeated Scar, they were booted out of the Pridelands. It's believed that Vitani and Nuka are Scar's biological children especially Nuka who looks like a sickly, scraggly version of Scar and voiced by Andy Dick (one of many reasons to despise this movie) and it's thought that Nuka was seen as too crazy and sickly to be Scar's heir and Kovu was some orphaned cub they took in. So that's what most fans can come up with. After Zira chews out Kovu for interacting with Simba's daughter and how Simba killed Scar though we all know, it wasn't Simba, it was the hyenas though this could be explained that Zira purposely lies to remind her pride that Simba is the enemy. As for those hyenas, they get explained off in one line by Nuka, that they just "ran off." At least they got an explanation as opposed to poor Sarabi, Simba's mother who is just not around. It's assumed she died of old age (as I heard her voice actress died). You'd think Kiara would like to spend time with her grandmother but the movie has a hard enough time finding stuff for Zazu, Timon, Pumbaa and Rafiki to do. But getting back to the plot, Zira gets the brilliant idea that when Kovu is grown and trained to be a killer, he'll infiltrate Simba's Pride asking to join, then assassinate Simba from the inside. Zira sings her equivalent of Be Prepared but without nearly the amount of spectacle. No goose stepping lioness parade here.
Then we come to another issue Lion King 2 has. Rafiki. In the original movie, Rafiki was an interesting character in that he didn't speak much, and when he did, it was usually very short and simple and somewhat cryptic and most important, he got to the point. Here, he does not shut up. He's in his tree having a conversation with Mufasa's spirit about Kiara and the rival pride and through the magic of blowing leaves Mufasa shows Rafiki that the way to bring about peace is to get Kovu and Kiara to hook up. A plan that even Rafiki thinks it stupid, but plans to go through with it because the ghost of dead Mufasa told him to?
Fast forward a couple years and Kovu has now been groomed into a cold hearted assassin with one mission: "kill Simba." Their master plan involves creating a fire in the Pridelands, getting Kiara trapped so that Kovu can save her, be accepted into Simba's Pride so he can get close and kill Simba. It just so happens that this is the same day Kiara is going out on her first solo hunt. Wow, that worked out well. Kiara, now grown, asks her father to let her do this on her own. Of course Simba lies and, no sooner, is she out of site, then he sends Timon and Pumbaa off to follow her, you know because that worked so well the LAST time. She only almost got eaten by crocodiles and whatnot. But once again, we went too long without Timon and Pumbaa's signature comic relief I guess. During that time we also see that Kiara is a terrible huntress because she's rustling grass or stepping on rocks and scaring the prey off. Of course Timon and Pumbaa blow their cover, Kiara gets mad and runs off right into the area where Zira and company are setting things ablaze. So, as per the evil plan, Kovu rescues Kiara, who remembers him from that one afternoon when they were cubs. Simba and the gang show up having seen the smoke off in the distance. Simba immediately goes into dickish overprotective dad mode, but Zazu and Nala point out that Kovu did rescue his daughter. Nice to see Zazu got something to say. So Simba resentfully lets Kovu join but won't let him sleep in the house. Kovu does offer to give Kiara a hunting lesson in the morning.
That night Simba has a weird dream about Mufasa's death only for things to change to Kovu shoving Simba off the cliff. The next morning Simba goes for a drink and we see the only time Kovu makes any attempt to kill him only to be interrupted by Kiara for her hunting lesson. The hunting lesson is short as they run into Timon and Pumbaa again and end up messing around chasing birds, then getting chased by rhinos where they all hide in a small cave where Kiara and Kovu sort of touch lips and suddenly they're in love because, Disney. Yep, apparently despite years of harsh military training to be a cold blooded killer, can all be reversed by one day of chasing birds with a cute girl. We jump to that evening where Kovu and Kiara are stargazing and Kovu goes all mopey and emo about Scar meanwhile Simba is spying on them and now torn because his little girl fell in love with "a guy from the wrong side of the tracks." OH MY GOD!! Now I get why this is so popular. Whiny teenage girl. Mopey emo, brooding bad boy. THIS IS TWILIGHT WITH LIONS!! Ok, I know this came out years before Twilight was a thing but the formula has been done to death. It makes sense as the first Lion King was loosely based on Hamlet so this one decided to go the Romeo and Juliet route. But seriously how many movies, books, TV shows have done the good-girl-from-well-to-do-family -falls-for-bad-boy-from-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-and-she's-the-one-who-turns-him-good story? I don't know, but somehow it keeps working.
So Edward lion starts to walk off and almost tells Bella lion what he was trained to do, starts to walk off only for Rafiki to show up, and now he gets a song titled Upendi which does not mean "love" as the song says rather in Swahili means "champion." It's a pretty dorky, sappy song where our teenage lion lovers ride around on a heart shaped leaf boat, eating passion fruit while other animal couples dance around. So along with being a Shaman, fortune teller and medicine man, Rafiki is also the local matchmaker. But hey, during that song, Simba decides to stop being a complete ass and lets Kovu come in the cave to sleep, but I'm sure he wouldn't allow any lion hanky panky in his cave. Of course Vitani is spying on Kovu and realizes he's not going through with the plan and of course Zira's pissed off.
The next morning Simba takes Kovu for a walk through the burned ruins to talk to him and tell him how bad Scar really was, Kovu realizes that maybe he's on the wrong team and everything's going well. Then Zira and her army show up and try to make it look like this ambush was Kovu's idea which Kovu flat out tells Simba, he had nothing to do with this but it doesn't matter, they attack, Kovu tries to help but gets knocked out. Simba gets chased into a dammed off river area, but manages to escape, but not without him knocking down a log that kills Nuka. That's one good thing this movie has. We get to watch Andy Dick die. And after all his annoying shtick ("roasty toasty princess! OW THESE TERMITES!!" Just Shut up!), it feels so good knowing you'll never have to listen to him anymore in this movie. Imagine if that had happened to Jar Jar. Kovu shows up and Zira smacks him in the face leaving a scar on his left eye just to drive in the idea he's Scar's heir. Zira blames Kovu for Nuka's death. Kovu says "f--- you! I'm outta here." Zira FINALLY does what she should've done all along, rally her pride to just go invade the Pridelands and take it by force.
Meanwhile Kovu returns to Pride Rock only to have Simba return to pompus dick mode and boot him out without letting him defend himself. Oh Simba, don't you remember when Scar was trying to accuse you of murdering Mufasa and you weren't allowed to speak? You might be a hypocrite or something. For some reason all the animals of the savannah showed up. I guess they have town meetings periodically and they're there to be the chorus to "One of Us," the song that's sung as Kovu is running away being banished. Kiara makes an attempt to reason with Simba, but of course he's back in dick father mode and grounds her. She yells back "you'll never be Mufasa!" But within a few minutes has snuck out the back door of Pride Rock and run off to find Kovu. And apparently despite all those animals hanging out to sing, none of them saw her escape.
Kiara wonders around to a sappy love song titled "Love will find a way" eventually finds Kovu and they frolic for a bit. Kovu then makes the proposition to just leave and not deal with their stupid parents, but Kiara decides to be mature and realizes it's their responsibility to get their families to make peace and running away won't solve anything. Imagine if Romeo and Juliet had done that instead of committing suicide. So I give the movie credit for taking from the original in that you can't run away from your problems and eventually you have to face up to responsibility.
So cut back to Pride Rock, now at night and raining and it's clear a couple hours have passed and only NOW does anyone realize Kiara is gone. Oh well we had to have another morsel of Timon and Pumbaa shtick fighting over who lost her despite Simba not telling either of them to watch her this time. Zazu, getting something to do, is the one who tells everyone that the Outlanders are coming for a fight and then he's sent off again until the end of the movie.
So now we have our big climatic fight between two warring prides of lions. Remember how awesome the fight with Scar and the hyenas were with the brush around Pride Rock on fire? Yeah, that doesn't happen here. They battle is on some flat rocky plain with the "bad" lions covered in mud so you can tell everyone apart. Instead of using their bowling for buzzards tactics they did on the hyenas, Timon and Pumbaa get one big fart joke and Rafiki's cool ninja monkey skills are absent as he is. Then Simba and Zira face off and they're just about to have a cool slow motion fight like Simba and Scar did when Kovu and Kiara interrupt and stare down their warring parents. Then comes the biggest retcon of a Disney movie moral. Kiara tells Simba to stop this fighting because "they are us! What differences do you see?" The idea being is that they're all lions and they're all the same. It shouldn't matter as long as they're not a bunch of slobbering, mangy, stupid hyenas right? So everyone realizes that war is bad and we should all get along as long as we're the same species. Of course Zira won't let it go and she ends up doing herself in and falling off a cliff into a river. Guess she was beyond redemption despite Kiara's half-hearted attempt to save her. It's also sad that Kovu was more upset over his annoying step brother dying than his adopted mother. Oh well, he's got a new, better family anyway.
So everything is happy. Kovu and the rest of the rival lionesses are fully integrated into Simba's Pride. No one had a baby for Rafiki to hold up but they all get to stand on Pride Rock and roar. Then the clouds part and you hear Mufasa say "Well done. My son. We are one." Why the hell, Mufasa, are you happy with Simba!?" He did nothing!! Where's the pat on the back for you granddaughter?! She's the one who got everyone to make peace!! You're son spent the entire movie being a pompous, narrow minded dickhead!! For someone who was so wise, you sure are stupid in the afterlife.
Still, despite all these complaints, it's easy to see why this direct to DVD sequel is liked more than many of them. The animation is well done compared to the Aladdin, Hunchback, and Atlantis sequels. Also compared to other Disney sequels featuring kids of the original leads, Kovu and Kiara have their own story as opposed to the Little Mermaid and Lady and the Tramp sequels where they basically just recycle the first movie plot with the kids learning the same lesson. Still I think it gets way more credit than it deserves given that it's still the clichéd good girl falls in love with bad boy and turns him around plot and it's easy to see the places where the writers were trying to give the supporting cast things to do. You could remove Timon and Pumbaa from this and not much would change. Even more so for characters like Zazu and Nala. Yet we get a whole bunch of new villains that apparently existed but we didn't know about until now.
At least John Lasseter put an end to terrible direct to DVD sequels but maybe I'll go after a few more. I caught some of them on TV and I would like to rip a few more apart.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Enough wtih the Cartoon Network Nostalgia Already!
The other day someone posted a picture on Facebook lamenting the "old" Cartoon Network. Now for those of you too young to remember, let me offer a bit of history into Cartoon Network when it first became a cable channel. It began in 1992, media mogul Ted Turner had obtained the rights to the vast library of Hannah Barbera cartoons and started a cable channel devoted to 24/7 play of the old Hannah Barbera cartoons as well as reruns of the vast backlogs of cartoons from Warner Bros. So Cartoon Network was born as a place where you could watch a lot of classic cartoons as a lot of cable channels in their early years rely on reruns of old shows to fill their daily schedules as they slowly began to add their own original programming. Thus, over time, like it's other kid oriented counterpart, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network began airing a lot of its own original programming. As time went on, less and less classic shows were on in favor of newer shows that were clearly getting better ratings and attracting the demographic they wanted. So as you can expect, you now have a bunch of sad sack gen Xers lamenting the "old" Cartoon Network, upset that their channel now houses shows like Ben 10, Adventure Time and Regular Show and they can no longer tune in to endless repeats of Scooby Doo and Tom and Jerry. Oh, wait, those are still on Cartoon Network.
Some would be annoyed at this. After all, we grew up in an age where MTV went from a cool 24 music video station to a disgusting display of scum bag college kids and teenagers showing off the worst of humanity. But for me, Cartoon Network didn't devolve THAT badly despite a short time where they contradicted themselves with a block called "CN Real" where they tried having reality shows, but in the end, Cartoon Network still shows cartoons even if so many these days are CG. Meanwhile, the old classics didn't go away, rather they were moved to Boomerang. Not to mention we live in the age of Internet video streaming and DVDs. A quick browse of Amazon will find you all the DVD collections of Warner Bros.
Another commenter on the picture was saying how sad it was that network TV no longer had "Saturday Morning Cartoons," which is almost extinct now. Once upon a time, before cable TV, kids got up early on Saturday to eat sugared cereal and watch cartoons that ran from 6am to noon usually, but looking back, that could be a pain. Never mind your mother deciding to run the vacuum cleaner while your favorite show was on, you never knew when the network would decide to interrupt your animated bliss with a stupid news special report or sports cutting your morning short. It's easy to see why kids gravitated to Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network where you didn't have to worry about that, then along came Netflix where you could watch an entire season of a show with no commercials. Let's see, watch a six hour block of shows that can get interrupted or watch all day long with no interruptions. It's easy to see why Saturday morning network programming went the way of the VHS and cassette tapes.
But back to the concept of "old" Cartoon Network. I'm not going to rip on Adventure Time or Regular Show because I never really watched either and yet I find many people in my age group to be big fans of those shows and unlike MTV which really is nothing but garbage now, it's not like there aren't some good shows coming out of CN. Star Wars: Clone Wars gave us something worthwhile out of the often reviled Prequel Trilogy and as a fan of dragons, I found DreamWorks Dragons: Defenders of Berk to be pretty good for a show based on a movie series. Adult Swim still has it's loyal following of late night stoners and I heard that Toonami was back for the late night anime fans. Do I miss tuning in to watch Looney Tunes, Flintstones or Scooby Doo? Sure, but again, that's what Boomerang is for. It's not like the old Disney Afternoon shows which are next to impossible to find, even as a good DVD set. Seriously I'll write another blog at how much Disney sucks when it comes to releasing their old TV series on DVD.
The other thing that gets me is the parents who look back at stuff like the old Warner Bros. cartoons as if they were something "wholesome" and "moral." I look at Warner Bros. cartoons and think "have these folks watched any of these recently?" Sure the old Looney Tunes didn't rely on bodily functions for humor, yet if you sat down and watched uncut versions of the old Looney Tunes you would see all the following:
In conclusion, I am tired of listening to Generation X complain about how Cartoon Network was "ruined" despite the fact that all those old cartoons moved to Boomerang especially given the current Cartoon Network still shows cartoons. When you look at how so many other cable channels like History, TLC and MTV of course, have devolved into nothing but reality TV shows about white trash people and their scumbag lives, the Cartoon Network lamenting just sounds like a bunch of old people sitting on the porch talking about the "good ol' days." Maybe we're just getting old.
Some would be annoyed at this. After all, we grew up in an age where MTV went from a cool 24 music video station to a disgusting display of scum bag college kids and teenagers showing off the worst of humanity. But for me, Cartoon Network didn't devolve THAT badly despite a short time where they contradicted themselves with a block called "CN Real" where they tried having reality shows, but in the end, Cartoon Network still shows cartoons even if so many these days are CG. Meanwhile, the old classics didn't go away, rather they were moved to Boomerang. Not to mention we live in the age of Internet video streaming and DVDs. A quick browse of Amazon will find you all the DVD collections of Warner Bros.
Another commenter on the picture was saying how sad it was that network TV no longer had "Saturday Morning Cartoons," which is almost extinct now. Once upon a time, before cable TV, kids got up early on Saturday to eat sugared cereal and watch cartoons that ran from 6am to noon usually, but looking back, that could be a pain. Never mind your mother deciding to run the vacuum cleaner while your favorite show was on, you never knew when the network would decide to interrupt your animated bliss with a stupid news special report or sports cutting your morning short. It's easy to see why kids gravitated to Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network where you didn't have to worry about that, then along came Netflix where you could watch an entire season of a show with no commercials. Let's see, watch a six hour block of shows that can get interrupted or watch all day long with no interruptions. It's easy to see why Saturday morning network programming went the way of the VHS and cassette tapes.
But back to the concept of "old" Cartoon Network. I'm not going to rip on Adventure Time or Regular Show because I never really watched either and yet I find many people in my age group to be big fans of those shows and unlike MTV which really is nothing but garbage now, it's not like there aren't some good shows coming out of CN. Star Wars: Clone Wars gave us something worthwhile out of the often reviled Prequel Trilogy and as a fan of dragons, I found DreamWorks Dragons: Defenders of Berk to be pretty good for a show based on a movie series. Adult Swim still has it's loyal following of late night stoners and I heard that Toonami was back for the late night anime fans. Do I miss tuning in to watch Looney Tunes, Flintstones or Scooby Doo? Sure, but again, that's what Boomerang is for. It's not like the old Disney Afternoon shows which are next to impossible to find, even as a good DVD set. Seriously I'll write another blog at how much Disney sucks when it comes to releasing their old TV series on DVD.
The other thing that gets me is the parents who look back at stuff like the old Warner Bros. cartoons as if they were something "wholesome" and "moral." I look at Warner Bros. cartoons and think "have these folks watched any of these recently?" Sure the old Looney Tunes didn't rely on bodily functions for humor, yet if you sat down and watched uncut versions of the old Looney Tunes you would see all the following:
- Smoking
- Usage of alcohol and drunkenness
- Racial slurs (especially if you watch old WWII propaganda shorts)
- Sexual innuendo
- Gun violence
- Cross dressing (Bugs like dressing in drag didn't he?)
- Animal Abuse
- Homosexuality (Bugs Bunny liked kissing other guys a lot)
In conclusion, I am tired of listening to Generation X complain about how Cartoon Network was "ruined" despite the fact that all those old cartoons moved to Boomerang especially given the current Cartoon Network still shows cartoons. When you look at how so many other cable channels like History, TLC and MTV of course, have devolved into nothing but reality TV shows about white trash people and their scumbag lives, the Cartoon Network lamenting just sounds like a bunch of old people sitting on the porch talking about the "good ol' days." Maybe we're just getting old.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
How I Learned to live on a Budget and still enjoy life.
For three years I worked at a call center for a major banking institution and in that time I learned a lot about how people spend their money. We live in tough economic times. Prices of everything seem to keep going up while our wages stagnate, yet it amazes how many people out there have no idea that it is possible to live within your means without totally giving up things you like.
I've been married for ten years and neither my husband or myself found out bank account at zero. We didn't make tons of money and yet we could still enjoy a nice vacation and I could even enjoy my vice of video games. Some would say "well you didn't have kids so of course you had money." While that was true, we didn't go out and blow tons of money on stuff we didn't need.
Everyone's financial situation is different and unexpected expenses happen. Cars break down. Accidents and hospital bills happen. People lose jobs. I get this. These things happened to us too and we were always able to deal with it and very rarely ever asking for help from family. Many times our families wanted to help us and we flat out turned them down. We wanted to be independent and this motivated us to work harder to make a good life for ourselves.
So here's my advice for how to live within your means.
1) Buy a house or rent an apartment you can afford. Your mortgage or rent is what's going to take the biggest chunk out of your income. When we were first married, we had a little one bedroom apartment that cost us $360 a month and it was fine for us. We lucked out in that it had a basement so we had extra storage but it was good for us to start out with given neither of us were making a ton of money at our jobs at the time. Plus a smaller place meant less to spend on utilities. We did eventually get a house. It was a little 2 bedroom house and needed a little bit of work like new windows, but it worked for us. Those of you with larger families, do you kids each need a room of their own? My mom shared a room with 2 sisters growing up. If you claim you need a lot of space, maybe there's some stuff you can get rid of.
2) Second hand goods. Our first place was filled with second hand furniture, either my old bed or his old dresser, we had a couch and loveseat my sister in law gave us. Now that I'm pregnant, I have a nursery full of second hand baby furniture given to us by friends and family. Second hand furniture can go a long way. If it looks a bit beat up, a coat of paint can do wonders. Now with a baby on the way, we cruise yard sales and second hand stores for baby items. I used to hate going to the Goodwill in my old town because the store always smelled bad but this one now is a newer facility so it's not bad and you find a lot of good, cheap used items that look like new.
3) Take care of the things you own. As someone who likes trading in old video games, it amazes me to see what Gamestop takes back. You see game discs without boxes all scratched up and consoles covered in dirt. If you're going to spend a few hundred dollars on a game console, you'd think you'd want to take care of it so it lasts. This applies to a lot of items. In the US people like to buy a car, drive it for 5 years and trade it in. We would rather, take care of the ones we got and run them for 10+ years. Both our cars are paid off and still run great. Learn to check your oil, tires and fluids. Learn how to do basic repairs like change break pads. Take your car through a good automated car wash and get that undercoating to prevent rust every so often. Oh and don't drive like a maniac and you'll save on your insurance.
4) Take care of your health. You know what leads many families to bankruptcy? Healthcare costs and hospital bills. In this day and age you think with all the moans and groans over Obamacare and the high cost of health insurance, you think that would be motivation to take better care of ourselves, yet we still eat junk food and don't exercise then get mad that when we hit forty, we have high cholesterol and blood pressure and have to take tons of expensive meds. What's cheaper? Spending $30 for a gym membership or spending $100 on the medication because you didn't exercise enough. The healthier you are, the less you'll miss work, the lower your health insurance costs will be and you'll feel better. If you can afford a gym membership, then walk in your neighborhood or get an exercise DVD. Yes I am aware that some things are unavoidable. Healthy people get cancer. You're born with type one diabetes, but everyone can eat right and exercise. The sooner you start, the better off you'll be.
5) Walmart isn't always the lowest price. Over the years, we've been told that Walmart is the cheapest place to go and yet I don't always find that to be true. There's two grocery stores in the same area and many times, I have found various goods to be cheaper especially if there's a sale going on. Sure Walmart is easy and convenient because everything's right there, but if you're like me, you don't always like shopping there whether it's their bad corporate policies or the fact that they have 25 registers with only four open. There's a Kroger nearby and many times I saved more there. Why? Well there's this neat little app they have for smart phones. On it, they have digital coupons. In my mom's day she had to clip tons of them and carry them around but in our vast digital age, you can access both store and manufacturer's coupons from your smart phone and upload them to your customer loyalty card so they automatically get deducted at the register. The last two times I did this I saved. I still have good old fashioned paper ones too but they can get lost easily. Also non Walmart grocery stores like Giant Eagle or Kroger have fuel perk programs where you can get enough points to get 10 cents off a gallon. So you got to weigh these options when going to the grocery store.
6) Plan a budget and keep a checkbook. In the years I worked for customer support at the bank, it was amazing that people don't bother to keep a ledger book of their expenses. So many overdraft fees could've been avoided, had people simply had the foresight to write down what they spent. All too often someone would go online to call to get a balance and forget they wrote a bill payment check the day before, then they went out and spent money on dinner only to have the bill payment clear and overdraw them. When you write down your expenses each month and keep track of what you're buying, it makes you realize how much your really spending as well as makes you realize where you could cut corners. I always believed that high schools needed to stop wasting time teaching math you'll never use like Algebra and have a required class in Managing finances.
7) Pay off your debts. You get that bonus at work or get a decent tax return, your first instinct is to go blow it on some new toy. Maybe you should step back and use it to pay off those student loans or your credit card that's gotten a hefty balance from the last new toy you bought. The longer those debts linger, the more interest they'll get. My husband and I had school loans, car payments and a equity loan we used for home improvements and about 2 years ago they were all paid off. Aside from a little on our credit cards, we have no debt and it's an amazing feeling.
8) You may have to forgo some things for a while. I always hear "I can't afford to X" yet they have cable, or a new smartphone, an Ipad or an Xbox Live subscription. When we were first married in our little apartment, we had no cable or internet. We watched DVDs on his original Xbox, listened to the radio and if we needed internet we either went to the library or to a family member's house. A lot of folks I know have ditched cable in favor of Netflix and really the only thing you lose are live sporting events. At one point, we ran into a tight situation and downgraded our cable to basic, which meant getting rid of DVR and HD and honestly, we were fine with that. Basic cable is dirt cheap and most of the shows we liked were still available. It's hard to not have internet in this day and age but there are options for cheaper plans. So if you have to you may have to downgrade that cable or cell phone plan and trust me, you won't miss it as much as you think.
9) Cook at home more. We work hard all day and, for some the idea of coming home and having to cook seems exhausting but think about it, what you spend on groceries in a weekly trip can feed your family for a while, while that same amount spent at a nicer restaurant only lasts an evening, maybe two if you had leftovers. I've made the conscious effort to make more home cooked meals and many don't take that long. I get non perishable things like rice and beans that I can store. I stock up on canned and frozen vegetables. If I make a large meal, I'll freeze some to save for another time. I've made some good, healthy meals and saved a ton on ordering and eating out. More so I really enjoy cooking now and experimenting with things. Plus I almost always have leftover so my husband can take something for his lunch at work.
10) Continue these things even if you do get more money. Say you finally get that great job that pays well now and sure you can go back to having cable or go out to eat a little more often but there's no reason to stop being smart about money. Most wealthy people didn't get there by being stupid. Even when money was good for us, I still found myself looking for a bargain. We still enjoyed going to yard sales and finding hidden treasures. When we did have extra money, we invested it in a retirement fund, put it in savings and of course paying any debts that were owed. As I said, you never know when your car will break down or you'll have to go to the hospital so it's good to be prepared for those things.
So that's my advice to save money and doing all these things helped me out greatly and I never felt like things were that tight. I still went out and had fun by visiting friends and family, going for walks at the park, taking smaller weekend road trip vacations. Sometimes it's not a matter of what you want rather it's what you need.
I've been married for ten years and neither my husband or myself found out bank account at zero. We didn't make tons of money and yet we could still enjoy a nice vacation and I could even enjoy my vice of video games. Some would say "well you didn't have kids so of course you had money." While that was true, we didn't go out and blow tons of money on stuff we didn't need.
Everyone's financial situation is different and unexpected expenses happen. Cars break down. Accidents and hospital bills happen. People lose jobs. I get this. These things happened to us too and we were always able to deal with it and very rarely ever asking for help from family. Many times our families wanted to help us and we flat out turned them down. We wanted to be independent and this motivated us to work harder to make a good life for ourselves.
So here's my advice for how to live within your means.
1) Buy a house or rent an apartment you can afford. Your mortgage or rent is what's going to take the biggest chunk out of your income. When we were first married, we had a little one bedroom apartment that cost us $360 a month and it was fine for us. We lucked out in that it had a basement so we had extra storage but it was good for us to start out with given neither of us were making a ton of money at our jobs at the time. Plus a smaller place meant less to spend on utilities. We did eventually get a house. It was a little 2 bedroom house and needed a little bit of work like new windows, but it worked for us. Those of you with larger families, do you kids each need a room of their own? My mom shared a room with 2 sisters growing up. If you claim you need a lot of space, maybe there's some stuff you can get rid of.
2) Second hand goods. Our first place was filled with second hand furniture, either my old bed or his old dresser, we had a couch and loveseat my sister in law gave us. Now that I'm pregnant, I have a nursery full of second hand baby furniture given to us by friends and family. Second hand furniture can go a long way. If it looks a bit beat up, a coat of paint can do wonders. Now with a baby on the way, we cruise yard sales and second hand stores for baby items. I used to hate going to the Goodwill in my old town because the store always smelled bad but this one now is a newer facility so it's not bad and you find a lot of good, cheap used items that look like new.
3) Take care of the things you own. As someone who likes trading in old video games, it amazes me to see what Gamestop takes back. You see game discs without boxes all scratched up and consoles covered in dirt. If you're going to spend a few hundred dollars on a game console, you'd think you'd want to take care of it so it lasts. This applies to a lot of items. In the US people like to buy a car, drive it for 5 years and trade it in. We would rather, take care of the ones we got and run them for 10+ years. Both our cars are paid off and still run great. Learn to check your oil, tires and fluids. Learn how to do basic repairs like change break pads. Take your car through a good automated car wash and get that undercoating to prevent rust every so often. Oh and don't drive like a maniac and you'll save on your insurance.
4) Take care of your health. You know what leads many families to bankruptcy? Healthcare costs and hospital bills. In this day and age you think with all the moans and groans over Obamacare and the high cost of health insurance, you think that would be motivation to take better care of ourselves, yet we still eat junk food and don't exercise then get mad that when we hit forty, we have high cholesterol and blood pressure and have to take tons of expensive meds. What's cheaper? Spending $30 for a gym membership or spending $100 on the medication because you didn't exercise enough. The healthier you are, the less you'll miss work, the lower your health insurance costs will be and you'll feel better. If you can afford a gym membership, then walk in your neighborhood or get an exercise DVD. Yes I am aware that some things are unavoidable. Healthy people get cancer. You're born with type one diabetes, but everyone can eat right and exercise. The sooner you start, the better off you'll be.
5) Walmart isn't always the lowest price. Over the years, we've been told that Walmart is the cheapest place to go and yet I don't always find that to be true. There's two grocery stores in the same area and many times, I have found various goods to be cheaper especially if there's a sale going on. Sure Walmart is easy and convenient because everything's right there, but if you're like me, you don't always like shopping there whether it's their bad corporate policies or the fact that they have 25 registers with only four open. There's a Kroger nearby and many times I saved more there. Why? Well there's this neat little app they have for smart phones. On it, they have digital coupons. In my mom's day she had to clip tons of them and carry them around but in our vast digital age, you can access both store and manufacturer's coupons from your smart phone and upload them to your customer loyalty card so they automatically get deducted at the register. The last two times I did this I saved. I still have good old fashioned paper ones too but they can get lost easily. Also non Walmart grocery stores like Giant Eagle or Kroger have fuel perk programs where you can get enough points to get 10 cents off a gallon. So you got to weigh these options when going to the grocery store.
6) Plan a budget and keep a checkbook. In the years I worked for customer support at the bank, it was amazing that people don't bother to keep a ledger book of their expenses. So many overdraft fees could've been avoided, had people simply had the foresight to write down what they spent. All too often someone would go online to call to get a balance and forget they wrote a bill payment check the day before, then they went out and spent money on dinner only to have the bill payment clear and overdraw them. When you write down your expenses each month and keep track of what you're buying, it makes you realize how much your really spending as well as makes you realize where you could cut corners. I always believed that high schools needed to stop wasting time teaching math you'll never use like Algebra and have a required class in Managing finances.
7) Pay off your debts. You get that bonus at work or get a decent tax return, your first instinct is to go blow it on some new toy. Maybe you should step back and use it to pay off those student loans or your credit card that's gotten a hefty balance from the last new toy you bought. The longer those debts linger, the more interest they'll get. My husband and I had school loans, car payments and a equity loan we used for home improvements and about 2 years ago they were all paid off. Aside from a little on our credit cards, we have no debt and it's an amazing feeling.
8) You may have to forgo some things for a while. I always hear "I can't afford to X" yet they have cable, or a new smartphone, an Ipad or an Xbox Live subscription. When we were first married in our little apartment, we had no cable or internet. We watched DVDs on his original Xbox, listened to the radio and if we needed internet we either went to the library or to a family member's house. A lot of folks I know have ditched cable in favor of Netflix and really the only thing you lose are live sporting events. At one point, we ran into a tight situation and downgraded our cable to basic, which meant getting rid of DVR and HD and honestly, we were fine with that. Basic cable is dirt cheap and most of the shows we liked were still available. It's hard to not have internet in this day and age but there are options for cheaper plans. So if you have to you may have to downgrade that cable or cell phone plan and trust me, you won't miss it as much as you think.
9) Cook at home more. We work hard all day and, for some the idea of coming home and having to cook seems exhausting but think about it, what you spend on groceries in a weekly trip can feed your family for a while, while that same amount spent at a nicer restaurant only lasts an evening, maybe two if you had leftovers. I've made the conscious effort to make more home cooked meals and many don't take that long. I get non perishable things like rice and beans that I can store. I stock up on canned and frozen vegetables. If I make a large meal, I'll freeze some to save for another time. I've made some good, healthy meals and saved a ton on ordering and eating out. More so I really enjoy cooking now and experimenting with things. Plus I almost always have leftover so my husband can take something for his lunch at work.
10) Continue these things even if you do get more money. Say you finally get that great job that pays well now and sure you can go back to having cable or go out to eat a little more often but there's no reason to stop being smart about money. Most wealthy people didn't get there by being stupid. Even when money was good for us, I still found myself looking for a bargain. We still enjoyed going to yard sales and finding hidden treasures. When we did have extra money, we invested it in a retirement fund, put it in savings and of course paying any debts that were owed. As I said, you never know when your car will break down or you'll have to go to the hospital so it's good to be prepared for those things.
So that's my advice to save money and doing all these things helped me out greatly and I never felt like things were that tight. I still went out and had fun by visiting friends and family, going for walks at the park, taking smaller weekend road trip vacations. Sometimes it's not a matter of what you want rather it's what you need.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Moving is lonely.
So I just moved from my hometown to a new place and to be honestly, it's a rather lonely time for me. My husband got a job 20 min from here and while the town is nice and our apartment is great, I do find myself with a lot of free time and nothing to do. Also facing the realization of how hard it is to make friends after college and especially in your 30s.
When in school, it's easy to have tons of friends because that environment encourages it. They have orientation and "get to know you" excercises and are always promoting clubs and events and this leads to the fact that most folks make their best friends in college. This is also probably where I should've tried harder to make more friends. I saved money by living at home. On one hand, it was nice to come home to a clean, quiet place where I didn't have to share a bathroom but on the other hand I may have cheated myself out of certain experiences that only come from communal college living. I still eventually made a couple of friends and kept pretty busy but also as someone who found the whole drinking partying scene a bit "immature" I often felt like I didn't truly fit in. Most other friends I had who weren't into that same scene were either too overly religious to be any fun (sorry but it's true) or working on top of going to school and didn't have as much free time as I did.
In my junior year of college I met my future husband and then I found that at least I had someone to do stuff with on the weekends and many will agree that a relationship in it's early stages gives you more of a social life in some cases. But eventually I graduated, started working, got married and after about 2 years of marriage both my husband and I found ourselves in the same situation many our age are in. We didn't have any friends to call on. We had friends but they are either moved away, worked long hours or had kids and while we enjoyed each other's company we both found ourselves wishing we had someone our own age to invite over for dinner or go bowling or something. It didn't help that I worked in retail where hours are all over the place and you work all holidays so have time to get together with folks was hard.
Eventually I did get a job with more consistent hours and we were able to do more things like joining clubs and taking classes and we lucked out when some of my old friends from college moved back to town and despite them having a child, were usually available on short notice to do stuff and for a while, it was nice to have something resembling a social life.
But all good things must come to an end, after 10 years at a job where he couldn't move forward, my husband needed a change and the job offered paid better and had great benefits. I was ok with moving but then realized how much it sucked that just as I was getting a circle of friends, we'd have to move 2 hours away.
So I find myself back at Square one. My days are spent looking for a job, going to the gym, running errands, getting settled into our apartment and playing video games. Trying to figure out how to make friends again. Wishing I had someplace to go or someone to go visit who was nearby. Trying to see if there's anything in town I can do during the day. And some days just feeling lonely.
When in school, it's easy to have tons of friends because that environment encourages it. They have orientation and "get to know you" excercises and are always promoting clubs and events and this leads to the fact that most folks make their best friends in college. This is also probably where I should've tried harder to make more friends. I saved money by living at home. On one hand, it was nice to come home to a clean, quiet place where I didn't have to share a bathroom but on the other hand I may have cheated myself out of certain experiences that only come from communal college living. I still eventually made a couple of friends and kept pretty busy but also as someone who found the whole drinking partying scene a bit "immature" I often felt like I didn't truly fit in. Most other friends I had who weren't into that same scene were either too overly religious to be any fun (sorry but it's true) or working on top of going to school and didn't have as much free time as I did.
In my junior year of college I met my future husband and then I found that at least I had someone to do stuff with on the weekends and many will agree that a relationship in it's early stages gives you more of a social life in some cases. But eventually I graduated, started working, got married and after about 2 years of marriage both my husband and I found ourselves in the same situation many our age are in. We didn't have any friends to call on. We had friends but they are either moved away, worked long hours or had kids and while we enjoyed each other's company we both found ourselves wishing we had someone our own age to invite over for dinner or go bowling or something. It didn't help that I worked in retail where hours are all over the place and you work all holidays so have time to get together with folks was hard.
Eventually I did get a job with more consistent hours and we were able to do more things like joining clubs and taking classes and we lucked out when some of my old friends from college moved back to town and despite them having a child, were usually available on short notice to do stuff and for a while, it was nice to have something resembling a social life.
But all good things must come to an end, after 10 years at a job where he couldn't move forward, my husband needed a change and the job offered paid better and had great benefits. I was ok with moving but then realized how much it sucked that just as I was getting a circle of friends, we'd have to move 2 hours away.
So I find myself back at Square one. My days are spent looking for a job, going to the gym, running errands, getting settled into our apartment and playing video games. Trying to figure out how to make friends again. Wishing I had someplace to go or someone to go visit who was nearby. Trying to see if there's anything in town I can do during the day. And some days just feeling lonely.
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