movie trailer: The Men Who Stare At Goats

Watco: What are the consequences of watching this movie on your level of happiness or entertainment?
Claim: If you watch this movie, you will be entertained.

Reason: It is funny.

Implicit Assumption: Whatever is funny, entertains.

Argument: This is a very funny, interesting movie.

Audience: Moviegoers 20 and up. The same kind of people that liked Ocean's Eleven, The Big Lebowski, etc.

Goal: Get people to go see the movie.

How:

Pathos: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey have a history of good, funny movies. Their combination looks very promising.

Ethos: The clip shows the main characters in an absurd, futile situation. Absurd is funny, futility is funny. People like funny.

Logos: The general story of this movie, that the government trained soldiers to be psychic, is a funny story. It makes sense as a great comedy.

Effective:

Yes. This movies looks terrific.

Story of my life

So when Billy gets in the car with Meg in When Harry Met Sally he starts out the ride by telling her to give him the story of her life. And she's all, we just met and its kind of long and all that stuff. And he's like so what, we have a 17 hour car ride. Well, I feel like asking people that question all the time but they never have a good answer. In case you were wanting to ask me that question at some point but haven't the nerve yet, here's a start.

I'm a closet romantic. I want to pick up the bass again. I want to play lacrosse this fall. I want to sail around the world. I want to open a store filled with the very best fruit the world has to offer and nothing else, except crepes perhaps. I design towns, furniture, etc. I want to create a botanical garden in the shape of the continents, with everything in its place...but freaking Dubai beat me to it. I love bed time and bed time stories. Trevor reads Aesop's fables to me sometimes. My dream is to open my own school (K-12), teach history and coach football. If I could have been any musician, it would have to be a toss up between Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and Jim Croce...cause Man!

I'm going to expound for a second on that fruit store. When we were little, pops would occasionally discourse at the dinner table at the geographical marvel on our plates. Grapes or SeaBass from Chile, pine nuts from Morocco, etc. Sometimes we'd pull off three or four continents on one plate. Jump. Have you ever had amazing peaches? I mean the juicy spheres of heaven that you get at roadside stands in Georgia (or Paonia, CO as I've found to my delight). You buy a box of fifty of those. They're not lasting a week. No way. So what if there was a store that had all of these different fruits of the world, picked in season from the best place in the planet for them. Underneath the basket is a little plaque talking about the place: its soil, its climate, why it is so ideal for that fruit. How awesome would that be? Yeah it'd be more expensive, we're not trying to kid anyone, but who wouldn't pay some extra dollars to eat from the closest we've got to the Garden of Eden.

Don Carlos

       This man is the brother of my great-great grandfather, Hazzard (that's right.  Double Z).  Now, let's think about my great-great-great grandfather for a moment.  He named his two sons Hazard and Don Carlos.  Don is an honorific title - in Spanish.  In case you ever wondered where some of my oddities come from, you can stop.  It's in my blood.  And you can rest assured it will be passed on; the current plan is that two of my sons will be named Hazard and Don Carlos.  Brothers, take note, I've got dibs...  

Top left is the father, John Henry Owen.  Right is Hazzard, my man.  Bottom is Don Carlos...

Be what you want to be

I'm helping a buddy write a philosophy paper arguing capitalism's moral supremacy over socialism.

"But capitalism doesn't let you be what you want to be; musicians, artists, intellectuals all have to sweat it out to get by" That seemed to be a trump card of sorts.

But here's a question: 500 years ago, how was the occupational diversity? 99% of people were farmers, part-timing as soldiers. Now only 2-3% of people are farmers while service, entertainment and other such sectors have grown tremendously.

Maybe it's still tough to make a living doing something few other people care about, but its easier than it ever has been in the history of the world, and as capitalism develops, it will continue to get easier. People's options are greater than they ever have been because of capitalism's superior ability to allocate resources efficiently along society's summed preferences. Just look at high school clothing variety. Socialism's central planning would ease the ability of a chosen few to do what they please at a greater sum cost to the rest of society, pigeon-holed as they are into careers that "society" wants them to fill.

Life isn't perfect and easy, but we're closer to that than we ever have been. We ought to recognize that and be happy for it.