Basic Income

A friend of mine asked for me to talk about basic income a while ago. That was during a glut of socio-economic blogs, though, and I didn't want to scare people away with more of my my socio-economic nonsense. Now that I'm coming off of a glut of movie reviews and D&D pantheon rants, though, I think I've scared off pretty much everyone. So, it's back to economics! Yay!

Basic income is the idea that the government pays every citizen in the country enough to cover their basic needs. This is an interesting concept that I've honestly thought about for a long time.

Story Jam

Recently I joined a Secret Facebook Group (shh, don't tell anybody) in which everyone is supposed to post a new story idea every day. This actually sounds way easier that writing a blog post every day, ad I'll prove it by making this one blog post just a collection of story ideas--as many as I can think of in the time it would normally take me to write an average blog post.

Movie Review #48: The Ice Storm

I heard about this movie during an episode of WTF in which Marc Maron interviewed Elijah Wood. For whatever reason, this movie really stuck out in Marc's mind, so it's been on my list for months.

Short review: this movie is kind of all over the place as far as the tone goes, exploring a variety of emotions. It's compelling and uncomfortably sexual, but not explicit. It's also really hard to describe, apparently. The cast includes a variety of recognizable actors, including Toby McGuire, Christina Ricci, Sigourney Weaver, and, of course, Elijah Wood.

My New Favorite Company

In the past week I've placed two orders through Cards Against Humanity, totaling $21 in spending. I have no idea what I'm going to get for that $21, so why did I bother? That's what I want to talk about.

Working on Thanksgiving

I've been seeing a lot of people suggesting that everyone should boycott stores that are open on Thanksgiving. I disagree.

Los Angeles

A few weeks ago Laura and I drove to Los Angeles for a weekend. We were primarily going there to pick up our friend Jami to bring him back to Tucson for the holidays, and we decided to use that time to see a sight or two in the city.

So, here are my impressions of Los Angeles.

Movie Review #47: The Rounders

There are a bunch of movies I want to watch, but it's hard to string together 2-3 hours where I can sit down and actually focus on one I want to watch. Some movies I'm hoping to watch soon include 12 Monkeys, Ice Storm, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Raising Arizona, and The Fisher King. Given that I'm supposed to watch a movie every week this year, and that this is movie #47, I have five movie left. I think those five movies should probably be it.

Anyway, I chose this movie randomly while browsing Netflix for something to watch while eating breakfast. I just finished it, after 3-4 sittings.

Short review: there are better Matt Damon movies, better Edward Norton movies, and better poker movies. That said, it's competent and engaging enough. The actors perform well, but the story itself is rather predictable.