The annoying Hollywood cliches and how they wish to shape the world

If you watch movies often, as I do, you will realize that most scripts seem to follow a script. There seems to be a checklist of cliches in Hollywood these days, which are, annoyingly repeated movie after movie. Funny that movies from other countries do not seem to follow this “script”. Exactly who force feeds this agenda on script writers is not clear. It is difficult to fathom they all really share the same views about certain things and folks.

First of all. These days, whenever a police chief is portrayed in an American movie, he is black. Judges are often black AND women. This obviously does not represent the reality in most instances. Most judges in the USA are still men and white. Perhaps Hollywood thinks this will change things…

The movie industry alternates its own self view as exclusively a purveyor of fiction, with a lofty role of actor of change. Meanwhile, a lot of people see movies as news programs. They know it is fiction, however, they truly believe what they see in movie screens as representation of truth in some form.

Cops and doctors are normally represented on a good light. There are some corrupt policemen, however, the police is normally portrayed as diligent crime fighters, true heroes who will take a bullet for anybody. The majority of police do very ordinary work, such as writing parking tickets, and at least where I live, they take their time to report to a potentially violent “situation”. As for doctors, a friend of mine who is a surgeon, posted on Facebook the other day, that most doctors in America suck. They care about social standing, quit studying after leaving school, and are bureaucratic test readers. I did not say this, a doctor did. Yet, physicians are generally portrayed as altruistic individuals, who “feel the pain”  of their patients.

Whenever you see a classroom in a movie, nine out of ten times, it is an English or literature class. It seems that in writers’ minds, writing and literature are the only things that matter, and all other areas of knowledge, rubbish. Sure, writers should write about what they know. However, there is a little of self-glorification. “What we do is cool and relevant, everything else is boring and irrelevant.”

Children…how many child geniuses have you seen on Hollywood movies? Well, in my few dozen years of life, I have never seen a child that fits the children that appear on American movies. They are always witty, highly intelligent and cultured, articulate and mature way beyond their years. What I see, across the board, are  lame children. Children are still children. Worse yet, they are maturing in their 20’s now, in their late teens they still behave as they are in the early teens.

Religious people are always portrayed as demented, hypocritical demagogues. So much for not being prejudiced.

All orientals know martial arts…

As for the stuff that sells, yes, sex. There are some annoying cliches in that area as well. Every movie seems to have lesbians now. Not gays, lesbians by the truckload. And the lesbians are always highly feminine and beautiful, knockouts. I have met many lesbians, and have never met one who is both feminine and beautiful. Most are masculine and ugly.

I suppose that according to Hollywood’s worldview, the American population will take a dive in the next few years. That is because whenever there is a sex scene between a man and a woman, most likely, it is anal sex. Contrary to all evidence otherwise, Hollywood seems to think that all women love anal sex, and so do men. According to them, that is all folks of all cultures and ages are doing. What exactly is the point of this, I do not know.

Sometimes one gets the feeling we are getting an agenda pushed down our throats. They might wish they will change the world, but judges will continue to be white men mostly, children will remain lame inarticulates, cops and doctors bureaucratic, and lesbians ugly. And hetero couples will continue to enjoy the missionary position.

To get or not to get a credit report from Experian? DON’T GET IT

I never had my identity stolen, however, a couple of months back, I suspected something was wrong.

A few years ago, I requested free credit reports (everyone is entitled to one, once a year), writing directly to the top credit reporting agencies, by snail mail. It worked great.  Now, you have to go through a website, which confuses users by hinting their identity has been really stolen. Since I have very little time to waste with games, I decided to go directly to one of the providers, and I chose Experian.

The free report I was entitled to quickly became a 1 dollar report. That meant I needed to provide a credit card number to pay the buck. And here a little nagging problem started.

Not only would I be charged US$ 1 for the report, however, by requesting it from Experian, I would agree to try out for a US$17.95 a month credit monitoring service, which I could cancel at any time. If I canceled within 7 days of ordering the trial subscription, I would not be charged anything, not even the first charge.

I ordered my US$1 (free) report on a Wednesday, and found out all was clear with my credit. Then, the next Wednesday I called to cancel the subscription. Funny thing. To sign up, you can do everything on line, within tops five minutes . To cancel, you have to speak to a rep, and stay online for a good 30 minutes. I hate to think that the idea is to have you give up on the cancellation and be stuck with the subscription forever…

Be that as it may, I did call, stayed on the line patiently, and spoke to a nice rep. Although she kept on trying to convince me to keep the service, I denied every time. Then, after five attempts to keep my hard earned dollars, she offered the service for half-price, which I found outrageous. After I gave her a few thoughts on the hard selling tactic (why not offer the service for US$8.00 to begin with?), she confirmed the service would be cancelled, THAT I WOULD NOT GET ANY FURTHER BILLING FROM EXPERIAN, and I got an email confirmation on the trot.

Much to my dismay, I just got my credit card bill, and guess what it contains? A US$17.95 charge from Experian!! Yes, siree!

Needless to say, I was beyond outraged by this point. I explained, over and over again, that I opted out of the service within the prescribed seven days, that I got verbal and written confirmation, yet, the representative insisted I did not comply with that requirement, and that although the subscription would be canceled henceforth, that US$17.95 charge would stand.

After referring to this business deal in not very endearing terms, and making a rhetorical observation concerning the mission of the company, which is to protect us from scams and aspects of this transaction, which looked like a scam to me, I told the representative that I would feel free to share my nasty experience with the entire world, by writing on several dozens of blogs to which I contribute material.

That did the trick, though. She was so adamant that the charge would stand just a few seconds before, however, when I said I would make the matter public, a third party, a supervisor, I guess, entered the picture and allowed the credit!

I can only say this: before you order anything from Experian, think twice. I have since then read similar stories on the internet, so I can assure you that this is not an isolated incident. I am ready to do battle next month again.

Lena Neyse is not a real German translator

If you get a resume from a so-called Lena Neyse, email Lenatrans58@hotmail.com, watch out. This is not a real person.

In fact, the somewhat impressive resume has been stolen, word for word, from another, supposedly real translator who posted her resume in Proz.

The fact is that so called “Lena” is part of a growing trend, fake resumes sent by email, using gmail, which does not allow you to locate the IP where the message was originally sent. The intent is obvious. In fact, the real name behind “Lena” is Rana Ad, a Middle Eastern sonuding name.

By using gmail, the scammers do not allow computer savvy resume recipients to detect where the resume came from. In this case, it probably came from Palestine.

Fake “Lena” uses the paypal address trans.payable@gmail.com for payments. This is the address used by Rana Ad. However, you only know that when you maker a payment, too late!

Paypal also does not provide information about the location of the recipient account, a major security flaw. This lets scammers have free reign on the Internet, hiding behind names such as trans.payable, when in fact their name has nothing to do with Germans (or Arabic, for that matter).

“Lena”  is not alone. Scammer Walid Issa, who hides behind the paypal email ghhissy@gmail.com, also sends resumes for fake translators for a number of languages. His German “aliases” are Tomas Skold and Ronat Neil, who hide behind the name snow2white translation.  These scammers generally deliver work done in google translate, of subpar quality.

The best thing to do is, be careful with resumes sent from gmail. Some scammers even go as far as using real names of translators who are ATA members or certified.

 

 

No demographics, kinda of a liberating thing

I have no idea as to who reads this blog. I have another one, that has many followers, and gets tons of google search hits. This one, for some reason, gets visits, but google does not consider it too relevant. Who exactly are the visitors, I know not.

In a sense, it is a liberating experience. I can write as I please, without playing to an audience. I do not offend anybody, after all, it is not my nature, but I do not need to censure or gag order myself.

Free writing, if you will.

Not having a readership – or knowing what it is – has its advantages!

Young Immigrants Deferred Action program

The reason why Europe is in trouble now is an aging population, with ever lower numbers of people contributing to social programs.

The USA also has that problem. The larger number of aging people, and longer life expectancy, creates a problem, a funding problem. Thus, a lot of countries must “import young people”, who hopefully will work and contribute.

This is the basic premise of this program. Very practical, however, people make a lot of ideological garbage out of it.

This is a hot topic, and as such, there will be pros and cons. The point of this blog is to point people to articles that might be of use, rather than simply discussing politics

As with anything dealing with immigration, there are tons of crook lawyers, ~paralegals~ and lawyers wannabes willing to extract a few bucks from immigrants. So you may as well get facts. These are articles from several cities across the USA and from reputable organizations and companies. Of course, this is not an endorsement, by any stretch.

Here they are

http://www.dhs.gov/news/2012/06/15/secretary-napolitano-announces-deferred-action-process-young-people-who-are-low

http://www.dhs.gov/deferred-action-process

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/us/young-immigrants-poised-for-deportation-deferral-program.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/19/deferred-action-immigration-program_n_1786099.html

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/deferred-action-applications-young-illegal-immigrants-now-online-214133456.html

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/15/2952870/undocumented-young-people-getting.html

Certified translations at low cost for Young Immigrants deferred action programhttp://www.legaltranslationsystems.com

http://www.natlawreview.com/article/us-government-sets-motion-deferred-action-program-young-undocumented-immigrants

http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2012/08/17/fact-sheets-on-deferred-action-for-young-immigrants/

http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?docid=40233

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/08/14/young-immigrants-to-apply-for-dream-act-program-on-wednesday/

http://www.transworldnews.com/1124544/a74525/what-are-the-requirements-for-deferred-action-for-young-immigrants

http://www.wbtv.com/story/19287898/young-immigrants-prepare-applications-for-deferred-action

http://beforeitsnews.com/the-law/2012/08/deferred-action-program-may-help-1-8m-young-immigrants-2443560.html

http://www.fowlerwhite.com/when-publications-USCIS-begins-accepting-applications-for-deferred-action.html

http://www.foxreno.com/news/news/local/deferred-action-program-begin-accepting-applicatio/nRBMp/

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2012/08/young_immigrants_line_up_to_ap.html

Certified Translations of Birth certificates http://www.birthcertificatetranslations.com

What happened with the Republican party being the Christian’s party?

I have been a Christian for years. And for years, I am being told that the Republican party is the Christian’s party.

I always found that a bit strange. Sure, the party’s ideology does seem to share certain things with Christian faith, while others, such as almost undeterred. shameless greed, seem to be totally foreign to Christian precepts. The same ambivalence applies to the Democratic party, by the way.

However, there is no escaping the fact that a large host of Christian leaders , and by that I mean Evangelicals (like me) promote the Republican as the party of choice for people of this faith.  Even from the pulpit (something I do not agree with, I want to hear about Jesus at Church, not politicians).

For years I have been told that the Mormon church is a cult, and that the adoption of the Book of Mormon is a clear violation of the last book of Revelation.

So now, the Republican party, the Christian party, has a Mormon candidate!

And Christian leaders see no problem with that. All of a sudden he is a brother…

At best, it also sounds strange. Very strange.

A weird political notion

I have heard many people say that “if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain”.  This means, I suppose, that only the people that vote for a particular individual, who won the election, have a right to complain. That is the underlying idea some would like to proclaim.

The other idea is that anybody who voted can complain, the people who did not vote, cannot at all.

This makes an assumption that there are always viable candidates, of course, and that in the current US political scenario means, you are either Republican or Democrat. Nothing else is a viable politically.

Thus, according to these narrow minded people who love labels, YOU HAVE to vote, irrespective of the fact there is no candidate that represents you or your view points. In the USA that pretty much means, the middle class, whose interests are not fostered by either party.

So, according to this weird political notion, politicians  in office only represent people that vote. Die hard partisan fans would like to think that if a Democrat is in office, he or she should only represent Democrats. Some Republicans think the same.

This is obviously very flawed, and likely to contribute to the current political scenario we have. Large numbers of people chose to stay out of voting, because they feel alienated by politicians. And politicians in office represent everybody in their jurisdiction, people from his-her party, from other parties and people that do not vote.

Maybe, just maybe, one of these days other parties with emerge, and mechanisms might be created that make them viable.

This will not sound good…

This will not sound good. However, the internet is a place where one can vent his frustrations, so here it goes.

I have been writing, one way or another, for a few decades. And can do it in more than one language. I am no Bill Shakespeare, but I got skills, a huge vocabulary, good imagination.

A few years ago, an acquaintance asked me about writing a book. She wanted to write a book. Whereas I am literate in a few languages, she is illiterate in many. Her story was also borderline interesting.

However, she had the dream.

Although I have tons of texts written all over the place, and have started a few books, I never published a thing in paper form. Sorry, publishing on the internet is not the same thing as having a paper book published. Any dodo with an internet connection can publish a blog such as this, and if he writes about deviant sex he will probably have more readers in one day than I get in ten years.

If you have some imagination, you probably guessed where this is going. Yes, my multi-illiterate acquaintance has managed to publish her book, it seems, by a valid publisher. She obviously hired the services of a ghost writer (she wanted me to be her ghost writer), but, it does not matter.

A few lessons. First of all, if you have a dream, you are more likely to get things done than if you don’t. I suppose I have been waiting to be “discovered” all these years, but being “discovered” is a fairy tale. You gotta go for it.

Second, you got to know the right people. This acquaintance, in spite of her cultural shortcomings, knows a lot of the right people, who got her project going.

Lastly, a humbling experience. I obviously think much of myself, whereas this person, who has no desire to embrace a career as a writer (heck, she cannot even write), is probably much more humble than me, and that opened doors.

Time is running out, for I am not a spring chicken anymore.

One thing I forgot to say. The book has a sex angle…Figures.

Bean counters

The business world is run by bean counters these days. They appraise companies, keep value “honest”, prepare reports for upper management, determine which areas require red flags, size downsizing and watch out for cash flow.

The business arena is still in mayhem, but this is besides the point.

It is in cash flow management that bean counters get ridiculous.

I have a client, a company that earns many billions of dollars in profit a year. I had done some work for it in the past and never had much of a problem getting paid. But I suppose now they have been taken over by bean counters with surgical zeal.

Mind you, I don’t cost them much. It is not as if I am sending them invoices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (I wish this was the case). Plus my work SAVES them money.

Yet, they take an awful long time to pay. Although my terms are nominally “upon receipt”, they take anywhere from 60 to 90 days to settle invoices.

Even then, departing with the money is no easy thing. They normally play the “check is in the mail game”, and more than once, it was not. Followed by many “sorries” the check is sent, with a last stroke of bean counter genius. The mother of all b.c.s times the sending of the check to arrive either Friday (my mail comes late PM) or Saturday, that way, the low 4-digit check can cook a little bit longer in their coffers!

Unbelievable!

More comfortable with his blackhood

I had a few good experiences with Facebook.

One of them was finding a buddy of mine from college who finally became comfortable with his blackhood.

It was sad seeing him chasing after white girls in College, and none of them gave him the time of day. It was not very fashionable way back them, and he was not an athlete. So he suffered. Well, black, white, Asian, latino all girls didn’t care for me either, so we kept good company to each other.

Eventually he did get a white girlfriend. And I remained alone.

Bu his tastes in music, sports, were all whitish, and he spoke without an urban accent. It was up to a point where he seemed to hold a prejudice against African americans…

Now, though, he is married to a black woman, and posts lots of black stuff, all the while respecting and mixing it in with white culture, which is  the way it should be. We have to be comfortable with ourselves, to be truly comfortable with other people.