1. Would you say that Capitalism is unsustainable in the long run? More specifically, what are your thoughts on all of this income/wealth inequality around the world and the fact that the cost of living keeps going up while wages continue to remain the same? Some say that wages and taxes on the rich will simply have to be increased. I wonder if we will see a revolution or some form of social unrest in the future.
2. How has Life been treating you lately? :)
I wonder if I will ever run out of questions. lol
1) Capitalism is very much unsustainable even in the short run. As for the extreme inequality of wealth within the country I think that is a greater example of how using capitalism as the sole form of economic progress as a concept is completely broken. People always refer to the idea of the "American Dream" starting out with nothing and then making it big. That is not a reality in the United States these days. Statistics say that about 42% of Americans that start out in a low income bracket or at the bottom income level stay at the same income level they started out in as youths.
I myself believe in a taxing system where there is a set percentage of a persons income. So while everyone would have the same percentage taken out of their yearly income it would actually end up being a much fairer system I think. Lets say that the tax rate is 12% of someones yearly income, so even though people of a lower income level would end up paying out less in taxes then people of a higher income level it would be the same percentage of their income the only reason there would be a difference in the amount of money payed out to the government is because the more wealthy have a much higher income.
To me that is the most efficient, fair and reasonable way to have a taxation system run. Oh and obviously there should not be huge tax breaks given to people of the highest income levels. Because it makes not a lick of freaking sense to me why the wealthiest in the country who are most able to afford high taxes get breaks to pay less then others.
2) Life has been treating me fairly well lately thank you for asking. =) I will be moving within a couple months to Fitchburg Massachusetts. The house in an area that is very open with woods very close by and the town itself which is very nice and has a lot of cool older buildings. The best part is it's about ten minutes from the border of New Hampshire so I just cross the border and do all my shopping there, which as I believe you know has no sales tax, lol. You may find this next bit of information amusing, but I am considering running for state congress in two years. Not sure if I actually will but I am considering it.
3) As for having seen any movies in theaters lately actually yes, I usually don't see movies in theaters so it's kind of funny that you happened to ask around this time. The film I saw in theaters was "Dawn of Planet of the Apes" and I thought it was really good and very much enjoyed it. I will be seeing "Guardians of the Galaxy" probably next weekend not this one though because there is a local Con this weekend in North Hampton which I'm going to go to. I'm waiting for my dad to be home since he is my sensei in comic books since he was reading them in the 70's. He is also my sensei in punk rock since he was listening to it and went to local shows in the DC area where he resided during the late 70's.
Anyway I hope you are doing well at the moment as well.
@eisenfauste: I have a medieval style recurve, and longbow. Bought both from a guy who goes to ren fairs and the are really well made. He makes them himself actually. I also have a single compound bow that's a 50lb draw weight, both of the wooden bows are 45lb draw weights. I recently bought a fiberglass recurve at an antique fair. There's a massive one a few separate weeks each year two towns over. It's in really good condition, however it didn't have a string with it lol. I know that it's a 60lb draw weight so that makes it a little easier to get one lol. However it's going to be a challenge to start using that one once I get a string for it, the good kind though lol.
I have a large back yard and that's where I usually shoot. It's handy living in the boonies sometimes lol. However they usually have a small archery competition at each ren fair and I have entered those, won a couple actually with some cool prizes for the two I've won. Those are obviously low key, but it is still nice going up against others on occasion. Most of the ones that get to the end are pretty good, but the targets aren't that far so it's not that hard in terms of having to calculate or adjust so much for the distance. It does actually take a bit of readjusting for me, and the others that do it a lot too I'd assume, because we don't get to use our own bows just the ones they provide which aren't great quality since they are used for people who pay to get to shoot a little at the fair, also I hardly ever shoot from that close of a distance so that throws me off too lol.
@vortex13: Props to archery being a hobby, do you enter in contests or just head to your yard and shoot some arrows down range. I have been eyeing a recurve bow to buy but haven't commited, do you have a decent recurve bow or do you simply go with a compound bow?
Sage advice for safe and fun heroin use, I always felt like I was doing it wrong, I'll probably take a trip tonight and get a good high since I have nothing better to do.
Nah, not at the moment. A little irritated at the moment to be honest, the younger dog of the animals that reside here keeps trying to climb into my lap. FYI She's not a lap dog.
Favorite things to do? Well Archery is absolutely at the top of the list for favorite activities. Others are writing, doing crafty things, hiking, climbing, and swimming. But swimming in natural bodies of water like lakes and rivers it's preferably to pools for me. I like gaming. Both video games and table top like Settlers of Catan. Although I do play games a lot I usually do it in blocks at a time, like three days of almost non stop gaming and then I'll stop and just do it casually until like three weeks go by and I'll go back to gaming mode lol. Reading and learning as much as I can about aspects of mythology I am not yet well versed in. Going to Renaissance fair's and now cons as well in costume. I also love taking pictures, mostly of nature and animals, that kind of stuff.
Wait I'm forgetting something..... Oh right heroin. I love that stuff, obviously shooting it up is great fun. I really feel like it's an activity for the whole family. You know just passing the needle around to your spouse and kids each of them getting a good dose in. I mean I guess there is a slight issue with the kids doing it, since depending on their age they may not be that competent with needles. But if you just help them out so they can shoot up with the shared needle/syringe you can make sure that they are shooting up with the processed liquid form of an opiate safely and responsibly. It's important to teach kids early on how to inject heroin into themselves with a used needle properly. You certainly can't trust some quack doctor to show your kids.
I'm not so big with Dragon Ball Z personally, (had to look up kamehameha lol) So I will go with Falcon punch since those are not restricted to a particular show so I have seen them in things I've watched lol.
I play both, but I much more prefer RPG's. And the FPS's I play are almost always partly RPG's. Like the Crysis series, Dues Ex Human revolution (I literally stayed up for close to two days straight playing that one non stop except for pee, and food breaks. Love that game), Dead Island, and one of my personal favorites the Deadspace series.
@stormdriven: Like I said, I'll answer pretty much any question, just in my meandering pattern of speech lol. I kind of type the same way I speak in real life, it's just how I roll dawg. *Insert random gangsta hand sign*
@stormdriven: I am personally a fan of both and would rather not have to choose between the two. If you are asking which I notice more or first, that is easy to answer. If a female is walking by me while facing me I typically notice their face, then hair, then eyes, and then the bust of the woman. If I do this at all, which I usually try not to because I try to be a gentlemen at all times, but I accept both women and men check out the type of person they are attracted too, it's human nature. Anyway this only takes like a fraction of a second when it happens, how ever if there is a women walking in front of me with a nice looking rear (by my preferences, everyone's are different) my eyes linger slightly longer. So with all of that in mind, I guess I am a butt guy. You'll find that I am upfront with my answers to any questions. I'll answer most of them right up front, in my meandering style granted, but ask any question and I will answer it to the best of my ability. Literally ask anything and I'll answer.
@xwraith: Well you do know what I look like since I don't hide it really lol. And if I plan on going in costume (I probably will) I will let you know what character I will be dressed as. It'll be a proper American comic book character for that one lol.
Will you be attending the Rhode Island Comic Con in November?
(Yes, it's a thing.)
Hello, this was last year you asked but I thought I'd let you know that this year I might go and attend at least one of the days of the Rhode Island Comic Convention since my con cherry has been lost to the Boston Anime Convention and I had tons of fun at it.
@scorpion2501: I don't use pick up lines myself, but one that has always given me a good chuckle (never used it myself or seen anyone use it) "F%$k me if I'm wrong, but haven't we met?" Obviously if that was used in reality it'd be weird. Pick up lines are stupid though, just talk normally.
2. Sure, you can be the boyfriend to my non existent girlfriend.
3. No, but I do give them money usually and make them do the hokey pokey to get it. (the second part is a joke)
4. He would be the kind of guy who when someone asked him what they should do he would give a bunch of solutions most of which useless and comical but at least one proper solution would also be provided. As well as when someone makes an incorrect reference or false fact he would have the almost involuntary need to correct them. I.E. somewhat like me.
@mrdecepticonleader: Oh and on the subject of chia pets my AOL Instant messenger screen name in middle/highschool was chiapetonritalin. I had one friend like randomly message me on it one time when I still used and just in all caps say "I JUST GOT YOUR SCREEN NAME!" and me and her had chatted a fare bit, we were friends in high school and I had the same one since seventh grade and this was junior year at this point. My response was a long the lines of "it took you that long? and why didn't you just ask?" I had a few friends that did that actually, however most of them had it figured out before near the end of the third year of knowing me though lol.
@mrdecepticonleader: Oh and on the subject of chia pets my AOL Instant messenger screen name in middle/highschool was chiapetonritalin. I had one friend like randomly message me on it one time when I still used and just in all caps say "I JUST GOT YOUR SCREEN NAME!" and me and her had chatted a fare bit, we were friends in high school and I had the same one since seventh grade and this was junior year at this point. My response was a long the lines of "it took you that long? and why didn't you just ask?" I had a few friends that did that actually, however most of them had it figured out before near the end of the third year of knowing me though lol.
@mrdecepticonleaderWell... no, I don't. Not technically at least. I believe a criteria for being alive is to have a pulse, which I no longer have do to some complicated issues in my real life. Lets just say it is a good thing I had my entire consciousness, personality, and accumulated knowledge backed up on a supercomputer ready to be installed into a replacement android body in case of incident with my former fleshy meat. And that I didn't skimp out on the price of said supercomputer and went with the 1.5 Geobyte level of storage instead of just the 500 Brontobyte amount. Made the downloading process much quicker. Oh and that I learned my lesson and will not challenge an all powerful godlike being to a game of "go fish". They'll cheat in the face of loosing... a lot.
I do still have feelings and emotions though. Well at least to the extent I did in my original organic meat sack body, which is to say not tons. Also I have a nifty new stun gun feature that can zap people into submission just by touching them. I'm still working out the kinks of that new feature though... my dogs kind of look like chia pets after I pet them.
@mrdecepticonleaderWell... no, I don't. Not technically at least. I believe a criteria for being alive is to have a pulse, which I no longer have do to some complicated issues in my real life. Lets just say it is a good thing I had my entire consciousness, personality, and accumulated knowledge backed up on a supercomputer ready to be installed into a replacement android body in case of incident with my former fleshy meat. And that I didn't skimp out on the price of said supercomputer and went with the 1.5 Geobyte level of storage instead of just the 500 Brontobyte amount. Made the downloading process much quicker. Oh and that I learned my lesson and will not challenge an all powerful godlike being to a game of "go fish". They'll cheat in the face of loosing... a lot.
I do still have feelings and emotions though. Well at least to the extent I did in my original organic meat sack body, which is to say not tons. Also I have a nifty new stun gun feature that can zap people into submission just by touching them. I'm still working out the kinks of that new feature though... my dogs kind of look like chia pets after I pet them.
1. How can we make housing more affordable in areas that lack affordable housing?
2. What should be done with this country's very high military expenditure? I personally think that it should be lowered, but I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
1. It's unlikely that we actually can to be honest. Housing is a privatized system so the main goal of it is profit, obviously. There also seems to be very little restrictions on what to charge for all kinds of different housing. Affordable housing typically means (sadly) cheaply made and cut corners for cost effectiveness. Housing in my opinion should be a right not a privilege. Everyone deserves to have a place to sleep with walls a roof and some form of heating. People often reference homeless shelters as a place that provides shelter to those who have none. I've volunteered at a homeless shelter, yes they have a place to sleep but it's honestly not a very safe place to sleep. They are not watched in a way to make sure that they themselves are safe, the main concern when dealing with safety is for the safety of the staff and volunteers. Which in a warped way makes sense to the people who run those places since they are legally more liable for the people who work/volunteer then the people that actually go there seeking refuge. Homeless shelters are very flawed in the way they are run.
Back to the main point however, I really do not know enough about the subject to come up with a plausible or effective solution. Sorry for the extreme lack of a proper answer lol.
2. This answer is easy, lower the freaking amount we spend on our military. And how about after we lower the military expenditure by lets say a third, we increase soldiers wages to a level that they can live well on and give them the benefits promised to them that they are often denied after there military service has ended. I mean we sure as hell will still have plenty of funding to do all that for the service men after the military's budget is cut by a third as well as still maintaining the most powerful military presence in the world. Oh and how about we that third of the now available yearly cut from the military budget to go somewhere more helpful, like education, or healthcare... no wait, not healthcare if we spend too much on that we'll have evil socialist medicine and we might loose our place as 47th in healthcare services in the world. I mean lord forbid we make it to the top twenty and have better healthcare then countries like Slovakia, China, Romania, Thailand, Peru, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and if we made it into the top ten how horrid would that be to have beaten Mexico (15th) and only just beat Libya (11th). I mean HOW could our country bare the shame of beating those countries, some of which that are considered by many Americans as third world countries. How shameful indeed.
Hello Mercy. Well for all of last month and a good chunk of the month before we had in this area almost constantly sub freezing temperatures. And today our state did seem to get a little bit of snow, I doubt you noticed how much snow we got it was almost inconsequential in the amount we got today. An aside to those who are not in the New England area that was sarcasm. We got over a foot of snow today, just today and it's looking like heavy snow falls for all day Sunday and Monday as well. Oh and for everyone in the Atlanta Georgia region, you wimps. You get barely two inches of snow and your whole damn city shuts down for like three days?! As long as it isn't still snowing tomorrow, school will most likely be back in session and again, over a foot. I'm not saying the residents are wimps (unless you were one of the residents who stayed overnight at work or school because of two inches) but your city sucks at dealing with snow, I've been here when we had two feet of snow fall on Sunday which stopped falling by Monday morning, and it was awesome because school was cancl- oh wait no it was just delayed for an hour... ok I guess I am sort of calling you wimps, but I promise you only some offense intended.
1) Things are actually going quite well for me at the moment.
2) Though I do happen to know a fair bit about archery double bows are not a thing that I have used, nor am I very well versed in the pros or cons of them.
3) I have always wanted to own a Mongolian horse bow. The are very small and compact. Essentially they are smaller recurve bows but more awesome and designed to be used on horse back, whilst maintaining a high amount of penetrative power and high velocity depending on the draw weight still of course. I've been on horse back before (I have a cousin who actually had one), it was a few years ago, actually when I was fifteen so that would make it nine years ago at this point... any way the whole concept is cool to me. Plus, from a historical standpoint, it's the bow that allowed the Huns to conquer most of Asia, Russia, and Eastern Europe.
They utilized a rather brilliant battle strategy, they would send wave of men on horse back in front of enemy forces and those men would fire their arrows and ride to the back ranks of their own forces while another group of horsemen would already be ridding past the enemy's front line firing arrows still. It was continuous waves of this to the point where most of the opposing armies forces would be decimated before the Huns even needed to draw their melee weapons to engage the enemy directly. This was even more effective when used in raiding parties against smaller settlements or villages where they would first use flaming arrows to set fire to the town buildings or defensive structures.
In history the use of flaming arrows was actually very rarely used against just people. If the arrow hits a person they are already likely out of top physical condition to fight which is the absolute best case scenario for the opponent struck by an arrow. Flaming arrows were for setting things on fire, such as buildings or perhaps siege weapons and the like. Not people. People would obviously still get hit by flaming arrows, but the aim with flaming arrows was to strike structures to burn them down.
Apologies for getting so far off topic lol, I just fine those things interesting and like to share them when possible lol. So onto question number,
4) My favorite character origins is either Alister, or Sten. In Dragon Age 2 it is Merill, or possibly Qunari mage who, (*spoiler if you have not played the game up to this point*) when I play, you free and he still chooses to except death. I find the Qunari culture fairly intriguing, don't really agree with a lot of their viewpoints but they are still very interesting too me. I am assuming I am not actually allowed to pick the character I create and play as, because if so it would be them lol.
Ah thats good to hear friend, hope CV gets to have your presence for a bit more.
I was watching a documentary about ancient weapons a few weeks ago and they showed a type of round double bow they believed was used in forest warfare because it was more compact but retained some sense of power that larger bows had. The people in the documentary were skeptical about whether it could be practical but the practical tests they did showed the particular double bow design they were focusing on was actually pretty handy. It just required a bit more strength and skill than a normal bow. It started getting me thinking about Marvel and DC characters and what characters like Captain America and Deathstroke could do given their extra strength and materials like Adamantium. Then I started thinking about characters like Thor and Sif and about the sort of bow and arrows a person could design to accommodate those characters abilities.
Oh and no worries, I appreciated your answers, I remember you mentioned archery a lot, and having an interest in it. I have an interest in it as well, but my interest outpaces my actual knowledge and experience in archery. At school I got to practice archery and it was incredible. Felt like second nature to me. No way for me to continue with to though post schooling. Though whenever a video game has an archer character/bow and arrow options I always tend to get addicted to them (so many hours spent in Resident Evil Mercenary modes because of this) so yeah I am glad you went off topic heh heh was fun to read. I have heard of that strategy of the Huns as well, I am hoping with technological improvements in video games that one day they will be able to better implement such ideas into gameplay.
Ah Sten, such a lovable lug. Ome of my favorite parts of the game is when he titles Warden as Kadan. Alistar is great as well, at first I was a bit weary but yeah he was one of my most used characters. Merril I love, especially her and Isabela together, oh and yes I know the Quinari mage you speak of and like them too. I understand what you mean about the Qunari culture, for Dragon Age III, right now I am leaning towards my character being a female Qunari warrior. Oh well if you want to talk about your Dragon Age Warden or Hawke characters you should feel free to, am always interested in hearing how people craft their own mythology with those games.
1) Yes I have. A lot of times, there are some nice beaches there to visit in warmer weather. Which right now it is not, at all lol. At 5:00pm the temperature here was around I think 10 degrees Fahrenheit which is actually a bit warmer than it was most of yesterday. Properly cold winter we are having here in New England this year.
2) Stryfe. Just because I like his character more.
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