Tag: stupid

Depressing suburbia

Finally, a scientific explanation for the feeling of depression I get from suburban environments dominated by Applebee’s, OfficeMax and 8-lane thoroughfares. Urban design can have a measurable effect on how people feel. Researchers examined levels of self-reported happiness in 10 major cities. Quality urban environments do indeed contribute to happiness among residents.

“People are often connected to quality places that are cultural and distinctive. Not all neighborhoods are the same. Some are designed and built to foster or enable connections. Other are built to discourage them (e.g., a gated model) or devolve to become places that are antisocial because of crime or other negative behaviors.”

Death to suburbia. I have nothing against truly rural communities, it is the sea of despair and mediocrity in between that is the problem.
2012-07-13: I have said as much for 10 years

Nearly everything that these families had striven for — material possessions, good jobs, extracurricular enrichment for their kids — made them wholly miserable.

Film School Fraud

Is The New York Film Academy Worth The Money? i have long suspected that film school is an expensive way to unemployment, but these tales take the cake.

Furthermore, the locations your students most often ask me about tend to be notoriously expensive and difficult to shoot in: doctor’s offices, jail cells, luxury apartments, high-end restaurants, etc. That students aren’t being warned off writing scripts around such high-priced filming locations they have no prior access to is really, really strange.
I have to shoot my thesis and I’m facing a lot of problems regarding my locations: my story in fact takes place during World War II, and I need 4 peculiar interiors: a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen that can be believable for that time. In order to make my life easier, I also need a jail, ‘40′s-looking as well.
The bottom line, as I’ve written to your students time and again: outside of public streets and parks, THERE ARE NO FREE LOCATIONS IN NEW YORK CITY.
I am doing the 8 week filmmaking program…I came across your site and read your post about 5 Beekman…Being a student, the problem is that my budget is next to non-existent. Is there any possibility that we could get this location next week?

US Bathrooms

why do bathroom stalls in the US rarely have real doors going all the way to the floor? some mullah decree against hanky-panky?

Your toilets are too low down and the stalls have massive gaps around the door so that people can see in. You can put a man on the moon but can’t design a setup whereby I can have a shit in comfortable privacy. Sort it out America.

+1

We ask citizens to bear with us as we modernize every toilet stall in the country by doubling the width of the gap between each door and its surrounding frame.

this is a national priority in the us.

USPS commercial

On the verge of losing billions of $ in revenue, the US Postal Service this week is launching a new television advertising campaign designed to promote the security and reliability of snail mail. The first ad, ‘Hacked,’ reminds viewers that snail mail is safer than virus-prone e-mail, while the second ad, “Face to Face,” promotes the value of hand-delivered mail.

this would be tragically funny if not for the annoyance of getting useless statements from td bank and cigna, despite being on edelivery. they must be smoking whatever usps is smoking. good riddance, usps.

Boring future

typical failure of imagination. all these technologies used to demonstrate a “future” that hasn’t changed in any meaningful way. the message seems to be: don’t worry, you will still get to do all your familiar routines, just cooler! that is not how the future works at all.