Leather ID Holder

I have an unlimited Metrocard for the NYC subway which lasts 30 days, regardless of when you buy it. The Metro-North commuter trains do not work that way, they sell monthly cards that are tied to the actual calendar month because they have conductors who look at your monthly pass. I used to have both cards in a small wallet with a window that allowed me to both show the Metro-North card & store the unlimited card. So when I lost my card holder at Union Pool during the Idiotarod, I decided to buy a card holder like the one I use for my work ID.

I have a fancy black crocodile leather ID holder; it's really nice & everyone likes it. I only bought it because the free ID holder my company gave me apparently got wet in the rain too many times & the ink of my photo stuck to the plastic. My old ID ended up having a ghostly image of my face on it & was unusable. I replaced my ID & put it in my new ID holder. It has a small hole in the window that allows air to flow so if it does get humid the ink won't come off the ID. Now my work ID actually looks like me.

After I lost my Metrocard holder I ordered a purple leather ID holder for $33.42 & that same day after work I went to the 99¢ store:

Beach, sponsored by

My friend was once surprised to see that there were ads on the turnstile bars in the subway. There is no place left that doesn't have adverstisements. You would think you could escape ads when you are enjoying nature, like at the beach but everytime I've gone to the beach there is always some small propeller plane that flies by, tugging a large banner ad flapping in the wind. You hear a plane & you look up to see why a plane is flying so low & even though you know it's for an ad you look anyway to see what is so important that someone would waste money hiring a plane to fly over the beach. Of course if you don't want to look at the ads in the sky you can always avert your eyes & look out at the ocean. Or not:

True Blood Sucks

True Blood is terrible & not because of the missed opportunities of having stories centered around the political, religious & social implications that go along with this show's premise: public acceptance & knowledge of vampires that was promised with the initial marketing of this show. True blood is awful because of the vampire rules that are specific to this show. Every book or tv show or movie has it's own rules about vampires. That's ok, but this show doesn't care about it's own rules. It's like watching a cop show & 2 episodes later we learn that bullets also make people sleepy if they get shot on the weekends. True blood is stupid because the author has short term memory.

According to the first episode, a silver necklace is enough to incapacitate vampire Bill. It wasn't even a gangsta' rapper necklace but a little woman's necklace. It burns his neck & he is lying on the ground unable to get up. A woman named Sookie rescues vampire Bill by removing the necklace. In season 2 we see a suicide bomber covered in silver blow himself up in a room full of vampires. The silver shrapnel goes everywhere. It should be deadly, according to what we were told. Sookie bravely sucks the tiny silver shards out of Eric the vampire's chest as though it is snake venom. Later that episode vampire Bill says that vampire Eric was in NO DANGER from the silver shapnel embedded in his chest. Apparently little silver chains can immobilize, burn & can kill a vampire but silver shrapnel blasted into your body from a bomb have no effect. It's like there is special garlic on this show that only keeps away Consistency.

Vampire Bill tells us that Eric tricked her so that she would drink some of his vampire blood which would create a bond between them & sure enough, she starts having sexual dreams about vampire Eric. Except that in the previous season, we were told that vampire blood works like LSD, if you put ONE drop on a paper towel & put it on your tongue you get high & hallucinate but she didn't. Vampire blood will also heal you quickly. Vampire blood also works like Viagra giving you an erection. Vampire blood also acts as GPS so that the vampire you drank the blood from can locate you. But when Sookie's brother Jason was in the back of a cop car he didn't want the police to confiscate his Vampire viagra so he swallowed an entire vial of vampire blood. He developed priapism but somehow managed to avoid being bonded with the vampire that supplied the blood. No dreams, no GPS, he didn't overdose on vampire LSD or heal or experience a heightened sense of smell or taste (vampire blood does that too!). It wasn't mixed blood either because we learned that his dealer of vampire blood, Lafayette, was getting the blood from only 1 vampire. Jason's girlfriend also wasn't bonded either while she was using this same vampire to supply blood for her recreational "drug" use. Vampire blood does whatever you want it to whenever you want it to because the author of these books never bothered to keep track of what was being written.

The show also doesn't know which vampire cliches to keep or get rid of. A power that vampires have in a lot of media is that they can "glamor" you. A vampire can look you in the eye & order you around. A generally accepted vampire rule is that vampires can't enter your home unless you invite them in. True blood has both of these ideas, which would be ok if they didn't invalidate the invitation rule by allowing a vampire to glamor you into inviting them in! That's right. They ignore the rule because a vampire can order you to ask him in! It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Why would they need to be invited in if they can order you to do so? So vampires don't rob your home when you aren't there? That rule exists in vampire stories because humans need a way to be safe, but True Blood discards this so that people are never safe from vampires. Why bother introducing the rule if it isn't effective? If True blood vampires can stand before a cross, in a church, with a bible as vampire Bill tells us then why not have him tell us that he doesn't need to be invited in? It's another poorly though out concept on this show. The author introduces these rules & tries to follow them but when the author realizes she's written herself into a corner, she ignores her rules in order to get out of it. It's just lazy writing.

In season 2 we also learn that the show is based on The Secret because if you want something bad enough it will happen. A woman turns out to be a Maenad, except she's not. As the vampire queen tells us, the greek gods weren't real & neither are Maenads. So how is this woman immortal & have super powers? Because she believed it. That's right, because some ancient greek woman believed she was an immortal Maenad she turned into one. Instead of this insanely stupid explanation the author could have just said "gods are real & so are those mythical creatures." It would open the door for more supernatural stories. Instead we get the most moronic explanation I've ever heard on a tv show.

This show is popular because of the nudity, violence & the twilight backlash (& yet both books have telepaths & someone impervious to telepaths). Maybe it's my fault because I pay attention. If you want to watch the show don't listen too closely to the dialogue, in fact the show is best watched with the volume down.