An Inconvenient Al

Well, after seeing it parodied for years, I finally watched Algore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

My first question is “What was this movie about?” The ‘inconvenient truth’ seems to be Al himself! Most of the movie is spent showing him either giving his slide show to adoring audiences or backstage before and after a showing, including the applause. Or it tells some tale of his childhood or some personal tragedy. Throughout most of the film, the personal reminiscences seem like nonsequitors, spliced in for emotional impact only, not moving his ‘scientific’ narrative forward to any conclusion other than that he’s had some bad luck. How is that the fault of Global Warming?

He reaches lots and lots of conclusions without ever explaining exactly how he got there. Bold-faced assertions that some dire consequence will happen in the future without the back-up of real data makes them totally meaningless.

He several times throughout the film says that some friend of his gave him pictures or evidence that supports his conclusions but never shares who these people are. Are we just supposed to trust him that he knows important people who are ‘in the know’?

There are lots and lots of ‘maybe’s in this as well. Well, maybe I’ll win the lottery, too, but I’m not making major financial decisions based on any future lottery winnings. Making decisions that undermine our economy based on a series of improvable ‘maybe’s is just as foolish.

The film’s director, Davis Guggenheim said of the film, “Al Gore strips his presentations of politics, laying out the facts for the audience to draw their own conclusions in a charming, funny and engaging style, and by the end has everyone on the edge of their seats, gripped by his haunting message.” All of this is complete nonsense. The film is completely political with Al bring up his lost election over and over. In his first appearance, his makes a joke at the expense of the Bush administration.

Siteing a sampling of ‘peer reviewed’ articles as evidence of the ‘settled science’ is also quite spurious. For decades, it was almost impossible to get published in the ‘peer reviewed’ publications if you disagreed with the Global Warming hysterics. Since the release of the emails from England, we now know why. Anyone who was foolish enough to actually publish anything that challenged the orthodoxy was run out of their job. ‘Peer review’ is meaningless if you can only get published if you agree with the party line.

Gore might be more believable if he didn’t live such an extravagant lifestyle. He jets all over the world telling people that they need to cut back on their carbon emissions that then goes home to a huge mansion that uses more electricity in one month than the average home uses in an entire year. You first, Al!!

And he really does make that joke that he ‘used to be the next president of the United States’! I thought Rush’s parody made that up! He also apparently doesn’t find the joke all that funny. I guess I wouldn’t either. Who likes to be reminded of what a loser they are?

My Definition of a Moron

An Obama voter:



(stolen from Denny Wilson at http://www.grouchyoldcripple.com/)

Co-workers

One of the more irritating things about most of the TV I watch is how all these people who work together never seem to have any lives outside of work. Their work ‘family’ is it. They’re all great friends and hang out together even when not forced to do so by working hours.

Does anybody out there actually work under such conditions?

I’ve been working since I was 16 and am now pushing 50 and have never, ever encountered such a situation. Where co-workers are friends, they tend to form exclusionary cliques that are then quite cruel to their other co-workers. Not fun if you’re not in The Group.

Most groups of co-workers are barely polite to each other. We don’t get to pick our co-workers and probably wouldn’t pick the people we end up working with. We’re lucky if we can work with these people. Hoping to make friends is very unrealistic.

In all my working life, I’ve made two friends that lasted after our work association ended. I still maintain contact with them, mostly over Facebook. But if not for that, I probably would have never spoken to them after we both moved on to other employment. That’s the way it seems to work.

If you can find someone you can be friendly with, the friendship ends when you are no longer co-workers. It seems that employers is the only thing you have in common, no matter how well you get along. I’ve run into ex-coworkers and been confused at their response to meeting again. I’ve always been glad to see them, they give me a cold shoulder, usually. And it’s not just me. I’ve spoken to others who have had the same experiences.

I am now retired and on Disability. Once I got used to staying home every day, and that was quite an adjustment, I realized that no one was now forcing me to associate with unpleasant people for money. It’s an odd form of prostitution, really. I have contact with my friends and don’t have to fake interest in nasty, boring people. Win-win!

I still get to read the Internet all day and now I get to cook and knit as much as I want. More money would be nice but everything is a trade-off in life.

No more nasty people I have to pretend to like!