samueljohn's blog

I like to consider myself a film aficionado.  And since this term is generally applied to fanatics, enthusiasts, or Johnny Depp crazed middle aged women, and I happen to be none of these, I suppose I’m really a mere critic.  I love to watch a good movie and roast it.  Movies like Elf, Wild Wild West, and Crossroads are all among my all time favorite terrible movies, just because every time I watch them, I learn something new. 

I wonder sometimes at the American school system.  If there is anything as anti-American as the school systems, let me know.  Schools ban everything that freedom is about.  I was okay when they didn't let my friend Gean print her article on Immigration.  I was okay when they didn't allow my Drama Club to perform Footloose because of its' "adult themes" or whatever they claimed it to be, although in all actuality it was because our principal was Baptist.  But now, I am not going to just sit back and "be okay."

As a Junior in High School, my AP Language and Composition teacher assigned us to read Henry David Thoreau's Walden.  Yes, this would be the book that sold a grand total of seven (I think it was seven, at least) copies during Thoreau's lifetime, three of which to his own mother.

I despised Walden far more for Thoreau's literary personality that the dry quality of his speech.  Thoreau's a literary snob.  He finds it necessary to go off on a tangent in Latin, and then explain it in plain-man's English for those of us too dumb to understand his high-class level of speech.  Thoreau is a self-proclaimed man who "marched to the beat of his own drummer."  Or so he wished to believe.  He lived in the wilderness for two years, two months, and two days, and in that time he lived his life-SUPPOSEDLY- vegetarian, alone, and nobly by-passing the prosperity of normal life and finding the true meaning.

Many of you have probably watched the WB's Survival of the Richest.  If you haven't, you're really not missing much.  There are an equal number of rich and poor kids and they compete in poor/rich combos for a grand prize of $200,000 for the poor to pay off their debts and the rich to... well, that part wasn't quite explained.  Anyways, one of the "competitions" (which was really just supposed to be an eye-opening experience for all those pompous rich kids) turned out to be helping out at a food bank.  Simple enough.  Make food, hand it out to all the "Po' Folks."

In the fourth grade, I developed a severe case of depression.  I was dorky, and unpopular, and I read... a lot.  I was unhappy with my upper-middle class existence.  I was drowning in suburbia and I couldn't get out.  After several attempted suicides, I came across a book that suggested writing as a release.  Pathetic, I know, but the rest is history.

The American philosophy of capitalism is a reformed "survival of the fittest" "may the best man win" kind of situation. 

So, using all of your resources: money, family, friends, blood sweat and tears; is the theme of our market.

So, explain to me why synergy is illegal.  When I say synergy, I mean... corporations using all of their resources.  That means using sister companies, utilizing the market they have created.  Just because Mom n' Pop stores don't have those resources, it suddenly becomes illegal to have an advantage?  I don't understand that.  After all, it is the "American Way," isn't it?