The State's Mixed Up Priorities

So I got my financial aid notification and I'm not happy. The Texas Legislature, in all its infinite wisdom, has taken almost $5000 away from me in scholarship money. This past year my tuition was paid for, but next year much less than half of it will be covered. Readers of the Texan probably know that I'm not the only one with a beef, but others have more severe problems. So what's the deal? They're screwing with all their formulas so that less needy students get the money. Did you know that Texas is ranked 45th among all the states in number of students who go through college after high school? And it's crap like this that causes it. Not only do you need ambition for college, but you also need money. Instead of jumpstarting the economy for the long-term by increasing the amount of skilled labor they'd rather allocate their monies elsewhere. I'm part of a single-income family and I have a 4.0 GPA, so would someone tell me what exactly I have to do to get scholarship money? Do I have to jump through blazing hula hoops? I'm still trying the FastWeb route, but no luck so far. I think I now officially hate George W. Bush, because his administration set off a chain reaction of events that caused this and yet he gets re-elected because he claims to support education. Bullshit.

My nerd news is much less aggravating. Movie pirates everywhere started hiding under rocks today upon hearing the news that Bush has signed a bill into law that would subject anyone in posession of unauthorized copies of a movie prerelease to fines and jail time of up to 3 years. So if you have done that stuff in the past, keep it in the past! It's not worth the risk. In a weak attempt to compete with Google, Yahoo launched the beta of its My Web services today. After they became such a hot item way back when they were bound to burn out. As an interesting connection to my main topic, Bill Gates is encouraging the U.S. government to relax quotas on visas given to skilled labor because apparently they can't find enough employees inside the country. This wouldn't be such a big issue if they encouraged education more by improving financial aid programs! And lastly, Nokia is preparing to release quite a monster on the high-end cell phone market with its N91, which comes with a freaking 4GB hard drive. That's more hard disk space than my old computer had! That can hold a ton of music and it comes with a 2MP digital camera. It's also Bluetooth enabled and you can buy music through the phone. Now it's drool time:



I know I've already mentioned the Batman Begins trailer a couple of times already, but there's a newer one! You must check it out right now. It's a combination of all the old ones plus a few new scenes and it's totally sweet. The remaining movie news isn't quit as exciting, but at least we know that Batman Begins will be dark and not created for the mainstream, so it should turn out well. Another cool trailer out today is the one for George Romero's Land of the Dead, which is part three of the series and looks to be promising so far. Another video you may want to check out is a behind-the-scenes montage from Kingdom of Heaven, which I really hope becomes a good movies. Back to men in funny suits though, Marvel has decided to produce its own movies and so you'll want to brace yourselves for a sleu of PG-13 flicks so they can build up a lot of capital. Something I didn't know about and maybe you didn't either is that Jerry Seinfeld is working on a CGI film called Bee Movie about a bee fresh out of college trying to make it out in the real world and befriends a florist along the way. There's more than that to it but the point is that it won't come out til November 2007 so we have a long wait ahead of us. At least it has an impressive cast. And lastly, there's a Samuel Jackson interview at JoBlo, but it's unfortunately centered around XXX 2, which is bound to flop.

Before I go I just have to plug this parody of the Wal-Mart Foundation site, especially because they got a cease and desist order from the retail giant for using copyrighted images. That really didn't help their image out much.

And now, you know you want some Thursday Threesome:

Onesome: Sex...When did you learn about sex? Was it through those films at school? Word of Mouth? Your parents?
Sex? What's that? Seriously though, I don't exactly remember. I'm pretty sure it was word of mouth. I just put all the pieces together and they fit, and then it was all confirmed in high school health class, but not with a video.

Twosome: ...Lies-- ...do you believe little white lies are all around us? Or do you prefer only the truth even if it hurts someone's feelings??
This is a tricky subject. I prefer euphemisms to lies because any kind of lie can get you in a lot of trouble. I really try to stick to telling the truth and being frank with people.

Threesome: and Videotape-- ...do you buy movies on Video and/or DVD? Or do you prefer to rent? What kind of movies do you add to your collection?
I buy DVDs of movies I absolutely love, so I only have 10 right now but there are a few others I want (Memento, a Kill Bill boxed set, Spider-man boxed set). I rent when I'm with my brother or with my cousins sometimes.