The USS Quad Damage

… is back in the news thanks the Myers. Apparently Australia along with the United States of America are the only two OECD countries without paid maternity leave.

Which is funny because last time I checked the government gave women 9 weeks of maternity leave at minimum wage levels. Plus they give you an extra 9 weeks for every additional child born.

Hell you can even get paid for having a still born child, one that dies shortly after birth and adopted children, even those from over seas, under two years or one given to you for care before 13 weeks of age that your likely to look after for atleast 13 weeks.

Plus when I was looking on wikipedia at how long countries pay out for maternity leave it’s around 9 weeks on average anyway.

So yeah no sympathy from me for people qqing about paid maternity leave.

Rands talks about something not boring for once. And he’s wrong about Lost. I think Rands never watched X-Files, because that was when all nerds collectively figured out there’s actually nothing out there. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel, there’s no solution, because the only way to keep you watching is to keep you guessing.

In order to solve a puzzle, it must have a definite end. In order for a TV show to be complex and yet satisfying means the TV show must not have a series two. Otherwise, like the X-Files, you’ll just get dragged along until the show loses focus and popularity, and then they’ll give you aliens and everything you thought up at the very beginning but it’ll be too little, too late.

All good shows with complexity have had an ending. The Pirates movies were great because there isn’t going to be a fourth. If there was, it should involve different characters in hopefully a different setting, the way Read or Die did with the TV series, which is why it’s a pretty cool moment when they meet “the paper” in the series.

And if you’re looking for complexity, you can’t look further than FLCL. That shit should be canon. People should be taught it in high schools. It’s like those old puzzles everyone learns as a kid and you have fond memories of how you solved it when you were young, and you can give it to your kids as well.

The most important thing about complexity is that by itself it’s nothing. This is what makes Opeth a fucking brilliant band. It took me a while to understand the music. For someone coming from Dimmu or other ADD heavy metal, Opeth is positively repetitive, but repetition re-inforces structure, and complexity shatters it. Good TV follows a lot of rules, and really good TV knows how to break the rules, and how to add complexity. As Will Smith says “[We both do the same thing, but] I make this look good.”

Also, pride and prejudice? You have got to be fucking kidding me.