Mr. Money Bags, You Can't Be Serious...

I wasn't planning on posting anything until later today but I am so outraged by this that it simply could not wait.
Once again, the human race has demonstrated to me that they are irrecoverably stupid and continue to proudly hold there subjective preferences over common sense and justice. I am, of course, referring to the newest edition of the board game Monopoly: International Monopoly.
The people at Hasbro wanted to try and get people excited about their new board so in their infinite widsom they chose to have people vote to pick what cities would be featured. The more votes the further up they get.

So what does the board look like? Well, all of the obvious choices for the most valuable spots (New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Beijing) are all peppered around the middle of the board, only Paris being placed on the final straight away. Many of the most well known and most populous cities in the world arent' recognized: Los Angeles, Seoul, Prague, Madrid, Amsterdam, Dublin, Egypt, any city in Germany, any city in Russia, any city in India, any city at all from Central OR South America!

But of course, these tiny, significant cities had to make room for mecca's of modern day civilization such as Kyiv, Vancouver, Toronto, Belgrade, and Gdynia. I've never even heard of Gdynia. And what two mighty cities claimed the coveted dark blue spots you ask? Well Riga and Montreal, but of course! Now if you're like me, you are asking yourself, "Where the hell is Riga?" To answer your question it is in Latvia, or as no-one-in-the-whole-world-calls-it: "The Center of the Earth". If you're wondering where exactly Latvia is it is one of those three tiny countries right next to Russia (the other two are Estonia and Lithuania).

Seriously, what was Hasbro thinking when they put this together? Never mind their exclusion of cities like Berlin, Moscow, and Mexico City. How can they have THREE cities from Canada of all places and not have a single city from the entire CONTINENT of South America? The common sense approach to this board would have been simply to designate each color to a continent and any continent with a large number of historical cities (such as Europe) would be given two colors. Even if they decided to go with the very flawed voting system they went with they should of at least had the sense to limit the number of cities from each country to one or reserved the right to put the cities in whatever order they saw fit. Doing that would have at least made it possible to put somewhere respectable onto the final straight away (the only city that belongs there currently is Paris).

I have nothing personally against any of the places that did make it on the board and I also understand that it would have been impossible not to leave some great cities off the board but it is pretty hard to objectively defend a place like Capetown being given the final green and Montreal the most valuable spot on the board when somewhere like New York or London (two cities that virtually everyone in the world has at the very least heard of) are on red and cities like Rio De Janeiro and Mumbai (the largest city proper on earth) aren't even on the board!
Ah, humanity. I'm not surprised, but I'm still dissapointed.

Ice Breakers: Part Duex

I guess when I put up "Random thoughts and Ramblings" on the title of this blog I wasn't kidding. Not that I'm hugely unsatisfied with what has been posted thus far, but when your as opinionated as myself you like to try and say something just a little meaningful every once in a while. Over the next few weeks I'm going to make a much stronger effort to cover topics that I really have something to say about. Things that really grind my gears. Things like Bill Maher and public opinion on steroids. People's opinions about the economy and government. In general, just how much I can't stand the approximately 70% of the world's population that is stupid to the point where if someone they trusted told them the wrong thing they could be pretty dangerous.
I'll probably talk a lot about sports and a little about music. If I was talking about me from 4 years ago it would have been a lot more about music.

I'll undoubtedly talk about how I should be doing lots of things like performing stand up comedy and going around asking/begging different people for internships and work. I'll piss and moan and ironically muse about my frustration of being a struggling human being in a competitive world.

I'll probably talk about a lot of this over the next few days, maybe even some of it tonight. So if that stuff sounds like something that might interest you, maybe you should ask to see my pamphlet sometime. For right now I'm going to work on a magazine article for Primer Magazine about riding on the New York City Subway. Until then, I hope this can satisfy your unsatisfiable nature (the human nature, naturally).

Be back soon,

Kevin H. MacLean

(Sort of) Brave New World

You know, this isn't actually even my first blog, technically. My first blog was started over the summer of last year (2008) for an internship at a theater production company. I never actually made a single post, but it was called "Good 'Bad' Theater". If I had written anything, it probably would have been about how much I hated that internship and a mass warning to anyone who would find it, "Don't see this show!"

I quit that internship in mid July. When I did I was so worked up and angry that I probably could have written 50 pages worth of complaints and frustration. But I didn't ever write anything.

So that was my first blog and this is my second, but this is my first post.


-Kevin H. MacLean

P.S. I could say more, a lot more. I could talk about why I quit that internship, or the music I love, why I didn't finish filling out my profile, or the woman at work today who unleashed a profanity filled tirade when I asked where she was from. But I'll save all of that. After all, I need to keep you coming back for something, don't I?