Monthly Archives: October 2010

The Village That All of Korea Forgot…a legospaceman ghost story

Writing, , , , , ,

It was late in the Summer of 1988 when I was assigned to an Army counterintelligence field office in South Korea. However, it was during a field exercise during the Team Spirit wargames that this particular incident occurred.

As a field agent, it was part of my job to interview soldiers and civilians who had information that might be of interest to military and national security. From time to time, the information was of use, but most of the time this information tended to be incorrect, misunderstandings of insignificance. However, from time to time, information came my way that tended on the bizarre, and all one could do was investigate and hope to explain away the situation in some reasonable manner. This brings us back to the Team Spirit Exercise of 1988.

As members of the intelligence group operating in South Korea, it was our job during these exercises to concentrate our efforts against the US troops that were going to be arriving from the states. However, because we were stationed in South Korea, it was also part of our job to investigate any real world situations that happened to come our way. It was surprising how many of these would happen during one of these war maneuvers.

There were four agent stationed back at the field office to handle the investigations that were already ongoing. I was personally assigned a private as a counterintelligence (CI) assistant and one Korean Augmentee to the US Army (KATUSA) translator. We were working on covert surveillance missions for Team Spirit missions when a call came over the radio from headquarters to report to one of the 2nd Infantry Division Infantry comanies concerning a possible breach of security.

I took Corporal Yu (my KATUSA) and Private Bottoms (my driver and assistant) with me to investigate the situation. Once there, I proceeded to initiate an investigation (the results and content of which are not significant to the story). However, while conversing with one of the platoon sergeants of this unit to gain some background information on the circumstances, a sergeant first class reported to me something that struck me as great interest at the time.

“Sir,” he said, “I don’t know if it means anything, but one of my squad leaders reported a pretty strange occurrence while on maneuvers near the ******* region.” (the actual location is not important, although it was located quite some distance from the demilitarized zone, as most military maneuvers would not be located close to the border with North Korea) I asked him to elaborate. “Well, we were traveling to this hill trying to seek higher ground for a fifty position when one of the locals stopped us and told us we were traveling on sacred ground.”

“Sacred ground?” I said. “This is Korea, not an Indian reservation.”

“I know it sounds strange, sir,” he continued, “but the locals were serious, and they didn’t want our guys to continue heading up the hill.”

“So, what happened?”

“Well, my guy decided to chance it anyway. That was when of the locals told him that the place was haunted.”

This revelation surprised me. Coming from a private or some green lieutenant, this might be expected, but this was someone who was wearing a combat patch from Vietnam. This guy wore an expert infantryman badge, and he didn’t look like the kind of guy who would accept a ghost story as any type of answer. However, that was what he was telling me. “So, what happened then?”

He smiled. “The damn bastard came back down and reported it to me.”

“So, why are you telling me this?” I said.

His smile grew even deeper. “Well, who else was I supposed to tell?”

That seemed to be the catch-all phrase for half of the information that came my way. If someone wanted to pawn off information, we were the people to pawn it off to. CID handled criminal cases, MI handled intelligence cases, and we handled anything that didn’t fit anywhere else. That included strange lights, UFOs and ghost stories. Catch-all summed it up quite nicely.

I had the platoon sergeant draw me up a map of the location we were discussing, and then I concluded the business I was at this unit to conduct. From there, I went back to where our logistical group was located. After firing off an electrical message to Seoul concerning our real investigation, I met up with my fellow agents and passed on the story of what was told to me.

Only one other agent was interested in the story; the others didn’t consider it worth their time. For the sake of identifying him for the story, I’ll just say his name was Mr. Smith (a name I’ll use considering he’s still working in this field to this day). Mr. Smith and I sat down in our tent and worked out a plan of action to see if there was anything to this ghost story.

The first phase of our investigation was to find the site. The next day I was on infiltration duty with my assistants, so Mr. Smith took the day to investigate the ******* region. When I returned from maneuvers that evening, Mr. Smith’s vehicle showed up, and he told me he was successful in finding the location. It was located at the top of a hill (he showed me on the map). There was a small village at the bottom of the hill, and several people attempted to stop him from traveling up the hill before he continued past them and found what was definitely the site described by the platoon sergeant.

Mr. Smith described the site as a series of buildings that all appeared to be abandoned for no apparent reason. He spoke excitedly about finding furniture still in the buildings, but no occupants of the buildings themselves. He said there was an eerie feeling about the place as they traveled through the ghost town. He even said that his KATUSA, Sergeant Kim, grew really nervous before they finally decided to leave and report back to camp. Sergeant Kim didn’t say what was wrong at the time, but when I spoke to him, he told me that there was something bad about that place, but he just didn’t know what it was. He refused to elaborate any further than that, which was unusual because Sergeant Kim was usually pretty upfront about everything.

The only problem with the first expedition is that no one brought a camera, so there was no proof of anything they saw. All they brought back were eerie stories of feeling they were being watched. Therefore, I decided to find the place myself.

The next day I brought Corporal Yu and one of our US Army corporals, another CI assistant, who I will call Corporal Jones (as he is now an agent himself and probably would not appreciate his real name being used), along with Private Bottoms who I always liked to have around because of his clear head in most situations. I chose Corporal Jones for this journey mainly because he was an excellent driver and had an excellent knack for getting us out of situations that weren’t always as clear cut as I would have liked. I didn’t anticipate any trouble during this fishing expedition, but I always liked having Corporal Jones as my driver whenever possible.

Using a map drawn by Mr. Smith, and the map drawn up by the platoon sergeant before, we set out the next morning to find the ghost town. The trek was quite a long one considering the fact that once one leaves the city roads in South Korea (at least back then), one quickly finds oneself traveling down dirt roads, and even roads that are no bigger than rice paddy mounds used by farmers who travel across on bicycles. Corporal Jones handled himself and our vehicle quite well, and eventually we came across a village that was located at the bottom of a very large hill/mountain.

At the forefront of this little village was a small convenience store, much like every other convenience store located throughout South Korea. It is not hard to spot these places when out in the larger cities. Almost always, there is a display of Pepsi-Cola (with printing in both English and Korean that reads Pepsi-Cola, a display that contrasts with pretty much everything else sold in these little stores) in front of a sliding door that houses multiple colored products that can be bought for daily living. Most products are warm as there is rarely electricity running these places. Usually, the family that owns the stores usually lives deeper within the store itself, as it also serves as the family home as well as the village store. As expected, the family was seated behind the sliding glass door, eating a meal of kimche. When they noticed our vehicle pull up outside of their store, the sliding glass door slowly peeled open and a young woman stepped out meekly to greet us.

Corporal Yu stepped out of the vehicle and spoke to her. He told her that we were searching for a small village that was supposed to be on top of the hill. He asked her if she knew anything about the place. She told him that there was an old school on top of the hill, but that no one went there anymore. She stared at the rest of us with suspicion and seemed nervous about speaking before Corporal Yu lied and told her that none of us spoke Korean, that she could speak to him freely and he would filter the information that came to us. Corporal Jones and I were both fluent in Korean, but Corporal Yu knew it made people speak up if they thought we weren’t.

Corporal Yu then asked her if there was ever anything strange about the place. She said that people used to get scared there, but then stopped speaking when the sliding glass door opened again and her father stepped out. Before she could say anything more, he waved her back into the store and took up a position in front of Corporal Yu. His first words in Korean were that there was nothing to see on the hill, and that we should turn around and go home.

Corporal Yu attempted to ask him a few more questions, but the father refused to answer anything. He was adamant about there being nothing of interest at the old school, and he refused to even discuss the possiblity of anything abnormal happening in the area. Finally, frustrated, Corporal Yu bought four Pepsis and walked back to the vehicle with the father following close behind him.

The father moved over to my open window, figuring that I was probably the one in charge of our little group. In broken English, he said that we should go home, that there was nothing for us to look for there. I responded in English, speaking slowly, asking him simple questions that basically had little merit or value other than establishing the fact that I was trying to speak to him in English. After a couple of questions that he answered quickly without thinking, I switched to Korean and asked him how long the local people have stayed away from the place because it was haunted. It was an old trick, and like usual, it worked. He responded, saying it had been several months, right before he realized he answered a question put to him in Korean. Before he could deny any further knowledge of a haunted area, I motioned for Corporal Jones to drive on and head up the hill.

The road wasn’t a simple one we had to travel. There were parts of it that were quite dangerous. But we made it, and the effort was worth it.

As described, the place was some kind of camp retreat, half school and half residences. If this was a place in the United States, I would have assumed it was a children’s camp, or some place you’d find a cult religion. But being in Korea, it was very possible that this place was some type of community that had been put together over the years.

The buildings were mostly similar in shape, almost like large doll houses. However, the first building we came across was the length of five or six of the buildings put side by side. When we entered it, we realized we were in some type of church.

There were still pews down one side of the church, but down the other side, the pews had been ripped from their housings and scattered across the floor. There was an altar on the far end of the room, almost like one would find in a down south Methodist church. There was a podium in front of the altar, but there was nothing else of religious significance in the room. It wasn’t hard to tell that this was a place used for some religious ceremony,but whether it was Christianity, Buddhism, or Satanism was difficult to tell. That was when the first feeling that something was wrong came to us.

I felt it myself, but Corporal Jones was the first to say it out loud. “I need some air,” he said as he stepped outside and we followed behind him. Once outside, he told me that the place started to feel really stuffy inside and that he had to get out. I realized I had the same feeling myself, but I was the leader of this expedition, so I pretended this revelation came as a surprise to me.

“Let’s check out some of the other buildings,” I said.

We continued going through the rest of the buildings, and with each one we discovered something different that sparked our interest. In one, there was furniture that was thrown around the place like some major fight had taken place. In the next, everything was completely in place, except that a closet door had been thrown off of its hinges. With each unit we went into, something always seemed to be different from the ones we had already seen.

We spent several hours going through the many buildings–there were over forty in total–before we finally began to feel we had seen enough of the place to justify our belief that something wasn’t right. There were two levels of buildings to this place as well; the second level was hidden around a corner of the main hill and we ended up discovering that section completely by accident. But during the entire time we were there, not a single person from the village came up to see what we were doing, even though the father from the store had to have told everyone that Americans were traveling up to the camp.

During the entire time I was there, I kept feeling that there were people watching us. Often, I stopped and looked around, convinced that someone was right behind me. But there never was.

Throughout the entire trip, we all were completely on edge, almost as if we were expecting something out of the ordinary to take place. But nothing ever did. It was like the entire place was dead to the world around it.

Finally, we finished taking several rolls of film of the place, and then we headed back down the hill to find the nearest city where we could contact local authorities to see if they knew anything about the place.

The nearest city was several clicks away, and we found a precinct of the Korean National Police. As representatives of the US forces, and card-carrying members of the KNP, we met with a Captain Pak who proceeded tot ell us that the place we visited was an old live-in school that was no longer used. When I asked why there was still furniture in the buildings, he stated that he didn’t believe that was so. When I asked him if he had ever been there, he said that neither he nor any of his staff had ever been there mainly because they just didn’t have the time to visit old sites like that. When I asked him to comment on ghost stories, he just smiled and said that he had heard reports like that, but they were just supersititions. As a joke, I asked him if he wanted to return with us to take a look at the place. He laughed and said that he couldn’t, that his job was too pressing for time. However, he did offer to invite me and my staff to coffee with the local members of the KNP. During our coffee break, I mentioned that we could have spent that time investigating the site; he just smiled and continued to order more drinks (coffee is not all they serve in Korean coffee shops). When we were ready to leave, he invited us to join him and his staff for coffee again in the future, stating that he hoped he was of assistance to us in some way.

With that, we went back to our camp site to discuss our findings with Mr. Smith. Sadly, we never had the opportunity to visit the site again.

My Next Novel

Writing, , ,

One of the more exciting aspects of being a novelist is that every now and then you actually get to sit down and write a novel. Imagine that. Well, I’ve been giving the prospect a lot of thought lately, and now I finally realize what is going to be the next novel.

The working title: Mapping the Silence of Dreams

Genre: Fantasy

Premise: The next realm of exploration is Mindspace after a discovery is made that links the dream world that everyone travels to when they fall asleep. All along we thought it was a realm that existed within each person’s mind, but now we know that everyone travels to this same place, yet are separated by their own barriers their minds construct to protect them. Well, now that we’ve begun to explore it, we start to realize there’s something else in Mindspace. Something alive. Something that’s been waiting. And it’s ready.

The novel is based on a short story I wrote years ago and stashed away in a drawer but always wanted to do more with. Well, now it gets its chance.

I begin writing it on Monday, which is the start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where the goal is to write a novel (50,000 words) in one month. Last year, I wrote Plato’s Perspective during the contest.

A few of my friends will be participating this year.

How Math Saved the World…at least during World War II

Economics, Politics, , , , , , , , , ,

People who know me know that I am a huge fan of mathematics. My last academic paper for communication was a theoretical paper using a mathematical iterative model to develop international compliance and friendship between nations that have adversarial relationships. I developed this because I was sick and tired of the 18th century negotiations model we’ve been using nonstop even to this day, something I critique quite often whenever we get to having to deal with yet another adventure in acquiring peace in the Middle East.

But recently, according to Wired, it seems that mathematics has more of an interesting history than we may have been told. During the Second World War, it appears that our intelligence used the kind of thinking I really like. Instead of just relying on spot reports and covert agents, they used innovative thinking. When soldiers captured enemy tanks, rather than just strip them apart for intelligence involving their capabilities, they also recorded the serial number for the tank itself. Some intrepid mathematician for the government realized that if you used those numbers, you not only could catalogue a specific tank, but you could use the categorization scheme to figure out exactly how many tanks the Germans had. And once you knew that, you knew exactly how many you needed to make to overwhelm your enemy. Unlike the past where nations would just create weapons until they ran out of money, or guestimated they were making enough, this told you exactly how much you needed to beat your opponent in the field. When you needed a 2 to 1 advantage, at least according to the old numbers involving calvary and tank warefare, it was important to only field as much as you needed.

Well, the equation they came up with was:

, where k=the number of tanks observed, m=the largest serial number observed. The -1 is the simple factor that for every tank you take out of usage (meaning you were looking at the serial number of a tank that was removed from battle), you would not run into that same serial number again. Then you use this number to calculate the variance (N) and you now know how many tanks the enemy was fielding.

This formula was so accurate that we predicted the German were building 255 tanks a month, and after the war we discovered we were off by one tank (they were building 256 tanks a month). Not bad, eh?

People constantly disparage the importance of mathematics, but it can be used for so many different applications that people don’t even think about. With iterative calculations, you can estimate instances of occurrences, something I’ve recently found to be very interesting in figuring out long-term, generational effects. For too long, we’ve focused on calculus, which is quite useful for area-filling calculations, but this has pushed us into a one-use kind of mathematics that has limited its application. Statistics are great for certain things, but some questions involve the application of time and the degeneration of numbers. Fortunately, our ability to use the math at our disposal makes us capable of answering a lot of questions we were only imagining only a few decades before.

30,000 hits and no comments

Writing, , ,

I just noticed for the first time today that my blog now has 30,000 hits. That’s almost as much as a sex site gets in a whole three hours, and 29,732 more than Lindsay Lohan gets when she blogs about integrative calculus, so I found that to be seriously impressive. But what bothers me is that I have no comments. I get a few comments on facebook from time to time, but for some reason this widget doesn’t seem to import them anymore to my blog, which makes it seem like my blog has everything but tumbleweeds turning over and over again.

Yet, I get dozens of spam messages a day. So, somehow the spammers are finding my site and trying to get me to advertise their crap. But real people aren’t reading me. Or at least I can’t tell if they’re reading me because the only actual responses I get are spammers. And I’m convinced they’re not really reading me because when you get messages that hit my spam folder like: “I really like what you’ve done with your site, and I’m going to subscribe to your feed. Now, are you sure you understood Justin Bieber’s argument in his new single properly?”

Maybe I’m just wasting my time with this blog. I really don’t know. I know my stuffed animals read it, but they read everything I put in front of them, so I don’t even have to put it on the net for them to read what I have to write.

NaNoWriMo is starting again

Writing, , ,

For those of you who write, perhaps this is not news for you, but National Novel Writing Month is about to begin on November 1st. For those of you who don’t know what it is, this is a month where writers attempt to start and complete a novel. Last year, I spent my time writing Plato’s Perspective. It was a very rough draft, but it was interesting to churn that out in one month. I’m still working on it to this day, but it was definitely worth the effort and the time involved.

This means that this year I have to come up with a new novel idea that I will start writing on November 1st, which is less than a week away. To be honest, I didn’t realize a whole year had already gone by.

For me, this is a huge event. That’s because I’ve been a novelist for about as long as I’ve been an adult. I’ve never wanted to be anything else. I have a friend of mine who is a movie director who puts on all sorts of different hats to complete his projects, but as I keep telling him, that’s not my way. I’m a writer, and that’s all I’ve ever claimed to be. It’s all I ever plan to do as well.

Which brings all sorts of possibilities for the future because in 6 days I have to have an actual idea and start writing on it. I don’t even know what genre I want to cover, so this could be interesting.

“The Event” and “Chase” Leave a Lot to Be Desired

Television, Writing, , , , , , ,

I gave them both a try. I even continued watching both shows long after I thought they had seriously jumped sharks, shark tanks and the Atlantic Ocean. But nothing about these shows has caused me to think that they’re worth any further watching on my part. Last night’s airing of both is a good example.

The Event

The series started off with a bit of an overhyped dud and has managed to dog paddle its way through the rest of the season. In the very first episode, they presented us with “the event”, or at least what I think was supposed to be the event. A plane was hurtling towards the president, and then out of nowhere it vanished. The next week, the plane reappeared in the desert. Then secret police/military helicopters showed up and may have slaughtered everyone. And then the bodies woke up. And then the bodies were now all prisoners wondering what happened. My writing of this makes it sound a lot more exciting than it really was. To be honest, it’s been extremely boring, accented with huge moments that generally don’t make any sense. And I don’t mean “doesn’t make any sense in a LOST sort of way”. It’s more a “doesn’t make sense in a Cop Rock (remember that show?) sort of way”. Nothing the show has done has caused me to really think: “I can’t wait to see how they pull this off” or “I wonder what’s going to happen next.” Instead, it’s been more like “I really can’t wait until they go to a commercial so I can do something constructive like check email for a spam message I’m hoping to receive.”

Last night’s episode was par for the course. Let me explain. The main actor, who is Jason Ritter, the son of John Ritter, attempted to act his way out of a paper bag in which he showed his range of “I’m in a panic mode cause I’m looking for my girlfriend” and “I’m in anger mode because I’m looking for my girlfriend.” Unfortunately, in the previous episode, he found his girlfriend, so his acting range has no purpose right now, as “I found my girlfriend, so I’m now going to act all frantic for no reason is hopefully not going to be noticed by the audience.”

And that’s a huge part of the problem with the show right there. The acting is atrocious. And I mean ALL of the acting. At first, I thought it was because they had really bad actors, but there are some pretty decent actors here who are doing some seriously horrendous acting, which to me means their director sucks because even bad actors can’t act this badly. An example: One of the main recurring actors is D.B. Sweeney who has done some great things in the past. He was in a show with Terry O’Quinn, the bald guy who plays Locke in LOST, called Harsh Realms, where he played the buddy of the main character, and he was really good in this part. When I saw he was now in The Event, I was actually thinking, wow, they got a good actor, mainly because I was seeing a lot of bad acting. They’ve done nothing great with him, and as a matter of fact, his acting is pretty crappy in this show as well, which immediately tells me that the director seriously sucks.

Another example was the appearance of Paula Malcomson, who plays, well, to be honest, I haven’t a clue who she was playing because I was having a seriously hard time paying attention when she finally appeared. Malcomson is the actress who plays Amanda Graystone in Caprica, who probably has one of the most nuanced parts in television these days on that show. In The Event, they decided that because she was a “serious” actress, they were going to let her show her talents at being completely nuts and off the wall. She puts on a 40 or so second rant that was basically best described as “bad actress overacting”. I half expected the two other actors in the scene to respond with “Really?” because it was so over the top bad acting that I couldn’t imagine anyone else remaining in character for the rest of that scene. But fortunately, we was joined by Jason Ritter and the woman who plays the FBI agent, so the bad acting continued ensue and a good time was had by all.

Let’s move on with the story. In the last episode, they released the mysterious woman who won’t tell the president her secrets because of some strange terrorist demand that the government do so. So, she goes on the subway, drives around for a while and then ends up in a wannabe Starbucks, orders coffee, and then her fellow accomplice throws off a tracking device placed in her food (and now in her) by mixing a similar tracking device in the creamer of the coffee so that soon 50 something people are walking around with the tracking device. And then the good/bad guy working with her ends up beating up one of his fellow FBI agents, burying him in the trunk of his car and then radioing the bad guy holding everyone hostage that he needs to come in.

So, they all move in on a huge warehouse where the bad guy is holding out. Fortunately, the government just so happens to see the mysterious woman walk in through the front door of the warehouse with a CC camera at the last second before she disappears behind the door. So an FBI crack team of guys in military uniforms with FBI blazened on the back of their jackets rush into the building to catch the big bad, mean terrorist. I say this because this leads to a typical police raid drama that should have required the writers and director to have actually watched a typical police raid drama some time  in the past because it has to be the biggest joke of a raid I’ve ever seen. First off, it had to be the slowest raid physically possible. After the crack team breaks through the front door, they waddle forward in as slow a manner as physically possible so that we end up with at least two commercial breaks before they get about fifteen feet past the front door. Before they even get that fifteen feet in, the executives of the FBI then come crashing in behind them. You can tell the executives because they’re the ones that don’t wear any protective gear other than a flack vest, but all have three piece suits, minus the jacket, because somewhere in Hollywood land some informed them that cops look much cooler with the dress shirt, flack vest and hand gun attire than with full body armor and machine guns like the rest of the guys were wearing.

So, in all of this time they’re raiding, the bad guys get away by crawling into a hole in a drain that’s located in the room next to the one where the ten thousand crack soldiers are breaking into their warehouse. And then, and this was my favorite part of the episode, he activates some mysterious glowing bomb and the double agent guy from before decides to sacrifice his life (even though he can get away just by stepping into the drain opening about two feet away from him) because somewhere down the line he had to give up a girl he fell in love with because being an alien (did I mention he was one of the aliens?) he would never age, and well, we learned from watching years of Highlander that you just can’t do that to a woman. But back to the great moment of television history: The President of the United States is watching the invasion over the CC camera, which for some reason is relaying the image in full HD television, and focused directly on the door where the FBI agents busted in. And then, for no apparent reason, the CC camera switches to a full view of the warehouse, and we watch it implode on itself. And all I’m left wondering is: Who the hell switched the camera angle, how did he know to do it at that time, and where did that new image come from? Unfortunately, those questions won’t be answered by The Event because they were stupid mistakes in creating the show, not mysteries within the show itself.

When the episode ended, I was almost comatose and thankful it ended. And then I watched the lead-in for The Chase.

The Chase

One of the stupidest shows I’ve seen in years. It involves a female US Marshal who apprehends fugitives. For some reason, they’ve made her out to be a chance-taking, thrill-seeking agent who risks her life constantly. In the beginning of this episode, she gets angry at one of her agents who doesn’t risk his life jumping onto a boat that might have three armed fugitives on it. Her second in command plays the Will Riker character of her conscience, who tends to try to keep her grounded.

What bothers me about the show is that it takes every cliche of Hollywood and uses it as if it’s brand new. Last night, there were three separate dialogue moments where a character said something, and I responded out loud with exactly what was going to be the zinger of a response. And word for word, I was right each time. I’m not kidding either.

The villains are cartoonish and way over the top. I kind of wondered where they would even imagine such people really existed. Even the bar in Mos Eisley didn’t have a cesspool of villainy like the ones that occur in Chase. Sometimes, I find myself rooting for the bad guys, just in hopes that the death of the US Marshals on the show might cause the show to never appear again on network television.

Both shows have been picked up for finishing out their season, but I imagine that is only because NBC has nothing better planned. It has done everything possible to hype the crap out of The Event, but it’s really not worth the effort. The only thing going for it is that it comes on right after Chuck, which is a great television show, even when it’s not at its best. Unfortunately, everything following Chuck makes me realize how nice it is that I own books that I can read instead.

It Takes a Village Idiot & Other Self-Serving Nonsense

Economics, Politics, , , , , ,

Another election period is upon us, which means an endless stream of attack ads, empty promises and commercials about politicians who claim to be just like us but would never cavort with any of us unless it was during an election cycle. But what gets my goat the most is not the election pandering itself but one of the common refrains that just won’t go away. The one that says we’re doing it for the children.

You know the appeal I’m talking about. Someone will go off half cocked (or full cocked, or because someone did something involving a cock), and then state that he or she is doing what he or she is doing “for the children”. What they are really saying is that they’re doing for themselves, but they really need to sound like they’re doing it for a much higher purpose, and what purpose is higher than the generation that is coming up next?

In 1996, Hilary Clinton, who was First Lady at the time, wrote a book called It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. During the Bill Clinton Administration, it became a major talking point, and in 1996, H. Clinton went on a nationwide, ten-city book tour where she advocated that it takes a village to raise a child. I won’t get into the quandary that was the fact that H. Clinton really didn’t write this book, as it was actually ghostwritten by Barbara Feinman, but I did want to talk about a fundamental foundation of the book itself, and why it still continues to provide problems for modern day America.

One of the problems I have always had with the book is that it makes a specific claim that it never really backs up. Drawing from a spiritual African folklore idea, the book projects a belief that in order to raise a child in modern society, it requires everyone in the society to participate to make that child better. It also demands that all of the society’s resources be combined to bring forth the best children we can raise. That’s all fine and dandy if you have children, but it also makes a major assumption that a childless adult cares one iota about someone else’s children.

The book’s idea has been used a lot lately in projecting itself in political issues. Whenever there’s a debate about adult values being considered, quite often the argument gets placed back into the nursery sphere, and we’re arguing whether or not children should be subjected to influences they may not be ready for. Examples are music, videogames, television and movies.

Let’s look at those examples a bit. The first example was music, and look at how we’ve handled these issues in our modern day brush with this issue. It should not be surprising that one of the first avenues of contention occurred right about the same time rap music became a mainstream phenomenon. Next thing you knew, we had political commentators all over the country arguing that musicians (rap stars) were advocating all sorts of violence against police and state run institutions. In order to “protect” the children, we had to separate this horrific music from their ears. As such, people like Elizabeth Dole and Tipper Gore started advocating that music needed to be controlled because if it was not, then we might risk the future development of our children. That alliances occurred between such strange bedfellows as Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and John Denver against such actions is a testament to how deranged the attacks were in the first place.

Since then, there have been all sorts of continued attacks on the arts by all sorts of different “for the children” advocates. Computer games are constantly attacked by Jack Thompson, a disbarred Florida attorney, who has continued a Quixotic campaign against videogames that is so futile that he is continuously ridiculed by the Penny Arcade comic strip duo of Tycho and Gabe, even though he continues to threaten to sue them, causing them to humiliate him even further.

I could go on for hours about this sort of stuff, but the point of this post was to emphasize how fallacial the argument is that a village must respond to the needs of the few who advocate it takes a village to raise a child. And that’s where I wish to continue.

You see, the whole “it takes a village” crowd has managed to force itself into the decision-making process of a lot of things that directly affect adults who have nothing to do with children, and that’s just wrong. Part of the reason we formed a society in the first place wasn’t to protect the children, but to protect the adults from each other. As critical as it is that Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau compete against each other for why we formed in the first place, not a single one of them advocates that we formed for the purpose of raising kids but that our formation was for the purpose of how adults interact with each other. Somehow, with this whole “it takes a village” nonsense, we’ve kind of forgotten this.

Because of “it takes a village”, I now have to jump through hoops just to play a videogame. Now, I don’t have too much of a problem with most of the rules, such as having to be of a certain age to play a certain game, but those rules have developed other problems that do directly affect me. Because of these draconian rules for games, it is very possible that some of the games I would like to play aren’t even being carried by specific retailers. Wal Mart doesn’t carry anything that has the NC restrictions, because it figures that if kids can’t buy it, then it’s not worth stocking. But even though we’re talking about games, it should be pointed out that the majority of the customers who buy computer games aren’t kids, but adults. Yet, because of rules that exist because of kids, we’re limited in our selection by what kids would actually be able to buy.

According to the Entertainment Software Association, in a 2008 report, the latest one conducted, the average age of a gamer is 35, and only 25 percent of the player base is 18 or younger. So, we’re creating draconian rules for a small segment of the gaming population, yet 75 percent of the population is an adult who is limited in selection by these rules. To make it even more bizarre, it’s significant to point out that the average age of a purchaser of games is 40. I probably shouldn’t have to make the mention of the significance of that.

The significant assumption of the whole “it takes a village” thing is that everyone in society is required to contribute to the upbringing of a child. That’s relatively new and something that has been forced upon society by some people who I don’t think are revealing the whole story. When politicians use this mantra to get elected, and then turn around and don’t actually do anything that contributes to the upbringing and well-being of children, there’s a real problem here. Think about this. How often do women and children foundations have to struggle against any administration for a pittance of a budget when very adult endeavors get funded nonstop? After the Depression, married women convinced their elected husbands to start up a Women and Children’s Bureau, but once men in office set it up, they did everything possible to unfund it and eventually remove all of its teeth and capabilities. It only took a decade to completely destroy the foundation, and even though there’s a similarly named organization today, it is a shadow of its original purpose and is maintained more as a donations seeker than an actual organization that does the kinds of things it was imagined it would do back in the 1930s.

Which brings me to a very important subject to me: Me. Why should I care about the upbringing of someone else’s children? Because if you think about it, that’s exactly what’s being demanded of me. Sure, I like kids, but that doesn’t mean I want anything to do with them. I’m kind of like the hunter and gatherer guy from the Stone Age period (and not that much more intelligent sometimes). As the hunter in the tribe, my only interaction with little Johnnie is when little Johnnie is learning to become a hunter. Until then, little Johnnie is kept as far away from me as possible. He doesn’t get to go to the grub shop, or the ale house, and if he sees me on the street of our village, he should have been taught to say: “Greetings, good sir, Grokk” and then continue on down the street. He and I have very little interaction together. His father, whoever that is, is the one who actually raises him with his mother. Had I wanted a child, I would have had one, and then it would have been my responsibility.

You see, what I’m getting at is that Hilary Clinton’s book (that was written by someone else) argues that I’m supposed to present my resources and my time to raise her child. I’m sorry, but Chelsea Clinton doesn’t need Duane Gundrum raising her, or having anything to do with raising her. As a matter of fact, as a sidebar of this whole “it takes a village” crap, if I ever show up at Chelsea Clinton’s school to help raise her, the school administrators are probably going to call the police and make sure that I’m no longer allowed within 100 feet of a school, church or Chuck E. Cheese establishment. The point being: I’m only desired as long as I can provide resources. I, personally, am never invited into the rearing process.

So, if you get the point, the “it takes a village” is all about using my resources but doesn’t really want “me” to assist in any way. It’s all just a big shortcut at gathering resources for those who have children, like H. Clinton, and taking them directly from those who do not. That’s all “it takes a village” was really meant to mean. If I was ever invited to assist in the education of the child, it might be different.

The origination of “it takes a village” comes from an African source that actually wanted the village to participate in the raising of a child. The US version of the phrase never advocated for that. We’re really good at using some parts and discarding the parts we don’t like.

That’s why I think our version is really “it takes a village idiot” to raise a child because that’s what I’d have to be in order to participate without being allowed to ever participate in the first place. Like the reason I never got married, I’ve always felt it’s all about money, and I’d rather keep mine where it is.

Who Judges When the Government Goes Too Far?

Economics, Politics, , , , , ,

In the northern, midwest part of the country there’s an interesting battle that has been taking place between citizens and government that most people don’t even know anything about. To be honest, I didn’t know anything about this until a colleague of mine was swept up into the bizarre, bureaucratic red tape and forced into some pretty draconian adventures with government and immovable government employees who are incapable of seeing two sides to any issue.

I’ll give you a link to an interesting article that was written in November of 2009. Imagine if you were planning to rent a room out of your home, and you were looking for a specific type of roommate. Well, as my colleague discovered, be very careful about how you designate what type of roommate you’re looking for.

In my friend’s case, he has a large home that costs a lot of money to heat it. Well, he had rented a room in his home to a family that brought in a lot more people than they indicated they were going to when signing the agreement to stay there. As a result, the heat was turned on constantly as there was always someone in the house, and the costs to heat his place went literally through the roof. He found himself almost unable to pay his bills each month because the heat bill was off the charts. And then the family left and decided not to pay the money owed for the heat, leaving him pretty much holding the bag.

So, when he decided to rent out the space again, he put forth a Craigslist ad and wanted to make sure this didn’t happen again, so he said he was only interested in renting to individuals, not families. If you know anything about how the system works from there, you probably know what happened next.

There is a group of people who must literally sit at home and read each new ad that goes up on Craigslist because immediately they contacted the regional branch of the National Fair Housing Alliance, which immediately declared my colleague guilty, requiring a cash payment and then a mandatory attendance at a discrimination seminar, which also cost about $300 and took place in Ohio, even though he lives in Michigan. So, imagine how my friend must have felt when he was now out about $700 for listing a room on Craigslist, when all he was trying to do was avoid someone cranking up the heat and literally forcing him out of house and home.

My colleague tried to get anyone to listen to him, but generally people don’t care. He, and I agree, felt he was railroaded through a system that didn’t even give him an opportunity to present his own side. He was literally guilty without a chance to even prove innocence, which in my opinion, should never happen in this country, but it does almost every day.

Well, something interesting just happened that puts an interesting wrench into his phenomenon. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a 31 year old nursing student put up an ad on her local church’s bulletin board asking for a “Christian roommate”. As I’m sure you’re suspecting, she was turned over to the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan, a regional branch of the National Fair Housing Alliance. And, of course, the government treated her as a criminal without even considering any other possible circumstances or potential outcomes.

The difference this time is that unlike my colleague, this isn’t something that’s being taken without a fight. Remember, this was a religious act of “discrimination” so it should not come as a surprise that major entities are now responding in anger at a government entity that has no intentions of backing down. Nancy L. Haynes, executive director of the local Fair Housing Center, offers: “Our interest really lies in her getting some training so that this doesn’t happen again.” But as this is starting to become an issue that is getting the attention of some very powerful religious organizations and groups, one wonders if the government is really going to have the last word on this.

And I guess that’s the point of this. My colleague had no recourse, nor did he have anyone that was willing to advocate on his behalf. Basically, he was told he was in the wrong, and that under no circumstance would he be able to respond in any way that was not exactly as the government directed. Well, if the government caves on this, and they most likely probably will once very powerful entities get involved, then it’s important to look at this and start asking some important questions, like:

Is government answerable to the people, or is it as all powerful as it claims to be (at least in this case)?

If a powerful organization can change the dogmatic approach of government, then why isn’t there some kind of recourse for the average American?

And most important: How come these governmental entities do not have oversight that keeps them from acting as judge, jury AND the enforcement mechanism.

No one likes to be railroaded by government, but what’s even worse is being railroaded right before someone else gets treated completely differently because of powerful friends. That’s the origin of the pool corruption, even though most people won’t recognize it when they’re swimming in it.

The Advent of Cold Weather

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It’s moving towards the end of October, which means one thing for me: It’s about to get really, really cold.

I hate cold weather. I’ve always hated cold weather. Even as I say this, there’s someone reading this (well, someone imaginary reading this because no one actually reads anything I post) who is thinking: “You don’t know anything about cold weather, warm weather guy. I live in the middle of the Antarctic and let me tell you about cold weather!”

Okay, so I’m sure someone has it worse, but I’ll let you in on another little secret of mine. I hate people who compare their lives to someone else as if to somehow lessen someone else’s experience. We all know these people, too. This is the sort of person who after you’ve just talked about losing your arm in a battle with a raging grizzly bear, tells everyone: “That was nothing. Let me tell you about the time I fought a crocodile, and he took off half a’ my right arm, my right leg and ate half of my skull, forcing me to have reconstructive surgery, bionic implants, years of therapy and…” well, I’m sure you get the idea.

For me, I’ve never liked cold weather. I grew up in California, the nice part of California where the weather was beautfiul, the women even more beautiful and the crack addicts not as much. Okay, I ruined it with that last description, but I’ve always loved the feel of the hot sun on me…while I hide in the apartment and play World of Warcraft with the air conditioner on. Okay, something’s wrong with me, but I still like hot weather.

Michigan is not known for its warm weather in the Winter. As a matter of fact, it kind of sucks here. That was the first thing people warned me about when I came to Kalamazoo a few years back to do graduate work. They warned me that the Winter was going to be the worst thing I’ve ever encountered. And then we proceeded to have the mildest Winter in about half a century. I thought, wow, these Michiganders are wimps. And then the next Winter was one of the worst Winters ever, and I no longer felt like saying the same thing again.

Last year was really bad for me because I had just moved from California after being mugged, so not only was I poor, somewhat destitute, but I was also somewhat scared of interacting with other people. And I had no car. I had sold my car before leaving for Korea the year before, so when I came back, I had nothing to get around with. This meant I had to rely on public transportation, and there are some really scary people who also ride public transportation. Had this been me a year before, I would have been fine, but after getting the crap beaten out of me by total strangers, I had a very hard time that year, constantly convinced that people around me were going to jump me, even if there was no reason to think such a thing.

And I had no jacket. So the beginning of the Winter REALLY sucked. I had to walk half an hour every morning to the bus through the snow (UPHILL BOTH WAYS), and it was freaking cold. Many days there was no sidewalk, so I found myself trudging through the snow, in the middle of the darkened street (it was early morning when I had to walk to the bus), and quite a few times the cars weren’t really all that interested in swerving to miss the stupid man walking in the middle of the street, even though he was hugging what he thought  might have been the curb (as he couldn’t see it as it was covered in snow with the rest of the street and the sidewalk). Those walks really sucked. It wasn’t until December before I was able to afford a decent pair of gloves, January before I was able to afford a decent jacket, and March before I was able to finally buy a car.

This Winter, hopefully will be much simpler and less complicated. But it’s still going to be cold, and I think I mentioned how much I hate the cold.

The last few nights have been getting really cold. I refuse to turn on my heat until I have to, which has caused no fewer than three of my stuffed animals to get really pissed at me. And they have stuffed animal fur, so you know it must be cold if they’re already complaining.

It’s not even Winter yet, and I’m already looking forward to April. If I had four months of PTO saved up, I’d take it all. Unfortunately, I just did the math, and I’m short by about, um, four months, so that’s not going to be an option.

Did I mention how much I hate cold weather?

Is There a Cure for Spam?

Economics, Politics, Social Networking, , , , ,

Years ago, when the World Wide Web was still a few years away, one of the hottest communication tools available was a thing called Usenet. Sadly, some people may not know much about it, know it only from its current, sorry state, or had experienced it and fondly think of all of the potential that was destroyed. It was the forerunner of message boards, in that everyone connected to the Internet was able to go to a non-graphical environment and communicate messages with each other on various topics. There were different boards set up that ranged from soc.tennis (social networking about tennis) to alt.sex.bondage (alternative sex about bondage). Yeah, at one point there was a message board for practically everything out there. And it was showing us that the future of the Internet was going to be place where everyone could discuss things, and the alienation of one’s own desires and habits was no longer going to be a problem in the future.

This worked for several years, and it was a lot of fun talking, arguing, flaming and networking with so many people across the planet that you would never get a chance to meet any other way. The global community was finally upon us.

And then something ugly happened. People trying to sell things, mainly scams, realized that this was a far better (and cheaper) process than sending out letters to people at 23 cents a pop (the price of a letter back then, or at least somewhere back then in the past). Quickly, they started sending out hundreds, and then thousands, of messages to these message boards on Usenet to the point of where people could no longer read the actual messages because there was nothing but spam. The more popular boards were destroyed almost overnight. No one could write there anymore because it was nothing but spam.

So people started moving to moderated boards. But they found ways to start spamming those as well.

This was during the time that the Internet was making its transition from word text to a World Wide Web, and unfortunately we didn’t do anything about the spammers during this period, so they moved along with us. Realizing they could do the same thing with email, they practically have destroyed the very concept of email today, much like they did with Usenet.

Spam is starting to destroy the next frontier of the net as well. I have a blog on my own web site that I maintain. Every day, it receives hundreds of spam comments on every post that I write. I have to catch every message that comes through by a spam filter that makes it really hard for me to even try to read through messages for approving. I do it, and it takes time, but the spammers don’t care that they’re sending fake message in hopes of getting me to advertise their crap for free through my posts and messages. Oh, they think they’re intelligent by writing little comments like: “I really loved your post about a generic topic that I care a lot about, but perhaps your readers should check out my pictures of girls with tits for more information” and they’ll include a link to, yes, pictures of girls with tits (which will most likely lead anyone stupid enough to go there to a site that is designed to try to take over your computer).

Recently, I started posting a lot of my writing on several different mainstream sites that allow you to maintain blogs. A good example is Open Salon (where I’ll probably be posting this as well). Unfortunately, you can’t post a story or article on the site without being innundated with spammers trying to sell crap. The moderators try to do something about it, but they’re overwhelmed, much like the Usenet people were, so the spammers are probably going to win. Eventually, the site will either do something seriously draconian to cut down on spam, or the site will become overwhelmed and people will stop visiting there, causing Open Salon to eventually just close up shop cause it won’t be worth the effort for the eventual non-payoff.

So, what can we do? It doesn’t seem that there’s any way to stem this tide of shit that comes from some really sinister people who don’t care that they’re doing everything to destroy the potential marketplace of ideas by turning it into the marketplace of crap. What’s even of more concern to me is that I don’t think anyone even has the problem in their cross hairs, thinking that eventually the problem will go away, or something better will come along that makes it no longer a problem.

That’s the problem. That’s what we did in Usenet. Those of us trying to fight it were ignored, and then everyone eventually just left, thinking that it wasn’t worth their time. Instead of fighting back, they cave in and lose the very foundation of what brought them there in the first place.

Is that what’s going to continue to happen? Are we going to lose every great thing on the net because some really stupid thinking people feel it is their right to destroy whatever comes along? Why isn’t this a much bigger issue for people? It affects so many people, yet no one seems to give it any real attention. And those that do are completely ignored.

What more must we give up before people finally say enough is enough?