Monthly Archives: February 2011

Why I Never Watch the Academy Awards

Movies, , , , , , , ,

Last night was the big night for overexposed movie stars to rub shoulders with each other and then give each other awards. The rest of us, sadly enough, weren’t actually invited. And if we showed up, we’d be arrested and escorted off to some place where we would never bother the rich and famous again.

A bunch of movies were up for awards. A bunch of people who were in those movies were up for awards. Supposedly, songs that were sung or played in those movies also got put up for awards. In the end, very rich people rewarded each other on national television and gave speeches about how humble and wonderful they are. The rest of us, because we’re essentially peasants in comparison to the rich and famous, were allowed to watch them on television and cheer them on. If we were lucky, we could go to one of their movies and spend $10 to see how wonderful they were.

That’s kind of why I don’t care about the Academy Awards. It’s a hoo ha kind of show that’s designed around rewarding people who have somehow elevated movies to something more significant than Nobel Prizes every year, where someone’s movie gets more media exposure than a brilliant writer or peace champion who has risked life to make the world safer for others to live in. Movie stars and that crowd have elevated themselves to the new royalty, except they have basically done nothing different than wandering minstrels used to do only centuries before, except the wandering minstrels were usually chased out of town once they used up the local charity.

I don’t hate movies. I love watching good movies, and I recommend good ones to all of my friends. But I don’t worship the people who make them or who star in them. Okay, maybe Woody Allen in his day and perhaps Sean Connery in his, but that’s about it. Today’s stars are somewhat irrelevant to me, as I don’t find any of them to be all that impressive. I find most of them interchangeable, and quite often unrecognizable. Whereas people used to lust after the next appearance of Marilyn Monroe or the next movie starring Humphrey Bogart, that doesn’t happen anymore. Today’s stars are insignificant and overhyped. We spend more time trying to know about their personal lives than we ever did before, mainly because I don’t think people are all that interested in their movie star appearances any longer. None of them have the sustaining power to cause us to jump up for joy as we used to do in Alfred Hitchcock’s day.

This is why I don’t care about the Academy Awards. They’re generic, overhyped and irrelevant. During yesterday’s show, the studio heads tried so hard to hype the show for the youth of the world by showcasing two younger actors, and it fizzled and died. People just didn’t care. The days of Bob Hope or Johnny Carson headlining the Academy Awards are gone, mainly because the interest in the vehicle died a long time ago.

Last night, I watched the last four episodes of the 6th season of Weeds, a show that was so much more enjoyable than anything that might have occurred during the Academy Awards. And this wasn’t even their best season of Weeds.

Part of the problem is that we stopped making great movies and now just make movies. Generic movies. Boring movies. Remakes of remakes of movies. And we pretend its all new and fascinating. We have our “stars” go on talk shows and talk up how great their current projects are, even though they’re talking about a remake of Batman, or whatever generic intellectual property comes to mind. Creativity is gone, mainly because Hollywood tends to think that writers are afterthoughts, something you call in after the “geniuses” run out of ideas. And then every now and then one great glimmer of hope will show up, and then be milked to death before anyone can think of something creative to do with it.

That’s why I stopped watching the Academy Awards. Hopefully, things will get better one day, but I’ve been saying that for a few decades now, and it hasn’t happened.

I don’t have a lot of hope that things will.

The Music Industry Just Doesn’t Get It…They Lied to Us

Economics, Music, , , , , , , , , ,

You would think with the amount of money that goes into music studios that they would have actually hired someone who is capable of telling the executives what is really going on. Instead, we have a bunch of studio heads that are so convinced they understand the pulse of the consuming public that they don’t have to listen to anyone, and for some reason they’re losing more and more money every year.

The problem emerged in the beginning when music went from albums to CDs and then online. The old paradigm consisted of music studios finding talent, packaging it and then filtering it out to radio stations that then opened the doors for people to rush to record stores to purchase the brand new content. Well, somewhere down the line that model fell apart, mainly because a few little promises made never came through, and then the industry changed overnight as a result.

What I’m talking about was a promise that the music industry made to consumers when albums were on the out and CDs were coming in. The simple promise was that CDs, which were cheaper to make than albums, were going to be cheaper for customers. This was the selling point to get people to give up their vinyl albums and welcome CDs. The promise was that CDs would cost $9.99 all of the time. Well, when CDs first came out, that WAS the price, and then quickly they started to increase to $13.99 and other such prices. Now, if you’re lucky, a CD can be found “on sale” for $9.99 off of the retail price of much more.

We were lied to. Oh, the naysayers will claim such a promise was never made, but for those of us who were paying close attention back then, the promise definitely was made. Instead of following the plan, executives realized that consumers are stupid, or so they thought, so they just went back on their word and sold CDs for what they figured they could get, rather than for how much it was promised.

A funny thing happened right after that. The Internet showed up. You see, if that never happened, the music industry would still be the major entity it was a few decades ago. But no one anticipated that a couple of geeks at universities wanting to talk to each other would lead to something so powerful and so overwhelming. But the Internet happened, and the music industry was in the wrong place at the right time.

The consumer population was kind of pissed at the music industry at this time because of the whole lie thing, and then when the next generation realized that it could get all of this expensive technology for free, they jumped on it. So two things happened at once. The music industry cheated the older customers by lying to them while the younger customers grew up with a new paradigm where they got everything for free. You see, if the music industry hadn’t lied to the older generation, they might have actually had powerful allies on their side. Instead, they had a bunch of pissed off customers who decided to just let the music industry fend for itself. Where these people could have been the “moral” guides to the younger generation, who wants to be the moral guides to people who are doing something you figure the bad guys deserve anyway?

Well, the music industry sat it out, thinking things would fall back in place, but their real ally, musicians jumped ship on them as well. Oh sure, the established musicians were in their corner, but consumers are a fickle sort, dumping old artists for new ones because music really doesn’t have standards that are controlled by executives. Music is music and people will seek it wherever it can be found.

And a lot of future musicians realized that if they wanted to make it in the industry, there was a new direction to take, one that required they take their music directly to the people. This opened up the industry to everyone, and as more and more independent artists showed up, the music industry had less and less control over the content.

That’s kind of where we are today. The music industry is trying to save itself by reestablishing the controls, but no one really cares anymore. There was an attempt to force streaming content under draconian rules, but music executives are starting to realize that this isn’t leading to sales. What the music industry never realized was that the future was going to be somewhat of a free for all because if you can’t trust the industry to do what they promise, then you look elsewhere for results.

Recently, I bought a CD for the first time in about a year. Yeah, it’s been that long. I’m still pissed. It was Taylor Swift’s new album, and it was on sale for $9.99. Imagine that. Anyway, it’s a great CD, but it’s probably the only one I’ll buy for at least another year. I’m one of their solid customers, and it’s taken a long time to bring me back to the market. Before I stopped buying music, I used to buy three or four albums a week. They’ll never regain the market share they had before. It’s just not going to happen.

Like I said, the music industry lied back when it needed to win over its customer base. So, hopefully as these executives find new jobs mowing lawns, or whatever it is unemployed music executives are capable of doing, they’ll remember it was really their fault. And they should keep in mind that if they promise to mow someone’s lawn and then go back on their promise, they’re probably not going to get paid. The real world is kind of mean that way.

Caveat Emptor is why American is no longer the world leader it was

Economics, , , , ,

The other day, I bought a package of 16 chicken sandwiches from Costco. It was the really good kind with cheese. Anyway, I was all happy about it, thinking that 16 sandwiches should hold me for quite some time. So merrily, I began my odyssey of eating sandwiches for various meals, convinced that I would be a chicken-eating happy camper for some time to come. The other day, I put the last chicken sandwich in the microwave, thinking nothing of it, until I realized that it was the last one. It was then that I started to think back on the recent events of my life, and realizing that unlike other people, I didn’t think about the mad affair with the twin blondes from Sweden, the narrow escape from death I had fighting ninjas who were hell-bent on keeping me from their attempt to destroy our American way of life, nor did I reflect upon my invite to the White House where President Obama asked me to fix that small problem he was having in the Middle East. No, my reflection went straight back to that purchase of 16 chicken sandwiches and my realization that I had not in fact eaten 16 chicken sandwiches since buying that package. In fact, I could only remember eating 8. It was then that I realized I had probably been cheated, fooled and/or bamboozled by yet another American greedy corporation. I had been cheated of chicken.

You see, what I realized was that this chicken selling company had done was package 8 separate chicken meals and then count each packaged sandwich as two meals. When they put the content stuff on the side of the larger package, they decided that each package included two chicken sandwiches, even though the package appeared to be one, tasted like one, and fooled me into thinking it was one. Yet, for credit purposes, they were able to put “16” on the box, counting each of those sandwiches as twice as much food as it really was. No one would know better because when you had that many sandwiches, you wouldn’t know you were down to your last one until you had already gone through more than one man could possibly count at one time. Okay, I’m being a bit ridiculous, but the simple fact of the matter is: They told me I had more food than I actually had.

And I’m pissed.

You see, this happens a lot. The soda companies have been doing this for years, and it has been driving me nuts. I am currently drinking a single bottle of diet Pepsi right now. When I read the contents on the side of the bottle, the manufacturers are actually claiming that I am drinking 2.5 servings of soda right now. They are wrong. I am drinking 1.0 servings of soda right now because no logical person on the face of the freaking planet actually shares a bottle of soda with 1.5 other people. Nor do they poor only 1.0 servings and then put the other 1.5 servings back in the fridge. No, most people open up the one bottle and chug the whole thing down as one serving. This 0.5 crap is just that. Crap.

This also happens with potato chips. Buy a package of chips and that bag of chpis that you are planning to eat alone is actually 2 or 3 servings of chips that they give you the caloric data for one serving, so you think you aren’t eating as much. But everyone knows that one person sits down and pretty much munches down the whole bag.

Somewhere down the line, people who sell us stuff stopped being honest with us. Granted, they weren’t really always that honest with us to begin with, but even further down the line they got worse. The old line of caveat emptor “buyer beware” has always existed, but at some point the honesty should have gotten better, not worse. I remember a time when if you bought something, you were guaranteed to get satisfaction from the manufacturer for the life time of the product. Not any more. Now, when you buy something, Best Buy wants to change you an extra $60 to guarantee that the item will work past the first year. In other words, you can’t trust any company concerning any product because the only guarantee you get from the manufacturer is that it was so cheaply made that you either need to insure it past a year, or you’ll have to buy a new one in a year.

This is my belief why America has lost its way in the international marketplace of products. Years back, you would mention an American product and there was a certain satisfaction that you bought something of quality. Whenever you heard “Made in China” that was an indication that you went the cheap route. Now, any product you buy today is considered the cheap route because NOTHING is guaranteed to be good. If you buy a Japanese car, expect it to accelerate and kill you. If you buy an American car, well, just expect everyone to laugh at you because American car companies haven’t made good cars in decades. Oh, we say they do because we’re all patriotic and all that flag lapel wearing kind of crap, but in reality, when someone mentions an American car, we laugh at them because American cars are generally overpriced, gas guzzlers and overpriced. America no longer stands for quality and good prices. It really doesn’t stand for anything any more.

So, I’ll probably go back to Costco and buy 16 more chicken sandwiches, but at least I know I’m really buying 8. I just like to know when I’m being cheated so I can at least live a little better with myself.

Gaming the System

Social Networking, , , , , , ,

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Google having to clean up its ranking system because other companies have figured out how to game the system. I find this somewhat interesting because no matter what I do, I can’t seem to figure out how to get more people to read my blog. I guess if I cheated and did all sorts of surreptitious activity, I could probably get a whole bunch of people to accidentally wander onto my site. But that’s just wrong, and it makes me wonder why so many other companies and people would do that sort of thing, when all it really does is piss off people in the long run.

The thing that really bothers me is the amount of “traffic” I receive from people who don’t actually read my blog but submit spam messages as comments. My spam filter catches 99 percent of them, but it bothers me that my spam filter has to actually catch them in the first place. Why would companies and people go through so much trouble to spam the hell out of someone’s random blog site? Why are there people spamming me with stupid comments that have absolutely no relevance to anything I’m talking about? Why would people include fake comments that are designed to fool me into thinking they actually read my posts and commented on them?

I’m talking about comments that say something like: “I really agree with your perspective on this point, and this has caused me to want to keep coming back here and reading your blog.” Fake comment. Not real. Someone bullshitting for the sake of some stupid purpose that has no significance to the bigger picture whatsoever. Why do it? Why expend your energy trying to fuck up someone’s blog with nonstop spam messages that mean nothing whatsoever to anyone?

And they spam the crap out of my spam filters, too. It’s not bad enough that one or two get through, but someone will spend days spamming the same message to my comments that say absolutely nothing but pretend to be actual comments to my posts. Why do it? What purpose does it serve to disrupt the normal postings of someone you’ve never met before, have nothing to do with whatsoever, and have no incentive to make miserable just for the sake of some futile attempt at gaining traffic that you’re never going to get.

Why do it?

What’s Going on with Duane These Days? Could it be transmogrification?

Memoirs, , ,

I realized just a little while ago that almost all of my posts have been about something, rather than about me. I know that sounds a little strange, but what that means is that I haven’t really updated what’s going on with me these days. So, I thought I would clear that up, even if I’m the only one who seems to be reading what I have to say anyway.

First off, I’m still at the hospital. My job hasn’t changed, even though I keep hearing that it might. That’s been one of those songs that’s been playing on repeat over and over again to the point where I’ll believe it when I see it.

My writing isn’t really moving all that forward these days, which does bother me. It’s not because I’m not interested in writing, but because I’ve gotten really frustrated with the whole writing business industry. I have written so much, but my writing career isn’t doing anything. Instead, I keep seeing really crappy books being published by celebrities and people who shouldn’t be writing. My writing is actually very good, and I just can’t seem to get an inroad into an actual career. So my career has kind of stalled, mainly because even though I believe in myself, I don’t believe in the publishing industry any more. I haven’t given up, but I’m not really actively seeking success either.

I may be taking the LSAT in June and then possibly enrolling in law school in September. It’s all kind of up in the air right now, but I’m really bored. And that causes me to either just jump ship and do something stupid, or to think about it and try to do something constructive. This time around, I’ll try something constructive. I’m trying to save up money so I can afford tuition, as I can’t really borrow any more money through the government, nor would I even if I could. I figure three or four years later, I’ll have a law degree. Not the quickest route, but hey, doing nothing doesn’t get me anywhere closer either.

I bought a keyboard (music kind) a few weeks ago, and I’ve been playing around with that lately. It complements my electric guitar, so even though I’m never going to be a great virtuoso or famous singer, at least I can play around with the instruments and explore my creativity. Like my writing, I don’t believe in any industry backing me up on anything I do, so I’ll be creating music for myself. Everyone else can really go screw themselves, for all I care.

Other than that, I’m working on teaching myself how to write a decent screenplay. I have a few movie project ideas in my head, including the one that Chris is working on, so once I get through this book, I’ll sit down and start constructing. We’ll see what happens from there. Like I said, I have a few projects right in front of me right now, so we’ll see what I can do with those. I know the movie industry really sucks for writers, so I’m not putting a lot of stock in any type of career there. I’m more about the creativity anyway.

Other than that, I’m teaching two classes at Grand Rapids Community College (political science and interpersonal communication). Nothing really all that brilliant there as both classes are introductory courses. Half the time, I’m convinced none of my students care one iota about what’s going on in those classes, so I show up each day and hope that something will rub off on them. One student told me she thought I was a great teacher, and I guess I’m so screwed up these days that I attribute it to brown-nosing rather than sincerity. Yeah, I see the whole negativity thing, too. That doesn’t make it go away. It’s like the old adage on paranoia (“just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean the world isn’t out to get me”).

That’s about it. I consider my current existence in life as an outsider watching a television show about a television show that’s about real people. Because I’m just an observer on the outside, I get the distinct impression that nothing I do makes a difference, and no one really cares what I do or don’t do, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their own agendas. I’ve stopped believing I’m significant or that I really have anything of importance to contribute to this world any more. I feel more like a shadow that sometimes gets noticed by others who tolerate me because they notice me there sometimes but wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t. Other times, I feel like a writing Van Gogh, scoffed at by the neighbors while trying to create masterpieces that aren’t recognized enough to get me a drink at the local bar in trade. I often wonder if that realization was what finally caused Van Gogh to commit suicide at the end there, convinced he was fooling himself into believing he had something significant to contribute but suspecting that he was only fooling himself.

Anyway, that’s my rambling for now. Nothing great. Nothing horrible. Just a blah existence leading into a blah circumspection. Oh, and I wanted to say transmogrification. I didn’t really have anything to say about the word, but it’s a really cool word that I’ve been itching to put into a sentence, so there it is, even if it really doesn’t have any signficant context. Cool words rarely need to. Transmogrification, I say, and thus I have.

The News is Filled with Nothing But Crap These Days…An Analysis

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I was checking out the news today when it started to dawn on me how much of our news is just crap masquerading as news. So I decided it would be fun to point out the stories that seem to be generating lots of buzz, and then point out why it’s doing nothing but wasting our time. Part of the problem is that we switched to a 24 hour news cycle, but because there really isn’t 24 hours worth of news, we get lots of garbage that tends to just overwhelm us with mediocrity. And then a bunch of pundits, or housewives (like the View) will get together and start commenting on stupid stories as if they’re somehow relevant.

Here’s my line-up for today:

1. Emanuel Elected Chicago Mayor. Why is this included in my list? Because it was conclusive the moment he was given the nod to run that he was going to win. It’s like announcing that Obama is going to be president for the next two years. We know that. It’s not a newsbreaking story. It’s just something that’s happening because nothing else could have happened. What’s truly significant about Emanuel is what happens after, when the people of Chicago start to realize that they got a Washington-insider who is looking to pad his own portfolio and really doesn’t care one iota about people from Chicago. It’s a stepping stone for him to higher office, and everyone knows it. This falls into my “why do we give power to insignificant people” folder, which grows larger every year. Too many irrelevant people are put into positions of power because they know the right people, have enough money or just are so corrupt that people mistake that for competence. In the end, I predict lots of scandals, lots of corruption and headache news coming out of Chicago once things start moving as they normally move in Chicago. And no matter how many bad things happen, a core group of people will say he was a great leader and recommend him for governor or president. That’s politics.

2. Justin Bieber got a haircut. Really? This was on the front page of CNN’s site as a highlighted story? Really? I shaved this morning. Why didn’t I get a nod from CNN? I have to share this though. The other day, I was in Meijer looking through the posters they sell, and there were at least ten of Justin Bieber. One of them had me laughing hysterically for about half an hour. It showed Bieber in a leather jacket, acting tough, and all I could do was laugh nonstop. I think some woman grabbed her daughter and shuffled her away from me, and possibly Homeland Security was alerted, meaning I can’t fly on domestic flights anymore, but I couldn’t stop laughing. He’s a freaking teen kid who looks like Opie from The Andry Griffith Show. He’s about as tough as my stuffed animal Brucoe. Actually, I apologize as Brucoe is growling at me now, as he doesn’t like to be compared to Opie…I mean Bieber.

3. Alyssa Milano is pregnant. As are a whole bunch of other movie stars, tv stars, singers, musicians, muppets and whatever. Not a real story. Somewhere down the line, we started to go into the personal lives of celebrities and report on them as if they’re really news stories. They’re not. It’s all entertainment fodder that slowly replaces actual news. It’s one thing when a story like this one is reported by People Magazine (which is where I pulled the source citation). However, every major news outlet reports it as news as well, often linking to the People Magazine story, like CNN and Fox News are both doing. I could trace it up through a number of other major news outlets, but why waste the time? We know they all seem to be doing it these days.
Some years ago, we used to have little reports here and there about celebrities, but it was usually a side pack to an actual revelation, like a new movie was coming out, or someone was going to be starting a new television series. Now, we get nonstop coverage of Jessica Alba’s “baby bump”. Personally, I’d like to find and kill the person who invented the “baby bump” term, because it annoys the crap out of me. Somewhere, somehow, someone got the idea that talking about some star’s pregnancy is really significant information for the rest of us to know. It’s not. Some movie star’s future kid is an irrelevant story unless we know for certain that child is going to grow up to be a major celebrity himself/herself. Which brings me to the update of the day on certain implosive stars, like Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson and Lindsay Lohan. If they’re making a new movie, television show, or saving a specific rain forest, it’s a story. If they’re yelling at a concierge in a French hotel, it’s NOT a story. Or it never should be.
I’m sorry I have to point this out again, but I will, because someone is going to criticize me with exactly this argument: “But I like stories about celebrities.” That’s fine. They should be reported in gossip papers, not the national news as a newsbreaking story that gets pushed across the bottom of the screen while people are rioting in Egypt. That had to be the saddest commentary of all time when victorious revolutionists overthrew Mubarak, there was a news ticker going across the screen revealing the breaking news story that Paris Hilton was thinking about shopping for an engagement ring. Talk about destroying the impact of a world-changing event. I mean, years from now Paris Hilton is going to be forever scarred because when she was thinking of buying an engagement ring for a marriage that may or may not happen, she had to have it disrupted by a whole bunch of Egyptians overthrowing the oppressive regime of a dictator who only days ago ordered all of their deaths for disobeying him. That poor girl.
4. Lindsay Lohan is going back to court…and might wear a cute dress when she goes back to court. Okay, that’s important. I have no complaints here.
5. Ex-Aide slams Sarah Palin. Who cares? Tells us absolutely nothing new but fuels a news machine that loves to print things about Sarah Palin, who is a non-entity in real politics. She has zero chance of any electivity in this country and serves as a joke to the American political system. She has absolutely no significance, importance or relevance to anything whatsoever. Yet, every news cycle seems to need to print more information about her that has no further relevance than the last crap that was printed or broadcasted.
This week hasn’t been as bad as some other weeks, but that’s all I really have for the stories that probably shouldn’t be taking up our time. However, I’d like to talk about some stories that I think are important:
1. Libya. The continuous spread of the wave of democracy has now touched on Libya and is about to splash down there. Unlike Egypt, Libya has no US presence or any type of pressure from western countries to stop it from doing what it does. As a matter of fact, unlike Egypt, Libya has more control over the west than the west has over it, mainly because western countries will support this dictator to the very end in the hopes of not losing its constant flow of oil that comes from Libya. Somewhere down the line, as things get really bad, the western countries are going to have to make an important choice to either stand behind democracy or stand behind the dictator. Unfortunately, our track record on these types of events is not good, and Obama hasn’t proven to be any different than any other previous president before him.
2. Egypt. So far, everything has gone right for the democracy movement. The army has stood behind the protesters and is doing all of the right things. Like any good movie, I suspect some twist is only around the corner about to happen, so we should be ready for any jerking movement that should happen in the near future, like the army suddenly deciding to go back on promises, or revolutionaries doing something stupid based on unsubstantiated bravado. Hopefully, everything will keep going right, but we know how the real world tends to work.
3. Wisconsin. The fight of unions against government is playing out in Wisconsin as I write this. No one knows how it is going to turn out, but things are getting pretty bad for all of the actors involved. This is an important story and should be the focus of pretty much everyone.
4. The Budget Show Down. Most people aren’t really paying attention, but the whole future of our country is being argued on a daily basis between Republicans and Democrats, and they’re heading towards a shut down of the US government because neither side can get along. This is massively important, and much like a North and South Korea stalemate, our two sides are not budging. The victims in the end will be the American people, and to be honest, I don’t think the political actors really care because they both realize that the American people are still stuck with two choices: Them. Therefore, there’s no belief that any negative fallout will occur (at least not to them). If our nation shuts down, that should be a sign to the American people how little the people who run our government really cares about the people who make up the citizenry of this government. But unfortunately, no one will notice, and the fights will continue because we’re often way too stupid to realize when we’re being played and when we’re being played with.
Those are a few stories that should receive the most attention. Sadly, they won’t, and by the time we end up in an election cycle, we’ll be arguing about someone’s comments on abortion, an irrelevant celebrity’s comments on some half-relevant issue, or something completely innane and unimportant.

“Perhaps you need to live in the real world….”

Politics, Social Networking, , , , , ,

A couple of days ago, a female reporter from CBS was sexually assaulted in Egypt. What’s unique about the whole situation is not just that it happened, but it occurred right after a number of assaults on western media entities by pro-government forces. To put it more poignantly, it happened after those pro-government forces stopped attacking and took place during the celebrations of the succeeding revolutionaries who managed to overthrow the Mubarak government. In other words, she was attacked by a bunch of Egyptians celebrating a successful revolution against oppression. In even more other words, they were celebrating their freedom by sexually assaulting some random woman.

There are a couple of things that haven’t received a whole lot of attention because right now everyone in the world is so happy that “freedom” won the day against oppression. Yet, right after this horrible oppression, a newly “free” people took it upon themselves to conduct horrific, barbaric activities perpetrated against a woman, as if freedom is great, but it should never get in the way of a bunch of guys getting together and taking sexual liberties with random women. After all, isn’t that what freedom is all about? Sadly, there is probably an entire country of people who may be thinking just that.

But what bothers me about this is not just that it happened, which does, of course, bother me, but how I first found out about it. I follow news through a number of message boards, and it just so happens that there are a couple of computer gaming boards I follow where some of the more brilliant current events people hang out. I take great pleasure in debating all sorts of issues with these individuals, and it was on that particular day when I first read a thread of this event happening. However, what kept bothering me about the thread was not that the event had happened (which again, bothered me a great deal), but that almost all of the commentary was from people indicating that Lara Logan was the one who should be considered at fault, because she should have known better than to be in a place where she might possibly be raped by men.

I remember staring at the screen, thinking to myself, how could anyone even think something like that? In all of the years I’ve been arguing with these people, not once did I ever think of them as a bunch of Neanderthals who thought that women should be treated as sexual fodder to be used randomly because they’re soft and cuddly, and men are going to do what men are going to do. Yet, in post after post, that’s all I was reading.

So, I fired off a response in which I indicated that I was shocked that we still have people who think this way in this day and age. I was astonished at this behavior, and I couldn’t believe they would EVER blame a woman for the simple crime of, well, being a woman in a man’s world. I knew I was going to rile up some people, but right after I posted my response, the usual suspects started chiming in about how “you need to live in the real world” and that the world is a dangerous place, and if I can’t handle the way things happen, then maybe I should stay inside and not dare to play with the big boys, because “your panties might get tussled.”

Shortly after this, one post after another came across indicating that I was clueless as to how people live in the real world. Then, one of the posters responded with “um, guys, you know he’s an Army veteran, right?” And then suddenly the insults stopped. But it literally took another member from the group to point out that the person they were insulting was actually someone who wasn’t some girl-like guy for them to actually stop treating me like I was some wastoid of humanity.

But that never changed the perspective of the people who were posting. They still believed it was her fault for being in a place she should not have been.

Shortly after this, Nir Rosen imploded on himself with his tweets saying almost exactly the same thing. The upshot was he lost his job, and today Rosen has tried to salvage any future career by writing a veiled article about how his undoing was really his “enemies” out to get him by taking pot shots at him for things he didn’t mean to say. Unfortunately for him, most of the comments generally aren’t buying his banter, as he already threw away his career by saying some of the stupid things he said.

But the sorts of things he said were no different from any of the people who I was talking about from that message board. Yet, what I’ve discovered is that once these people realized their comments were seriously wrong, and they were, they’ve now just stopped talking about it, moving onto the next subject and pretending nothing happened. That, unfortunately, is what happens all of the time with our mainstream media, and I don’t think people really recognize what’s going on. People feel they can get away with it as long as they move onto the next subject and pretend they never said anything ridiculous. Mainstream news pundits are filled with morons who do that sort of thing. I’ll be honest. I’ve done it from time to time where I’ve taken the wrong tact on an issue and then just tried to pretend I never said anything and moved on. So, it’s not just enough to point fingers and leave it at that.

The problem we really have is that people do not take accountability for much of what they say and do. Yet, people like Lara Logan still have to get up and try to make it through the next day, realizing that when things turned bad, the people who claim to be the voice of the rest of the people threw her under the bus and hoped no one would ever hold them accountable for doing so. I can’t imagine how it must feel for someone who has been treated like dirt, after being treated like an object, and has to face a new day alone.

That’s someone who has to live in the real world. I’m just not sure that’s all that great a world to have to live in.

When the Revolution Comes Back Home

Politics, Religion, , , , , , ,

 

Revolutions can sometimes look like this

There’s been a lot of talk of revolution lately with the whole Egypt thing. I find it interesting that when we were talking about Yemen, my first thought was that Yemen would probaby be the tipping point for other revolutions because that’s usually what happens, and people didn’t seem to get what I was talking about. My point was that revolutions tend to spread revolutionary ideas to places where people aren’t expecting such ideas to take hold, and when it happens, it happens fast before anyone can see it coming, and usually faster than anyone can make it stop.

Mubarak realized that too late. He saw the waves of revolution coming at him, and instead of responding with an immediate jump into the current, he fought back against it, never seeing the wave as the tsunami that it was. And that’s what normally happens. When the US revolution happened, some French chick told a bunch of peasants to go eat cake. Next thing you knew, she was losing her head in a guillotine, and the monarchy of France was gone. Okay, for history’s sake, Marie Therese may have said the whole cake thing, and not Marie Antoinette, but most people don’t know that, and she still gets the credit for the sentiment, so I’m sticking with that. Rousseau was known for taking a bit of liberty with history, so we’ll just let it go there.

The point is: Mubarak never saw it coming and was so inebriated by his own power that he never saw the end coming. That’s generally how most revolutions play out, quite often with the masses rushing the bastille at the last minute and the monarch/dictator no longer able to hold session with the masses listening to every word, unless they are the “last” words before a beheading.

But this isn’t really a missive to communicate the aftermath of the revolution of Egypt. For all we know, there’s another that might have to take place once the army gets drunk with its new sense of power and ends up never giving it up. I can’t predict those events, so I won’t even try.

What is important is to focus on the wave itself, because revolutions don’t happen in a vacuum. They tend to overwhelm entire areas and spread one after another on the sentiments of rich, glorious freedom. Right now, Iran is shitting a brick because of the revolution that just took place in Egypt. The leaders there are condemning ANY attempt at celebrating or protesting in the name of Egypt or any other country because they’re scared to death with what might happen there. The public stance is that the revolution took place with the overthrow of the Shah in the 1970s. They don’t want to even think about the fact that there might be pissed off Iranians right now who are thinking about freedom. But if that happens, it will overwhelm them, and they’ll never see it coming.

Aren’t revolutions cool?

But what we should be focusing on is something NO ONE in the United States is paying attention to: The United States. We like to think that revolutions can’t happen here, but we’re exactly in the kind of atmosphere where one could spontaneously erupt, and no one will ever see it coming. Half of the country continues to use rhetoric indicating it hates the other half. It’s no longer gentlemen’s disagreements anymore. Half the country hates the other half. And the other half isn’t too fond of the first half. We’re either ripe for a revolution or a civil war. We’re just too sophisticated to believe that such a thing might ever happen here.

Well, I’ve got some bad news for you. More people in this country live in poverty than ever before. There is no direction out of it either. The country itself is heading towards bankruptcy and there’s no solution for that either. The rich and powerful own most of the production and money in this country. The majority of the country consists of people who have nothing and really have very little to lose. Right now, the only thing holding back an insurrection of horrible proportions is that the majority of the people who would participate are on invisible opium, a sense that there’s really nothing that can be done about anything. If these people start to tip in any one direction, you have all of the ingredients you need for an out of control movement that has the capability of becoming all sorts of things unimaginable.

The only thing separating us from that is this facade of “it can’t happen here” which is backed up by a fantasy called “the American Dream.” We’re basically surviving off of a fantasy that’s more believable in Santa Claus and slightly less believable in various variations of God. It really doesn’t take much to push us over to the other side, and all we have to rely on is, again, the idea that it can never happen here, backed up by the history of “it’s never happened here”. Well, at least not in the last hundred years, because it did happen here once. It doesn’t take much for these people to get riled up and start killing each other. For some, it’s a colored flag. For others, it’s an idea. For even more, it’s a realization that there’s nothing left to believe in.

That last one’s scariest of all because even after revolting, you generally don’t end up with a solution that satiates that one.

Either way, it’s been an interesting few weeks lately. Just remember that democratic movements come in waves, so always make sure you have a decent surfboard and lots of sunscreen. The sun can be a real bitch sometimes.

Another Day, Another Birthday

Memoirs, ,

Tomorrow is my birthday. I turn 46, or 21, or the Letter J. I’ve kind of lost count and somehow think that if I just make up numbers (and letters), it will work itself out in the end.

I’m not happy that it’s my birthday because to be honest, I’ve done very little with my life that makes me overly proud of my accomplishments. I say this with a bit of trepidation because I don’t really feel there have been ANY accomplishments. I’ve basically spent four or so decades wasting time, and every time I have a birthday to remind me that another went by, I realize that I’ve wasted even more time that should have been spent doing something constructive, like producing world peace, a literary masterpiece, or eating some great meal in Paris while fighting off evil secret agents from Kaos. Or something like that.

In all, it’s been four or so decades of trying to figure it all out and realizing that I’m no further closer to that goal than when I first figured out I was old enough to start trying to figure it all out. I mean, I can take the first twelve or so years and say that “that’s figuring out how to tie your shoes time” but everything after that should have been a consistent journey to the solving of all of the world’s puzzles. My life should have been a Da Vinci Code of  discoveries, instead of a continuous attempt to get to the end of my Netflix queue. Yeah, I’ve written twelve or thirteen novels (the exact number always hangs at the back of my head like a metaphor of something that hangs a lot like something at the back of a head), but aside from a couple of them, they’ve mostly been adventures in how to and not write a novel. My last few novels are probably the few “important” ones even though not a single literary agent cares enough to want to look at it, and no publisher is savvy enough to realize one of them might just change the very course of history. They’re good, but is it really considered good if no one ever wants to read them?

Which leaves me back at “what have you done with your life?” And I can’t really say with a definitive tongue that I’ve accomplished anything substantial. My actions didn’t move mountains, didn’t cause rivers to change their normal flow, or even get someone to realize that he or she could make a difference in the world because Duane helped them figure something out. Yeah, I’m a teacher, but every semester I come out of class thinking I just sent a whole group of students further into the world just as clueless as the day they started in my class. Sure, I tried, prodding and trying to get them to care more about the subjects I teach, but it just never seems to be enough, and when I talk to colleagues who also teach, I get the impression that it’s more about the paycheck than the long-term implications of education. Not all of them, but you know how that works out.

Which brings me back to the point that I’m going to be one year older in one day, and I really don’t feel like I’ve done anything significant in my life. Sure, other people tell me they think I have, but that doesn’t mean much when one is self-reflecting on the bigger picture. It’s like Socrates who spent the latter part of his life trying to prove he wasn’t the smartest guy around, even though the Oracle said he was. It doesn’t mean much if you don’t believe in it yourself.

My only real regret is that I didn’t ask for the day off today. I mean, it’s a Friday, and tomorrow is a Saturday, so I don’t even get a real day off because of my birthday. That’s not that big a deal, but sometimes, it’s the little things that count most.

What it All Comes Down to

Computer Games, Economics, Memoirs, Movies, Politics, Social Networking, Television, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I guess it’s time for another update on what’s going on, what’s on my mind, and where I think things are going.

1. My Readership. I suspect I really don’t have anyone reading this blog (my main one). It gets printed also on Open Salon, which might grant me a few readers there, but even there it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not anyone actually reads (or cares about) anything I have to say. I also import my blogs to my Facebook profile, and even though I have a bunch of “friends” there, I suspect practically no one reads anything I have to say there either.

It’s a real problem for a writer who wants to be taken seriously when no one reads anything he has to say. It gets really frustrating. I mean, Snooki can write a book and it becomes a bestseller based on her outrageous behavior alone, but a consistent writer generally has to kill someone in order to get anyone to read his stuff. And they wonder why so many literary types kill themselves before they ever become famous, often discovered after they blew their brains out over the frustration of trying to actually make it as a writer or an artist.

This means when I post my blog, I get tons of traffic, but I suspect it’s a bunch of bots that are trying to get people to buy their shit rather than actual people reading my blog. My spam filter logs dozens of spam messages a day, which are all the type that say something like: “Read your posting, and I completely agree with you. You should try out this new version of sex medication which can be found at….” Yeah, it gets really annoying and frustrating.

But just because I suspect one of my stuffed animals might be reading this by tapping into my wifi at home, I’ll continue….

2. Snow. I really hate it. I do. I’m not from Michigan, even though I live here. I’m from California, and if I could afford to live there or could have ever found a job there, I would be there right now. I hate the snow. I hate the cold. I turned on my heater two nights ago for the first time (been using an electrical set of heaters all Winter long), and it was so much nicer than just being able to heat up one small room, and not very well either. Even though my electrical heater could get the room up to about 70 or so, it felt like it was 45. I’m now using my real heater, even though it’s expensive as hell. But I can’t take the cold any more. I really hate it here.

3. The Whole Nook vs. Kindle Debate. I’ve written a few articles on this because I bought both a Nook Color and the $189 Kindle 3G + Wifi. I’ve completely given up on the Nook. I had two subscriptions to magazines with the Nook Color (Consumer Reports and the New York Times Book Review). I gave up trying to get the Nook to download Consumer Reports. It would start to download and then just stop. I would check the wifi signal, and it would register as fine. After three days of trying to download a magazine I already paid for, I gave up, cancelled my subscriptions and I will never use the Nook again. Contest over. The Kindle wins. It might not look as nice, but at least I can actually get content onto it. The Nook Color is a piece of shit that should never have been sold to people. I will never recommend it to anyone ever again.

4. Egypt. Things are probably going to get really interesting now that Mubarak went on the air and basically told the protesters: “I hear you, but I just wanted to say go fuck yourselves. Have a nice day.” He’s decided that even though people are out in the streets risking their lives, he’s not leaving. The Army has now backed him, which means that one of two things are probably going to happen. They’ll crack down on the protesters, and this will be one of those sorry moments in human history that people try to forget when talking about how great a people we are, or the people are going to end up going the way of the French Revolution, overthrowing the government and killing Mubarak if he doesn’t escape out of the country first. If you’re a dictator, and you pretty much give the finger to your people when they demand you step down, you really don’t have a lot of options that can play out from that moment on. I mean, all sorts of things can happen, but right now, it’s going to be a slaughter of people unless a whole lot of people back down, and when people are backed into a corner, they usually strike back instead of back down. Unless they’re Americans. Then they either sue you or back down and say that they want to spend more time with their families.

5. Relationships. I don’t know anything about this subject. I’m not in one. I don’t recognize one when I am in one. I don’t even know what women are, although I see movies with them in it, so I do believe they might exist, although I can’t verify it in person.

6. Politics in the USA. We’re going to be heading towards another presidential election with no electable people in the Republican Party, a current president who has done nothing to be reelected, other than make arousing speeches that don’t translate to actual action, and a whole lot of self-important politicians who think they deserve to be the next leaders of the free (in theory, at least) world. Right now, the front runners for the Republican Party seem to be Sarah Palin (the joke that keeps giving), Newt Gingrich (a pompous airbag that comes installed as standard equipment), a just-announced “I’m seriously considering it” Donald Trump (another rich buffoon who thinks that being rich translates to leadership potential), and a bunch of other people no one knows, has ever heard of, or cares one iota about whatsoever. So, right now, I’m calling it a boring presidential election where we reelect Jimmy Carter, um, Obama.

7. The Academy Awards. A bunch of movies I didn’t see, don’t want to see, and don’t care about, are competing for the top honors this year. As you can guess, I’m holding my breath in anticipation.

8. SyFy Becomes Shark Attack Channel. I don’t know when this happened, but my favorite channel (I remember actually asking a television station provider if they carried the SyFy Channel and not caring about any others) went from being a station with original science fiction programming with shows like Stargate SG1. Atlantis, Warehouse 13, Eureka, Battlestar Galactica (then Caprica), some variation of Star Trek, and lots of that sort of stuff. Now, it’s Man-Killing Shark and really bizarre movie of the week crap that stars Erik Estrada as a small town sheriff who is fighting a shark that has grown feet and chases people on the beach, but Estrada, who plays Skip William, is afraid of sharks because a shark killed his family in a drive-by shooting in Compton. Okay, that’s not a real show, but it should be. Who stole my SyFy Channel?

9. The Federal Budget is Out of Control. Um, when has it ever not been? We’re approaching the debt ceiling in February, when they told us that if we didn’t do things right, we’d be hitting that debt ceiling by September. Um, it’s FEBRUARY and we’re already arguing for having to increase the limit. And this is the government that’s trying to FIX the economy? Really?

10. Facebook Went Public. I laughed my ass off when I heard it was going to happen. If ever there was a bubble corporation that has absolutely no value whatsoever being sold for so many billions, I couldn’t find one. At least GM makes cars. At least Microsoft puts out a browser or operating system every now and then. But what does Facebook actually produce? Your content. Your friends. Your information. In other words, not a damn thing. Yet, they’re bad boy of leadership is now a multi-billionaire, and they’ve been launched as a fake IPO (a real one wasn’t done because the SEC would have hit them with all sorts of legal injunctions, which should automatically tell everyone something’s not on the up and up, but even that doesn’t cause people to take notice). Yeah, I use Facebook, but it’s such a non-entity in the grand scheme of things and is really only as important as it is at any one moment, knowing that it can go the way of Myspace in a second. Or like AOL, which still tries to regain some importance. Or sadly, like Blockbuster, that sad commentary of a video rental store that hasn’t realized it was obsolete ten years ago.

11. Verizon’s iPhone. Finally. Not that I want an iPhone on Verizon, but now I don’t have to read 10,000 stories manufactured by CNN about how great it would be to have the iPhone on Verizon. It’s there now. Leave me alone and stop hyping the stupid thing on your news site. Nobody really cares, as we discovered when no one lined up at the early Verizon Store openings that day, letting the event come and go without much fanfare. Nobody really cared.

12. Groupon’s Super Bowl Ad. All of the people who are upset about this incident don’t want to even deal with the ramifications of what really happened. First off, they all got upset at the ad where Groupon poked fun at itself by using the controversy of China and Tibet as its canvas. Well, here’s what they’re not getting, won’t get, and especially won’t ever own up to. The humor went over their heads. Not that they didn’t get it. It went OVER their heads, meaning they had to be smart enough to realize what was going on. Consider the source. It came from the direction of Christopher Guest, who is well known for creating comedy that not everyone gets, mainly because it pokes fun at people who are on stage and represents entire groups of people who when they watch it don’t always realize they’re being seen as the morons they really are because they’re so locked into their own little worlds that they are incapable of realizing the rest of the world sees them as ridiculous. It was the exact same humor used with Groupon, and of course, the people watching it were not Christopher Guest fans. They were Super Bowl fans, which I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we’re talking about two completely different intellectual mindsets here. Fill in the blanks to figure out which one I’m probably insulting here. I don’t really care. I’m not selling ads. Those people just didn’t get it and went nuts against Groupon. Why am I not surprised? I’m also not surprised that no one else is either.

13. Lindsay Lohan’s Theft Charge. Okay, I’ll admit it. I enjoy reading about the many demises of Lindsay Lohan. I don’t know her, I’m not a fan, and I probably shouldn’t care. But it’s like watching a train wreck happen in front of me. I probably should call 911 for help, but I can’t stop watching. I don’t get the same trill out of Charlie Sheen. Nothing about him fascinates me, nor does his drama. Lohan’s, on the other hand, completely fascinates me because I keep thinking that ir probably won’t get any worse, and then it does. I don’t even think she stole the thing, but that’s not even what keeps me interested. What keeps me interested is how someone can take her fame and continue to destroy her career, her future and any support from the community that she might ever have. Just the other day, her legal team says that it’s not going to deal with the allegations in public; they’ll deal with it in court. Then the first day of the trial, Lohan tweets her whole ordeal to the public, trying it out in the public again, even though that’s exactly what they said they wouldn’t do.

I can’t stop watching.

14. Writing. I’m taking a break from my current novel and working on a screenplay. Then I’ll be working on a word text game app that I’m designing for the android platform. I realized recently that there aren’t a whole lot of word text games out there any more, and I think it would be fun to create a new one. I remember how fun they were to create back when we were first designing computer games for the early systems, before graphics took over the industry.

That’s really it for now. If you’re actually reading this, let me know. I’d really like to know that there are people actually reading the blog.