Monthly Archives: October 2011

The Second Season of V Disproves My Theory That V Couldn’t Get Any Worse

Television, , , , , , , , , , ,

I discovered the other day that the television show V actually came out with a second season. Somehow, I missed it when it aired, but as I had seen the first season and was really interested in seeing how it played out in the second season, I went out and bought the season of DVDs. You see, I should probably explain that my fascination with V is not because I think it’s a great show, but because I watched the first season and kept saying to myself: “How can a show have such great acting talent, an obviously decent budget and still manage to suck so badly?” I mean, the star of the show is one of the main characters from the GREAT television series LOST. And then there are people in the show that come from some of the greatest that science fiction has ever offered. There was a guy from Firefly (the pilot on the show), the star of Earth: Final Conflict (a strange show that is oddly A LOT like V’s premise of an alien race showing up, promising great things but having a hidden agenda), an actress who was one of the recurring characters on The Office, the secondary female star being also from Firefly and Stargate SG1 (she played the prostitute on Firefly and the Ori human leader in Stargate SG1), the hot girl who played Supergirl on Smallville, and so many other actors that I was constantly saying, “hey, I recognize that guy/woman!” Yet, with all of that talent, they still managed to produce one of the most ho hum shows I’d ever seen.

So, I thought that the second season really couldn’t get much worse. Well, I was wrong. What started out as a “oh no, the aliens are really evil but only one FBI agent knows about it” has now turned into a show where I find myself going, “who cares?” almost every time a big event occurs in an episode. The aliens are diabolical, yet the rag tag team of rebels is at some times brilliant (beyond belief), the greatest Spetznaz operatives the world has ever known, completely stupid and clueless, overly obvious to the point of where I keep thinking, Okay, we have the stupidest aliens in history because they can’t figure out that the guys working against them are always present whenever things go bad, and filled with so many dorky coincidences that I’m sometimes embarrassed to be watching.

Spoiler alert: The end of this season got even worse than I ever imagined it would be. The aliens became so powerful, and so evil that it actually hit a point where I thought, wow, there’s no way the humans are going to win this one. Everyone is paranoid, and the good guys are losing their way and their battles, and I thought, okay, wow, this is going to finally start getting really good to where the main characters are really going to have to doing some serious crap to win this battle. And THEN: a secret organization of military organizations made up of every nation in the world comes to the rescue of the main hero, telling her that she’s no longer alone in her battle, that this organization of super army has been tracking the evil aliens, JUST IN CASE they might be evil, and now they’re ready to work with her, because they now realize she’s actually on their side.

Really? That’s the October surprise you have for your viewers? When things get really bad, SHIELD is going to appear out of nowhere and help the Avengers now that they’ve lost all of their powers, even though we never hinted SHIELD existed in the first place? How about a superduper weapon that they’ve been building in the Antarctic wastes, just in case something like this should ever happen? Or perhaps a Death Star? Or should we just find a hot shot pilot who has never flown a battle before to fly a sortie against the alien horde and shoot his blaster at a two meter hole that will somehow blow up all of the alien ships together? I mean, we’re doing stupid crap. Why not?

Anyway, I’m looking forward to Season 3, so we can see what “great” entertainment they have to offer next time around. I’m hoping the hero finds an alien motorcycle and jumps over the alien space shark that is threatening humanity.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is about to begin again….

Writing, , , ,

The yearly ritual of NaNoWriMo is about to begin on Tuesday. What this means is that thousands of people will participate in a process that challenges them to write a novel of at least 50,000 words. I’ve been participating in this ritual for the last three years, and while I’ve succeeded before, not always do I end up with the full 50,000 words. Last year, I kind of got stuck at around 30,000 words and started playing World of Warcraft. This year, I don’t play that any longer, so I have no complications of that nature to hold me back.

This year, I actually have my novel being planned, unlike some previous years where I tried to write it on the spot, making up as I went along. This year, I am taking one of my award-winning short stories and turning it into a full novel. For those wondering, and that would probably refer to the fantasy people I imagine are reading my blog on a daily basis (who are often standing next to the fantasy women who are lining up to date me…sometimes, they’re the same woman!).

The novel has the working title of Buried Memories, although I don’t think that’s the title I’ll end up with in the end. It is a mainstream fiction novel, but it borrows a lot from the romance genre, something that is not my normal area of expertise. Like most of my later novels, it involves telling the story from multiple perspectives, where even the reader is perceived to be an almost participant viewer (not involved in the story, but kept somewhat sheltered from all of the details as a storytelling element, kind of like how people experience life in reality). The basic premise of the story involves a 20 year struggle between Eric and Jennifer, when she begins the novel by finally forgiving him for betraying her those 20 years ago, involving their best friend Annie.

The novel, much like the short story, is told backwards in time from the moment of forgiveness back to their marriage 21 years ago. But unlike the short story, the novel will then jump 25 years back to when Eric and Annie were a couple, and Jennifer was their best friend, leading to the events that brought Eric and Jennifer together and Annie to become the outsider. Then it will lead to the events that provide the mechanism for the betrayal, and then culiminate with the events of the betrayal itself. The linking mechanism throughout the novel is a tree planted by Eric and Jennifer that has been growing for 21 years, a tree that was planted with the words: “this tree stands as a testament to the power of our love, and like our love, will endure forever.”

Tuesday begins the adventure.

Politicians paying lip service to the OWS movement

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I was pretty excited when I saw that President Obama was announcing changes to the federal student loan program that would benefit those of us with outstanding student loans. And then I started examining the details before I realized that for the most part, they help practically no one who currently has any student loans. In other words, if you are currently in school and racking up student loans, you might get a bit of a nudge in the way of help, but if you’re one of those saddled with $150,000 worth of student loan debt, well, the government isn’t really interested in helping you. As a matter of fact, every action the government has taken over the last few years concerning student loans has worked completely against helping anyone discharge (or pay) their student loans. The last piece of “help” we received was when the government sided with the credit card and bank lobbyists and made it impossible to use bankruptcy to discharge your student loan debt. You can discharge your debt for killing someone, losing your business, or throwing all of your money into the ocean, but if you took out student loans, you are stuck with them for life.

Students who have been part of the OWS movement have been screaming for some kind of help from the government since the protests began. As a result the Democrats have realized that a huge segment of their voting population are now tying themselves to this movement. So, obviously, they had to do something to look like they’re on the same side. What better way than to pretend to be doing something, which is exactly what President Obama’s action the other day did? As usual, the government response to a popular protest has been to pretend to be doing something and then hope the movement goes away long enough for people in power to get reelected. In other words, let’s continue to ignore the man behind the curtain.

I don’t think our current crop of politicians seems to understand what’s going on in the country right now. People are pissed off that their chances of a good future have been squandered away by corporations, banks and government officials who kept kicking the cans down the road. Sure, you can blame students for taking out loans, but you really can’t do that until you analyze why they took out the loans in the first place. The corporations, banks and government told them that the only way they would ever have a sustainable future was to take out these loans because the corporations, banks and government weren’t going to be picking up the bills for education. Throughout most of our lives, we realized that our economic future was going to be somewhat of a disaster if we tried to go it alone without education (sure, you can argue that a few people managed to make it without college, but they’re really a statistical outlier rather than anywhere near the norm), so we really had no choice. But now we’re finding out that the promise of a future was really a lie, created by people who realized they had to sell us this lie in order to continue making insane profits.

And look at some of the companies who have profited off of our stupidity. Look at the Fortune 500, and you’ll see nothing but lists of corporations that have played the game all the way to the top. And they did it in some pretty shitty ways, too. I look at the misinformation campaigns, and I”m shocked that we continue to allow it to happen. We have fake colleges selling fake degrees to students who think they are providing a future for themselves, yet are really only getting themselves further into debt and will have absolutely no future. Sure, you can point your fingers at the profit colleges, but what no one wants you to recognize is that legitimate, innocent looking companies are also the ones behind them. While we can all point at Haliburton and the Fox Corporation and claim all sorts of evil, there are so many companies like the Washington Post, which really doesn’t want you to know that it’s practically running one of those profit colleges that the government has been “claiming” to want to curtail, but when lobbyists got involved, suddenly the government didn’t want to “hurt students”. This happens in so many different avenues of business that we don’t even pay attention to it any more. And no one reports it because the major news agencies are all part of the same problem that caused our dilemma, and who wants to report on themselves? Certainly not NBC, which is owned by General Electric. And the lists just go on and on.

But right now, there are people out there making themselves heard, and they’re probably not going to last very long. Just yesterday, Oakland Police were tear gassing protesters and then shooting projectiles at Iraqi veterans who have joined the protest. But no one pays attention long enough to really care. And like the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, we’re probably going to condemn the protesters because it’s become really easy to ridicule the protesters instead of actually give them the coverage they really need.

You see, the protesters are out there for more than just themselves. They are out there advocating for everyone who doesn’t have a voice. And for the most part, they’ll be ignored, beaten and ridiculed by everyone else, even though everyone else is part of the 99% they’re there to represent. In the end, they’ll probably give up because we didn’t care long enough to help them make a difference.

And the fault will be ours. But we’ll never know, because we didn’t even take the time to care.

What Political Issues Should Be Focused On?

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Every time we come close to a major national election, I’m left scratching my head at the innane subjects that end up becoming “important” politically. You know the things I’m talking about. Stuff like abortion, stem cell research, soccer moms and legalizing marijuana. Sure, some people find them important, but for the most part, they’re fringe topics that tend to get people galvanized around unimportant issues that end up costing votes for elections. And we fall for it every time. So, I decided to look into a couple of topics I thought SHOULD be issues, and then ask if you have any thoughts or ideas of your own.

1. While the economy is an important subject, just focusing on “the economy” or “jobs” are useless endeavors because they really don’t get down to the point of actually doing anything. Sure, I could run for office and say “Duane is FOR a good economy and believes we SHOULD put people to work! So vote me for me!” Sadly enough, a bunch of politicians are probably already preparing their campaigns to say almost that. In rhetoric, it works great. In substance, well, not so much. Mainly because it doesn’t mean anything. Killing puppies is bad, but no one is actually advocating killing puppies, so getting on the side of the pro-puppy crowd doesn’t lead anywhere but to banal arguments that don’t lead anywhere. That’s the economy problem.

So, if I was going to talk about fixing the economy, I could probably focus on taxes, even though those often fall into banal areas as well, because then we end up in a pro-left “more taxes” or pro-right “taxes are bad”. Instead, I say that we k now that taxes are inevitable, so why don’t we focus on what exactly we’re taxing in the first place. And I don’t mean whom, such as rich versus poor. Yeah, I think the rich could probably afford to pay more taxes, but let’s be honest and think about the possibility that perhaps that’s not exactly right either. While they CAN afford more taxes, is it really right to say they SHOULD be paying more taxes? While I could argue that they’ve probably benefited more from capitalism than someone who is poor (which WOULD be a good argument), I’m going to take a different tact and focus on what should be taxed, because I think there are avenues where we are completely missing the boat.

Here me out here. What I propose is that we legalize prostitution and then tax anything and everything that has any ties to sexual barter exchanges. Right now, there is a HUGE blackmarket industry that is nothing but this type of behavior, and the only reason we don’t tax it is because the people who would pay those taxes are afraid to report it because they’d probably then get arrested for all sorts of blue laws we have instituted in our scared of sex morality that exists in our society. Face it. There are people paying other people for sexual behavior, some of it pretty innocent and some of it pretty damn bizarre involving all sorts of devices, machines, trapeze-apparatus mechanisms and some involving things that still shock the crap out of me. But I know it takes place because there are people out there doing it and enjoying it. None of them are evil, bad, dishonest or any other letter-wearing designation either. They’re normal people who have decided that that is how they interact with each other. And some people throw a fit because it doesn’t fit into their sense of morality.

Get over it. If you don’t like it, don’t participate in it. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be acknowledging it and taxing it. Believe me, there’s a LOT of money that changes hands here in this area, and once it becomes legal, you start to clean it up as well. Sure, people are still going to do their naughty things, but legalizing it gets organized crime, gangs and predators out of the business. It also allows women to have an easier avenue to protect themselves from some of the problematic people out there who prey on them because they figure the illegal nature of the business keeps them from every having to face justice.

Now, we could also legalize drugs, but at the same time I realize there’s a more health-related problem involved here that needs to be dealt with. Perhaps if we went into it with all eyes open, we might see drug behavior as a problem that needs to be dealt with through therapy and positive actions, rather than having someone try to get off drugs while in lockdown, waiting for his court case for possessing illegal substances.

2. International Diplomacy. We haven’t gotten this right in over a hundred years now. We’re still dealing with foreign entities as if we’re still part of the Napoleonic era. Governments aren’t that way any more. Major powers don’t really deal with each other on the international stage as they used to with detente and brinkmanship. What is needed is a different perspective, involving a more game theoretic foundation of tit for tat and compliance understanding than “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” nonsense. If you look at the problems the US is having with Middle Eastern countries, almost all of them stem from brinkmanship and religious intolerance (from both sides) than it does from actually attempting to engage with people as part of a give and take relationship. Right now, our foreign policy has more to do with where we might get our next barrel of oil than it does with how we get along with people who like types of music you can find on iTunes, yet much of our actual engagement comes from those avenues through social networking sites than they ever will through economic business ties being handled by corporate entities trying to corner the market on petroleum.

Years ago, I used to have disagreements with a young man who was fresh from Iran (shortly after the Shah was deposed). He was a strongly ideological Persian who believed in east versus west superiority (for whatever reasons, which surprisingly were not religious), but we actually became friends and arguments and conflicts practically ended overnight when I discovered he was a fan of Madonna, and I managed to get him a copy of Madonna’s “Sex” book that he so wanted but couldn’t bring it to himself to buy for himself. To be honest, I never heard an anti-western comment from him after the day he received that book. While I can’t verify he still didn’t feel that way, it was amazing what a sea change was made over such a simplistic gesture.

That our government has NEVER figured this out shocks me more and more as the world becomes a much more dangerous place while still moving towards some bizarre sense of a global economy.

3. Education. This, to me, is probably the most important issue that our country should be dealing with on a daily basis, almost with the same sense we gave to putting men on the Moon. Our whole country should be rallied around the idea of improving our educational system not so that we somehow obtain minimal standards, but that we start to surpass the very dreams we had back in the 1960s about the great civilization we hoped to one day become. Children should be taught calculus by sixth grade as a standardization and expectation because it should be almost second nature. Parents should be irrate that their children don’t know more than they did at their age and do everything possible to make sure that we don’t continue to churn out stupid people. Reality show programming should be seen as the embarrassment to America that it really is, instead of some kind of ideal that people look up to. My god, there are people who want to be Snooki and the Situation, and somehow seem proud of that. College should be an expectation for all, not because it’s an enlightened goal of the few, but because it’s necessary to build a society of free thinkers who should be challenging everyone about practically everything. I would like to see a presidential debate that is moderated by the audience who shows up to the event wanting to know the answers to real questions, not just packaged answers to questions pre-screened by candidate panels beforehand.

That’s all I’ll go with for now, because now I’ve depressed myself as I realize we’re never going to achieve any of this, and we’re doomed to go another century with people striving for the lowest standards possible, mainly because they never learned to challenge themselves.

The Problem of Relying on a Dying Technology Company

Business, Technology, , , , , ,

For the longest time, I have had trouble finding an Internet company that both works and is somewhat affordable. A long time ago, I went through Comcast, and aside from atrocious customer service and a product that worked 33% of the time, it wasn’t half bad. But when I moved away from the place where Comcast served my apartment building, I no longer had access to that dismally somewhat okay service. Upon moving to Grand Rapids, I was stuck in an apartment complex that did some kind of sweetheart deal with a company called Suite Solutions, which I discovered had atrociously bad Internet service. I was lucky if I got a stable signal four days out of a week, and there were so many weekends where it went down on Friday and didn’t come back up until Sunday after midnight. I shut off Suite Solutions and never looked back.

As a result, I had to be a little more creative about finding an Internet service provider. Because this company was the one with the sweetheart deal, that meant you couldn’t go through any of the standard Internet companies. Therefore, I looked for other places where I could try to get my Internet service. My two choices really ended up being AT&T’s DSL service, which is generally a lot slower than most other Internet offerings, and a company called Clear Wire, which runs a satellite Internet service on the backs of the Sprint network.

For the last year or so, I’ve actually been using Clear, and even though they’re not the greatest service in the world, I’ve also started to realize that I’ll be lucky if the service remains working for another year or so. Clear has been losing money big time since it first started, and it just doesn’t have the ability to compete with any of the big boys out there. Also, for some reason their management seems to do pretty much everything wrong, and their ability to attract new customers has been horrid. Sprint has been talking about closing them down almost since the day I first signed on to using them.

As a result, the service has been kind of spotty. I suspect that the service is getting worse because they’re closing down their lines, but they don’t want to lose any of the revenue they already have coming in through the door. I suspect that they’ll keep going until they squeeze every dollar out of their customers and then they’ll pull the plug (probably the day after the last charge goes through my credit card account).

I’m kind of sad about this because it’s been kind of nice having an Internet company that was somewhat off the grid and pretty fast (it was a decent speed). But they need, or needed, more customers, and they had a horrible process of making that happen. If I wasn’t already a customer, I probably would avoid them like the plague, because they have really draconian policies about shutting off the service. An example is that even though I bought the modem outright, meaning there’s no leasing and no amount of money they’ve invested, they still force you to sign their entry agreement where they rake you over the coals when you try to leave, charging you a disconnect fee, like a cell phone does when you leave before finishing out a two-year contract. You really don’t attract people with policies like that, and even though the clerk promised me that I wouldn’t end up having to pay the separation fee if I left (because I bought my own equipment instead of using theirs), I know better, and know that when I finally leave, it won’t be without a fight.

But slowly, my Internet is going away. I’m probably going to switch to AT&T as a result, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not upset that this company couldn’t make it on its own. It’s one of those cases where a company that could have done great things was led into the ground by people who just didn’t get it. And I saw it happening. I would have said something if there had ever been anyone willing to listen, but you know how those things go.

The other day, I was driving by the office where I first looked at the service they were offering. The storefront was empty. On the door was a notice from the landlord, threatening Clear with legal action for not paying its rent. Not a good sign. Not, not a very good sign at all.

The Struggles of Science Fiction on Modern Day Television

Business, Technology, Television, , , , , ,

I was watching another one of those obscure BBC television shows this last weekend called Outcasts. It’s a science fiction 8 part series that takes place in the future when a series of catastrophic events force colonists from Earth to take up residence on some far-away planet. Immediately, they run into political problems amongst the survivors, and then they start to discover really odd things, like the possibility that humans may have colonized this planet a long time ago (which makes absolutely no sense to anyone). It’s an interesting story arc, and as I was watching it, I immediately started thinking, “I’ll bet they didn’t renew this show, which means I’m probably watching the first season of yet another science fiction television show that didn’t make it past its freshman year.” And it turns out, I was right. The first season ends on a cliffhanger, and the viewers are left hanging yet again.

Maybe it’s me, but why don’t television networks understand that science fiction takes time to grab ahold of its audience? I don’t think there’s a science fiction show out there that didn’t take a number of seasons of trodding through really difficult character building before it finally got the to meat of its show. Look at the recent success of Battlestar Galactica. It started off a bit stale, and then it built into a brilliant final couple of seasons. Look at practically every Star Trek that came out after the original series. The Next Generation took a few seasons to catch on, people constantly comparing Picard to Kirk before realizing they weren’t the same person, but different, and that wasn’t so bad a thing. Deep Space Nine took about three or four seasons to kick off before it became possibly the most beloved of all of the Star Trek universe offerings. Voyager, well, I argue it was a lot better four seasons in and to the end, although there are some who can’t stand it at all, but it still made that same arc I’m talking about. And Enterprise was a pretty decent last season show that took a lot of “hey, we’re exploring space for the first time” episodes to get to its point.

I look at some of the greatest science fiction around, and it took a long time to get around to being great. The 4400 was a great show once you finally got beyond the beginning parts of what it was trying to do. The X-Files took some time to find its footing, as well as Fringe took about two seasons to finally reveal that it wasn’t a rip-off of the X-Files, but great science fiction all on its own. It’s still going strong.

The thing is: Science fiction takes time to tell its story. It’s not like a cop show where you throw a bunch of people into a scene after a murder, have the star do his quirky mannerisms and then jump to a chase scene/shoot out, and then cue the last insider joke before going to commercial. Some of these shows are dealing with some pretty heavy subjects, and it takes time to get an audience to buy into the characters, and sometimes even the universe we’re talking about. Stargate was an interesting piece of science fiction in that it started off strong, and then became even stronger once it played out its initial arc and had to reinvent exactly what it was doing to come to a whole new kind of show. Stargate Atlantis did practically the same thing, once its writers realized they weren’t just recreating Stargate SG1, but had a brand new animal on their hands. Stargate Universe could have evolved into something great as it was starting to get better in the second season, but like most executive decisions it never had enough time to build its audience and appeal to do what it needed to do. It was cut off way too early to finish its growth.

Outcasts is an interesting example for me because I’ve been reading the message boards concerning this show since it was shut down after its first season. People are really upset because a show they really started to get into was cut off way too early to allow itself a chance to breathe. And I don’t blame them. For all of the crappy shows that are out there, it is rare to find a show that really tries to take chances and pushes itself as it does it. It was fascinating that they were doing what they were doing with the cast they had, considering I don’t think I’ve ever really seen any of the actors before, aside from a cameo in the very first episode by Jamie Bamber, better known for playing Captain Apollo on the remake of Battlestar Galactica (I kept looking at him, thinking, “is that who I think it is?”).

Sadly, one of the few places where science fiction is welcome doesn’t seem to have a lot of science fiction anymore. I’m talking about the SyFy Channel, which used to be the SciFi Channel. Nowadays, the channel is known more for WWF wresting and ridiculous movies of the week about killer land sharks and other nutso ideas. They have a bad habit of killing any strong science fiction shows, including the cancellation of Caprica, Stargate Universe and the recent announcement of the discontinuation of Eureka. Checking through the TV Guide, I don’t find too many original programs showing up on the SyFy Channel any longer, which means my original necessity of always making sure my cable company had that channel is no longer a given.

Part of the problem of this dilemma is probably necessary to address as well, and that’s the fact that because science fiction involves special effects and unique, alien environments, the budgets for these shows can sometimes be astronomical. During the Star Trek run on UPN, there was some serious money being invested per episode to keep the quality up on that show, and every other show was trying to do the same sort of thing. Nowadays, a network isn’t really all that interested in paying that kind of money for entertainment, especially when they can get even higher ratings from crappy reality tv programming that costs a fraction of money to produce.

The other part of the problem is the perception people have for science fiction as well. For some reason, science fiction is seen as “geek” culture, which can often lead to a group of adults shunning someone who watches science fiction, while they may be gluttons of reality television and Gossip Girl-like programming instead, somehow seeing these alternatives as more “acceptable”. Science fiction gets equated with the kind of entertainment that should be enjoyed by little boys and men who never grew up.

But quite often, science fiction practically masters the concepts of the human condition by forcing us to look at social and societal issues that cannot be explored within the confines of our normal, everyday lives. Science fiction can put someone back into the shoes of someone who had to make decisions during the Trials of Nuremburg, or force a discussion on the ramifications of the ethics of genocide that are not just theories but might be happening at a particular time and place. It can allow questions of the nuances of same sex relationships by changing the species as the focus, yet still unravel a group of people on the cusp of making a life-changing decision. While it’s not impossible to do that in other genres, rarely is it done there, which leaves science fiction one of the few places where such ideas and thinkers can completely be at ease with each other.

Unfortunately, I just finished watching a great show that will never see another episode or any of its brilliant ideas examined further by the writers who presented the dilemmas in the first place. Until then, we have to search for another venue, and hopes that someone else manages to fill the void that doesn’t often get filled by those with the vision to ignite the ideas in the mind’s canvas of possibilities.

Is Being Upset Enough to Sustain a National Movement?

Economics, Education, News, Politics, Social Networking, , , , , , , ,

The Occupy Wall Street movement is turning out to be a very interesting flashpoint in modern day history. If you follow the news, commentators are going out of their way trying to explain away something they can’t explain by using metaphors and comparisons to previous movements that are completely void of any dichotomous connections. What is simply happening is that something new has emerged, and the media has no way of explaining it.

So, let me explain what is really going on. What we have are a lot of people who are pissed off because the American Dream (or whatever international aspirations they might have if they’re not Americans) isn’t working out as originally sold by the marketers known as government and media. It used to be if you worked hard, put in your time, and did the right things, you would come out ahead, and that your children would end up doing better than you did before. This would continue on for generations until several generations later the new species wouldn’t even recognize the old species.

That works great in theory. However, the theory doesn’t account for the concept of greed. A capitalistic system works really well at bringing the society to a higher level of achievement, but what doesn’t get discussed is that not everyone rises up with the new tide of prosperity. In reality, a capitalistic system is designed to benefit those who are capable of taking advantage of the process, and in a zero sum economy, someone generally has to do horribly bad in order for someone to do horribly well. Socialism is the economic system where everyone comes out equally, although not always at the best they could be (as government isn’t known for raising tides of boats of economies all that well when there’s no incentive to provide for upward mobility). But capitalism is a different animal, and equality has never been a promise, a guarantee or even a necessity. Instead, capitalism promises prosperity for some, and desparity for most others. What we’ve only recently discovered is that 99% is desparity while 1% is prosperity in this zero sum game.

That is why people are pissed. You see, most people don’t want to be part of the losing side of economics. Yet, whenever this gets addressed, the 1% (and the clueless numbers in the 99% hoodwinked by the 1% to believe that they’ll one day have a shot at being one of the 1%) does everything possible to make the 99% sound clueless, making such commentary irrelevant, and even more important: Unheard.

But one thing happened that wasn’t a part of the capitalistic dilemma: Education. Many more people achieved education than a capitalistic system can actually maintain. Oh, this works out well if the education is vocational in nature, in that everyone exists for the purpose of feeding the greedy animal, but if the education is social in nature, and people become made aware, rather than compliant, then there would eventually be a reckoning. It’s somewhat inevitable, although I don’t even think Marx or Hegel predicted it would happen as quickly as it is beginning to occur; they suspected much more saturation would have been necessary first, but who knew?

That’s where we are today. The movement has no leadership because there is no one who can steer a crowd to inevitable collapse. There is no rallying cry that can push people in that direction. And there is really no rallying cry that can push a population back in the other direction once the masses have been unleashed.

So, the question is: Are we there yet? If we’re at the inevitable saturation point that leads to eventual destruction of the capitalistic system, then nothing exists that can push the movement backwards. If we’re not there yet, the people who hold onto the reins of power will continue to use their influence to push the masses back to compliance again. But one thing is certain: There will be no actual compromise because the holders of power cannot compromise without acknowledging that the system was flawed to begin with.

So we’re left with the question of whether or not there is enough anger, frustration and disgust amongst the population to fuel a movement further to a point where changes will actually take place. As collective action theory points out, people will gather together for a common purpose, but if they do not receive a payoff for their efforts, the movement dies until it raises steam again. If they do receive a payoff, they may settle down, thinking they achieved their goals but not really satisfied (meaning they will eventually have to rise again and start over from scratch), or they will be so insulted by the compromises asked of them that the movement will fuel itself and sustain itself further until it actually acquires the goals it sets for itself.

Either way, no one is going to sit down and write out a list of wants and needs to sustain the movement (something the media keeps asking for). It will either achieve what it needs to achieve (fulfilling a sense of punctuated equilibrium) and return rhetoric to a sense of order again, or it will overwhelm everything until it becomes the new world order itself.

Only the future can really tell.

Now that Spock (Zachary Quinto) has come out of the closet, will it affect his Star Trek career?

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First off, I have to say “hats off” to Zachary Quinto for coming out of the closet as a response to a bullying incident that he felt warranted his revelation of his gay lifestyle. Quinto, who is best known for playing Spock in the Star Trek reboot and the sinister Sylar on the television series Heroes, probably could have remained incognito about his sexual lifestyle and no one would have really suspected (or even cared), but now that he has revealed his personal background it should be interesting to see where things go from here.

The reason I mention this is because of a distinct hypocritical situation that is probably going to play itself out over the next few years. You see, Star Trek has always been one of those shows that likes to think of itself as forward thinking and taboo breaking. It was known for the first interracial kiss that occurred between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura. When Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, was thinking of quitting Star Trek, Star Trek lore reminds us that Martin Luther King, Jr. told her she couldn’t quit, that she was making strides for the Civil Rights Movement that were happening in front of the audience in ways that no one else could do at the time. Whereas she thought she was playing a simple part, and not receiving the recognition deserved, others saw her as the ground-breaking maverick who would forever be remembered for her accomplishments.

It seems somewhat ironic, or surprisingly symbolic, that Lieutenant Uhura is again involved in another stride forward from Star Trek, as it is her reboot relationship with Commander Spock that breaks the traditional lore, showing her involved in a relationship with the Vulcan, whereas none was suggested before during the Leonard Nimoy era of Spock. Now, this Spock is going to be seen in a completely different light, because now everyone going to see the new episodes of the reboot will forever know that the new Spock is being played by a gay man. If seen from the eyes of the Star Trek universe, this should be seen as nothing but a step forward, as some of the newer episodes of the later series, like the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were not afraid to explore very controversial and ground-breaking ground in this area, including an episode where the Enterprise’s doctor, a woman, rekindled a romance with a species hopping former lover who was now in the body of a woman, causing one of the more awkward love-scenes between two women in a way that was quite brilliant in that it was not exploited, comfortable or in any way frightened of what it was attempting to portray.

However, even though the show might be ground-breaking and willing to explore new ground, I wonder if the fan base feels the same way. While I have zero problem with an outed gay man playing the iconic Commander Spock in the new reboot, one has to wonder how the loyal fans will handle the same kind of scenes where Kirk and Spock were conquering the galaxy together. Even during the straight days of the two iconic galactic heroes, there was a spread of fandom fiction that postulated the possibilities of Kirk and Spock being gay lovers, and quite often such portrayals were seen with harsh indignation from other fans. The very idea that Kirk and Spock might have even been suspected of homosexuality filled pages and pages of fan blogs about the two characters, and quite often there was an immediate condemnation of the very nature of the idea.

So, how will fans handle this sort of a character going forward? Will they be able to separate the actor from the character, or will they feel an apprehension with Quinto as the iconic Spock? When they see Spock wooing Lieutenant Uhura, will there be a sense that something’s just not right, as it is very hard to see the character through the eyes of an actor who is perceived to be faking a romantic involvement (even though that’s what most actors are supposed to be doing anyway)? Much like the criticisms of Rock Hudson after it was discovered he died of AIDS and was secretly gay, are audiences capable of that suspension of disbelief, or will they spend their time over analyzing every scene, kind of like music critics over analyzed Melissa Etheridge’s lyrics after discovering she was a lesbian, believing that somehow that changed the very nature of any love ballad she may have composed?

Personally, I find Quinto to be a brilliant actor and look forward to the many roles he will continue to play, but at the same time I wonder how much criticism he will receive as the indominable Spock, now having to live up to the baggage that will now be added to the part.

An Update of Current Events with Duane

Memoirs, Writing, , ,

Figured it’s been a little time since I’ve done an update on me, so here goes:

1. I moved. Yes, I’ve been planning a local move for quite some time and finally did it this last weekend. I found a two bedroom apartment owned by the same management company where I’ve been living for the last two years and decided to move there. I’ve turned one of the bedrooms into an office and moved two desks and all of my bookshelves into it). I still haven’t set up my computer yet, but it’s all there and waiting for me to start plugging everything back together. My other laptops are there already (I never realized how much computer equipment I had, but wow, I have way too much). The new apartment also has a gas fireplace, although I think they have to light the pilot light or something because I can’t figure out how to get it working yet. Mostly, I’m completely moved in and pretty happy about that, although my arms are really tired as I’ve done nothing but move for the last four days (plus a few days the previous week, when I actually took possession of the place).

2. Writing. I’m preparing myself for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) next month. Usually, I start November by free writing something and hoping it goes somewhere, but this time around I’m actually going to be working on a specific project. I’ve been putting together the background for the new novel, which is a tragic romance that’s told through time as a characterization mechanism. Like a lot of my more recent works, this project involves attempting to challenge my usual writing abilities by doing something that hasn’t really been done before and seeing how I pull it off. I’ve always felt that a writer should be trying to stretch himself beyond his normal abilities, to push the very boundaries of genre and skill. Otherwise, I feel that writing is just a casual thing that doesn’t really have much of a purpose. I’m still planning to work on my historical novel of the 1991 August Coup in the Soviet Union, which right now sounds almost impossible to accomplish, but I’m hoping that by learning new techniques with each of my latest projects, I might build the ability to finally write the projects I’m hoping to accomplish in the future.

3. Teaching. It’s going fine. I teach two classes a week (a political science class and an interpersonal communication course). Sometimes, I feel that I’m running on autopilot with both classes, as I’ve taught them so many times before, but unfortunately, as an adjunct, I’m never going to be offered the opportunity to build a curriculum or even a course on my own. I thought about going back to school to finish another Ph.d, but honestly my passion is writing, and as much as I love teaching, I still feel my greatest accomplishment is going to be in the creative sphere.

4. Work. I’m finding the ability to be a bit more creative these days. Having learned a little more with instructional design, I’ve been able to create a few more modules in a different direction, involving a more interactive approach. It’s not extremely satisfactory, but at least it gives me a chance to stretch my brain a tiny bit. The job is really not designed to be all that intuitive or that much involved intellectually, and that makes it really difficult sometimes to try to manage when I really want to be stretching the boundaries of what’s possible. Oh well.

That’s really all that’s going on right now. Guess I’ll get back to talking about politics and stuff because my own personal life is somewhat boring.

Netflix drops Quikster but Duane really doesn’t care

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I received an email today from the CEO of Netflix. How nice. Not long ago, I received another email from him, indicating that he was raising the price of Netflix by a LOT. And then he sent me another email explaining that he was going to be splitting up Netflix into Netflix and Quikster, basically forcing me to have to use two different services to get the same service I get in one place previously. And then he went on the news and started talking to Netflix customers like a mother talking to a five year old kid who doesn’t understand why mommy and daddy are splitting up, and then decides to explain it by saying that daddy is leaving mommy because you were bad.

Anyway, so this latest email was explaining to me that he decided NOT to split up Netflix into two companies, but sorry about the price increase. That’s sticking because Netflix needs to make a profit, and I’ve been getting too good of a deal from Netflix. Well, he was right. But when he sent me those rude emails a few months back, I did what came naturally. I cut off Netflix for good and decided while it used to be a good deal, I kind of wanted to do business with companies that don’t make me feel like a five year old kid. Yeah, I threw a temper tantrum, like a five year old kid. And I left Netflix. Not coming back, so their CEO can send me all sorts of emails about how he’s changed and isn’t going to hit me any more, but our relationship is over.

I moved on. It’s not me. It’s you. Sorry. And please stop hitting mommy. The neighbors are getting tired of banging on the walls.