Can Anyone Actually Beat Obama in 2012?

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There are a bunch of Republicans trying to run for office, and tons of talk about stupid subjects, like will Sarah Palin run for office, but what no one really seems to be discussing is the HUGE elephant in the room, and that’s the fact that the incumbent rarely loses, especially when no one else is massively popular in the same arena. If you would have asked me back during the second election for George W. Bush if he was going to win or lose, I would have actually thought his chances of winning were slim. But it turned out that incumbency was the overriding factor that propelled him towards a second victory.

We’re in that ballpark again right now. We have a president who was thrown into office with a massive wave of popular support, but even his most loyal critics would be willing to say he’s been quite disappointing as a president. There was a lot of hope for hope and change, but unfortunately the only thing that really changed was the person in office, and to be honest, this man has been somewhat of an after the fact speech maker who seems to think that the bully bulpit is the only thing he needs to run the country. It’s one thing to have a great orator in office, but when all he does is make great speeches, you start to wonder what kind of person you really put into the Oval Office.

But having said that, the Republicans have absolutely no one with any sense of popularity that can get someone elected. Their options are crap, more crap, and a lot of the same. Their show stoppers are carnival clowns that make the audience jump up and laugh, but other than that, they have no one capable of doing any real damage during the election. So, unless they somehow find an underdog that no one is expecting, or one of the boring people running right now suddenly becomes infused with superpowers, I don’t see anything happening this time around other than another four years of a very insignificant, do-nothing president who will basically be a place-holder until someone new comes along.

If you think otherwise, say something. Let us know. I certainly don’t have the last word here, but for some reason people seem so quiet over this issue, or they end up being reactive, falling into political paradigms and relying on talking points that don’t mean anything. So speak up and let us know what you have to say. Otherwise, this is going to be a very boring election with absolutely no surprises whatsoever.

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The Problems with Facebook & Google No One Talks About: Censorship

Business, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , ,

Some years ago, when the Internet was very young, I was one of the early adopters of the new technology and started building web sites for companies, organizations and individuals who wanted them. In the beginning, it was interesting in that the people who needed web sites tended to be in three categories: adult businesses, churches and social celebrities. To be honest, the social celebrity market wasn’t really launched yet, so you really relied specifically on adult businesses and churches, a somewhat unique duo of activity.

My first web site I built was for a church. So was my second one. And then members of those two churches contacted me, asking me if I could build a site for them as well, as there were no web designers around yet. It turns out that the people who contacted me were professional dominatrices, looking for new ways of attracting clientele. Not really one to care where business came from, I built their sites, and almost out of nowhere, dozens of brand new clients showed up, all wanting my business. What I discovered then, and later, was that I was one of the few web designers around they came across who just wanted payment (not the rest of what their activity had to offer). What had happened to them in the beginning of the Internet was potential clients saw a way to get free sessions from them, and then basically held them hostage (they would have control over their web sites) until they got all of their “needs” met. With me, they paid me money, and they got everything they wanted without any hassle.

This was great for me, and them, and lasted for years until I went back to school and had less time. Then I slowly pushed my clients off onto other designers I came in contact with, and slowly ended doing that sort of business. It was good to do so, too, because that’s when everyone started to learn how to do web sites, and a specialty designer like me was easily outnumbered by paint by number designers who really dirtied the whole industry. I kept a few clients over the years who knew I was a designer first, and not just a spaghetti code generator (the kind of people who used pre-packaged software that was impossible to maintain and change without continuing to use the same pre-packaged software, and it was also impossible to personally configure if you wanted to do something different than the software did out of the box).

Anyway, the reason for mentioning this is that one of my clients was an adult bookstore, and at one point, we were using a shopping cart service (before I learned to design them in php from scratch). In the middle of the night one evening, they shut down her site, deciding that they didn’t like her “pervert crap” and no longer wanted to do business with her. To them, it didn’t matter that her business had been around longer than theirs had, and that we had put a LOT of work into designing the site. They shut her down in the middle of the night because their owner suddenly “found God” and no longer wanted “smut” on his sites. The thought that he didn’t “own” her site meant nothing to him; however, his control of the shopping cart software, which configured the site’s business end, practically ended her business overnight. So I had to learn php, build a brand new shopping cart (when people weren’t doing that sort of thing yet) and then relaunch her site over a weekend during a week of tests at school. It was a nightmare, but I got her going again.

What I most remember about that incident is that the shopping cart manager wouldn’t return a phone call, and when I finally got a hold of him, he was the rudest person I ever spoke to. He really felt that he was talking to scum, so he didn’t have to address that person as a human. It was an eye-opening experience.

Years ago, I was asked to fix a woman’s business site because Google had shut her down completely. She was a pro dominant, and she knew about me through mutual acquaintances who had known someone who had done a site through me years ago, so she contacted me in the middle of the night, crying, saying that Google had just shut down her online business and she couldn’t even get anyone to answer why. She had followed all of their rules to the T, and she was in compliance with everything she could imagine would need compliance. Yet, out of the blue, they shut her down. Which meant everything that was tied to Google for her was also shut down. I tried to contact Google, and kept getting the run-around from them. Finally, I told her she could rebuild her site from scratch with a new Google account, or she could be smarter and just build her site from scratch using a non-Google tied server. So I ended up building her a clean site that had no connection to Google whatsoever. She’s still going strong today, although she’s probably not an early adopter of Google Plus for the crap they put her through.

Last night, I received a frantic phone call from a woman who said that she was shut down on Facebook a few days ago. The person she spoke to wouldn’t even give her a reason, quoting some obscure rule about “compliance with rules” and wouldn’t elaborate. Her gazillion friends are all gone, and much of the networking she designed through Facebook is now gone. She asked me if she should jump to Google instead now that she realized that Facebook is adult-unfriendly. I couldn’t give her a happy answer that she was expecting because I knew what her future would probably be with Google.

And that’s what I wanted to talk about. Two of the biggest kids on the block are fighting for supremacy in social networking sites, and they’re probably the two biggest unfriendly social networking sites around. If you’re doing anything with which they disagree, they don’t just turn their head and disagree, they shut you down completely, forcing their morals upon you because they have the power to do it. Like that shopping cart company from years before, they don’t care that there are thousands who feel as you do. Their personal desires are more important than yours, and if you don’t comply, you lose. And of course, you have nowhere else to turn, so screw you.

That’s what we have to look forward to with Facebook and Google. Now, I know the majority of people won’t ever do anything to worry about being forced out, but honestly, you don’t know that. What it means is that an organization that is trying to gain your business by promising to let you network with people like you is quite willing to shut you down if those people like you are not in agreement with what they personally think is cool, or okay. It’s like the old line of “when they came for the Polish, I did nothing because I wasn’t Polish, when they came for the French I did nothing, because I wasn’t French, and then when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me.” Now that’s not an exact quote, but you get the idea. Years ago, when there was a huge backlash against the gay community, I was an avid spokesperson against the backlash because even though I’m not gay, I felt that if thugs were able to hurt people who were gay, there’s only a matter of time before someone starts coming after me for whatever weird things I might be into (yes, I know, being gay isn’t a choice or weird, but I’m stretching for an analogy here). For the longest time, I had colleagues thinking I was gay because I was an out spokesperson for gays, and they couldn’t understand why someone would advocate for something they weren’t personally. That’s why that misquoted quote is so poignant. People won’t speak out for others without a personal stake, and that’s why so many atrocities continue to happen in this world.

I’m just saying.

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Classic Literature is not a Punchline of Knowledge

Books, Education, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

I was having a conversation with someone about a mundane topic, specifically about butterflies, when it reminded me of Kobo Abe’s Woman in the Dunes, a story of butterfly hunter who gets trapped by a society that mates him with a woman in an inescapable sand house. When first discussing it, there was no expression of interest about my story until I mentioned that the man’s story served as somewhat of an allegory to the fact that he used to trap butterflies (and thus, he became the trapped butterfly as a result). Then there was the recognition of the point of the story, and that’s the end of that.

But it got me thinking because I realized that after telling this little literary selection that there are a lot of people who seem more focused on the punchline of a story than in the story itself, and that’s the purpose behind this post. You see, what I’m starting to suspect is that people are so focused on the outcome and the “rest of the story” that they miss the purpose of the original story in the first place. In other words, people will read about Machiavelli, figure the Prince was about gaming the system and then feel they know what they are talking about when they refer to someone as being Machiavellian. I use this example because it is probably one of the more misused literary references in current usage. I observe the media constantly trying to act academic when they call some world leader, or some local leader, as Machiavellian, and what they’re really saying is that someone is manipulative. It immediately gives me the impression that they’ve never actually read Machiavelli to understand that to understand Machiavelli is to understand the Discourses, not the Prince. The Prince is only a small part of a much larger canvas, and quite often people read the Cliff Notes of even the Cliff Notes version of Machiavelli, meaning they’re getting about 1/10th of 1/10th of an understanding of the government scribe, not even realizing his whole purpose was to explain Aristotle in his modern day terms, not to create an understanding of how people can be snide to get over on others.

I find this in a lot of media (and common) references to literature. I hear a lot of referral of Moby Dick from all sorts of sources, and almost always they focus on a tiny segment of the story. Sure, they usually get the overall message, but almost every time I get the impression that that’s all they got out of the story, meaning they probably never read it all of the way through. A couple of years ago, while sick in Prague, I sat in my room and read through Melville once again, and I came away with a completely new understanding of his novel. Most people, if lucky, might read it once, and that’s it. And usually it’s because it was required reading.

I see this same thing with Don Quixote, which is such a brilliant story, in both English and Spanish, yet I would bet that one percent of the people who talk about it have actually read either version all of the way through. I was reading it a year or so ago again, in English this time, and I was just floored at how great a story the author constructs. It’s not just a literary story, but it’s hilariously written by a man who truly understood the human condition enough to hold it responsible for all of its absurdity. A media critic bringing up his loyal assistant doesn’t come close to relaying the significance of that poor follower who leads us through so many of the protagonist’s great, yet ridiculous, adventures.

A year or so ago, I sat down and re-read Dostoyevskiy (one of many spellings of his name) again. I had read Crime and Punishment when I was a young child. As a matter of fact, it is the very first book I ever read, and I only read it because my grade school teacher at the time said I was too young to ever read such a book. The first time I read it, I struggled through it and barely eeked out an understanding that this was the story of a man who did something horribly wrong and was fearing the ramifications of his actions, kind of a reading I would have years later of the Tell Tale Heart from a much different nuanced author. Yet, I have re-read that book many times over my life, each time getting a better understanding of what the author was trying to reveal to me, only understanding it differently because I had years of living that backed up my new understandings. This time around, as I read through the Idiot, I think I came one step closer to understanding why the author told the story he did. Years from now, I hope to revisit it again and see if I came closer that time.

The problem I perceive right now is that way too many people are hearing stories, or watching them on TV or in movies, and they’re convinced they’ve “read” the novel and understand all of the choices the author took to relay his story. That is such a weak interpretation of literature and so sad of a compromise that it bothers me to even think about it. I fear for America because almost all of our bestseller charts are filled with young adult books rather than powerful novels that challenge us to think, rather than fill our heads with mild entertainment. From vampires and zombies to Harry Potter, we keep filling our libraries with crap that does so little to stimulate people intellectually, and while I sometimes think “well, at least the masses are reading”, I’m left wondering if we’re a society doomed to complacency and easy manipulation by people who are smart enough to realize that an intellectually void mass is much easier to control than one that thinks for itself. All it takes is someone with the wrong intentions, perhaps someone very, shall I say Machiavellian, and the future might not look so bright.

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Learning to Code can sometimes be like learning to disarm nuclear weapons but harder

Computer Games, Education, Technology, , , , , , ,

A long time ago, I was learning the computer language COBOL. The first two books I went through were very simple. It was almost like learning to tie my shoes. And then the third book was like learning calculus right after learning subtraction. Nothing made sense. And everything before had almost no relevance to anything that came after.

I experienced that again today. I’ve been learning Objective C, Alice and XCode programming. It’s all been going well. As part of my learning, I’ve been following the Apple itunes demonstration lectures, and like COBOL, the first two were very simple, almost like learning how to plug in your computer. The third lecture started off with advanced algorithms that even Commander Data would have struggled with. And he went so fast, and the type was so small, and then out of the blue (due to time constraints) he decided to plug in predesigned code (to speed things up), and that’s right about the time I lost him (and it completely).

So I’m having to refigure where I am with this language, and now I’m discouraged. This happens a lot with computer languages. Something goes so easily, like they teach you how to program “Hello World” and then lesson two is how to break into the Pentagon and rewire their networks to get free HBO from the World Bank.

Having said that, I start teaching college classes again next week. I’ll try to make sure I don’t teach the same way I’ve been learning lately. I’d rather not have all of my students jumping off bridges.

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I is a teacher

Education, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , ,

A new semester is finally about to begin. Again, I will be teaching college political science and interpersonal communication, two separate disciplines, but two fields I am qualified to teach). Strangely enough, the two disciplines really aren’t that different from each other.

While I’m looking forward to a new semester of new young (and some older) minds to educate, I’m also feeling a bit apprehensive, and it’s mainly because our country is so negative towards teachers that I’m tempted to tell America to go screw itself and stop educating anyone on anything. The money isn’t all that great, so that’s not the only reason anyone would ever teach. But whenever I read about some critic of education going all half cocked about how teachers are lazy, how they only work a short period of time and get great pay (which they rarely do), and all sorts of other insults, I want to just say screw it. It’s not worth it. If America sees education as less important than business than let’s let the market figure it all out (which to make a long story short, the market is completely incapable of handling altruistic disciplines, like education, because there is no profit in doing the right thing to make your country benefit in the long run). Altruism, which is quite often the only reason to teach, is very difficult to maintain, especially when society goes out of its way to ridicule your field and everyone who has ever gone to school is convinced he or she is an expert on teaching, even though they have absolutely no experience at teaching, or so little that they have nothing solid to contribute.

When I first started teaching years ago, I remember being bogged down by the fact that I was overly concerned that a few of my students were struggling and no one else seemed to care. Other colleagues would tell me they were lazy, so forget about them, but I didn’t feel that way, and by getting closer to them, I discovered that there was more going on with their personal lives that was actually interfering with their learning. I realized then and there that they were going to fail because everyone else gave up on them because it was too much work to care, not because it was the right or wrong thing to do. What I discovered then and there is that educators who care are quickly discouraged from caring and working harder, quite often by the system, and sometimes by the same people they educate. Yet, I was convinced that this was important to overcome, or our very reason for teaching was gone.

Years later, I found myself in the same situation with a few students just last semester. It was so difficult to try to be more available than the system allowed, yet I tried, and in the end all you get is sometimes a belated thank you from someone who may or may not have saw you as their ally rather than the person who was making their education “more difficult” by forcing them to jump through hoops no one forced them to do so in the past. A couple of students out of the blue contacted me and thanked me, which may not have been the reward that completely paid back the efforts, but it helped, and that sort of thing is the item that keeps a teacher going. However, when attacked by so many other who really don’t care and see you as the enemy (for bizarre reasons that make no logical sense), it becomes less and less likely that you’ll continue trying.

So, I go into a new semester, thinking that maybe this will be the time when I find that one struggling student who needs that certain nudge forward, and hopefully I won’t be discouraged, rejected and forsaken at the time that one person needs a little more from an educator who is doing everything possible just to make sure the trains run on time (for the sake of an Italian historical reference of competent leadership).

When you’re standing up in front of a class of students and explaining the virtues of the governmental system, as proposed by Adams and Madison, you have to bite your lip after that young student in the back row raises her hand and asks: “Do we have to know that for the test?” I remember once responding to that exact question with a ten minute lecture on the importance of knowing information, history and relevance to all sorts of connective synapses of knowledge. How Caesar understood that Alexander’s charge into India incorporated phalanx technology with the scattering of forces or how Patton understood that Caesar’s understanding of Alexander showed him how a faster tank can be stopped by a barrage of spread ammunition. To them, nuance was more important than specific knowledge, but they came to specific knowledge through understanding of nuance. Even when explaining such things, you’ll still have one student sitting there wondering, “is this going to be on the test?”

Unfortunately, teaching can be a lot like that.

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Creating Apps, Programming and Just Plain Ole’ Creativity

Business, Computer Games, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recently, I mentioned that I had decided to start making apps. Originally, my thought was to program in Android, mainly because I wasn’t a fan of Apple’s nefarious walled garden. But then I started to realize that all of my Internet stuff was involved with Mac/Apple, including my iPhone and my iPad, so I ended up buying a MacBook Pro and downloading Xcode to start using Objective C to write iPhone and iPad apps. So here I am.

What I discovered is that getting started is never easy. I think this is why most app designers never end up actually designing any apps. The learning curve is freaking huge. But once you get past it, you actually start to get somewhere. But man, what a journey that learning curve has been. I could give you an Odyssey-like journey of a story, but I’ll save that for another time. I’d rather just talk about creativity and design today.

You see, I used to be a computer programmer back in the day when there weren’t a whole lot of different languages for programming. I learned BASIC and then went to school and learned FORTRAN. Right after that, I taught myself COBOL. Shortly after that, I designed my own word processor and then one of the very first databases (in the days before Filemaker and Access were even considerations). That first database housed the Asian threat assessment for the US Forces in Southeast Asia in the 1980s. People from all over the Asian allied forces visited my office during that time just amazed that I was able to take a paper filing system of known threats and turn it into something that people could use to compare cases they were working on. At the time, there was no such thing as an Internet linkage system, so if you wanted to access the database, you had to come to my office and enter the names yourself. Or they’d phone me and ask me over the phone; there was no thought of phone surveillance back then. We were really naive back then.

Anyway, I had designed this back when few people had personal computers. At the time, I used a Wang computer system. Personally, I coded on a supped up Radio Shack TRS-80 Model IV. Man, that thing was the shit back then. Now, it has less processing power than my $1.99 calculator I bought at Wal Mart.

But because I was in the military, the computer revolution quickly came and passed me by. I pretty much missed the whole thing. When I got out of the service, I had a few stints working for computer gaming companies like Maxis (working on Sim City and The Sims) and Electronic Arts, but it was pretty obvious that the programming world was changing quickly, and I was not keeping up with it.

For years, I kept telling myself I would get back into it. I created a bunch of games when I first started out, and I keep thinking that my way of coding is so much different than everyone else’s. I keep thinking I need to get back into it and develop something the way that only Duane might ever do. But I kept avoiding it and doing other things.

Then I decided to do the whole apps thing. And I’m learning. And right off the start, I’ve started to see a few things I would like to create that no one seems to be doing. And as I used to do back when I first started, I find myself wondering, why isn’t someone else coming up with these ideas, too? The self-indulgent part of me wants to say that I’m exceptional, but the cynic in me says that I’m not smarter or more innovative than anyone else. So why do I keep coming up with really bizarre ways to do things that other people aren’t? Some people look at Facebook and say, “wow, what a great idea. Wish I would have thought of that.” I looked at Facebook when I first saw it (and just a few minutes ago) and think: Why would they have stopped with that? There were so many other things they could have done with it, things that could have enhanced these social communities, but instead they created an interactive business card model that keeps you informed what other people might be doing, kind of like a boring stalker who has nothing better to do. Anyway.

So, I’m starting to think this is the direction I should have been going a long time ago. Currently, as I learn to code through Xcode, Alice and Objective-C, I keep coming up with grandiose ideas of things I would like to do. And I keep finding myself wondering, why isn’t someone else already doing this? I sometimes feel like Socrates responding to the Oracle of Delphi who claimed he was the smartest man alive, and Socrates spent the rest of his life trying to disprove the Oracle. Well, the difference is: The Oracle never said I was the smartest guy alive. As a matter of fact, the Oracle would have had no idea who I was and would have shrugged his shoulders if asked about me in the first place. At least I have an easy task ahead of me because I don’t have to disprove anyone of anything, and no government will force me to drink hemlock because I taught society’s kids to question authority. Nowadays, Socrates would have been unknown as well, competing against people like Kim Kardasian and Paris Hilton and the whole concept of being famous for being famous. But I’m kind of rambling now as this wasn’t really the topic I wanted to discuss.

So I’m making apps now. And I’m writing my first post on my iPad’s Word Press app. It might not even make it to the server. Hell, if I designed it, it would do all sorts of fun things, but knowing my attention to detail, “publish” would be the one thing I’d have forgotten, never thinking that was all that interesting to begin with. I guess there’s something to be said for practicalities. I hear they can be useful.

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XXX: The Domain That No One Wants

Bizarre, News, Politics, Relationships, Social Networking, , , , , , , ,

An interesting thing has happened to the Internet. It’s adding porn. Yes, in case you didn’t know it, porn has not existed on the Internet until someone decided there was a need for it. Up until now, anyone involved with porn has been required to keep in off line, but some kid with a dream (supposedly a wet one) came up with this pie in the sky idea of creating a web domain so that all of the poor porn purveyors could one day experience pornography on the Internet. So, the government decided to invent XXX as a domain suffix (affix?) that now leads people directly to whatever their heart’s desire, as sick as that might be.

Okay, all sarcasm aside, porn has been on the web as long as the web has existed. You might even say that it led the growth, so to speak, of the Internet. But for the longest time, pornography has been integrated with non-porn sites so that quite often you ended up on a porn site instead of the one you were trying to get to. At least that’s the excuse I’ve been using, but that’s probably another issue. Anyway, the government decided some time ago that if they could create an area of the web where porn could be “controlled”, then everything would be great. So the idea of a XXX suffix was designed. And of course, because porn makes a lot of money, they decided they would charge $100-200 for the usage of the XXX domain.

Here’s the problem with their plan. No one wants it. And I mean “NO ONE.” The pornographers don’t like being separated from the rest of the web because they realize that most legitimate Internet providers will be cajoled into just blocking any XXX area. I’m sure someone will say “it’s for the children”, but whatever the reason, someone is going to make sure that people are unable to access this area of the web. The people who don’t like porn don’t like it either because they think that all of the bad people will suddenly come to the web (like they weren’t on it before). And I’m sure they’re convinced that because “of the children” they’ll need to somehow shut down this cesspool of depravity.

And no one else will like it either because it will mean more crap on the web that they don’t want to deal with. You’ll probably have all sorts of privacy issues and scams and whatnot because of this. What will end up happening is that the porn people will continue creating and making porn on the regular sites, and XXX will be relegated to a few choice names that most people won’t pay attention to. The government will probably step in and surreptitiously design some kind of monitoring system so that they can see who accesses pornography on the web (which they’ll argue is for good reasons, but will eventually be used to shame, humiliate and then blackmail people), so that the only people who use XXX will be those who are clueless at the problems they’re causing by accessing porn the “right way” instead of the logical way.

In the end, the whole project will be abandoned, much like the old newsgroups were destroyed when they were spammed to death by, well, porn. What started out as a great idea always ended up being destroyed by someone trying to make a quick buck, doing whatever he can do to scam you before you figure out what’s happening to you. The only victims will be the ones who went into it innocently because they felt it was the proper way to do things. The bad people, the criminals, and those smart enough to realize the value of anonymity, will continue to do things the way they have always done it. In secret and not where government and censors can find them.

(Update: Turns out I was incorrect on the price of the domain registration. According to Daily Tech, it is $200-300, not $100-200 as I thought).

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What Causes the Media to Focus on a Particular Story?

Bizarre, News, Politics, Social Networking, , , , , , , , ,

ABC News International ran an interesting story the other day about Mikhail Gorbachev. It covered the last years of Gorbachev’s control of the Soviet Union right before it collapsed. Today, Reuter’s ran yet another interesting analysis of the August Coup that precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both stories came out of nowhere and pretty much had nothing to do with any particular story that was going on at the time. So, my question is: Why are mainstream news entities running these stories that seem to have no current relevance, yet both seem to be very intent on covering details that happened at around the same time, almost as if they’re complementing each other to tell us a much larger story of some kind of relevance.

Normally, I wouldn’t notice this, but I happened to have done a lot of research on the August Coup for my master’s thesis a few years ago, and it’s currently the setting of my most recent novel, 72 Hours in August. So when this sort of story drops, and it has a lot of relevance to what I’m writing, I find it very significant. However, before this, there was almost no information on the subject, which made for some very difficult research at the time. Now, it’s almost as if I could have just typed Google and would have everything I needed a few years ago. It sometimes doesn’t make any sense.

So I wonder at what agenda news medias have when they run these sorts of stories. Is there something going on with Gorbachev right now that causes senior members of the media establishment to want us to focus on the information? Is Russia about to become highly relevant again on the international stage in a way that it isn’t already? Does some analogy of coups have the possibility of transcending current events in a way that someone feels we need to have this seed planted before new events take place? In other words, is some huge coup coming around the corner, involving social media (in which Yeltsin’s response to the August Coup pretty much reinvented social media responses to huge events) so that we need to be reminded of how significant resistance is because we’re about to experience it again? Or is this such a slow news cycle that media personnel are resurrecting old stories for no reason, that have no connection to anything, just because there’s nothing else going on?

I tend to go with the conspiracy side of the house. I believe things are linked for reasons, even if it’s not that obvious why. I’m not saying there’s some diabolical mustache-twirler in a hidden office hidden underground who is manipulating things (although I’m not saying there’s not one either), but some things seem a little too random to be completely random, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I’m wondering if we’ll start to see the third prong of the story framing, because one thing still seems to be missing, and I have a feeling it’s coming around the corner. Unfortunately, my guess as to what it will be is probably as good as yours. Or worse, considering I usually suspect Elmo is involved, but that’s a whole other issue….

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Finally an app for studs like me who get way too much sex

News, Relationships, Social Networking, Technology, , , , , , , ,

How many times has this happened to you? You’re in the middle of a series of dates, just ran out of condoms during the last orgy you were attending with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, and suddenly Angelina Jolie turns to you in the heat of passion and says, “Duane, please tell me you have a condom on you right now, you great big sexy beastyly man of a stud.” And you do the math, remembering that the pack of Trojans you bought that had 30 condoms in it was supposed to last all day, but you’ve already used up 20 or so during that run in with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders when their bus broke down and only you, in your Penthouse letter-like encounter, required you to service them, which should have meant changing their tire, but you know how these things get out of hand. Anyway, as I was saying, you suddenly do the math and realize that you had planned to save one condom, but Paris Hilton kind of went nuts and then Bjork showed up and needed one to make balloon animals (or whatever the hell she was doing in the corner by herself), so you now have to turn to Angelina and say, “I might not have any condoms left.” And of course, Brad Pitt didn’t bring any, even though he knew he was bringing the two of them to a wife-swapping orgy party you were throwing this weekend, and he had all week to prepare beforehand. So, now you’re left without options.

But out of nowhere a solution has arrived. It turns out that MTV has always had my back. First there was that whole explanatory video about how video killed the radio star, and now they’ve come along and created an iPhone app that tells you where the nearest place is that you can find a condom. So, thanks to MTV, you can now make sure that you never have to say these tragic words: “I’m sorry, Angelina Jolie, but I have no more condoms.”

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Ponderings on the Ponders of my Ponderings

Memoirs, Social Networking, Writing

I guess I’ve been spending most of my blog time talking about politics, my iPad and other non-Duane stuff. So, I thought I would take a moment and talk about Duane. I don’t get to do that very often, other than an occasional mention here and there. So, let’s see where this goes.

1. My Writing. At the moment, I’m involved in what appears to be an endless writing project that will probably never see the light of day. It’s an epic romance, which is completely out of my normal genres of writing. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve written because it involves very intricate connections to pull off, and rather than just write my way through it, I thought I would attempt to re-create the genre through some experimental storytelling. I’ve never written this way before, and it tells a story that I probably could not have told a decade ago. You see, my previous novel was a humorous Greek epic, which on the surface sounds like a continuous one-joke romp through epic literature, but I wanted to do something with it I’d never done before. Rather than just tell a fun story, I decided to write a novel that would be written for two separate, distinct audiences. One would be the mainstream crowd that would appreciate the humor, and the other would be the academic scholars who study classical literature. By writing this way, I created a novel that is read in two completely different ways, based on which member of its audience you happen to be. It’s why it took me 5 years to write, instead of two months. On the surface, no one will probably ever realize this. It’s the same thing with my current novel. There is something deeper going on with this novel that might never be discovered, and knowing my luck, it probably won’t ever be published, so the point is probably moot anyway (or mute for that matter).

2. The Job Front. At the moment, it’s steady, but I had my annual performance review today, and let’s just say that sometimes I think I’m being held to higher standards than I should be. Needless to say, the review wasn’t all that exemplary, but not because I do a bad job, but because it’s obvious that I’m not comfortable where I’m at. You see, I do a job that not a lot of people could do, but I’m also way over qualified for the job that I do…if that makes any sense. So, I spend a lot of time doing busy work, because there are times when I’m really not tasked to do anything significant. And that’s a major part of my problem. I don’t do anything on a daily basis that makes a difference. All of my life I always felt that I was here to do something significant, something big, something that matters. And instead, I’m editing copy for a health care organization, whereas it’s seen that I should be doing more than editing copy for a health care organization, yet “we’re just not sure what else you could be doing”. So I find myself inventing things to do that I figure might be useful, such as digging for analytical processes that I can assess and help staff improve. When I do it, it usually looks great, and it’s appreciated. But again, it’s me searching for something to do, and in the end, it was never what was wanted in the first place. That gets old really fast.

We talked about that today in our performance review meeting, and I said I was interested in perhaps exploring developing apps for some of the learning modules we create. That’s seen as a great idea, but again I get the impression that it’s seen as a bit of a gray area until I actually produce something and it’s realized how much these sorts of things were always needed. I’m a creative designer who works for an industry that is not very excited about changing things; that gets really hard to deal with sometimes.

3. Relationships. Not much going on there. Hasn’t been much going on in the last decade. Before that, I had a very active life. Now, nothing. The closest relationships I’ve had have been women with whom I hoped to create relationships, but they were always only interested in being friends. The first time, you get over it. When it happens all of the time, you start to feel somewhat unwanted. It’s honestly been a decade since I’ve seriously dated. And I’m starting to get on in age right now so that it may never happen. My last serious girlfriend was a crazy woman from Hong Kong who should have been institutionalized except I think she scared the institutions too much to ever think of committing her. And that was one of the more stable relationships I had back then….

4. Health. Surprisingly, this is the one good area. I went through a lot of work to change my entire lifestyle to fix some of the health problems I was having. My last doctor’s visit indicated that all of that work paid off. So, something good at least.

5. The Future. I don’t really know. I have a feeling that I’m not going to remain in Grand Rapids much longer. I just don’t like it here. I have no friends, and I have no social life whatsoever. I basically sleep, go to work and come home and play World of Warcraft and then repeat. On the weekends, I don’t go to work, which is the only variation. I’d go out, but there’s nothing to do here in Grand Rapids that interests me. Nothing. I started looking at Chicago and Florida, but unless I can find a job, I’m really stuck here.

That’s really it for now.

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