My Thoughts on Memoirs and Autobiographies

Memoirs, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We live in an age where we seem to get a lot of autobiographical tripe paraded before us as legitimate prose and original content. Recently, previous political leaders have released their “true” stories of their administrative actions, including Decision Points by George W. Bush and Known and Unknown by Donald Rumsfeld. I’m not going to link them because I really don’t feel like hyping their work for sale because I think they can do quite well on their own as they try to force their manufactured truths onto the public through the usual channels.

My problem with just these two works is that the reviews of these have pointed out quite admirably how the truth is extremely distorted in these works. The nation, and the world, knew what happened because we recently lived through these events, yet we have two spin doctors doing everything possible to rewrite the history of those times because they still believe in the axiom that the winner gets to rewrite the history. What both books do, and I watched an incredulously sounding interview on the Daily Show with Rumsfeld the other day that was just filled with attempts at reinventing history, is attempt to clean up a very dirty period in American history by pretending that certain things didn’t happen and others did. Both make a weak attempt to pretend that weapons of mass distruction weren’t sold to us as a given in the lead up to war with Iraq. Both books also attempt to pretend that the administration didn’t do everything possible to sell a war, even though so many other rational voices were urging for more time. The Iraq weapons inspectors were begging for more time, and the Bush Administration did everything possible to discredit their voices during this period. Colin Powell, in the greatest travesty of UN history, stood before the world and powerpointed the most falsified series of documents about WMDs the world has ever seen. To this day, that event gets glossed over, or ignored as much as possible, because there’s no way to get around the fact that the administration straight out lied about the lead up to war with Iraq. And that’s really the elephant in the room there that no amount of rewriting of history is ever going to change. Rumsfeld, himself, went way out of his way to cast Saddam Hussein as the best friend of Al Qaeda, and even his attempts at trying to rewrite the narrative on the Daily Show the other night did not change my opinion that this man is amongst the greatest disgraces to the American people of all time. Sorry, you don’t get to rewrite your history when everything you did was wrong, you lied consistently and you haven’t even acknowledged the wrongs you did in your past, especially when those wrongs led to thousands of deaths of young American soldiers.

Which then brings me to the whole memoir thing that seems to be coming out of the woodwork these days. It’s bad enough that we get tomes written by people who spend 200 and some pages lying through their ass because to tell the truth would be career and political suicide. There’s another kind of memoir that has been driving me nuts lately, and that’s the one that comes out from someone who has done nothing of greatness or significance, who somehow manages to get a million dollar contract to tell his or her life story.

First off, I have to point out that if someone is under 25, the chances of that person having a great life story that needs a book is quite minimal. Sure, you might be Alexander the Great, and have conquerered the entire known world by 30, but even he would have needed to wait a few years before writing his great autobiography, if he ever got around to doing it. But I’m sorry, Justin Bieber, who is only 17, or anyone of many celebrities who have done nothing but shake their asses in front of an audience for a few years, really don’t have all that much to share with the rest of us. I mean, honestly, how much more can Justin Bieber, at 17, tell us about his life on the road that is any more intriguing than a book by Robert Plant or perhaps Life by Keith Richards. I mean, at least these people “lived” an actual rock star life that might have a bit of content to them. Granted, I have no desire to read a book of this nature, but at least I know that which ones would actually have something interesting to tell me.

Recently, there have been tons and tons of crappy books being signed by publishing companies for autobiographies of unimportant people who haven’t been alive longer than the lifespan of my car. I’ve had this belief for a long time that a memoir should never be written by anyone who is not at least 35, and definitely not by someone who hasn’t at least done something so significant that rest of the world would stop and take notice. Someone who has spent an entire life in the movies might have a story to tell. Someone who is 13 and nominated for an Oscar because she played a spunky kid in some movie does not. A rock star who has had multiple divorces, four or five near death experiences, and quite possibly is known for ushering in the second age of rock ‘n’ roll might have a story. A Disney mousketeer who is now singing for teenyboppers probably doesn’t.

Which then brings me to the unimportant people writing important memoirs for the rest of us. Unfortunately, not all of us can be Jack London, living a bunch of different lives before finally settling down and giving us literature to ponder over for centuries. That means instead we get a lot of life stories from people who broke their cocaine habit, lived through therapy, had a really cool dog with a funny name, or just outright manufactured their history because it was the only way to get Oprah to let them appear on her show. Very few of those stories are important enough for us to really want to buy their books.

But even when someone does manage to have an important enough story for the rest of us to read, that person needs to realize he or she might not be the next Hemingway and should really stop at that one story. Dave Pelzer is a good example of this. I’m not sure if you’ve read his ground-breaking book, A Child Called “It”, which is his story of living with a seriously deranged and abusive mother. It’s a great book and really pulls at the heartstrings. Unfortunately, Pelzer felt he was onto something and has never stopped writing books about his life. The first one was great. The rest of them tired, old and overdone. At some point, you need to move on and show us that you learned something from your journey, not that the only thing you learned was it was very profitable and worthy of returning to the well over and over again.

One of the greatest memoirs I’ve ever read comes from probably the only man to ever do a memoir the right way. It was so much the right way that he spent his entire life trying to figure out how exactly to write it, and then spent his final years doing just that. I’m talking about the Autobiography of Mark Twain, which the author demanded not be released until 100 years after his death. And having just read through it, or at least the first volume of three that’s been so far released, I can say that he definitely knew what he was doing with an autobiography. I’ve learned so much about his time and the important figures around his life in so little space. Few memoirs are capable of ever transcending the page like that.

Unfortunately, we rarely get a Mark Twain to tell his story as only a Samuel Clemens can. Instead, we get lying politicians and self-important teenagers with a million dollar book contract. If only the middle ground was so much brighter.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 489

Bristol Palin to Write the Book of Her Life…I Can’t Wait….

Memoirs, Writing, , , ,

Nothing depresses me more than to see that a woman who is 20 years old, who has done nothing special with her life other than live in the shadow of her overexposed mother who is writing her life story. As someone who has done a “little” more than the young girl who was on Dancing With the Stars, bought a house in Arizona and got pregnant during her mother’s vice-presidential bid, I’m constantly amazed that a company like Harper Collins is willing to shell out real money to fund a “book” from someone who is no more special than any teen girl across the planet. Probably much less significant, to be honest.

Yet, big book companies constantly churn out this drivel to us, as if this is what we want to read. The other part that bothers me is that somewhere, somehow, there are people who are actually going to buy what she writes, being almost as excited as someone rushing out to buy Snooki’s next bestselling book.

As a writer, this is one of the things that has depressed me like pretty much nothing else can. I’ve lived most of my life in a Jack London-ish belief that you don’t really start writing great life stories until you’ve at least lived a few of them. So I spent my life trying to do just that, and now that I’m on the winding down part of that life, my writing feels great, but the writing industry passed me by, contracting books with White House party crashers instead of actual novelists and people who tried to go the old route of living and then writing, rather than doing something sensationalist and then thinking that was the groundwork for a great writing career.

I know I’ve complained about this sort of thing before, but is this what writing in America has come down to? Are we so foolish in our pursuit of stardom that this is what we’re going to pretend is important enough for us to buy and read?

I’d write a book about it, but considering I haven’t pulled any Charlie Sheen shenanigans lately, I can’t guarantee anyone would want to read it.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 453

A Conversation with Conservatives About that Whole Midterm Thing that Just Happened

Politics, , , , ,

Hey, Conservatives. I just thought I would take a moment to talk to you about the midterm elections, because for some reason you’re getting the idea that events happened for reasons completely absent of reality. Therefore, as I know that you always listen to rational people explaining rational theories, I thought I would chime in with a little rationality.

There are some things you got right and some things you’re getting wrong. Let’s start with what you got right because everyone likes to hear good things about themselves. First, you are right that America was angry, pissed off and frustrated with politics as usual. In droves, people went to the polls and voted to “throw the bums out”. That anger was their way to show that they were angry, and if Washington wasn’t going to listen, they were going to make them listen, or at least stop paying for their hearing aids.

Lots of Democrats were thrown out of office, and lots of Republicans were given a chance to run the government. Okay, we’re on the same wavelength here.

Unfortunately, this is where reality sort of spins off on its own axle and falls apart. While the American people were angry, we need to kind of revist exactly what they were angry about.

First, Americans weren’t angry about social programs in America. Republicans tend to always be angry about these things. But it wasn’t Republicans that really voted the Democrats out of office. It was both Democrats and Republicans, meaning average Americans. The average American wasn’t upset that people were getting health care and the opportunity to survive through the Winter. They also weren’t upset that the government was spending money to get people back to work.

No, Americans were pisses off at government because government was helping out the wrong people. Who are these wrong people? The rich, the selfish, the people who don’t care one iota about the common folk of America. Americans saw the government spend a lot of money to bail out Wall Street, to help out banks and to rescue multi-millionaires from losing more money than they were already losing. The fact that almost none of the stimulus money actually went to help out the average American, other than through the usual trickle down crap theories, that upset Americans a lot. While the average American was trying to find a job, government was spending weeks arguing over how much money to protect from millionaires and billionaires with expiring tax cuts. The government seems willing to go into shut down just to make sure that the rich are taken care of, and the poor really don’t mean much to those who occupy office. Except in conversation, which doesn’t mean a lot when people have to actually pay their bills.

When the midterm elections came along, the American people were pissed that government was catering to the rich only. Yes, both Democrats and Republicans were bending over backwards to make sure the rich weren’t inconvenienced in any way, shape or form. The poor, well, they needed to fend for themselves because that’s generally how government feels they should have to handle their own affairs.

Most people didn’t even recognize what was going wrong with the Democrats in office when they had control of the entire government. Not once did they even act like Democrats, being almost indistinguishable from Republicans. THAT is what pissed off the American population that went through a previous election putting every Democrat they could find into office. When the American people discovered that it didn’t matter which party was in office, they kind of revolted and threw those people out, figuring the Republicans weren’t probably any worse.

Well, the Republicans need to figure out that the American people didn’t send them into office with a mandate to do things Republicans tend to do when they aren’t discussing politics. You know, the kinds of things they do surreptitiously behind the backs of everyone else, like reward the rich and screw over the poor. No, the American people sent the Republicans to Washington to remind the Democrats who they were supposed to be working for. That’s really it. The mandate the Republicans received from the American people was “do something different, but if you piss us off, too, expect to be accepting your own unemployment check.”

And the way things are going, there’s going to be a lot more unemployed politicians in 2012. Unfortunately, this will cause the Democrats to pull a Sally Field, thinking people like them, when in fact the people are still pissed off. The only difference is, they’ll realize they have nowhere else to turn.

And a pissed off electorate that has given up on both sides is a very dangerous animal. Once you give up on your government, there’s really not much else to do. Just ask all those Middle Eastern countries right now that are throwing out their leaders. They might have something interesting to say about it, if you could stop them long enough while they’re rioting in the streets.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 480

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.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 726

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.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 709

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.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 708

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?

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 1,850

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.

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

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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.

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