I’m Confused About the End of the War in Iraq

Politics, , , , , , , , ,

Okay, maybe I’m just not all that adept when it comes to military things. Let’s discount the military background I actually have, the numerous degrees and my fascination with girls who shoot guns for a moment so I can somehow understand what’s really going on here. Some time ago, the actual ground battle stopped in Iraq, which is why the bombs stopped dropping, the soldiers stopped invading and the airplanes stopped flying nonstop combat missions. So, somewhere after that we started walking around the country and getting fired at by civilians, or terrorists, or Imperial stormtroopers working for the Empire, or whatever, and we were, um, fighting?

Now, we’re going to stop fighting, turn the mission over to the Iraqis and then go home? Oh wait, we’re not going home. We’re going to hang out in barracks and do nothing? But why do I have this feeling that we’re still going to get daily counts of Americans dying while sitting around in the barracks?

What exactly is changed? Or changing? Is the war really “over”? Or are we just looking for something to sound good so we can say it’s over?

I’m really confused about this because I don’t think anything’s really going to change other than a different president is is charge who promised the end of hostilities in Iraq, so he’s telling us it’s over, but we’re still going to be there in the same exact places where the enemy is firing at us on a daily basis. Or am I wrong? I mean, I could be. What do I know about such things anyway?

I really hope it means good things, but I just don’t understand what it means other than a change in rhetoric. Are the al qaeda guys listening to rhetoric? Or are they too busy trying to kill Americans?

I apologize for being confused here. It’s like I turned into a season of Stargate only to find out that I missed an entire season while playing World of Warcraft every day instead, so I don’t understand why there are strange people on the show. Can someone get me up to speed? Or should I just go back to playing WoW?

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 702

Even though they’ll probably kill me, I still love eggs

Politics, , , , , , ,

The whole egg recall thing has me worried. But not because I’m scared of eggs, or think that I’m going to die. What worries me is that there’s so much information about the whole egg thing roaming around the airwaves that I haven’t a clue about what’s really going on. Either the industry leaders are only interested in profit and don’t care if I die, or they’re great down home farmers that have my best interests at heart and this is all just some kind of overreaction. Or it’s something in between. Or none of these things. To be honest, I don’t know the details because the media has managed to ramp up the scare tactics so that I’m afraid of drinking potable water these days so that anything they say about eggs really seems somewhat irrelevant.

And that’s the problem. There is so much information that is clashing with more information that no one really knows what is real and what is made up. Everyone claims to have our best interests at heart, but after you unpack that, you start to realize that people are telling you things to maintain profits, or because they’re just nuts and want to be heard. In fact, no one really knows anything, and there’s a lot of disinformation available. There’s just no way of knowing what to trust and what not to trust.

But the simple fact still comes to light: I like eggs. I like eating eggs. I only eat them on the weekends, but it’s my one guilty pleasure. Well, aside from that other one, but I can’t talk about that one because the government is listening, and the tinfoil hat I usually wear is in the shop, so I have to be careful about what I say in public.

But I like eggs. And I want to keep eating them. I don’t know if it’s safe. I know that I need to cook them, but I wasn’t planning to eat them raw in the first place, so that’s not a problem. But even now, people tell me that it’s dangerous to eat eggs because of disease. Well, it’s dangerous to breathe as well, but for some reason I keep doing it.

What it comes down to is that at some point you have to turn out the overbearing messages and just do what you’re going to do. We can be scared of everything, like taking an airplane because of crazy terrorists armed with pen knives and box cutters, or we can just live our lives and hope that things work out. I think I’m going to try the latter, even though it might kill me.

But I like eggs much more than I like living in fear about my next meal. And sometimes you just have to compromise, like any woman who might ever agree to date me. But that’s a whole other issue.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 676

Facebook Is Lawsuit Happy & Trying to Rule the World

Social Networking, , , , ,

Eventually it had to happen. A company becomes so powerful that it decides it pretty much owns the world. Just the other day, a teaching company attempted to file a trademark for the name Teachbook, which pointed to its online identity as a company that provides lesson plans and other teaching related materials to teachers. Well, of course, this was obviously a ploy designed to steal the identity of Facebook, because they turned around and sued them, stating that

“If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online networking services targeted to that particular generic category of individuals, the suffix BOOK could become a generic term for ‘online community/networking services’ or ‘social networking services.”

This can loosely be translated to: “We use the word book in our name, so we own it forever and ever, and we’ll sue the crap out of you if you think otherwise.”

Not surprisingly, we visited this topic a short time ago with the brilliant mind of Paris Hilton, when she trademarked the phrase: “That’s so hot” or something as stupid as that, indicating that the phrase was never popular until she came along. As if.

But Facebook is doing something much more dangerous because it’s attempting to pretty much shut down the use or specific words that have any similarity to the one they use in their title. But the process of trademarking also involves the concept of “intent” and I seriously doubt that Teachbook was really planning to steal market share away from Facebook. I’m waiting for the inventor of the netbook to sue Facebook and stop them from using their name. Not going to happen because most other people, aside from Facebook, AREN’T STUPID enough to do so.

Well, the sad part of this is that because Facebook has gazillions of dollars to spend and Teachbook is a small launch with two employees, Facebook may just use its corporate clout to completely clobber them in legalese, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it because no one really backs the underdog except to cheer and say “attaboy”. So, if they go down in this fight, that just means that we’ve made the demon that much stronger.

It’s only a matter of time before Facebook turns around and says that everyone must stop using the word “.com” in their titles, because Facebook uses it and Facebook is much bigger than they are. It’s not that much different than forcing people to not use the word “book”. Think about it because soon that may be all you can do.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 639

I’m so glad I don’t work for Vasily Boiko

Religion, , , , , , ,

If you live in Russia and work for Russkoye Moloko, which means “Russian Milk”, it’s not just good enough that your job is done well. You also have to kowtow to everything that falls under the rules of the Orthodox Church. It seems that “Boiko the Great”, as he likes to call himself, has determined that having an abortion is a firing offense. He says it is murder and will not employ anyone like that. One woman is currently on the chopping block as a result. But that’s not all. He also thinks that if you’re “living in sin”, you’re wrong and should be fired. He has given an ultimatum that will be carried out on October 14 (a holy Russian, Orthodox day). If you are living in sin after that, you’re fired.

What’s interesting is that even if you’re not of the Orthodox religion, he doesn’t care. You’re still going to be fired. What’s even more interesting is that this is not a man without sin either. This guy just served time in prison for fraud allegations in 2007, which really isn’t that long ago. So because HE found religion in prison, suddenly everyone else has to suffer as a result.

All I can say is that I’m fortunate that I don’t work in that environment. While there are times when my own geographical area scares me religious-wise, as the locals can be somewhat dogmatic about religions that aren’t mine, and there have even been times where I’ve seen that filter over into the work environment, at least my job hasn’t been at jeopardy because one lunatic decided that his way is the only way. It’s one of those things that has scared me for quite some time because as an amateur philosopher-scientist and writer, I find myself often at odds with practically everything and everyone around me. I’ve always been open to everyone else, even to the point where I don’t care what religion other people are, and I’m not going to be expending any energy trying to convert other people to my own religion. Let people worship what they want to worship, even if they’re all wrong and going to Gre’thor when they die (Klingon Hell for those not versed in Star Trek mythology). Everyone has his or her own religious beliefs, and I think that’s wonderful. What is not wonderful is when some moron thinks that his or her own religious beliefs should be worshipped by everyone, including those who aren’t of that particular faith.

I’m fortunate that I live in a society where I don’t have to worry about such things. But that may not always be the case. It doesn’t take much for a lot of stupid people to start forcing their values and norms on everyone else. It also doesn’t take a lot of time either. Mobs of stupid people have been known to destroy the very foundations of enlightened societies, but unfortunately people don’t take lessons from history or psychology. They take lessons from their own hearts, and as comforting as it may be to them, it’s not all that comforting to people who are not them. Just imagine being told that your very livelihood (and sometimes even your life) depends upon bowing down to a religious entity you don’t believe in. And then imagine forcing someone else into that same paradigm. That’s why I don’t push my own religious values on others. Unfortunately, there are way too many people who don’t feel the same way.

Vasily Boiko is one of them, and things in Russia just got really crappy for a lot of people who were probably minding their own business until this ultimatum came upon them. It’s amazing how one powerful, shitty person can ruin the days of so many.

(image: from Startrek.com)

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 767

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Nutcase Who Is Kind of Scary

Writing

I was out of the Army and spending a great deal of my time bar hopping for thrills. There really wasn’t anything else to do, and I no longer had any responsibilities, requirements or even a schedule. I had a job, but it was really unimportant and somewhat irrelevant to the grand scheme of things, so I started looking for bars to hang out for brunt of my free time in the evenings.

For me, this meant spending a lot of my time walking home drunk. Well, “drunk” is a mild way to put how I was most of those evenings. Let’s just say that I don’t remember a lot of what happened in between a few of those drinks and waking up the next morning. But showing up at a local bar the next evening told me that I must have had a great time the night before, because everyone in the bar was glad to see me again, talking about what fun we must have had the night before.

I’m a writer, so I chalk it up to one of those learning experiences you’re supposed to gather while working on the next all American novel. Only, 13 novels later, none of them really seem to have been all that American, or anything that would be considered “all American”. Years of experience has taught me that they’re just novels, and if people read them, then they were good novels, and sometimes you take what you can get.

But it was one of those evenings that I remember vividly because I remember talking to a woman I had been trying to get close to for some time at my neighborhood bar. You know the place. It was that bar where everyone came in, but no one knew who anyone was, although you came there so often that you kind of recognized everyone, even if you couldn’t place a name with a face. You’d nod at people, and they might nod back, but that was as close as it came to making a connection.

I knew the owner of the bar. He and I had been in the military together, studying Korean at the language school. This bar was actually located down the street from that post, and one day after he got out of the Army, he bought the bar where we used to go when we were still in the service. Army guys do that sort of crap. I never did, but I sure knew enough of them that did.

Anyway, my buddy was never at the bar but his wife was, and she always poured me a free drink or two because I had met her when she was just a waitress at this bar, before she married my friend. So we were old buddies, even though we really didn’t know each other that well. But she was the one trying to help me make some time with this one girl I was talking about, the one I said I’d been trying to connect with for weeks. Turns out she was a cop, and she was kind of strange, which always seemed to attract me to a woman. But I’m getting ahead of myself because, to be honest, this story isn’t about her. It’s about some guy that showed up one evening and started talking to me.

It was getting close to closing time, and this young guy was talking to me, and he was interested in the fact that the owner’s wife said I was a writer. He said he was an artist and that artists needed to stick together, or some kind of weird crap like that. I was drunk, so it made sense, so he and I were talking about art and all that. The facts kind of escape me, because to be honest, I doubt anything we were talking about was all that important in the first place.

So two a.m. came around, and the bar was closing, so for some reason this guy and I decided we still had so much to talk about, and we took our conversation to the street. We both lived in the area, and he said he wanted to show me his art work, so we walked towards his place.

And I should probably insert that in a lot of stories right after this moment it can go all sorts of directions, including some pretty shocking revelation that this is some kind of gay hook-up story, or whatever, but it’s not one of those. I don’t knoe if the guy was gay or not. I’m not, but it probably wouldn’t have stopped me from walking to the guy’s place anyway, just to see what it was the person wanted to show me. So I went, and it turned out he wanted to show me the sort of art that he does.

Turns out that his art consisted of large columns with pillows on top of them. No, I don’t know the significance of them either. Nor could I figure out what made it art, but his apartment was filled with these things. Must have been about forty or fifty columns with various pillows on top of them. They looked pretty dorky, to be honest. All I remember was how proud he was of his creation, and he wanted to show it to me.

I stood and stared, not really sure what to say, or even what to think. There were pillows on top of columns. and they were everywhere. To this day, I don’t know what they were supposed to convey, or even why it was an obsession. All I remember thinking was, I really needed to get out of that apartment. So I did. And I went home.

Never saw the guy again either. Or his form of art. But I never forg0t what he showed me, and I wonder if that’s the goal of the artist anway, to put forth a haunting image that endures forever, even if it is only seen by one person. If so, he was very successful and in a way that my own art has never achieved itself.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 633

Some of the Best Writing on TV May Never Be Seen

Television, Writing, , , , , , , ,

It’s kind of funny, actually, but there is this bias against certain types of programming on television, specifically that of the science fiction and fantasy variety. But surprisingly, some of the best dramatic writing I’ve ever viewed has been from this genre, and unfortunately no one really seems to be watching it.

An example is the one that everyone talks about when it comes to science fiction, and that’s the rehash of Battlestar Galactica, which had to be one of the best dramas I’ve seen on television in ages. It was intense, well acted, and with plot twists that were so well constructed that it was shocking at how well it was carried out. Some other examples would be some pretty obscure titles, including one I was watching last night that was unbelievable for how well it was written, and that show is Doctor Who. Over the last few years I’ve kind of paid attention to this show, but always thought it was a bit too campy for me. I was watching the middle of the fourth season of the latest variation of this show, and out of nowhere the writing was just overwhelming. Some of the plots were just genius, and then the way they pulled the stories off was beyond anything I’ve seen in modern television. There was one episode that took place on a futuristic airliner (done to be much like the cabin of any airplane, but in space), and the character interaction was just off the charts. The plot seemed somewhat simple, but the story quickly went from a “what’s out there” to a Lord of the Flies segment of anarchy that I kept thinking they were going to somehow blow this great moment of television, but they never did. They did a really good job of maintaining the type of power they were going for, and it was like a seasoned director took a great screenplay and made it just right. You don’t see that very often.

Lately, we’ve seen some brilliant character-driven storylines on recent television shows like LOST, which has shocked so many people at how it did exactly what it set out to do. Yet, we’re still left with this sense that science fiction and fantasy is trash that really shouldn’t be paid attention to.

I had a conversation the other day with someone who told me that she only watches dramas, like Gossip Girl, because she likes shows that are a lot more realistic. I’ll not even comment further on that one, but I’m sure you get the idea. People are so convinced that it has to be a drama to be considered real, yet I can’t tell you how many of our dramas are some of the worst writing that has come along in ages. Sure, there are exceptions, but way too often we’re given trash and get so used to it that we give accolades to medium level stuff, as if it is brilliant. A couple of examples come to mind because I’ve been watching these shows and still can’t believe that people think these are the best we have to offer.

Breaking Bad. An okay show, but for some reason every review of this show acts as if it is the greatest television show ever. I’m deep into the second season of it, and it’s okay. It’s not great, but it’s okay. What I would like to comment about this show is something no one wants to admit: It’s basically Weeds with a much more serious story line. And Weeds does it so much better. Let’s look at that for a second.

Weeds has a woman who needs to make a lot of money because she lost her husband, so she goes into the marijuana dealing business. She has a bunch of wacky friends who hang around, and the show does everything possible to justify that this woman is doing a very bad thing but for the right reasons.

Breaking Bad has  a guy who needs to make a lot of money because he’s got cancer, so he goes into the meth dealing business. There are a bunch of somewhat wacky people who are part of his world (including a klepto sister in law and a DEA agent husband of the klepto who has all sorts of his own wacky drug-related adventures), and the show does everything possible to justify that this guy is doing a very bad thing but for the right reasons.

Both shows are essentially about the same thing, except unlike Weeds, people don’t generally consider meth to be as innocent as they do marijuana. So it has some problems there. All along, I watch Breaking Bad, waiting for the great moments everyone talks about, but I find myself thinking, “why should I care for this guy who is creating a product that is destroying the lives of so many so he can take care of his family?” It’s like the show Dexter, another “great” that people talk about. I watched all of three episodes before I thought, “I can’t root for this guy” and never watched it again. There’s a point where rooting for the underdog just doesn’t justify rooting for the criminally insane guy who considers himself above the law.

Other “great” shows: Rescue Me. I bought the first season and had a hard time getting through the first episode. Trite writing that tries too hard to play the 9/11 angle of brave firefighters. Let’s make them somewhat crazy, and everyone will root for them. Hasn’t worked so well for me so far.

Sadly enough, there aren’t enough ground-breaking shows out there, and the few that are just don’t seem to be that great themselves. Which is pretty sad because the really, really good shows don’t last very long.

Anyway, just a gripe that is slowly going off track now, so I’ll end there.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 685

Lawsuits May Destroy Future Creativity of America

Computer Games, , , , , , , ,

I know people don’t think about these things, but I was just reading an interesting news story about how NAMCO, the creating company of Pac-Man, has sent a take down order to a bunch of students at MIT who were using Scratch to re-create Pac-Man. In other words, while teaching themselves out to create games, they created a simple game and then used that learn how to make more complex games. Makes sense. But if NAMCO has its way, no one will be able to re-create Pac-Man, even if it is for the sake of learning how to program.

Think about that for a moment and then think about the ramifications. Well, let me put it in other terms that might help point out the significance. I’ll use the TV show Survivors, or the movie The Road, or the Book of Eli, or any other dystopian disaster flick, to explain. Imagine that you had no more technology left and had to learn from scratch (for lack of better word). Well, if you did it the normal way, you would have to learn by reinventing the wheel, so to speak. Well, imagine if some company had made it impossible to reinvent the wheel, but wanted you to have to invent a brand new car without having to learn how to make a wheel first. Start to see the problem?

Computer programmers learn by adding on to what was learned before. That’s innovation in the software world. They don’t arbitrarily just create new code out of the blue without first knowing what has been done before them. It’s like an architect who is expected to develop post-modernism without first understanding modernism. Okay, not a great example, but you probably get the point.

This is the problem we’re running into with a lawsuit mentality in this country. Patents, trademarks and lawsuits make it so that people are running around claiming common ground so that no one else can possibly duplicate anything that is so basic that it needs to be used in order to do something else. Imagine if Ford had patented the “car” so that no one else could ever make a car. What if the Wright Brothers had patented the “plane”? Same thing. Or if Random House had patented the “book”. While these patents are designed to reward the inventor, at the same time they stifle the innovation of future creators.

Recently, LucasFilm attempted to stop a company from making an industrial laser because it looked too much like a Star Wars lightsaber. Finally, after a media storm kind of made Lucas look REALLY STUPID, Lucas turned around and declared that it felt the company making the lasers was apologetic enough to be left alone to make their–not like Star Wars in any way–lightsaber…I mean, laser.

Hopefully, NAMCO will wise up. If not, I hope they get as much ridicule as they deserve because that’s exactly what they’re going to get by going after MIT students with a desist order in order to protect intellectual property that has stopped making money decades ago.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 904

Why $139 for Kindle Isn’t the Sweet Spot Amazon Would Like You to Believe It Is

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

The other day, Amazon announced it was releasing a new Kindle, and the price was lowered to $139. Now, this isn’t a big deal, and that’s great, if you want one of those things, but what’s amazing is that the boss of Amazon claims that the price is so low that people are going to rush out and buy several of them for the household. Yeah, right. Not going to happen. I love how the multi-millionaire boss of a major company thinks that $139 is the sweet spot for a tech gadget, so he makes a pronouncement that the end of the road is finally here. And then the tech nuts start talking about how $100 is the sweet spot for most electronic gadgets, the sweet spot being the price people will arbitrarily just throw money away without thinking about it.

Sorry, the Kindle isn’t there yet. You see, there are some problems that no one has addressed, and that’s the fact that people actually think about these things before they shell out a lot of money for products. Oh, you say that Amazon just announced they sold out of their Kindles until Sept. 4? So what? To me, that sounds like their marketing department made an announcement to create a “need” for this device when there really isn’t one yet. I don’t personally believe a lot of the hype that these companies put out, because what they’re trying to do is manipulate us into buying their products by pretending that if we don’t do soon, it will be too late.

I went to Amazon’s page today. They’re still hyping the new Kindle as if they have a gazillion of them. They’re not going to NOT take my order if I want one. The hype is just that: hype.

What no one really wants to talk about is the actual cost of this device. Unlike a cell phone, this is not a final purchase product, meaning that once you buy it, you still have to spend a lot of money on other things, like books. If you buy a Kindle, you still need to buy electronic books from Amazon. For Amazon, it’s the product that keeps on charging. Because of that, $139 is still too much money. To be honest, $99 is going to still be too much money.

A couple of experts have pointed out that the sweet spot for an e-reader is still $49. Until they start coming down to that level, the demand is never going to happen. Because there is no demand for an e-reader. People in America generally don’t read. So pretending there is a demand for a reading product is a joke. When people buy books in America, they still buy actual paper type books, and that’s not going to change any time soon. People are so aware of the fact that few electronic products are good forever, but books are. If you bought a computer ten years ago, you wouldn’t have much success getting it to run today. So, who knows what is going to happen with e-reader technology in the future? It’s like taking a bet on the Blu Ray vs. whatever that other standard was that was supposed to compete with Blu Ray disks. It’s like taking a bet on the betamax. Remember that? Didn’t last long.

That’s why e-readers still have a long way to go, because there’s been no standardization developed, and we’re still some ways off from that happening. No one wants to buy a useless piece of garbage that has a shelf life of a few years.

Until then, only the select few are really going to jump on the e-reader bandwagon, kind of like the select few who buy Ipads, convinced it will be the coming of the electronic messiah. I almost bought one, but I’m so glad I didn’t because it would be in the back of the closet right now with my Coleco and Atari machines.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 789

Vote for Elmer, my stuffed animal frog, for office

Politics, , , ,

I’ve been noticing that there are a lot of political signs up on the sides of the road these days, all instructing me to vote for people I’ve never heard of, promising me that these unknown people somehow have my best interests at heart. But whenever I read the newspaper, I read nothing but bad things about the people we elected, and the bad articles go on for days, never ending until the next corrupt person enters office and starts the cycle again. I read the letters to the editor section of every newspaper, and there are so many people trying to convince me that some  unknown dweeb has the best qualifications to be elected for some random position.

Then someone will come on the news and berate me for not wanting to vote. In some sanctimonious tone, some rich, privileged individual will tell me, matter-0f-factly, that by not voting for a bunch of people I know I can probably never trust, that I’m somehow responsible for the bad state of affairs in this country, in my county, my state, my district or wherever. It’s always my fault. If I vote for someone, it’s my fault. If I voted against someone, it’s my fault. If I don’t vote, it’s my fault. Not once has anyone ever thought of the possibility that maybe the fact that we’re voting for people in the first place means it’s THEIR fault.

That’s why I’m proclaiming Elmer my choice for every political office under the sun. Oh, I know you won’t vote for him, because you’re so convinced that Joe Politician has your best interests at heart, even though he’s never done anything personally for you, has been accused of all sorts of crimes of stealing OUR money, but because he’s actually a living, breathing person, he’s a much better candidate in your opinion.

Well, let me tell you about Elmer. He’s never cheated on his taxes. Not once. He’s never even thought about it. Not once did he vote to send troops into harm’s way. He’s never even written a letter to the editor claiming that would be a good thing to do. Not once has he ever taken money that didn’t belong to him. He’s never been friends with anyone who did either. He’s just that good.

Let me tell you what he has done. He’s ALWAYS been a good friend no matter what happens. When I came home drunk from that party and didn’t score with that girl I was trying so hard to win the heart of, he was there for me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He’s just that kind of guy. Instead, he sat there and let me figure out how to get ready for the next day without any condemnation. A politician would have thought less of me. But not Elmer.

Elmer has also never lied. Not once. Whenever he speaks, he speaks the truth.

He also cares about everyone. He’s willing to let everyone hug him and be his friend. And he’s never taken back that friendship from anyone. He’s just that way.

So, when the next politician starts lying to you to gain your vote, think about Elmer. Would Elmer do that? No, he wouldn’t.

So vote for Elmer next time you vote. You’ll have to write him in, but that’s okay. He’s not proud. He’ll take whatever he can get. And he’ll even work for free. Or hugs. Whatever you want to give him.

Let’s see another politician promise that, and mean it.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 2,163

Independent Productions and How They May Be the Survival of the Future

Computer Games, Movies, Writing, , , , , , , , ,

Over the years, there has been a tendency to avoid the big budget productions of numerous fields and focus on independent producers. This has helped us find some really innovative creators out there in numerous areas, including film, writing, software development and music. But part of the problem has always been twofold: First, an independent producer has very little money to draw upon, limiting the outcome of the product being produced, and second, because the production has little marketability due to a lack of a budget to handle that, almost no one knows the production is happening in the first place.

But several little productions have managed to go big time regardless of the obstacles placed in their way. Although we know that the big studios make the big bucks, every now and then a little guy creates something so good with almost no budget that that person becomes one of the big guys almost overnight. We saw that with Kevin Smith and Clerks. With music, it’s happening every day with overnight sensations showing up and overwhelming the studio produced big names. What’s so cool about it is that it happens so fast that the big guys can’t do anything about it, and it’s always nice when the underdog wins big time.

But this isn’t about underdogs becoming big. There’s enough of that in every Slumdog Millionaire story out there. What I do want to talk abut is how we’ve sort of forgotten that a lot of these big studios that control everything really were nobodies a short time ago, yet because they managed to rise to the top, they want to control pretty much everything else in their realm of creativity. Let’s talk about a few of them.

Apple and Microsoft. Go back twenty years, and they were both essentially operations created in someone’s garage. While they may or may not have made their mark stealing technology from other people, discounting that as significant, what is important to point out is that they are now the big boys on the block, and they are doing everything physically possible to control the marketshare when it comes to their corners of the software and hardware universes. Think about it for a moment. These guys started from nothing and are huge colossus behemoths now. Why can’t someone else come along and replace them? Well, aside from patent control by these entities, there’s really nothing stopping anyone else from rising up just as well.

The big book companies appear to have been around forever, but they haven’t been. They rose up not that long ago, and they’ve been trying to control the market ever since. Amazon is probably the biggest book seller in the world right now, and it came along after Apple and Microsoft, and is competing against them. I still remember Amazon’s first ads where they tried to play like they were this really, really big bookstore and were looking to lease space to hold all of their books. It was a cute joke, but they have become nothing but massive since those days. But why can’t someone else show up and do it again?

Game software development is probably the one area I know the most about because I was in this business from the beginning, and surprisingly a second generation is now on the scene that doesn’t remember how things actually took place. In the 1980s, software developers were creating games on floppy disks, copying them, and then selling them in little plastic sandwich bags. I’m not kidding. That’s how the gaming software industry was created. Some of the largest companies of today were doing that sort of thing, including Electronic Arts and a whole group of others that have risen and fallen (and quite a few have been bought by EA). But what’s interesting is that as more and more of these software behemoths keep announcing that PC gaming is dead. what I don’t think they realize is that as they do more and more to piss off their customers (which they are doing a lot of these days), the more likely they are going to make it that people are going to go back to the beginning and start creating their own games and distributing them much like we used to do before (although probably through easier online distribution). Look at Zynga. This is a company that came out of nowhere, and now is one of the big boys.

The point of this post is that I don’t think the big guys realize how vulnerable they still are, even as they try to completely control the market they currently dominate. A friend of mine recently made a full length movie for about $20,000. I was watching a special on independent movies, and some small studio guy said that it was impossible to make a movie for less than a few million these days. Even the guy who made the $20,000 movie keeps saying almost the same thing. But people are doing it. And I think that’s what’s going to completely change the industry because what we’re seeing is a lot of studio people who don’t know anything different. They’ve been taught that you have to have millions to make a movie, or it can’t be done. But then someone comes along and makes one for thousands, and everyone just shakes their heads and says, “wow, never saw that happening.” That’s what happens with revolutionary change. No one ever sees it happening.

And I suspect that this is going to be happening a lot more soon. Book companies are about to be hit big time by e-readers, and innovative people with little money are going to see a way to get rid of the producer middlemen and make the industries brand new again. But no one will see it coming because they’ll be so focused on RIAA lawsuits and maintaining control over their little fiefdoms, that they’ll never realize how insignificant they’ve become.

So keep your eyes open, or start producing independently, because it’s going to happen. Unfortunately, everyone is so tied into the current paradigm that they’ll never believe it until they’ve become completely replaced and discarded.

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