Is Ownership an Illusion?

Politics,

Every now and then, a new article on Second Life will pop up, and people will start arguing about whether or not intellectual “property” is, in fact, property. What the argument means is that there are people who own virtual land in games, and they argue that they “own” that land in the real world. Linden Lab, the company that owns Second Life, recently changed its user agreement to indicate that they own their property and that the players only get to use it as Linden Lab allows it. Well, in case you don’t know this, people have spent thousands of dollars buying property in that land and developing it. For them, they’re somewhat pissed. But it’s a show down that is now going to the court systems of the real world in the United States (California, actually, as Linden Lab is located in San Francisco, California). The court system, however, has been very apprehensive about taking cases of this nature, because in case you don’t realize it, a decision on this issue would be one of great magnitude and importance, and no one wants to be the precedent for this sort of litigation.

But you’re probably wondering, who cares? You don’t play Second Life, and chances are you probably don’t play anything else, like World of Warcraft to really care any way. Well, neither do I, but I do find the issue to be one great importance because it is touching on an issue that is very dear to me, and that’s the idea of ownership in general.

You see, I’ve been convinced for a long time now that ownership is really an illusion, something we convince ourselves of being tangible, only because we’ve convinced enough of our neighbors to buy into the fantasy. It’s partly why I’ve never looked at property as an investment. I’ve never bought into the whole idea that it’s actually mine. It’s kind of hard to think that way when the property you’ve bought is subject to taxation by the government that automatically indicates that the property actually belongs to the government and I’m just living on it. I mean, if it was MY property, then no one should be able to benefit from my ownership. It should be mine, straight out.

But it’s not. The government claims that it is authorized to charge me money if I happen to own a bit of property in ITS jurisdiction. If I don’t pay them, they can forcibly take that property from me and give it to someone else. Also, if the government decides it wants to build a tea garden where I happen to have built a gazebo, they can just take it and offer me whatever THEY decide they want to offer me for it. There’s a whole amendment to our Constitution that pretty much says they’re not supposed to do that, but when it comes to government following its own laws, well there’s an exception to everything. When it benefits them, it’s an exception. When it benefits me, it’s a breach of law.

This is a problem that goes way back to before our country was even founded. Kings used to think that they owned all of the territory and that the peasants were just there to work the king’s land. We’re not that far off from where we used to be, even though we took the Lockeian direction and claimed that land we own is now something that belongs to the people and individuals. But it doesn’t. Nothing is really ours as long as someone with more power wants it. If someone with economic power wants your land, he or she attempts to buy it. If that doesn’t work, he or she then attempts to take that land through legal maneuvers, like suing you for some “crime” that you have done to that individual, like growing your weeds too far over a fence or something equally ludicrous. If that doesn’t work, then quite often a business will turn to government to declare your land a public land grab and then take it that way. It happened in San Francisco when I was living there. The government took land that was owned by individuals because they wanted to develop it for “the poor”. When they completed their land grab, businesses lobbied government for it and then took ownership of the same property for private development. The people who complained were pretty much told to shut up, first by loud mouth private interests and then by baton-carrying police officers. Well, the same thing happens all over the country, and whenever you hear of government planning to “clean up” an area, expect a land grab to happen soon after as the richest elements of that society then profit off of the misery of those who were told to move off their previously owned land to make way for “progress”.

What is interesting about this whole thing is that with the collapse of the housing industry, the illusion is a lot more present than it has ever been before. There is currently a huge land grab taking place all across this country, as the rich are now buying up the land that had to be cast aside by those who could no longer afford to make their payments that were too much for them to pay in the first place. It was all a house of cards waiting to fall, and someone removed the queen of spades from the bottom of the deck, and rather than have the whole thing collapse, the whole house is teetering now, just waiting to cave in on itself. Yeah, so much for an overused metaphor….

In the very near future, we should see a lot of interesting tales as the reality of what has taken place starts to make its way into the public realm. A lot of this was able to continue as long as no one ever questioned how it could keep maintaining itself, but the era of manifest destiny has been over for a very long time. There are no more trails to travel with lots of land as far as the eye can see. We reached the ocean, and ever since then there’s been the realization that expansion is over; consolidation is never as much fun or as opportunistic for all involved. Now that we’ve turned back inward on what we passed on the journey to reach the water, we’re left with the realization that there’s nowhere else for us to go, and all that is left is what we have already seen. Mix that in with the reality that ownership of land is just an illusion, and there’s a very interesting powder keg preparing itself for something. What that something is might be much more interesting as it begins to reveal itself in our future.

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Reflections on Life in General

Politics, Religion, , ,

I spent a few hours this weekend paying bills. You know, the usual, where you sit down with your check book and write out checks for all of the bills that have been building up over the last few weeks. The kind that build up not because you can’t afford to pay them, but just because you don’t want to take the time to pay them. I find myself doing that a lot, and have even paid some bills really late because I just didn’t feel like filling out the paper work that is required to fill out in order to pay a simple gas bill. I really hate  paying bills, and no matter how many times I pay it, that feeling just doesn’t change.

For me, it feels like my life has very little meaning when it comes down to it, because when I’m sitting there with a handful of utility and credit card bills, one starts to feel that there’s really little purpose in life other than paying bills to people who don’t provide anything for me other than little nuances that one needs to endure in order to live somewhat comfortably. I pay a gas bill because I don’t want to freeze, and sometimes I like to cook food without having to rub two sticks together and hope that millions of years of evolution don’t put me back a couple of thousands years to where I’m still required to provide my own fire. I pay an electricity bill so that I can watch TV, turn on the lights, run the microwave (avoiding that rubbing sticks together thing), fire up my computer to write this blog, and other things that come from Ben Franklin’s kite discovery a couple of centuries ago. I pay my rent bill so I don’t get kicked out on my behind and actually have a stuff to put my, to put what George Carlin eloquently referred to as, “stuff”. I pay my car payment so I can avoid having to take the bus to work, and then I get to pay my insurance bill so that I’m legally allowed to drive my car on the road. Add in credit card bills and other little nuanced payments here and there, and honestly, I’m paying a lot of money to maintain a very low level of existence.

But what’s the meaning of it all? I mean, why continue to pay all of this money to entities that don’t care one iota about me in any way just so one can continue to survive? Throughout history, reflective souls have constantly asked the inward-looking questions of “why am I here?” and each generation seems to have one or two philosophers that think they have it all figured out, yet why is it that we still keep having to ask this question? I mean, we can read all sorts of philosophers and think we have it all figured out, but I get the impression that no one has ever really figured it out, because we still have to keep asking the questions. But we don’t seem to come up with any real answers.

I remember a colleague and I once joked in political science that we were challenging the paradigm Americanist belief that all representatives do what they do in order to be re-elected. We posited that perhaps the rationale behind congressional representatives was a little simpler, that maybe they did what they did in office, and to achieve office, because they were interested in dating. In other words: Attracting a potential mate. Sure, those of us in the discipline laughed at us, and we chalked it up as a joke, but if you think about it, there’s probably something there. If you look at it from a basic biological necessity, most people tend to do the things they do in order to perpetuate the species. Men fluff their feathers in hopes of attracting a mate, so why couldn’t it be seen that in the end congressional representatives do everything they do in hopes of perpetuating their species as a biological necessity? Sure, getting elected, or re-elected, may appear to be the end goal, but what if it’s really just a step in a biological direction? I honestly think that scientists aren’t all that interested in examining such issues with sincerity because then it would present all sorts of dilemmas that they don’t want to deal with, especially if the base values of a politician are narrowed down to simple reproductive functions.

Which brings me back to my original question of “why are we here?”. I mean, is that all there is? Are we here specifically just for reproducing, and thus, all of our mannerisms and manifestations mean nothing but achieving survival through offspring? I’d really hate to think that life is as simple as that, and the bigger picture is really nothing more than just the continuation of the species.  Wouldn’t that be truly sad to discover that after all of this evolution we’re no different, or better, than a snail slug? What a joke that would be if our achievement of sentience means absolutely nothing but an ability to acknowledge that we really don’t have a purpose in the first place.

All of this discussion makes it really difficult to conclude without at least mentioning the concept of religion because when it comes to this type of conversation, there’s always this tendency to try to find answers through a “higher” meaning. Having been brought up in the methodist sense of spirituality, I often find it interesting that there are people who can so easily surrender to the idea that it’s all just a part of a religious purpose, that there’s no need to think any deeper than that. In a Penrose sort of way, it’s hard not to be able to acknowledge the possibility of something deeper than basic humanity, but at the same time it’s so difficult to accept that we have managed to figure it all out because someone in an earlier age, with less ability to understand the bigger picture, had it all figured out and wrote it down in a book for the rest of us to follow, especially when the book is so damn confusing, is interpreted so many different ways (often leading to war, subjugation and hatred), and no two copies of “the book” are believed to be any more valid than any other. And then the followers of those books do such horrific deeds and offer up such hatred towards other people, all in the name of doing the right thing.

Anyway, I’m starting to ramble now, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

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Thumbs up for new Court Yard Hounds CD

Uncategorized, ,

Most people are probably wondering who the hell is Court Yard Hounds, which is part of the interesting approach to this band. First off, the band is essentially two women: Emily Robinson and Martie Maguire, who you might know as the two back-up singers for the Dixie Chicks. Natalie Maines has been taking time off, so the two of them decided to release their own music while waiting for Maines to jump back on the music wagon again.

It’s a really interesting CD, too. The first release of “The Coast” has been climbing the charts lately, and it’s a pretty cool song. The other hit they have going for them on the album is “See You in the Spring”, which is a duet between Robinson and Jakob Dylan. But so far the really power ballad on the CD, in my opinion, is Ain’t No Son, which is this song that starts off very nice and sweet in typical country style and then kind of just erupts. The fascinating thing about these musicians is that, like their last album, Taking the Long Way, their music is really hard to pin to one genre; sometimes it has no tie at all to anything you’re used to. Ain’t No Son is one of those kinds of songs. It starts out with a sweet, little fiddle/banjo jingle and then just builds into something hard to describe.

The only thing missing is Maines’s distinct voice. Robinson, who does the main vocals on all of the songs but Gracefully (which is sung by Maguire) sounds a lot like Sheryl Crow without that distinctive Crow guitar. But the variation is definitely worth the journey until the Dixie Chicks reunite again.

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The Problem for the Future Might Not Just Be the Government

Politics, , , , ,

As an advocate of free speech and very (extremely) limited government, I’m often talking about the problem of government control and its intrusive nature. For those like me, we’re often seeing the future as a variation of “1984” and fear the process of new-speak and Big Brother. But one thing that has emerged over the latter part of the 20th century and into the early part of the 21st century is the revelation that the problem may not be coming from big government, but from big business. This is somewhat ironic, or tragic, because most people who tend to advocate for less government are usually big fans of privatization and the freedom of business interests. But what has happened is that big business is slowly usurping big government as the entity we most need to fear.

Look at Microsoft, Google and Facebook for examples of what I’m talking about. Microsoft won the operating system wars by dogmatic policies and, as some lawsuits would have you believe, through some pretty crappy business practices involving monopolies and claims of stolen innovations. Whether or not there’s any truth in that latter claim, I don’t really care about, but what arguments can be made is that by having huge monopolies of this nature, we’ve really made it practically impossible to innovate in new directions because dogmatic companies just don’t let you do that.

But to make matters worse, these types of companies are now going out of their way to innovate their own successes on the backs of most of their customers. Facebook, lately, has shown itself to be a behemoth that no longer cares what people think as it buys and sells our own personal information, and it laughs at us if we think what they’re doing is wrong in any way. I love their procedure for dealing with you when you decide to quit them. Instead of actually allowing you to delete your account, they “allow” you to “deactivate” your account so that they can still use your information and treat you as one of their products rather than one of their customers. To ACTUALLY delete your account, you have to go through a four or five click process to finally reach a page that then informs you that it will take 2 weeks to delete your account, as if the owners of Facebook realize that you’re being rash and hotheaded, so they’ll give you some time to think about it before they’ll allow you to make the “mistake” of leaving. Even when you deactivate your account, they make you feel so guilty about it, reminding you that if you should dare to deactivate your account, you will no longer be able to communicate with your friends, your wife, your loved ones or your family EVER again.

The biggest problem with some of these companies is that they buy and trade our own private information as if it is their own. And read the legalese they make you click and agree to before you ever access their pages. THEY OWN YOU and your information, and you’re only living in THEIR worlds. That’s really how they feel about it.

Lately, there has been a new movement to pretty much dump Facebook because of their unilateral strategies in ownership of information. The backlash has been a claim of “if you don’t continue with Facebook, then you can never communicate with anyone ever again”. It’s straight out arrogance and stupidity, but people fall for it.

What we used to fear was government becoming too powerful, which is why we made rules of what government could and could not do. But private enterprises don’t have this same type of hold on it, unless you count the government itself. Right now, Congress is looking into a number of these different large companies to stop their approaches to ownership over data and information, but these companies are doing an amazing thing as a response: They’re appealing to citizens and acting as if government is using its power to stop them from donig what is their right to do, which essentially means they are upset that government is stopping them from doing to us exactly what we wanted to make sure government could never could do to us. The irony is that because they’re not government, they think it’s okay that they get to do things that we would never allow government to do.

As big businesses are becoming more aligned with the wants and needs of government, and often use government to back up their plans (police agencies have always responded to the needs of large businesses before they respond to the common folk), this collusion may one day reach a point where we are going to find ourselves being detained by government at the behest of these organizations. Recently, when Gizmondo printed a story about the new iPhone, the government raided their offices and took all of their computer equipment. No one knows who pulled the government’s strings on that as Apple claims it was the individual who lost the iPhone, while many others claim it had to have been Apple because the government agencies involved then went silent when questioned further.

It might not be something people realize is a problem just yet, but when it becomes a problem that everyone notices, it will then be too late. But when has that ever caused anyone to be proactive about one’s own rights and responsibilities?

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The Demise of the Dedicated Movie Critic

Movies

There’s an interesting article at CNN’s site, titled, “Is social media killing film criticism?” And it’s an interesting question. I mean, one might wonder if social media is killing film criticism when everyone has an opinion, and people constantly have something to say. I’m no different than anyone else here as I’ve reviewed a couple of movies here recently as well.

But I think there’s more to the situation than just social media as being a knife wedged into the back of film criticism. To begin with, I think film criticism as a whole has suffered a lot lately with the demise of the two media darlings of film criticism themselves: Siskel and Ebert. When Gene Siskel died, that left Roger Ebert as the only one left, and for the longest time there was an attempt to recapture what Siskel and Ebert had on evening television every week. Those two arguing back and forth over whether or not a cartoon mouse was socially relevant in a film, or whether or not Jeff Spicoli really managed to overcome the evils of Mr. Hand to the point of achieving social relevance  (Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Almost every week after Siskel died there was a new replacement to argue with Ebert, and it just never worked. Come to think of it, there was really  never another reviewer or set of reviewers that managed to become as socially relevant as those two, including Ebert alone.

Now, Ebert is suffering from the inability of being able to speak, and his articles are all we have, and it’s just not the same. Movie reviews are becoming 20th century artifacts, and it’s very hard to get anyone to even care what one has to say when it comes to a review.

Nowadays, it’s pretty hard to even go to see a movie because you really can’t trust anyone’s opinion. Reviewers are sporadically relevant, but mostly interchangeable and incapable of achieving a sense of usefulness. I recently went to see Kick Ass, realizing that the reviews were pretty much all over the place, so I had to make a judgment of my own. And with movies being so expensive these days, and so many remakes of remakes, it’s really hard to even trust a trailer because those thirty second soundbytes can sometimes be the best 30 seconds of the entire film.

A new movie is coming out tomorrow that is getting all of the hype, and that’s Iron Man 2, and already the reviewers are all over the place with this one. I’ve heard some saying it’s great, others saying its rehashed old stuff with lots of special effects, and others saying that it’s just not worth our time. The old days of relying on the two thumbs up or down are gone, so we pretty much have to fend for ourselves.

And that’s pretty scary.

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Survey results indicate that people lie a lot

Uncategorized

Coredata did a survey in Australia the other day where their results indicated that if people had better access to TV shows, movies and music, in a method much like bit torrent (how they illegally download them now), then they’d be more likely to pay for the stuff they currently steal. Yeah, right. Let’s unpack this survey a bit to see what was really being said here.

First, it was conducted in Australia, so let’s put that part into perspective. The survey results people want to cross apply this to everywhere, including the US and Europe, but the survey was conducted in Australia, meaning that people who don’t have steady access to a lot of western material, especially US shows, movies and music, are, of course, going to have to turn to whatever mechanism they can in order to get the material. When I was in South Korea, I couldn’t get US shows, so the only way to get them was to either buy them through iTunes (and lie that I was actually in the states at the time I got the material), or to download it illegally. Not much of a choice. Yeah, if it was legally available, I would have probably paid for it that way. But it wasn’t, so I did without (unlike others who would have pirated it).

Now, let’s unpack another part of this and pretend that this survey was done in the US. Sure, if I was a pirate, and someone asked me what it would take for me to buy my stuff legally, I’d say that if they made it more available, and easier to obtain, I’d probably buy it. But if I’m already doing it illegally, chances are pretty good that when they produced it in an easier way for me to get, I’d probably still steal it because I’m a piece of crap already, so why would I suddenly gain a moral backbone and start doing things legitimately? Answer…I probably wouldn’t. And that’s what’s not being discussed in this survey because what no one wants to admit is that people today have an expectation that intellectual property should be free, so they’re going to do what they can to keep getting that stuff free.

Unfortunately, the cart is already out of the stable, or whatever metaphor seems to work. Today’s generation doesn’t see anything wrong with piracy, or at least enough of them that are already pirating stuff don’t seem to see a problem. The RIAA’s attempts to stop illegal downloading of music isn’t a deterrent to these people; it’s an inconvenience. To them, the RIAA is outdated and being stupid in its actions. I don’t see any sort of process that is going to change that opinion because the Internet was developed with the idea that it creates free information, and as a result, should be perceived as a free for all environment. Old styles of control are coming in direct contact with new media that has no central authority of control, so there’s going to be a battle for a very long time until one side wins completely. And unfortunately, I don’t think the old ways are going to win out because the old people, people like me who still buy the music they listen to, are slowly disappearing, and we’re not being replaced by enough younger people who feel the same way. Instead, we’re being replaced by people who think it should all be free, and we’re seen as stupid for paying for the products that we do.

Itunes is a good example of a market that is holding its own, but is eventually going to implode on itself. I still buy television shows every now and then on iTunes, but every time I do so, I feel stupid for doing so. Hulu.com offers television shows for free, sometimes the same ones I might actually buy. Little by little, Hulu is suffering for trying to be in the middle of this war, as was seen when Comedy Central pulled its shows off of Hulu, thinking it would just get the Hulu people to come to Comedy Central’s site. But that didn’t happen; people just stopped watching the Daily Show online, because their access to it through Hulu was removed. But the problem with the iTunes model is that the prices are sometimes astronomical. They still try to get $2.99 for a television show, which is ridiculous. I sometimes pay $1.99 for the weaker version of the same show, but even that seems like too much money. The problem with Apple is they are seriously greedy bastards who think they have such a great product that they can overcharge and get it. Read some of the comments on iTunes movies and shows, and you’d be shocked at how pissed people get at Apple for their control mechanisms they use to squeeze every dime out of their customers.

So, this leaves us still in a nether world of the Internet where we have people who think that all of this should be free, so they are basically pirating all of this stuff on the backs of the rest of us who are paying for it. But that can’t last as a sustainable market process because people like me start to get pissed that we’re being overcharged to pay for the pirate market. I”ve bought very few CDs in the last few years because the prices just haven’t been what I find myself comfortable with. The newest CD to come out, which I would have bought, was the new one from Court Yard Hounds, an offshoot of the Dixie Chicks. But to buy it on iTunes is $13, and that’s ridiculous when a long time ago we were promised that CDs would cost us $9.99. Itunes should be even cheaper because it doesn’t even require any packaging, but instead they decided to go with greed instead of attract their customers. So I won’t buy it. And that is why more people will end up pirating it, leading to prices going up even further until something happens, like the industry collapses.

Cause when people aren’t paying for it, that’s all that can happen. So unless people want to go back to the idea of music being wandering minstrels performing for the king and the local ale house, someone should really think about this because the old ways aren’t working, and too many stupid people are making the decisions for too many others, which means that if you understand game theory, the result is a bankrupt marketplace, and while those of us who like anarchy and chaos might like this, I’m going to go out on a limb and think that perhaps that’s the not the best alternative for everyone else.

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The “end” of LOST

Television,

What’s interesting is that for the first time in a very long time, we’re closing in on the end of what has to be one of the most monumental shows in television history, and a lot of people don’t even realize it. This show has been going on for six seasons now, and it’s one of those that people either love or hate, and there really doesn’t seem to a lot of in-between there. The show ends at the end of this month on Sunday after a 2 1/2 hour conclusion.

I remember watching this show when it first came out, and I was apprehensive about it because all I kept thinking was that this was essentially a remake of Gilligan’s Island without the laugh track. But at the time, I knew nothing about the show; I was just making a spot assessment based on what I was hearing in the popular media. But to be honest, no one in the media had a clue what was going to happen on this show, so everyone was just acting like they knew more than everyone else, and the show aired as some kind of weird drama.

The first episode really should have told everyone what they needed to know: This show was going to be so different than you’d probably never see anything like it again. In the very first episde, we have people crash landing on an island from Oceanic 815, trying to figure out where they were, getting attacked by polar beers (in the jungle!), then attacked by a mysterious “smoke” monster, and then running into ghosts and mysterious people. No, this definitely wasn’t going to be a serious version of Gilligan’s Island.

What is interesting about this show is that everyone is a critic and convinced they know more about what was good and what was bad, when in reality some of the “bad” episodes were actually mega important when it came to the crafting of the overall theme. The third and fourth season is often seen as the low period for the show, when a bunch of bizarre characters get introduced to the island, but what was really happening was that a HUGE story arc was being created that was so necessary to bring the drama to where it is today. Without those really bizarre asides, the story we have now could never have come into being.

And that’s the problem with a show like this one because very rarely is a network going to be giving the show enough time to develop this kind of an arc, cancelling the show before it even has a chance. Had LOST been aired on NBC, there’s a good chance that it would have been taken off the air after the fourth season. Fortunately, it aired on ABC, which has a bit more of a backbone than NBC ever had.

LOST had to survive some pretty interesting times, as it was pretty much coming into its groove when the Writer’s Strike took place, an event that destroyed so many potential shows during its occurrence. It also had to survive Hollywood’s incest-like behavior whenever a ground-breaking show appears, and that’s the tendency that networks have to copy a show and try to capture audience share by trying to reproduce what an innovative show has already done. For every LOST you have, you end up with dozens of Flashforwards that try so hard to pretend that they are as innovative as the original but just pale in any comparison. One thing LOST does well is that it sets up a mystery and lets the audience experience the growth of that mystery through its eventual revelation once its solved. A show like Flashfoward screams “I’m a MYSTERY!” because it so wants to gain the audience that a show like LOST has. So instead of a lot of nuance and intrigue, it jumps right into the mystery, patting itself on the back as it recognizes itself for what it thinks it is, and then prods on as if it is the first to ever do so. You can even see it in the ad spots that they run for the show; they want so much to seem mysterious, but instead they come off as pretentious and stupid. Having watched Flashforward, that’s been my observation of the show as well.

Unfortunately, for a show like LOST to work, it has to eventually end, and it is doing just that. The mystery is being unfolded now, and we’re starting to find out more and more. Not only that but characters that have been with us since the beginning (and others that hopped on board in the process) are slowly being shown to be real and touchable, meaning that they can die at any moment now. We lost a few hugely important characters just last Tuesday, and it was done in a way that those watching still shake their heads and cannot believe those characters could possibly be gone. But that’s the beauty of a show like LOST, especially as it comes to an end. Anything can happen, and when someone watches a show with that thought in mind, it makes it that much more real. And in a show with such a fantastic premise, “real” is such a wonderful thing to achieve.

What is sad about LOST is that its end means that we will probably not have a show like it again. Oh, they’ll attempt to recapture this kind of show in many different variations in the near future, but it will take many years before we have anything that comes as close to being as impacting as this show was on the viewing public. You can probably list on the fingers of one hand how many shows have ever been that powerful that so many people are anxiously awaiting the outcome. Fortunately, those of us who watched LOST from the beginning can now say that we were there all the way through, and May 23rd, that journey finally comes to an end.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 2,644

News Round Up

Politics, , ,

Just thought I would take a few moments and comment on some of the important news stories that seem to be in the news lately:

The Oil Spill: See here.  My initial comment is that this is one of those stories where I so much want to point fingers and laugh because I have been against drilling for oil on the coasts for about as long as the idea has been around. I was against it when Bush was in office, and I’m against it while Obama is in office. What shocked me was that when Obama changed his mind and suddenly was for it, a whole chorus of people who used to be against it were suddenly for it. Now, they get to experience the consequences of what happens when you drill for oil close to the coast. Not a good idea. Ever.

Country singer Chely Wright reveals she’s a lesbian. Story is here.  If this was Shania Twain, I’d cry. But it’s not. It’s Chely Wright, someone I’ve never heard of before. And I’m a big country music fan. Don’t know who she is and don’t really care. Judging from some of the comments I’ve read from others who have been following this same story, none of them know who she is either, and the consensus seems to be that this is generally someone who hasn’t been selling a lot of music who is now looking for a gimmick to sell more music. Probably not going to work because country music fans aren’t real open to diversity. Sorry, but most aren’t. I am, but I’m not the average country music fan, so I’m chalking her career up to being somewhat over, unless she somehow reinvents herself so that she is appealing to those who aren’t part of this genre.

Arizona’s Immigration Problem. Story is here.  I’m sorry, but why is this a problem or a debate? Honestly, don’t we have more important problems in this country to deal with than whether or not immigrants are sneaking over the border and taking jobs? Yes, there are crime problems, but I’ll let you in on a little secret. Fix immigration and you’ll STILL have a crime problem. The crime problem is caused by disparities in wealth, a desire to achieve something for little work, and very stupid people; none of these really has anything to do with immigration, both illegal and legal. Solving immigration doesn’t fix that anywhere else but in fantasies.

Apple’s New IPad. Story can be found here.  My only comment to this one is a source quotation, the source being P.T. Barnum, and the quotation being one that everyone should know by now. If not, I apologize for laughing at you.

Another week or so of very unimportant news masquerading as important news. We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rich people are still getting paid way too much money and upset that they can’t keep more of it while they employ the very poor to work for them and make them even richer. Politicians are still more interested in a photo op than they are in helping people but are willing to spend millions of our dollars pointing out how much money they saved us. There’s a lot more, but this is where people stop listening and go look for other “interesting” things to read.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 575

Thoughts on Movie “2012” and the Concept of Bad Writing

Movies, Writing, ,

I finally got a chance to watch the movie 2012 over the weekend, and it served to remind me that no matter how much money you put into a production, how great the actors are, and how big the premise, bad writing will continuously destroy a movie no matter how much other effort is put into the film. 2012 is one of those movies that had a lot of things going for it. It had a huge budget, the special effects were over the top phenomenal, the actors were all actually high quality actors, including John Cusak and George Segal as well as many other well performing actors. The premise for the movie was pretty big, surpassing pretty much most others with an end of the world theme (which was a lot more impacting than a bunch of transforming cars that fight each other as Megan Fox somehow manages to pretend to act while finding herself in all manners of undress).

But the writing destroyed the movie. Horribly.

It started with one of the cardinal sins of writing, and that’s using coincidence sparingly. (spoiler alert!) Let me start with the basic events of the movie: John Cusak is a writer who published one book that didn’t sell very well, so he’s now working part time as a limo driver for a rich Russian mafioso, ex-boxer. The story starts with him taking his son and daughter on a camping trip to a lake where he and his former wife used to go all of the time on romantic getaways. His ex-wife, by the way, happens to be married to a plastic surgeon who just so happens to be the doctor who did the boob job on the girlfriend of the ex-boxer mafioso Russian. Well, on this trip to the lake, Cusak and kids run into a military operation that is exploring Yosemite, where the ground is becoming unstable. So they meet crazy wacko Woody Harrelson (possibly playing himself), a conspiracy radio host nut who knows the world is coming to an end. When the military detain Cusak, the guy in charge is part of the team that discovered the world is coming to an end, and he just so happens to have a copy of Cusak’s book, being one of the 400 people in the world who has ever seen it, and he recognizes Cusak’s name because he just so happens to be reading it RIGHT NOW.

Well, Cusak, because he believes the crazy nutjob of a radio announcer is telling the truth, manages to get his family out of their house JUST AS ARMAGEDDON HITS and drives them in his limo through California on its worst day EVER, as the Earth explodes all around them. But he has managed to find the one airplane in California that will take them out of danger, so they get to the minor airport, which is where Cusak drove the Russian mafioso guy and his family. But Cusak heard about a map that crazy Woody had, so he manages to get it, and it is a map of China, so they decide they need to fly to China (even though their little plane can’t make that trip). Oh, by the way, the pilot he hired died, so it turns out that the plastic surgeon husband of his ex-wife JUST SO HAPPENS to have had a few lessons in flying, so he flies them out of the worst nightmare of an escape that has ever existed (that is almost as bad as the escape I had when I was running away from an ex-girlfriend who refused to break up with me without at least one of us dead first). Anyway, he gets to Las Vegas where there’s a plane that the Mafioso guy has managed to get a hold of, and because their pilot died, or left, or I don’t really remember what happened to him, it turns out that the “I had a few lessons” guy is now going to fly their plane to China. So they get in that plane and fly it to Hawaii, which is where they need to refuel, but there’s no fuel cause Hawaii is now an inferno, so somehow they manage to continue flying to somewhere in China. Yeah, not really sure how they made it, but somehow they did.

Anyway, I did forget to mention that the guy who ran into Cusak in Yosemite is a scientist and part of a secret plot to build huge space arks that you only discover later aren’t really going into space, but they’re really big water vessels made out of metal. So, if the planet is doomed, that’s not a problem cause they’re still going to be saved somehow because they’re in really big boats now. Meanwhile, the scientist guy’s father is some kind of bad musician on a cruise line with George Segal, who is also a bad musician, too, and they’re on the biggest boat ever, which tips over and kills everyone but not before both dads get to phone their kids and say bye. It’s a good thing to know that during Armageddon, at least AT&T will work as desired, even though AT&T has a bad tendency of dropping most of my phone calls normally (and that’s without Armageddon happening).

So, it turns out the Russian guy booked passage on the space ark fleet for 1 billion and some Euros, and when he gets there, it turns out his space ark has been damaged, so he’s now not going to get to go. So all of the passengers who came with him riot and throw a fit. Meanwhile, an evil government official, who is really not evil but more of a bureaucrat, is trying to keep everyone out of the arks because only the scientifically chosen can be saved (and the ones who had a lot of money, which seems to be the only people who showed up anyway). So Cusak and gang somehow manage to convince a Chinese family that has lived in a Tibetan village their whole life, but all somehow manage to speak English, that they should help them sneak onto the arks. And then fun ensues with lots of rubber tubing getting stuck in the door gears of the most important ark, which cannot be started because for some reason they built a superpowerful space ark (that doesn’t go into space) that for some reason can’t start its engines if the doors are not completely sealed. So, they go on an adventure to “seal the door” and people die, and others live, and sparky the wonder dog somehow gets saved, even though his boob-enhanced mistress does not survive. But the obnoxious Russian twin kids do get saved and somehow become nicer kids in the process, letting Cusak’s daughter play with the dog at one point, whereas they were originally overjoyed that Cusak’s daughter was going to die while they got saved.

Anyway, it’s a complicated story that is somewhat ridiculous, as if the writers weren’t sure if this was an end of the world story, or Earthquake II, in which everyone will live happily ever after. The ending was almost the same ending of Wall-E, and that was kind of disconcerting. There were so many loopholes and plot points that didn’t make any sense throughout this entire movie that I was often flabbergasted that I was watching what I was watching. I kept trying to turn off my critical mind during the watching, but every now and then it would pop back on and say, “um, isn’t 2012 supposed to be about the end of the world, not the moving of the planet’s plates?” In other words, the Mayan prophecies are all about how the calendar ends, meaning the universe as we know it ends, which according to the premise, means that all humanity dies. For me, that meant that we needed actual space arks, not just Noah’s 21st century arks. I kept wondering when these arks were going to fire actual rockets, and then it turns out that they’re nothing more than very big boats. Really? That was the solution to the end of the world?

Anyway, that was the movie, and I was very disappointed. A couple of moments were worth the watching, like trying to see two really old men pretend they’re actual musicians when neither one of them can hum a tune. But other than that, I was disappointed. I had gone into the movie wondering how an end of the world story can possibly have a happy ending, but like most Hollywood productions, they were too frightened to deal with the resolution of the story as the Mayans would have because that would have meant that the struggle in the movie was hopeless and futile. That doesn’t sell a lot of tickets.

One moral I did get from the movie, even though they were trying hard as hell to go the opposite direction of this, is that no matter what you do, no matter how good you are, in the end, those with the most money and power are rewarded with survival; those without are doomed to be swallowed up by the apocalypse and left to die…cold and alone.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 666

Cheesy Tactics to Get Your Money in Computer Games

Computer Games, , ,

I started playing Dragon Age-Origins this weekend. It’s been a while since I’ve played a new game, so I was really excited about it. And it’s a lot of fun. There’s a reason why it has been receiving such rave reviews. But I’ve always been apprehensive about buying games affiliated with Electronic Arts (the game was made by Bioware and Electronic Arts, or made by Bioware and distributed by Electronic Arts). Don’t get me wrong; I used to work for Electronic Arts, but when a hegemonic company starts buying out other gaming companies, I always find that to be a scary thing.

Anyway, the game is a lot of fun, but at one point I was in a camp (a resting spot in the game), and one of the npcs (non-player characters) indicated it had a quest for me (it does this by showing an exclamation point over its head, something somewhat stolen from MMORPGs like World of Warcraft). So, all excited, I clicked that character and listened to his rant (quest information), and then right before I was about to click to accept, I realized that the option to do so requires me to purchase downloaded content, meaning that right in the middle of the game the developers are trying to get me to pay them more money.

I’m sorry, but this is really cheesy. This type of thing tends to piss me off because it’s basically saying: “Nyah, Nyah, you can’t play forward and use ALL the content in this game until you go to the EA site and buy more of our product.” That sort of thing really bugs me because part of the allure of a computer game is not having to be reminded of the real world, and someone trying to sell me shit in the middle of a game (that I buy in the real world) pretty much ruins the experience for me.

I see this as a really bad sign for the future. I was half tempted to stop playing right then and there, before realizing that would have meant $50 I threw away because I got pissed off at a gaming company (you can’t return an already opened game…well, you can but good luck trying it at most retailers).

So I’m torn. It’s a great game, but at the same time their business practices really irritate me.

Has Been Viewed (since August 20, 2021): 694