I don't mind my own spin

New cell

2009-10-19T12:16:00.001-04:00

There's something very sad about having finally bought a cell phone, and having no one to call.

On the T

2009-07-23T09:11:00.002-04:00

Over the last week, I saw a lady stand up after sitting in a seat on the T for part of the trip. She had gum stuck to the back of her leg.
I was considering letting her know, but I didn't want her to think that I was checking her out or staring or anything.

In the event of my zombification

2009-03-19T15:37:00.002-04:00

I'm re-listening to the original Dawn of the Dead.

One of my general problems with a lot of zombie movies and literature is that there's too much hope for "maybe they didn't get infected" or "maybe I'll get better."

While it seems obvious to the audience that the infected contract the disease and invariably turn, it seems clear that in a real life scenario, maybe it wouldn't be as clear. Similar to something like cancer, where a diagnosis can mean either a fast or a slow death, depending on a variety of factors.

But I have a hard time deciding how I'd like others to handle it if I were infected.
If I have turned over, please, go ahead and shoot.
If I've been injured, and will likely turn, I can still be useful. In this case, possibly quarentine me, or if that isn't possible, I'd probably volunteer for a suicide mission. If that isn't needed, then I'd probably ask to be allowed to turn, and join the mob, or be put down in the space between dying and returning.
If infection can turn too quickly, I'd advise shooting in the back of the head. I wouldn't see it coming, which would probably be a less fear-inducing death.

Voting for a winner

2008-11-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

This has been the first time that I voted for a winner in an election.

I didn't have many problems with McCain. I had some problems with his attempts to appear knowledgable. His attempts to rally against 'pork' is absurd. The 'pork' that he dislikes is usually money that helps out considerable numbers of people in the same spirit as the WPA. It's true that there is some money that has not been spent wisely, although hardly enough to make it a serious problem.
And certainly not enough to claim that it would be his key to eliminating overspending. Certainly not enough to make up for the amount of money lost by continuing Bush's tax cuts.

I found McCain more unsettling in a more personal way. He was sticking to Bush's stubbornness, and picked a VP that was pathetic. She'd be a more appropriate choice if she were something other than a journalism major. Shouldn't a journalism major know what the first amendment actually means?

I expect a VP to have few official duties, but to mostly play the role of advisor to the president. This means that the pick should be able to patch weaknesses in the president's knowledge. Same role as the cabinet. Palin wouldn't be able to do anything of the sort.

I have one expectation of Obama's presidency. I expect him to listen carefully to arguments, and to avoid policy manuvers based on ideology. I couldn't believe that McCain would do that. I anticipate that Obama will be a very logical president. In all honesty, his policies aren't as far to the left as I would like. They tend to be compromise policies. Specifically, I would like to see him fix healthcare. I don't think I can realistically expect that though.

I know that economic hard times are ahead, but I'm confident that Obama will inspire and lead toward a healed economy.

I do worry that I voted against my interests, in a strange way. My wife will be making a high salary next year. Assuming she stays on schedule, I would probably expect that around her fifth year, we might reach that tax bracket. I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement. In fact, I just looked it up. The difference is only 12 dollars more. We'd have to reach around 600K a year to reach that point.

It feels good to have voted for someone I believe in.

Corporal Punishment

2008-08-20T11:15:00.004-04:00

Not having children, it's hard to speak with any authority on this matter.

My co-workers were enjoying this article. The summary is that corporal punishment is still legal in 21 states, and is used in 13 of them primarily.
They liked hearing this. They consider it an effective punishment. One recalls that she was spanked once at school, and that she never misbehaved again.
As long as we're using anecdotal evidence, my dad spanked me more often when I was much younger, and I can remember the last time that he did. I wasn't a badly-behaved child. But the last instance of corporal punishment I remember happened sometime during either 8th grade or possibly 9th. I wanted to go to a movie with one of my friends. My mom was unhappy because this would mean I wouldn't be home for dinner. She (intentionally) stomped on my foot. At that point, I was still getting ingrown nails all the time, so this was much more painful than a normal stomp.
I didn't react badly, but it decreased my respect for my mom a little more.

I suspect that's part of the problem with the method. While I was never punished physically by any teacher, I know that students tend to resent teachers that punish them.
When a student does a bad thing, there are two possibilities
1 - they know that what they did was a wrong thing
2 - they don't know what they did was wrong

If they already know that what they did was wrong, they just expected to be able to get away with it. Acknowledgment of this, combined with a means of preventing them from thinking they can get away with it is effective. If it's something like cheating, you make the act not worth the risk. Being caught cheating carries disproportionate punishment compared to the actual harm done, although it remains relevant to what was done.

If they didn't know what they did was wrong, then it teaches them that they can expect to be punished at random for normal behavior.

The act is indicative that the person administering is at the end of their tolerance. They have no means of thinking through their problems.

This doesn't mean that I don't think it isn't understandable. It's just an exceptionally poor stopgap measure. It might solve the problem in the short term, but it doesn't instruct the student, and it would create more problems further down the line.

And now the more interesting part of this.
After finding the states that still allow corporal punishment, I checked the education rankings. I correlated this data, and came up with this.
First, the states that use it frequently

State, State Education ranking, number of students spanked
Mississippi 50 38,131
Alabama 48 33,716
Louisiana 46 11,080
Arkansas 44 22,314
Georgia 43 18,249
South Carolina 42 1409
Tennessee 38 14,868
Florida 37 7,185
Oklahoma 36 14,828
Kentucky 34 2209
North Carolina 29 2705
Missouri 28 5,159
Texas 26 49,197

Followed by the other states, allowing it, but not using it frequently.
New Mexico 49 705
Arizona 31 16
Colorado 25 8
Idaho 23 111
Indiana 22 577
Wyoming 17 0
Ohio 16 672
Kansas 7 50

If I wanted to have some more useful information, I would make a percentage based on the student population in each state, but this is already too much work for me to be doing on company time.
My big surprises - Kansas is number 7 in education?
New Mexico is number 49?

The rankings for states that don't use it often are scattered much more drastically, ranking between 7 and 49, and ranging from 0 to 705 incidences of spanking. There's a smaller range in the other grouping - ranging between 50 and 26, and 1409 up to 49,197.

In reading more about these things, there were issues of race that show up - black children are much more likely to be spanked than white children. And there are issues of budget - spanking is a cheap punishment, compared to other methods.

I still think it can be more effective as a tool for parents, if applied properly. But when a teacher administers it, I fail to see the effectiveness.

My love/hate relationship with mankind

2008-06-30T19:52:00.003-04:00

I have an unusual sensitivity to the way that I'm treated in a social context. Certain things don't bother me at all - not being invited to drinking parties, not being called in to play softball, etc. - none of it bothers me in the least.
But certain things that call into a different, but similar category do bother me.

These have a been a wide range of things over the years. A girl explained to me when I was in fifth grade, that the reason why another girl wasn't interested in me was because I "had no talent." This stuck with me and still bothers me occasionally to this day. I know that the standard advice regarding this would be "Get over it!" Wow, I really hadn't thought of that.

A more recent thing that had bothered me was back about three years ago, I had been characterized by someone I had minimal contact with as "creepy." I think I wrote about this back when it was bothering me more.

But I've realized that it's not just a matter of what's been said, the stronger component is who said it. I like people. I really like people. When someone has not offended me early on, or if I feel a sense of kinship with them, then I feel like I have reason to be a friend to them. This can be trivial things - we both like Parker Lewis Can't Lose or we both majored in Information Systems. It can mean that we both liked the same obscure movie. But after that commonality is found, I find it so much easier to be betrayed by minor things that don't occur to most people.

Because I find it so easy to like people as much as I do, I also find it easy to develop a sense of contempt for them as well. I'm not even sure why it is, but this extends to social networking sites. It serves as a reminder of how poor I am in my social world, how much people ignore me, and how much contempt it stirs in me when I feel that way.
Maybe I'd feel better about myself if there's less of an opportunity for virtual rejection. I can preemptively reject others by not participating.

Guitar search

2008-06-11T13:06:00.002-04:00

I've been looking into finding an appropriate electric guitar for myself. I had been strongly considering the Godin line, looking for something that was right.
My fingers are large, and as a result, most of the electric necks don't feel like they're the right size for me.
I got to try a handful of Godin guitars up in Boston recently. I didn't care for any of the electric guitars in particular. But I did like the A6.

So.... maybe I'll look into Ibanez guitars. I remember them feeling very smooth.

I also hate

2008-05-30T11:06:00.001-04:00

People who use the word "cowinkeydink" rather than "coincidence.

Apparently, the preferred spelling is "coinkydink."

Man, I hate 'em.

Living alone

2008-05-22T11:04:00.002-04:00

It's strange that I've been finally living alone for about a week.
I've done similar things - weeks where my parents were away. I usually had friends that I was still spending time with.
In this case, my wife is away for the summer, while I'm still at the apartment, working.
My neighbor has sublet his apartment to a guy that I think I'll be getting together with occasionally.
Despite not really having much to do, I still wind up feeling like there isn't enough time to do everything I need (or expect) to do.

I've worked on cleaning up the apartment and getting rid of useless things, possibly reorganizing some things. I've worked on drumming more, and started a vocal tour in Rock Band. I plan on taking the recycling out. I want to clear out some extra boxes.

I have no idea how well I've slept. While I don't wake up during the night, I'm still waking up early, and I've had strange dreams.

I've been trying to write more, and I've come up with a fair amount of music that I'm happy with. My biggest problem is that my lyric writing has really gotten poor. I have difficulty in the fabrication part of the process. While I have no problem telling the facts as I see them, I have a tendency to want to include all the details that I shouldn't. This leads to an unwieldy song, something that can't possibly be taken seriously.

Aside from that stuff, this has been the highlight of the week so far.

http://www.triedtorock.blogspot.com/

Co-worker's violent wishes

2008-04-09T10:04:00.002-04:00

A common thread in my room at work is that one of my co-workers subscribes to an absurd eye-for-an-eye thought process. That children who are caught being cruel to other children should have the same treatment visited on them.
More specifically, "someone should beat them up."

I don't know if she has figured out exactly what she is suggesting.

But I remember at one point, one of my sisters had punched me. I'm not sure exactly how old I was, but my dad offered that I could freely punch her back. I had refused.
I'm not exactly sure why he gave me that choice.

Yet another downer post, against my wishes

2008-03-13T13:12:00.004-04:00

I had another post that I had been working on that was largely just complaining about my co-workers.

And they just continued their complaint about people who can afford to write a $200 check on the spur of the moment. I've avoided mentioning that I keep at least 2000 in my checking account.

I broke my Rock Band drum pedal last night. But I was making some good progress when it happened. I was about 3/4 through Roxanne on hard, and it snapped at the base.

And I had been determined to not spend my post complaining, and had deleted an older draft in favor of the above, but I don't think it'll end up being a happy post.

I suppose the good part of things is that I went back home to deliver a TV to my dad, and got to spend a bit of time with my harder-to-reach brother. I got to try two Godin guitars, one was more of a disappointment. One was pretty good, but I didn't like the location of the pickups. I kept hitting it with my pick.

I've been in a fairly poor mood for the last couple weeks. The reasons for it sound much more trivial when I try to explain them.
I haven't gotten better after reaching medium on drums. While I should expect things like re-learning my coordination to take some time, I see a lot of people who either made it to medium with considerably less effort than me, or have made it to hard without any effort.
I've also been convinced that I'm disliked by nearly everyone we know here. My evidence for this is mostly that I seem to both be either left out of things that they know I enjoy, or that I get responses that suggest annoyance or something similar.
I've tried speaking less than my impulses tell me to, but that doesn't seem to do anything.

I do have the next music thing to look forward to.

Gaming

2008-03-11T11:17:00.002-04:00

While I've been spending a fair amount of time playing Rock Band in an effort to learn some basics of drumming, I've also gotten much more back into Magic.
While I really didn't abandon the game entirely since I was introduced to it, I certainly decreased my interest in it from around freshman year of high school up through a few years ago. And even then, I got interested in playing it a little online. I tried a few programs. I was really annoyed with the Magic Online game. I tried Apprentice, which I liked in theory, but without the artwork, and the lack of the game enforcing rules, it wasn't that fun.
I really enjoyed the Microprose game, and I still play that on my own. It's a lot of fun to be able to abuse cards that I never would be able to afford.

I've played a few drafts with a handful of other people. We've gotten up to around 7-8 people at these things, and they're usually fairly fun.

I have a tendency to get overly interested in hobbies, and start pouring too much money into them. I've managed to restrain this, at least for the time being. I've bought two boxes for drafting purposes, one of Morningtide, the other of 9th Edition. I selected these carefully, with drafting in mind. And I will be (gradually) reimbursed for a portion of the purchase price of these. But I have not bought any packs with me specifically in mind. And I plan on letting these cards go in another year and a half.

But I've got a dull summer coming up. While I have plans for how I'll spend my time, (losing weight, playing music, recording, etc) I keep thinking about the idea of building a proper deck, and going to the local gaming shop to play occasionally.

But I'm not sure about that exactly.

Maybe instead, I'll get much better at playing guitar, and will want to buy a proper electric. Nah, I should really hold off on that.

Good news and bad news

2008-02-05T09:50:00.000-05:00

The good stuff:
I saw a fairly long show on Saturday night. The first up was a guy named Travis, who did fairly well. He didn't play with a good balance, and was very difficult to understand when he was singing loudly. He would have left a very good impression if he had only done about three or four songs, but he pulled out worse material that made his earlier stuff seem more redundant.
Then JuliusC was up, and they knew what they were doing. Their show is polished, theatrical, entertaining, although the room was too small for them. The audience wasn't big, but they still showed plenty of enthusiasm. They are a soulful funk/rock sort of deal. I got a sense that everyone in the band was exceptionally skilled on their instruments - with the exception of the keyboard player, who at least played soulfully, but I couldn't evaluate his skill very well.
Then after their show, Chris Barron went on.

He's improved a good amount since the earlier solo shows I've heard of his. He's gotten better at playing electric, but he's still not up to usual pro-act standards on that. His tone is an issue, but it wasn't as bad as I expected.
His show was interesting. I was much more impressed to hear new arrangements of older songs with a band that is not just different from the Spin Doctors, but a different set of instruments.
Big Fat Funky Booty is now much more of slower groove than the upbeat funk/rock number it was. Little Miss Can't Be Wrong was inserted into another song, one that I knew, but can't remember the name of right now.
I was a little more shocked to hear Two Princes, Little Miss, and Jimmy Olsen's Blues.
I also was impressed that songs like Providence were a bit more rocking than I remembered.
His new arrangement for Can't Kick The Habit is a huge improvement. While the version on Nice Talking To Me is good, it suffers with the extended guitar solo that feels more aimless in comparison to Eric's usual solos.

My biggest beef with the show was the bass lines that the bass player was using. Some of them were good, but somehow the deeper notes seemed to take away from the balance.
On the other hand, I really liked the changes to the arrangement of Gorilla Boy. The new drum and bass parts really fit the song better than any other versions I've heard.

I also got to talk with Chris Barron for a few minutes after the show. It was nice. I expected that he would be a little more aloof than he was. He signed my copy of You've Got To Believe In Something. Unfortunately, I think my copy of Up For Grabs was up in NJ. That copy has been signed by Mark White & Aaron Comess.

Other good news includes that this weekend holds more promise to be good. Some dinner/gaming plans on Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon, there's more playing with the local musicians.

I also got a 10% raise at work, in addition to my cost of living increase.

Our tax return this year should be close to $2000, between both Federal and State.

And we moved up to a 37inch flat panel TV.

Then the bad news:

I was informed that it had been checked, and I was allowed to join the pit band for a local event. After a little bit, I was told that nope, I'm not allowed to participate. While I wasn't expecting them to allow me to participate, it's more disappointing since I had been led to believe that I could.

Seeing these shows has just reinforced that I'm nowhere near as competent as a lot of these musicians. Part of it is that I'm physically not fast enough, but also that I'm not as disciplined as I should be in playing. I don't have the same type of creativity as some of the people that tend to amaze me. I am not an adventurous player when it comes to harmony, or even rhythm. I'm pretty straightforward with most musical things. But I do have a good memory for how to play things, and I can provide a solid base to build more interesting things on.
But I'd like to be able to be as clever, or as disciplined as some of these musicians I've seen.

It seems like this should be balancing out, or at least putting me in a good mood, but for some reason, I'm not. I don't think it's just the bad things I've listed here, which aren't on my mind all the time. I'm not sure what the problem(s) are.

Edit: I figured that going to a social event would help. Nope.

Assorted updates

2008-01-23T10:08:00.000-05:00

Over the last couple weeks....

I played Magic with a handful of people.

I played Rock Band with a handful of people.

My back got screwed up.

I saw Cloverfield.

First up, the Magic was interesting. We played with a bunch of cheap cards that I bought off ebay. So none of us knew many of the cards well. I've bought a set of the Unhinged expansion, so that'll be fun when that is used.

Then Rock Band is nice. It's not as spectacular as I had been led to believe. The guitar/bass stuff is still the same as Guitar Hero, but disappointing for a guitar player. The vocal.... I didn't even try. The drum stuff was the highlight of it. It took a few songs to get used to, but it was entirely worth it. I've never been able to get the right kind of coordination to play drums, and this game is like taking drum lessons. So I would like to play this more often, solely for this purpose.

The way that my back got screwed up is a mystery. I was bagging groceries at Giant, and it just happened. I wasn't lifting anything heavy or anything. The pain that it has is a little hard to explain, especially since I'm not experiencing it any longer.
But that was a serious annoyance. I went to play with the local musicians, and made it through that without serious problems. It has made sleeping more of a problem, since my back is usually worse after I wake up. Still, I've been getting better over this past week.

Cloverfield is a good movie. I'm not sure how I could explain it in other terms. It's most likely not a movie I would buy, but it's certainly good.

I'm also reading Lolita, which surprises me in both how easy it is to read, and how clever his phrases are.

I'm not in a good mood, and I'm unsure if it's the mood that directs me to what I think are the causes, or if the causes actually lead to the mood. Now and then I think that I should start charting my mood, and see if it correlates to anything in particular.

Christmas sucks

2007-12-28T16:55:00.000-05:00

Christmas didn't work the way it has in years past for my family. This year, my wife and I went to her family's house for Christmas day, and came back to my family's house during the afternoon. It turns out that no one else was coming today. I knew that gift exchanging was going to be done later in the week, but I still expected that more people would be around.

So after that, I had about 4 more days to kill before my family would be doing their gifts.
In the meantime, I was planning on getting to see my friends in the area.
One of them I still haven't seen, and I doubt that I will.
Two others I have gotten to see. One of them was over for a chunk of a day. My mom came in while we were watching a horror movie, and I paused it. She hung around, talking to my friend for a bit over an hour. I don't think I mind it when she does short things like this, things that don't involve her struggling to keep things going by talking about anything she can think of.
But this was an hour of time with my friend, during the one or two times a year I might get to see him. When the opportunity presented itself, I told her that she just talked for an hour, and her immediate response was that I wasn't talking.

After driving that friend back, I got back home, and my mom had clearly been crying. We still wound up going out to dinner, me, my wife, and my parents. And she seemed to have calmed down more.

Then I had another friend over late last night. My mom asked how much she was allowed to talk to him.

It's not something she understands, because she has a selfish sort of view of her relationships with everyone. It's not just my friends, but my siblings as well. When my sister or brother come to visit, she makes every effort to monopolize their time. This means that I don't get any sort of casual or personal time with these siblings.

I also notice that I don't have the same relationship with my parents as I did. I don't seem to be able to keep the attention of my dad the way I had. And my mom and I have next to nothing in common. Even the things we have in common don't seem to be shared between us.

So what's wrong with me? While I'm glad to get to see some of these people, it's surprisingly sad at the same time. The closest we get to be is that I get to give them a knowing look when my mom says something odd. And I get to buy them all presents.
Maybe it's that my enthusiasm for Christmas has waned in the last couple days. Maybe I find the house uncomfortable in a strange way.
Maybe I should just start packing some of my stuff, so I'm all ready to leave in another day or so.

Rockin' out

2007-11-30T11:47:00.000-05:00

Along with the prospect of using Garageband to record, I've been trying to learn new stuff.

I found a craigslist ad for a local "musicians exchange." After getting onto that mailing list, we exchange suggestions of what to play next meeting. Then we get together in a rehearsal space, set up, and play whatever we feel like for about 3 hours.

I didn't want to be yet another guitar in an army, so I figured that I'd bring my bass. I practiced the suggestions.
It went well. There were two guitarists, both very good, one other bass player, who knew his way around the fretboard well, but had never played guitar, so he couldn't follow them by watching. A harmonica player, three drummers (with two kits) and a singer. Plus a guy who came to sing, but only stayed for about an hour, with his daughter, who played violin.

It was good. We played
"Cold Shot" and "Pride and Joy" by Stevie Ray Vaughn
"Walking Through the Park" by Muddy Waters
"Sweet Home Chicago" and "Love In Vain" by Robert Johnson, recorded by
the Stones
"Little Red Rooster" by Willie Dixon, also recorded by the Stones
"Honky Tonk Women," yea, those guys, again
"Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Bob Dylan
"Nebraska" by Bruce Springsteen
"The Christian Life" by the Louvin Bros., recorded by the Byrds
"Fire on the Mountain" by the Grateful Dead
"Wild Thing" by Chip Taylor, made famous by the Troggs
"My Girl" by the Temptations
"Mustang Sally" by Wilson Pickett
"Hey Joe" as done by Jimi Hendrix

So, after playing bass for 3 hours, I had a blister on my middle finger. It wasn't a large one, but it felt a little strange, probably since it was both a blister and a callus.
But this made me realize that my equipment wasn't able to compete as well with everyone else's stuff. I was playing a cheap bass through a 15-watt guitar amp, and was playing as hard as I could in order to remain audible.
So I bought a new bass. It has a very nice look, but it's very comfortable, and it has excellent action on it. I can play comfortably on it. Now I just have to buy a bass amp. I'll probably be picking up a smallish Marshall 30-watt amp, but I also might actually go with a 60-watt of some other brand, since the price difference is only about $80 to double the output.

So I've been playing the bass a lot more. It's not so much about technique, doing lots of slapping and popping.... I've become a bit more aware of clever bass parts, and the effect that they can have on driving a song to have a different feel. The bass has a lot of capacity to drive melody, as well as rhythm, but it's usually in a less obvious way than a song like....
Split Open and Melt, where the bass runs the melody pretty strongly. If you listen to the bass part for With A Little Help From My Friends, the bass isn't all quarter notes. It's actually got a lot of swinging rhythm to that line, which drastically reduces the plodding sound of the chords.

Since starting writing this entry, I have bought the 60 watt bass amp. It sounds great. I still haven't gotten to play with with the exchange, but I'll be doing that this weekend.

Bought the new iMac

2007-11-02T11:33:00.000-04:00

I picked up an iMac back on October 12th.

I'm really pretty satisfied with it. My biggest problems are incidental issues, and things that I'm becoming accustomed to.
I also bought Leopard, and I've been pretty satisfied with that as well. There are a lot of complaints online about the transparency of the bar at the top, and while I think that's a problem if you use very distracting pictures, it's not a problem for me. I also have no real problems with the changes to the dock. The only beef I have with it is that it's not as clear that you still have an instance of a program running.

I have had a problem getting bootcamp to work. I have a legitimate copy of Windows XP, but it's a version that was released before SP2. So in order for it to work, I had to slipstream a copy of it.
Eventually, I got it to install. After getting through the first part of installation, it wouldn't automatically continue. It restarts, then I eventually figured out to hold both the eject key and the option key at the same time... strictly by luck.
It finished installing. Now I screwed up somewhere, and I'm locked out of Windows because I didn't fill in a password, and it thinks I did.
So I'll have to reinstall again and see if I can get it to work.

I mostly want it so I can play more games on it. Right now I'm stuck with Diablo 2 and Starcraft.

Boredom

2007-10-06T18:29:00.000-04:00

My wife is away until next Wednesday, so I've already had a slow weekend here.

I packed in a whole lot of little things already. I washed the cars, I took the recycling in, I did a bit of shopping for my father's birthday. I cleaned the tub, did a little bit of my own shopping, as well as bought some groceries for this coming week.

So then I'm down to trying to clean the apartment up. I've done a bit of it. Some of it I don't feel like I can do, since it involves trying to sort out where I should put things that belong to her.

All of this means that I just have laundry to do tomorrow.

I don't have too much I feel like doing around here.

A hopefully non-tracable post.

2007-09-11T12:53:00.000-04:00

It's been a slow time for me down here. Work has been busy, and while I've gotten to be able to ignore the negative qualities of my co-workers, other elements of work have gotten more distressing. I was going to write more about it, but I keep being concerned that somehow this blog will be discovered by my current and future employers. Luckily, it doesn't show up after googling my name.

I haven't had much to do for the last couple weeks. My wife has been making trips up to Boston for callback interviews, and beyond that.... nothing new.

I bought an Apple TV, and it's better than I expected it to be. I loaded all of my pictures onto it, since that didn't take up too much space. And I looked at them last night. Not all of them, but I did go through all of my college pics. The noteworthy thing is that I was still very awkward then. Somehow, I was actually more awkward then than I was during high school. In high school I was as insecure as most are, but I knew who I could talk to, I wasn't as offended by dumb stuff (like being compared to King Friday of Mister Roger's Neighborhood). For those who don't remember, this is the description of him via Wikipedia...

The imperious monarch of the neighborhood. He is relatively egocentric, irrational, resistant to change, and temperamental, although open-minded enough to listen when told he is wrong. He has a fondness for giving long-winded speeches and using big words. Despite these qualities, he's basically a good person, capable of summarizing the lesson he has learned after something has gone wrong.

So anyway, I didn't actually react much to that comparison. It may have just been that everyone was cruel to everyone else. I've listened to all these basement rehearsal tapes, and there are instances where I'm much more impatient than I would normally be. Then during college, I realized that there were some people that I actually got to know, but those relationships tended to fall apart pretty easily, and for much more trivial things than they should have. I had nothing to do with most of the people I got to know during the first two years, because they wanted to spend their time drinking, and I didn't. Then the people I got to know during the second two years... I'm not exactly sure what happened. One was an inconsiderate guy, who otherwise was entertaining, if a little cruel. The other was actually an awkward guy, but was genuinely nice. He had a fascination with marine life, and I couldn't indulge in that so much, but I think I understand that kind of preoccupation.

But what made me more awkward in college was that it was next to impossible to estimate what people though about anything. The most interesting people were also the least accessible. But the unpredictability of the people extended to the less interesting.

It's been about two weeks since I've seen anyone other than my wife and my co-workers. This doesn't bother me as much as it should. I'm still included on the group mailing lists, so I hear what they plan on doing (which usually involves getting together to play games at times that I'm at work).

I'm still looking forward to buying my iMac, which I'm aiming for a 24-inch model, and I'll be personally upgrading to 4 gigs of ram. If I order from apple's site, I might upgrade to a 500G hard drive, rather than the 320G. If I wind up buying it in person, I'll go with the 320. I can always get an external drive if I really need it.

I'm looking forward to starting Christmas shopping. It's hard to explain it, but I think that I treat Christmas a whole lot like Valentine's day.

Wow, it's almost 11, and I thought I'd be in bed about an hour ago. I also think that I didn't actually make any of the points I set out to make. But that's the breaks. At least I didn't write anything that could be traced back by an employer.

Playing live

2007-08-31T16:17:00.000-04:00

I played for a work-related event yesterday. It was a smallish audience - around 20 people, I think.
The last time that I played for an audience was sometime late in college. I remember letting my roommates know I was going to be playing, I let a girl I had been sort of romantically involved with know that I'd be playing (I think we were on acceptable terms at that point). No one showed up. While I know that I'm not exactly a draw for an event like this, I'd like to think that I'd do the same for them.

I dealt reasonably well with the pressure of performing in front of an audience.
It's odd that a socially awkward person such as I has a compulsion to perform in front of an audience. I probably wouldn't deal well with hecklers, if I ever had any.

Entirely unrelated, I'm having difficulty getting to sleep right now. I got up after being in bed for about an hour, and entirely unable to make any progress toward sleep. I think my wife will probably wake up and be nervous soon.

I've been worried about another social problem I have. I tend to find a whole lot of things funny, and somehow, I have problems identifying things that other people will or won't find funny.
This normally shouldn't be a problem, we usually can move on after we find something unfunny. What I dislike is the moment after the presentation of what I found funny, and the reaction of the other people. I can't interpret it as being a reaction along the lines of "Ok, I don't think that's funny." I interpret it as being "Holy crap, you're sick for thinking this is funny." It's not as if I'm pulling out pictures of roadkill and talking about how funny it is. These are things that I think they'd find funny if they saw it under other circumstances.

I never intended this blog to be a personal bitching ground. Of course, I didn't intend for it to be anything in particular. It's hard to feel like it's not manipulative for me to write in it, knowing only two people who read it, as if I'm begging for a response from them. But I don't lay blame for any of my problems on them. They know me well, and don't contribute to my problems.

3-hour lunch

2007-08-29T14:21:00.000-04:00

I attended an extended lunch during work today. It was in honor of the person above my boss. This person has been on sick leave most of the time that I've been working here, and this lunch was in recognition that they will be leaving on extended disability.
It's not exactly right that I be involved in this. I've had next to no contact with this person, they seem utterly disinterested in me, and I'm disinterested in them.
In fact, I'm disinterested in most of the people I work with. I don't mind doing the work, and I don't mind them being around most of the time. I just have no interest in knowing them socially. We have very little in common, and I find protracted discussions about food to be the equivalent of talking about the weather.

So, during this 3 hour black hole in the middle of the day, it gave plenty of time to reflect on my social problems. I've noticed over the last.... 5 years or so, that I have some problems with not censoring myself effectively, or phrasing my sentences poorly. That's something that I've been much more aware of over the last year. This has made it a little more clear that, in order for people to accept me, they need to pay attention to me in greater detail. I'm not trying to be mean, I actually like most of the people I talk to.

But that brings me to my relationship to the people I work with, and the students I socialize with. I think I fall into this gigantic space between the groups. I'm too interested in things to be understandable by my co-workers, and my views are too poorly nuanced to be of interest to the people I socialize with.
Or maybe I'm too bossy with my opinions?

These work-related social events are such a bad idea.

The Road

2007-08-14T16:12:00.000-04:00

I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and it's such a disappointment.

The book became recommended by Amazon, as being zombie-related. It's not really, but I still can enjoy a good post-apocalyptic story. There are certain things that became well known about the story - McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks, and other punctuation is not used on occasion. These rules don't seem to be solid throughout the book.

(Full disclosure - I'm only a bit past halfway through the book right now)

This book is horrible. It's not offensive though - I don't feel like he's insulting my intelligence as I read it. But there's no real plot. It is a father and son traveling through the post-apocalyptic wilderness. The setting is developed, but the characters are not reacting to anything. There appear to be hints that a story is happening somewhere - the father is clearly sick, but no actual details of that have been revealed.
The most interesting section so far has been when a third character was introduced briefly. However, McCarthy does what he can to eliminate any hint of interesting discussion.

There aren't too many books I've read that I've disliked. The only other one I can think of is Tuesdays With Morrie, which was glurge.

Legally Blonde 2

2007-08-09T12:44:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted about many movies lately. I've seen The Simpsons Movie twice now, and while it wasn't as amazing the second time, I think a lot of that was seeing it with far fewer people in the audience. The first time, the crowd had a whole lot of enthusiasm.

But last night I saw Legally Blonde 2. While I don't think I could qualify myself as a fan of the first one, I found it enjoyable in a non-offensive way. This movie was really pretty horrible. I can't really say that I'll be providing spoilers, because the movie spoils itself.
Elle Woods is a supremely unlikable person throughout this movie. She is generally selfish, and the extent to which she helps those who help her is by complimenting them.
Part of what would make the first movie charming was that while she had generally dippy behavior, she had the capacity to be bright when she needed to. She was able to construct an argument when it had to be done.
Now, she seems dumber than ever. She supposedly graduated from Harvard, but doesn't understand the difference between the law and what's right.
I don't think it's too bad that she maintains some of her idealism. It helps to point us in the right direction. But Elle is completely blind to the unethical aspects of nearly everything that she does in this movie.

She seems to be complaining about the way that there's too much back-room dealing in Washington. So she engages in a plot to meet and manipulate two representatives in an effort to get her bill passed. She doesn't seem to notice that this is incredibly unethical, and it doesn't serve to raise her above the level of the politicians.

The only highlight of the movie is that it's got a small part for Mary Lynn Rajskub, who I think is a bit cute.

I think it could also be that I have a dislike of people stating the obvious, and this extends to movies. I don't like hearing people making statements about how the government is entirely corrupt, or how everything costs too much. I consider these "revelations" to be the adult equivalent of "fire hot!"
I know that a lot of people enjoy talking like this. It doesn't change that I find it at the least, uninteresting, and at the most, very offensive. Which probably explains why this movie was annoying enough that I felt compelled to post about it.

2007-07-22T21:22:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this on a shiny new Macbook Pro! While it isn't the most spectacularly powerful laptop, there's an odd charm about it. I find it a compelling computer to use. It looks very nice, and while I don't care for certain issues of layout, I'm otherwise very impressed.

The things I seriously dislike -

I'm used to a Start Menu. While it doesn't have to be the same, I like that method of sorting programs.
I hate not having the right click available in programs.
GarageBand is nice, but it took way to long to figure out how to build tracks with it.

But there are a lot of really nice things about running this mac. I've used the video chat thing for a little while, and I'm very impressed with how easily, and how good that came out.
I've had no problems networking this computer either.

To be honest, this Macbook isn't for me.... but I'll probably wind up getting my own eventually. Not that I'm abandoning my other computer. I just feel like this is better for my creative purposes. Like I can build music nicely now.

Another long delay between updates

2007-06-28T10:41:00.000-04:00

So the wedding went off without any real problems. It wasn't done outside, but I don't know how much we noticed.
After that, we flew over to LA, then drove up to Sequoia National Park. Then came back down, and went to Celebration IV in LA. Then flew back over, and drove back home.

And since we've been back, I went back to work, and my wife has started her summer work.
It still feels like we don't have enough time to get as much relaxing done as intended.

The highlight has been that we got a Wii, and I've been very enthusiastic about this.

I heard a lot of complaints about the graphics, and how they aren't moving far enough forward compared to the other consoles.

I've played an Xbox for most of the last two years, and I like a lot of the games I've gotten for it. The graphics are good, usually not spectacular. In fact, the coolest looking stuff I've seen has been Call of Cthulhu, and that's because it's so moody.
I've seen the X360, and the PS3 in action. They look spectacular, but they're still trying to look human. This is the problem - Nintendo's titles aren't trying to look human exactly. They try to look like cartoons, and they succeed very clearly. I don't doubt that the other consoles could do the same, but they aim to look very realistic, thus raising our expectations of what they should look like.

The Wii games have been very pleasing to play. They work very well in groups, but I've had no problems playing by myself either.
And I love the virtual console. I've been playing bomberman again, and it feels so good.

Wedding

2007-05-10T20:35:00.000-04:00

Less than 10 days to go, and I'll be married.

I'm not at all worried about this. I'm more concerned that I won't be able to figure our how to get places in L.A. Or how to deal with renting a car, which I haven't ever had to do.

And then I'll have a long, pool-bound summer to look forward to. Night swimming with bats swooping in to pick off the bugs.

I look forward to getting back to NJ, where all of my comfort restaurants still reside.

Cracking heads open

2007-04-24T20:56:00.000-04:00

It was pointed out to me that it has been about two months since I last posted.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up a post that I intended to use, which had actually been researched. My co-workers insist that school shootings (more accurately, school violence) has been on the increase. Whenever I've tried to explain that it's actually gone down, they pull out a defense of "well, it never happened when I was in school!" So I managed to find my sources, which showed that it has been going down. The bigger difficulty is that figures have not been maintained on this, and the main difference has been the degree to which events have been covered.

But I wound up deleting that post from my drafts.

I haven't felt like posting, and part of it is that I had an argument with someone back on Easter. It was a pleasant conversation, and I was talking about where my fiancée and I were planning on heading post-graduate work. I said that I didn't care for this state, I clairified that the people at the school were bright, and most of the people in the city, but then outside of that, I was disappointed that people were dumb.
Somehow, this led to a brilliantly contradictory argument on her behalf - telling me how wrong I was, while qualifying it with "well, it's fine that you feel that way" statements. This was followed by misquoting me and ignoring that I had made the disclaimer before this.

I haven't felt good about this. I give a lot more consideration to other views than it seems, and my internal conflicts over most issues are not made public. I have given these people I have labeled as "dumb" every possible benefit of doubt. I still try to ignore poorly worded statements, and attempt to extract what is probably the best possible message from their words. I just can't do that with advocacy of lynching, or promoting the idea of castration and execution of all mentally ill people.

These "opinions" of theirs were defended because these people have not had the economic opportunities I have had. (To be fair, she didn't know what sort of ideas she was defending) That's all well and good, I can understand that a lack of education would lead to poor understanding of critical thought, but these are violent ideas. At what point are we allowed to evaluate another adult?

So.... I don't want to talk about this. It's distressing to think that these adults would be willing to sponsor execution for people accused of crimes without any proof. In the words of one of them -

"I could crack the(ir) head open myself!"

Aside from this sort of nonsense, my wedding is coming up. Less than a month away, and I haven't thought anything odd of it. I've felt like I've been married for about 10 months now, so the biggest worry at this point is coming up with a toast for the rehearsal dinner.

I was also considering wiping out this blog. I saw another blog linking to it, looked at a few of the blogs linked to that.... and it just seemed distressing as well. I don't think I could suitably explain it though.

Educating against their will

2007-02-19T18:55:00.000-05:00

This week's episode of This American Life from Chicago Public Radio has a short segment where they speak with a participant in a major puzzle. He explains that he was once told by his supervisor that they had gotten complaints that he "used too many literary references in his speech." This wasn't his work - this was just in his casual conversation at work.
He keeps track of everything he says at work in a notebook, and finds no literary references. He goes out to lunch with a group, and someone mentions how their greeting cards have a lot of monkeys, but they all look like chimps. He explains how monkeys and chimps are related, and gets a rude comment along the lines of "look how much I care."
He summarizes that the problem his supervisor actually had was that he has the habit of "informing people against their will."
And I feel so sorry for this.

This is a side effect of the lack of intellectual curiosity that plagues me at work. No one wants to learn anything new. Even things they ask about. I've gradually stopped talking at work, unless I am directly questioned.

In fact, I realized that my attempt to offer a solution to a problem was probably unwarranted, and possibly even disliked.

So what do we do? We avoid letting anyone know what we think, or what we know, or what the relevant are? If that's the case, how do we gain recognition and move ahead?

Sadly, I think that we do it by bullying people and spreading ill sentiment.

Parenting through fear

2007-01-30T21:09:00.000-05:00

I am exposed to a spectacular range of contrary opinions at work, and I'm usually more upset by the ideas expressed. It's not unusual for my co-workers to advocate disposal of the justice system, followed by mob rule, and encouraging lynching for those accused of molestation. That isn't even a paraphrase. They got a black lady in the office to actually say "they should just lynch him."
I haven't been talking much at work, of course. My education is hardly spectacular, but I suspect that my co-workers just finished high school - if that. One of them, I suspect did not finish high school. I've also found that even if I present a strictly fact-based statement, it is approached as an opinion, and I'm treated with a mild contempt for bringing my information to discussion.
There is an idea that is repeated periodically in their discussions of how the world is falling apart, how everything is so much worse than it was when they were growing up; that children today "feel like they're owed something" and that "they don't have any fear." Oddly, it seems like I'm the only one with the perspective to realize that their parents felt the same way, and their parents felt the same way, and so forth.
The first half of that - that they "feel like they're owed something." This is a vague statement which reflects that kids/teens want things. The difference is that they don't have the means to achieve those things. I can remember my high school days all too painfully, and recall exactly how miserable I was during stretches of time, and how much I wanted different things. Do I like things more, now that I work in order to afford them? Not exactly. I like them pretty much the same amount as I liked them when I wasn't working and relied on generosity to get them.
The second idea is so much more disturbing, that they "don't have any fear." This is usually accompanied by talk about how great it was that their mother never had to deal with any of this nonsense, she just gave "the look" and you knew that you shouldn't do whatever it was you were about to do.
Fear of punishment is a different thing than fear of the individual. The degree of corporal punishment they encourage (they often refer to "beating" someone up) is unlikely to achieve what they want. Sure, the kid will be heavily under control, but then when they reach their teens, they'll probably end up either dangerous to you, or horribly repressed for the remainder of their lives, dealing with psychological issues.

Hearing them deal with their parenting issues have made me realize that my parents did a pretty good job. I don't resent or fear my parents. I can deal with them as adults, and I see their flaws, but I also know that they put more thought into their actions than these people have.

I also keep thinking of the problem of ruling through fear. Again, it can work in the short term, but usually those repressed will fight back with unusual force. It'd be more effective if I could think of an example, but I'm getting to bed.

My second Blog for Choice

2007-01-22T19:46:00.000-05:00

I've been intending to think of what I wanted to say for a few days, and actually thought I might write something up while I was at work. That didn't happen, but I did think of one item. Sorry if it seems trivial by comparison.

I've been watching the modern Battlestar Galactica series. If you haven't watched it, go watch it. But start from the beginning. Probably some of the best dramatic/sci-fi TV ever made. The relevant part of the story is that mankind is down to around 40,000 people. They're sort of bouncing around the universe in a loosely held-together convoy of ships. A lady smuggles herself onto the only military vessel in an effort to reach the main doctor. She wants an abortion. This has brought it to the attention of the military commander and the President. The President is petitioned by the lady's native tribe, which holds a strict religious ban on abortion. However, abortion is legal under their legal system. The President has a difficult time weighing this issue, and decides to let this lady go through her abortion, then bans abortion, citing that if mankind is going to survive, they can't afford to allow it.

It's a little sad that there wasn't any discussion about concession for the woman's health, or anything other than that.

I feel like I can't possibly understand how it feels to be carrying a baby, and without the risk of myself becoming pregnant, I would never want to lose control of my body as a result.
Before becoming intimate, my significant other asked me what I would do if she became pregnant. I can't recall my exact response, but what she wanted to hear, and what was included, was that I would allow her to do what she wanted.

What could be more romantic than not forcing your lover to do something they don't want?

Atheism

2007-01-01T19:33:00.000-05:00

I've only just started reading Dawkin's latest, The God Delusion, but his careful writing has helped me to articulate some arguments that he makes. I really shouldn't repeat those here, but I'm more concerned about getting down to the end point.

Religion in itself should not be a bad thing. Belief actually is a problem when the staples of the system involve restructuring your life and taking offense at opposing opinions. Here's where this is a problem; atheists are persecuted. Not even in your "war on Christmas" sense, it's actually a little more similar in behavior to racism. People have a wide range of associations with the idea, and for the most part, they're wrong.
An atheist isn't about to use faith to justify poor behavior in any way. They might misuse science, but the lack of religious convictions actually makes them much more predictable - and thus, less of a threat.

I've felt a surge of pride in being atheist lately. It's not a "wow, I'm so much smarter than you" feeling, but it's a sense of well-being, knowing who I am, where I'm going, and being interested in learning more about the world, universe, and just about anything else I can find time for.

I have a sense of joy in knowing how closely related I am to animals. Is it an insult to consider my ancestor to be a chimp? I'm fine with it. I'm better than fine with it - I love it. These relationships are what make life on Earth interesting, and make us far less alone in the universe already.

Now for something I never do

2006-11-12T14:12:00.001-05:00

I took this survey from a fellow collector who is linked to me on myspace. I haven't filled out these silly questions in ages (honestly, I think the last time I had done it may have been over four years ago).
But I liked this one, mostly because it was a little more retrospective than the other ones, especially those that ask things like "what did u hav 4 lunch?"
On to the whole thing.
The questions are exactly as I had encountered them.

Fill this out about your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be.

1. Who was your best friends?
I was fairly alone during senior year. I spent a chunk of it with Eric, but that fell apart a bit as the year progressed.

2.What sports did u play?
None. I played in jazz band and participated in both the fall play and the spring musical.

3. What kind of car did you drive?
'89 (?) Plymouth Sundance. Blue.

4. It's Friday night, where were you?
Usually rocking out with Eric. Occasionally, a movie.

5. Were you a party animal?
Never was, doubt I ever will be.

6. Were you considered a flirt?
Depends on who you ask. I think most of them thought I was creepy.

7. Ever skip school?
Nope.

8. Were you a nerd?
Again, depends on how you want to look at it. Generally, yes.

10. Did you get suspended/expelled?
Nope. I think I got one detention for being late during 7th or 8th grade. That's it.

11. Can you sing the fight song?
I don't believe we had one.

12. Who was your favorite teacher?
As a rule, my freshman English teacher. But during senior year? I don't think I had particular fondness for any of them. Probably the music teacher.

13. Favorite class?
I usually enjoyed english and film. Well, film was handled poorly.

14. What was your school's full name?:
I'll leave that out since I'm posting this on my semi-anonymous blog.

15. School mascot?
Bulldog

16. Did you go to Prom? Who was your date?
I didn't go to prom. I could have gone with Esther, but I dread larger social events, especially during high school.

17. If you could go back and do it over, would you?
Sure. It wasn't too bad, and my biggest beefs are that I didn't put much effort into things.

18. What do you remember most about graduation?
The one black guy in my grade wasn't allowed to walk. Of course, I heard he had taken a swing at the VP.

19. Favorite memory of your Senior Year?
Playing both of the school coffeehouses. The exhilaration of the first one, and my technical prowess for the second one. It's a shame they didn't come together well.

20. Where were you on senior skip day?
I can't remember if we had one. I was at school.

21. Did you have a job your senior year?
I worked the summer after high school at Foodtown, were I attempted to pursue Susan, and recorded an album during that summer.

22. Where did u go 4 lunch?
Ate in the senior commons.

23. Have you gained weight since then?
I have no idea. I can't remember what I weighed in high school beyond Junior year. I might be roughly the same weight now as I was then.

24. What did you do after graduation?
Worked, recorded an album, went to college.

25. When did you graduate?
1999

26. Who was your Senior homecoming date?
I didn't go to homecoming. I don't even remember the event being scheduled.

27. Are you going to your ten year reunion?
Probably.

28. Who was your home room teacher?
Mrs. Campanella.

29. Who will reply this after you?
I don't think anyone will.

30. Did you hold any Senior Superlatives?
No.

31. Senior Prom Date?
Again, could have been Esther if I weren't a weenie about going.

32. If Bf or Gf still with them?
This is not a question. Who is them? I can only assume you mean me.
I don't think I ever had a girlfriend during high school. I'm not sure anymore. Regardless, no.

These questions could have been a whole lot better now that I've taken it.

I liked high school. I didn't enjoy senior year, and a good part of that had more to do with personal insecurities than much else. I don't think I wasted the experience though. I learned a lot, I didn't bother teachers (at least not enough to be memorable) and I became substantially more assertive in arguing things I disagreed with.

VA's Anti-Gay amendment

2006-11-08T19:53:00.000-05:00

VA had an proposal on the ballot this election cycle, which effectively banned gay marriage. At least, that was the way it was presented in casual conversation, or in papers, or on the news. In truth, that was part of it, but key details were left out.

The language was vague enough to encompass all non-marriage relationships which served to approximate marriage. Thus, no marriages by common law. This is a bigger issue in VA than you'd think.

Second, the amendment actually did next to nothing. All of the changes it made were already in legislation. This just copied these ideas over into the state constitution. So.... people overwhelmingly expressed their homophobia by voting against their own best interests.

It's hard to not be upset by this down here. Even though we hopefully have Jim Webb replacing the self-destructing Allen, it's not as if these people have cruel intentions. They are....
simple people. They don't like to get caught up in nuance or thought about other people. Their visions are of what they expect other people to be, and that everyone else has got to be pretty dumb if anything bad happens in the world.

But I feel the same way sometimes, I think we all do. But I'd like to think that I'm not selfish enough to impose rules that don't affect me.

Bush's email choice

2006-10-24T21:16:00.000-04:00

I don't think it's been mentioned too much, although it gets reported every now and then. Well, not exactly, Bush tends to mention it, but for some reason, it never gets followed up on.

Bush doesn't use email. Well, the quote is this.
"I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email. 'But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?' So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”

There's an obvious problem with this. He's avoiding responsibility! He doesn't want to have to pay attention to what people tell him! And if it's in text, it's something that can come back to bite him, just like that PDB warning him about Bin Laden.
He's more concerned about having control over what historians will get to find out about his presidency than he is about doing his job to the best of his ability.

Would I like it more if he were saying that he doesn't use email because he doesn't understand it? Possibly!

Radio Remix

2006-10-22T18:36:00.000-04:00

I've heard an awful lot of radio at work recently. I don't mind it, exactly. They're playing a "best of the 80s, 90s, and today" station, so I'm pretty familiar with most of the music (except for the most modern stuff). There's quite a bit of repetition. And it's fairly spectacular that some songs (Cher's cover of It's In His Kiss comes to mind) get as much radio play as they do.
But I've noticed something odd. Shania Twain's You're Still The One has a different radio mix. There's a chance that I've just heard the real album version, and that the recording I've heard before is actually a radio remix.
I remember during 8th grade, I shared a room with my brothers. I woke up to the radio alarm, which resulted in hearing The Sign every morning for several weeks. They played it at approximately the same every morning. While I had a strange facination with Ace of Base, I enjoyed hearing it each morning. I'm sure that my brothers hated it, and held a resentment for that each day they woke up and got to hear it straight through. But because I was so familiar with the album version of the song, I was surprised when they switched to playing a radio remix, which was a bit longer, and heavier on the dance beats.

I'm not sure why I felt this was important. I have a love/hate feeling about radio remixes. I like the idea of variation in songs, but I don't feel like the studio is the place for that, at least in the minute ways these songs are changed. The exception is when songs are rebuilt in such a dramatic way that they qualify as a different song.
Love In An Elevator is a prime example of a bad radio edit. Roughly half of the solo is chopped out, and it's a sequence of the solo that makes the song much more interesting.
It's not an important thing to talk about, sorry for wasting both of my readers time.

Amish school shooting

2006-10-02T19:23:00.000-04:00

There was a school shooting in Amish country today. I'm not that aware of details regarding it, since I don't have broadcast TV hooked up.
But the reaction to it at work was facinating.
I'm no longer working at the same place as I've mentioned before. Now I have a group of four other female co-workers, all a fair amount older than I am. I wasn't in a talkative mood today, and it wasn't helped by the general reaction they present. They don't like to actually talk about it; but they like to chat about it. They want to agree with each other about how it's so horrible, and 'why would someone do that' and 'it doesn't make any sense.' This sort of talk is useless.
There's generally agreement on things like "people killing other people is bad." (except when the person being killed has done something bad, then it's "I would shoot him myself" - not that anyone at work has actually said that) But there's no interest in talking about the answers to these hypothetical questions. Why do they do it? Odds are that they are unhappy in some way. What makes them unhappy?
Unhappiness can't be solved in a general way. Our definitions of what make us happy vary dramatically from person to person - go see the movie Happiness to understand this idea.

The issue of the kids acquiring the weapons showed up, and they shrugged their shoulders at a kid who took his parent's gun from a locked safe in a locked bedroom. I pointed out a fairly obvious solution to this problem. Biometrics have been created that would allow only the appropriate person to fire a weapon.
The response I got was "yeah, how much would that cost?"
I only looked around briefly online, but I found a fingerprint scan wall safe for about 400-500. I'm sure it's more expensive than other wall safes, but that level of security is excellent. The actual biometrics inlaid on guns, as far as I know, have not reached mass market. I suspect that the NRA opposes them.

But this might be a dividing point between myself and other people. I like to talk about a larger issue (or occasionally, the smaller issues that surround the larger ones) rather than make vague statements that everyone can agree with. We don't learn anything that way. In fact, we learn how to not think.

As an endnote, there was another discussion later that I thought gave a nice counterpoint to this. They were talking about the meetings that they attend relating to the larger project. They complained that the issues that brought up would never get resolved. No one wanted to make a decision.
I'm sure they would never realize that they engage in this sort of nonsense all the time.

I'm sure I sound bitter. It was just a boring day at work.

The Original Original Trilogy

2006-09-25T10:28:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, the orginal versions of the Star Wars trilogy were released on DVD. I got a very good price - 13.87 per movie at Walmart. While I'm not a fan of Walmart (although they are improving) I can't pass up that price, especially compared to the next cheapest, which was $20.
Anyway, I haven't watched through the movies entirely. I've watched several sequences, mostly from A New Hope, though I've looked at Empire and Jedi. A New Hope looks great to me. The picture is steady, not as much flicker as VHS copies have, but the amount of grain in the image is perfect. Usually the main character looks entirely clear, but the background has the grain. I feel like this adds a degree of realism to the movie. It's difficult to articulate the idea, since it goes against the traditional thought, but I found the visual aspects of the films to be much more realistic when I was younger. And this has restored those feelings. I like some of the variations that Lucas has made with the subsequent releases of the films (there are rumors that he's planning an eventual re-release of the prequel trilogy that includes a digital Yoda for episode 1, plus more deleted scenes for the original trilogy. I'm sure I'm enough of a sucker to buy that when it is released) but these original versions have so much more charm, and not as much of a sugary glaze on the donut that is SW.
I'm going to go have lunch.

Torture

2006-09-16T11:35:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile since I posted. I've been working on another blog.

Bush has been pushing for some legislation. Mostly, he wants to define the terms of what constitutes torture, as well as make it so detainees cannot charge that their rights under Geneva have been violated.
I do understand that it makes sense to define what constitutes torture, although the terms would have to be agreed upon by all participating nations for it to not be a slap in the face.
Part of the strength in the current standards is how vague it is. You aren't holding yourself to your own standard, but you are holding yourself to "will this be considered acceptable behavior to everyone else?" That's what makes this agreement work.

Our own government has plenty of reports that specify that torture does not work. It leads to poor information, if any. For some reason, Bush ignores this. Perhaps he thinks he knows better?

Bush has been skillful in rephrasing his "answers" to torture-related questions to make it sound like he has entirely honorable intents in mind.

The difference between his presidency and other past presidents is not that he is the only one post 9/11, but that he's the only one who doesn't get the way that the world works. He consistantly reshapes everything he hears to fit his prior impression of global functions. This leads him to think that the US can get along just fine while it snubs the rest of the world and tortures their citizens in the name of protecting itself.

Are You Afraid Of The Dark and Johnny Cash

2006-08-24T18:17:00.000-04:00

Two mini-reviews of general things.

First, I've managed to watch a couple episodes of Are You Afraid Of The Dark

This was a horror series on Nick, which apparently lasted for 6 seasons, from 92 till 96. Then a second series ran from 99-00.
I used to watch this over at Marcel's house. I don't recall ever being seriously scared by it, as it wasn't too memorable. I do remember that it was fairly funny occasionally.
After watching a few episodes (The Tale of the Pinball Wizard, Tale of the Dark Music, and The Tale Of The Night Neighbors

The direction is as obvious as it can get. While this is to be expected in shows aimed at kids, there is an unusual sensibility applied. This is difficult to explain - characters reach conclusions and supply reactions that don't have to make sense. The stories are usually very predictable, and yet characters don't react in a predictable way. There is an abundance of reaction shots that are perfectly framed closeups of a single person saying their line.

Despite these weaknesses, the show is still enjoyable. It's not actually good enough to warrant a dvd purchase, but good enough to watch if it showed up on TV.

Actors/actresses aren't good enough to tell a difference between acting as brother and sister than as a couple.
An interesting aspect of the stories is that they seem almost exclusively focused on the children characters. Adults are stictly limited to being the "bad guys" or inserted for comic relief. Perhaps this is a reversal of normal horror standards.
Another episode, Tale of the Dream Girl starts off with the classic hitchhiker story, but has the 6th Sense twist at the end, that the main character is actually the ghost.

The second of my mini-reviews is on Johnny Cash. I've been aware of a lot of his covers, and was vaguely aware of his Folsom Prison album (mostly because of the reference to it in The Simpsons with Krusty performing in jail). I've finally heard the Folsom Prison album, and I've sort of figured out his appeal.
Johnny Cash is not for everyone. The music is almost entirely unremarkable. I like his selection of songs though - the lyrics are very appropriate, although I don't identify with it. I find the music end of things very boring. Mostly those alternating 4ths in the bass, the heavy "oom-pah" sound.
His voice is actually unremarkable as well, it's very plain, not very distinctive (it's worth noting that I felt the same way about Peter Stuart's voice).
Listening to Cash produces a certain feeling though. It makes you feel like you've had a tough life, and like you could sing and play like that. In this way, he makes people feel very much a part of something. The real question is if he has planted that feeling there, or if he's actually stirring a real thing inside you. In my case, he's planted it, and because it is not naturally inside me, I'm left with the nagging feeling that I'm being manipulated.
Johnny Cash is an interesting performer because he seems so much like an everyman.

Looking for work

2006-08-22T09:01:00.000-04:00

I'm looking for work again, which usually puts me in a bad mood. I'm generally a lazy person, but that isn't the problem. I don't mind doing lots of types of work, the problem is just that those are the types of work that one has to work one's way into.
I have applied at a handful of jobs appropriate to my background, and haven't heard anything. So I'm probably going to wind up at a retail job. I'm not as actively opposed to this as I would be. I'm only worried about two things - first, I hate selling things. I can't stand to offer credit cards or warranties on anything. Second, I don't want my schedule to fluctuate too much. I'd like to still be able to see people I know.

MOH 13 - Imprint

2006-08-08T22:31:00.000-04:00

I FINALLY have gotten a copy of the last episode of the first season of Masters of Horror.

Imprint is directed by Takashi Miike, who has an extensive catalogue of films, however, I've only seen Audition. I was fairly engrossed by it, although it seemed to move too far in the wrong direction near the end. The change in direction made the ending entirely uninteresting to me.

Imprint has raised to an almost mythic stature with horror fans watching the MOH series. It was "banned" in the US. I don't think this is true. I suspect that very few things are actually banned in the US (at least in a horror movie way) but they are simply not picked up for distribution. This mostly just means that Showtime doesn't feel it is worth the risk to put it on TV.

An American is work his way through Japan, looking for Komomo, a prostitute he had met a long time ago. He made a promise to this lady that he would bring her back to America when he came back. He meets another prostitute, a deformed lady, who explains how she knew Komono.
She tells a few variations of both her background and Komomo's story, blurring the distinction of what is true and false regarding both stories.

The gore is.... interesting. It is very high quality, but during certain passages, it seems almost comical. The abortion scenes are hardly the most difficult to take. There are a number of aborted babies, and they look much more formed than I would expect. It is the sort of gore that doesn't reach TV in general, though, and it would probably disturb younger viewers (who shouldn't be watching Masters of Horror to begin with!). The sequence that is far, far stronger, and far more difficult to watch is a torture sequence, which has large pins inserted under nails and into the gums.

In truth, the episode feels sub-par. While the direction is interesting, and the story has the potential to be excellent, it suffers from two problems. First, even though the story is generally moving forward, I still didn't end feeling like anything had been explained. Second, the audio/acting is having serious problems. There are far too many lines that are said either way too quiet or way too loud, and the fact that the actors/actresses are dealing with a script in English make this very difficult to understand. I had to constantly rewind to understand lines, and sometimes that still didn't help. Subtitles would have really helped.
I don't feel like I need this episode. When it comes along on DVD, I actually don't think I'll buy it.

Guess which one this is...?

2006-07-13T16:09:00.000-04:00

Post number 100!

And it's been awhile since I posted. I recently moved, and now live in VA. It's nice so far, and we finally got our phone and internet service hooked up and running.
However, being without internet access has left me without much knowledge about what has happened out in the world. Plus, no TV hookup here. I'm fine with that though. I mostly just watch Simpsons/Family Guy, and then Daily Show/Colbert.
So mostly, lots of reading. Richard Matheson now, and I've just about finished another horror anthology by Bentley Little. Fun stuff, but somehow, very silly.

Science! Science I say!

2006-06-18T21:45:00.000-04:00

One of my sisters sent out her birthday list, which included books by Daniel C. Dennett. I wound up ordering her, among other things, Breaking The Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.
I spoke with her briefly on the phone, and I told her I was glad to see that she was interested in this material.

After talking about these kinds of books (science, in particular, evolutionary biology) I went off to pick up my dinner. I thought about how happy I was that she was getting into this. I realized that my reaction to science is similar to the pleasure that people get out of religion. I feel like my belief in science has left me feeling a sense of belonging in the universe. I understand certain universal truths; in particular, that humans are another animal, that we aren't blessed in any way, in fact, we're just one of the latest creatures to come along, and our existance is only as important as we make it. This is actually very inspiring. It puts us fully in charge of our lives.

I know who I am, as a result of science. There isn't that much confusion when you know the facts. Trying to be a special (as opposed to unique) person is a silly thing when you believe that God makes the choice for you. But if there is no God (I mean - SINCE there is no God) then what you make of your life is yours to choose.
No God is ALL about freedom.

Creepy stuff from Tomorrow

2006-06-08T20:20:00.000-04:00

I picked up Tom Tomorrow's Hell In A Handbasket which has a strip from 2001. Bush's administration had proposed an "Information Awareness Office" that would monitor all citizen's email, credit card transactions, and travel.
While it would have been generally dismissed at the time as being a silly idea - a little too over-reaching. Now, it seems that the administration went ahead with this plan. While all of those examples have not come to fruition (that we know of) I DO know that emails are being kept an eye on. A friend of mine from high school related that a friend of hers had gotten in trouble with the government for signing his emails with something along the lines of "long live the revolution!"
While I have no direct confirmation of that, I wouldn't be surprised if most professional email accounts are monitored.
We know phone information is being collected. Credit card transactions? I don't think that has ever been too private. Travel plans? Hardly confidential. Bringing them together to be cross referenced?
While they could assemble an image of what I like....
(Horror movies and stories, action figures, video games....)
I have nothing to hide, but that doesn't mean that I want the government to keep watching me.

Conservative top 50

2006-05-25T20:44:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/arts/music/25brockweb.html

A strange list of songs that are considered very conservative.
I realized while I was reading this.... the implication by these selections are that liberals are anti-family, always pro-revolution, and curiously perpetually annoyed.

This list doesn't seem right. There are certain things I can concede without much thought. The Beatle's Taxman seems conservative enough, although I'd hardly consider dislike of taxes to be the realm of conservatives. Again NO ONE likes paying taxes, but liberals have embraced that it is needed. As a result, we don't feel too much of a need to complain. I think Harrison was in a unique position though, where the Beatles found themselves in an absurd level of taxation. Same thing happened to ABBA.

I'd like to go through the list, though it's a bit late for me right now, and I have a hard time articulating the strangeness of the whole thing.
Of course, I can't detail the liberal position on the cold war. I think it was primarily a conservative projects, but still hardly unique to their point of view.

There we have it

2006-05-11T20:40:00.000-04:00

Well, he's down to 31%, last I saw.

But I've been very busy lately. I've had an entertaining time at work, and my living situation has been twisted around a fair amount. I've wanted to do some updates, but I kept forgetting about it. Plus, the internet connection hasn't been too reliable. I'm the one connecting wirelessly, so it drops occasionally, though it's coming back up reliably now.

This afternoon, I found about the latest bit of NSA stuff. Very disappointing to know that my phone provider is sending the government information about who I call. Of course, since moving here, I've placed 9 calls, all to the same phone number. And only one of those actually resulted in a conversation.
While I have no problem with the government knowing who I call, it seems like the most senseless collection of data. It results in a database that is so incredibly comprehensive that it gets difficult to cull any reasonable information from it.
In fact, they'd be collecting better data by collecting it in a reasonable way. The record of who calls who means that you'll be able to trace backward, but I can't imagine how useful that is. And who says how long it's reasonable to keep this information?

How low can he go?

2006-04-23T20:51:00.000-04:00

I read recently that Bush's approval rating is down to 33%.
It seems surprising, because I was much more unhappy with his work during his first term. This second term has found me reacting to his shenanigans as "well, they're up to it again." I'm somehow able to laugh it off more than I did for the first term.
So it seems surprising that America is picking up on this. That they're only now getting really unhappy with his nonsense.

And it has clearly affected Bush now. His "I'm the decider" comment was really out of line. He interpreted the question to be about Rumsfeld, while it wasn't really targeted at him in particular.
So how low can his approval go?
I looked it up, and Nixon's approval rating died out around 25%.
But what will happen? Even with extremely low approval, it just indicates that Democrats will regain the House, Senate, hopefully.
Thus ensuring that Bush will have a much harder time getting any of his agenda through.

Iran mess

2006-04-11T13:56:00.000-04:00

I read about the Iran story via Crooksandliars, the evening before the release of Hersh's article. I'd be amazed if Bush would go through with that sort of attack. It's a weighing between two possible factors - first, if he takes the way the world is into account, he'll understand that it's not really an option unless seriously threatened. But on the other hand, the guy seems to think that his role in the world is to re-mold it into the way he wants it.
What would happen as a result? I can't pretend to understand the way that social/political procedures work in most of the world. But I think it would lead to a larger bridge between the left and right in this country - we'd all sort of band together to get rid of Bush/his influence.
However, there are still people who want us to nuke every country in the world that has ever disagreed with us.
He claims that diplomacy is being worked on.... but what kind of dipolmacy? I want to hear that there are talks, and what comes of those talks.

strange person to meet

2006-03-21T17:11:00.000-05:00

I've met a strange person at work.
This person is pretty racist, by his own admission. He has a dislike for Jewish people, Asian people, Mexicans, and to a lesser extent, blacks. He expressed some very conservative views. Including desire to destroy France, to destroy Iraq (rather, all of the Mid East, "except for Saudi Arabia, so gas prices are stable"). But he also said that his favorite TV show was The Colbert Report. I don't think he understands the show, that he might think it's meant to be taken seriously.
Creepy person.

MOH 12 - Haeknel's Tale

2006-03-14T19:02:00.000-05:00

A man visits a necromancer to try to get his recently deceased wife to come back from the dead. She tells him Haeckel’s tale. This is the framing story.
Haeckel is an atheist medical student, who is interested in proving his professor wrong about the role of God in creating life. Somehow, the story of Frankenstein is considered a scientific paper. He meets a man who brings people back to life (who demonstrates this ability on a dog). He receives news that his father is sick, and perhaps near death. So he makes the trip to visit him. Along the way, he stays with a man, his wife and her baby. He witnesses the results of the ritual to bring the dead back.
The rest of it would be considered spoiler.

While the story is interesting, and fairly remarkable in what subject matter it brings up, the movie is not particularly noteworthy. It has a lot of atmosphere, but the horror of it is in how it can disgust you. This does not make for a timeless film. There are a few ‘jump’ scares, but those are not connected to the plot. In fact, we see a dead man hanging from a tree at one point, labeled as a pedophile, although no explanation for his presence is given, he’s only there to make things creepy.

SPOILERS AHEAD (highlight to read)

Necrophilia is the point of horror in the story. It’s not even straightforward necrophilia that’s going on, but it’s a strange, family, multiple partners sort of necrophilia. Zombie stuff. Despite being done in a way similar to Cemetery Man/Dellamore, Delamorte, it somehow seems much tougher to take. Probably it’s not as philosophical as my example.
It’s a good episode, altogether. Uniqueness is the key charm of the Masters of Horror series.

MOH 11 - Pick Me Up

2006-03-14T19:00:00.000-05:00

I’ve never been a real fan of Larry Cohen’s work. I like it, but it’s not remarkable. In fact, it’s only really recognized because he manages to make some dumb ideas into very fun (at least for about half of it) movies. I rented The Stuff a long time ago, and it’s a memorable movie, at least for the first half. After it moved further, it didn’t seem that great. I also rented It’s Alive during college, and thought that was probably his most clever work. There’s been a fair amount written about that one, so I don’t feel a need to reiterate the important aspects of that. What’s more important about Cohen is that he has more writing credits than directorial credits. His ideas are not outright horror, usually. He seems to have dabbled in it, but his more recent efforts (Phone Booth, Cellular) have been closer to the suspense vein.
I had read a few comments on IMDB complaining about this episode. I’m not sure what they found wrong with it. The pacing was far better than anything else I’ve seen Cohen do. There were strong sequences of gore, although they were spaced out, and the intent was far more to focus on the relationship between the three main characters.

The story deals with two killers and their potential victim. One of the killers is a hitchhiker, who kills mostly whoever is willing to pick him up (although it is shown that he doesn’t limit himself to those). He is a slim, youngish, attractive man. The other killer is a truck driver, (at least to our knowledge; there’s no real proof that he owns the truck, aside from the decoration of it, and his knowledge of truck driving) who kills hitchhikers he picks up. The potential victim’s character is nearly unimportant. We know that she’s generally cautious, and any other traits are incidental.
You can probably guess the direction that the story takes. The important thing is that the killers seem to have a disdain for each other. The trucker feels the hitchhiker is sloppy and overconfident in his work. The hitchhiker expresses at some point that the trucker is not as brutal a killer as he should be (or something like that). They both feel that they have rights to kill this potential victim, and wind up fighting it out.
It’s a moderate level of balance between straightforward horror (in the vein of Incident On and Off a Mountain Road) and the psychological end of horror (Chocolate). I suppose that the idea of horror, as expressed in this film, is being trapped between the lesser of two evils. Knowing that doom is impending, regardless of how things turn out is a hellish experience, which is only augmented by the winding roads of the middle of nowhere.

Another interesting thing is the way that the trucker is portrayed. He talks in a low voice, slowly, deliberately, but still sounding sluggish, almost drugged. He gives the implied performance of a psycho, but balances the line more closely than the hitchhiker does, who is a more imposing character. As a result, I viewed the trucker as the lesser risk, considering that he would be the sort who could possibly be reasoned with.
Yes? No? Who knows! It’s a good episode, and I liked it enough to probably rewatch periodically.

MOH 10 - Sick Girl

2006-03-14T18:59:00.000-05:00

Really, really strange.

A lesbian etymologist is sent a package from Brazil that contains a bizarre, huge, crustacean-looking insect. She also acquires a new girlfriend. The girlfriend stays over, and is bitten by the escaped bug.

I expected the story to be a better episode than it turned out to be. While I liked the first half of it was very enjoyable, as it focused on the development of the lesbian relationship. They have a very nervous relationship, which brings an amount of tenderness to the episode. This is destroyed in the second half, as the infection makes the girlfriend into an increasingly difficult person to deal with.
There isn’t much gore in this episode. There are a few disgusting passages, but the two deaths are not all that spectacular. But there are themes at work in this movie. McKee has strange issues with sexuality, explored in May, as well as this one. I don’t know if this is personal, or solely a matter of what is interesting.

MOH 9 - The Fair-Haired Child

2006-03-14T18:56:00.000-05:00

William Malone directed House On Haunted Hill 99, Fear Dot Com, as well as an episode of Tales From The Crypt that I think I’ve seen. I’ve been mildly impressed with his direction. I don’t think he would translate well outside of horror, but he has a knack for putting together unsettling images. This is not too apparent in this film, but it’s still there, at least to an extent.

There isn’t much I can say about the plot without giving it all away. An unusual couple kidnaps a teen girl so that she can participate in a ritual to bring their deceased child back to life.

I anticipated this episode to be very creepy. I was wrong. It’s not exactly creepy, though it is a very strange episode. It still didn’t make me apprehensive at all. In fact, the direction that the story takes in the last five minutes or so makes it into a very Tales From The Darkside production.
And to place this in context – Tales From The Darkside is darker than Twilight Zone, but still lighter than Tales From The Crypt. Hence, this one has a much more upbeat ending than I expected.
The plot is interesting, and it unfolds at an appropriate pace. You know the next step, but you don’t know the step after that. The dialogue was strange, and one line stood out to me. A kid shows the female lead a book of spells, and she says, “Where do you get a book like this, this is crazy!” This line struck me as being a very high-school thing to say. Forget addressing the content of the book, ask where it was acquired.

So I did like it. But it’s not my favorite. Not horrifying enough. Actually, the first half of it seemed to have more to do with horror than the second half. And seeing the kidnapping sequence was really the most chilling part of it.

A quick post regarding science and religion

2006-03-10T15:22:00.000-05:00

I have about a half hour before I have to get out the door, but I've been thinking about something a co-worker said today.
I had pointed out on the front page of the Times that water had been discovered on a moon of Saturn.
Her response was that the religious groups were going to get upset about this.
I had never thought of that. I've never heard of a religious group insisting that we were the only life in the universe, but it'd be interesting if that were true.
It would seem to lend more credence to the idea of humans being divinely blessed or something, but it would also be fairly horrible. The knowledge that there is life outside our apartment (sorry, planet) is remarkably comforting. Yes, it could be hostile, or otherwise dangerous to our species, but the idea of more life out there makes the universe more interesting. If god were out there, and only created one key species to play with, it'd be more like a kid with an ant farm. Entertaining for a short while, then eventually he'd crack the glass open and pour us into the toilet for the fun of it.
It might help to envision the universe as a room, with a series of desks on it. We're approximately the size of atoms, and we can see there are other desks, but we can't see if there are other atom-sized creatures on them. Eventually, we'll wind up being able to explore each other desk/planet, and learn more and more about the way that life works, the way the universe works, and in doing so, learn more about ourselves.
(That was quite a run-on sentence.)

This is an optomistic view though. The Star Trek version of what life could eventually be like. On the other hand, it could turn out more like Starship Troopers. Or maybe it'd just be Starship Troopers for awhile, then eventually turn into Star Trek.

Work related annoyance

2006-03-01T15:14:00.000-05:00

I know I never write about my work here, it's part of my effort to be anonymous except to those who really know me personally. But I don't like something that happened at work today.
My supervisor stopped by to say to check in with him after work. I checked in. Other workers have complained that I'm not doing anything.
Without being obvious about what I do.... when I don't have anything assigned to me for the day, I really have no other duties. My superior made it clear that this was his responsibility, his fault, that he should have made alternate duties when I was brought into the position.
I'm completely fine with this. While I'll have additional duties, I still am not about to be doing much. What I don't like about it is that this is the result of other workers complaining about it.
If you know the line of work I'm in, it's understandable that this is more out of line. If you think I'm working at a grocery or Kinkos or something, then that's different. In this case, my lack of work has no adverse affect on anyone. In fact, it's an indication that I'm doing my job well, and that others are, too.

You could compare what I do to a security guard. Yes, they stand around and don't do much for the majority of the time. But they are there for the worst-case scenario.

This has left me feeling less charmed about the place I work. While I really enjoyed helping out, I'll be left wondering if everyone that I help is one of the people who complained.

And I think it might have a bad effect on my weight loss. I'll need more energy to perform these other duties, which would lead to more intake.
I hate that these sorts of things put me in a bad mood.

Ports thing

2006-02-28T17:28:00.000-05:00

I haven't weighed in on the ports issue much, mostly because it seems completely unimportant.
Yes, it is an example of right-wing hipocracy. If Democrats did something like this, the issue would be framed as "they aren't tough on security." Or maybe there'd be the outcry of "they want the terrorists to win!"
The right wing has been successful in reframing it as a "Democrats are racist" issue.

The issue has made me think about US military bases in other nations. Ports are essentially border stops (to a lesser extent. There are more products coming through than people, but it still serves roughly the same purposes.) and I don't think it's in the national interest for those ports to be controlled by an outside force.
However, investing is different than being controlled by. So I'm not sure how much this matters.
Though it does seem to matter to those who want to exploit it.

MOH 8 - Cigarette Burns

2006-02-21T17:53:00.000-05:00

John Carpenter directed this one, which is probably the most brutal of the series.

A man is recruited by a wealthy collector to find a legendary film - La Fin Absolue Du Monde. The film was supposedly only screened once, and the theater went crazy, eventually burning it down. While it was supposed to have been destroyed after that, a copy still exists. The main character tracks this down, gradually learning more about the movie in the process. He finds it and delivers it, leading into a grotesque, gory ending, which lends more credence to the power of the film as stated.

While I've seen a lot of Carpenter's work, I've been fairly indifferent about most of it. Halloween, Escape From NY, Escape From LA, The Thing, Christine, They Live, Vampires, Ghosts of Mars, Bodybags.... all of them range from being just OK, to being campy, to being watchably good. In The Mouth Of Madness is one that I really enjoy a lot more though. Feels more like a King story, and it is shot a whole lot better than some other ones. Cigarette Burns is one of his best efforts. In fact, I'd put it a shade below In The Mouth Of Madness.

The horror here is in the suspense, but also in the tragedy of the main character dealing with the death of his wife. Besides the shock of the gore, the inventive quality of how rough it is, there is the horror of the possibility of a film being able to achieve such an impact.

I'd like to be able to articulate my feelings about this one a little more clearly, but this is the only one left to write.

Cheney's mishap

2006-02-15T19:45:00.000-05:00

I read about Cheney's shooting mishap back on Sunday morning (I think) or possibly Monday morning. Read about it on Crooks And Liars.
And I've enjoyed the coverage that The Daily Show gave it. But I've found the subject far more embarassing for the left. The item has been twisted into an issue of how quickly they release information to the press. This is hardly an issue. I actually agree with Cheney's (possible) view of this - it was a personal hunting trip, and while an accident occured, it wasn't anything that affects the population. Thus, it's fine to sit on releasing it until it's convenient. What does convenient entail? In this case, waiting till Monday morning would have been fine. Coordinating the offices to tailor their statement, just fine.
This is hardly the same as something like Gannon, where there was a clear problem beyond those directly involved.

However, C&L also posted a link to a Republican blog, which picked on the guy who was shot for getting in the way, and suggested going hunting with some Democrats.
Classy act.

MOH 7 - Deer Woman

2006-02-07T20:24:00.000-05:00

John Landis has a fair amount of comedy credits to his name; Blues Brothers, Animal House, Kentucky Fried Movie. But his horror credits are kind of limited, mostly the video for Thriller, and An American Werewolf In London. This sums up the way that this episode runs.
Deer Woman deals with a cop and his new partner working on a case involving a few guys who have been killed in a very violent trampling manner. They eventually learn that it’s a half deer-half woman creature, a Native American myth.

The entire movie runs exactly like an episode of The X-Files. Rather, any of the funny episodes of The X-Files. It’s very fun, but it’s not very horrific. I think there was one good jump scare, but it was mostly just a lot of good quips. Very little else to say about it.

MOH 6 - Homecoming

2006-02-07T20:14:00.000-05:00

I’m sure you thought this was my favorite. Nope, not exactly. While I liked the sentiment, it did not seem horrifying at all to me. The dead were not out to do anything mindless at all. Thus, the fact that their bodies are decaying doesn’t actually make them dangerous. The closest they get to being dangerous is when the one dead guy attacks the “Rove” character. But even that seemed to be carefully handled. The dead guy is provoked, and has nothing to lose.

So anyway, a brief recount of the story. A political consultant appears on a Larry King-esque show and says that if he could, it would be great to have all of the dead in this current war (although unnamed, it’s clear that it’s our involvement in Iraq) to come back so they could let us know that it was worth it. Then the dead come back, and it becomes clear that they are interested in voting for any candidate that will end the war.

The story this is based on is called Death and Suffrage, which I’m interested in reading. It is not a war-related story exactly, but it’s about gun control. Joe Dante adapted the story to his own purposes. I’ve seen a fair amount of Dante’s work. The Howling, Gremlins, Explorers, Innerspace, Matinee, Small Soldiers, as well as handful of his TV episode credits. His work consistently has a certain amount of wildness to it, the stories seem almost too big to effectively handle in the confines of a standard feature film. This one feels more like he didn’t have enough material.

I find myself wondering if this film would be more horrifying to someone conservative enough to not recognize that they’re making fun of them. I keep thinking of The Simpsons and “Oh no! The dead have risen and they’re voting Republican!” There are other details that should make it more ambiguous; no party is ever named. The only clues that they’re picking on the current administration is the facts that 1) we’re in a war, similar to their mentioning, that is of this administration’s doing. 2) characters are similar to other well known political figures. There’s Rove, there’s a Bush character that we see very fleetingly on a TV, and hear him talking in “his way” and one of the key characters is very much Ann Coulter. At least the way that I imagine her behaving off camera. I’m sure I’m wrong.

I love living dead movies. I tend to have a great time with even the worst of them, but this one falls short in the horror category. I found that I liked certain sequences, particularly some of the phrases that the Coulter character uses. The fact that those phrases are used as selling points for policy indicates something has been going wrong.

But I strongly defend Joe Dante for having the conviction to make this movie. It’s fairly creative, and the message makes a decent point. While it’s possible to make a pro-war or “let’s wipe them out” sort of movie, I don’t think that would be effective. The closest we can get to that is something like Independence Day. Stir up patriotism, that’ll make you willing to go out and kill. But only for your country.

As I said, there’s nothing too horrifying in it. If you’re liberal, you’ll find some of the Coulter comments to be horrible. If you’re conservative, you’ll be dismissive and bored. Probably the weakest point in the series, but it’s still a pretty high point.

MOH 5 - Chocolate

2006-02-06T20:54:00.000-05:00

Chocolate is probably the most underestimated of the Masters of Horror series, at least so far. Mick Garris, who usually seems to direct Stephen King adaptations, has made a story that is not as typical in treatment of what constitutes horror. Of his directorial credits, I’ve seen Psycho IV, Sleepwalkers, The Stand, The Shining (miniseries) and I look forward to seeing his adaptation of Desperation.

A chemist who works on scents (for perfume, candles, etc) suddenly finds that some of his senses are crossing with a lady, who he’s never met. At one point, it’s what she can smell. Other times, what she can taste, what she can see. And gradually, when it happens, he loses control of his own body, and is stuck experiencing what she does. He experiences her killing of a lover, and does what he can to meet her. He is convinced he loves her.
Despite similarities to something as unique as Being John Malkovich, this movie had one of the most unique interpretations of horror. I believe that I say it elsewhere in my reviews; one of the scariest things that can happen is being unable to control what you do, and to a lesser extent, being unable to assert some dominance over your environment. While the approach to the story doesn’t scream that it is a horror story, it becomes one by the end. I’m sure that the pacing, and the relative non-horrible aspects of the story turned off the viewers that tune in looking for gore and scares. But regardless, even though the story did not haunt me, I have a lot of respect for Mick Garris for being interested in making a story as subtle as this.

MOH 4 - Jenifer

2006-02-06T20:35:00.000-05:00

Amazingly, I haven’t seen anything by Argento. I’ve intended to rent The Bird With Crystal Plumage, but I keep expecting that I’ll hate it. Giallo flicks were never my forte.

Jenifer deals with a cop who saves a disfigured woman from being killed by a man. His concern for Jenifer grows, and winds up bringing her to stay with his family for a time. He gradually becomes obsessed with Jenifer, and protecting her comes into conflict with his feelings about her behavior.

How far do we go for love? At what point does behavior become unforgivable? Jenifer behaves like a pet in this film, to the point that she makes purring type noises as part of her seduction. The gore is strong, but brief. There is a strong amount of sex in this story, and there have been complaints about that. I considered the sex to be entirely necessary to the plot. The psychological aspects of the characters involved make these sequences indispensable. A very strong entry in the series, probably one of my favorites.

MOH 3 - Dance Of The Dead

2006-02-06T20:33:00.000-05:00

Tobe Hooper has directed a handful of well-known horror movies. Personally, I’ve seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Eaten Alive, Salem’s Lot, The Funhouse, Poltergeist, Invaders From Mars, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, The Mangler, and…. Body Bags. While I enjoyed most of these for a certain level of campy B-horror fun, I’ve never been able to take his work seriously. Somehow, he tends to shy away from the tougher horror in favor of more cerebral material. This is usually a good thing, but the shock value of the work is diminished by the time dedicated to this end of things.
So, as you can tell, I’m not a fan. But I enjoyed Dance of the Dead. It’s not my favorite in the MOH series, but it has some good material to offer up.

The plot is minimal. After some sort of nuclear holocaust, the country seems to be holding together, but unstable. A mother and her daughter run a small diner. The daughter gets picked up into the “wrong crowd” where she winds up at a strange rave-like club. All the while, there are dead bodies around, and infected people – those who were damaged during the fallout – shamble around the town and are shunned by everyone else.
The actual story of it is incidental. I think the episode is much more about a slice of life under these circumstances. It’s completely watchable though; photography is excellent, and the weirdness of the situation (especially the flashback sequences) is very good.
As I’ve said, the sense of horror that this episode builds is not very obvious. What makes it work is that it stays in your mind as a horrible scenario. The horror twist at the end seems to be the useless part.

Nightmares In The Witch-House

2006-01-31T15:10:00.000-05:00

Based on an H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name, Nightmares In The Witch-house is a solid second entry in the series. The story has moved from being straight slasher into being less slasher and more nightmare.

A grad student rents the cheapest room he can find, where he can work on his schoolwork quietly. He finds what seems to be some sort of dimensional portal in the corner of his room (not a vortex or anything, just an odd convergence of lines). He befriends the lady in the room next door, and her baby boy. He eventually becomes manipulated by the witch, who seems to be doing a series of bizarre rituals toward an unknown end, but it involves using the student to sacrifice the baby boy next door.

What I mean by saying that the episode is more nightmare than straightforward slasher is that the horror is not based so much on being in a difficult situation as it is about being unable to control your actions. This is a nightmarish quality – when you know that if you open the door in your dreams, you’ll be scared, but you do it anyway, almost out of your control. This idea is a theme throughout the movie, but it’s not as trumped up as I thought it could be. I’m reminded of the movie The Game (Michael Douglas one from ‘98, I think) which I always considered to be a horror, in a certain sense. The character’s control over the environment is lost, leading to a near-nightmare situation.
I’ve read a bit of Lovecraft’s work. It mostly seems to be roughly the same stuff. But I looked into it, and he went through a few different phases in his work. While there’s no mention of Chulhu here, there’s the Necronomicon, thus firmly tying it together with his other work.
It’s ultimately a good episode. I’ve seen it twice, and my only beef with it is that the sound varies too much in volume.

MOH 1 - Incident On And Off A Mountain Road

2006-01-30T19:19:00.000-05:00

I feel bad about capitalizing each of the words in a title, but I just can’t help myself. I know it’s not the right way to do it.

This movie opens the series with a pleasantly evil bang. Don Coscarelli directed this one, and my familiarity with his work is mostly in passing. I’ve seen Phantasm, which I didn’t care for. I’ve heard that there’s actually a lot of depth to the Phantasm movies, but I can’t get past the effort to make them as strange as possible. I also recently saw Bubba Ho-Tep, which Coscarelli wrote and directed. I found the direction to be excellent, and the script to be interesting, though not as perfect as I’d have liked.

A lady rear-ends another car that was stopped in the road on a mountain. The area is wooded, dark, and it’s hard to tell exactly what happened. The lady finds herself running from a maniac, trying to help the other lady, while utilizing survival and combat training that she undertook from her ex-husband. The pace seemed frantic at first, but in retrospect, I can’t remember specific sequences that well.
This is good old-fashioned slasher horror. The Moonface killer has his front yard decorated with human scarecrows, and the situation looks hopeless. There is some psychological backstory, although the origin and real intentions of the Moonface killer is never really explored. It’s actually completely irrelevant. Yes, there is eye-gouging.
I would hardly consider this to be a strong artistic statement, but it is very enjoyable, and the horror is creepy enough to keep you scared for a short time afterward, though it will not haunt you for days.

Masters of Horror, introduction

2006-01-26T17:20:00.000-05:00

I plan on writing a series of entries, centering around Showtime’s Masters Of Horror series, but also about horror in general.

My first memory of horror comes from when I was fairly young. Either my brother or an exchange student who stayed with us rented a horror movie from the local video store, and I only remember a short sequence. There was a person (probably female, probably pale with dark hair) stuck in the back of an old-fashioned car (possibly a hearse) which was being pushed into a body of water. She was yelling to be let out, visible through the back window of the vehicle. My memories of this are so vague, yet I still can envision the screaming look. But maybe my real first memory of horror had to do with the stories my brothers would tell me about “dancing elephants” in the basement. The furnace was kind of loud sometimes.
I sort of fell into watching horror movies. I’m not even sure what triggered it. Maybe it was the promise of a certain amount of nudity. There’s actually some basis to that. I remember watching Hellraiser III on HBO at a friend’s house, since we saw the warning that there was nudity in the movie. We were disappointed when there wasn’t anything really visible. Regardless, I gradually picked up my consumption of horror movies throughout high school. We’d watch the latest slashers in the theater, I’d rent movie after movie throughout the summer. I remember that I watched each of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies during the same summer.
The argument that watching horror de-sensitizes you doesn’t hold water in my mind. Watching the same horror over and over will de-sensitize you, but horror has had a strange effect on the way that I perceive violence. I think I was fairly de-sensitized during high school. After all, I only squirmed during one or two sequences of Dead Alive the first time. I felt I could take it all in stride, and then I remember becoming far more sensitive to violence during college. My overall progression has made me stare at the horror on screen with a form of disgust that is difficult to name or describe.
I read about the Masters of Horror series in the New York Times a fair time ago, shortly before, or just after the first episode had aired. I was fascinated with the idea, and recognized that I had to find these episodes, and watch them as soon as I could. See, it’s not just that it’s horror, or that a notable horror director is making each one. It’s partly that its uncensored horror (since I’d consider it the genre most affected by poor censorship judgment) but it’s also that the directors have total control over what story they want to do. Well, within certain limits. I’m sure there are budget constraints, and the final length of the film is approximately an hour long. But that’s not much to be constrained by, compared to the usual work within a studio system. I’ve been impressed with each of the episodes, even the stories I didn’t care for.

I was telling my father about one of the episodes yesterday, and he always expresses that he doesn’t understand the appeal of watching horror. This isn’t exactly accurate. He enjoys horror, but only to an extent that doesn’t include excellent gorefests, like Evil Dead II.
It’s always difficult to explain why I like horror. To a person that doesn’t enjoy it, the explanations never seem to come across the right way. It’s the same reasons that anyone likes any kind of movie. They’re entertaining, they make you think, and there are statements made that express larger ideas than the sum of the frames. I also feel like horror fulfills some other need. It’s like the blues, in that it reminds you that even if you have some of it in your life, somewhere, someone else has it worse, much worse.
I know that the arguments stands that you can just watch the news to know that. It’s not the same. Seeing high school teens running from some creature that wants to suck their brains through a proboscis is not the same as hearing about some drunk girl who fell off her balcony while on Spring Break.

My Blog For Choice

2006-01-17T17:22:00.000-05:00

I know it's a little early for me to write about it, but I have a feeling that if I don't do it when I think of it, it's the sort of thing that would slip my mind.

I rarely articulate my views on abortion beyond a statement of being pro-choice.

The reason for this is that I feel entirely unqualified to tell someone else what she deserves to do with her life. Being this way, I consider the alternative of being pro-life entirely rude.
And even in writing the phrase "pro-life" I felt that I was giving the point of view far too much credit. It amounts to removing a personal decision from everyone. You want to save unborn baby-life, go for it. There's nothing wrong with encouraging that in people you know, people you meet. But there's a very clear line between efforts to make it illegal and making it a societal stigma.
The fact that it is not nearly as much of a stigma now says something. Everyone’s sin is nobody’s sin.

I have little experience with the opposition to abortion. There was a girl in my argument and persuasion class one year who made everything into a religious issue. This is a horrible idea for this sort of class. You can use the Bible to argue for anything, and the miraculous infallibility of it makes the arguments impossible to refute. She gave her presentation argument on abortion. She focused on generally reasonable arguments. The problem was that she didn't focus on the early points in the development of a fetus. I can't remember what the number of days was, but she ignored the time between conception and the point at which the heartbeat can be detected.
I questioned her about instances where abortion would be acceptable. She was willing to take it to the extreme point, stating that abortion would still be unacceptable in a situation where the pregnancy would result in the death of the mother and the baby. Being unwilling to concede this point undermined her entire argument. In fact, it made it clear how blinded or callous her stance had made her. I don't think there's anyone out there who wants more abortion, more abortion! Everyone feels like it's a bad thing. (Being a medical procedure, most people would prefer to avoid them if possible) Suppose that there was a group of people who campaigned that circumcision was the only way to go, and made it illegal to be uncircumcised....?

Wow, I've gotten further off topic than I wanted to.

For all two of my readers (three if you count me).... I worry what would happen if abortion were outlawed again in this country. Fight for your rights.

Blog for Choice

2006-01-12T20:36:00.000-05:00

I'll try to think up something to write for this occasion. But I might wind up jumping the gun a little.
And thanks to my former Lit teacher for making me aware of this.

Review of Spin Doctors - Nice Talking To Me

2006-01-10T19:42:00.000-05:00

Note that I was planning on posting this in the Spin Doctors message boards. So I don't imagine anyone who reads my blog would be interested.

I've been a fan of the Spin Doctors since I was old enough to enjoy popular music. I was at summer camp the summer that Two Princes was a hit. I never listened to radio really. I mostly was raised on lots of classical music, some Beatles, eventually leading to Billy Joel. Two Princes opened my ears to radio, and I got heavily interested in a lot of modern rock, classic rock, and so forth.
I loved Pocket Full Of Kryptonite. I bought Turn It Upside Down when I was in 8th grade, and while it took me a bit longer to like, I love that album. I bought You've Got To Believe In Something, and learned to love it ever faster than TIUD.
Here Comes The Bride is a charming album, but not that great. I like a handful of tunes from it. Mostly the album is important because it showcases a variety of styles, all of which get meshed with the Spins style (more accurately, the Comess/Barron style).
Personally, I'm convinced that Waiting For The Blow, Key To The Kingdom, The Bigger I Laugh, The Harder I Cry, and Dodging Assassins are all pretty weak, and don't reflect serious work.

But I've mostly seen a lot of praise for Nice Talking To Me, with no real critical thought involved.

Track by track....
Nice Talking To Me
A little of a country edge. The song is fun, and fairly original. Catchy enough to get casual listeners to pay attention, it has potential as a single. But not HIT single.

Sugar
I like it. It's strange, because we hear more of the lyrics reminding me of Yo Mama's A Pajama, which are not serious by any real stretch. The characteristic that bothers me is a holdover from Here Comes The Bride - the backing vocal that shows up. This makes it even harder for me to take the song seriously. My feelings about this might change as I hear the song more.

Margarita
Probably my favorite. There are still minor problems with this, mostly that I don't hear as much room for a jam as I'd like. This might be overcome with some inventive arrangements live. Barron's lyrics are more clever than the rest of this album. While I read one other review that said they were cheesy.... I feel that Sugar is cheesy because the lines are cliché; these lines aren't exactly cliché, as they are twisted enough.

Happily Ever After
I grew to know the song from a live recording that circulated. I was never very happy with the lyrics. I'd be a little happier with them if it weren't being used in the band context. If it were Chris solo, then it'd be a very welcome addition to his repertoire. This album version is way too polished. The guitar sound isn't as tough sounding as the live version. And that, combined with the mixing, make the lyrics stand out. They sound trite.
Those backing vocals really hurt the production too. Sorry; I like my Doctors a bit tougher.
This reminds me of Matchbox 20. Sigh.

I'd Like To Love You (But I Think You Might Be Crazy)
I heard a tiny bit of Shinbone Alley and Refrigerator Car in this. I think the recording might be more immediately digestible with an altered drum part. I understand that this one is probably a whole lot of fun to play live. I can hear the fun that Mark and Eric are having, while Aaron gets to freak out a bit.

Can't Kick The Habit
I'm impressed. The extent of ballads that the Doctors have done have been usually been a little heavier (a la the blues of Indifference, She's Not You). I like that they've managed to do a tune like this. BUT... the recording needs to be tightened up a little. The solo is very good for the majority of it, and I especially like the unusual figure at around 5:40-5:52. But the solo wears thin. Not so much the cleverness of the whole thing, but it has a lot to do with the guitar sound. The production calls for a slightly smoother, rounder tone. The first, short solo, is perfect. Composed, emotive, and the tone is perfectly selected. The extended outro solo is where it goes wrong. While I'm all for pulling some distortion into the fray, this is some dry stuff. Maybe the EQ should bring up the bass and middle range? A little more of a Brian May sound? Where is the incredible sound from the solo for Refrigerator Car?

My Problem Now
That country sound is back, but this feels a little more straightforward for a rocker. I like the lyrics, but the song is overall, unremarkable.

Genuine
Reminded me immediately of Off My Line and Bags Of Dirt. By the time the singing started, I wasn't surprised. I like it. I feel like there's a bit of Joe Walsh in Eric's guitar. Good for us guitar nuts.

Tonight You Could Steal Me Away
Little Miss Can't Be Wrong, pt 2? I like these lyrics even more than I would expect. And.... at the :27-:29 timemark, you can hear that Spins staple - Barron yelling above it all.

Safety Pin
Generally fun. A nice rocker to close the album. It actually sounds like Mark is having some fun with this one.

Overall, the biggest problem with the album is the production. The mixing is not the best way to sell the Doctors. They are a power trio, plus a singer. (With the exception of Chris' nice playing when it appears) Mark's bass generally needs to be louder. Eric's guitar needs a broader palette to use. Chris's singing is generally very good, the only exception is the way he sings the line "nothing if you're not here....". It sounds a little nasally/whiny, reminding me of a kid I knew in high school. Aaron's drum work has always been a major component of the overall sound, and he is an incredible bedrock for the whole thing.
What I'm more worried about is that these songs usually don't have quite the same amount of jam space that is needed to prevent boredom (not the fan's boredom - the band's. I want them to have as much fun playing the music as possible).
After listening to this via the iPod, the mix sounds a little better than it did through other sources.

On reading A People's History of the United States

2006-01-10T19:28:00.000-05:00

History teachers at my school suggested this as the place to start with history books. I actually started my generic US History with The Cartoon Guide to it. But I'm about halfway through the book, and I have a very general reaction to it.

I had heard that it had a liberal slant to it. I accept that as inevitable in anything that is reasonably fair. The way that the modern debate has been reframed so the extreme right is considered their normal ground makes it look like any attempt to use facts is taken as evidence of bias.
But I also looked up Amazon's reviews of it. The response it has gathered is very much like every other political book out there - one side loves it, the other side hates it.
In fact, one reviewer took issue with the fact that he uses only two sources for certain points. Come on.
Another reviewer made the case that Zinn seems to think that nothing good has ever happened in the US.
I already seriously disagree.

Zinn has made the case that the nation really screwed up in the beginning. We were founded on a variety of corrupt goals, and the corruption has continued. HOWEVER - we are getting much better with it.
I learn about the difficulties that the labor and civil rights movements had to deal with to get where we are today. We aren't perfect, but we've made progress. It's a downer of a story in general, bad things after bad things, but it all ends in achieving another step toward a truly good society. To believe that everything was rosy, not corrupt at all, and that our "Founding Fathers" were some sort of infallible demi-gods is the least worthwhile thing we can do.

So I'm only halfway through, and I'm sure I'll write more about it soon.
I think I'll post an album review that I wrote up.

and now Xmas is over...REVENGE!

2006-01-02T19:24:00.000-05:00

It was a long week. My whole family was here, including all significant others.
So I spent most of the week hiding from most people. I can't compete with my mother's demand for attention from them, and I'm more interested in talking on a one-or-two-to-one basis.

My gifts were alright. I was throughly impressed with my girlfriend's gifts for me. She certainly did better than I feel I did.
But anyway.

We were leaving a restaurant, and we saw an SUV of some sort (it may have been some sort of truck, I can't remember). It had a painted-on American flag on the back, with the word REVENGE written across it in white.
I was unsure of exactly what is meant by this. The symbol is poorly chosen. The obvious meanings are 1 - revenge should be taken against Americans, and 2 America deserves revenge.
What I think is the much more clear meaning - although not intended - is that REVENGE is an American ideal.

The other thing is that revenge has a negative connotation. Isn't AVENGE a word that suggests that we are justified?
Are all uber-patriotic meatheads as clueless about the symbols they choose? Is that a silly question?

It's like Xmas is already over

2005-12-19T16:41:00.000-05:00

I finished my shopping this last weekend. I had 4 dvds to find, and two books. Plus a bit of candy to distribute among the stockings. I found three of the DVDs, and one of the books. But I ordered off of Amazon on Friday evening, so it's all set. I just have to wait for bits of it to arrive in the mail.

And I'm busy in school now. It's not bad, but after reading the Chronicles of Narnia books (in their proper, not chronological, order) I'm in the mood for short things that don't require much attention.
Not to say that those books required much attention. But most of the time, I can get about a sentence or two done before I'm bugged by a student.

I was surprised by Bush's speach last night. I didn't watch all of it, I was mostly trying to tune in to Family Guy before going to sleep, but Bush pre-empted that.
If this were earlier on in the whole process, like closer to 3 years into his presidency, as opposed to 5, then I'd feel much more sympathy for his plight. I'd probably feel more approval of his work, since he'd be admitting mistakes and so forth.
But come on, this isn't exactly news. What I see is that Bush has taken longer to catch up to the news than anyone else I know. He still doesn't seem to pick up on the logical disconnection between ideas like "we had to take his threat seriously" and "while his threat wasn't actually serious, we still have to occupy their nation."

That'll show 'em.

I'm hoping that whoever reaches the White House next is able to undo some of these freedom limitations. Notably, I don't want the government watching me because I don't agree with every little thing they do. And I'd like the freedom to read any political text I choose. But somehow, these seem to be dangerously related.

Silly student

2005-12-13T20:16:00.000-05:00

I spoke with a kid today, who was complaining about Tookie Roberts' execution. He didn't know that it had already happened. He seem to think that this was entirely unfair. That's a reasonable position, except he had no idea how to express this. He was under the impression that there was no evidence against him. I found Schwartzenegger's statement, which listed a handful of testimonials indicating him in the crime, along with ballistics information linking him. Plus, he has confessed to it on a variety of occasions. His guilt is not in question. The issue was solely if his death was a worthwhile goal now, in consideration of his anti-gang message. After reading this information to him, he didn't care about Tookie's anti-gang message, and his complaint didn't have anything to do with an opposition to the death penalty.
Maybe he's just an inarticulate case, but I sort of wonder when people learn to make reasonable arguments.... or even to express their opinions in sentences.

Honestly, the only reason he had to like the guy was just that he was "huge," black, and at least at some point, had a tremendous afro.

The plus side - I have a drawing that a student did of me. I come across looking more angry in the drawings I've seen of me, mostly because they drew me as I was looking down, reading.

Sickening

2005-12-07T16:07:00.000-05:00

I finally had an encounter that really was fairly enlightening. It was a 14-15 year old Bush supporter. Not one that actually knew why he liked Bush, either.
I noticed that specific instances of blind faith were required.
He did not have a stance on abortion, and he had to ask what Bush's stance was. After hearing that he was against it, he made arguments against it.
He also complained about John Kerry (odd, since there's little mention of him nowadays). He claimed that if he was elected, he would change his position on everything. I think this was the goal of the whole "flip flopper" thing.

The only thing that was encouraging about it was that there were two other kids there who also felt he was really out of line.

I wouldn't consider any of them to be enlightened, or even reasonably good at arguing, but the methods used by the Bush supporter showed that there are some horribly manipulative methods at work.

The other thing is that all kids have been taught by their parents that politicians are not to be trusted - or rather, that all of them lie.
We all lie, it's part of living. The question is if the lies are intended to mask a goal that is not noble. Jimmy Carter never lied to us, and partly because of it, was considered to be ineffective. I think most politicians make an effort to be truthful. The only ones who have to spin their work are those whose ideologies are driving their facts.

1 year old!

2005-12-01T16:40:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, blog!
67 posts (counting this one) in a year.

And there was a wealth of interesting news things today.

To start with, my fiancee got into the law school of her choice today, one of the top 10, and I'm very proud of her.

Second, there was a Times mention of a paper Alito wrote back in 1985, regarding methods to chip away at Roe v Wade. There was a phrase mentioned, encouraging the law to dictate that doctors must make all of these warnings/disclaimers regarding abortion, including "unforeseeable" issues. In legal terms, if something is unforeseeable, doesn't that get you off the hook? "I didn't know that leaving that brick outside my door would lead to my neighbor contracting AIDS - it was unforeseeable." Encouraging to inform about unforeseeable events seems like...encouraging to make up silly scenarios that would be possible, but unlikely.

And there was mention on crooksandliars.com of a lady who was arrested for refusing to present ID when the bus she was riding was stopped. While I have a little sympathy for the government in the case, since they were entering federal land, I feel like it's actually the fault of the bus company for plotting a route that enters federal land. If they wanted to use the route, the government gets to waive the right to inspect all passengers without cause.

Xmas shopping

2005-11-29T19:54:00.000-05:00

I've refrained from putting any political books on my list this year. The reason for this is twofold.
First, an in-law who would be present most likely disapproves of my leanings. This would also mean that he disapproves of most of his family's leanings, as well as most of mine. In fact, I think I'd assume he's closer to my end of the spectrum, except he seems fairly devoted to Bill O'Reilly. Even though O'Reilly makes an effort to sound like he's nonpartisan, he's clearly right-leaning.
Second, while I enjoy political books, I try not to read them at work (I have ample reading time at work, it's just that I don't want to offend anyone there). Besides, I've gotten more into taking things out from the library. I'm reading a bio of Django right now.

But back to Xmas.
Of course, you've noticed that I've written it Xmas. My fiancee has rubbed off on me; I used to always write out Christmas. Even though I really dislike the religous end of the holiday, I've never used the abbreviated spelling as a 'mini-rebellion' against the basis for the holiday.

I don't take Christmas to be a very spiritual occasion. I remember I've had one occasion that I felt what could be considered the "Christmas spirit." This was probably around 5th or 6th grade, and I was in a town nearby, at a local hobby shop, playing an arcade game. I played several rounds with another kid my age. We joked around a bit, worked together on the game. When he left, he wished me a merry Christmas. In thinking back on it, it's probably the first time that anyone really stated it at me directly. I felt that he meant it, and even if it was just being polite, it was directed at me. So that's the brotherhood of man sort of thing.

My shopping has come along well. I'm done with my mom, my fiancee's parents, one of my dad's gifts, I know what I'm getting one brother, and I've gotten his stocking gift too. And I've got most of my fiancee's gifts out of the way. Both of our birthdays are clustered around Christmas, along with our anniversary in late November.... so it's been a lot of gifts crammed into a short time. One of her things should show up in the mail in another day or so, and the other one I should get to work on. But I keep delaying work on it. Xbox'll do that to you.

Maybe I should mention more about Shopgirl.

I've gradually gotten more into Steve Martin's work. Not so much the cheap comedy work like Bringing Down The House or Cheaper By The Dozen, but HIS work. This means Roxanne, LA Story, Bowfinger, and his books. I read Shopgirl first during this last summer, and then again near the beginning of this school year. I picked up more about the story this second time, and it also stirred my doubts about how it would work as a film.

I was pleasantly surprised. It's a very nice film. There are problems with it, but they are not issues that could be overcome. The story is pleasantly direct, especially near the end, when the point becomes so much more obvious than expected.
The story is a quiet thing, and it's played with strong realism. It isn't a unique situation that the main characters find themselves in, but it's only made a little more filmworthy by the third character, as well as some of the witty dialogue.
It's a film for adults, because the only part that will attract younger viewers will be the third character's plot. The rest of it is nuance, and a message that will only resonate with people who are old enough to understand the lesson.
The criticisms I had heard were mostly complaints about the narration. I enjoy Martin's narration. He knows when to use it, and how to use it effectively.
My dad brought up a point about Martin's work. He likes women. The director, Anand Tucker, has very little work to compare to - according to IMDB, only two other films, both biopics. The photography of Mirabelle is done gracefully. We see her body is not perfect, but the camera seems to focus on smaller attributes that make her more attractive than her totality. Close-ups on small curves in the space right above her waist, leading to her ribs. My dad liked this; said it was tasteful.

So there you have it. I still have.... roughly 13 gifts to buy.

Asbury Park Press and more occasions

2005-11-22T17:00:00.000-05:00

I've been getting more fed up with the Asbury Park Press. The paper has never been anything especially good, but I remember that in the couple weeks leading up to the 2004 election, it stopped carrying anything resembling national news. The editorials turned into focusing almost exclusively on local politics (not even the state level - usually the town level) and even the national articles were bland. I figured that this could be an attempt to be as nonpartisan as possible in the time leading up to the election. But the trend continued. There was very little content in the paper, and it seems to increasingly rely on community fluff pieces. Things like their page dedicated to pictures of pets. Their "On The Run" section is... I have no idea how to describe it.
A slacking-off paper isn't anything too bad. You still can get news, and if you really want to get involved in local political issues, there might be something there for you.
But the Asbury Park Press has gotten worse than that. They regularily run right-wing letters to the editor, which don't even present arguments....
I was annoyed at one about a week ago, which was complaining about the ACLU. I consider most complaints about the ACLU to be entirely invalid. I don't agree with each stance they take, but I understand that the organization plays a role that is unbelivably vital to the well-being of the country.
(I'm reminded of a Times article I read either today or yesterday, which refered to police files in Guatemala that listed the reason for arrest as "communist." The ACLU defended those accused of communism in the 50s here.)
And today, the Asbury Park Press did not print a rebuttal letter to the editor....they printed another letter condemning the ACLU, claiming that they fight against everything that has made our country great.

I have urged my father to stop his subscription to the Press. Instead, he ought to just subscribe to the NY Times. He already buys most issues, this would actually save him money.
He also agreed that even the local coverage in the Press has been weak. The Hub does a better job.

In other news....
I've gotten engaged....no date is set. And it's now our 4th anniversary.
(In case you haven't noticed, I avoid making any reference to my name or anyone else connected directly to me.)

ID and FSM

2005-11-10T22:54:00.000-05:00

While I'm not at all a religious person, I think I've found the religion for me.

But first...
I read a Times article sometime last week, regarding the current "Intelligent Design" lawsuit, and that the Thomas More Center went out to search out a school board that would be willing to take on a lawsuit, in their effort to "change the culture." Despite how common this practice supposedly is, I still think that the citizens of this community should file a lawsuit against the school board members that did this.
I understand that they have some protections against making the wrong decision, although I feel like this is closer to gambling. They didn't make the decision on their own, and have the lawsuit fall into their lap. They decided to take on a lawsuit, which, at best, would result in no money being paid out, none taken in. If they lose it - which is likely - they would be forced to pay out the legal costs to the opposition. Since they represent the town, this would just sink it into debt.

But that brings me to the other thing.
http://www.venganza.org/

While they still don't have too much out there to make it a more complete site, I find the art of the FSM far more.... encouraging. I like that the eyes seem to suggest a curiousity, not an interest in creating/destroying/judging. An observer - albeit an omnipotent one - is just more representative of the beauty of how complicated and fantastic everything is. One gets the impression that the FSM watched with interest as The Glob wormed it's way up out of the sea.
Uggity Gluggity Moon!
Uggity Gluggity Joon!

Thomas

2005-10-19T18:16:00.000-04:00

I've been reading David Brock's Blinded By The Right, which is an amazingly nonpartisan work. It's not particularily anti-conservative, and it's not anti-liberal, it's more about his personal journey.
There are a lot of interesting bits, but one of the things that I think is surprising is that Clarence Thomas still attends Republican functions. Parties, etc. I'd be fine with him appearing as a guest speaker or something, but it doesn't seem right for a supreme court justice to continue associating within the political party. Scalia did the same thing with his hunting trip this last year. Aren't we supposed to avoid even the appearance of conflict-of-interest?

The other things that come out in the book are a lot of things I've seen in the past. I'm curious if he reflects on how this behavior appears on the liberal side of things. Still have about 50 pages to go.

Yom Kippur

2005-10-13T14:26:00.000-04:00

I saw a girl talk to a bunch of her friends yesterday, announcing a general apology for anything she did wrong to any of them over the last year. This was for the Jewish day of attonement, and I really liked that.
We could all use an occasion to apologize to everyone else for anything that we did wrong.

the right thing to do

2005-10-02T19:22:00.000-04:00

I helped a little kid today who wiped out on his trike, while his mother was somewhere else. She did sort of come running, but it probably took about a minute and a half for her to get there. I was cautious about helping, because I open myself up to legal action by helping.
This is an unusual issue. By helping, you can open yourself up, and by not helping, you open yourself up (unless that law is just an urban legend made up for Seinfeld).

At least the mother wasn't mad at me, I mostly just pulled the bike off of him, and checked to make sure he wasn't hurt. I wiped a little dirt off of his elbow.
I mentioned this to my dad, and he asked if other people were around to observe. I think that might actually be the dividing line. But if other people are around, there would possibly be a slower reaction to help, since most people would be hesitant to help if someone else could do it.
So I think I did the right thing, but it's a bad thing when you have to worry about the consequences of doing the right thing.

Sheehan arrested, and update

2005-09-26T16:29:00.000-04:00

Well, Sheehan was finally arrested today. From what I've read, she will be charged with demonstrating without a permit. Does it seem strange that we are granted the right to assembly, but also that we have to apply for permits for it? Does it mean that the permits should be free?

As you can probably see, I haven't posted in awhile. My father's computer died, and I turned mine over to him for a time, while we got some more hardware and tested it out. It looks like his ram actually died, though I also suspected his motherboard and his CPU. The big upside of this is that I have a new motherboard, which supports faster RAM, as well as RAID. So finally, I might have more hard drives!

I've been exposed to more corporate-style thought at work. There's a silly theme for this year, and I was curious about what was meant by this idea. Unfortunately, it amounts to the idea being just a phrase, and the closest we got to a definition was the statement that policies had been put in place to encourage this idea. There was no explanation of what these policies are. So what I think it is...is probably a method to make it look like they're trying to do something special.

I realize how vague this must be. As it should be clear, I'm trying to be kind of covert about this. I just don't want my job to think that I dislike it, or that I disrespect any of the employees. I just think there's a problem in America of people stringing words together to make other people think they have an idea of what they're thinking.

So I'll be doing a lot of reading at work this year. I read half of The Mother Toungue today, and I'll probably be skimping on some of it later. But I picked up Bryson's The Lost Continent from the library today, and that should be good.

been a little while

2005-09-12T19:42:00.000-04:00

I just started work again, and the extra time that provides let me read an article in the Washington Post online.
Georgia is trying to introduce voter ID cards. They cost approximately $20 for 5 years, $35 for 10 years, and there are some other problems. Besides how illegal that is, there's the other issue of there being in the area of 150 counties, and only 58 locations to get these cards. There are none in Atlanta.
While there is some speculation that this is intentional "poll taxing," I don't think it is. I think that these ideas to create IDs for every little thing is a side effect of people wanting to implement new technology to streamline processes that they dislike.
The truth is - if voting were a once-a-week, or a once-a-month sort of thing, then it would make more sense to do this sort of thing. But this amounts to being charged $20 to vote for president.
Another point brought up in the article was that there have been no allegations of voter fraud at the polls. The only area where voter fraud is suspected is in absentee ballots. And these would not be affected by this idea.

I was also impressed by this unknown person calling out to Cheney while he visited New Orleans. It's easy to criticize or curse a political figure while they're on TV, or when you're talking with friends. But it's another thing to say it to their face. I believe that if I were faced with Bush, I would probably be fairly quiet, reverent, and would only start arguing with him if he was trying to discuss something with me (and of course, it'd have to be in private - unless I were someone other than I am - like a pundit). It would be very difficult to tell Bush personally that he's a liar. Or that any of his decisions were bad.
But this says something about the way that they handled this disaster. The administration has lost a whole lot of respect that it once had. When ordinary citizens start cursing them to their face, that's a big step.

Might as well talk about Cindy

2005-08-23T19:59:00.000-04:00

Cindy Sheehan has been camping out, waiting for Bush, and his acknowledgment of her has been... wanting.

I'm not terribly passionate about this story. I agree with most of the assertions I've heard from her, but I just think I'm a little more focused on issues rather than people.

Bush's response has been very predictable. I'd actually feel much more sympathy for him if he met with her, and was able to explain his position. To expect him to listen to a question and to answer the same question isn't reasonable though. He regularily seems to think that she is requesting that he withdraw troops. Her goal is more personal than a policy change, but he doesn't seem to get that. And if he makes a public acknowledgment of that, then he becomes a much more cruel figure.

It's actually very clever that this is being done while he's on vacation. If he were in Washington, then it'd be easy to shout her down, saying that he shouldn't be distracted from work with this. Distracting Bush during a 2-hour bike ride is perfectly reasonable.

Unrelated-
on the commentary for the Simpsons episode "The PTA Disbands" there is a bit of talk about the line that Groundskeeper Willie says ("Bonjouuuuuuuuur....ya cheese-eatin' surrender monkeys!"). Supposedly, this has been attacked by the left. I'm amazed, it's clearly not the message of the episode, and it isn't backed up by the episodes content. It's mostly a comment that Willie is not at all qualified to be teaching French.

Rumsfeld's plan

2005-08-12T09:37:00.000-04:00

Supposedly, Rumsfeld has announced the "celebration" plans for Sept 11, 2005. They have a march from the Pentagon over to a location in Washington, DC... where they'll have a country music concert by Clint Black.

I haven't heard anyone say that this is a good idea.
I think it might be more appropriate to make it a national day off of work, and to leave the government out of making events for it. It works well on the local level, and if the government wants to organize something... make it a little less Woodstockian.

A liberal complaint I don't agree with

2005-08-02T13:09:00.000-04:00

The recent energy bill that was passed contains an item that I've heard complaints from the left about.
It includes tax breaks to companies that sell hybrid cars. There are two limitations. First, they can't already be producing them. Second, the tax break only applies to the first 60,000 cars sold.
The interpretation I've heard of this is that they lose the tax break if they succeed with the new model, and thus this penalizes doing a good job.
I disagree with their interpretation. This is designed to encourage companies to take the risk associated with trying something new. Thus, the government helps recoup potential losses until the item is a success. After that, they can afford to pay their normal taxes. (If corporations really paid taxes, that is.)

I'm unaware of much of anything else regarding this energy bill, so I don't feel like I could offer an opinion.

Catholic weddings

2005-07-24T11:40:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about an ideal way to satisfy the Catholic end of my girlfriend's family. Neither of us are religous, however, we suspect that her mother would like her married in a Catholic church, partly as a way to maintain the illusion for my girlfriend's grandmother.
So I looked up the requirements to be married in a Catholic church. I was mostly concerned about the communion/confession related things... this is what I found.
1. Choose a partner that you aren't related to. The Catholic religion doesn't allow marriage between blood relatives.
2. You and your partner need to be the right age. A man has to be seventeen and older. A woman needs to be 15 and older. If you aren't of consenting age, you'll need parental permission.
3. Attend premarital counseling.
4. Discuss with your future spouse how you plan on raising your family and how many children. Accepting the possibility of children is a requirement in Catholic marriages.
5. Schedule to be married by a priest and you'll need two witnesses.
6. A marriage in a Catholic church is never dissolved. You are married until death do you part.
7. If you and your partner are not baptized, your marriage will be valid and your children will be legitimate in the Catholic Church. But unlike the marriage of a baptized couple, the union will not be considered a Sacrament.
8. Discuss Catholicism with your spouse and its importance.
9. Decide if you want a Mass wedding or just a wedding.
10. Meet the state requirements such as blood tests and marriage license.

The ones that present problems are...4 and 8. Neither of us want children. But the phrase "accepting the possibility of children" is an interesting one. Does this mean that "suppose my brother dies, would we be willing to take his children?" I think I'd be fine with that. It doesn't say the possibility of YOUR children...or even the word parenting, which suggests just accepting that children exist.
Number 8 is not a problem between my girlfriend and I. But I just think it would present a problem to a priest.

This also raises another issue. Suppose that a couple wanted to be married, and one of them was infertile. Would that exempt them from the process? Or would that only be for the priests who really want to be stingy about it?

offensive artwork

2005-07-23T09:33:00.000-04:00

You know, that should be an oxymoron.

I just read an article, which I've clipped the relevant bits from. This article is from Sacramento, and the pieces of art were selected to represent all different views on the subject of the exhibit.

"The painting -- part of an exhibit of more than 30 works by lawyer artists and pieces with overt legal themes -- has an American flag-painted continental United States heading into a toilet. Next to it are the words: "T'anks to Mr. Bush.""

The GOP wants to have this work removed, and have petitioned the state attorny general, Lockyer.

"I don't know why we need to tolerate the cheap artwork of a gadfly with a world view that is so offensive to a majority of the people," said Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the California Republican Party."

"Hanretty countered that Lockyer, a Democrat and staunch supporter of free speech, would not have allowed art to be displayed that gays or lesbians found offensive or promoted violence toward women."

I can't believe that there's actually an issue large enough for an article to be written about. The phrasing of the spokeswoman is absolutely disgusting. "I don't know why we need to tolerate..." suggests that she doesn't understand the difference between tolerating something and accepting something. (For a good explanation, see South Park's The Death Camp Of Tolerance.)
You tolerate things that you dislike, but realize that it doesn't actually hurt anyone/anything. This is exactly what this is.
I hate to say it, but I find those "W '04" stickers offensive. I find the confederate flag moderately offensive. But I would never petition anyone to remove them, even on a social level.

And the other thing - her complaint that Lockyer is a Democrat, that he wouldn't allow art that was offensive to the gay community or promoted violence toward women. First of all, there's a difference between promoting violence toward women and disagreeing with the direction that Bush takes our country. One of them is illegal, the other is not. The offensive to the gay community issue is a little more tricky to dismiss, because it has more to do with how you interpret homosexuality. While I don't like the comparison, you can view it as a disability. It would be offensive to pick on a group for something that they have no control over, such as a piece of art that made fun of the down syndrome community. However, if something is being made fun of that has to do with a choice behavior that they engage in, then that would be acceptable. Such as, say, making fun of Scientologists.

And I realize that my spelling/punctuation quality has been decreasing. Sorry about that. I'm only writing this up while I wait for the shower to open up.

Another bad cover

2005-07-21T21:31:00.000-04:00

Not exactly a cover of the original - there's a song that is on the radio now (at least it was about 3 or 4 months ago) Akon's Mr. Lonely. It borrows liberally from a song by Bobby Vinton called Mr. Lonely.
The cover is actually insulting to the original. Musically, I have no problem. The problem is that he's appropriating a song that is about being a soldier overseas, and the loneliness that (can) come with that. Akon's version completely eliminates that idea, and instead makes the song come out quite a bit like Shaggy's Angel, about how he's lost his girl.
Which suddenly reminds me of another cover version that I have a small problem with. The Counting Crows cover of Big Yellow Taxi. He changes the lyrics in part...
The original - "Late last night, I heard the screen door slam/And a big yellow taxi took away my old man."
The cover - "Late last night, I heard the screen door/And a big yellow taxi took my girl away."
My initial complaint is first that he broke the rhyme.
My other complaint is actually invalid. I always understood the title of "old man" as being either your father, or possibly, as intended in the original, her husband/boyfriend. For some reason, I lean more toward the meaning of it being her father. Somehow, I view the message of the song more clearly when it's a parent. Boyfriends and girlfriends are fairly non-permanent in songs, so the loss of a boyfriend doesn't seem nearly as important as losing her father. But it does raise the question of why her father was taken away. If you interpret the phrase to mean her boyfriend, then the boyfriend just chose to leave late last night. If you hear "old man" as her father, I hear it meaning that her father has been deemed obsolete (or something like that) and has been carted away.
While I know it probably sounds silly to others, there are two ideas in the song, and the primary one is the "you don't know what you've got until it's gone" message, the other is the idea of replacing these natural things with their 'improvements' (DDT, 'tree museums' parking lots...). The more I write about it, the more silly I think I sound.

He's (unofficially) out

2005-07-05T14:29:00.000-04:00

Here it is-
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/07/02.html#a3746

It appears that Rove has been named as the source who leaked Valerie Plame.
I don't follow this story as much as I should, but it seems obvious that this sort of act - especially since it was perpetrated by someone as high up as Rove - qualifies as treason. Regardless of his reasons, personal or professional, it amounts to an act against the US.

The other news is that I took my test, and score 184 on the Reading, 187 on the Math, and I won't know the score for the Writing section until a few weeks later. But this is good. None of the documentation I've found has said what the top score is.

Wilson hates Moore

2005-06-17T17:45:00.000-04:00

I got Michael Moore Hates America through Netflix today, and already watched it.
I was hoping that the arguments in it would be at least reasonable. Some of them are, and I'm generally annoyed that Moore chose to aim for the most entertaining option rather than the most accurate. However, I understand his reason for doing so.
There is a major problem with this movie. Nevermind the technical problems, the slow-as-molasses pace, or the lack of wit.
This guy - Mike Wilson - doesn't understand Moore's movies. He seems to think that examining a problem means that you don't think that anything else exists.
Moore likes America. His goal is not to destroy it, he wants to make it better, and he thinks that acknowledging our problems is a first step toward doing something about it.
For example, Bowling for Columbine is not about being anti-gun. It can easily be viewed that way. But Moore's message is focused on the idea that we have a problem with guns. We are treating them as weapons, but we really aren't restricting them appropriately. That isn't even a main point. The key to the movie is that we have a large, general problem here in the US, that is not easily defined. He shows a few elements of this, mostly in his section regarding fear.
Wilson tries to counter this, by talking to a lot of people who claim to have no fear. Maybe they don't understand what the definition of "fear" includes. Manson uses the example of commercials as an example of what fear means - that if we don't get the toothpaste, we'll be rejected, etc. The other thing is that the people Wilson appear to be interviewing seem to be those who live in gated communities. They also don't sound terribly bright. To be fearless is to be ignorant. We've got a lot of nuts in this country, and I suspect if there were no consequences, people would gladly kill me for things I've said or things I believe. Well, maybe not kill me, but at least attack me.
Wilson's argument digresses into the complaint that Moore is unpatriotic or unamerican, or otherwise simply hates America, all because he doesn't talk about the good things in our country.
Come on. Go watch The Big One. Moore loves the US.
One other argument. Wilson attacks Moore's claim regarding financial mobility in this country. I've heard about this recently in the news. England has surpassed us. It's easier to change classes over there than it is here.

whew

2005-06-09T17:04:00.000-04:00

I just got the call - I am hired for next school year as a permanent sub. This makes a world of difference for this summer. Now it's not nearly as bad if I can't find work. In fact, there are a few things I would like to get done, provided that it isn't far too hot to work on them...
- straighten out my room and the girl's room here. We have so much junk that should be tossed out, or at least stored away.
- the front walk really needs to be fixed up. If this means pouring some fresh concrete, that might be a good idea.
- the upstairs bathroom should be re-wallpapered.
- I'd like to change my eating habits a bit. Mostly, I think that eating greens (even just a little) shouldn't be causing me problems.
- I'll have to do some clothes shopping near the end of the summer
- after my test next week, I have to fill out some paperwork and send it in to get a certificate of eligibility. This would actually give me a $5/day pay bump.
- and I'd like to get some writing done.

This is such an incredible relief.

any suggestions?

2005-06-07T19:29:00.000-04:00

I've thought about a few things that I'd like to post about, but I keep putting it off, mostly since the thoughts I have on them tend to be fleeting. There was a great thing on religion, specifically the Bible, on NPR's This American Life. I think I might relisten to that before I post regarding that.
There is some good news though.
I got a call this morning, and I have a short interview tomorrow at school, I might have a permanent sub position for next year. While it's not too much money, I would get benefits, and it would mean regular paychecks of roughly the same amount.
So I should let you know how it goes.
In the meantime though, any suggestions as to what to change my little picture to be? I mostly want this to be anonymous as so I don't have to explain things to my students.

Ug, Summer.

2005-05-26T17:54:00.000-04:00

I'm not looking forward to this Summer. I really enjoy subbing, and the more I do it, the more I want to spend some time getting to know more about education. But it's not just that there's no more subbing to do, but it has to do with finding other work in the meantime.
Maybe they need subs for summer school?
What I really want to happen is that I get the permanent sub position for next school year, handling the in school suspension. Then I don't mind if I don't do any real work over the summer. Besides, I like getting other work done. The front walkway really needs to be done, I want to fix up our phone system a bit, so that it's all nicely laid out on a board. The upstairs bathroom needs to be fixed up too.
Not to mention that I could use a certain amount of education regarding teaching. It's a bit late to register for any local courses regarding it, but it might be good to read some books or something.
At worst...I'll register with a temp place locally. I just really don't want to be doing a single day at a location. If the job lasts a week, that's just fine. If it lasts two months, that's fine too. But I can't stand any of the short term things - one or two days is just an annoyance.

Maybe I'll do it

2005-05-19T20:36:00.000-04:00

Another high school related thing.
I get an interesting view of things that happen on a social level in high school, and it's a facinating way of looking back on the things that happened while I was there.
They are not easy to express. But I've been thinking of writing a whole lot of songs about high school, not ones that have been done before, like It's Raining On Prom Night or anything about football.
Maybe it'll be a summer project. Or maybe I'll never get started.
Oh yes - and Revenge Of The Sith was very good.

I like high school

2005-05-13T13:59:00.000-04:00

I'm approaching 50 total days between two high schools.
It's a bit hard to explain, but I like it a lot. I find that the kids are so entertaining, and that I actually want to talk to a lot of them. I'm concerned since there's a girl that I've seen in several classes. She doesn't talk to anyone, and I don't think I've seen her smile at all. I've helped a guy work his way through square root math problems. I explained a scene in a movie to an English class.
I really like seeing these kids every day. I'd like to be able to impart a little knowledge though, not actual instruction, but more like advice about college, things like that.
I still don't have any ratings on ratemyteacher.com, but I've been invited by about 5 people on myspace.com.
Maybe it's a way of making up for how I was during high school? I'm sure that just as many people think I'm a dork, but I'm not at all concerned about it.

Silly Rev, Church is for Everyone

2005-05-09T20:29:00.000-04:00

I saw this bit on Jennings, and I've pulled up an article relating to it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/07/AR2005050700972_pf.html

How far can this go? If a church risks tax-exempt status, do we really think that politicians will risk forcing them to pay tax? I'm sure that this church would raise some sort of religious discrimination counter-suit, and the more attention that is brought to it, the more chance that the public will side with the church, under the guise of "the activist judges are trying to destroy churches!"

Luckily, I avoid going to church (even though I went the last two weekends to play music) so being excommunicated (if that's possible from a Presbyterian church) wouldn't be much of a blow to my well-being.

A link for you all

2005-05-05T15:31:00.000-04:00

Moore linked to the version of Imagine here, but I've got to share this.
http://www.thepartyparty.com/
My favorites... Imagine, My Name Is Rx, KGBTV, HIV/AIDS, Birthday (Party Party Mix).
It's sampled music. The music is remarkably well arranged, despite that I have little interest in much dance/techno music (except for my old Ace Of Base interest). The lyrics are sampled from mostly Bush 2. Birthday has some Schwartzenegger though.
It doesn't seem mean-spirited though. I'm not laughing at Bush...this stuff is really good.

So...take a listen. It's fun.

Il Papa

2005-04-25T20:40:00.000-04:00

I didn't have much of any opinion about this new pope for awhile. Just like the majority of Americans, I don't know much about the religious players from Germany. Or anywhere outside of my own church.
But I didn't even have much of an opinion of this new guy. I don't expect the Catholic church to make some sort of turn around on issues. I think part of what makes it a religion is that it is even slower to change than government is. In fact, the most interesting thing that this last pope did - in my non-catholic, non-religious eyes, was suggesting that the death sentence become an issue for the chuch again. While I'm sure that one bugged the right-wingers, it seemed like the most logically consistant thing that could have been done, after railing against abortion for long enough.
But I had no complaints about the new pope.
But he gave this speech before his inaguration as pope, which is talked about here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4460673.stm

Only two of the comments at the end are in favor of the absolutism approach. I'm curious about the way that these things are decided. When they change their approach, based on new evidence, does that fit into the absolutism mold? Does the recognition that new information alters our perspecive fit into this equasion?

I'm not sure exactly why they think that this leads to trouble. I understand how they feel that abortion fits under the category of being created by moral ambiguity, but what about the inquisition? The chuch hasn't offered much of an apology for that. Just as the comments at the end point out - absolutism leads to intolerance for any other view. Those that hijacked our planes were positive that their actions were right, and that ours were wrong. But suppose the entire world were converted, we would still find ways to divide ourselves. Maybe by how pious we could be. Maybe they'd start trying to enforce that stuff about not wearing more than one clothing material, and then all of us who like a little bit of polyester in our shirts would be excommunicated and executed.

After writing this, I've realized part of what makes this seem even more silly. When Carter appeared on TV, and requested that everyone lower their thermostat ONE degree, that was attacked. However, his request was really nothing bad. He wasn't telling you that your way of life was evil, or that you weren't thinking right. It was saying that this sort of miniscule sacrifice would make a large difference if everyone did it. This Benedict guy gives a talk suggesting that everyone alter the way that they construct their moral system. Which is more impossible? (of course, even the Force can't change people's moral system, only the user is in charge of that.)

Red Blogs

2005-04-15T18:34:00.000-04:00

Somehow, through two searches for completely unrelated subjects, I found two different right-wing blogs today. The first, by searching for information about the video for Lucas With The Lid Off, I found some right-wing blog, which had the usual inflammatory rhetoric about how silly and intolerant the left is. The post the author made that had gotten the most replies was about some news item regarding someone who was sentenced for attempting to smuggle something like $17 million in cigarettes over the border for illegal sale. The author blames this on the "liberal practice" of taxing cigarettes heavily. He gets his on an indian reservation. Costs him $.19 a pack.
So anyway, the thread of replies was interesting. It seems like his view is not a popular one, even from the right-leaning view. The replies suggest that it is a liberal thing to claim that a law makes people do bad things. Surprisingly, at least one reply on the thread nailed the essence of how taxation ought to work, though it didn't complete the thought. Cigarettes are a luxury item. While those that use them often tend to view them more as a food, the truth is that one cannot sustain oneself on them. Cigarettes and water won't keep you alive for much more than 3 weeks.

The other blog I looked at was found after searching for Kobayashi Maru, which is supposed to be an impossible-to-win scenario in Star Trek lore. I mostly wanted to know exactly what made it impossible. (In Wrath Of Kahn, it is revealed that Kirk beat the situation by cheating.)

While I found the Kobayashi blog more of a thoughtful, expressive blog, I still think I'm starting to understand the divide a bit more. It's not something that can be easily summarized.
Both sides state that they understand that their side is not innocent, but nobody actually acknowledges it unless another person brings it up. I'd like to think that I try to be more balanced. (Though I'm sure that everybody says that) Moore pointed out a quote from a talk that Bush gave (which I caught later on C-SPAN) where he defends the death penalty being used, and claims that it doesn't conflict with his "culture of life" thing. I agree. The issues are not terribly related, although it would help if he didn't give that corny name to the idea of being anti-choice.
For the record, I think that Gore actually said it well in his debate with Dubya - "I support the death penalty for the most extreme cases." Bush's response to the same subject was pretty weak. "Death penalty is.... a tricky thing...." and then went on to say that he would support the law, whatever it was.
Yes, there are people that are too dangerous to keep alive. I just watched Natural Born Killers again last night, and that only reinforces this.

Just about entirely unrelated. I did my state taxes yesterday, and I owe $1.60. I'm donating $1 of that to the gubernatorial race thing. Supposedly, paying extra money in taxes is supposed to turn me Republican. Nice try.