posted 2007/03/31 at 20:40
I've mentioned before that I've been a long-time user of Yahoo!'s My Yahoo! customized news/page service. In fact, if anyone ever got hold of my Web browsing history, you could always tell when I started eating lunch just by when I load My Yahoo! up for the first time in a day, it's become that much of an integral part of my daily routine.
Anyway, Yahoo! launched a beta of a new version of My Yahoo! that I've been test-driving here for the past couple of weeks. It's got a much smoother and cleaner interface, but they've made the ads much more intrusive, and I had to change my pages from three columns down to two just to get them to look okay. I honestly don't know that My Yahoo! is necessarily the best service for me at this point, but I've invested so much time into it over the years that I've got it about as close to perfect as I'm going to get, and I don't see myself switching anytime soon.
That being said, I have been toying around with the similar features that Google has added to its front page, but I can't get things on there like I'd like them to be. I'm particularly confused by the selections Google News pulls for their headlines; there doesn't seem to be any pattern to what makes their news module at a given time, either in terms of national/global relevance or things that I might be interested in based on my past use of Google News.
Neither service completely satisfies me, and in the past I would just write this off to the fact that Web technology is kind of limiting and the companies who create these portals have to balance the kind of deep customization I'm interested in with ease of use for other, less computer-savvy users. These days, though, with all the bells and whistles these services have added, I don't think that adding a couple of more design options would be that much trouble. I'm still going to use both My Yahoo! and Google's services for now, but I have a feeling that I'm not the only person who feels like there's a potential market here for a service that offers much more layout customization.
posted 2007/03/29 at 21:08
I want to thank everyone who responded to my last post about my internal deliberations about whether or not to work for a company that refuses to hire smokers. You've certainly given me a lot to think about here.
I suppose I should relate a part of the discussion I had with my family regarding this matter last night. Mark, my British brother-in-law, was quick to point out how different employment laws are in England. At the bank he used to work at, the bosses wanted to get rid of a worker without cause, which isn't exactly legal there. In order to sack this worker, the company would either have to show a demonstrable reason for why the employee deserved to be fired, or make him redundant (aka downsize him). The bank couldn't come up with a good reason to fire him, so they made his position redundant, then turned right around and hired someone new to fill his old position. The fired worker then went right to the courts, showed that he'd been wrongfully terminated, won his case and was put back in his old position.
I mention this because I think it underscores one of the big problems I have with the American socio-economic-political system, which is how much trust and power we give to our companies. I do identify myself as a capitalist because I think "the profit motivation" is ultimately necessary in order for a society to produce substantial innovation, but at the same time I think capitalist markets need strong government controls over them in order to make sure that workers are treated fairly, consumers aren't sold dangerous products, and companies don't leverage and horde their huge sums of money to the detriment of the greater populace. If companies control the primary means for employment in a society, and employment is the only way for the population to gain capital, then companies have a responsibility to be fair and equitable in their methods of employment.
I'm certainly not going to question that smoking is an unhealthy and disgusting habit, but whether we like it or not, it is legal. Illegalizing tobacco use in the United States would take every bad aspect of the misguided "war on drugs" we've been fighting for the past twenty years and amplify it fifty-fold, dwarfing the crap we got into when we tried Prohibition in the last century. People shouldn't smoke, and I don't like being around people who smoke, but it is a choice that people in this country (of a certain age) are legally entitled to make, and as strong a supporter I am of smoke-free workplace laws, telling employees that they can't even smoke in their own homes smacks to me of Big Brother wrapped up in a capitalist cloak.
What worries me most is that even if the rules on smoking at this company don't affect me, the fact that they would regulate the private lives of their employees -- something I think no company has any conscionable right to do, particularly concerning a citizen's legal rights -- what else might they try to regulate? What would stop this company from firing me because they see me playing one of my dancing video games at the arcade and they think that people my age shouldn't be playing video games? What would stop this company from firing me because I'm a vegetarian and I don't get some of the nutrients that are found only in animal flesh? What's to stop any company, at least in the states where there aren't laws governing how much control employers can exert over their employees' private lives, from dictating exactly how I spend my time off of the company's clock?
Perhaps my issue isn't so much with this one company and its "we won't hire you if you smoke" rule as it is with the lack of employee protection laws in this country and the general attitude of the power elite in this country that big business and big money are the solutions to every problem, but it is still a very big issue in my mind right now. I feel like if I don't raise some hell about this, things will only get worse for everyone. Believe me, I know how ironic it is to be saying that in terms of me defending the right to smoke, but there is a general principle involved here that is causing this dilemma to put me completely on edge.
posted 2007/03/28 at 22:58
I'm still applying for jobs here, hoping I can find a position soon. Yesterday I did an online job application, and it's kind of given me cause for some real deep thinking here.
During the application process, I was informed that the company I was applying to work at does not hire smokers. I don't mean that workers can't smoke in their offices or that they have to leave company property to smoke, I mean that workers aren't even allowed to smoke on their own time, at their own homes. The company literally tests its workers for nicotine, and if a worker tests positive, he or she can be fired on the spot. (A company in Michigan was actually the first to start this practice a couple of years ago.)
Now, I don't smoke, and one of the things I won't miss when I finally leave this house is having to share it with three smokers. That being said, it kind of doesn't sit right with me that this company is making these kinds of demands on what its workers can and can't do on their own time, in their own homes, particularly when said activity, for better or worse, is legal. I usually don't like using slippery slope arguments, but if a company can dictate whether or not its workers can smoke in their own homes, what's to stop them from dictating where they shop, or who they can associate with? I did a bit of research, and apparently only twenty-four states have laws in place that prevent companies from dictating what their employees can do on their own time. Neither Ohio nor Michigan are among those twenty-four states.
I certainly don't question how bad smoking is, and how unpleasant it is to be around smokers. (Believe me, I know.) I am fully aware of how much of our health care costs are tied to smoking-related diseases, but if a company's worried about its health care costs, they can simply choose not to offer health insurance to its employees who smoke. I think that companies should give their employees a covered place outdoors to smoke, but I think a company would be within its right to demand that its employees leave company property to smoke. Demanding that employees never smoke anywhere, anytime, though, feels to me like an intrusion on people's civil liberties.
Given how desperate I am for a job at this point, I'm deferring my decision on whether or not this is a make-or-break issue for me until I get to the interview process (which will be at least a month). Still, right now I'm really not sure I'd be comfortable working for a company that legislates what I can and can't do on my own time. This may be one of those rare instances where my Libertarian side is beating out my Green side.
posted 2007/03/26 at 23:20
We got close to 80 degrees here in Toledo today. Unlike last time we had an unseasonably warm day and then it snowed overnight, the weather's not going to turn around right away, although we still have sub-freezing temperatures in our long-range forecast. Still, I can see some of the trees starting to bud leaves, and it won't be too much longer until I get a really good view outside my bedroom window here. As it is, it's near midnight and I still have my window open, letting the fresh air in.
This brings up a question I've been wanting to ask here for a while. I've had the .photography section up here since the .org's launch, and I've done all this nature photography for the site (since nature is my primary photographic interest). I'm probably going to want to do a lot more photography over the coming weeks -- especially if I wind up getting a job that causes me to move from Toledo -- but other than the usual places I go to, I don't know where else would provide an interesting backdrop for photography. I know most of you have never been to Toledo, so I'm not expecting anyone to list landmarks of the city they'd like to see, but just in general, are there any facets of Toledo you'd like to see me photograph?
I can't promise I can fulfill every request -- downtown Toledo is an absolutely horrible place -- but I'll see what I can do.
posted 2007/03/25 at 18:22
I wrote a few weeks ago about how moving from Toledo was likely to force me to choose between keeping my Canadian hockey coverage or watching all of my Detroit sports teams. I suppose this is one area where my local cable company was doing me a great service, even if I don't like the owners for locking their newspaper workers out and just generally not being very nice people. However, this isn't to say that they're totally pleasing me in this regard.
See, although Fox Sports Net Detroit carries the bulk of Red Wings and Tigers game, some games are still being broadcast on Detroit's Fox affiliate, WJBK-2. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago our local cable company decided not to renew their agreement to carry WJBK, even though they still carry nearly all the other major broadcast networks coming from Detroit. I've missed a handful of Red Wings games this year because of this, including yesterday's game. (Between the Wings losing and Todd Bertuzzi playing, though, perhaps that was for the best.)
Now, from what I understand, Fox basically told their local affiliates to jack up their fees to cable companies, in a similar move to how the cable companies are being forced to pay far more to carry Fox News Channel than they used to. A similar thing happened when my local cable company was one of many that chose not to pay an extra fee to the NFL in order to carry the football games that were shown exclusively on NFL Network late last season (which caused me to miss a key Bengals game), and in both this case and the WJBK case (if WJBK did indeed significantly raise their rates to be carried in Toledo), then yeah, my local cable company is in the right to stand up to them. Still, though, with all the other stuff that company's been doing, it kind of doesn't sit right with me to say that, at least in these instances, they're in the right.
The reason I bring this up is that the Tigers' opening day is a week from tomorrow, and not only is this the first year in a long time that I'm enthusiastic about the Tigers at the start of the season, but this is also the first year in the past five or six that I'd actually be able to watch the opening day game here at home. I would watch the game, that is, if I could, but unfortunately it's going to be on WJBK and not FSN Detroit. Sigh. Maybe if I'm lucky it'll be broadcast locally as well, but somehow I have the feeling that I'll have to settle for watching the game after opening day. That figures.
posted 2007/03/23 at 16:21
P.J. O'Rourke on Life in Toledo (NPR's All Things Considered)
(Originally aired on my birthday, funnily enough)
I'm not quite sure how to react to O'Rourke. Certainly I'm very critical about some aspects of Toledo, and I can't deny feeling the urge for a change of scenery after having lived here in my life, but at the same time there are things about Toledo that I do like, and I guess that as much as I've tried to shake it over the years, there are still tiny bits of "city pride" in me regarding Toledo. Not that O'Rourke was penning some scathing indictment of Toledo or anything like that, but for all that O'Rourke was adhering to the conventions of non-fiction narrative, I still don't think that he painted a picture of Toledo that sits all that well with me.
If I could pin down one thing that O'Rourke's piece seems to lack, it's historical context. As I've mentioned recently when writing about the local newspaper strike, Toledo has always been quite a strong union town, largely from our position on the Great Lakes just down from Detroit. Back when ships put the ship in shipping (say that ten times fast), Toledo grew as the automobile industry grew since ships going to and from Detroit would invariably stop here. However, this also meant that we were always playing second banana to Detroit, and even the city's most well-known export, glass, could be seen as just a small component of the horseless carriages the Motor City was churning out.
The important thing to remember, though, is that particularly in those early days of auto industry unionization, as financially liberal as the typical union member was, s/he was also likely to be very socially conservative, largely thanks to the religions that the burgeoning immigrant populations brought with them to America. When religion became a wedge with which American politicians differentiated the United States from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, religious conservatism took an even stronger hold in this country, and while that seemed to abate in cities like Detroit over the years, I don't feel like it ever abated that much here in Toledo. Even today, our representative to Washington, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, despite being one of the more fiscally liberal members of Congress, is also very fervently pro-life.
This is why I can't accept O'Rourke's portrayal of Toledoans as a happy, humble bunch. While I don't want to make Toledo out as being like a southern city in terms of religion and conservatism and all that, there is still a very strong undercurrent of old-time religion here that seems to make everyone kind of uptight. I don't think Toledoans manage their bad feelings all that well, either; I've already written about all the restuarants here (O'Rourke was right about the "48-inch waistbands" around here), and I'm sure that Toledo has the highest rate of cigarette smoking in Ohio, if not the entire United States. In addition, playing second fiddle to Detroit all this time has given Toledoans both an inferiority complex and a chip on their shoulder, which may serve to explain why Cleveland sports teams get more play in the local press than Detroit sports teams even though Detroit's much closer to us geographically. For that matter, I can think of lots of cities with smaller populations than Toledo that have their own professional sports teams, whereas we're pretty much stuck with the Mud Hens (and will always be identified with them thanks to Jamie Farr). Heck, one of the most recent enduring images of Toledo in the media was when our mayor went on The Daily Show and offered to let Hollywood blow up one of our old, decrepit buildings in exchange for filming here. (The same mayor who heard Gallagher's old 80's joke about giving houses near airports to deaf people and thought it would be good government policy.)
I don't mean to make Toledo out as this horrible place to live, but in all honesty I have to say it's pretty darn depressing up here, and I think that living here all my life has played a part in my mood problems. I have no doubt that I'll miss this place when I'm gone, but after the traveling I've done this past year, I can't help but feel like what I need most in my life right now is a fresh start someplace new. Toledo is hardly the "nowhere" that O'Rourke makes it out to be, but sometimes it feels like it'd be easier to be from "nowhere" than to be from Toledo.
posted 2007/03/21 at 21:47
First of all, happy 61st birthday to my father today.
There's still no word on the job hunt here, but that isn't stopping me from thinking about where I may end up moving to, assuming I get one of the jobs I've applied to already. Although my father has always encouraged me to avoid the apartment route whenever possible, I'm thinking that I should probably get an apartment for at least the first year or two after I move out, just so I can really get to know the city that I move to first, and then get a house once I really know what the neighbourhoods are like and what stores and other places I need quick access to.
This presents one huge problem for me, though, in that I'm guessing that me playing so much DDR/ITG could pose problems for the people who have the apartments next to me or below me. Now, I do know some people who play DDR in their apartments and don't get in trouble for it, but these people don't exactly weigh as much as I do. Back when I first got into DDR, I played up here in my second-floor bedroom, and my parents apparently could hear my steps quite loudly below, even when I was playing on the softer pads that have an inch of foam underneath them.
I'm guessing that I wouldn't have so much trouble if I were on the lowest floor of the apartment complex -- I remember one friend back from my UT days had an apartment that was below ground level and you could stomp your heart out down there without affecting anything -- but I've also heard that ground-floor apartments are far more susceptible to being burglarized than apartments on higher floors. I'm not sure that's a risk I want to take, even for the sake of my dance games. Then again, being forced to only play dance games at the arcade could get expensive for me really fast there, not to mention the fact that I've sunk so much money into my dance games these past three-plus years.
This will probably wind up being a bigger deal for me than I realize, because only after I started playing dance games did I really start getting the exercise I've needed for so long. I am interested in doing more varied forms of exercise here, but I think my dance games will continue to be, at least for the foreseeable future, the anchor of my workouts. I just hope I can find a dance game-friendly apartment complex wherever I end up moving to.
posted 2007/03/20 at 15:36
Activist Obama church enters spotlight (AP through Yahoo! News)
Members of my family keep asking me what I think of Obama, and to be honest I'm not sure what to think at this point. Obama says a lot of things I can agree with, and I don't think there's any doubt that in the few short years he's been in the national spotlight, Obama has proven himself to be one of the most gifted orators of our times. However, as has been mentioned countless times already, Obama has yet to really define his stances on a huge range of issues, and to be honest I almost worry that Obama may be too skilled of an orator, and that he may be able to craft his rhetoric in such a way that tricks other people into thinking that he's saying things that he really isn't saying.
I'd like to believe in Obama, but I can't put my foot down on where I stand on him one way or the other. I suppose the only way I really would be able to tell is if he were to get the Democratic nomination, and then to really listen closely to him and see if he sticks to his left-wing guns, or if the DLC just winds up Lamonting him into the centre like they've done with so many other candidates. I really don't think that there's going to be any stopping the Hillary juggernaut, though; the only way I see her losing the nomination is if she does something to screw up her own chances, and the Clintons may be the biggest masters of political games of all time, let alone this generation.
Still, I have to say that it's funny to see how desperate the right-wing is to discredit Obama this early on in the game. Perhaps the most amusing of these follies is how some on the right-wing (particularly the crowd over at Fox) keeps harping on the fact that Obama smokes, as if that has any bearing on his ability to govern effectively. The delicious irony here, of course, is that the right's hero of heroes, Ronald Reagan, used to be a SPOKESPERSON for Chesterfield cigarettes. Episodes like this makes me wonder just how little intelligence people on the right assume that everyone else has.
posted 2007/03/19 at 23:26
I'm going to go ahead and include a few little things I got for myself for my birthday as well here just to make this list bigger. Hey, I don't let myself be this materialistic very often.
- Poppy Z. Brite's Prime and Soul Kitchen. (I wanted these much earlier, but grad school really cut into my leisure reading.)
- The Best of the Gipsy Kings on CD.
- Season two of Soap on DVD.
- Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy Chronicles for Playstation. (I have no idea why I didn't pick these up earlier, other than the fact that my RPG backlog is already huge.)
- A very nice bathroom scale with which I will weigh myself on a regular basis ... maybe.
- Saving the best for last: The remastered DVD set of the original Oh My Goddess! OVA. (Oh yes.)
Oh, and since no one online got me anything off of my Amazon.com wishlist for my birthday despite how much I advertised it over the past few weeks, expect twice as many reminders come Christmas-time.
posted 2007/03/18 at 17:02
As opposed to last year's huge trip to Raleigh, this year I'm spending a quiet birthday here at the house with my family. Granted, it's not like I have the money to be doing any long roadtrips right now, but at this point it's hard not to assume that this will be my last birthday as a resident of this house. I plan on coming back here for my birthdays after I move out (especially if, as I hope, I remain within daytripping distance), but once I have my own place, I figure that birthdays and Christmases and stuff will feel a whole lot different.
This morning I woke up and realized that, for the first time in a long while, I was thinking about the best friend I'd ever had my whole life. It's been about four and a half years since I abandoned her when she needed me the most, and even though I've moved on for the most part, it's been hard not to feel like every bad thing that's happened to me since then has been thanks to all the bad karma that incident engendered. The events of this past summer may be why I'm thinking of her again, because I was faced with a similar situation and I once again failed to do the right thing.
I know that I shouldn't count on her ever appearing in my life ever again, but at the same time I've already been through enough crazy stuff in my life that I know better than to say "never" to the possibility, however remote it may be. Even though I may have moved on from her doesn't mean that there isn't still a huge place in my heart for her, and it doesn't mean that it no longer hurts to think about her, to remember what a good thing I had with her, and to castigate myself for spoiling that for no good reason. I guess on days like my birthday, when I tend to be even more contemplative than usual, it's just harder to avoid thinking about her and hurting from doing so.
Yeah, sorry I can't be cheerful right now.
posted 2007/03/17 at 22:59
Apart from a few of my pre-teen years when I let the groupthink of the private school I went to get to me, my wardrobe has always been far more functional than stylistic. When I was younger my parents did all my clothes shopping for me at K-Mart (believe me, that made those first months in private school with all those rich kids real fun), although these days I do clothes shopping in a variety of places. I still shop for bottoms at department stores -- mostly yoga pants, since I stopped wearing jeans once I got into dancing video games -- but my tops come from a variety of places, both online and brick-and-mortar. That being said, rare is the day that I'm not wearing some kind of t-shirt.
I thought about buying some fancier clothes when I first started grad school, as I noticed that the other English TAs tended to "dress up" on days when they were teaching. (At least at the start of the semester.) I decided in the end to keep with my old style of dress, though, because my style of teaching places very high importance on my students being able to be as comfortable as possible while I stretch their minds and challenge them, and I'm certainly more comfortable in a t-shirt and yoga pants than anything else. I figured that I should model this for my students by keeping my old wardrobe from my undergraduate days. (This also helped me subvert the traditional teacher-student power dynamic, another important element of my teaching style.)
That being said, these days I'm kind of thinking about expanding my wardrobe. I don't know if it's a function of my age or just being tired of my wardrobe being so limited or looking at Ariel's photos of her own eclectic mix-and-match wardrobe and being kind of jealous, but I'd kind of like to get some more things to hang in my closet here. The problem I'm having (aside from being reluctant to spend much money until I get a job) is that when I look for the kinds of clothes I'm interested in online, most of the Websites I'm finding haven't been updated for at least three years. I have no idea what's up with that, although maybe it's the universe's subtle way of telling me that my fashion sense is seriously outdated.
posted 2007/03/16 at 20:31
... and people who watched Countdown tonight as well:
The last name Cloete is not pronounced "KLOH-eh-teh;" it is pronounced "KLOO-tee," with a soft t.
(Cloete is my brother-in-law's last name, so Keith's mispronunciation tonight really irked me.)
posted at 15:21
(Just to give you an idea of the weather around here lately, Wednesday afternoon we topped 70 degrees and had a severe thunderstorm warning for a good long while. The following morning when I woke up there was new snow on the ground. This is getting pretty insane.)
It was a year ago today that I loaded up a rented Kia and took off to Raleigh for a dance game tournament Lara was running, and a chance to meet all the cool Carolina dance game players I'd read so much about. Funnily enough, the only other major trip I've taken since then was for a tournament Lara ran in Cleveland last month. I'm hoping that soon I'll be making other long trips for job interviews at some of the places I've applied for jobs at.
I'm not really all that big on cars -- especially compared to my father, who is one of the biggest classic car nuts you'd ever hope to meet -- but there is something I enjoy about long drives. Although I do have music to listen to in my Camry, whenever I'm out on the road I just like to keep things as silent as possible. I guess there's something kind of zen-like about being out there on the highway for a long while, something that helps me take my mind off of the dozens of things I usually have swirling around it at any one moment.
I figure that if I get a job that's within daytrip distance from the house, I'll probably be coming back here every Saturday or so. In addition to wanting to stay close to my family, I figure things will be a lot easier for me if I just bring the basic necessities with me when I get my own place, and then I can start bringing other things from here to my place as I need them. The folks don't seem to be in a rush to rent out my room here (even though I've encouraged them to let Jeff rent it after I move out), so I guess there really isn't too much of a rush. Besides, driving here and back will just give me another good excuse to go out driving.
posted 2007/03/14 at 19:16
First of all, Dennis Kucinich now has a MySpace and a YouTube account, for those of you interested in such things.
Once again I'm finding myself in kind of an awkward position thanks to Ohio election laws. I really, really, really want to see Kucinich as the Democrats' nominee for President, but at the same time, I don't know if I should campaign for him in the primaries because I refuse to vote for him in the primary. It isn't that I don't support Dennis, because I do, but according to Ohio election law, if I vote in the Democrat presidential primary then that officially makes me, according to Ohio, a registered Democrat, and I don't want to be a Democrat. If Dennis doesn't get the nomination, then I'll probably vote for the Green Party candidate in November, simply because I'll wind up agreeing with the Green Party candidate much more than I'll wind up agreeing with the Democratic candidate.
There's also the fact that being a registered Democrat in Ohio can be risky. I was in my first semester of grad school in November 2004, and one of my Democrat classmates wound up being victimized by state Republicans. A Republican challenged her voter registration, by claiming that she hadn't lived at her present residence for at least a year before the election, even though she had. Now, according to Ohio law these challenges can only go to court if the notices are mailed out two weeks before the election, and my classmate's notice was mailed right at the deadline. However, by some weird happenstance (gee I wonder what), she only received her notice five days before the election, and her hearing was scheduled for the Saturday before the election. She had already been scheduled for work that day, and thus she was forced to choose between voting and keeping her job, and of course she chose to work that day being a grad student and all. One of my classmates experienced first-hand the Republican effort to suppress Democratic voters, so all the right-wing commentators who claim that those efforts were just a construct of the so-called "liberal media" make me sick.
Of course, I should also note here that Ohio Democrats were so gung-ho on suppressing Ralph Nader that they not only made sure that his name didn't appear on the 2004 ballot, but even pressed to make sure that his write-in votes wouldn't be tallied. I still think that if Ohio Democrats had put more effort into promoting Kerry than trying to screw over Nader (and David Cobb, the official Green Party candidate), even the Republicans' best efforts would have failed and Kerry would have carried Ohio and won the election.
Still, I feel like I'm in a difficult position, because I want to support Kucinich but I don't want the baggage that the state of Ohio would attach to me voting for him in the primary. I really can't stand how the Republicans and Democrats have set things up across the country so that they've effectively got a duopoly on political power, and as much attention is paid these days (and rightfully so) to Republican efforts to create a permanent Republican lock on political power, I think more attention needs to be paid to Democrats' efforts to lock other political parties out of the electoral process.
posted 2007/03/13 at 17:26
It's seventy degrees and sunny out right now, so you'll pardon me if for today's post I cut-and-paste a post I made on a messageboard earlier today instead of creating something original. We'll be dipping back below freezing again in just a couple of days, so I want to take advantage of this good weather while it lasts.
Anyway, this is the tail-end of someone else's post that I was replying to:
But seriously, what I've seen on these boards recently, and talking to other people I know, atheists are kind of assholes. I guess it's kind of shock value from being awakened from the naive assumption that being atheist equated somewhat with being more open minded about accepting other peoples faith. That's what I get for believing that one group of people is less intolerant than another group of people I suppose.
This is how I responded:
I don't think it's a function of atheism/faith so much as it is a certainty of belief that pervades one's character making him/her intolerable. I've known plenty of atheists and religious people of different stripes who are nice to be around, and I've known plenty who I didn't want to be within 500 feet of just because their religious faith/atheism was so strong that they believed that they had the answers to EVERYTHING, and based on one of two little acts of mental gymnastics that somehow "proved" their religion/atheism was right, believed that they were automatically smarter and more knowledgeable than everyone else around them, and had to drive that point home at EVERY POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY.
Unfortunately we live in a media-driven culture where those of us who are more meek and humble, who have strong beliefs but don't try to push them down everyone's throats all the time, don't get much press or publicity because we're "boring." Our culture thrives on conflict (thanks in large part to hypercapitalism), so it's the people who set out to start conflict by being intolerable, obnoxious jerks who get on television and set the tone that other people mimic in an attempt to increase their own social, political, and cultural capital. Most people aren't like that, or at least they wouldn't be if we, as a culture, stopped placing such esteem on being confrontational and obnoxious, and started rewarding reason and compassion. Even if those qualities don't necessarily make for "good TV," they certainly would make for a better world.
I guess this does kind of tie in, in a loose way, to a California representative becoming the first ever to openly declare his atheism yesterday. (AP via Yahoo! News)
posted 2007/03/12 at 21:56
With my birthday now less than a week away (buy me something off of my Amazon.com wishlist darn it), I am reminded of the fact that for my birthday last year my parents got me the Gameboy Advance remake of Final Fantasy IV, and then for Christmas they got me the Gameboy Advance remake of Final Fantasy V. Given that the Gameboy Advance remake of Final Fantasy VI came out last month, I think I have a pretty good idea of what one of my birthday presents will be this coming Sunday. (Is it too much to hope for a Gameboy Advance remake of Chrono Trigger some time in the near future?)
This realization, coupled with a debate about the merits of Final Fantasy VI I had on a messageboard recently, has me thinking about the whole process of remaking games for newer consoles. I think it's noteworthy that these Final Fantasy remakes have been coming out mostly for systems of comparable power to the systems the games were originally made on (the DS remake of Final Fantasy III being the only exception I can think of). I'm wondering if perhaps there is a link between the graphical complexity of a game and how mature of a storyline the game can get away with.
In this debate I was having, I was arguing that one of the reasons I don't think Final Fantasy VI fully succeeded was that the game was just ahead of its time. In addition to pure technological restrictions (the opera scene that so many people gush about was ruined, for me, by the crappy wavetable they used for the voices), I think that the story was a little too dark and mature to be adequately conveyed. Final Fantasy VI's story, to me, seems like it could have been told far better on Playstation than it was on the Super NES. It was only when we got to the 32-bit era that the technology allowed game developers to create worlds where you could tell a really mature story and have the visuals and sounds to really immerse you in that world.
There's a part of me that thinks that I may just be thinking this because of how I grew up with these games, though. When the original Final Fantasy first came out, I don't think I would have been interested in handling a story more complex than the old "bad guy looks to destroy our world, please save us" framework. Perhaps I'm just so used to simpler stories being told on more primitive video game systems that to me the idea of trying to tell a more mature story on less powerful hardware seems like it wouldn't work. Then again, it's not like I played every RPG that came out in the 8- and 16-bit eras, so for all I know maybe there was a game that succeeded in doing just that.
posted 2007/03/11 at 23:21
Switched time successfully: My computer.
Did not switch time successfully: My cell phone.
Not applicable: VCR (no DST function), stereo (ditto), car clock (analog).
What's most infuriating about my cell phone not switching over automatically is that there's no way to set the clock yourself. You'd think that if the phone automatically downloaded the time off of some signal somewhere (which I assume it has to do in order to keep correct time), the signal itself would switch over to the new DST rules. I'd hate to think that the phone itself might not be able to change to the new DST settings, since there's no way to upgrade the software on it. Like I gather most people do these days, I don't wear a watch because I usually count on my cell phone to give me the time, which is going to be a problem if Virgin doesn't do something about the incorrect time being displayed right now.
By the way, why is it that these changes to DST -- which I personally like even though I'm more of a night person (I like extra daylight in the spring, though) -- always seem to happen under our worst presidents? First Reagan, now Dubya. Odd.
posted 2007/03/10 at 18:39
I've been dieting since the start of the year, but Saturday nights I take off of my diet so I can indulge in my odd cravings. Even though I may not eat the best food on Saturday nights, I do at least try to keep my portions in moderation. (I don't think my problem with food is so much that I eat the wrong stuff -- although I could do with less carbs and more variety in what I eat, to be certain -- but I tend to eat way too much when I'm not dieting because the feeling of a full tummy is comforting to me.) Given that Toledo has more restaurants per capita than any other large city in the world, I have a lot of choices on nights like this, although I usually end up getting something delivered so I can watch my hockey.
Here's the thing, though. Domino's Pizza has been advertising a new garlic bread pizza on television these past few weeks, and it certainly looks great. The problem is that, for all that Toledo has so many restaurants, we don't have Domino's Pizza, or at least we don't have it now. We used to have quite a few locations, and there used to be one less than a mile from my house. (While we were out of the house after the fire, it changed to a Cottage Inn for some reason.) There was another location several miles south of here, but that one went out of business, and the Domino's that used to serve UT just up and vanished one day. The closest Domino's to me at this moment is the one in Bowling Green, which is a half-hour drive each way. I doubt they'd deliver that far, and even if they did (or if I drove down to get it), the pizza would probably be lukewarm by the time I got it back up here.
I could understand this if pizza franchises as a whole in Toledo were having troubles, but we've had at least five new chains open locations in Toledo in the past year. Not that I think Domino's is cream-of-the-crop pizza, but I don't think these new chains make pizza as well as Domino's. I wonder if Domino's just didn't find much success in Toledo, or if they did something like raise their franchising fees so much that these other chains started coming to Toledo in place of Domino's.
posted 2007/03/08 at 23:28
[Reminder: My birthday is in ten days. Have you bought me a present off of my Amazon.com wishlist yet? You know you want to ... ]
It's been a while since I posted an update on the situation with our local newspaper, the Toledo Blade. The Blade is one of the few big city papers that's still locally owned and operated, and of course I'm all for local media. Unfortunately, in the case of the Blade, I went to the same school that the owners of the paper sent their kids to, so I know the family, and thus I know why no one really wants the paper.
Anyway, over six months ago some Blade employees were locked out since the owners of the paper basically decided to go all Wal-Mart on the unions and tried to get the employees to sign a new contract which would divest their unions of pretty much all their bargaining power. This would be bad enough in and of itself, but the same family that owns the Blade also owns our local cable company, and they decided to start airing anti-union commercials in pretty much every local commercial break on every channel. I swear not an hour went by without at least two commercials talking about why the only reason Toledo's economy is so bad is because the unions prevent companies from making "a fair profit."
About a month ago, though, things changed. The family's still running commercials for the Blade (which I don't think they ever did before the leadup to the lockout), but the commercials just feature scabs, identified as "Replacement Workers" on the chyrons, talking about how wonderful working at the paper is, without talking about how bad the unions are. My first thought was that some judge somewhere ruled that it was unfair for the owners of the paper and cable company to take advantage of their dominance in the Toledo media market, but I can't find any news stories about that anywhere. Perhaps the hardcore anti-union propaganda just backfired on them and they toned down their rhetoric. Whatever the case, I just wish this lockout would end soon and the paper would let its employees go back to work there at decent wages with union protection.
I did find one pro-union Website devoted to the struggle, stoptheblade.com, but I haven't found any pro-ownership Websites. I can't even find any real mention of the lockout on toledoblade.com. Now that I've said something about that, though, watch them put up a Website in the next couple of days or so.
posted 2007/03/07 at 13:46
Ah, it seems like a while since I've just posted about how bad a day's gone for me, but good grief did yesterday stink something fierce.
First of all, I had errands I was supposed to run yesterday, but none of them got done at all. When I went out to start my car, the battery was dead and it just wouldn't get going. Normally this wouldn't have been that much of a problem because I can always borrow one of the folks' minivans to do my running around, but my brother-in-law had taken one to work, and he'd left the other one with so little gas in the tank that it wouldn't start. By the time my father's battery charger had gotten the Camry up and running again, it was too late to do the stuff I needed to do that day.
Oh, but it gets better. Yesterday had actually started out on a good note, as I'd gotten my copy of the latest Japanese home version of DDR in the mail. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with how DDR (or video games in general) work, not every song in a home version of DDR is playable right away; in order to "unlock" (as it's called) songs, you have to do some other stuff, most of which is time-consuming and downright difficult, and is hard enough to do when the game is instructing you on what to do in English. Not only is my command of Japanese not good enough for me to understand the on-screen instructions without help, but my English-Japanese dictionaries wouldn't have even helped because the font used in the game is so small that I couldn't even make out most of the kanji. (Seriously, what is with video games using smaller and smaller fonts? Do developers assume that anyone who plays video games these days has a 52" television to play on?)
I didn't want to go through the hassle of unlocking all the songs in the game, so I downloaded a save file off of the Internet that had all the songs already unlocked and transfered the file to my Playstation 2. However, I then found out that the save file was corrupted, and while it didn't ruin other files on my memory card, it did screw up part of the memory card, and for some reason Sony didn't make it possible to clean up corrupted memory cards. From what I've read online, the only way I'll have to fix the problem with my memory card is either to buy a new memory card and transfer the good files over to the new card, or buy another device that will allow me to reformat the memory card (after transfering the good files over to a spare memory card, of course).
These are small things, I grant you, but stuff like this kind of makes it hard to get out of bed the following day.
posted 2007/03/05 at 14:58
When I wrote about Keith Olbermann's "Special Comment" segments on Countdown a couple of weeks or so ago [link], I mentioned that I don't always agree with the tactics Keith uses on his show. Case in point, at least half the time Keith makes some mention of Rush Limbaugh (usually in the "Worst Person in the World" segment), he slips in some sort of snide remark about Limbaugh's weight. Now, I am certainly no fan of Limbaugh's, and I think his rhetoric has done this country an incredible amount of harm over the past twenty years or so, but not only does Limbaugh's weight have no standing whatsoever on the relevance of his opinions, but Limbaugh's been at a fairly healthy weight for several years now. Limbaugh gives those of us on the left enough material as it is just from the absurdity of the things he says on his radio show; making jokes about his size is not only pointless and way behind the times, but I think it also shows a certain hypocrisy when these same people talk about how the right-wing in this country relies so much on personal attacks.
This is coming up again because late last week Ann Coulter used a homophobic slur in describing John Edwards at a conservative conference. I really, really don't like Coulter, and this incident was just another example, to me, of the despicable politics of the modern conservative movement. Unfortunately, many on the left turned right around and started in on their whole "Ann Coulter's a man baby, yeah!" crap. I'm hoping that the irony of people going after someone who used a homophobic slur with transphobic rhetoric isn't lost on anyone. (Again, this is a common tactic Keith Olbermann uses on his show.) Not only is this sort of stuff unnecessary, but it offends me, and it would offend me even if I wasn't a transsexual myself. Even if Ann Coulter were born with a penis (which I sincerely doubt), what standing does that have on her views? Again, isn't the material Coulter already gives us with her columns and speeches enough for those of us on the Left to talk for hours about how wrong she is on almost every issue she speaks about?
I'm not saying that I don't understand the visceral pleasure that insults like these give to some people, and certainly there have been times in my life when I've done that kind of insulting. Even now, when I try my hardest to avoid participating in that kind of rhetoric, I'm not going to deny getting a little guilty pleasure every once in a while when someone crafts a really good insult against someone I don't particularly care for. (I don't think that's something you can ever completely get out of your system, no matter how hard you try.) That still doesn't change the fact that it is utter and complete hypocrisy for so many people on the left (certainly not everyone) to call attention to the personal attacks that have become such a staple of modern right-wing rhetoric -- something I think needs to be pointed out and rallied against -- and then to turn around and use those exact same tactics against people on the right-wing. As Paulo Freire points out in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, you can't tear down the oppressor's house using the oppressor's own tools.
posted 2007/03/04 at 18:07
Once again I found myself compelled to watch both games and all the pre- and post-game coverage on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada last night. Although nothing is for certain yet on my job hunt, I'm planning on having to move to find good employment, and I'm guessing that wherever I wind up I won't have access to CBC television.
This brings up kind of an interesting dilemma for me. Hockey Night in Canada's coverage is broadcasted on the NHL pay-per-view package NHL Centre Ice, so even though I might lose my Canadian comedies and beloved curling coverage, I would at least keep the best hockey coverage in the world wherever I go. If I move someplace where I can't get Red Wings games on basic cable (basically anywhere but Michigan), then purchasing NHL Centre Ice is a no-brainer for me, even though I'll likely get very few Tigers and Pistons games throughout the year. (Let's forget about the Bengals for the sake of this argument.) If I move to Michigan then I'll probably get FSN Detroit on basic cable, which means I'd get all of my teams, but adding NHL Centre Ice on top of that would kind of be overkill for me. I love Hockey Night in Canada, but not that much. This isn't exactly the kind of decision that will affect my choice of jobs, but it is something to think about.
Oh, and since I've been talking about children's issues lately, I'd also like to note that during Hockey Night in Canada last night, this organization aired several commercials encouraging children who are being bullied at school to call their 800 number for help. The number is just for counseling for the victims and the organization doesn't appear to actually confront the bullies, but it sure would be nice if children had a toll-free number to call to report incidents of bullying. At least Canada seems to be taking a good first step towards that. (In the states, of course, I'm sure that anyone who suggested anything like that would get all of that "being bullied builds character" rhetoric that makes me want to puke.)
posted 2007/03/02 at 14:51
I'd prepared something to tide you all over here in case it turned out that jury duty was going to keep me occupied this week. Even though it didn't, I still figured I should post this, so ...
New in .fiction: "Jesus Sends You Flowers Every Spring." This is a piece I wrote for one of my fiction workshops in undergrad a long time ago, and I was never completely satisfied with the way it turned out. I like the ideas I worked with in the story, but I could never write the second half of the story in a way that I felt did justice to the story in my mind. It's not that I don't like the story, but it's not something I'd consider sending out to get published.
In a way I kind of don't like how I don't put my best-of-the-best work up here, but there was a reason why I stopped publishing fiction and poetry on here after I got my first two poems published. I still want to keep alive the possibility of making a living off of my poetry and fiction, and publishers just aren't going to be interested in attempting to make money off of work that's already been published for free, particularly in a channel with such wide-ranging distribution as the Internet. I've been devoting much more time to writing lately, though, and I hope that I'll be able to keep writing here even after I find a good job. I also hope that I'll still be able to keep posting fiction and poetry up here as well, without ruining any potential chances for publication.
posted 2007/03/01 at 20:51
You know, as much as I may dislike it, I've come to accept that companies will continue to market their products in ways that reinforce traditional gender stereotypes. The marketers responsible for this kind of advertising will say that it tests well in focus groups, that it allows them to segment their marketing efforts across easily identifiable lines, and that they aren't the ones who should be responsible for instigating social change through the command they have in modern media. I disagree wholeheartedly, but at the same time I've resigned myself to the fact that this isn't going to change any time soon.
That being said, NutriSystem's latest television advertising campaign couldn't be worse if it tried. It doesn't help that they're running different-length versions of the same two commercials, one of which features only men and one only women. In the women's campaign they've got a bunch of beautiful but unrecognizable faces, but in the men's campaign they signed all these sports people like Dan Marino, Don Shula, Cris Carter, John Kruk, Bob Golic, and others (but, of course, with a heavy focus on football players because football's a man's game). While the men talk about the hearty portions of "man food" Nutrisystem sends you, the women fawn on how wonderful the chocolate tastes. It's almost comical the way the commercials bring up and reinforce all these old gender roles that have been a staple of American culture for so long in such a patently obvious way.
What isn't funny is how, in the women's commercial, one of the woman says something along the lines of, "My husband says he's glad that he's got his real wife back." America has certainly latched onto this notion that "you can never be too thin" long before I was born, but women have it far worse in this regard than men, and the problem has only seemed to get worse over the years. If a man is carrying a few extra pounds, he's just "husky" and others will likely think he's "earned" the right to proudly carry extra weight because he used to play football. A woman who doesn't fall neatly into her "ideal" BMI, on the other hand, will be chastised for being slovenly, and overindulgent, and not fulfilling her primary role in life, which is, of course, to be attractive to her husband. Men certainly get bad messages about body size, I'm not denying that, but this commercial by NutriSystem spells out, in as direct a manner as I can recall, how much worse women have it; women just aren't considered "real" in this country unless they're rail-skinny.
Perhaps I shouldn't say that I've gotten used to this kind of unethical advertising, but it's certainly something that I'm not expecting will disappear anytime soon. Like I said before, for the men in the NutriSystem commercials to be throwing around footballs while the women go on and on about how wonderful the chocolates are is, on a level, kind of amusing, especially since whoever wrote this advertising campaign didn't seem to make the slightest effort to camouflage the appeals to these old gender stereotypes. For a woman to come out and say that she wasn't a "real" person because she wasn't super-skinny, though ... that honestly offends me. It's not like I have the money to afford NutriSystem in the first place, but after seeing these commercials all over the place there is no way I would ever fork any of my money over to them.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon