posted 2007/11/30 at 22:06
New in the .journal: .org.7: When you gonna make up your mind? Normally I try to have the anniversary entries focus more on my life as a whole, but given the enormity of one particular problem I've been facing, I decided to devote the whole entry to that. Given its broad-ranging implications for my future, I think it makes for a good anniversary column.
Yes, I will get around to updating the other sections of the .org soon. I'm just not sure when at this point.
Labels: journal, siteupdate
posted at 14:49
The reach of his magnum opus, Gulliver's Travels, on our culture cannot easily be overstated. Although those of us who have memories before 1994 will probably recall the image of the Lilliputians tying Gulliver down as the most iconic image of the book, its biggest influence in modern times comes from the name Swift invented for the deformed creatures Gulliver encounters near the end of his journey: Yahoos. Yes, Swift is responsible for creating what eventually became the name of one of the Internet's most popular and powerful portals. One can only imagine how history might have changed if Yahoo's founders had chosen the name of another fictional race from Gulliver's Travels as a name for their Website, say, Brobdingnag or Glubbdubdrib.
Although Gulliver's Travels is by far Swift's most recognizable work, his satire A Modest Proposal may be more appropriate reading for these ages. In it, Swift suggests that the poor families of Ireland might ease their financial troubles by selling their children as delicacies for aristocrats. Thus, Swift not only brought us the name of Yahoo, but he also may easily lay claim to being the father of neo-conservative thinking. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five!
1. Are you a mentalist or an illusionist?
I feel a need to explain the theme for this week's Five: These are questions taken from an interview Larry King did with Criss Angel earlier this week. I don't get the appeal, but I might as well play along. As for this question, I am neither mentalist nor illusionist, but most who know me would certainly agree that I am at least somewhat mental.
2. You’re on a roll. Do you feel the roll you’re on?
If the roll's just come out of the oven and it's warm and toasty, yes. If it's been left out in the air too long and has started to crust up, I'll certainly feel that underneath me. Otherwise I might just mistake the roll for a large pillow.
3. How many performances a week?
Life is a performance, so measuring performance by a number instead of an amount is fallacious.
4. Is there a little bit of Evel Knievel in you?
Unless Mom had some really freaky dalliance that she never let on to the rest of us about, no. Then again, I hear DNA testing kits are only a hundred bucks at Rite Aid now, maybe I should make sure of this before any rumours start spreading.
5. How much of what you do is physical, by the way?
Even if something I do is accomplished physically, it starts with a mental impulse, so ultimately it's all completely mental. Like me.
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2007/11/28 at 21:14
I'd like to post a bit of a follow-up to a post earlier this month about a television commercial about workplace safety on Canadian television that features incredibly graphic images of a woman with her skin peeling off as the result of accidentally throwing hot oil all over herself. First of all, if you didn't read the comments to the post, I found a copy of the commercial on YouTube later on, although before I link to it I just want to reiterate that this commercial is extremely graphic and nearly made me vomit. That being said, if you think you can stomach it and want to see what all the fuss is about, knock yourself out. The commercial has aired during the late-night games on Hockey Night in Canada each of the past two Saturdays, but I've gotten a lot better at switching the channel before the commercial becomes so horrible.
First of all, I should mention that there is a Website that goes along with this campaign, a Website which I tried to visit several days ago, but given that everywhere you go on the site there's a theme of this severed hand -- even if it's a cartoon severed hand -- I just got sick of it and stopped trying to see what all was in there. Again, let me preface this by saying that this isn't nice stuff, but if you want to see how this campaign has been translated to the Internet, the Website for the campaign is prevent-it.ca.
Naturally, I was curious to see what kind of news coverage this campaign was getting, and I found a good article about it at canada.ca. This link is safe, thank Goddess. However, given that I'd argued in my first post that late-night Saturday shouldn't be considered a "safe time" for this commercial given the high number of youths who watch Hockey Night in Canada, I was shocked to discover that the day I first saw this commerial, it also aired during a matinee hockey game that afternoon on CBC. In other words, CBC was showing a commercial that depicted a woman whose skin is, in the words of the article, "peel[ing] off in bloody ribbons," at four in the afternoon. How anyone could think that a commercial like this is suited for Saturday afternoon television just completely astounds me.
In my original post on this topic, I'd mentioned that I thought that the body that produced this commercial did so because they wanted to grab the attention of young adults who have been growing up on the Saw movies. (It was right after Halloween, so the movie franchise was kind of fresh in my mind.) After reading what that news article had to say about the kinds of comments that were posted about the commercial on YouTube, though, and after going back to YouTube to read more of the comments myself (you know, the ones with expletives that couldn't easily be reprinted in a news article), I couldn't help but think of Beavis and Butthead when reading through some of the replies. Having once again painfully reminded myself of how old I am, I tried to update the reference in my mind to Jackass, because shows like Jackass have likely led a whole generation of young people to think that televised depictions of these kinds of horrors are, well, cool.
As I said in my first post, though, I'm too much of a First Amendment believer to suggest that these commercials should be censored, although given the kinds of things that have been censored on Canadian television in the past, it doesn't make much sense to me that these commercials have been allowed to air. Still, though, even if I don't believe in government censorship, I think there's a lot to be said about self-censorship, self-restraint, and plain old common sense, and whoever thought that this commercial would be suitable for Saturday afternoon television is plainly lacking in one, or all, of those things. I'm all for calling attention to workplace hazards, particularly those hazards that are caused by corporate greed and indifference to workers (which, ironically, this campaign is all about), but if the sampling of comments I've seen on YouTube are any indication, this commercial may, ironically, be having quite the opposite effect. Regardless, I sincerely hope that I don't run across this commercial again, and that it gets shuffled off to viewing times when young children aren't so likely to be watching CBC.
Labels: canada, commercials, freespeech
posted 2007/11/26 at 21:17
Bam! Emeril Leaves Food Network (mediabistro.com)
I had heard a while ago that Emeril had planned to leave Food Network, or at least discontinue Emeril Live, and I've been pained to see Food Network begin to transition to Alton Brown as the "face" of the network. I haven't watched Emeril regularly since before the fire, but back when I first got DirecTV in the late 90's Emeril Live was probably the show I watched the most back then. Mom owns several of his cookbooks, and my world-famous brownies are pretty much a slight tweak of one of his recipes. I haven't watched Emeril on a regular basis for several years now, although that's more due to lack of time than lack of interest, but this news kind of saddens me.
It should go without saying that I'm not happy with Alton being promoted to the network's most promoted star. I disliked Good Eats from the very first episode, and I think Alton himself is, pardon my language, a smug jackass. I can't stand how Alton thinks he knows the only "right" way to cook everything, and how he presents himself as the Goddess's own gift to cooking and television. I understand how shows like Mythbusters are hot properties these days (and that's one show I haven't been catching enough of lately), but at least Mythbusters is informative and entertaining. I usually catch at least one absurdly incorrect statement or atrocious recipe on every episode of Good Eats I'm forced to suffer through (it would figure that everyone else in the house is a big fan of the show), and I shudder at how Alton could possibly consider his awful puns to be anything even approaching entertainment. I can't figure out how Food Network could basically build itself on the back of a goofy, fun-loving chef who always reminds his audience that good cooking "isn't rocket science," and has now turned around and made a conceited jerk who turns everything into rocket science its primary star. Don't even ask me what I think of Iron Chef America, seriously.
Funnily enough, though, the one cooking show I have been catching on a regular basis is also from another former Food Network star. I had heard about Ming Tsai getting a PBS cooking show a while back, but it was only in the past couple of months that I found where I could watch it locally. Since it airs here early Saturday afternoons, when I have a bit of free time, I've been watching it regularly. I can't say that I've ever been a big fan of Asian fusion cooking, and no one would ever dare to say that Ming has a larger-than-life personality built for television, but I always liked East Meets West on Food Network back in the day, and I've enjoyed watching Ming's new show. If nothing else, watching Jeff Smith and Mary Ann Esposito on PBS Saturday afternoons when I was younger was what got me into cooking in the first place, so being able to watch a friendly face (and a good chef) on PBS these past few Saturdays has been nice and kind of a trip down memory lane.
Labels: food, television
posted 2007/11/25 at 21:53
Giuliani's "Kucinich-Size" Crowds Disappoint In New Hampshire (NBC News via huffingtonpost.com)
The Huffington Post, as usual, chose their own headline for the story, and much like the Drudge Report before them, they picked a headline that targeted the HuffPo base and framed the meat of the story in the best terms possible for their goals, mainly to assist the mainstream Democratic candidates towards next year's Presidential elections. (Also note the unflattering photo of Giuliani they use in the story; as much as I dislike Giuliani, I don't think it's fair of HuffPo to do that.) Mind you, in just the short excerpt of the story featured in the link above, HuffPo had another way to frame the story, comparing the size of Giuliani's crowd to the size of the crowd Ron Paul garnered. That comparison would have worked just as well to slam Giuliani, plus it would have stuck it to another Republican, but instead HuffPo went with the Kucinich slam.
I've written before about how upset I am that HuffPo has made itself a shout box for the centrists who continue to stink up the Democratic Party, paying a small amount of lip service to Obama but otherwise playing the same "Clinton doesn't represent us but don't you dare vote Green" game that the Democrats played last time with John Kerry. It simply boggles the mind that there are so many on the so-called left here in America who are pushing hard to make Ron Paul an alternative to Clinton simply because he opposes the war, given that he also opposes pretty much everything the Democratic Party has traditionally stood for. I'm not saying that the war isn't an important issue, but it's almost as if Democrats are willing to throw away their very identity in order to try to spite Clinton in some sick, twisted way.
What has made this situation all the more maddening for me in recent weeks has been the sudden surge of Mike Huckabee in polls, both in the early primary/caucus states and in the nation as a whole. Huckabee's rise in the polls doesn't particularly surprise me, because he represents the values that the religious right so desperately want to keep in the White House. We can argue Huckabee's electability later -- I think he's far more electable than anyone in the mainstream media has argued -- but the point I am trying to make is that Mike Huckabee is living proof that a party can play to its traditional values instead of running to the centre and create a viable candidate. Huckabee's example should have all true Democrats rushing to put their money into the campaigns of Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, and yet both of them continue to be treated as "joke" candidates, not only by the mainstream media but by the Democratic Party establishment itself.
I'm pretty much resigned to voting for the Green Party candidate next year and taking whatever abuse people want to give me for it. That's not my primary concern right now, though. Right now I want nothing more than to take Dennis Kucinich softly by the shoulders, give him a warm smile, and then shake the heck out of him and yell "Why on earth are you still a Democrat?" I understand Kucinich's historical ties to the party and his desire to work within the party to try to transform it, but I don't think at this point that any reasonable person can expect that the big money centrists that have so thoroughly ruined the Democratic Party will be taking off any time soon. More than ever, 2008 needs to be the year that the Green Party establishes itself as a viable alternative for true progressives, and we start to chip away at the two-party hegemony that is so clearly leading this nation right down the crapper.
Labels: greenparty, kucinich, politics, rhetoric
posted 2007/11/23 at 19:07
Adolph Marx was born, later legally Arthur Marx because he disliked the name Adolph. However, it was under his stage name of Harpo Marx he would become best known, as the always silent, usually lecherous, harp virtuoso of the Marx Brothers. While Chico's piano-playing captivated me as a child because of the tricks he did with his fingers while he played, Harpo's musical moments always touched me the deepest because they so totally broke from the ne'er-do-well characters he played throughout the rest of the movies, and were always elegant and beautiful. After that, though, it was usually right back to chasing after the young women in the films. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. If a really, really good photographer — the kind who always makes you look good and still look like you — were to take your photo right now, what would be a good title for it?
Such a photographer simply does not exist, but for the purpose of this exercise, let's say "Despondent."
2. If that photo were so good it belonged on the cover of a magazine, what would be a good choice, based on where you are and what you’re doing?
Bloggers don't have magazines; we publish what we do online. Seriously, I haven't done anything of interest today, so I have no idea how to answer this question.
3. If you took an interesting or aesthetically pleasing photo of something in your view right now, what might it be, and what would its title be?
The lightpole on the highway in our backyward just above my LCD right now, and for a title let's go with "Why it's so hard to see the stars at night."
4. Among people you know, who seems to have a knack for taking great shots of people?
Given that my family is more inclined to take shots at people than take shots of them ... yeah. I'll go with Lara here; her DeviantArt has a number of lovely photos on it if you're interested.
5. Are you usually happier with candid photos of you, or photos you’ve posed for?
I'm happier when there are no photos taken of me at all, thank you very much. (I will sometimes consent to have my photo taken if it serves a larger purpose, e.g. when I was in all those stories in UT's newspaper a couple of years ago, but otherwise I'm very camera-shy.)
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2007/11/22 at 21:01
The depression I've been suffering from these past few days has only been getting worse. I even skipped half of my usual waffles-and-Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Thanksgiving tradition today, just eating the waffles and generally moping around the house. Things have gotten bad enough that I notice myself slipping back into some of the old, destructive behaviours I thought I'd gotten over in recent years. I suppose things aren't so bad right now because I can distract myself with the Red Wings game on my television right now, and I was playing video games earlier to take my mind off of my problems, but when the hockey game is over tonight I have a feeling that I'm going to slip right back into a very deep funk.
There are far too many contributing factors to this recent bad spell for me, but one of the underlying themes that has come up is a kind of juvenile sense of not being rewarded for doing the right things. When I was very young I was always getting into all kinds of trouble, and I frequently acted out and misbehaved as a way of getting attention. Threads of that behaviour trailed well into my adult life, and I wouldn't be honest if I said I've totally eradicated them, but as I've grown older I've put in more and more of an effort to be a better person. In addition to just the overriding theme of acting in good conscience, I try to have that spirit carry through to all the small things in life I do like adhere to all the rules of the road when I'm driving, holding doors open for people wherever I go, and the like.
Unfortunately, and I don't know if this really is happening more or if I'm just noticing it more because I'm in such a bad mood right now (probably a little of both), but more than ever it just seems like being the good person is costing me. Everywhere I look, it seems like the people who break the rules, who act selfishly, who don't care who or what they hurt by acting in their own self-interest, are getting what they want, while I keep getting the short end of the stick. I know that this sounds childish, and I know that being the better person is supposed to be its own reward and all of that, but at times like this it just seems hopeless to keep trying.
I know that I can't be the only one out there right now who is feeling like this, so in keeping with the theme of the holiday, I would just like to say, to all of the rest of you out there who always try to act for the greater good, who follow all the rules even when they work to your detriment, who make every effort not to give in to selfish, destructive thinking (even though you may not always succeed in doing so) ... to you, I say thank you. Perhaps I may not have directly benefited from your kindnesses, but I'd like to think the act of being kind and responsible helps the world, intangibly, as a whole. I appreciate the efforts you put in to make the world a better place, and I can only hope that others are appreciative of my efforts as well.
Labels: depression, personal
posted 2007/11/20 at 23:18
With little more than forty-eight hours to go here before Black Friday and with the holiday shopping season more or less kicked off already, I figure it's time to make my annual plea for you all to either buy me stuff or help me buy stuff for myself, particularly now that my student loan repayments are eating up so much of my money. As I've done every year since I launched the .org, I strongly request that those of you who plan to shop at Amazon.com do so through my Amazon.com affiliate link (also below the Google ads on the .org's pages) so that I get a small percentage of whatever you buy back in store credit. In addition, my Amazon.com wishlist (also in the right-hand bar on the .org's pages) is full of stuff I'd really, really like, so if you're feeling a little generous this season, please shoot something my way. I'm going to be nice and whiny about how I don't have money to buy all this stuff for myself for the next few weeks, believe me.
That being said, I will have a bit of money in my pocket here later this week, and I'm not all that sure just how I will spend it. There is a small chance that I might wind up being one of the lucky people to pick up a Wii for eighty bucks thanks to Amazon.com's "Customers Vote" promotion (check their homepage for details). I have to admit, I've said before that I wasn't that interested in the Wii, but a lot of that had to do with the Wii's price and the fact that it's so difficult to get your hands on one, even all this time after the machine's release. Now that I've started to think about getting one, though, I can kind of see myself paying full price for it at some point (read: once I have more money) somewhere down the line. See, if I'd just kept thinking that the current generation of video game systems wasn't for me, I wouldn't be thinking like this, but the moment I let myself think for even a second about getting a Wii signaled the point of no return. Now I'm probably going to keep thinking about getting a Wii here until I finally get one, whenever that may be.
There is one other possibility that might stop me from just placing another huge book order with Amazon. According to a post I saw on one of the bulletin boards I visit, Circuit City is going to be offering Guitar Hero II bundles on Black Friday for sixty bucks. Given my love of music and music games, I'm kind of surprised that I haven't bought Guitar Hero sooner, although given the additional health benefits of playing DDR and ITG I don't think I can be blamed for focusing on them. Again, the price was probably a bit of a barrier in terms of me starting to get into Guitar Hero sooner (I've played it in store displays and certainly enjoyed it), but for this price, and given that I don't feel a particular need to get Guitar Hero III (since it'll probably take me a while to get really good anyway), but if I can pick up a bundle for sixty bucks, I think it'll be worth it for me. Then again, do I really want to go out for any reason, let alone shopping, on Black Friday? I'll have to think about that these next couple of days.
Labels: shopping, videogames
posted 2007/11/18 at 18:19
Reforms urged after MySpace hoax's victim kills herself (AP via pantagraph.com)
I've been following this story as it's been developing for the past few days. This doesn't exactly follow the pattern of behaviour I've been so interested in tracking recently, since the person who created the fake "Josh" account on MySpace was an adult (and a parent at that) rather than a fellow teenager, but what happened to Megan is certainly similar to what I've been warning could happen if this kind of Internet misanthropy, more common among younger people than people the age of the parent mentioned in this story, continued unchecked. Although I have mentioned in the past that I am concerned over how some older people have latched onto the relative anonymity of the Internet to keep doing the kind of immature bullying most of us get tired of in our teenage years, this was clearly more a case of premeditated action than juvenile humour. I still think it's a huge cause for concern, though, and I can only hope that this news story opens up a greater dialogue about this kind of cyberbullying.
At the same time, though, I'm kind of conflicted about how to resolve this issue. Someone on a messageboard I visit pointed out that there is a free speech issue involved here, and of course whenever the words "free speech" get brought up I hesitate because I'm such a huge First Amendment advocate. That being said, there is that whole thing about not being allowed to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre, and I think that in that same spirit it's hard not to argue that there should be some consequences for telling a vulnerable person to kill himself or herself. (Ignoring that Megan was diagnosed with depression and Attention Deficit Disorder, the fact that she was just thirteen years old kind of automatically made her a vulnerable person.) Perhaps for the parents involved here this was a more methodical thing, but it's shocking for how many young people this kind of "go kill yourself" rhetoric is a humourous pasttime.
I don't know if there is a legal solution to this problem that can make me, let alone anyone else, happy. The underlying problem here is a society that encourages people to act in their own self-interest and not care if their actions harm others, and gives young people lots of examples of how attacking other people, whether physically, verbally, or emotionally, can either work to their benefit or at least provide them with "great entertainment." This is a problem that would require an incredibly long time to correct, though, and given the changing sociopolitical climate in this country, we seem to be moving away from a more just society in this regard rather than towards it. In the meantime, though, 13-year-old Megan is dead, and every day since then there have been more immature people going online, harassing people just as vulnerable (if not more so) than Megan and inflicting tremendous emotional pain on these people for their own jollies. I can only hope that this story, as tragic as it is, draws more attention to this problem before it becomes a true epidemic.
Labels: cyberbullying, freespeech, internet
posted 2007/11/16 at 20:38
Although later generations may only know of Leisure from reruns of Empty Nest, those of us who lived through all the eighties will never forget Leisure's brilliant turn as Joe Isuzu, the Isuzu television spokesperson whose lies about the company's cars were so over the top ("It gets twenty million miles per gallon" and the like), and delivered with such a deadpan charm, that Leisure may be one of the best commercial actors of my lifetime; certainly Joe Isuzu presaged Jon Lovitz' more popular "Liar" character. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. Where is the nearest playground slide?
I'm fairly certain several of the houses near ours have some kind of slide, but the nearest playground slide would be at Stranahan Elementary School, about half a mile from here.
2. What’s something you recently let slide?
Entirely too many promises from my sister to take care of her responsibilities. The less said about that, the better.
3. Who recently let slide something you did?
I polished off the orange juice this morning for breakfast, but the folks let it slide because my brother-in-law didn't buy bananas last night like he was supposed to. (Starting to notice a pattern here?)
4. Where is the nearest water slide?
I believe at a theme park up near Dundee, Michigan, about five miles north of how far I go up into Michigan on US-23 on my way to work.
5. When did you last slide down a pole, a rope, or an embankment?
The closest thing I can think of is when I slid down the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes up in Michigan when I was on a school trip up there in sixth grade. Yeah, I don't like sliding, thanks.
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2007/11/14 at 21:29
Although the eleventh of this month is notable for me personally because it was the day I launched this Website seven years ago, it's also painful for me because five years ago on that date, I made the biggest mistake of my life. I turned my back on the best friend I've ever had in my entire life at the moment when she needed me the most, and nearly every day since then I have cursed myself for having done what I did. Some days it feels like I'm getting better about it -- I know full well how harmful it is for me to keep living in the past like that -- but I can think of no other reason for the deep depression I've been in lately than this rather unhappy anniversary. Too often in these past five years, whenever I feel like I might be on the verge of real happiness, it seems like the bad karma I built up from that one mistake comes back to bite me in the butt real hard. I'm not so sure that I believe in curses, but I've certainly become a lot less skeptical of them these past five years.
It was only in the past few months that I came to realize why I did what I did back then. It didn't take me long after the incident for me to realize that, as much as I tried to block the feelings out in my conscious mind, I was deeply in love with my friend. That much was fairly clear, but it's only been recently that I've realized that more than just being afraid of my feelings towards her, I have a fear of being loved by others in general. I finally realized what a tremendous responsibility it is to be loved, and how it was a responsibility that I didn't feel ready to handle. Yes, back when I was still in college I had my share of crushes and fixations, but none of them ever got to the point where I had to start thinking about what it would mean to be loved by someone else. (Just to clarify, I have no fear of being loved by other members of my family because I just don't feel there's the same responsibility there.)
These past few weeks, I've been thinking about this a lot. Perhaps I'm doing so because a couple of old friends I can't deny having feelings for suddenly showed back up in my life recently; perhaps I'm doing so because I continue to edge ever-closer to leaving here and living on my own and I worry about feeling even lonelier than I do now. I want to be more open to the possibilities of love, but after I've been through so much disappointment these past five years, that comes very, very hard to me. Don't quote me the whole "better to have loved and lost" thing; that's one line you don't have to tell someone with two degrees in English, thank you very much. Still, I can't help but feel that I'm in a very fragile state right now (for this and other reasons), and I can't help but worry that if I make any kind of move to bring that kind of love back into my life I'll just wind up hurt again. I already have a hard enough time dealing with regret; I don't need more bad decisions on my part to look back on like the one I made a little over five years ago.
Labels: depression, personal
posted 2007/11/12 at 21:15
Several months ago it was hard not to notice just how many piles of entertainment media I had in my room. These piles had started accumulating a little over a year ago as my time just got completely sapped up with finishing my MA, but even after graduating I noticed that the piles just kept getting bigger and bigger. It wasn't that I didn't have free time, but I lacked the initiative to go through them for some reason. Granted, in some cases I was kind of dreading that I wouldn't like things as much as I was hoping I would -- particularly new CDs by Björk and Tori Amos -- but a lot of this stuff was stuff that I actually wanted to listen to or see or read, and I just couldn't force myself to go through them. Finally this past summer I did force myself to go through these piles, although I never did get through the DVD pile.
I've been trying to go through the DVD pile a bit at a time here, and a few days ago I finally finished going through the boxed set of Chef! which I'd been watching an episode or two at a time before going to bed. Chef! is one of those great British comedies that appeals to my darker, less nice side, and I hadn't been able to watch it for several years since our local PBS station took it down due to viewer complaints about all the cursing in it. However, I can't say that I was too thrilled to watch the final season, which I hadn't watched before and had heard didn't live up to the expectations set from the previous two seasons. Still, it was something of an accomplishment just for me to get all the way through that set, and now I can only hope that I can start going through the rest of my DVD pile in similar fashion.
That being said, all of a sudden I have a book pile starting again, and it looks like it's only going to get bigger over the next several weeks. I've said before that for someone with two degrees in English, I seemed to play video games a lot more than read books when I was growing up. Now that seems to be changing, though. (Let's forget my dancey games for a moment here, since for me they're more exercise than video gaming.) I've got a lot of books that I really want to get through in my pile, not even counting stuff on my shelves that I've either never read or want to re-read. I just can't seem to find enough time in my days to get through all this stuff, and considering my teaching load is being doubled next semester, I'm starting to wonder just how to make the most efficient use of my time. I'm certainly not doing a good job of it right now.
Labels: books, dvds, entertainment, television
posted 2007/11/11 at 20:39
Happy seventh birthday, seanshannon.org. I will have a .journal entry to commemorate the anniversary, but as has been the case so often these past few years, I've got to put off writing it until I get to Thanksgiving break and have some time to write it well (and also finish dealing with some personal stuff that's kind of weighed me down here lately).
On a mostly unrelated note, last night I think I came the closest to throwing up that I've been in several years. I had the late game of Hockey Night in Canada on my television, and this commercial aired where this young woman with a chef's outfit was talking about how great her life was and how she had gotten engaged recently. A somber look overtook her face, though, and she said that she wasn't going to get married to him the following weekend like they'd planned because she was about to have a horrible accident. She started to talk about how she should have cleaned up the grease spill earlier and how she shouldn't have put the deep fryer in the position it was in, and in mid-sentence she turns and slips on the spill, throwing a huge amount of liquid out of the pot she was carrying, covering her face, splashing behind her and causing the stove behind her to catch fire.
Now, up to this point I'm thinking that this is a highly effective commercial. At this point, though, the woman lets out this blood-curdling screen as another chef bends down by her to help her, and then, for about a half-second, the shot snaps to the woman, the skin on her face and hands completely scalded, before snapping to black, finally showing the URL of the Website people are supposed to go to in order to learn about safety. I'd been noshing on Doritos just before the commercial aired, and for about a good twenty seconds I thought I was going to lose it. I ran to the upstairs bathroom and lifted the toilet lid, but nothing came out. Needless to say, I kept my eyes glued to my flat panel here whenever the commercial came back on, as it did several times throughout the rest of the night.
I know that we're living in a post-Saw world and that some people argue that you need these kinds of jarring images in order to attract people's attention these days. I can remember a debate several months ago when Volkswagon started showing car crashes from inside the cars in a line of their commercials, the ones that famously ended with the person driving the Volkswagon saying "Holy shit" at the end (with the -it cut off by a similar snap to a black screen). However, I think there is a world of difference between showing car crashes (which despite all of the twisted steel never had a drop of blood or even the slightest hint of injury) and flashing to a shot of a woman with third degree burns on her face and hands. Even though Poppy Z. Brite is one of my favourite authors and I've written a bit of horror myself, I really have no desire to see horror on television or in films, and it couldn't be more obvious that this commercial was trying to play on horror-film schlock here, particularly given that they cut away from the burnt woman so quickly.
More to the point, this is not a commercial that should be airing when children are so likely to be watching it. The commercial only started airing during the late-night game, but even assuming that it aired only in eastern Canada and they didn't show it in the west, there are still a lot of children watching CBC that late on a Saturday night during hockey season. Hockey brings Canadians of all ages together in a way that the NFL only wishes they could get football to do here in the US, and little kids don't need to be seeing stuff like that. I'm too much of a libertarian on these issues to say that the Canadian government should outlaw the commercial, but given some of the ridiculous things some Canadian bodies (in particular the CRTC) does to regulate Canadian television, I would have thought that they'd never allow this commercial to air, much less during Canada's signature sports broadcast.
Labels: canada, commercials, freespeech, hockey, television
posted 2007/11/09 at 19:53
Garry Kasparov, himself then the age of 22, became the youngest world chess champion by defeating Anatoly Karpov. Kasparov's win crossed over into the mainstream news of the time not only because of his youth, but because he was already preaching political ideas that Western countries, still in the grip of the Cold War, approved of. I was 9 at the time of Kasparov's victory, and my father had already gotten me interested in chess, but I think Kasparov being in the news as I watched Today before school every morning was one of the main reasons I played as much chess as I did in my teen years. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What’s something that’s hanging from your ceiling?
Cobwebs. We don't believe in hanging stuff from the ceiling in this house, and I can't think of anything I'd like to hang from the ceiling here. (Once I get my own place, though, that will likely change.)
2. What’s something that’s hanging on your wall?
The only thing that's actually hanging on the wall are brackets for some shelves above my television which currently house most of my old VHS collection and my Nintendo 64 games. Before the fire I had a bunch of Björk, Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, and Sugarcubes posters on my walls, but I've never bothered to put them back up. (I'm not even sure where they are right now.)
3. What’s something that’s hanging in your closet?
My clothes? Um, I guess the most interesting thing that's in there right now is my witch costume from that Halloween Party in 2003 that I still don't have my props back from ...
4. What’s hanging from your rear-view mirror? (for those without cars, what’s something hanging from the rear-view mirror of a car you’ve recently ridden in?)
It's actually against the law to hang stuff from your rear-view mirror unless it's a parking tag. UT used to have those tags, but MCCC uses a sticker for staff permits, so right now I don't have anything on my rear-view mirror.
5. What have you been hanging onto for too long?
Too many bad memories and bad feelings to even mention. Seriously.
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2007/11/07 at 19:56
Poll: 70 percent of LGBTs support noninclusive ENDA (Planet Out via Yahoo! News)
I don't know what pisses me off more right now: the fact that there's so little news coverage of Kucinich introducing Articles of Impeachment against Cheney, or that there's so little news coverage of the machinations of the ENDA. For all the talk out there about this huge left-wing media conspiracy, the fact that the media is burying stories like these in favour of things like the President of France cozying up to the current administration and Pat Robertson endorsing Giuliani just goes to show, as far as I'm concerned, how centrist Democrats have managed to squeeze truly progressive politics and politicians almost completely off of the American radar.
That the GLBT community would leave trans people high and dry on a matter like this is hardly unprecedented. Although the GLBT community made great strides towards public recognition and acceptance in the 1990s, it was really only gays, lesbians, and bisexuals who got the benefits of that wave. Remember the images of gay men and lesbian women from that time period: the couple from that Ikea commercial, Will from Will and Grace, and so on. Not only were trans people completely left out and overlooked at the gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities fought for more acceptance, but in order to try to make themselves look more appealing to the public at large, the GLBT community gave into the other kinds of quiet discrimination in the media at large. Even today, all it takes is a casual glance through the pages of big GLBT magazines like The Advocate to see that this trend is still continuing today: nearly all the people portrayed in articles and advertisements are thin, clean-cut, young caucasian males. People of colour, people of size, women, and trans people are nearly as unpresented in the pages of GLBT magazines as they are in the media at large, and you would think that a community that claims to be so concerned about diversity and acceptance would actually, you know, show that in the image they portray of themselves.
Even the rhetoric being used by people who claim that this "compromise" bill is the best option we have right now is painfully familiar, as it calls to mind Hillary Clinton so laughingly trying to defend her husband's barring of same-sex marriage in his administration by claiming that it was the best political solution at the time because at least it wasn't a Constitutional amendment. The notion that the civil rights of a group of people, whether it's discrimination against trans people or the marriage rights of same-sex couples or the atrocities the Chinese government continues to inflict on its people, should never be considered some kind of political bargaining chip. How different would this country be if LBJ was more concerned with preserving the power of the Democratic Party in the south than with granting civil rights to non-Caucasians? How different would we be if Gandhi had been concerned with the practicality of his non-violent protest of colonial British rule? At a time when this country is aching for massive change in the way our government is run and the business it conducts, all of what is so ludicrously called "the left wing" in America today just wants to give us a slightly-retooled version of what has so failed this country for these past six and a half years.
Let us name this rhetoric for what it is: capitulation. Congressional Democrats talked a big game last year around election time about changing Washington, but all we have gotten from them is the smallest bit of bluster, followed by flaccid fealty to the current administration. They promised an end to the war in Iraq, but they've continued to capitulate to Bush's funding requests. They talked of taking care of lower-class Americans, but the rich continue to get richer while more and more Americans have a harder time making ends meet. Every time when the talk of standing up to the administration falls to a whimpering, simpering ascension to Bush's desires, we are told the same old story of how the "compromise" -- when Bush has yet to substantially compromise on a single issue in these so-called negotiations -- is the best that we can expect under the current political climate. The notion that Bush has somehow become a lame duck is patently false, because Congressional Democrats have simply replaced Congressional Republicans in enabling the Bush doctrine across the political board.
It is now more evident than ever that the centrists who have been allowed to claim the left wing of American politics are more concerned with self-preservation than they are with actually tending to their constituents. From the exclusion of progressive voices in the political talkies, to the poo-poohing of Kucinich's presidential campaign, to the sweeping of trans people under the rug in the ENDA, to the fear-mongering that goes on whenever the words "Green Party" or "Ralph Nader" are mentioned, it is clear the Democratic politicians and their friends in business and the media are just as bad as the current administration when it comes to latching onto power for the sole sake of preserving that power and fattening their own pockets at the expense of this country's well-being. If Congressional Democrats are too concerned with their image to grant civil rights to all people, or to impeach a Vice President with an 11 percent approval rating, whose political machinations are responsible for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and several times more Iraqis, then they should at least have the decency to own up to their own venality and impeach themselves ... or do something else to themselves.
Labels: glbt, kucinich, politics, transgender
posted 2007/11/05 at 20:08
Antioch College to Remain Open (antioch-college.edu)
As an alum of Antioch (even though I never graduated from there, Antioch considers anyone who completed any course credit there an alum due to the academic and financial difficulties involved in getting all the way to the final degree), this news brought a huge sigh of relief from me. Not only do I still feel incredibly strong ties to Antioch from my time there and how it influenced me, but Antioch's historical influence on this country from the sixties onward cannot be overstated. I didn't like how little coverage the decision to close Antioch got this past summer, but this story seems to have hit a couple of more newswires, at least. Just like Kucinich doesn't seem to get that much press even though he's one of the few Democrats out there who espouses traditional Democratic values, I have to wonder if the American "left" is trying to sweep Antioch and its historical importance under the rug because of their misguided grab of the political centre.
On that level, I'm happy. On a professional level, I have to admit that I'm kind of sad. I've been thinking about my future a lot lately -- I'm still happy with how things are going at MCCC, but I'm agonizing over some possibilities that lay ahead of me -- and teaching at Antioch would be a dream for me. If Antioch had closed for those four years, all the professors there would have had to have found other jobs, and starting with a "clean slate" in 2012 would have put me in a much better position to go in and snag a job there. Now, not only is the college staying open, but it's cutting services and jobs, which means it will be all the more unlikely that a teaching job there will open up any time soon. I realize this is kind of a selfish way of looking at this announcement, but Antioch is a tremendously special place for me and it feels like my chances of ever landing a job there have just took a huge downturn.
That being said, I would love to give money to the college now so that they can stay open for these next few years, but I am just in no condition to do that right now. I'm hoping that I can pick up a second class to teach this coming semester to increase my steady income, but until then my finances will be kind of tight. You know, there is this one son of a former music professor at Antioch (the professor before the one I studied under, Dr. John Rinehart) who still lives in Yellow Springs and is kind of flush with cash ... and it sounds like he's feeling a wee bit guilty for leading a generation of young people to think it's okay to drop n-bombs all over the place ... just a thought.
Labels: antioch, teaching, work
posted 2007/11/03 at 18:49
It's Saturday night and Hockey Night in Canada is on my television. Life is good. Actually, I have to condition that by saying that I think there's been a definite downturn in CBC's hockey coverage this year. Losing Harry Neale was a big enough blow, but I think what bothers me the most is how much their coverage has started to borrow from NBC's Football Night in America presentation. (Ironic that NBC not only "borrowed" the name for their football coverage but also borrowed it for Baseball Night in America the last time they broadcast MLB games.) They've changed the set around to have all the sofas and stuff that you see in NBC's football coverage, they've cut down on the amount of on-site coverage they do at the games themselves, but most annoying of all they re-recorded the opening music to their pre-game show just so someone who sounds vaguely like Joan Jett sings it. As I said during the playoffs last year when CBC shifted their in-game graphical style to something resembling NBC's, a good part of the reason for the longevity and continued success of Hockey Night in Canada is because it is so distinctly Canadian, and imitating Americans sports broadcasts to such a degree just seems to be counterintuitive to me.
The Red Wings are kicking as much butt as could be expected so far this year, and of course no one seems to take notice. Irritatingly enough, earlier this week yet another article came out trying to figure out why the Red Wings have had so many problems with popularity and attendance, and not even the slightest hint that it might have something to do with the lack of fights in Red Wings game in the post-McCarty era is brought up. In all seriousness, is Gary Bettman threatening to whack any US-based sports reporter who brings up the notion that maybe fighting helps to sell the game? Things on the fighting front have been better this year now that Dallas Drake is back and Aaron Downey's stepped up to throw some fisticuffs, but it still feels like the Red Wings need a more visible enforcer-type figure if they want to start selling out the Joe again. At least I should be able to get up there for a game sometime soon, provided I can find someone in the neighbourhood willing to go up with me.
Also on the hockey front, I'm beginning to wonder if the Red Wings' dominance of the Toledo market will finally start to wane now that the Columbus Blue Jackets are fielding a decent team. There didn't seem to much interest in this area when the Blue Jackets started playing, but I thought it safe to attribute that to the fact that the Blue Jackets were an expansion team and have yet to make the playoffs. (That, and Columbus seemed like a strange place to put the team considering that Columbus is outside of the Hockey Belt and doesn't seem like much of a hockey town. Toledo actually might have been the best place to put an NHL team in Ohio in terms of the city's natural predisposition to like hockey.) The Blue Jackets have been on a fairly nice tear so far this year, though, so I'm wondering if local NHL coverage will start to tilt towards the Blue Jackets. I don't think it's too likely to tilt a lot as long as the Red Wings remain so dominant, but I'm expecting to see many more Blue Jackets sweaters when I go out holiday shopping next month.
posted 2007/11/02 at 15:05
Anyone with any passing knowledge of British comedies post-Fawlty Towers has doubtlessly heard a litany of jokes about how Channel 4 offers a wide variety of outlandish, anti-establishment programmes that seem to cater to the craziest, most lunatic fringes of British society. At least that was the popular joke in the 80s and 90s; these days, of course, you can just take the same outlandishness, repackage it as a game show or a Jackass rip-off, thrown in a celebrity has-been, and get a 20 share. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five!
1. If you were on a game show and could phone a friend for help, who would your lifelines be for sports, arts & music, literature, history and geography, and science?
(Okay, I swear I wrote the game show thing above before I even looked at this week's Friday Five.) With the exception of literature -- I can think of a few professors of mine from UT I could phone there -- of all the people I'm close with, I think I know more about those subjects than anyone else I know. My mind tends to latch onto trivia and weird minutae, although not to the extent that I'd ever consider going on Jeopardy! or another similar show.
2. When you need someone with muscles to help you with a task, who’s the first one you call?
My father, although since that's kind of a given since he lives here and all.
3. When you need some creative help with ideas for a project, who’s the first person you call?
My creative process tends to be very insular and I don't like soliciting outside help on matters like these. If I ever want to brainstorm anything, though, Mom is likely to be the first person I ask for help from.
4. When you have a moral dilemma and need advice, on whom do you rely most?
Mom, no question. She and I don't always agree on anything, but the fact that we have similar thought processes means that even if we disagree on something, I'll have a better idea of why I believe the way I believe after hashing it out with her.
5. When you need to know the best way to get somewhere, which of your directionally-gifted friends do you call upon first?
I don't call on friends in matters like this, although given how frequently I get burned by the online map/driving direction services I've tried, maybe I should.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon