Quote Bashing, Part I

Posted on April 10, 2010 by epthnation

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

-Nelson Mandella

This quote is fine, up to a point.  The idea that we shouldn’t let other people’s insecurities decide the way we act SOUNDS like a good idea, until you get to the question of applying it to real life.  And then you realize that Nelson Mandella just put his Very Respected Name underneath the personal philosophy of every ignorant loudmouth in the world.  It’s one thing to not shrink when you’re fighting apartheid; it’s quite another to bully some poor kid into giving you his lunch money.

Maybe sometimes it’s ok to love other people enough to become lesser so that they can become greater.  Unless your point is that people can only grow if they confront those insecurities, another point that SOUNDS good until you find yourself Dwight Schruted in the middle of nowhere and told to find your way back to camp so you can pass some insane initiation.  Again, this cannot be universally applied to any insecurity.  This is why it’s a bad quote.

I would further submit that you’re more here on this earth for others than you are for yourself, but that’s admittedly a crazy idea and easily dismissable on the grounds that it requires faith, which as we all know is not scientific and therefore just nutty.  Carry on enlightenedly browbeating weaker people with your hideous strength.

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Man, I’m busy

Posted on April 7, 2010 by epthnation

Yup, this is me.

It’s not only that I have a full-time job AND a part-time job now (the part-time job mostly to make up for the taxes I pay at the full-time job), it’s that on successive nights I have: 1) discovered gin and tonic; and 2) attended a Brewers game.  Both were great, but have left me so tired I don’t have time to even post here or read a 1000-word story for a writing contest I’m judging.  It’s time to cram activities into any blocks of time I can, I guess.  You know what else?  And this is a shocker…

I missed LOST last night.  And a Desmond episode, no less.  Ugh.

Posted in Apologies, This Insane World, Work | Leave a comment

What Are Dorks, Geeks, and Nerds?

Posted on March 27, 2010 by epthnation

Great White Snark has provided a helpful diagram…or have they?  See it here:

http://www.greatwhitesnark.com/2010/03/25/difference-between-nerd-dork-and-geek-explained-in-a-venn-diagram/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+greatwhitesnark%2Fyqzr+%28Great+White+Snark%29

Because that link is super-long, I’m going to be a bad internet citizen and hotlink the picture:

I’m going to geek out a bit here (or is it nerd out?) and tell you why I think this diagram is wrong.  I don’t really care about this issue, but somebody has to say what I’m about to say.

Nerds, geeks, and dorks are all synonyms for dweebs.  They mean the exact same thing.  To suggest otherwise is pretty dorky, don’t you think?  I like the three characteristics in the diagram, but the reality is simpler — and more complicated — than it suggests.

There are different types of nerds/dorks/geeks out there.  We’re all familiar with the common ones — computer geeks, science geeks, socially awkward outcasts, total weirdos, etc.  But those are not the only ways in which people can nerd out.  In fact, there are geeks for just about any interest in our world.  We just know them by different names, i.e.,  “enthusiast,” “passionate,” or “fan.”  The only thing you need to be considered a geek is a large enough amount of interest in something, and that something could be anything in the world.  Don’t think so?  Search for anything on the internet, and chances are you’ll find someone with a larger-than-advisable interest in that thing.  We are all dorks.

So the core component of nerdiness is obsession, and the “intelligence” and “socially awkward” parts come from developmental stages of life (usually middle- and high-school), where certain types of nerds tend to be a) Really into being smart, and b) Really having no clue as to how to properly relate to peers unlike themselves.  When you become an adult, these characteristics tend to get smoothed out, just as non-nerds get interested in interesting things and geek out in their own way.  Remember when you got to college and 80% of people were on roughly the same social status?  Yeah, that’s because people grow up and adopt more nuanced social constructs.

It’s at this point that most people start self-identifying themselves as nerds about something, in order to find others who are nerdy about that particular thing.  The only people who don’t do this are people who are trying too hard to be cool.  Have nothing to do with them.

To be fair, the diagram really isn’t about any type of nerd, it’s about the specific type that everyone remembers from high school — male, white, unhygenic, generally nice, interested in technology and math, athletically anti-gifted, unpopular, Red Dwarf-watching, living in a strange culture that only they understand –  and it still fails, because like I said, these terms all mean the same thing.  Nerds, dorks, and geeks are all obsessed, intelligent, and socially awkward.  This is why Chuck can call its IT repair team the Nerd Herd and everyone associates them with Best Buy’s Geek Squad.  This Venn diagram should just be a single circle with a bunch of words inside it.

Man, I’m a dork.

Posted in This Insane World | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Breaking My Links

Posted on March 27, 2010 by epthnation
No, not this type of Lynx.

No, not this type of Lynx.

I just broke all my permalinks in an effort to try something.  Permanent links to posts on epthnation.com will now contain the name of the post rather than the default, which was a sequential number.  The good thing is, there are very few links to this blog out there, at least according to my records.

This is what happens when you change something that’s supposed to be permanent, I guess.  Sorry if this ruins your day.

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Health Care And You

Posted on March 24, 2010 by epthnation

Against my better judgment, I got some points to make about “The Health Care.”  They aren’t necessarily good points, but they are my own.  I better get these out now before the Government takes over Blog Care, too.

Just kidding.

Because people love lists, I’ve written everything I know about the just-passed Obama Special Healthcare Bill in the form of a numbered list.  To paraphrase Neville and Ronstadt, I don’t know much but I know I love you, and that’s why I’m posting this.  If I didn’t love you, would I really dive into these shark-infested waters?  How silly of me — I actually think I have some worthwhile things to write about regarding this hot-button topic.  Anyway, enjoy:

1)  There are things in this passed bill that are fantastic.

I’m talking about the “no limits” clause and the “pre-existing conditions” clause, both of which are long overdue and had to be included as part of any serious approach to US health care.  These clauses directly address the major weakness of the old US system, namely that it (was) based upon social status and insurability rather than need.  There are (a few) areas of life where strict capitalism works well; access to medicine is not one of them.  So, something clearly had to be done.    Just by getting rid of the pre-existing condition disqualifier for health insurance, Obama has leapfrogged Clinton on the list of “most effective presidents.”  Don’t get excited, though — Clinton would be at like no. 48 on that list.

2) I will benefit from this bill.

Disclaimer (although I probably won’t need it when you see the rest of my points):  I am one of the people who will move from uninsuredness to insuredness because of the Obamacare.  I will take the public option if need be, and I will gladly stand in long lines to see semi-disinterested doctors who look at me for a few seconds before misdiagnosing my diseases.  This will put my family’s mind at ease a bit (though certain members are probably pretty angry with Congress right now), which is always preferable.

3)  We (the people) cannot pay for this.

We can’t pay for anything.  We have no money.  We have anti-money, in fact.  We have a dark black hole of debt where our money should be, thanks to (insert preferred scapegoat here).  This is not the time to be creating another government program.  This is the time to be disbanding them and fending for ourselves like feral alley cats.

4)  In related news, Social Security and Medicare are NOT success stories.  Pelosi, I’m looking at you.

They will go bankrupt, at least in the sense that they’ll not be able to make promised payments on time because of the baby boomers and their accursed birth control.  This will cause cuts — real cuts, not just the slowdown in increases that have been proposed (and rejected) in recent years.  By the time I’m old, if I get to live that long, Social Security will look way different than it does now.  Either that, or we’ll be a totally communist nation.

I wonder if people ever think about exactly how much of our income goes to the Social Security “flushing toilet of death.”  Yes, it’s helped a lot of people meet their needs in a “dependent on the Man for a check” kind of way, but for the money we’re all pitching in, people should be spending their golden years in mansions made of actual gold.  Do you realize how much your employer contributes to Social Security?  Ask him/her about it sometime.  Expect to hear cuss words back.

5)  It is accurate to say, as a Christian, that God has a heart for the poor.

If you read the Bible, it’s almost reasonable to conclude that the poor are all He cares about.  Jesus, especially.  This has become a popular talking point among liberal Christians w/r/t Universal Health Care, to the point that the issue has almost become a litmus test for how compassionate (and, therefore, Jesus-like) a person is.   Would Jesus deny health care to poor people, they ask?  Would he want the rich Insurance Companies to make money off pain and suffering?  When people came to him to be healed, was the quality of healing they received directly proportional to their available resources?  Did he only heal those who had jobs?*  And so on.  The answers to these questions is obviously no.

6)  It is not accurate to say that Jesus wants Universal Health Care passed.

I’m going to throw a big word at you: Hermeneutics.  It’s a fancy term for the systematic interpretation of a particular text.  Applying all the verses about God’s love for the poor to the idea of a government-run health-care system is a violation of everything you learn in Biblical Hermeneutics 101, if there was such a class.  In other words, it’s bad Theology.  Not only that, but it’s the same exact mistake that Conservatives and Evangelicals are always accused of making — namely, equating the Nation of Israel in the Old Testament with the good ol’ U.S. of A.  When God gets mad at Israel for not doing anything to help the poor, you can’t look back at that verse in 2010 and put the U.S. government in the place of Israel and apply the passage in the same exact way.  Why?  Because the nation of Israel’s equivalent since Jesus did his thing is the Christian Church, not a particular country or culture.  What does this mean to the health care debate?  Well, Christians should evaluate a thing like Universal Health Care in America on its political and pragmatic merit, rather than the fulfillment of the Church’s mandate to care for people.  This means that liberal Christians can’t rightly call conservative Christians heartless and godless just because they think differently about political issues and core economic principles.  It’s not unchristian to challenge the merits of a piece of legislation.  It’s just not.

Also, it’s technically an ad-hominem argument to say that the right doesn’t care about the poor because they oppose Universal Health Care.  Again, this doesn’t mean it’s not true — it’s just not a valid argument.

7)  Maybe We Need To Embrace Socialism

Um, has anyone seen this button:

Just asking to be hotlinked

Just asking to be hotlinked

http://www.zazzle.com/i_welcome_our_socialist_overlords_button-145271086667136959

I think it’s funny that an Obama supporter would wear this button not realizing that the quote is actually from news anchor Kent Brockman on The Simpsons, who mistakenly believes that giant ants have taken over Springfield, and so out of fear pledges allegiance to them.  So what you’re saying when you wear this is a) You just support Socialism because you’re afraid of being killed by giant Socialists, and b) Socialism isn’t real.  Ahh…this brings back memories of when The Simpsons was great.  Let’s try this again…

7)  Maybe We Need To Embrace Our Socialist Overlords

I know a lot — a LOT — of Christians who are afraid of big government, and they have (mostly) good reasons for feeling that way.  I’m not.  This makes me naive and (in many ways) stupid.  I want you to know I realize this.  Perhaps because I believe in the American Dream, or perhaps because of my next couple points, I just don’t think Obama-style Socialism is that bad.  Anything that restricts normal freedoms is bad, I agree — for example, laws about smoking in restaurants or using cell phones in school zones.  Those prevent people from doing what they choose for no dang good reason.  Sure, it might be good to eat in a smoke-free environment, but it’s totally stupid to not allow restaurants themselves to make that call.  These are the types of issues that freedom and capitalism were made for.  But redistribution of wealth?  Not so bad.  I think we’d all like to believe that the rich deserve more money than the poor, but I think we also deep down know that they don’t.  Anyway, I plan on giving away all my money as soon as I pay off all my debt, so I’m going to react to Obamanomics with a big fat personal “whatever.”  And yes, ladies, I am available.  Shocking, I know.

8)  This vote probably means President Palin in 2012.

This health care bill is wildly unpopular; every poll during the past year has said so.  Conservatives are fired up at unheard-of levels because of it, and every one of them that stayed home for McCain will come out in spades for whomever the Republicans throw out there.  This upcoming crap-storm will make the Tea Parties look like a College Republicans’ Mixer.  It will be huge, and it will start this year.  If the Socialism Fear really takes off, we could end up with a Republican supermajority and a Palin Powersuit Presidency two years from now.  In which case, the parts of this bill that haven’t taken effect by then (which are most of them) could be in jeopardy.

Don’t think so?  How are pro-life Democrats going to react when it’s rightly pointed out that Obama’s supposed last-minute Executive Order to uphold the ban on using federal money to fund abortions will be (presumably) superceded by the bill itself?  How will they react the first time the Executive “Order” is circumvented?  I’m guessing probably not well.  As much as the Press would have you believe otherwise, this particular Universal Health Care legislation is not supported by the majority of the people in America.  Once somebody figures out what’s actually inside the bill that passed, this fact will become crystal clear.

9)  Fining those who choose not to have health insurance is actually, really Tyranny with a capital “T,” and also super-unconstitutional (not that it matters…or does it?)

Will the courts throw this plan out completely, throw out this particular part, or just whistle while looking at the ceiling as it passes by them?  There will be a court case — I know there will be, because a friend of mine has threatened to file one when the time comes.  It’s impossible to know how they’ll rule, but this is a good thing, this Constitutional review of laws.  This is what the courts are for.  Separation of powers, checks and balances, and all that good stuff, remember?  Now, if only we could convince the court to make the right judgments, we might have a Republic that works.  But I don’t want to get into our insane and dart-throwing court system right now.  I could go on and on all night about that, and I have to work at 6 am.

I think that covers it.  Carry on, then.

* Ok, so I made up these last two questions.  Pretty good ones, though, don’t you think?

Posted in Apologies, This Insane World | Leave a comment

Rules For Writer-lings #1: First Sentences Are Important

Posted on March 10, 2010 by epthnation
Blurst of times? Dont be a stupid monkey.

Blurst of times? Don't be a stupid monkey.

Hey, since I’ve mastered the art of writing (shut up — if Miley Cyrus can be said to have “mastered the art of comedy,” anyone can claim to have mastered anything) I thought I’d pass along some tips for you would-be writers out there, in case you want to submit your work to somebody someday and make lots of dough by composing readable material.  Despite my sarcastic nature, these tips are going to be both serious and helpful.  Many of them will seem obvious, but sometimes obvious things are the least obvious of all.  I think that would probably be an example of a bad first sentence, but I’m not sure.

When you start a story, you need something to hook the reader’s attention so he/she doesn’t put it down and move on to the next story/TV show/movie/blog post/pie-eating contest in life.  That’s not ALL you need, however.  A mistake I see a lot is the dreaded “hook that doesn’t make sense.”  It’s ok if you’re trying to draw the reader in with mystery.  It’s not ok if your punctuation is wrong or your characters say words that make no sense.  Sometimes you try so hard to draw the reader in that you forget to structure a sentence properly. For example:

He was the best rugby player in the world, and in fact, he was a hit with the ladies and the men alike, except me.

You know what the reader says to that?  “Who cares?”  The “in fact” doesn’t fit, and the “hooky” thought involved needs to be expressed in at least two sentences.  Now, watch this:

He was the best rugby player in the world.  Women loved him, and men wanted to be him.  I, however, just wanted to kill him.

See what I mean?  Who wouldn’t read the story that followed that sentence?  I wish I would write a story with that as the first sentence just so I could read it later, because it would be awesome.

Heck, I’d rather see a story with no hook at all in the first paragraph than one that doesn’t punctuate or grammar-ize properly.  You are introducing your narrative world to your potential audience, and you need to assure them that they are in good hands.   If you don’t do that, they are lost forever.  Even if they do read what you’ve written, they won’t fully buy into the story.  If that’s true, why even write one in the first place?

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I Watch The Oscars For You, You Know.

Posted on March 8, 2010 by epthnation
Not just for men anymore (TM)

Not just for men anymore (TM)

Hey America, it’s time for the Oscars!

I’ve been feeling unable to form complete and wonderful sentences lately. They’ve been turning out half-done and awful. We’re just going to plow through this Oscars ceremony and see if we can get something funny or poignant going. It’s an amazing night every year, right? Lots of glitter. But let’s try to keep the cynicism to a minimum, shall we? While it’s true that nearly every year they pick the wrong film as Best Picture, it’s really more about the spectacle than the statues. This year, I haven’t seen any of the Oscar contenders, so I’m fresh out of opinions on their relative merits. It should be terrific!

The pre-show is on now, and Nearly Ubiquitous Sherri Shepherd (NUSS), Former Model Kathy Ireland (FMKI), and some dude named Jess Cagle are on the Red Carpet being Flavor Flav-style hypemen for Hollywood and all of its wonderful stars. I fully expect a lot of wondering about who is wearing whom, as if we’re all going to go out and buy that designer’s dresses if we think that Kate Winslet looks hot. Which she does, but I’m still not going to buy that dress.

First notable phenomenon of the night: Maggie Gyllenhall is really tall. She towers over the other Best Supporting Actress nominees, but that won’t help her tonight when Mo’Nique of Flavor of Love Girls Charm School beats her. Tall Maggie’s stylish bro Jake is talking to FMKI about his upcoming movie Prince of Persia, and he assures her it’s incredible. She can’t wait for it, because she’s contractually obligated to not be able to wait for it. You know, it’s funny, Kathy Ireland has a super-annoying voice that she’s mitigating by speaking an octave lower than normal tonight. She must have hired a voice coach sometime between Alien From L.A. and now. After she talked to Jake they let her talk to Zac Efron, and she was really enthusiastic about his upcoming projects, too. Apparently he was in something besides High School Musical. Oddly, he was wearing a shirt. I don’t want to be too negative, but he’s useless.

Speaking of, imagine my concern when I saw that Miley Cyrus is in a real live movie with other real actors. Imagine it. I’m asking you to imagine the thoughts that went through my head when I saw the trailer for a Miley Cyrus movie, knowing full well that it will be a hit. Just like “Party in the U.S.A.” I wonder if the movie stars Jay-Z, too. It’s not that I’m against her personally, it’s that I’m befuddled by her continued success in the face of sucking. Oh, that all of us who suck at something could become that popular.

So this happens: FMKI is forced to pronounce “philanthropy” when she interviews a possibly drunk and definitely frisky Morgan Freeman about the bracelets he and his two(!) dates are wearing. I’d make a timely joke about his multiple dates, but one of them is his daughter. Kathy’s super-impressed by those gold bracelets, and the fact that they have something to do with Nelson Mandela. Morgan tried to explain it, but he wasn’t all that lucid.

Matthew Broderick has salt in with his pepper hair. Wasn’t expecting that. Don’t know what to make of it. Totally awesome that he’s not coloring it, though. He looks old. I am old. Ferris Bueller came out when? Over 20 years ago? This sort of revelation is going to keep happening, isn’t it?

Anyone out there going to see the movie with the Twilight vampire and the girl from LOST? What, you don’t have anything better to do? It’s a bizarre combination of two very passionate fan bases. I wonder how much overlap that ven diagram has. In any case, unless the smoke monster fights vampires, I’m not interested. If it does, I’m VERY interested, especially if smokey wins. They need one of those things on True Blood.

Kathy just interviewed the aforementioned Miley Cyrus, and read a script that requires her to tell that hick that she’s “mastered comedy.” I don’t even have a line for this. Am I the only person who realizes that Miley Cyrus is basically the daughter of Cleetus from The Simpsons? People keep giving her contracts in the entertainment business, and she keeps being successful. Please stop supporting her. You’ve probably ruined her life with excess already, but we might be able to save the next one if we stop this lunacy now. Think about Demi Lovato, people. She still has a chance.

NUSS told Jeff Bridges he looks “yummy” as his wife was standing there looking pissed off. He does look yummy, though, in a wolfman kind of way.

On cue, we see Taylor Lautner’s nose. Again, am I the only person who notices this? This child is a sex symbol, and his face looks like it’s melting a la the bad guys at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Neil Patrick Harris kicks off the ceremony with a dirty, dirty song about dropping soap. Dirty. In the audience, all of Hollywood looks old. It’s comforting, really. We are the established generation now. If we wanted to, we could destroy the young. Keep that in mind, Miley.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are hosting together, and one of the people in the room with me correctly calls the first joke they do before they say it. They’re going very broad here, comedically speaking. Most of their jokes are too bad to mention here, but they bring up Hitler in a joke series about Meryl Streep, and that’s always appreciated. Steve also references The Jerk, and that makes me think of Freaks and Geeks.

Funny thing: Steve Martin’s joke about Hollywood being full of Jews. Really? I did not know this. Yes, I’m an alien who just arrived on earth. Just a stranger here.

Thankfully, that Waltz dude from Germany won for Best Supporting Actor, and not any of the other nominees. All of those roles except the Damon rugby player were extremely creepy, especially Stanley Tucci. Woody Harrellson should have been nominated for Zombieland, not The Messenger or whatever it was called. Hey, Zombieland was one of the three movies I saw this year, so I know what I’m talking about.

I don’t know much about Hollywood, but I know that if The Blind Side wins Best Picture, that town will burn to the ground by the hands of the cultural elite. Nancy Pelosi and Bill Ayers will be first in line. They hate all that normal heartwarming crap. They want Hindu-Communist allegories like Avatar or films that veterans hate like The Hurt Locker. Mostly, they just hate movies where white people and black people succeed without liberalism. In a nutshell, this is why the Oscars is ruined like cheese that’s been sitting on the counter too long.

Animated film is next, and after a cutesy intro to all the films, Up! wins, to nobody’s surprise. Up! is about a balloon that has wacky adventures, I think. The only one of the animated nominees I saw is the last half of Coraline. I need to see that Fantastic Mr. Fox thing. It looks so cool.

Miley Cyrus misspeaks, and the angels cry. Yes, I borrowed that line from The Lonely Island, and it doesn’t have any sort of point, but forget her. Please? I’m sure Oscar ratings will be way up this year solely because of her teenage fake-casual twang. I’ve figured it out: Billy Ray made a deal with the Devil. It’s the only thing that explains all of it – from “Achy Breaky Heart” to “Miley at the Oscars” and everything in between. Either that, or I’m in purgatory.

If I ever do a Playboy spread, one of my turn-offs is going to be giant gaudy rings. I want to see your hands, not a giant rock. Don’t they bother you, girl in that commercial?

INTERMISSION – I need to eat something. Also, the Oscars are kind of boring, don’t you think?

Robert Downey Jr. and Tina Fey are doing a great bit about actor-writer rivalry, picking up where Ricky Gervais left off at the Golden Globes. I’ll leave you with that for a while as I munch.

While I was gone, the stupid short films that nobody saw this year competed against each other for like 20 awards that nobody cared about. The high point was the speech from the winners in the Short Documentary category, where an insane and very unpleasant older lady pushed a nice gay man (the filmmaker, I think) out of the way and tried to use the Oscar mic to make some point about this documentary that nobody has seen. The subject of the film was smiling away in the audience, and I was wondering why we were hearing from the pushy unpleasant lady instead of her or the nice gay man. They never even explained who this woman was, she just pushed him out of the way and charged him with sexism for not letting her talk first. It was great.

I need to see: District Nine. Up. Up in the Air. That Precious movie, even though it stars Mo’Nique. The writer just won for adapted screenplay, and gave the best Oscar speech ever. He was so affected by it he could barely talk, and he ended up just thanking a few family members and, then, everyone. I might not be able to take that much Mo’Nique in one sitting, though.

Supporting Actress!! You know, I’m against the entire concept of Nine. After Fellini made 8 ½, did he really need somebody to come around 40 years later and add to it? Also, it looks just terrible and racked with male guilt. In other news, Maggie Gyllenhall is still a tall drink of water, and she loves Jeff Bridges. Mo’Nique is still the Ambassador of Seriousness and Positivity, and she predictably wins. She thanks her lawyer, BET, Oprah, Tyler Perry, and the Academy for not choosing a white woman. She phrased it differently, but that’s what she meant. And I’m serious – those are the only people she thanked, besides her husband. Ugh.

Goods: Ben Stiller in Avatar makeup and the touching John Hughes tribute. Bads: An Education. I realize the movie was made for people who aren’t me, but that won’t stop me from being annoyed by it. Watch – it’ll pull an insane upset and win. Wouldn’t be the first time. Shakespeare in Love, anybody? Heck, it’s not like Avatar, the favorite, is a Godfather-level masterpiece. Can we pretend for a while that any of these ten (10!) nominated films can win? Can we exist for a second in that world? No? I’m going away until the real awards are given out. This show is a sham.

Yay!  Sandra Bullock won!  She seems really nice, and her tattooed extreme husband is crying.  They love each other.

Hurt Locker wins, director and picture. Take that, Hindu Communism. Did you notice Babs Streisand mouth “It’s about time” when that Bigelow chick won Best Director? The lesson here is simple: Some people think life should be politicized, rather than bemoan the fact that it is. There’s a subtle difference there. You could argue that as a white male, the only reason I don’t want life to be politicized is that I’ve already gotten everything I want, politically speaking. I am of the Ruling Class or whatever, and see all such politicization as a threat to my power. It’s this (false) assumption about me and my ideals that has turned you into the kind of person that mouths “It’s about time” when a woman wins Best Director at the Oscars, thereby insulting everyone there who isn’t a woman. Congratulations, Barbara – you’re a full-blown arrogant buttmunch.

The problem is that life – and society — goes on whether we like it or not. That kind of naked inconsiderate “f-you” feminism would have made sense in 1980, but this is thirty years later. These days, a woman winning Best Director really is no big deal, even if it has never happened before. It’s a Little Deal. There’s a black man in the White House now. The younger you are, the more that you understand that you don’t have to turn yourself into a political construct anymore. It’s ok to just be a woman who directs a great movie and wins awards. You’ve come a long way, baby. Enjoy it.

And it’s not like she deserved it for directing Point Break, either. If anything, she should be doing penance for that.

Posted in Apologies, Netflix Diaries, Television | Leave a comment

A Small Portion of the Copyright Post I Always Told Myself I’d Write

Posted on March 1, 2010 by epthnation

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m confused by copyright in the US right now.  I’m a child of the 80′s — an era where magnetic tapes time-shifted anything and everything, from song mixes for would-be lovers to Thursday night’s episode of Hill Street Blues.  It turns out that all these tapes were a product of an agreement between Sony and Big Tape Makers, and Sony got a kickback for every Maxell or BASF time-shifting product I purchased.  It apparently wasn’t that making mix tapes was OK, it was that Sony looked the other way because of the kickback.  Not a perfect system, but it helped produce joy on many an acne-stained face in the Reagan, Bush, and early Clinton eras.

We never even thought about copyrights back then, we just freely did what came naturally.  Why?  Because this was the 80′s, and technology had given us a new era where we could watch TV shows later (and fast forward through the commercials).  No longer were we slaves to the networks’ insane scheduling and fascination with USA Baby’s advertising dollars.  We could, in good conscience, get a second shift job somewhere and still be able to see Alf when we got home.  Oh, what a world.  We also broke free from slavery to the record companies by being able to create tapes that combined the good songs from many different artists, rather than having to fast forward past the inevitable “filler” to get to the good stuff.  It was like the impossible-to-copy vinyl of the 70′s never existed, and that was a good thing.  And people wonder why I call the 80′s the greatest decade ever.

This copyright paradise could have lasted forever if not for the advent of the music CD.  All of a sudden, large-scale copying got easy.  And fairly exact.  And Sony had no kickback agreement for CDs, at least at first.  This led to the first of many “Copyright Freakouts” starting in the late 90′s, where record companies banded together illegally (let’s be honest here — the RIAA is a classically illegal monopolistic organization where competition is undermined for the sake of making everyone involved more money) to fight a multi-tentacled attack on their customers.  They sued Napster, a song-sharing program with a centralized database, and won.  They sued Kazaa and other song sharing programs without centralized databases, and still won.  They got William Jefferson Clinton to sign the DMCA, a draconian and blatantly anti-consumer piece of copyright legislation, which pretty much struck the concept of “Fair Use” from US law (unless you happen to be a library, which nobody is).  They sued old ladies and little kids and college students under the DMCA (at $250,000 a song!), and got a bunch of settlements that served to scare file-sharers into purchasing music with money they didn’t have.  Somehow, even after all this rampant suing, their customer base left and never returned.  In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to pretend that anyone who downloads music without paying is a criminal.  That may have engendered some resentment among the youth.  But record execs are obviously smarter than me, so they probably know what would have happened if they just let Napster exist (or take it over), sell ads on it, create a legal site to download high-quality mp3′s (or, even better, develop your own compression scheme like Microsoft did), still sell CD’s to old people, and save ALL THOSE LEGAL COSTS.  They’re right, that probably would have been a disaster.

Today, in 2010, we seem to be turning a corner on copyright.  The Big Companies are winning, mainly by getting former employees installed in government positions.  The DMCA has been unconstitutional for 12 years and isn’t going away.  Fair use is pretty much a thing of the past.  If I rip a CD to my computer, I can be prosecuted as if I were a shoplifter or black-market CD salesmen.  The world has gone insane.  I wonder:  Why even have a constitution if we can’t stop the DMCA?  Why even have a Congress if they’re going to listen to big business instead of their constituents all the time?

I’m being vague and bombastic here, I realize, but this isn’t an essay.  It’s a blog post.  I want to concentrate on the concept of fair use for a second, because it’s important.  If we’re going to have copyright law, we need exceptions to that law.  Copyright law is here to protect creativity; fair use is its necessary counterpart, and is there to protect innovation.  Without fair use, there’s nothing to stop those that create content from controlling every instance and portion of that content to the fullest extent possible.   That may not seem so bad until you realize exactly who we’re dealing with here.  If networks/record companies/movie studios/ book distributors had their way, time-shifting would not be an option unless they deemed it ok — they would want to control the when, where, and how of your television-watching.  Also,  making a backup copy of a song you purchased would not be possible.  If your hard drive crashed, you’d have to purchase the song again.  If someone broke into your car and stole all your CD’s, you wouldn’t be able to make new ones from a backup.  If a husband and wife liked the same CD  and wanted to listen to it in different places at the same time, they would have to purchase a second copy.  I promise you I’m not making this up.  This is what these big companies are aiming for, and in some cases, they have already succeeded.

Which is why we need to come to a societal consensus on fair use.  We can’t just strike it from our society because some people abuse it.  This is art we’re talking about, and if we’re going to experience innovation in art, we’re going to have to protect consumer rights so that people will create new ways of delivering content.  Would P2P technolgies like BitTorrent have been created and explored if not for indifference to copyright?  Oh, wait.  That’s right.  We WERE creating and exploring BitTorrent, but then US ISP’s (already providing terrible service and bandwidth compared to the rest of the world) were strong-armed into “throttling” torrent bandwidth.  Bye-bye, possible innovation.  Hello, terrible data rates and complaining about net neutrality*.

By now you probably see why I’ve been hesitating to write anything on copyright.  It’s a huge diamond of an issue with a crap-ton of facets.  So let’s get back to fair use.  On the one side of the spectrum, you have blatant copyright violations that everyone besides criminals would see as illegal — stuff like making a copy of a DVD and setting up a stand in front of Best Buy selling them for 5 bucks a pop.  That’s obviously bad.  On the other side, you have obviously private stuff that the government has no business making laws about — stuff like lending a DVD set to your cousin so he doesn’t have to purchase the whole thing, recording a tv program so you can watch it later, and backing up the music on your drive to an external drive or an iPod.  In the middle somewhere is making a mix CD for a friend.  There’s a legitimate debate as to where fair use ends.  I don’t mean to suggest that copyright be abolished, just that other rights be seen as just as important.  Keep your laws off my CD collection, Obama.

*  Oddly enough, a chief complainer has been the usually innovation-minded Mark Cuban, who seems to think that net neutrality would tax US bandwidth to the point that it would affect the megabits-per-second of people who aren’t using their bandwidth to play internet games or download P2P files.  If that is true, the solution is not punishing people for using the internet access they’ve paid for, it’s getting ISP’s to pay for infrastructure to alleviate any slowdowns.  What the non-neutralists want is a tiered system where those who use more bandwidth would pay more.  This would stifle any innovation that requires a constantly-working internet connection, because consumers wouldn’t want to pay for it.  It would be a constant boondoggle.  Net Neutrality forces ISPs to provide a fair product for a competitive price.  Bandwidth isn’t a product; nor is it a commodity (though Enron tried to make it one).  It’s just speed of access, that’s all.  Paying more for speed makes sense.  Paying for amount of data transfered does not.  If we’re having trouble transferring data at the promised speeds, then those ISPs need to get some more switches and wires.   This is 2010, for Pete’s sake.  Let’s get some routers up in here.

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I Don’t Like Loud Noises And Other Indications Of Oldness

Posted on February 24, 2010 by epthnation
These Danes are happy.

These Danes are happy.

I’m getting a little tired of having to have a point when I type these blog posts.  I mean, I want to be understood as much as the next guy, but it’s just not worth all this stress of having to reason out arguments and make coherent points.  Sometimes I just want to throw stuff out there and see if it sticks, ok?  Having thus disclaimed my entire blog, let me now proceed to write stuff:

Figure skating is really bad, I think, for America.  Those poor dudes and girls are all being forced to wear funny outfits and give up the prime of their recreational lives so that America’s female audience can be entertained.  The men’s and ladies’ singles competitions strike me as especially odd for some reason.  It’s basically a highly organized form of So You Think You Can Dance On Ice.  The girls are all young and growth-stunted, like they’ve been smoking since birth.  It’s all weird and sketchy.  The guys just look uncomfortable, like they have to constantly convince themselves that ice skating is OK.

Also, and obviously, Ice Dancing is not a sport.  It’s barely a competition.  Are we really giving out Olympic medals to who dances the best?  The ancient Athenians are rolling over in their graves.

The Olympics are just another in a long list of things that US women have ruined, a list which also includes the Lewis & Clark Expedition, elections, and our children.  Of  course, I’m kidding.  It’s just that when I see figure skating it makes me really, really sexist.  I can’t help it.

On a more serious note, I find this whole Disney obsession with princesses disturbing in all sorts of ways.  I feel like I’m the only one noticing that these movies are totally corrupting our kids.  It’s like an episode of the Twilight Zone or something.  Children are, after all, our most valuable resource this side of soybeans and corn.  Monsanto owns those things, and now Disney owns our children.  What’s the deal with princesses anyway?  To become a princess, you either have to be born one, or have a Prince marry you.  Both of those things are totally random, but Disney is purposely pretending that they’re not.  And in the real world there are no princes, which means Walt Disney might as well be making movies about unicorns.  You can rest assured that if they did, little girls everywhere would be gluing toilet paper rolls to their heads.  I regard this princess thing as equally strange.

Unrealistic expectations = death.  Did you know that people from Denmark are on average the happiest in the world?  Do you know why?  Because they are content with what they have.  They take their 2% unemployment and semi-comfortable life and are content with it.  Maybe Walt Disney should start making movies about that, instead of trying to turn our children against us with toys and false hopes.  And don’t get me started on Barbie.  Yeesh, that girl is insipid and unstoppable, like Speidi crossed with Hakeem Olajuwon.

You know what else?  I don’t think there really was a secret chord that David played that pleased the Lord.  So that famous song is based on a foundation of wrongness, is what I’m saying.  I don’t really care for music, I guess.   It’s pretty, but so are princesses.  A cold and broken kind of pretty.

Also, I don’t like loud noises.  Bah!  I need some peace and quiet.  Where are my ear plugs?  There’s a hole in my heart that can only be filled by ear plugs.

Whew.  That’s better.  Sorry, it’s just that sometimes these things just build up in my heart like that magnetic force in the hatch on LOST, and I have to input the numbers and press the button to release them.  If I don’t, the blast doors in my soul shut and weird-looking runes appear in my head.  I can’t carry the metaphor any farther than that, so goodbye.

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New Post At The Christian Manifesto

Posted on February 22, 2010 by epthnation

Like the Olympics?  So do I.  At least I think I do.  I’m kind of conflicted about it.

http://www.thechristianmanifesto.com/index.php/2010/02/21/our-olympic-supermen-superwomen/

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