So, who really owns the computer games people play?

One thing I've always found fascinating about online games with persistent worlds (games where the world doesn't change, but lots of people can interact together in the same world) is the concept of who actually owns the content. I don't mean the overall game itself, because that is obviously owned by a company that made the game, but the specific property that each character owns within the game.

Think of it this way: If you're an elf who owns a +5 Sword of Death (I'm sure some game has something named like that), and you log out, that sword is still in your in game inventory somewhere. When you sign back on, that sword is still there with your character. Some other player doesn't get to just go into your private inventory and steal it (unless you're playing some twisted game where you can do just that, but I have yet to see a successful one that has survived longer than a few hours with that kind of play style). So, do you really own that sword, or is it the property of the company that makes the game?

That's an issue that has been argued back and forth since the creation of games like Ultima Online, long before World of Warcraft and the latest Star Trek Online. The game companies will always argue that THEY own the property within the game, and that you are just playing in THEIR world (Sony Online Entertainment used to make that argument of "You're in OUR world now" on their marketing materials for Everquest). But that's an easy argument to make before getting into the nitty gritty. A customer IS paying money for the experience of playing the game, and there is a somewhat legal precedent that as long as the company honors its commitments (meaning all of your stuff is there after you leave and return to the game), your business arrangement remains. There are any number of customers who have ended their business arrangement with a company when the company has lost their equipment (thus, they have felt a breach of unwritten contract was reached). Therefore, in legal terms alone, a company that runs a computer game may have been making the accepted agreement of honoring that unwritten contract by continuing to take money for services. The challenge is convincing a judge of exactly what those "services" actually were.

But that's going further than I wanted with this post. What I was really wanting to talk about are these people who sell their accounts, convinced that the property within the game is theirs. I actually find myself somewhat fascinated by the advertisements they make on Craigslist and other such places. A lot of these ads involve the most popular game on the block, World of Warcraft, and way too often someone tries to sell his or her account for hundreds of dollars. What caused me to want to write about it was how someone actually had the nerve to write: "You are paying me for the time I put into making this character." In other ads, I've seen words such as: "I wanted to get something back for all of the time I put into building this character."

Now, I play World of Warcraft, and I have a lot of fun playing the game, as I believe many other people do as well. Not once have I ever thought that I was producing work, that my tribulations were actually part of the process I must endure before I have a commodity that I can now sell back to another customer who will value the time I've have endured in this game. No, I had fun doing what you do when you play a game, and never was it thought of as work. Oh sure, the quests might have been difficult, and I might have been frustrated from time to time, but it's not a job, and trying to convince someone that he needs to pay me hundreds of dollars for my account because of my "work" is just ridiculous.

But I see it all of the time. What is even more interesting is that selling one's WoW account is not authorized by the Blizzard, the company that owns the game. Nor is buying or selling of gold, the currency used in the game. Yet people still do it.

And I've often laughed at the arguments people make to justify it. Here are some of my favorites:

1. It takes a lot of time to accumulate money in the game. I work hard in my regular job, so I should be able to use that money to save time in the game because unlike the kids who play this game, I don't have as much time to waste on the game.

If it's wasted time, then don't play the game. Part of the challenge of the game is being able to accumulate wealth in the time that you're actually playing it. Being a CEO of a company OUTSIDE of the game shouldn't suddenly make you a god in the game. Cheating in the game is cheating in the game.

2. Buying gold (or a character) doesn't hurt anyone else, so why should they care?

Buying gold actually causes massive inflation in the game so that those who play the game must pay outrageous prices for items they buy from other players. Essentially, that CEO with his outside money is making it impossible for anyone to play the game without investing outside money into the game to bring the game back to an even playing field. It does affect other players, and it ruins the experience of the game. Also, Blizzard has pointed out that people who partake in the gold selling community also contribute to illegal programs in the game that are used to accumulate money through exploits. It also causes a lot more hackers to play the game who go after legitimate players and take over their accounts, selling their goods when they take over their accounts and then going onto the next victim.

There are a lot more points to make about this, but the main point is that virtual worlds are living worlds of their own that do much better without outside stimulation that brings outside forces into the inner dynamic. While some games welcome microtransactions that benefit the game making company, virtual economies do not benefit from profiteers who try to link outside money with internal money economies. Even the microtransaction models of some games out there ruin the experiences for normal players. This type of behavior practically destroyed the Ultima Online housing market because you couldn't get a home unless you were able to buy it through Ebay, back during the hey day of UO. When new housing opened up, that Ebay market died almost overnight. People who used to make $150 for a keep (large house) could no longer get that, so they let those properties just collapse, and then players were able to place homes for the price of housing that existed within the game. It practically changed the market within the game overnight, which was a great thing.

Anyway, that's my rant for this topic today.

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This Blog Post Proves How Cool I'm Not

Turns out that social networking scientists have finally discovered that teens don't think blogging is cool. The article is here. According to PC Magazine, only adults seem to blog these days, and unfortunately, teens don't think we're cool for doing it.

Um, when have teens ever thought adults were cool anyway? And why is it we're all concerned about what teens think? Honestly, are we all sitting around at the mall, waiting on the next issue of Teen Magazine to discover what teens think are cool so we can all go ahead and do that "thing"? At what point did adult coolness (yes, it does exist) revolve around the coolness of kids who aren't old enough to vote. Of course, it should go without saying that voting isn't cool, but that's another issue, and we won't get into that here.

I'm completely at a loss to understand how the gauging of coolness somehow came down to what teens think. When did we suddenly care what children think before deciding what to do? It's almost as if someone did a corollary study that went something like: Harry Potter is popular = Teens like Harry Potter = People who like Harry Potter are cool. I don't buy that.

Yes, marketers are interested in what teens like because teens buy products. That's about as far as it goes. But guess what? Adults buy things, too. And quite often, they buy them without a single thought about what teens want or care about. It's like the argument about music where somehow we have to believe that a music group is cool because young kids like the music. Well, that model is killing the music industry because guess what? Young people are more likely to illegally download music. It's not because they're evil. Okay, young people are evil, but that's beside the point. The reason they are more likely to download music illegally is because they have grown up within a culture that has seen music as a free commodity due to the growing online presence of music (that is easy to download without paying for it). Older people grew up with record albums and then CDs where they mostly paid for the music. So, they tend to continue to pay for music.

Well, the music industry has historically tried to appeal to the younger crowd because that's the crowd that paid for the music. But that younger crowd grew up and no longer likes the hip, cool music that gets put out as brand new (some do, most don't). So, newer bands that appear might appeal to younger people, but they're going to make less money because fewer people are willing to pay money for it. Therefore, if a band really wants to make money, it needs to appeal to an older crowd (not teens). But because so few new artists do appeal to the older crowd (and the industry keeps wanting to sell us compilation CDs of old groups), we're not buying as much music anymore. So, of course, the music industry is convinced that everyone is illegally downloading music because no one wants to buy the new stuff (that appeals to the audience that doesn't like to pay for music).

Again, the music industry cares more about a demographic that doesn't buy their music than it does the demographic that might buy its music. Kind of a ridiculous revelation, isn't it? Well, this is because they aren't paying attention to the bigger picture, which is that they need to appeal to an older crowd that is not seen as "cool", which is pretty much the revelation that is being shown in the original article. We're so concerned about a group of kids that are so insignificant to the grand scheme of things that we're willing to call ourselves not cool, even within our own social circles, where teens don't belong.

It's kind of crazy on that level.

So, I'll continue blogging, even though it's not cool to teens, who wouldn't read what I had to write anyway. But if you are reading, I guess that makes us both not cool. But I'm okay with that. I gave up trying to be cool back when I was a teen, a time ironically when I was supposed to be cool.

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Toyota's Response to Pedal Problem? A cute, apologetic girl

The Reuter's article is here.

I talked about the Toyota recall situation yesterday. What I find interesting is that the Reuter's article the next day shows a picture with an apologetic looking Japanese girl in front of the Toyota sign. This might give one the impression that Toyota might actually have some female leadership. It doesn't. As a matter of fact, when doing a google search for Toyota leadership (and women), what I kept coming up with is women suing Toyota because of discrimination in the workplace.

It does seem odd that the face of an apologetic Toyota is an apologizing woman, when none of the executives of Toyota are actually women. I guess apologizing is for women. The real men drink saki and do men things. Or something like that. What's next? Manga cartoon girls with samurai swords fixing cars? That might at least be interesting.

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Toyota's Gas Pedal Problem and Ostrich-thinking Behavior of Auto Companies

I was reading a very scary story of a woman who was driving her Toyota when suddenly she started accelerating and could not slow down her car. She ended up in an accident, and the rest of the article was how this was becoming a somewhat frequent occurrence with Toyota vehicles. Then the article went on to explain how Toyota was wrong for trying to avoid dealing with the horrific situation until finally the public outcry has forced them to do so. Now, Toyota is going through a PR campaign to somehow save its US business, something that might be difficult, as happened back in the days when Pintos were discovered to explode when you rammed them from behind. Pinto never really recovered, and it is wondered if Toyota ever will either.

Some information is important to add here because there's a difference between Toyota and Pinto. First, Toyota has a stellar reputation in the US, and over the decades, it has grown to be a very reliable maker of cars in this country. Pinto didn't have that history, at least not the decades that it needed.

There's a second piece of information that is important to add as well. This isn't the first time this situation has happened, and I'm going to let you in on a little secret: It's happened to me with at least two different cars. Neither one of them were Toyotas.

My first occurrence of this happening was with a Chevrolet Chevette. I was on the freeway, having a normal day, when suddenly my car started to accelerate. I couldn't stop it. I was going faster and faster, and I started to panic. I tried turning off my engine, but the car was now just revving so fast that it was practically burning my engine. I then discovered that when you turn off your car, if you don't put the key into the right slot, now you can't turn your steering wheel either. Discovering that while in the middle of a panic usually doesn't lead to very good results. Common sense doesn't really come to the forefront when you're not sure what to do and are in unfamiliar circumstances. Fortunately, I somehow managed to slow down the car to a stop (using the emergency brake in quick spurts).

The second time this happened to me, I was driving a Ford Escort wagon. Same exact situation, except this time it was not new, and I managed to slow down to the side of the freeway and stop the car. Both times were very scary.

Both times I tried to contact the dealership where I bought the car. My result: No one cared. No one even offered to fix the car or look at it. It was seen as MY fault, and I was pretty much left to fend for myself. I had to take my car to a mechanic and pay for the entire repairs to my car. Neither Ford nor Chevrolet cared one iota that I almost died.

So, my point is: The American car companies are going to be trying really hard to capitalize on this bad media opportunity against Toyota; they'd be stupid not to. But at the same time, at least when push came to shove, Toyota acknowledged its problem. But it's not the first car company to ever have this problem. It's just one of the first to actually do something about it.

You should think about that as this crisis continues. Personally, I've never owned a Toyota, but that's because my ex-girlfriend had one, and I loved her so much that I've never been able to step foot inside a Toyota since. But it was never because of their customer service or their PR campaign. I've bought American cars since my two fiascos with their cars, and I probably will again in the future. I just don't have a rosy feeling about the people who run those companies, because when push came to shove, I was seen as an inconvenience and ignored. I'll always remember that when it comes to specific circumstances because once you've been treated like crap by a company, it sours ever interaction you have with that company in the future.

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iPad announced but most likely AT&T will be its demise

The big announcement of the iPad was made yesterday (or day before...kind of lose track of days in this wintery wonderland). I've been waiting on this announcement, not because I want one, but for weeks I've been wondering what the hell it was. I kept hearing all sorts of undocumented speculation, but no one really knew what the thing was. Well, it turns out it's not an oversized iPhone (although Apple haters are trying to make it seem as if that's what it is...or an oversized iPod). It's not that. It's basically Apple's attempt to monopolize on the ebook future.

For awhile now, the claims of a new frontier in reading has been on the horizon, most often discussed in the mentioning of the Kindle by Amazon. But the Kindle was just too expensive for a product that requires you to buy more junk from Amazon. At prices dictated by Amazon. So I was holding off. The iPad is essentially Apple's attempt to jump into this market.

And jump it will. But it will also bring about the creation of the iBookstore, which is going to be Apple's attempt to monopolize the book market like iTunes monopolized the music market. And then the movie market. And then the television weekly program market. But the difference is: People already have a foot in the bookstore market, so Apple isn't inventing the wheel here; it's trying to reinvent the wheel and then pretending that the car wasn't already invented before it.

But even with that jibe, Apple can still do it. So what can stop this from happening?

Well, AT&T to be honest. It almost destroyed the iPhone the last time because when the iPhone was released, AT&T did everything it could to screw up this wet dream of a marketing opportunity. It dropped tons of calls. It forced you into two year contracts that were ridiculous. It had lousy coverage areas. It had crappy 3G service. Its customer service consisted of two cavemen in Delhi who had to use Verizon phones to communicate with you because AT&T kept dropping their calls. Basically, it was AT&T being AT&T.

Well, it can happen again. Over time, AT&T actually fixed a lot of its problems with the iPhone, although it never could change the fact that AT&T is still AT&T (an example is a conversation I had with AT&T recently over my Internet service that went very much like this:

AT&T: Hello, welcome to AT&T, which has the fastest Internet connection in your area. How can I help you?
Me: Hi. The tech recently came out here to install my AT&T dsl but he couldn't install the fast service, so he had to drop me to the slowest service you had due to some weird line problem you guys have. I was adding AT&T because my other service was kind of crappy, and AT&T promised to be a lot faster.
AT&T: I'm sorry you had a problem. How can I help you?
Me: Um, you're still charging me for the fastest service, but you can't provide it.
AT&T: Are you saying you want to subscribe to the slower service instead?
Me: Um, no, I'd love the fast service, but your tech couldn't provide it. You're ONLY giving me the slow service.
AT&T: So you want to downgrade?
Me: No, I don't want to pay for the fast service if you're not providing it.
AT&T: (silence for a moment) Unfortunately, I don't show that your area has access to the slower service. I can only offer the faster service.
Me: Um, that's not physically possible. Your tech--
AT&T: One moment, let me put you on hold.
(insert endless silence on the line as minutes pass)
AT&T: Welcome to AT&T, which has the fastest Internet connection in your area. How can I help you?)

Anyway, so the point is, even with all of this, AT&T can actually capitalize big time on this announcement. ALL THEY HAVE TO DO is inform the current iPhone users that they can use their already paid for 3G coverage on an iPad as well as the iPhone. This will cause more sales of iPads and continuous business for AT&T rather than more continuous jumped ships of people who give up on their iPhones and switch to Verizon. Instead, what is going to happen is that AT&T will demand that you pay for 3G coverage twice at $30 a shot to cover two separate items from the same company. If you want to sour a relationship with a customer, this is exactly how they can do it.

But mark my words, they will. Because remember, this is AT&T. They can do the smart thing, take a dip in new sales of service (but not in current business) or they can melt their market share they already have. Basic economic theory says to go for the quick profit. Sound economic theory says to do what I'm suggesting. Stupid people in business will do the former; brilliant ones will do the latter. Guess which one they'll take. We'll leave that to the future so we can laugh at them when the obvious happens.

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Howard Zinn dies

The article

He died at 87 years old (although the article mistakes his age as 89). He wrote a history book called A People's History of the United States, which may not seem like an important book based on the title, but it was. It wasn't important just because of the subject, but because of the approach. And that's why I'm taking a moment from my day to write about it, even though I'm still contemplating ending this blog anyway.

One of the problems with scholarship and knowledge is that there are too few people willing to take a different path than the ones everyone else takes. Social science is filled with that problem. To even get published in many social science fields, you have to pretty much do exactly what everyone else is doing, and then try to pretend that what you're doing is different enough to warrant attention. It's very dysfunctional.

Zinn went against the grain by focusing on the common person rather than on world leaders. Up until his ground-breaking book, history taught us about great leaders and how they impacted the world. Not on the common guy or gal. No one cared about the laborer or the shopkeeper. Instead, it was always about the one person, or few people, who made the big decisions, as if there was nothing else to history. When we hear about an era, we hear about the Chang Dynasty (named after a leader) but we never hear about the Farmer Bob Period of History. What this used to mean to me is that no matter what contributions I make to the world, I'll never be remembered because my chances of being president or someone of that stature are so minimal that it's not even worth trying. Most people will be forever forgotten and forever insigificant. Zinn showed that may not be the case. Even if they don't remember your name, they might remember what you accomplished, or what you were doing, even if they don't remember you by name. Great people lived in castles, but unknown important people built those castles, and it is sad at how we still don't pay attention to those secondary actors.

Some years ago, when I was attending West Point, I was in a history class where it was our assignment to reenact the French Revolution. The teacher saw me as an unimportant member of the class (I came from a poor family, and I was never seen at the Academy as one of the ground-breakers because I didn't have a senator or a general for a father, something two of my colleagues did), so he gave me the unimportant position as "shopkeeper" whereas the rest of my colleagues were given the "important" positions that would take place during the French Revolution. Well, one of the important characters was playing a general who was put in disfavor with the monarchy, and there was a trial for his life. I, as a citizen, was the deciding member of the jury that outlined his future fate. The king wanted "death"; I voted for banishment (with his army). The general and I were actually seeing eye to eye on where this might go in the future. Anyway, the scenario played out, and in the end, the general came back and took charge of France with his army (after everything fell apart, and all the political actors played out their politics to their ultimate demise). When the general came back, he remembered my action and made me king of France. It was a token position (he was still the power behind the throne), but this little shopkeeper became king of France.

Well, the teacher was actually kind of angry because a shopkeeper should NEVER have become king, and he didn't like how I used his political paradigm to become the victor, even though I was a non-entity in his planned scenario. Even though other students kept bringing up how fascinating it was that a shopkeeper became king, he refused to even discuss that part of the scenario as the review and tried to instill "other" lessons from the exercise. I don't think he ever forgave me for "winning" his game.

The point is: Sometimes the lowest peasant can make the biggest impact, yet we refuse to acknowledge any such contributions. And that's what Zinn was pointing out.

I can only hope that if I ever do contribute anything to history or science, it is something of this nature, something that causes people to think outside of the box. Running stats on crap we already know is beneficial for limited purposes; it's the stuff that questions our very foundation that will change our perspectives. Unfortunately, getting people to listen is equally as challenging as seeing things differently.

But at least Zinn showed us how.

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The audience as shadow

You might say I've come to a conclusion of sorts. I realized that the whole online thing isn't really working for me. I have a blog, but no one really reads it. I have a Facebook account, but no one really communicates with me on there, and all I end up receiving are notifications of how someone is having a bad day or how someone found a lost turtle in Farmville or something stupid like that.

For me, the whole online thing never worked out. Never found a girlfriend online. Never found conversations. Never got into online gaming, aside from MMORPGs. Really nothing on the social fabric has been my thing through online.

Yeah, I play World of Warcraft. And I still will. I'm just going to take a different direction on everything else.

I'm not leaving online. I'm just dumping everything social networking that's online. Never worked for me. Adds more frustration than anything else.

I shut down my facebook account yesterday. Figure no one will really notice. Or care.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to start to shed my web site as well. I've been paying $10 a month for YEARS to a company that has been getting my business that amounts to me talking to myself. Sure, I have a friend or two who reads the blog, but honestly, I can hold a coversation with those people in person. I don't need a blog to communicate with them.

The website was an experiment in beta for me because it was how I was going to keep in touch with my writing fans. They never materialized. Neither did my career as a writer. I've been writing for vanity alone, and I'm the only one pretty much reading it. What's the use in that? It's like keeping a diary and leaving it out all of the time in hopes that someone will accidentally read it. What kind of game is that?

So, I'm going to be shutting down my web site over the next few weeks. I might blog here and there much as a smoker still tokes up every now and then but knows that he shouldn't, even though he swears he quit the habit a long time ago.

I've found the whole social networking experiment to be interesting, mainly because it works for some people, but it didn't work for me. I'm a writer, not a blogger. I need an audience. It's never been about me or about writing for myself. Without an audience, well, I'm nothing. It's like being in the 1991 August coup in the Soviet Union, being Boris Yeltsin and then trying to stop the coup by talking to yourself in the shower. It might make you feel better at the time, but if there's no one listening, it doesn't do any good. If Yeltsin never had his audience, all we'd know about him and those days in August was that some fat Russian guy danced on a tank. But then, we'd probably not even know that. He'd just be some fat guy with a lot of things to say and no one to hear him.

That's what I feel like. I have a lot to say, and no one ever bothered to listen. Oh sure, a few did, but they were just being polite. And I reciprocated by listening to them. That's social networking, not writing. Never been my thing. It's like small talk. Never did it, and it's probably why I don't handle dates well. I hate small talk. It leads to nothing and is irrelevant. I hate irrelevancy, which is exactly what my web page has been all of this time.

I stared this web site with the idea that the audience would eventually come around. It never did. I thought I had a lot to say about politics, being a strange, anarchist political scientist. No one ever bothered to listen. You have to be someone with media clout. That's not me. I write humor. People find that irrelevant. So nothing comes of it. I thought I had a lot to say about writing, but no one cares, and everyone else ia a writer. Just ask them. They think they are. So who cares about what another one has to say? I thought I had a lot to say about communication theory, but again, no one cares.

And like the Pearls Before Swine cartoon where the pig is constantly being reminded by the rat that his blog is irrelevant, I'm tired of pretending it's ever going to change.

So, if you have any final comments, please do so soon, because soon there may not be a place to do so. It's okay if you don't comment, however. I'm kind of used to it. I can go off into the sunset without the attention. I'm kind of used to it.

If this ends up being my last post (which is probably not the case), I wish you all well and hope you find what you're seeking in whatever venue you seek it out. I'm saving myself $10 a month and going back to realizing that only my stuffed animals ever really cared what I had to say. And sometimes I suspect they're just being kind because they have to live with me.

Stuffed animals can be that way sometimes....

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Dreams that get in the way of sleeping

I had one of those dreams last night. You know those dreams, the ones that cause you to wake up and question whether or not you were really dreaming. It was really bizarre, one of those circumstances where a whole story was being crafted in my head, and even when I went back to sleep, the story continued from before.

I woke up several times, convinced that I need to remember this story, and even tried to edit it in my head during the moments I was awake. And then I went back to sleep and continued dreaming it again.

I don't often have dreams like this. Most of my creative writing is designed in the conscious world, where I am completely aware of what I'm doing when I do it. This was different. It was a story that was trying to create itself, and I even found myself editing it while I was dreaming it, telling myself that it needed to change in one way or another.

It was an interesting story. I'm still thinking about it today. It was one of those dystopian types of stories, something I've been writing a lot of in the last few years, but it took a really interesting direction, something I wouldn't have done if I was crafting this story myself from scratch.

I wonder if the subconscious world tries to write its own stories sometimes and has to do it in this sort of manner because my reality based writing won't let that subconscious take over like it did while I was dreaming. For all asides, it was an interesting story, and I'll probably revisit it at some point when I'm not involved in any writing projects already.

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The race is on, but Chuck didn't even get out of the gate

I am a big fan of the television show Chuck. It seemed to do all things right, including some of the best writing I've seen on television in ages. Its first season was somewhat ho-hum, but oh my god, the second season was phenomenal. It's like they put the kids to bed and then brought out the real writers.

So, I've been anticipating the third season, even though the show was almost cancelled after Season 2 because of ratings. Well, sadly, the show is like we're watching Season 1 over again.

They took an innovative show about a real fish out of water, a computer tech nerd who works for the television version of Best Buy (the Buy More) as one of the Nerd Herd (Geek Squad in Best Buy), but who accidentally has a CIA database dumped into his brain so he now must be protected by secret agents and go on missions himself. They teamed him with one of the hottest actresses to ever play on a television show, and she became his unlikely girlfriend (which made the show even funnier because he had no chance whatsoever with her, yet slowly was winning her over).

Now, he's gone from being the nerd with tons of information in his head to an upgrade where he also has secret agent skills, like Kung Fu and all sorts of other abilities that flash when he needs them. Bad idea. It was cute when he was stuck in hopeless situations and trying to fend for himself (like anyone of us might do), but making him into James Bond was stupid.

And then the writing...I don't know what to say other than I've seen some of the worst plot turns I've seen in a television show yet. The infamous unwritten backstory where he chose the job for the girl (yeah, right) that slowly gets filled in so you have to somehow feel for him because he dumped her when she was giving up everything for him to help him out of this life he was trying to escape. Doesn't work. The "we're getting the band back together" plot line of the hero getting the CIA group back together so everything's just like it used to be (except he's now a superhero superspy) was the main plot behind the last few seasons for Stargate SG1. It worked for Stargate because, well, that was Stargate. But it doesn't work every time you try to pull it off. Especially when it was just done in an earlier series.

So they relied on the "let's get the geek with a supermodel and it will by funny" schtick. Yeah, that was great for Season 1, but not Season 3. It was essentially a set up for a punch line they delivered at the end of the episode (it was Chuck's best friend hooking up with a superspy supermodel). It doesn't work when you're trying to make the show seem a bit more serious, which is the direction they took in Season 2. In Season 3, it just seems like bad writing.

There was a lot of bad writing done in this show, mainly because the creators don't know what they're doing with the show. All of the Buy More scenes are jokes, which is the way the show was designed. Then they kill off a main character by having him murdered in the parking lot of the Buy More. I can see the attempt to show the "it's now going to be serious" but then goes right back to zany comedy bits at the Buy More. Either do it, or don't do it. Killing off that character was like having an episode of SAW take place on Sesame Street. It can happen, but it doesn't belong. Sure, I'd love to see Elmo chasing people with a chainsaw, but let's be serious here.

I really hope this doesn't bode badly for the future of Chuck. I want this show to succeed so much, but this first outing of two episodes in a row is scary because it shows such a bad direction for such a great show to go. It continues tomorrow, followed by another episode of Heroes, which is another one of those shows that just can never seem to figure out what kind of show it wants to be.

But that's for another entry.

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LOST vs. President of the United States: LOST wins

Turns out that President Obama was going to give a state of the union on February 2, which in case you don't know, also happens to be the date that LOST is going to premiere its first episode of the final season. I think he finally realized that when it comes down to it, the people wanted LOST a lot more than it wanted a speech from the president. So, he decided not to go up against LOST.

There's a much bigger issue here that's not being addressed, and that's the fact that the President of the United States had to change the date of his speech because people actually believe the network premiere of LOST is more significant than his speech. Kind of tells you something, doesn't it? In the beginning, I was going to make this big criticism of the American people about this, but then it also got me thinking. Why would LOST be more important to them than the president giving a speech? Perhaps it has more to do with the realization that the affairs of state are becoming less relevant to the common person so that such a thing might actually happen. I mean, I think about myself, and honestly, I don't really care all that much about what's happening nationally these days, when I used to care a lot. And the reason I don't? Because it really doesn't have anything to do with me, and if you really think about it, it probably never will. Oh, we can make arguments that somehow it's significant, but it's about as significant as the wars of Louis XIV were important to the common person of France. Yeah, it's important, but it's not really.

And that's my thought for today. All I can say is that I'm glad that LOST isn't going to be postponed because of this speech. I'd rather watch the show. Sorry. That's just how it is.

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