The Leipzig Entertainment Show & A future trip I may have to take (for writing reasons)

It appears that E3 is pretty much dead in this country. For those who do not know what E3 is, it's the big electronics exposition that highlights the new computer games and consoles that are in the industry's headlights. Well, because it's the place for geeks to be, every geek and his mother shows up at this thing every year. It got to the point where the industry insiders didn't like the outsiders showing up to the insider convention, so they decided to do away with the big E3. Well, that's good for avoiding the outsiders, but it also put the whole industry in somewhat of a bind, because the publicity from these shows, notwithstanding the beautiful booth babes that causes every 31 year old nerd who lives in his basement to believe he actually has a chance with a hot model, is what actually sold future games. Now, well, the industry kind of screwed itself.

So, the industry in/outsiders have decided to hype a different show as the insider show that every outsider should be at. And it appears to be the one taking place in Leipzig. PC Gamer sent my favorite executive editor Kristen Salvatore this year to Leipzig's Game Convention. Supposedly, it was the gaming convention to see. I think if it comes down to it, I would enjoy attending this convention, if it ever becomes possible.

My favorite part of Kristen's weblog:

8/24/06: Not only do I appear to be on the correct tram, but I have also successfully negotiated buying tampons in eastern Germany.

Sometimes, I love PC Gamer.

However, my real reasons for wanting to go to eastern Europe has more to do with the latest book I am completing. It is a rewrite of a previous novel I wrote that takes place in eastern Germany, Poland and the former Soviet Union. It takes place during the August 1991 coup attempt, which is actually quite important to the retelling of this novel. I've done a lot of out of country research, but until the Soviet Union fell I was never really able to plan to take a trip into the area to research the locations themselves. When I first wrote this book (previous To Touch the Unicorn, but current title is closer to 72 Hours in August), I was not allowed to travel to any of the communist countries because of my intelligence background. Now, it shouldn't be a problem anymore. I've pretty much given up on working for my country again because their application process is broken and dysfunctional. It's too bad but what can you do.

So I figure in a few years from now, I'm going to be doing an extensive trip to the locations that will probably be used in this novel. At least that's the plan.

In other news, a publisher is planning to publish one of my earlier novels. They sent me a contract, and it's not a subsidy publisher either. Now, I just have to wait the period of forever it takes to publish these things, and all will be fine. I'm writing this novel under my pen name instead of my own because it is a different kind of novel than my usual stuff. I'm planning to build up both names on their own. I figure I'll let the scholars of tomorrow make the connections between me and the other names I choose to put on other novels. Gotta keep them doing something, otherwise they'll spend all their time trying to destroy Christmas.

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Gotta love my ability to pick my cities....

It turns out that according to The Record, Stockton ranks dead last in literacy for large cities in the United States. Yep, last. We're as stupid as stupid does. Or something like that. I could come up with a better allusion, but I'm from Stockton. We're all kind of dumb here.

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It's all downhill from here...well, kinda

I finished my paper for Interpersonal Communication and turned it in. I've also finished the revisions for my other grad class, and I'll be dropping that off tomorrow. All I have left this semester is to grade speeches for one more class tomorrow afternoon, edit a conference paper abstract for Dr. D., complete a final exam for one of my grad classes (that is assigned tomorrow and due on Tuesday) and then attend a holiday party for the department. I figure I'll probably go visit my sister in Southern California on Monday or Tuesday, depending upon how things go.

Finances are still getting on my nerves. My student account automates messages to me that indicate that I need to "pay my balance" by December 1st (yeah, by December 1st) for classes for next semester. They also indicate that I need to pay it off by January 1st, or they assess a $150 charge on my account. Then, in a follow up message, they state that if I'm getting financial aid, it arrives when school starts in January, which just so happens to be in the MIDDLE of January. Also, they've charged me for my two classes for next semester, yet I'm on a graduate assistantship which means I don't get charged ANYTHING for tuition. Yet, the way things have happened here, I won't be surprised to see a $150 charge still manage to take place.

Last semester they had problems awarding my financial aid, which became somewhat of a nightmare until they fixed it a few days before school started. I really hope the same thing doesn't happen again. I don't think they understand that they create stress with their system, which continues to impact on you during the rest of the semester, even though the initial stress does go away.

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Finishing the semester

These last two papers I'm writing are practically killing me. It's not just the papers, but I seem to have too much on my plate in addition to what I have to do with my classes. I blew off a forensics party this evening that I did kind of want to go to, but I had to finish my references list for one of my papers so I could continue the research and finish writing the whole thing tomorrow. My other paper needs a reworking of my newly designed Repeated Message Model. I worked with one of my professors today to put the model into more of a path model, but it wasn't the model I wanted, which kind of ended up watering it down into something unspectacular.

So what am I working on?

For Interpersonal Communication, I'm finishing a compliance-based, foot in the door literature review to show how a new approach can be used to assist patients to participate in smoking cessation activities.

For my other grad class, I took Axelrod's Adaptive Culture Model, utilizing Kennedy's opinion spin to the model (replacing culture with opinion and ideologies) and then incorporated Shibanai, Yasuno and Ishiguro's 2001 extension of the model which replaces local neighbors with international "neighbors" made local by the usage of mass media and then incorporated it into my own path model of repeated messages that continue to influence one's opinion until one leaves the experiment either with the same opinion or a changed opinion which then feeds into a new socialization. I integrated influence with persuasion and attitude change to explain why message boards that communicate with international actors now have an international messaging impact that was previously unattainable in the past except in limited circumstances involving travel to other countries or with tiny effects involving exchange students and other such visitor phenomena.

You might get the idea that I kind of like what I'm doing now. And you'd be right. This field is very open for my brand of exploratory science. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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I want the truth, sir!...No, the locals can't handle the truth!

In Stockton, it appears that because we really don't have water coming in from the Stockton rivers (because we really don't have Stockton rivers that have water), we tend to get our water from Nebraska. Yep, Nebraska. Now, I don't mind that. And the people don't mind that because they've been paying for this water for awhile, but something even more interesting has been happening with those payments.

You see, the billing address for water payments in Stockton has a Stockton address. THEN First National Bank of Omaha forwards those letters to Nebraska, and this only costs us an extra $30,000. Yes, we're paying $30,000 to forward letters that we originally put postage on that could have gotten the bills to Nebraska all on their own.

Why are we doing this? Well, it appears that no one wants to give locals the impression that they are paying money OUTSIDE of Stockton, or even California. So they are continuing to do this. $30,000 may not sound like a lot if you're a tax and spend kind of person who believes there's no end to the amount of money you should be able to pull out of the taxpayers, but this is OUR money, and it's money that could be used for better purposes in a crime capital of California.

The way I see it, and I'm sure someone has an "enlightened" perspective about why we should pay $30,000 to forward our mail to Nebraska, is that this is all part of that problem we have in government where NO ONE wants to be accountable to the people, and if they can keep shirking their responsibilities, no one will know and no one will ever hold them to stupid decisions like this one.

Gotta love America, the country of accountability, not really for, neither by but in this case, exceptionally FROM the people.

Stumble It!

Reflections on the TV shows "The West Wing" and "Heroes"

I'm finally getting around to watching the final season of the series The West Wing, and surprisingly, it has revealed to me something I never figured out before: Why the series Commander in Chief failed. For those who don't remember, Commander in Chief was another presidential series about a woman who becomes president due to the death of the previous president. It used Donald Sutherland as the "evil" Republican Speaker of the House, and well, the series just kind of went off that premise.

The West Wing used to be about those people in the White House who really cared about what they were doing. Then it became, from the end of the previous season and then all the way through this season, a show about the presidential election with special guest appearances of the White House staff. Instead of great decisions and drama by the people who run this country, the premise changed to "crisis of the week" which is solved by some fly by the seat of your pants solution maneuver. People don't want that. I didn't want that. Like me, people tend to want a White House show to be about solid, enlightened leadership, which the previous seasons were all about. Instead, we got this issue of the week crap, the same exact reason why Commander in Chief failed; it was never about the White House but in outdoing the evil Speaker of the House.

This points to something that tends to bother me about television these days. We're getting more and more crap of the week stuff. Now that Lost has become a huge thing, we're starting to get a mixture of crap of the week and fantasy opera. Lost does a wonderful job, but one of the most popular shows today is Heroes. And while I watch it week to week, I watch it because I keep thinking that a show about superheroes is going to be, oh I don't know, about superheroes. Instead, it drags on and on and on and on....

This is the problem of why Heroes is not going to survive into subsequent seasons. They're playing really stupid drama games, like sending a main character to India because I'm sure some producer/writer thought "India is different. People will think it's drama." He had to think this because even though main sections of the season's plot have been about a main character going to India, he could have gone to the local Wal-Mart and STILL completed the same exact scenes that were done in India. I really want to like this show. I really do. But it has shoddy writing that everyone and his brother is claiming is wonderful writing. It's boring. And it keeps pointing to a possibility of being wonderful, but it just never goes there. It has some great potential characters, but it doesn't do anything with them. It's got so much promise, but it's living up on the hype of that promise without actually delivering anything and then claiming that it's the new hip thing. It's the new hip thing mainly because everything else tends to really suck. Sorry to say it, but that's the case.

I figure I'll give it a few more episodes in the next season and then I'm giving up on it. For some reason the critics are complaining about Lost, but I still love the show and have watched it all the way through this season.

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Feeding the hungry newspaper thief

When I moved back to California, I decided I wanted to get the San Francisco Chronicle sent to me. I used to love the Chronicle. After reading it a few months, I've decided it's really not what it used to be, even though I still like it. Back when I was getting the Chronicle, Herb Caen was still writing his daily city beat. It was so fun to read. The two people who have since replaced him after his passing away are really not all that interesting, but more like reading bad gossip columnists. But I still like the paper, although it's not as great, to me, as it used to be.

Which brings up the illustrious newspaper thief. I was getting the paper delivered to me every morning. Turns out about 33 percent of mornings I actually got the newspaper. Either the delivery guy is inept, which I really never believed, or someone has decided that my paying for a newspaper constitutes consent of them stealing my newspaper every morning. It got to the point that I had to get up at 6am to catch the guy delivering the paper so I could actually get it in the morning. That was beginning to become a bit ridiculous.

After conducting a cost benefit analysis on how much I'm paying for the newspaper (they charge a "delivery" fee that actually makes the paper more expensive than if I just went ahead and bought it at the student center every morning) and how much I'm actually receiving it, I decided to halt future deliveries of my newspaper. This was about a week ago. Yesterday, one of my "neighbors", another college student here at Pacific, remarked to me: "Did you stop receiving the paper?" Now, my question is: Why would this person who has NEVER spoken to me before, suddenly take an interest in my morning literacy program? And having answered that question as I believe is the actual case, I then wonder: "What kind of nerve does it take to inquire about a newspaper you've been stealing every morning for the last five months?"

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