Dreams of a lego spaceman...

My blog will be changing very soon

2010-04-08T06:52:00.000-07:00

I've been kind of ignoring the little messages at the top of the screen for the last few weeks (could have been months, and I might not have even noticed), but Blogger, which is owned by Google, is removing ftp access for its blogger service. What this means might not make a lot of sense to people who aren't all into the hardware side of blogging, but for someone like me, it's HUGE. For the longest time, I've really enjoyed using Blogger to make my blog. I was able to configure it to be exactly what I wanted, which meant having to hack the code a bit (all legal, of course), but I got it to be exactly what I wanted. What was most important to me was that the blog was actually hosted on my own website's server. I learned a long time ago that when you don't do that, you are at the mercy of some other company and how good its service is. I used to use Xanga some years back, and they constantly had hardware problems, so Blogger was my solution.

Well, they're ending ftp service for Blogger, which means I have to look for a different service. Oh, I can stay with Blogger if I want, but basically what it wants me to do (in order to use littlesarbonn.com) is to do a DNS change to my system so that THEY host my blog, and that my web site is now completely pointing over to the service provided by Google. In other words, my web site will be completely hosted by Google, which means that at any moment, Google can completely cut me off if for some reason it doesn't like my content.

Unfortunately, Google has been known to do that. Oh, they don't advertise it, but I know a number of controversial people who have had their Google GMAIL accounts completely deleted on them for no reason they can fathom, other than someone didn't like who they were and what they were saying. Or it could be a technical glitch. Either way, that's not the kind of organization I want to entrust my daily writings to.

Unfortunately, this leaves me with two options. Go to another service, or pay more money to my own service provider to add a blogger service from it. Pair.com, which is my provider, uses Moveable Type, and I'm not really all that enamored with it. It has a bit of a learning curve I really don't want to try to figure out any time soon. I then looked at Word Press, but the only service they really offer that I would want is almost as bad as going to Moveable Type. So, I may end up just using their free service, which I've established already some months back at http://sarbonn.wordpress.com. It's not really a solution to my problem, but I don't really trust Google all that much, so I'm going to be moving my blog over to Word Press's free service and see if that works out for me.

I might change things as I look further at Moveable Type. I just don't feel like spending hours learning and configuring something that might just not be worth the expense.

For the most part, those who follow my blog on Facebook shouldn't see any difference. I'm pretty sure I can use the same linkage anyway. But for those who follow the site itself, it might be more difficult. The fortunate thing is that The Adventures of Stickman and the Legospaceman comic is hosted directly on my server, so it doesn't need a blog service in order to make it work.

Either way, I'll keep you informed.

If You Want To Save Money, Don't Spend Money....

2010-04-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article today on CNN Money's page about three ways you can save money. The link to the article was "Save Money Now! Three Great Deals!"

Let's examine the three deals first and then I'd like to make a small comment.

1. Fly At A Deep Discount
2. Get Cash For Appliance Clunkers
3. Tee Off For Less

Okay, the first one says that you can save money by using special promotion codes to book air travel. Um, okay. That's nothing new. And the deals aren't always THAT great, even though they want to hype the thought they might be BECAUSE PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO FLY ON LOUSY AIRLINES THAT ARE NOW CHARGING YOU FOR CHECKED LUGGAGE.

The second one says you can save money by using promotions for appliances to replace your older equipment. Now, this could be a good thing if the incentive was to get rid of resource using clunkers, but not everyone really has that need, and you kind of have to decide if the price you're going to be paying overall is really going to garner a savings down the line, or just make back the money you spent buying the new appliance.

The third one is to save money on golf courses by calling and asking if there are any discounts available. Duh. Okay.

Having read that article, I'll put forth three alternative ways to save money:

1. Don't fly anywhere. Don't travel unless you absolutely have to.
2. Use the mediocre appliances you already have if they're not consuming more energy than necessary.
3. Don't golf. It's a stupid sport anyway, kind of like NASCAR is a sport. Whenever a sport involves people who can perform it while drinking beer, it's not really a sport. It's a diversion.

The point is: If you really are trying to save money, don't spend more money than you have to spend on entertainment. If you really like golfing, then make sure you allocate a certain amount of money to golf, and all will be fine. It's a luxury, so treat it as such. If you're having trouble paying the rent, golf needs to take a backburner to paying the rent, the car payment, the loan shark or whatever Maslowian need that needs to be fulfilled.

This goes back to one of my biggest pet peeves, and that's department stores where a clerk will ring me up and automatically say: "You saved $50 today by buying this coat" right after I just handed her $150 for a coat that was originally marked up for $200. No, I did NOT save $50; I lost $150 in the transaction. A savings means that I GAINED money, not spent it. Whenever I hear that statement, I want to pull out my glock (which I should point out that I saved $33 on by buying it on sale at Walmart) and open fire on every cash register in the joint. But instead, I smile, thank her, and go dump my head into a barrel of water.

Anyway, just saying....

Pirates Hijack Duane's Novel off Somali Coast

2010-04-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

Today, the writing of Duane Gundrum was hijacked by pirates in international waters near Somalia, the European Naval Force reported this morning.

Somali pirates attacked Duane�s latest novel approximately 600 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia. He was completing an intense scene involving a complicated, triangular romance between his protagonist, a nice Southern girl, and a mysterious woman known only as the Klaw. Complete details on their complicated relationship is unknown at this time, as the author was deep in the middle of a plot variation that could have resulted in either a twisted relationship, involving a previous lover or some kind of plot twist that might have introduced yet another character who has not yet been identified.

Why Duane and his writing was traveling so close to the Somali border is unknown at this time, although it is believed that his journey may have been influenced by the concept known in certain circles as Writer�s Block.

The Somali pirates are believed to have kidnapped numerous passengers on Duane�s cruiser, although sources have yet to reveal any names. However, a recent communiqu� from the Somali pirates indicates that they are holding a plot point prisoner and are demanding $13 million dollars (US) in ransom. They threaten to �delete the hard drive� if they are not paid off as demanded.

European Naval Force commanders have indicated that they have no intentions of launching a rescue attempt at this time. Admiral Franz Heckler of the British Command Vessel Trinity stated, �We do not know anything at this time, and to be honest, Duane is kind of an unknown writer pretty much everywhere, so I�m really not sure anyone cares.�

An image of the pirate leader who Duane would REALLY like to find

Duane was contacted by email, to which he responded, �How did you get this email? Did my girlfriend put you up to this?� There is no indication at this time if his response was sincere, or if it was, in fact, some type of code that really means, �I can�t talk right now because Somali pirates have kidnapped my hard drive with my latest novel on it, but I really like your news program and recommend everyone watch it every hour that it airs.�

The US Navy responded to our request for information with a simple dispatch: �If we see pirates, we blow them out of the water. What was the question again?�

Former literary victim of Somali pirates, Elric Longfellow commented on this story with the following: �If only these pirates would target one of those stupid vampire novels. Just once�.�

We will continue to report on this story as more information develops.

Caring about Acedia

2010-04-06T07:20:00.000-07:00

As a writer, I would have to say that words are my bread and nuance is my butter, or is it nuance is my bread and words are my butter, or is it butter is my bread and....

Okay, I stole a bit of a joke from Woody Allen, but the point still sticks. As a writer, I love words, especially really poignant ones that have very unusual, nuanced meanings. The words "acedia" is one, in particular. It means to be extremely apathetic, to not care about anything to the point of not even caring about not caring. It was used in older days, but was eventually replaced when it was collapsed into "sloth" which took over as one of the deadly sins.

But we don't think about acedia that much these days, and it's not just because we don't know the word. We don't know the sense of its perspective.

I discovered this when I was teaching college students in the introductory class of political science. I used to assign a daily newspaper culling assignment where students were required to bring in one story from the news. What I discovered is how many lazy college students there are. They just don't seem to have the ability to do it. Of the ones that did actually do the assignment (which came after many days of prodding), I started to realize that very few of the students really cared what was going on in the world around them. I mean, they really didn't care.

And that seems to be the case in most circles. On some subjects, we tend to pay attention, but mostly we just don't care that much. International subjects are ignored, mainly because they involve people we don't know or ever intend to know. This is why when atrocities take place in some foreign land, there is a sense of "that's really sad" but very rarely does anyone want to get involved. The subject usually falls really fast on the interest level of most people.

Then we come to more local issues. A fire might cause someone to watch for the visual effect, but rarely because of concern. If you know someone in that fire, or close to it, then you might pay closer attention, but even that is on a case by case basis. Generally, we don't even care that much unless it seems exciting in some way.

Look at the news that gets played every day. I was watching responses to specific stories some time ago, and I noticed that people were concerned when the story involved celebrities they would never meet, but if some homeless person was killed in their area, the interest would be very lacking. In other words, if some movie star in Hollywood was going through a relationship crisis, people in Michigan might care, but if some vagrant was stabbed down the street from where they live, then the concern really wouldn't arise all that much.

I think this is why we can have a war go on for nearly a decade now, and no one really seems to care. Even though Americans have been dying, and many other people from those countries have been dying nonstop, we don't have much of a concern. Its a sidebar story that gets played right before the local weather and sports.

It also has to do with how the media covers the story as well. If I showed a personal interest story of someone suffering, people are going to pay attention. If I show you the same situation but explode it so that thousands are affected, and I use statistics to explain it, generally people aren't going to care. People can't wrap their emotions around statistics, which is why a lot of our national stories are so hard for us to wrap our heads around. We just don't care.

Which brings me back to my word of the day: Acedia. We just don't seem to care, but even worse, we don't care that we don't seem to care. Instead, we focus on minor, unimportant things while others are dealing with mortality issues on a daily basis.

Words can be interesting sometimes.

Your Friends May Not Be Your Friends: The Dark Side of Recent Trends in Facebook

2010-04-05T05:23:00.000-07:00

This has been bugging me for awhile now. I wasn't really sure how to word it, or even if anyone else was noticing it, but I was certain there was something bad going on. Turns out, I was right.

For the last while, I was getting numerous Facebook friend requests from people I'd never heard of before. I'd look at their included profile (or what little of it I could see) and there would be even less information included. In other words, I was getting friend invites from people who I didn't know, and I suspect that none of their other "friends" knew them either.

Turns out, these aren't just lonely people trying to make friends. They're spammers who realize that they can no longer get through your spam filters, so they are now trying to friend you and then open a new door to send you lots of information about products you don't want to hear about. Whatever other motives they might have, like trying to get personal information about you so they can use it to steal your identity and make your life a living hell, well, I'm sure no one would ever do that. Especially some anonymous stranger who has sent you an invite and "wants" to be your friend.

Technology Review has an article about this. Which means, if you've seen the article in the trade press, then the issue is already HUGE, which also means that you're probably already a victim. When CNN picks up the story, which is probably tomorrow or the day after, then you can be assured that if you weren't already informed, you will be informed by your bank when they ask you what all these charges in Arumba are for.

Spammers are getting very good at what they're doing, and they have to be, because there are too many programs designed to circumvent their attempts. I have a friend request I put on hold last week from a very attractive young woman who wants to be my friend. She lives in Georgia, and she has about forty other friends, none of whom I know. Her profile picture shows her with half of her shirt missing (on purpose), which I'm sure is quite useful in getting your average male to think to himself, "hey, she wants to be my friend, so maybe I have a shot at that hot chick" or some other stupid thought process. And that's how someone who is a spammer is going to get onto someone's friends list.

But then it gets even more interesting. Because I'm some horny guy that wants to make it with some hot girl half my age who lives on the other side of the continent, I'll probably be stupid enough to accept her friend request. I mean, what can I lost? Well, then she decides she wants to be friends with a lot of my other friends, which she now does by sending out a mass request to everyone on my friends' list. Then they look at it, realize that she's a friend of a friend, so they click yes when they get her request. They figure that by association (she's "my" friend), she must be safe and quite possibly a forgotten friend of theirs. So, she uses this to continue to break her way into the associations that we have amongst our friend networks, until she has managed to exhaust all avenues of connections. But now she has a huge list of people to spam for her products.

Let's now revisit "her", because odds are pretty good that she's not really a she, nor is she actually a person, but a spammer network that is interested in exploiting connective networks. Without any work at all, they let the previous connections of networks do the work for them, and next thing you know, we're all starting to receive strange correspondences. What you will also NOT notice is that her connection to you seems to disappear, going underground. Oh, she's still your friend, but she doesn't make status updates, so you don't remember she's your friend. She's like a sleeper agent waiting for the right moment to strike. And when she does, you'll never even know she did.

This is the type of thing that will probably bring down the usefulness of a site like Facebook because once people realize they're being scammed and targeted by people in their own networks, they'll do what comes natural: Leave. Why stick around an invite future attacks and continued exploitation?

There is much more to this than these basic points, but I'll leave it at that so people can get back to informing me of how many sheep they've found on their farms.

Stickman Will Be Returning Soon!

2010-04-02T11:01:00.001-07:00

My comic strip, The Adventures of Stickman and the Unemployed Lego Spaceman, will be returning soon. I just finished the conception story and art for the first few new entries. As soon as I can hook up a scanner, I will be producing these and adding them to the site. The new stories will begin with the introduction of Stickman's new pets, and then I'll be slowly integrating the introduction of the third main character, the lego spaceman.

People Are Still Not Clear on How to Do an April Fool's Joke

2010-04-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

I've talked about humor here before, and unfortunately I'm revisiting the concept because people still don't get it. Not that they read my blog anyway, but they still don't get it. I'll say it again: A joke is not funny if people end up pissed off after you tell the joke. If they're hurt in the process of telling the joke, you really need to relearn the concept of humor.

An example is the Republican Party. Just because you insulted the Democratic president on April 1st does NOT make it an April Fool's joke. It just means you chose an appropriate day to be inappropriate. Here's what they did: Obama Insult. Basically, for those not going to the article's site, the Republicans thought it would be a hoot to pretend to like Obama's ideas, and then they end their spot by talking about how they're joking and Obama is still essentially the anti-Christ (or something like that). Their actual joke is that they liked Obama's plan to cure global warming by:

"by replacing cars with low-emission unicorns� and achieving an unemployment rate of "negative 39 percent," among other �accomplishments."

I'm sorry, but insulting the person you're trying to punk doesn't come off as humorous. It comes off as insulting.

Google thought it was being clever this morning by changing its name to Topeka. On the surface, it might be kind of funny that Google decided to change its name to a town, but there's a darker joke being played here, and that's a direct slap at Topeka, which is trying very hard to become a site for a Google project (which playfully changed its name to Google for the chance of being recognized by Google). Well, here's where that joke turns really sour: If Topeka doesn't get the project it's vying for, then Google's little April Fool's joke goes from being playful to being straight out insulting, because it shows that it used Topeka as a brunt of its humor and had no intentions of actually awarding Topeka for actually going out of its way to honor Google in the first place. Instead, they would have made a grandiose gesure for nothing and got punk'd instead by Google.

That's not to say that some companies haven't got into the spirit of the day with just straight out fun. A couple of good examples are Starbucks and Blizzard.

Starbucks announced that it has two new coffee sizes: Plenta and Micra. Plenta is so big that it can be used as a rain hat or a lampshade, while Micra is only two ounces big. Fun all around cause it's a quick, one shot joke.

Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, had two announcements on its main page. The first is somewhat cruel, but playful, because it pokes fun at players who are obsessed with equipment in the game (often referred to as Gearscore, from the site that tracks this in game). They announced a new tracking system that will be part of the game that is essentially a vertical line that continues to grow larger as your "e.p.e.e.n." continues to increase in the game. It plays on the Internet term "e-peen", which is kind of risque to explain otherwise. The verbage used to explain the article is filled with euphemisms and double entendres that are all sexually related, and it reads more like a Viagra commercial.

Their second ad was just fun. It advertises a new virtual reality visor you can buy that can be used to totally immerse yourself into the game. When it comes to ordering it, it retails for $14,999.00, and takes you directly to their store site, where it lists the product as "Sold Out". There appears to now be a new message on their site that indicates they are now advertising a new World of Warcraft "matchmaking service", which gives me the impression their Devs are going to be playing at this joke all day long.

Well, that's all for now. Nothing impacting, but just something to share for the day.

The Solution to School Bullies: People Who Actually Care

2010-03-31T11:47:00.001-07:00

We've been hearing a lot about the events in January that led to 15 year old Phoebe Prince committing suicide because of school bullying. Not surprising is the people coming out of the woodwork, convinced they have the answers, some of whom hope to sell you a book or have you pay money to attend their conference to show you what they know. CNN has been going nuts at the end of March, three months after it happened, to indicate how much they care about what happened, including this article on how parents should handle their kids being bullied. What often isn't covered is those parents of bullies, who are quite often ignored until the bully does something criminal, and then everyone goes nuts, talking about how the parents are responsible for such atrocities. I'd show you a link to that kind of story, but I'm a few days ahead of that (those should start up in a few days from now).

But what isn't really discussed, or at least not at the length it should be, is the responsibility the rest of us have for making this kind of activity stop. Let's not pretend that bullying is a new crisis. It's been going on as long as a bunch of cave man kids figured out that if you hit Grokk over the head with a club, it would cause Grokk to feel bad and be laughed at by the other cave kids. And the cave kid who hit Grokk over the head would become really popular.

It was no different in my day (a few years after Grokk graduated and went to MIT, or the Paleolithic Era equivalent of MIT). Tougher kids targeted weaker kids. Popular girls shunned less popular girls. The "in" kids treated the "out" kids like crap. The "out" kids grew up to make web browsers and sell their companies for billions of dollars, often putting the former "in" kids out of work, forcing them to move out of their trailer park homes. Or something like that.

So, yes, at one point, I was a young kid at school, and there were bullies all around me as well. Some bullied me, some left me alone, and others continued on their self-directed tours of social environments that inhabit such worlds. But I'm thinking of one kid named Roger (for lack of any other name and not to embarrass anyone who might actually be this person). He was kind of insane. Everyone shunned him and stayed away from him because he was generally perceived to be nuts.

Unlike others, I actually found his strange antics to be somewhat fascinating. He used to have laser battles in his head, and he would act them out in public, with everyone just shaking their heads at him and looking around at everyone else to make sure they all realized they were in on the joke, and Roger was just being Roger.

At one point, I actually found myself in a situation where I was having a general conversation with Roger. I should point out that it was very difficult to speak to him because he suffered from all sorts of deficiencies, including an early form of ADHD, and he would just yell out random things at times. But every now and then, you could get him to stop, calm down and actually hold a normal conversation.

And he was brilliant. I was working on a prototype model of a water run, hydrogen enhanced engine at the time (it was the early years of high school, so I was aiming high). He took a look at my crude drawing, sketched over it and showed me exactly where it needed to be fixed in order to work. He then drew in an oxygen to hydrogen consumption matrix that took me several months to eventually figure out was meant to compensate for the loss of thermal energy. He was brilliant at ideas; he wasn't always that great at explaining them.

So, in coherent moments, Roger and I would have long conversations about really fascinating subjects. I then found out about his home life as well, which was one of the more dysfunctional family environments I'd ever heard about, causing me to wonder if it was as imagined as most of his out loud ramblings. And then, one day, he and I discovered we walked the same area going home, so he invited me over for no apparent reason, other than it was just something to do.

I met his family, and it was both very normal, and really bizarre. The father was somewhat insane as well, and the mother was someone who would just ramble on and on with incoherent sentences, before switching to normal "mom" mode and ask if everyone wanted lemonaide. His sister seemed the most normal, right up until the point she started talking about her future as a high class call girl in Beverly Hills. I had numerous conversations with her (she was in junior high school at the time), and I could never get over the feeling that I think she was just putting me on the entire time, not wanting to be outdone by her strange family, almost as if she was being crazy in hopes of fitting in, but was secretly sane and just taking notes for her future tell-all book.

At school, I'd run across Roger all of the time, and he was slowly moving from "out there" to outright, no turning back, insane. He was constantly picked on by other kids, because he was such an easy target, and all I kept noticing was that no one ever bothered to hold a conversation with him longer than an insult session, because they were missing what appeared to be a really interesting guy. But they were never interested in a conversation to begin with; they were looking for a victim, and what better victim can be found than someone who really has little grasp of reality and little ability to interact in that environment?

All I remember is that Roger was so much more interesting to talk to than 90 percent of the rest of those students in that environment. He really had something to say, but he just had little way of communicating it. But all it really took was a desire to listen, and a whole world of fascinating information was available to a potential listener.

When I think about this whole episode with Phoebe Prince, I think about the so many victims who have been targeted by stupid bullies, and it's painful. I think many of us have been victims of such Neanderthals in that past, but we all managed to make it (better or worse). I wonder how many others didn't make it because no one cared enough to step in and realize there was an actual person being targeted, not a punch line to someone's joke.

Why I Write

2010-03-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

I know some of those who read my stuff aren't real science fiction fans, so hang in there with me for a second cause I have to go all geek like to make this point. There's a scene in Star Trek: First Contact where Picard is having a conversation with the actress Alfre Woodard (a stellar actress in her own right), right before he goes into one of the greatest monologues of all Star Trek history, and he starts it off by stating: "I have a certain perspective when it comes to the Borg." And those who were fans of the show know that he was once kidnapped, turned into one of them, forced to destroy many of his friends and comrades while helpless to do anything to stop himself from doing so. Yes, a certain "perspective". So whenever I'm asked why I write, I think back at that moment, and I say that I have a certain perspective when it comes to writing.

What that means is that I've lived a life that's very different than most others. That doesn't mean it was better, more introspective or whatever. It just means that my whole life seems to have been designed around giving me a different perspective on the way of seeing life and the world around me. So, when I write, I like to think that my third eye, as some writers, specifically Stephen King, have pointed out, sees things differently than most other people. And as a result, I like to share that perspective with others, because I often fear that no one else will ever have that perspective to share with the rest of the world, because my perspective is strange, and thus, I think needed.

But I'm sure most people feel that way about themselves, so I don't purport to be superior to others, or to be more significant in my knowledge. I just happen to be a certain kind of information sponge who grabs many things, puts it through a really bizarre blender and then spits it back out as "perspective".

And I've always felt that way, even though my background hasn't always been so varied. I felt this way before I went to West Point. I thought I had a pretty strong handle on the world back then. I hadn't experienced ANYTHING, but I sure felt I had. Then there was West Point. Then there was my time in the service, which has given me a seriously distorted background that has added all sorts of nuance to that perspective. There were things you do in the military that automatically give you a different sense. There were things people don't normally do in the military that I did in the military that add to that sense. Then there were the places I went, and the experiences I had with the many people of those places. It seemed like most of my life was designed around exposing me to things other people don't see. Things from burnt out villages, abandoned ghost towns, roming Roma families, shysters, scammers, brilliant scientists, murderers, treasonous villains who would sell out their mothers (some who did), people who would look me in the eye and lie to me even as I knew they were lying to me, world-traveling doogooders who no one would ever know because they never sought out notoriety for what they were doing, crazy nutcases that had more power and responsibility than anyone should ever have, mysterious strangers who would fade in and out of my life at times (sometimes reappearing at odd times, and other times never being seen again), and all sorts of others that I can honestly say have helped me to see the world as such a different place with so many different perspectives.

And when I was a kid, living a very unimportant life, realizing that I was probably never going to do anything to make a difference anywhere or to anyone, teachers started to tell me that I had a gift of writing, that it was something I should pursue and continue to do. And then people kept telling me this, until I realized that it wasn't just something people say to kids, but they were serious about it. And then I started to sell my writing, and I realized that I loved to communicate with people. That sort of put me on a path that I've been traveling ever since.

What I discovered with writing is that I began to love the process as much as the communicating. There are all sorts of nuances that make it so much more interesting and fascinating as a process. In the beginning, I was writing just to communicate a message, but these days I explore each new story with the perspective of challenging myself to write differently to provide the story that needs to be provided in whatever fashion that best fits the process. And while it may not seem that way, it opens up a whole world of possibilities when it comes to writing. Even the name of a character can have massive symbolic, intuitive value. Sometimes, you can even create a sense of writing that hides a whole fabric of writing within its world, so that someone would have to actually be very introspective and careful to make sure that he or she found exactly what was really being written. I got to do that with a humorous novel I wrote, and it was so much fun because I was challenged the entire time I was writing it, and at the same time I got to really stretch the limits of what I was capable of, realizing that I couldn't have written that same book ten years ago. Which puts forth the possibility that there are novels waiting to be written by me that I'm not even capable of writing today, just because I haen't learned what is necessary to bring the writing to that level yet.

That is why I write. It is for me both a process and an ultimate challenge. It's the only challenge that I am capable of putting forth for myself, completely aware that any laziness on my part leads to complete failure, but complete effort leads to results I can't even yet begin to imagine. Again, that is why I write.

I guess you could say it gives me a certain perspective when it comes to the activity. Picard would be so proud.

The Art of Nuanced Titles

2010-03-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

This is another writing topic, for those who are keeping track. But I seem to be on a roll these days.

My topic today is nuanced titles and the art of creating them. What I mean by this is best explained by a series of plays I wrote as Nigel Cross (written with Allen Amundsen...who at one time actually was reading my blog, so who knows, maybe I'll get a shout out from him). One of the titles we created was called Without A Net, a play about two guys who meet on the Golden Gate Bridge while one is contemplating "hurling himself into a watery death". The title was nuanced because as the story goes on, the character who wants to jump keeps saying, "I'm jumping because I'm without a net." You find out later that what he is really saying is "I'm jumping because I realize I'm without Annette." Annette was the woman who dumped him, causing him to finally decide to end his life.

We revisited the nuanced title thing again and again, like our story "Be the Monkey", which is about two actors putting on a play called Monkey Boy. The nuance is a little more subtle this time around, but I won't go into the particulars, other than to say that it works out that the name is important to the story. Later on, we wrote "Splitting Adam", which is about two brothers who haven't spoken in years. I based the title off of the nuclear family, which then leads to the thought of "Splitting Atom(s)", which leads to the nuance I'm talking about.

Later titles I played around with came in other plays, like "Hostage Play", where a group of previous characters take over the play until the playwright decides to "end" the stories they were in previously, thus taking the play hostage. It seems that I've had a lot of fun with titles over the years because nuance really seems to be almost as important as the story itself. My latest short story that was published was titled "Buried Memories", and it had as much to do with memories as a tree that was planted that contained the memories of an important event shared between the two main characters of the story.

Recently, I've been updating a story I wrote years ago called "Killing Robert Shaw", which is probably one of the most powerful stories I've ever written about a doctor who administers the final lethal injections on death row and sees the actor Robert Shaw each time he kills a patient (because you later find out the actor looked identical to the man who killed his wife and daughter and got away with it).

I don't think a lot of people think enough about nuanced titles anymore, but sometimes they can be really powerful. I've seen it used recently in some great movies, such as Babel. After you watch the movie, you can probably sit for about an hour and ruminate on the title alone.

Anyway, my latest novel is called Plato's Perspective, and I'm sure you can imagine it is filled with all sorts of nuance in the title alone. I'll pretty much leave it at that for now.

The Struggles of Writing Humor

2010-03-25T07:07:00.000-07:00

In the many writing books I have read over the years, one of the toughest writing processes is often considered to be that of humor. Part of the problem is that it can sometimes be considered difficult to do humor due to numerous reasons, ranging from the author not being funny to not being able to translate humor to the averge person.

I've been writing humor most of my life, starting off with many short stories I wrote, up until one of my latest novels. In almost all of my writing, there has been a sense of "duane", or humor to the writing. My characters were always known for having little asides that add laughter to what can sometimes be a very serious subject matter. It takes nuance to be able to do this, but over the years I've managed to craft this part of my, well, craft.

Part of the problem of writing humor is the perception that it's not "real" writing. And that's one of the things that has bothered me for many years. My very first submission of a short story to an editor was "The Ides of March", which was my send up on horror, which involved writing myself into the story itself (the writer, not me as a character). At one point, the writer becomes involved in the story, and the characters throw a fit because I didn't belong, and like most jokes, it becomes one of those "you'd have to read it to understand it". But the response I received from the first editor I ever sent it to was something I remember word for word: "A series of jokes, alas, does not make a story". But it was a story. And it was funny.

What I discovered is that because I wrote humor, I was shown a different part of the writer's business market. Quite often, an editor feels he or she doesn't have to take you seriously or even treat you with respect, because you write humor rather than "something serious". Over the years, some of my humor writing has received some of the harshest responses from editors. Some of it has been published. But sometimes, out of nowhere, I'll get really obnoxious, mean-spirited responses from editors who I really feel think that because there's humor involved, they don't have to be as professional with the writer as they would someone who sent something "serious".

Now, humor isn't all that I do. It's just something I like to do. And I have discovered over the years that I can be quite successful at it. Some of my strongest published writing has been humor, and the responses I've received from readers has been really great.

But having said that, I wanted to talk about honing the craft when it comes to humor writing, because a lot of people don't understand how to do it. I honestly believe that a lot of people think a bunch of jokes does substitute for story. It doesn't. That should be obvious, but quite often it is not. I once mentored a young woman in writing some years back who was trying her hand at writing. She couldn't get it down on paper. She was a very funny person, in person, but she just couldn't convey that humor when she tried to write it down. She would constantly fall back on trying to point out that she was trying to be funny. I kept trying to tell her that what I perceived as her conflict was that she wasn't sure enough of her own humor to be able to convince anyone else. We never really got over that hurdle. She went back to romance fiction, and that's what she writes to this day.

For me, I did a lot of stories and articles that helped me figure out how to deliver a humorous story. But something else came along for me that I never suspected would help, and that was speech and debate (Forensics). I wrote a lot of stories during this time, for both myself and other people who were competing. I did a lot of humor during this time because it was just so much fun to be able to get an immediate reaction from your humor. You don't normally get that as a writer; you just have to hope that somewhere out there someone is reading your writing and laughing, and for the right reasons. With Forensics, I was able to craft a funny story and have people laughing right in front of me. It helped me to figure out timing, something that Steve Martin has pointed out is one of the hardest features for a comedian to nail down in a routine. He uses humor to explain it, but he makes his point well. Since then, I often think about my audience in front of me while writing humor; I figure that if I can see them laughing, then I know I've achieved my goal. If it doesn't work, and I know when it doesn't, I rework it.

My latest big project was The Ameriad, a novel written in the style of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The difference was, I wrote it in character, as the worst translator in history, who was good at getting the words right, but just not that good at nuance and understanding what he was really translating. This allowed me to write a novel on several levels, something I always wanted to do. I was writing metaphor, allusion, symbolism, slapstick humor, and nuanced humor. It was designed so that both a scholar and a novice could both read it and get something out of it with neither the scholar feeling that he or she was being talked up to nor the novice feeling that he or she was being talked down to. It made the writing of this novel very difficult, but in the end, it helped me reach the next rung of writing, something I think a lot of writers don't understand.

Because what happens with a lot of writers is that they spend decades trying to put out writing, but spend less effort on honing the craft, even though they say they are, not realizing the significance of the act. Good writers stretch themselves each time they write so that they are not writing the same thing over and over again. An example of an author who stopped doing this a long time ago is Clive Cussler, who is arguably one of my favorite authors of all time. But he doesn't reinvent himself every time he writes a novel. You can read Raise the Titanic and get the same sense of writing you get from his latest novel. That doesn't make him any less of a great writer. It just means he stopped trying to better himself a long time ago. Take an author like Doris Lessing, and this is someone who pushes the envelope every time she puts pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard...don't know how she really writes).

That was the sense I had when I went into the process of writing The Ameriad. It was meant to be funny, but it was also meant to be seriously socially relevant. And that's what makes it a struggle to write humor. You can't just tell a bunch of jokes and hope people laugh. You have to be challenging your readers as well as yourself so that the humor means something. I don't think a lot of writers get that. Some do, and it's wonderful whenever you come across one that does it well. I can't claim to be a success at it, but I'll certainly admit that I try each and every time the next story is begun.

The Categories of Great Television

2010-03-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

It is not often that you hear the words "great" and "television" used in the same sentence. But there have been some great series out there, and believe it or not, there are a few that are wonderful even today. Unfortunately, the majority of what's one television is avoidable, at best, and even more unforunate is that sometimes it's hard to figure that out until it's too late.

It's no secret that television stations are famous for destroying great television shows, either through cancellation or through inner destruction by ruining them on screen. A good example is the classic example of the original Star Trek. This was a show way ahead of its time, and it was taken off the air before its time. Then put back on the air, and then shut down for good. (well, until it was reinvented decades later as a brand new set of franchises that served to fall down again before reinventing itself in movies again). But that being said, television networks constantly destroy great shows, and we're the victims each time, and there's really nothing we can do about it.

But I thought I'd talk about some of the great shows, and to do so I'd like to point out some of the categories I've created for how I like to distinguish television shows.

1. Great Television Series
1b. Good TV Series, But Not Great
2. Good Series That Were Destroyed By the Networks
3. Great Shows That Wore Themselves Out
4. One Season Wonders That Destroyed Themselves
5. One Season Wonders That Networks Cut Off Life Support in Their Infancy
6. Fun Shows That Were Good At Times But Didn't Always Do It
6. Everything Else That Sucks

Great Television Series
There are some great shows that fit into this category, and unlike a lot of critics, I will argue that the actual listings that fit in here vary from person to person. But for me, I would have to say that there are some brilliant shows that have existed and were done so well that they will forever be the ones to be compared to. Here are some examples.

LOST: One of the few shows that has been strong from start to finish. It even had a mid series few seasons that people said they didn't like, but after rewatching those shows, you realize how important those particular seasons were. People didn't know enough to realize what was being done during those seasons, and now on its own, the whole series is probably the one to compare to forever. We're about 7 episodes from a series completion, and the show has never been as strong as it is now.

Battlestar Galactica (the remake): They took a hokey 70s show and turned it into something powerful, ground-breaking and so dramatic that normal television dramas don't even hold a candle to it. Sure, there were a few hit and miss episodes, but the writings was brilliant, and the acting was dead-on. Unlike LOST, it suffered from its closing up of the series, but that's because it seemed like they were making it up as they went along, not realizing how they were going to tie up all of the loose ends. LOST never seems to have had that problem as everything (or practically everything) tied itself into the final season.

Babylon 5: The series was designed from start to finish to play out exactly as it did. Sure, there were a few episodes that were hit and miss, but it went over a 5 year period. The last season was a bit weaker as it didn't have the overarching nemesis of the Shadows to act as the enemy, but it was still done very well. Their attempt to spin off a new series after it (Crusade) failed miserably, but fortunately that other series doesn't have to be looked at as a condemnation of the original material.

M*A*S*H: One of the few non-science fiction series to reach the top point of television presentation. A comedy, it was different from other shows because it also had some of the most powerful dramatic moments in television history (including the first usage of swear words in a TV series; Alan Alda called someone "a son of a bitch", which back then was HUGE). Later generations tend to see the show as more of an old show that isn't that funny but for its time, it was ground-breaking, and it served as a direct condemnation of the Vietnam War, even though it was really about the Korean War. It's somewhat ironic that the show ran longer than Korean War by several times.

Get Smart: Another great old comedy with Don Adams as the clueless Maxwell Smart (later played by Steve Carrell in the latest movie adaptation). Most people don't realize the show was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, two of the greatest comedic geniuses of the 20th century.

These are just a few of the great shows that existed. Here's a list of others I think belong here, although not always were they as spot-on as the previous few I mentioned.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Angel
Hillstreet Blues
Monk
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Deadwood
Stargate SG1

Again, as previously mentioned, there are many others that others might want to include with their lists. But this brings me to a secondary category, and that's where things start to fall apart for television. There are a lot of shows that were really good, but they didn't always produce great episodes. A lot of times they were hit and miss, even if their shows ended on a great note (and some haven't ended yet), like:

The Sopranos
Weeds
The Tudors
Dr. Who (the new one)
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate Universe
V (the new one...the old one was atrociously bad)
Magnum, PI (great fun, very hit and miss)
Ghost Whisperer
Roswell
Smallville
Veronica Mars

Again, there are probably a dozen more, but it's hard to remember them all.

But that brings us to another category, and that's the shows that wore themselves out. We all know the "jumping the shark" reference that comes from Happy Days when Fonzie jumped a shark with his motorcycle. For bad journalists, what this serves is as a vehicle to say that a show has hit a moment where it is no longer the show it used to be. But that just shows that most of them lost touch with the metaphor, because what was happening to Happy Days at that time was that it was once a great show, but people stopped watching it. So this HUGE media event was created where it was advertised day and night that Fonzie was going to be jumping a shark on Happy Days. THAT was the "jumping the shark" moment. The network was so desperate to get its fan base back that it overhyped an event that was really stupid. THAT is jumping the shark. Anyway.

Other shows that started out great but died out were like Heroes, which had a great first season, and then it has been nothing but an attempt to appear relevant again. It's not. The show sucks now. It's never coming back.

Part of the problem with these types of shows is specifically in the vision and in the writing. The writers fall in love with themselves, and they think they're being really hip and cool, but they're being corny and cliched. They do stupid writing techniques (like the old writing cliche of writing a serial story where you always end with the hero falling into an endless pit and then start the next episode with him "leaping out of the pit"). The vision of the story suffers here as well, as the producers and directors want to make the show seem visually relevant and hip, but it ends up being worthless a trite. An example of this is with a show that was never hip to begin with, and that's Flashforward. They started with a great visual premise, but had nothing to add to it. So the show was on autopilot until they decided to "pull a LOST" and take the show off for half a season and then come back like they were planning the hiatus all along. People aren't going to watch a show when you do that, and you didn't hook them the first time.

One season wonders are caused by two problems. One problem is the show itself, as in it really has nowhere to go after its first season. Like Heroes. The other problem is when the studio has no confidence in the show and makes attempts to pull it off the air because of ratings. Quite often, the show doesn't last (or just disappears). A good example of a great show that could have continued but suffered from network ailment was Jericho. The show had great promise, but the studio pulled it, then allowed it to continue for a bit, then pulled it. So it ended, but it seemed really forced, turning a great first season into a hurried finish through half of a second season. They're doing that with a lot of other shows as well. People like conclusions, but it really needs to make sense. Otherwise, the show dies a stupid death.

The last category is unfortunately the norm for most television shows. There are so many bad shows on the air that actually do better than the good shows that people just don't watch them anymore. Grey's Anatomy is a good example. I wanted to like the show because I was a Katherine Heigl fan (from Roswell). I stopped being a fan after Grey's Anatomy. What a bad show. I tried watching it but it tried so hard to be Scrubs with relevance. An ER with a laugh track (or needing a laugh track). It was a horrible show. Please let it die.

Other shows are just as bad. Reality shows are even worse. I understand that people will do anything for their few minutes of fame and don't want to actually work for a real living but be famous for being famous. I don't care. I don't want to watch them. I won't watch them. I don't care that some girl got a boob job because she wants to be seen as relevant in the real world of her reality show existence that no one cares about except her and a few thousand of her wannabe Facebook friends. Reality shows have completely destroyed television. For every good American Idol (which I don't personally watch, but recognize its relevance and good attributes) there are so many crappy reality shows that are essentially attempts to popularize bad social science with spot assessments of little merit. I don't care how many times people think the world will turn into a Hobbesian dystopia once controls are removed, I don't buy it, and I still think the only reason people become such assholes is because there's a money pay off at the end of those shows. Man, those shows bug the crap out of me.

Anyway, that's my quick assessment on television that everyone has been waiting for. Okay, just my stuffed animals were waiting. Okay, even they didn't want it. But it's my blog, dammit!

The Problem With Health Care Legislation May Actually Not Have Anything to Do With Health Care

2010-03-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

I'm going to go out on a limb and say something most people aren't thinking about, and most people probably don't want to admit (or will admit). The problem right now in today's political environment isn't health care, even though it does seem to be the main focus. Like most major issues, health care is serving as a metaphor for what is really wrong. What's wrong is not health care. What's wrong is that our country is stuck in at a nexus, and NO ONE has a clue where to take it next.

Think about it. The United States has been rudderless for decades now. We've been going on autopilot towards...well, to be honest, no one really knows where we're heading. All we know is that we seem to be reactive against things that we don't want. We don't want terrorists. We don't want unemployment. We don't want wars. We don't want cars speeding up and crashing into walls. We don't want crime. We don't want taxes, bad health care, mean people, too many commercials, men kissing on television (okay, some people don't want that, and others REALLY want that), pirates, high prices, corruption, evil banks, Wall Street profiteers and, well, the list seems somewhat endless, although I'd go on a limb and say we don't want long lists that seem to go on forever.

What we don't seem to know is what we do want. Oh, I don't mean intangibles. I know we all want "peace", money and Megan Fox (okay, some people want that and others REALLY don't want that). But we really don't have a grasp on what we really want and need. Throughout most of the US's history, we were at war with someone, or were fearing a war with someone. I'm sorry, but Iraq, Afghanistan, the Taliban, Osama Bin Ladin, and terrorism is NOT a war. Almost all of those are intangibles that really have no substance. Iraq is a war we didn't want or need that is now a mess we have to clean up. Afghanistan is a cesspool that has needed cleaning for several centuries now and has been a failure of numerous administrations, hegemonies and various dictators. The Taliban is another metaphor that has no substance to most normal Americans anymore than Team America: World Police was an accurate depiction of US Foreign Policy. Osama Bin Ladin is a spectre of an entity that we keep bringing back to scare little children who happen to be Republicans, live in Texas and vote for Sarah Palin. Terrorism? Um, a state of being is not a process of war. Terrorism is something you do to scare governments; it's not a thing you fight anymore than a War on Fear makes sense.

We need direction. And we need some where to actually go with that direction. Once, we needed to go to the Moon. So did Ralph Kramden, but we got there (he didn't). We elected a man who claimed he had a vision for America, but so far, that vision has been more like a new pair of glasses. Yes, it helps us see better, but it doesn't make the picture any more palatable. The kind of direction we need is the kind that leads us to a positive future of tangible benefits, not a potential esoteric plane of existence where we might feel better.

In the process, we have people out of work who need jobs. We have people without health care who need long term care. We have cities that cannot afford to put police officers in the streets, and even when they do, we have populations of people who don't even trust them, teamed up with populations of people who have been fending for themselves for so long that they've given up the Hobbesian perspective of trusting the gatekeepers.

The United States needs a vision of an actual future where tangible things can be worked for. People can work together towards an ideal if that ideal makes sense, but there seems to be way too much "trust me and all will be okay" in current day policy decisions. There is also way too much corruption in the ranks of the people who are supposed to be leading us towards that type of future.

Do I have an actual answer? No. I'm not the person who needs to be doing that in the first place. I never claimed to be a politician, nor do I even claim to have the best interests of the greater good at heart. I just know that listening to self-motivated individuals talk about how they know best about health care is not leading us to answers that will help the rest of us. Obama had one thing right during the election, and that was the concept of town halls. What he's not getting right is how they should be used. We need leaders that stop talking to us with great speeches about how they're going to continue doing the status quo in hopes of making things better. What we need are for those leaders to put together town halls and listen to the people. Listen to those constituents who put them in office in the first place.

Unfortunately, listening in this country involves money and lobbyists. As long as that continues, the cesspool is all we have available to us for future development.

The Struggles of Being a Professional Writer in the 21st Century

2010-03-11T10:39:00.000-08:00

It doesn't seem all that long ago that being a professional writer was not all that difficult. Yes, it was still a difficult field to break into, but once you did, you were pretty much a part of publishing's bigger picture. I kind of grew up a bit too late to be part of the Maltese Falconish era of writing with the Sam Spades and gumshoe detective novels, but I put forth a lot of effort during this period and was starting to make a name for myself.

That was about 20 years ago. Then I just kind of went into a retrospin and stopped writing. Well, I didn't stop writing exactly. I just stopped trying to be published.

The funny thing is: I almost made it 20 years ago. I was highly published, and even editors recognized my name when I sent in my stuff. Fast-forward twenty years, and I'm an unknown just like every other wannabe writer under the sun.

Something happened during the last twenty years that has completely changed writing, and it's actually made being a professional writer almost impossible. Back in the early days, it was kind of cute when someone told you he or she was going to be a writer, because the majority of them never followed through, and you knew there was always this belief that someone who was intelligent also thought of himself/herself as a potential writer. I dated a woman some years ago who because of her education was convinced she would make a great writer, but she had never written anything, so we kind of know how that ends up. But back to the point, something has changed.

What changed was that becoming a writer has become much easier. In the old days, companies used to prey on potential writers by trying to sell them into vanity presses (which were pretend publishing houses that would charge you to publish your book and then pretend like you "made it" even though all you did was pay for a bunch of books to be published and then have no way to sell them). Other companies came along that did something similar, but instead of charge you to publish your book, they would publish your book for free, but they would only print as many as were sold, effectively setting up that same thing the vanity presses did because the only market for your book was YOU, and they expected you to pay for copies of your own book. It was vanity without the vanity name.

What this has done is make any potential writer automatically claim to be a professional writer, even though that's not what they are. The old model used to filter them out of the picture because the process took so much work and effort that a lazy writer was never going to go through the work. Now, everyone can be a writer, and because there's no longer any work (they'll publish anything), more and more crappy books are being published, making it that much more difficult for dedicated writers.

This has brought about another thread in the writing market that is even more dubious. For the longest time, writers could supplement their income by writing articles. You didn't make a lot of money doing it, but you made enough money that you could survive quite comfortably. The idea was quality work of select titles, not volume of crappy work. Now, a bunch of for profit schemes have appeared on the scene and have practically destroyed the freelance writing market by pushing it out to the common demoninator writers and those who are willing to bargain their way to a writing career. Some examples:

1. Guru.com. This organization has appeared and turned the normal writing market into something of a joke. In the old days, someone wanting their memoirs written would have to shop for a quality writer, often finding someone who had some experience in the memoir market. Guru serves a really bizarre function for this market in that it now offers a place for people who want writing done, but the writers all try to low bid each other for the assignment. The job no longer goes to the best writer; the job goes to the one who offered to do an assignment for the lowest price. Talk about a business destroying mechanism.

2. Demand studios (demandstudios.com). This organization gets people to write articles for $7.50 to $15.00 an assignment. Yes, you can probably survive by using this process to write, but it is completely serving to destroy the freelance writer market because people used to get paid $200-500 for a writing assignment. Why pay them $300 when you can pay them $15.00? Yet, many writers seem willing to do this in order to get both income and a byline. I've been kind of hovering on the edge of this organization for a while because I'm torn between the fact that I hate what they're doing, and I realize that I need to survive in order to consider myself a professional writer. My personal jury is still out on this one, even though it's not all that happy about it.

The problem with writing today is that everyone can be a writer because there are so many ways to get your writing published. But there's still no way to get anyone to read what you write. To do that, you still need to break through with the big publishing companies, but it's getting harder and harder to do it because there is so much trash out there that is competing with the serious writing as well. Publishing companies are going with safe products, like already famous authors or celebrities who pretend to write books. A book by a controversial figure like Sarah Palin can guarantee sales, but a book by a serious author may never even get published, unless that author chooses to become published through an almost vanity publishing house.

It makes the whole field very depressing. I'd leave it completely and focus on something more useful, like fishing in Azeroth (World of Warcraft) if I wasn't addicted to writing. I'm one of those "need to write" people, and that makes it even worse. I was born to do this as my calling, yet I can't seem to get anywhere with what I was born to do.

It's depressing. Almost enough to write a book about it. Maybe I can get Sarah Palin to pen it. I hear she has a really strong writing career these days.

It's Just a Joke...really

2010-02-24T05:24:00.000-08:00

ESPN has made a politically correct move and suspended one of its reporters for statements he made about a female colleague on the air. Supposedly, he made negative comments about the outfit she was wearing, and after that the heads at ESPN went nuts. The commentary has been all over the place since then, with people either saying it's much ado about nothing, ESPN overreacted, or Kornheiser should be fired, skewed and napalmed with extreme prejudice.

Why am I talking about this? Well, because it brings up a subject I've wanted to talk about for awhile, and that's the whole idea of comedy and humor.

Years ago, when I was in the service and out of the Academy, I was required to attend a basic training unit (I attended a lot of them as part of my assignments while working for CID and CI). I remembered I was in this battle of wits with this really stupid PFC. He was trying to insult me, and my response was to take every insult he waged, agree and then use an additive process to show how he was now contradicting himself. By the time I was done, he looked really foolish, wanted to fight, and let's just say that the situation did not end well for him.

BUT right after that, and because of that, it got me to thinking about humor. I was a very flippant young man at the time. I was quick to use a cynical response to unarm an opponent, and much of my humor was directly insulting in some way. At the time, I thought that was what constituted "funny".

Well, at that time, I made a decision because I felt really dirty after that conversation because even though EVERYONE was laughing with me, they were all laughing AT HIM, and something didn't seem right about that. I began to see humor as something that could be very negative. After that day, I made a vow to avoid ever using negative humor that hurt someone else. I no longer found it funny, and therefore, I would no longer try to gain favor for using that style of humor.

What I discovered is that there are very many people who ONLY know that type of humor as "funny". As I was reading through the responses to the Kornheiser story (the guy who made the stupid comments about his female colleague), I started to notice how many people would say something like: "you people don't understand humor, so leave him alone", and all I could think was that perhaps a lot of people don't understand humor. The ability to poke fun at someone else's expense should never be considered funny to an enlightened community, yet there is so much of that type of behavior in our society. From political pundits to late night talk show hosts, negative humor is used so much at the expense of other people. Oh, we justify it by using such comments as "he's a public person" or "he or she should have known better". But in the end, it's humor that comes at the expense of another individual.

One solution to this problem for me back then was to think through each attempt at making a joke. How I used to do this was think to myself, "would everyone find this funny, including the subject of the humor itself?" If the answer was no, then it wasn't funny to me. It took me many years to cement this into my psyche, but it was something that had to be done because I was no longer finding insults or negative commentary to be funny. I don't even find it funny when it is done by very good comedy folk; I tend to be the only one in the room who doesn't laugh, and I have come to a comfortable understanding that I'd rather be that person than the one who joins in with them.

Unfortunately, very few people agree with me. Or they agree, but in the end they practice a different processing when it comes to such humor, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

What I'd like to add to the interesting part of this observation is that I do succeed in creating a lot of humor on a daily basis, both in my writings and in person. But it's never negative towards an individual. Oh, it may still by cynical and biting at times, but there's never a person sitting in the next cubicle, thinking "I wish he wouldn't use me as the brunt of his jokes all of the time."

The Problem is Simple: Lawmakers don't know how to stop spending our money

2010-02-19T10:18:00.001-08:00

It seems almost as if lawmakers in this country have no clue that to fix the problems in front of them, they have to stop trying to fix the problems caused by them. An example: Grand Rapids. On May 4th, Grand Rapids is going to ask taxpayers to increase city taxes to solve the budget problems of Grand Rapids. Before that, the city government asked the people of the city to come up with "ideas" to solve the problems of the budget, OR they would have to start cutting essential services. A lot of the comments that were entered by citizens were mainly "stop spending our money on stupid stuff" but that's the problem. The government NEVER sees any of the money it spends as problematic. The problem is always that there's not enough money to spend. So it asks for more.

Well, taxpayers aren't really excited about picking up the additional tab. Here's a story of taxpayers saying just that, in the Grand Rapids Press. You see, the average citizen is being asked to tighten his or her belt but the government doesn't believe it should be held to the same standard. Instead, it believes it needs more money to do the things it needs to be done.

To anyone who has ever worked for a large corporation, or the government, it is not hard to see how this waste accumulates. First off, whenever there is excess money, there is NEVER an attempt to put that money back into the system. Instead, that money is seen as extra, and it spent as part of the extra fund capacity. If you don't believe me, it might be interesting to ask what has happened to the money that was paid back to the federal government from the loans that were made to the national banks. Was that money added back to the national coffers, or was it treated as "already spent" so it because excess? I'd like to think it's the former, but I'm willing to bet a government free lunch on the latter.

The Grand Rapids tax thing is really interesting because it is asking for an increase from 1.3 percent to 1.5 percent tax for those who live in Grand Rapids, and from 0.65 to 0.75 percent tax for those who don't live in Grand Rapids, but work here. What's interesting about that last category is that it increases a tax rate on people who have absolutely no input on the decision whatsoever. They don't live in Grand Rapids, so they don't get to vote here. Ever hear of taxation without representation? Apparently not.

But even so, the city of Grand Rapids is asking for more money to do what it is already supposed to be doing. If it doesn't get it, it threatens to cut off vital services. It's interesting how they never threaten to cut off non-vital services, which is usually the salaries of people who don't really have much of an impact on the city itself, like people who make budget decisions. Sorry, but you're not as essential as you think you are. A cop is essential. A firefighter is essential. A bean counter? Not to essential. But as you are the ones who make the decisions, of course you're never going to cut yourselves.

So the answer is to ask the taxpayers to give them more money. Governments all over the place are doing this, and it's actually pissing off taxpayers all over the place. What they are discovering (and California is my favorite example of this) is that the taxpayers, when asked, say no. They're not interested in more taxes, special levies, or any other legalese wordings that cause them to pay more money. Especially when they feel they are being threatened by their government if they don't pay up.

What government never seems to understand is that it's not really all that essential other than the immediate services. As more and more government gets involved, it entrenches itself and makes itself believe it is even higher on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs than it really is. And people don't tend to support them.

Instead, what seem to see most of the time is the absurd amount of corruption that is taking place in government. In Michigan alone, the amount corruption in the news is astouding. Here's a small sample of just recent stuff:

Grand Rapids school board has no plans for nepotism policy despite member's son Kenneth D. Hoskins' conviction for sex crimes with students

DTE Energy, MichCon suspend energy-saving rebates, but customers still pay surcharge

Grand Haven school board member Brandon Hall found guilty of larceny

Holland Councilman Jerome Thomas-Kobes arraigned on drinking-and-driving charge

Kenneth D. Hoskins sentenced to three to 15 years behind bars for sex with Grand Rapids students

There are a ton more stories, but you get the idea from that little smattering of stories from the last two days. I don't even need to get into the cesspool of government that has been Detroit (although arguably it is supposedly getting better, according to feel good reports coming out of the Detroit Free Press).

The point being: At what point does government feel it is doing a solid enough job to ask for more money? Really. At what point?

The Philosophical Concept of Suicide as a Process Improvement Strategy

2010-02-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

Before I begin to start talking about this, I already know there are some immediate responses to this that I'll hopefully get out of the way by addressing them first. It seems that no matter how hard you try to broach this subject, it always seems to fall into the same kind of responses, and honestly that's not really where I wanted to go with this. So let me get through some disclaimers right off the start to move this thought process forward.

First, this isn't a call for help or a warning or anything ridiculous like that. I don't need counseling or even "a friend". It's more a thought process that I've been analyzing for some time now, and honestly I haven't been able to figure out how to even attempt talking about it without someone turning it into an "issue" rather than a discussion.

I'll put the elephant right on the table, and the question to be asked is whether or not suicide can be seen as an actual positive mechanism for one's imposing choices for the future. I've been thinking about this for some time, and I honestly haven't come up with a lot of rationale for deciding against it. What I have discovered is that every time I have attempted to talk about it, I end up in a situation where either a therapist wants to commit you, or I find the responses to be somewhat hostile. (Bring it up on the Internet on a message board or in a chat area of a computer game, and you're likely to get a whole lot of people answering in an angry tone, actually goading you on to do it because somehow you've "bothered" them by bringing it up).

But here I am. My life really isn't going anywhere. I have a few friends, but that's about it. I don't date and haven't dated longer than...well, to be honest, I don't remember when the last time was. My job is really unimportant, and to be honest, I get the feeling sometimes that it's probably not going to last that long anyway with all the budget cuts and subsequent "need to justify positions" that goes on. I was hired on at the lowest pay grade I should have received, and I'm pretty much stuck there because I get the impression that HR thinks that people are lucky to be working, so why should they care? My writing careers is nonexistent, and I'm to the point now where I don't think it's ever going to happen. It's pretty much the only passion in my life, and when you have to treat your life goal as a "hobby" and people give you condescending smiles when you talk about your "career", well, you might get the idea of how that feels.

I'm not rich, but I'm not poor either. I'm just kind of not much of anything. I'm not important to anything or pretty much anybody. Nothing I do or don't do really makes a difference to anyone. If I was gone, no one would really be affected all that much, other than to think "oh yeah, him. Yeah, too bad he's gone. Wonder what's on TV tonight?"

To be honest, my life really doesn't have that much of a purpose. Oh sure, I could go the whole empowerment route and FIND a purpose, but that's never really worked for me. Living life has made me pretty cynical, and the more I've done things the more cynical I've become as more people have taken advantage of me, and I feel that my only real contribution to this planet is as a consumer of stuff to help enrich people who will get rich regardless of whether or not I'm here.

It's almost to the point where I'm more concerned with how and when I do it than whether or not I do it. Nothing's really worked to talk me out of it, and to be honest, nothing has really even tried. I keep thinking that there's going to be some significant moment where I walk outside and see the perfect sunrise and say, "okay, that makes sense now" but that never happens. I did see a really good movie once, but that just isn't the same.

Lately, I've been feeling like I'm the protagonist in Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes where I live in a world of sand that I can't escape, and even though the world around me looks like it might be interesting and fun, I just can't get there. I'm always stuck in the sand. Hell, I can't even get a car right now, which leaves me to having to rely on a very unreliable bus system just to get to work or the store, but of course, the bus doesn't go to the store, so I have to take a taxi just to get groceries, which then serves to knock down what little money I have even faster than it normally would.

So it leaves me wondering: Why not? I actually find myself looking more forward to sleeping at night than I do waking in the morning or doing anything else during the day. Someone once said that "the unexamined life is not worth living" but never really did analyze what happens after you examine that life and realize that there's really not anything there. Unfortunately, that Socrates never really did think all his arguments through. No wonder we don't hear much about him anymore these days.

Spammers Will Spam You, No Matter How Nicely You Ask Them Not To

2010-02-09T06:05:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I made the foolish gesture of creating a Craigslist ad in the personal relationships section. I didn't really expect to make a "love connection" but at the same time, I was curious at what type of response I would get. I got lots of responses, but very few of them were actually productive. I had included, as most people tend to do, a desire disclaimer, practically begging scammers to leave me alone, that I was not looking for someone to make me rich, or whatever, but sure enough here's the break down of what I received:

37 Responses
18 Wanting to provide me with sex (requiring me to contact them at their special site)
10 Very interested in my ad, but needing me to register at some sex site for verification (they've gotten tired of "fake people" and "scammers")
4 People who felt they could help me find "love" if I joined some pay site they knew of
2 Actual people who were interested in talking more (neither responded further...must have been the picture I sent them of me in my Disco Suit)
1 Married person who was interested (as long as we didn't tell her husband)
1 Woman with children who seemed interested, but just wasn't sure I felt comfortable with someone else's children just yet
1 Woman who claimed "I know who you are but am not telling you who I am"

That was my response from my personal ad. My stuffed animals have more success at this sort of thing than I do. Hmm, maybe having stuffed animals is WHY I'm not more successful at it than I am. Must reconsider this while playing more World of Warcraft and shopping for a new slide rule before returning to my job at Best Buy.

So, who really owns the computer games people play?

2010-02-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

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.

This Blog Post Proves How Cool I'm Not

2010-02-04T06:33:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2010-02-02T05:54:00.001-08:00

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.

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

2010-02-01T06:39:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2010-01-29T09:38:00.000-08:00

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.

Howard Zinn dies

2010-01-28T06:44:00.000-08:00

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.

The audience as shadow

2010-01-14T07:42:00.000-08:00

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....