A couple of years ago I was in top form. Everything I wrote was going to get ignored by pretty much the whole internet and I still made it count. I look at myself recently and, dear reader, it is painfully apparent that I've lost the patience to craft outstanding prose and to keep a non-partisan balance. Yes, I've committed the cardinal sin of becoming political. I might've been the same a few years ago, but what is important is that I was doing it with grace, if at all. That's not everything I've been doing wrong, but it's a good portion.
So I apologize. I'm not going to put up another piece about Edward Snowden, how Bradley Manning is still ignored (and his connection to the repealing of Don't Ask/Don't Tell - a very interesting hypothesis), or how the two men are very similar even though Edward Snowden is a civilian. I won't post about the odds of Snowden getting nabbed, disappeared, or simply imprisoned for the rest of his life. I won't opine about what would be fair, or if what he did was right. Though I will say that it speaks volumes about society that even 'the good life' wasn't enough to silence him, and that he is being denounced as rotten traitor, and that a decade+ ago the things he recently brought to light would have be mocked as patently paranoid. And I will also say he is lucky that McCarthyism has worn off somewhat in the 'States, even though it lives on in spirit, as so many things do.
I really wanted to, of course. Why else have a blog if not to write about issues that one considers important? Well, the world doesn't seem to care very much what Snowden did. I haven't met a single person since the story broke out who gave a shit. I don't know if they're unsurprised at the totalitarian security state slowly caging them in, or if they are just anesthetized to it. Maybe the oversharing internet attention junkies have won, the concept of identity is permanently deformed and bureaucracized, and the privileged are smirking, and anyone who thinks differently is already a fool in the eyes of the world. Yes: the state looking inward is nothing new, but the implications have never been this clinical or far-reaching.
You can tell how tempted I am to write about it. I would continue to approach the topic as if it mystified me. I would slowly bring in the revelations that this, ironically, takes the modern world another step towards the supposedly obsolete and abandoned precepts of Stalinism. I would use the word totalitarian a bunch of times and I would put in a few choice burns at facebook's expense. I would not mention Orwell, because I'm not an idiot, but I could. I would point out that collusion between government and industry is never a good sign. Damn, it could've been a fine piece for the world to ignore. Another feather in my cap, but I don't want feathers in my cap and I don't want to say too much. Suffice it to say that the modern world has been making me more and more uncomfortable and uneasy.
[Oh, and I could go on...]
6/21/13
Cinema vs. Literature: The Case of Cloud Atlas
Hey I know it's a crazy debate that is considered tedious even by the people who engage in it and incredibly dull to the vast majority of people, but to me it's a somewhat important debate – also I've always wanted to get my piece in. In my life I have watched many movies that started out as books. I even watched a series of movies pull an entire genre out of leftfield and into the mainstream (the 'teenage girls + Lord of the Rings = Twilight' formula).
I never really want to do the research. One masterful post about 90's action movies Judge Dredd and Demolition Man is the one piece of film criticism I've ever attempted (I wouldn't even call criticism that by a mile), but the fact that it came together at all is a miracle and premised heavily on my understanding of the 1990s and action movies. I would never put on airs about film. I didn't study film, I am no expert, and if I couldn't write a decent bit about it I wouldn't even dare tangle with such heady stuff. Just kidding: nothing is sacred and film deserves an honest thrashing beyond my abilities.
But so do books, which brings me to today's post, which will take all of my faculties firing at once. Books and film. Easy target. Why not the Jurassic Park series? Why not the Harry Potter series? Well, both of those movie series are premised on books written in the 90s and I don't want to overplay my hand. I want to up the ante, though, so I'm taking it up to the 2000s and the 2010s. Cloud Atlas, the novel, was published in 2004 by an English author named David Mitchell. It was a rather engaging, spirited, and creative endeavor that consisted of six stories and their mysterious interplay throughout the novel. With no one narrative, or style, it was consistently engaging to read, and the nesting of the stories (like so: 1/2/3/4/5/6/5/4/3/2/1 ), and their content lent the final conclusion an epic sense. What a book, David Mitchell. Good work.
For years I had encountered brief allusions to the book, and some people I know had read it, but nobody had recommended it to me. Then I came across a trailer for the movie version and the race was on: I had to read the book before the movie came out. I was determined to do that and then also go see the movie. Naturally it took until this very week (8 months after release in my region) for me to actually see the movie. Life interceded, but I did find the book and read it.
Between a book and the film inevitably made about it there is a chasm so wide it cannot be imagined. A book can take a year to finish but a movie only has the audience's attention so long. Therefore, any attempt made to transcribe an entire book into a movie (even if the visual medium optimally condenses meaning and collapses the long-windedness of writing into digestible, filmable scenes) would fall completely flat or be ludicrous or run for 9 hours straight. Film buffs and hardcore book worms don't even have time for that: the two mediums are a world apart.
I never really want to do the research. One masterful post about 90's action movies Judge Dredd and Demolition Man is the one piece of film criticism I've ever attempted (I wouldn't even call criticism that by a mile), but the fact that it came together at all is a miracle and premised heavily on my understanding of the 1990s and action movies. I would never put on airs about film. I didn't study film, I am no expert, and if I couldn't write a decent bit about it I wouldn't even dare tangle with such heady stuff. Just kidding: nothing is sacred and film deserves an honest thrashing beyond my abilities.
But so do books, which brings me to today's post, which will take all of my faculties firing at once. Books and film. Easy target. Why not the Jurassic Park series? Why not the Harry Potter series? Well, both of those movie series are premised on books written in the 90s and I don't want to overplay my hand. I want to up the ante, though, so I'm taking it up to the 2000s and the 2010s. Cloud Atlas, the novel, was published in 2004 by an English author named David Mitchell. It was a rather engaging, spirited, and creative endeavor that consisted of six stories and their mysterious interplay throughout the novel. With no one narrative, or style, it was consistently engaging to read, and the nesting of the stories (like so: 1/2/3/4/5/6/5/4/3/2/1 ), and their content lent the final conclusion an epic sense. What a book, David Mitchell. Good work.
For years I had encountered brief allusions to the book, and some people I know had read it, but nobody had recommended it to me. Then I came across a trailer for the movie version and the race was on: I had to read the book before the movie came out. I was determined to do that and then also go see the movie. Naturally it took until this very week (8 months after release in my region) for me to actually see the movie. Life interceded, but I did find the book and read it.
Between a book and the film inevitably made about it there is a chasm so wide it cannot be imagined. A book can take a year to finish but a movie only has the audience's attention so long. Therefore, any attempt made to transcribe an entire book into a movie (even if the visual medium optimally condenses meaning and collapses the long-windedness of writing into digestible, filmable scenes) would fall completely flat or be ludicrous or run for 9 hours straight. Film buffs and hardcore book worms don't even have time for that: the two mediums are a world apart.
6/13/13
Language Crisis: part One Million, Sixty Three Thousand, Five Hundred and Eleven.
Real Talk: News Flash: 'Addicting' isn't a word.
The word you're looking for, under-23-year-old, is 'addictive', which is a real word that means what you think you mean when you use a nonsense word like addicting. I know that language and spelling aren't very cool and communication is for fags and noobs, but not even your whole generation using the same wrong words makes you any more right. Also, 'addicting' sounds stupid. Addictive: therefore you become addicted. The word you're searching for, that the education system or your own brain failed you on, is 'addictive'. You're welcome.
Addictive. Not 'addicting'.
And again, for clarity.
Addictive. Not 'addicting'.
Similarly, putting 'of' behind a word doesn't work. It doesn't mean anything except that, once again, the education system failed you or you failed yourself. Basically people who do this are phonetically sounding out a word like should've, (which is a contraction of should have) and turning it into should of, which, once again, sounds and looks stupid. For example and context, back in the 50s when people still gave a tiny fuck about education, even babies knew these kinds of things.
Now, in 2013, there are literal adults (the adult is a species in decline for three straight decades) who don't know things a 1950s baby would have taken for granted. This is what old people mean when they complain about youths. Take a goddamn minute and figure out what you're writing. Your grandfather got the shit beat out of him when he couldn't, and it made him into the debonaire, wise, smug, super-entitled person he deserves to be today. Do him proud, and don't go on running your dumb mouth and using imaginary words.
It's very tempting to think your corruptions of sensible English will change the language to the dumbfuck patios you would comfortable with, but over my dead body. I've let a lot of things slide for a long time. I've hung up my Grammar Nazi hat many a year ago, but sometimes things have gone on long enough. How the fuck did you graduate from Univeristy, you mentally-children, without knowing how to fucking spell?
It's good for you most people are dumb as fuck and lack even common sense. Sure, correct usage is an elitist thing. Fine, whatever. Continue fitting in with your degenerative world, but please don't turn 'addicting' into a word. It sounds bad. It looks bad. It's got nothing on 'addictive'.
The word you're looking for, under-23-year-old, is 'addictive', which is a real word that means what you think you mean when you use a nonsense word like addicting. I know that language and spelling aren't very cool and communication is for fags and noobs, but not even your whole generation using the same wrong words makes you any more right. Also, 'addicting' sounds stupid. Addictive: therefore you become addicted. The word you're searching for, that the education system or your own brain failed you on, is 'addictive'. You're welcome.
Addictive. Not 'addicting'.
And again, for clarity.
Addictive. Not 'addicting'.
Similarly, putting 'of' behind a word doesn't work. It doesn't mean anything except that, once again, the education system failed you or you failed yourself. Basically people who do this are phonetically sounding out a word like should've, (which is a contraction of should have) and turning it into should of, which, once again, sounds and looks stupid. For example and context, back in the 50s when people still gave a tiny fuck about education, even babies knew these kinds of things.
Now, in 2013, there are literal adults (the adult is a species in decline for three straight decades) who don't know things a 1950s baby would have taken for granted. This is what old people mean when they complain about youths. Take a goddamn minute and figure out what you're writing. Your grandfather got the shit beat out of him when he couldn't, and it made him into the debonaire, wise, smug, super-entitled person he deserves to be today. Do him proud, and don't go on running your dumb mouth and using imaginary words.
It's very tempting to think your corruptions of sensible English will change the language to the dumbfuck patios you would comfortable with, but over my dead body. I've let a lot of things slide for a long time. I've hung up my Grammar Nazi hat many a year ago, but sometimes things have gone on long enough. How the fuck did you graduate from Univeristy, you mentally-children, without knowing how to fucking spell?
It's good for you most people are dumb as fuck and lack even common sense. Sure, correct usage is an elitist thing. Fine, whatever. Continue fitting in with your degenerative world, but please don't turn 'addicting' into a word. It sounds bad. It looks bad. It's got nothing on 'addictive'.
6/7/13
User Comment Rodeo: One Very Stupid Internet Conspiracist (and Some Other Dummies)
This won't surprise anyone, but the internet is a proven haven for the undesirables of the world. More importantly, it is a place where legitimate discussion falls into disrepair - a great new arena where populism can continue to strangle the truth. The whole NeoPatriot Act debacle unfolding (as if it hadn't been reported on or a known factor since 2005) in the USA has brought out many of the stupidest users of comment systems. Firstly, since it's public record published on known narc/rat Google: surveillance culture is getting out of hand, it's shitty and regressive and will not solve the problem of terrorism. However I think I wrote about surveillance culture before, NSA agents will do the sifting and perhaps, if they're nice enough, will tell me where.
In any case what matters to me at this moment is not the potential erosion of a so-called democracy or the blatant transformation of North America into some kind of paranoid, military-industrial, authoritarian, police state, corporatist plutocracy. That's old news. You either know it's true or delude yourself with happy feelings of consequence-free freedoms that don't really exist. Society is pretty... well it's boned right now. However, it doesn't feel like that on the street. You can go out, get drunk, pick up drugs, protest the system. Generally you don't get beaten up too badly, and you don't disappear.
What matters to me at this moment is what the public at large is thinking. As usual, the public at large is making me want to side with the plutocrats, because the public at large has some really, really odiously stupid people in it who are maybe not capable of independent thought. I wonder is the public even taking this seriously? Are they all joking when they use the comment boards? Sometimes, a very special individual with a loose grip on reality will post some interpretation of events that absolutely wipe away accumulated feelings of unease and doom. Some people are so out of it that I can't get angry at them. It would be like getting angry at a special needs person. No, all I can do is laugh and wish I saw the world so naively... then I could stop worrying and start hating.
It goes without saying that this man (no woman ever would be quite so proud of being so stupid as to publicly assert it) is an overblown idiot. Ignoring the 2008 recession and the bail-out of the finance industry (aka 'upperclass americans') and the ultimate reasons for the decline of the middle class (somehow the middle class hasn't figured out the giant, decades-long joke that is still being played on them and their complacent sense of entitlement) this guy out and out imagines that the IRS, NSA and Obama Socialists are plotting against their own. People like 'NoMoMaggots' should... write books? Work in Hollywood? Their fantasyland version of reality is too good for politics.
6/4/13
The Gezi Park Protests And The Delayed Media Response
Any time there is a big ado and it is in spirit against corporatism or authoritarianism there is one easy media conclusion to make if you live in the West: you aren't going to hear a goddamn thing about it. Coverage of Occupy Wall Street was spotty enough and it happened in the West's back yard. But don't worry: when the internet isn't being creepy or fighting about fucktarded opinions, it is accumulating data and 1:10000 of its population is presenting information with as little bias as possible.
To be honest, the Gezi Park Protests are much more supportable than Occupy Wall Street. Why? I mean, sure, both protests had legitimate issues, but only in Turkey has it become egregious enough to erupt in violence. Occupy Wall Street, if you'll remember, was pretty tame. Innocent teenage girls getting pepper-sprayed, drum circles, the mildest police brutality since a drunk white dude got arrested after a hockey game, and the list goes on. Nobody was impressed. The media largely skipped and told the basics, so that apologists and the uncaring middle class could infer it was a bunch of a dumb goddamn hippies (while their 800 billion dollars in tax monies had long gone up the noses of the financial industry).
Turkey, however, is lit up with Mediterranean passion. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the sinister leader figure around whom these protests center, is sort of a hard-line 'Right-Wing Traditional Values Politician'. In the West he would be seen as a creepy, sinister vampire with a hidden agenda - the Right would generally hail him as Reagan Reborn or something nonsensical. In Turkey, a much more serious populace suffered Erdogan's fuckery quietly until he took a step too far and okayed a plan to turn the last park in downtown Istanbul (or Constantinople if you've been living under a rock for the last 600 years) into a goddamn mixed-use shopping mall.
Shopping malls are absolutely the devil, but they're not properly Satanesque until they eat up scarce greenery. I understand the irony of a Traditional Values Muslim Politician (who hates kissing, beer, and young people) destroying a natural place of peace, but that's the oldest game in the West, where so-called conservatives have bulldozed forests and pillaged history with such acumen that the general populace doesn't even care. In the West, however, no matter how powerful our corporate overlords, the last park in a city would never be bulldozed for a goddamn mall/condo construction project based on a preexisting militaristic building. Despicable.
So, quite rightly, ordinary Turks went apeshit and did their best to stop the destruction of an innocent park. The police responded harshly, shooting tear-gas everywhere and blasting people with water cannons. There were reports of civilians getting shot with bullets as well, in case things weren't bad enough. The military sided, unofficially, with the protestors. That was back on 28 May 2013. Since then the western media have made roughly 5% of a big deal about this news, probably in deference to stubborn Erdogan, who is 'our friend in Turkey' and likely portrayed as some kind of nonsense 'bulwark against radicalization'.
This struggle could overturn the Erdogan political dynasty, with unknown effects for Turkey, a vibrant up-and-comer in the world. Erdogan has done what all Traditional Values Politicans do: he has attempted to white-wash the past while getting rich on corporatism and brutally enforcing his country. He is afraid of bad press, freedom, and pre-marital sex, but if he's a true Conservative Traditional Values Politician he is right now engaging in sex-tourism in a midwest-America bathroom stall – while signing away resource rights to a multinational corporation that promises to subsidize his police force. But, hey, 'police are heroes' so maybe this story should be kept on the backburner awhile.
When there are reports in the West, they are brief and vague. Nobody wants to say 'too much', it seems. It is almost as if censorship in Turkey has spread into North America. Imagine how crazy that would be. What would it mean about North American and Western media if they kept silent about the abuses, threats, and brutality Erdogan has caused in his decade-plus of rule? But then, this isn't the first time mass media have been slow on the uptake. In Turkey itself is the only case of 'true' censorship, wherein television news reports completely ignore the protests. For the rest: enjoy your scraps of information while 'fair and balanced' reporters and organizations figure out their shit.
What if spurned environmentalists could start similar movements in the West? There are certainly abuses of power, and huge problems with the establishment that will not recede peacefully, but instead worsen every year. I bet you that profits would win at the end of the day, protestors or not. Or, worse: another OWS. What matters about Turkey is the theme: if the fight is lost there then the 21st century will look grimmer for the anti-corporatist and brighter for the career politician and the politician's masters (be they religious or business). That's probably why the Western Media is so mum about this story: they already know the answer. Plus it's Shark Week and tornado season has begun.
Of course reporting will open up when censorship is broken, or a reliable narrative can be applied to the story that will not alienate Turkish political elites, or when the story is over. It's not about a park, and it's not the fault of protestors: the Gezi Park protests are ultimately about resisting authoritarianism. The actions of Turkish police have proven it. At this point a few in-depth reports have probably been published. My sympathies absolutely lie with the protestors, and I wish them victory, because if they win, Turkey will be that much better for it.
To be honest, the Gezi Park Protests are much more supportable than Occupy Wall Street. Why? I mean, sure, both protests had legitimate issues, but only in Turkey has it become egregious enough to erupt in violence. Occupy Wall Street, if you'll remember, was pretty tame. Innocent teenage girls getting pepper-sprayed, drum circles, the mildest police brutality since a drunk white dude got arrested after a hockey game, and the list goes on. Nobody was impressed. The media largely skipped and told the basics, so that apologists and the uncaring middle class could infer it was a bunch of a dumb goddamn hippies (while their 800 billion dollars in tax monies had long gone up the noses of the financial industry).
Turkey, however, is lit up with Mediterranean passion. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the sinister leader figure around whom these protests center, is sort of a hard-line 'Right-Wing Traditional Values Politician'. In the West he would be seen as a creepy, sinister vampire with a hidden agenda - the Right would generally hail him as Reagan Reborn or something nonsensical. In Turkey, a much more serious populace suffered Erdogan's fuckery quietly until he took a step too far and okayed a plan to turn the last park in downtown Istanbul (or Constantinople if you've been living under a rock for the last 600 years) into a goddamn mixed-use shopping mall.
Shopping malls are absolutely the devil, but they're not properly Satanesque until they eat up scarce greenery. I understand the irony of a Traditional Values Muslim Politician (who hates kissing, beer, and young people) destroying a natural place of peace, but that's the oldest game in the West, where so-called conservatives have bulldozed forests and pillaged history with such acumen that the general populace doesn't even care. In the West, however, no matter how powerful our corporate overlords, the last park in a city would never be bulldozed for a goddamn mall/condo construction project based on a preexisting militaristic building. Despicable.
So, quite rightly, ordinary Turks went apeshit and did their best to stop the destruction of an innocent park. The police responded harshly, shooting tear-gas everywhere and blasting people with water cannons. There were reports of civilians getting shot with bullets as well, in case things weren't bad enough. The military sided, unofficially, with the protestors. That was back on 28 May 2013. Since then the western media have made roughly 5% of a big deal about this news, probably in deference to stubborn Erdogan, who is 'our friend in Turkey' and likely portrayed as some kind of nonsense 'bulwark against radicalization'.
This struggle could overturn the Erdogan political dynasty, with unknown effects for Turkey, a vibrant up-and-comer in the world. Erdogan has done what all Traditional Values Politicans do: he has attempted to white-wash the past while getting rich on corporatism and brutally enforcing his country. He is afraid of bad press, freedom, and pre-marital sex, but if he's a true Conservative Traditional Values Politician he is right now engaging in sex-tourism in a midwest-America bathroom stall – while signing away resource rights to a multinational corporation that promises to subsidize his police force. But, hey, 'police are heroes' so maybe this story should be kept on the backburner awhile.
When there are reports in the West, they are brief and vague. Nobody wants to say 'too much', it seems. It is almost as if censorship in Turkey has spread into North America. Imagine how crazy that would be. What would it mean about North American and Western media if they kept silent about the abuses, threats, and brutality Erdogan has caused in his decade-plus of rule? But then, this isn't the first time mass media have been slow on the uptake. In Turkey itself is the only case of 'true' censorship, wherein television news reports completely ignore the protests. For the rest: enjoy your scraps of information while 'fair and balanced' reporters and organizations figure out their shit.
What if spurned environmentalists could start similar movements in the West? There are certainly abuses of power, and huge problems with the establishment that will not recede peacefully, but instead worsen every year. I bet you that profits would win at the end of the day, protestors or not. Or, worse: another OWS. What matters about Turkey is the theme: if the fight is lost there then the 21st century will look grimmer for the anti-corporatist and brighter for the career politician and the politician's masters (be they religious or business). That's probably why the Western Media is so mum about this story: they already know the answer. Plus it's Shark Week and tornado season has begun.
Of course reporting will open up when censorship is broken, or a reliable narrative can be applied to the story that will not alienate Turkish political elites, or when the story is over. It's not about a park, and it's not the fault of protestors: the Gezi Park protests are ultimately about resisting authoritarianism. The actions of Turkish police have proven it. At this point a few in-depth reports have probably been published. My sympathies absolutely lie with the protestors, and I wish them victory, because if they win, Turkey will be that much better for it.
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