Let's Talk About Mental Health, But Let's Not Say Anything Meaningful About It

End the stigma. End the persecution. End the long decades of rotting lives at the bottom being forgotten and ignored. But whatever you do, don't point out how mental health has been adversely affected by the modern world, because that's where we make our profits. Let's not stigmatize the status-obsessesed, the oversharers, the internet addicts, sociopaths, borderline sociopaths, the narcissists, the identity fetishists... in short let's just change the perception by stating that it's not the ill person's fault they're ill, and give them a modicum of respect, and continue on our deranged way. Some day we'll all be mentally ill, if we aren't already.

So let's have a mental health awareness month, a couple corporate-backed mental health awareness movements every year, some nice infographics, some nice ads, some good progressive and compassionate copy. Let's take some real steps, let's end the crisis before it gets worse, or at least make a pretty big deal about acknowledging it. Just let's not pry into where it's coming from, or why more people than ever are getting ill. Keep condemning the suicides and the silence. Don't look over there at the causes: that way lies madness.

Poverty, mental illness, illiteracy, substance addiction, lifestyle addiction, non-normative sexuality (itself a freaky frontier that's easy to support especially if you want nothing to do with it but want to appear a progressive and compassionate person), and  megatons of other stuff. It's no longer anybody's fault. Those who declare it a function of individual responsibility, as well as those who declare it a function of societal responsibility, are entrenched in ideology. The truth is far simpler than anyone wants to acknowledge: they're all Bad Things. Mental illness is just a Bad Thing, that needs Attention, and requires Awareness. The problem is that mental illness not photogenic. It doesn't respond well to attention. It's really, really ugly and it's got deep roots and deeper pockets.

Health in general in decline. Increased incidences of diseases of affluence, first world problems like anxiety, a weakening breed finding new ways to pity itself. Dementia rears its ugly head. Cancer from years of worry-free high-living catching up to us. The natural, polluted world with its natural conclusions. Let's keep consuming so the economy doesn't falter. Let's not ask questions. Let's never wake up from our nightmare as it gets darker and darker.

People are less mindful than ever. Overconnected to everything via the internet. Bombarded with images of opulence and excess that they will never know, for which they are programmed to have an insatiable lust. Lost in meaninglessness, with false meaningfulness leading them astray. Conditioned to worship at the altar of Mammon. Real vs. VR. Terrorism vs War. Inequality is Solved. Internet sickness. Quality of Life. 12 Steps to a Better You. Fired by Text Message. 10 Cute Cats That Will Cure Your Blues. The Babylon System is winning, the world is changing, nobody seems to give a shit. Money rules everything, people with money call the shots, and most people believe their half-truths. Meanwhile a million unchecked distractions clamor for everyone's attention, and the individual (despite the hype of optimists) has never felt so insignificant in a world of Social Networks, Big Ideas, and Batshit Maniacs. There's no fucking respect, I'll tell ya.

In my opinion it's no mystery why people are getting all fucked up and sick. They can't police their own thoughts, they can't control their government and corporate sanctioned addictions to legal substances and activities, they can't escape without losing their future. People are generally more separated by technology than they are brought together by it. A whole generation is living a shitty, loveless, poor existence wrought by their elders and blamed on them – and I'm sure they'll turn out fine and well-adjusted despite this, but they take a sickening amount of shit from a world so unfair it's parodic. Suicides everywhere... a sinking quality of life, urban hellscapes, the decline of the natural world and a bunch of insane technofucks claiming we should divorce ourselves further from our roots, as if our current divergence isn't at least partly at fault for the insane clusterfuck we've wandered into. Jargon rules the day, but it never saved one life.

And the isolation. Alone in a sea of identity, tired of the cult of identity, feeling like nobody and nothing and stumbling through a life ruled by the pleasures of others and the whims of the greedy, powerful, and detached. Faces are masks, genuine humanity is in decline and retreating to the quiet places. Hope is dying along with mental healthiness. There is nobody to talk to, but everyone wants to speak out about how it isn't shameful to be mentally ill. Of course not, but the cure isn't in reinforcing the status quo, just like how all the cures to all of what ails us as a species are not in keeping things comfortably similar to 'how it is'. We don't want to look into what's harming us, like the obstinate addicts we are. Maybe things seem worse than they are, maybe I'm a shitty blogger and an alarmist, but things're bad enough and breeding vast populations of stunted narcissistic sociopaths incapable of human emotion or connection – populations in all age groups, not just the young tech-savvy millenials who already have tons of opprobrium piled onto them coupled with an increasingly grim outlook.

The world is increasingly soulless and irreal. Appearances have replaced qualities. Abandon all hope, because nobody gives a shit anymore. The pressure to succeed can only be met by dishonesty and combativeness, the competition is severe, the world is at the edge. Don't ask any questions. Don't step out of line. Don't live - exist. Just repost the memes, make those donations happen, and keep ignoring the people you know who are sinking, the people you pass on the street who are already sunk... keep your eyes on the newsfeed. Let the internet do the good works for you. This is the least self-aware era and it needs to be ripped violently in half by a comprehensive, blood-thirsty, no-prisoners satire before we destroy everything of value and premise our future on misery, ignorance, and disgust. The time to wake up is fast approaching, and a world of comatose automatons will greet it with indifference.

Literature as Film in the Epic-Franchise-Commercial Mode; or, The Hobbit Trilogy

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies was sullied by many things. It smelt of the boardroom, for one. It was kind of uncool to the source material, for two. And for three (threes are gonna be important): parts of it functioned as a commercial for a video game and quite possibly a theme park addition as well. Don't be surprised if in the next five years a middle-earth theme park opens (if it hasn't already, I am not bothering to look). And it wasn't just the action scenes, major characters were added to make it right. Maybe you don't care, but if this were middle-earth, then there is only a handful of villains spooky and evil enough to think up such a subtle and convincing marketing scheme.

Another thing you might have noticed if you watched it (and it was a grand spectacle, there is no denying that) is how each movie had at least one theme park ride of a scene in it. For instance the sterling standard of 'theme park ride scene' that anybody could recognize is the barrel escape (lazy river/barrel ride variant) from the second movie in the series. There were other such moments... I can't afford to go back to document them.

I'll admit, I'm the wrong person to point this out. The last time I read the book I had not yet lain with a lover, driven a car, or drank alcohol. I read The Hobbit at least five times. It's a slim volume packed with adventure, humor, and the odd dwarf song/elfin slam poetry session that you may skip if you're a kid. In short: it's brief, to the point, and quite fantastic. I don't think there's a lot of modern fare that could boast it was better, if any. It might be the best, but I don't indulge in fantasy as such anymore, so I don't know. In my mind it gets the gold.

However that's not even to the point. To clarify: I may be the wrong person to look upon the Hobbit Trilogy Franchise because as soon as I heard it was to be a trilogy I already thought 'Oh, oh no. This is not how things should be. I must ride... to New Zealand!' because damn it all, it is not impossible to pack the whole little book into a single two and a half hour (three and a half extended) film. It could've been done, it would've been considerably more exciting, taken more skill, more risks with narrative, trusted the audience more... in essence it would've been greater than it was, doing more with less. I'll state that one of my chief contentions with the modern world is its increasing inability to do more with less, and how it instead does less with more, and leaves the increasingly tone-deaf uncritical audience squalling with idiotic delight anyhow. That is the degradation brought into the world by the explosion of Nerd Culture... that is what has been wrought. I will say no more at this time.

It would've taken skill to condense the story into a manageable screenplay. It'd take some 'hard' decisions like throwing Frodo Baggins and Legolas out, which would've saved about an hour. All the backstory nonsense could've been stripped out (1.5 hours), the business with the Necromancer could've handled as it was in the book (saving roughly another hour), and the love story could've been shit-canned (which would've hurt Orlando Bloom's feelings and destroyed Evangeline Lilly's lifelong dream of playing a cute elf – and also saved another hour and a half). So with basic, sensible ideas I have already cut the length of the movie by 5 hours, making my originally stated aim possible. Plus I'm reducing the budget - you're welcome.

There could've been less bloat in this fantastic franchise vehicle. I won't say the series is shit. It's pretty good – not as good as the LOTR movies (which confronted me with less major issues, though the omission of Tom Bombadil was unforgivable) but I suppose that's the price you pay when Nerd Culture rampages through the things you loved as a child. The technical achievement of the movie cannot be understated: many talented people worked hard to make it happen and I do not deride their efforts in saying the movie could've been better. Parts were cheaper than I liked, and cheapening the source is somewhat of a sin. And sometimes it all looked a little plasticky, a little too videogamey for my tastes. Which leads to the most interesting angle: the commodification of middle-earth.

What really burned me, what really made me feel squeamish, and what really sullied and cheapened the experience is the fact that it was a big old commercial – a vehicle to create retail appetite in the viewer. As stated earlier, it was a subtle one (or at least subtler than Transformers), but not too subtle for this viewer (who, cards on the table, never played Shadow of Mordor). The game was quite hyped and the movie was incredibly hyped, so much so that I, who was quite outside of the media ecosystem, still heard more than enough about the trilogy's finale. Two rentals and a discount midweek viewing later I had all the facts at hand to make my dismal voice heard in the matter. I was free to state my opinions bloggishly, and I knew I had to.

The videogame-like action sequences (when Galadriel, Elfin Agent Smith, and Saruman battle the ghost skeleton warriors springs to mind, or almost every other major straight-up fight or battle) set the tone to a degree where I cannot hold my peace. Watch the rhythm of the fighting, artificial enough in execution, and you can almost imagine someone pressing B three times and forward once on the joystick to execute a daring feint or parry, or the blatant finishing moves... not that filming the chaos of battle with any fidelity is possible in a staged event, but care should be taken to keep it separate from interactive experiences. The choreography doesn't have echo the digital dance. One can almost see the gang teaming up for an epic loot raid, Radagast complaining meekly about having to buff everyone and that he's got to go to sleep while the rest slash meaninglessly at a big enemy, hacking away the health bar and exchanging terse gamese jargon.

Most of my contention stems from the final movie, when all the pieces fell into place, confirming my suspicions. Azog the Defiler is a clear Shadow of Mordor Nemesis-system entity, and so is Golg. The final fight at the end, gratuitous as it is, is nothing more than a winking reference to the videogame. The whole backstory of Thorin and Azog is basically an example of the Nemisis system – wherein you slay an enemy only to find out it survived, gained power, and has your death on its mind. Their final battle is so on the nose that I had to Google, Yahoo, and AskJeeves search about the commercial theory, and finding nothing begin to write this very post you are reading. The media are so interlaced it boggles my mind, and chilled my enjoyment of the show. Also there's a little part in the second movie where the gang climbs up a blocky staircase that looked specifically Minecraftish... dreary, maudlin, maybe even unintentional, but I could not escape the connection.

The writing could've used polish and was almost painfully amateurish at times. Dain repeatedly saying bugger as if he knows of no other term for orc. The 'forcing the hand' of the Necromancer (this phrase is used and reused so much as to be admirable - a true testament to recycling lines) is the only idiomatic phrase the writers seemed to know. The love story is filled with lines that groan under their own dull and predictable weight. The earnestness with which the lines are delivered is sometimes their only saving grace, but all deviations from the book are apparent because the lines are either too flat or too flowery, and the actors make them work, but a critical ear will hear what it will. The Master of Laketown and his wormish assistant are so baldly written they become parodic, which was out of place in a movie that took almost everything else too seriously. I did enjoy Stephen Fry's portrayal for all that, but it was really very super on the nose... a little subtlety would've carried it far. The wormish guy was just... feh, super overdone, even a deaf-blind fish would've grimaced a bit at the character as he kicked infants and old women, exhibited unrealistic cowardice, stole gold from the poor, and threatened to transform into a cartoon villian. I don't recollect if they were this blatant in the book, but probably not. Tolkien was a little subtler than that.

The schmaltzy love story was for the girlfriend, the insipid video game action sequences (you can literally tell when a character has unlocked Quad Damage, Rage Counter, or God Mode by how easily they plough through the abundant fodder enemies, and there must be Life Regeneration going on) were for the boyfriend. Good for more than dates, even, but best for dates... millennials will go crazy for it. Everyone will love it, in fact, except the critics and who gives a shit about their pernicious skepticism? What a perfect creation, what an essential excretion of our era – a timeless expression of the values of 2014. The book got shafted again by the light rays of the cinema, the synergistic marketeering of commerce, was it ever any different, et cetera...

Finally: what's up with the alleged Brian Cranston cameo? It might be the most underlooked part of all, and the least offensive. I truly hope that it was Brian Cranston I saw at the horn-blowing sequence after the battle... others have noticed it as well, but I'd like to know more. If anyone gets the DVD/BluRay, please do screenshot that moment and post it. It would be good to confirm or deny this one.

There could also be a great two-hour epic of all the walking scenes in the entire Peter Jackson middle-earth series. I wouldn't watch it, but it would be hilarious enough after five minutes of steady walking in various beautiful locations.

Cyber Menace

In shitty apartments all over the world, one thing is law: you get the internet and you let your friends use it( unless you are very suspicious of them; in which case, why are you hanging out with them?). You don't even need a public terminal (say, for instance, a hilarious, very poignant, and svelte circa 1998 laptop you bought from an IT guy for a bag of weed) because almost everyone carries with them an internet capable phone now. So there's no question at all that there's some kind of cyber menace... and, check this out: it has already claimed lives!

It just makes sense that in a society so ill that it sometimes creates psychiatric disorders at almost the same rate as it creates landmark celebrities, there would be a cyber element. The internet is everywhere and still spreading. Some people can't look away from it or live without it. Being without it is missing out, but being part of it is not always what you want. Some, the wild or wise, might even call the contemporary situation one involving significant levels of Cyber Menace.

"This ain't your granddad's Neuromancer, kid."

Sure, it's easy to pish posh the point away by citing the unreal possibilities of the incipient cyber-era, which is so different from even what Nostradamus saw it was (due to relativistic drift and/or other variables) that contempory people are still trying to say what the hell is going on with no recognizable degree of accuracy. It's all... you know... dust in the wind kind of shit. Typos of the blogosphere business.

The internet business: the potential is awesome but the reality is also very convincing in another direction than what is classically termed hopeful. I don't really need to cite anything, I feel. Pretty much everybody has or has heard a fantastically gut-wrenching and uncomfortable internet story by this point. Facebook is turning some people into wrecks and offering hilarious insights into human nature to others. It's a fact of life, even: you play with the internet and you get burned. You get played. Or you get an okay laugh or chuckle while you shake your head. #SMGDH with a side of #LOL, please, and don't overdo it.

People's day-to-day living and actual worlds are all affected by the digital world. Well, not mine, but then again I'm a blogger and nobody cares, so I can actually sit down and look and see people get affected by the internet media they consume. It's a weird era, and unfortunately it's not always fun YouTube videos weird. I find it all very strange and I can feel its draw as much as the next human. Still, everybody should have to admit: a reality check is in order.

Beyond the hype, the laughter, the outrage, the trolling, the well animated distractions, and the jargon lie actual problems. Let's see what the impossible potential of the Cyber Menace can do about that, before we consider it a friendly necessity.

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'.

Twitter Strategies for Journalists: An Existential User Comment Rodeo

CJR posted a great bit about getting Twitter followers that almost makes me want to dust off my twitter account and make it live. I used to try to follow twitter. Now I mostly blog lackadaisically in order to tell myself I am doing productive writing. I see people tweeting and they repost their tweets to facebook and I think, "Goddamn that's insane." but on the other hand they sometimes get 100 or so impressions. Which is generally still pretty insane. They are engaging with the imaginary yet somehow relevant aimless messaging system. Some people who have encouraged me to join actually have audiences and purposes for tweeting – which, in a fast-moving, egalitarian telegraph machine, are the most difficult things to achieve and understand.

I might be biased. I see every twitter account as the equivalent of a Minecraft video on YouTube. It does not inspire me. I see tweets in various news media and have to restrain myself. Jimmy Fallon uses twitter in cool ways, though, and the service has been used for all kinds of mischief so it can't be all bad. But on the other hand, the volume of tweets alone is a barrier to entry. The slavishness of hashtag culture, the ruthless advertising. Twitter has as much of a mercenary heart as facebook. But who cares what I have to think or say. I still have to think or say it if it's not broadcast.

Still, I do my best, despite having posted legitimately cringe-worthy abominations, to say interesting or informative things in a neutral language which does not rest on lazy assumptions, fallacies, or promote negative patterns of thinking. I try to do my best, on the internet or at least this blog, at least sometimes but it can be so hopeless and tiring. The internet, used anonymously, has a tendency to communicate the worst aspects of individuals and their cultures. There are heartbreaking stories about these kinds of problems and what their fallout is. Unless you're not paying attention, you have probably heard one.

Probably you came here to add followers to facebook and increase your clout score or whatever. I already linked to it at the top.  The specifics of the linked article are great and all, but there was one user comment that was essentially critical of Twitter, but also probably uncomfortably accurate:

The flood of user-generated everything, from literature to the internet to economics, is an incredible problem that is both happening and waiting-to-happen. An unthinkable volume of information is kind of awesome, but also kind of terrifying. This brave new world is, after all, the kind of world that spawned the hollow 'expert culture' – an institution that is essentially quackery in all but name. The fact that the article shows at least one case of people forced to contribute to twitter against their will is equal parts hilarious and sad.

Bookishness Reloaded

50 Shades of Grey and its ilk have been on the bestseller lists all year. Really long now and I'm wondering about it. They've basically made it a place for them to hang out. I don't know how any serious watchers of the bestseller list feel about it. I don't even know if there are serious watchers of the bestseller lists. I suppose, ultimately, there should be a few, and none of them should be surprised by what generally hangs out there. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with what hangs out there.

The whole 50 Shades debacle is the latest of an entire series of its kind. The ecosystem of modern publishing doesn't strike one as exclusively healthy – but there's nothing wrong with it, per se. Or so one thinks, ultimately the nonfiction lists aren't really super hopeful either. But there's also sometimes interesting stuff. Whether or not it's brewed by committee, exploits the zeitgeist, and has 'buzz' and 'word of mouth' and 'traction' are the great indicators of sales. Commercial success nullifies critical success and proves the naysayers wrong, inept, and out of touch. Or it should/might/doesn't, depending on how you feel about unlimited free market, incorporated.

The funny thing is, in this era dictionaries have actually created entries on mots célèbre that have no longevity or ultimate worth. I'm looking at you, 'frenemy'. The news crowed joyously about frenemy and friends getting into Webster and Oxford for the better part of a week, probably more than 12 months ago now. What increases the hilarity factor is that the conservative book set (most publishers, consumers, etc) actually sees the potential for twitter literature as a good thing. They might shit if it was considered to switch to a pure paperless market (which is sort of a scary idea when one considers it), but they will fill their own pages with the sort of meaningless colloquial twaddle that has no fundamental role in language. The white noise of language and of literature, and the much hyped 'echo chamber' effect of Twitter is involved somehow. Publishers bank on books that are too big to fail and they go to town whenever some book becomes so important that everyone needs a copy right now. They aim to remain relevant as opposed to fundamental. Language skills and general output are fucked enough without a neoliberal approach to neologisms.

So if you really think about the situation as it stands, the publishing ecosystem is a bit like every other large-scale market ecosystem: some smaller companies, independent organizations, and identities cling to the vestiges with varying success; by and large it consists of gigantic entities producing essentially a monoculture. So what? The incredible size and awesome power of these entities is something that should inspire us, their offerings are delivered with unthinkable force to vast numbers, on a scale that was relatively recently unthinkable. This is no minor business, even this allegedly 'dying' publishing industry.

There exists more written word than can be reliably processed by any one person. This condition is hardly new or revelatory, but it seems worth mentioning no matter how many thousands of years it's been true. Seeing as the human world still exists, and written word is still very essential to its development and even survival, the immense pile of written work should not merely be considered refuse. Some of it obviously stinks, but it's necessary.

Still. At this advanced stage the offerings aren't always on the level. The fact that one book hangs onto a bestseller list for months, in one country, means that not enough books are being shared, or that the market isn't dynamic enough, or anything because its actual value cannot be the ultimate monetary sum represented by its time on the bestseller lists. All of which is beside the point, I know.

Well, No, Actually... Pt. 1

News is, at heart, a predictable beast. Whenever news stories follow the deranged, subnormal individuals of the deranged species known as humankind, there is a certain amount of inexplicable posturing and bristling. So a forty year old woman almost died eating a hamburger that weighed in at almost 10,000 calories, or enough food energy to feed two normal human beings for a week, or keep one, at minimum, alive for three weeks.

Excess is nothing new. Billions are spent on dumb, unwholesome, or dangerous things each day. Governments don't blink at billion dollar stealth fighters, million-inmate prisons, or corporate welfare. It only makes sense that governments such as spend money and run incredible deficits are propped up by fat, ungainly, mentally inadequate wasters who waste money in a similar manner.

The metaphor is clear: social arteries are hardening from lack of vigor and surfeit of fatty junk expenditure. We don't want to help the poor, at all, because it's their fault that society failed them and they're addicted to drugs or gambling or they're mentally ill. Meanwhile soft-hearted activists agitate for safe-injections sites for addicts. All of this means that the destitute and drug-addled are left to rot and roundly despised for being filthy, druggy pieces of shit with no redeeming features - mini politicians who would shank a much better individual for twenty dollars and change.

All these stories are seemingly designed to destroy my ability to sympathize. I can no longer approach many stories with pity or empathy or understanding. This woman should be burned for energy, or thrown into a diamond mine, or made to prepare her own food. The story cited here suggests that the problem is that people 'eat out' too often and that they should be encouraged to eat healthily and at home.

Fine. Or we can write these dumb pieces of shit off and stop supporting them at all. No hospitalization, no news stories, no free food for fat fucks. If we let some addicts rot, we should let them all rot. There is no obesity crisis: certain people are destroying themselves. Let them. They will not be missed.

Also, there is no obesity crisis. Some people are actually bound to be fat. Fat people exist outside of the caricature of fast-food swilling, eat-while-they-drive, cankle-waddling shits. It's similar to how thin people exist without bulimia, cigarettes, starvation, or the modelling industry.

Of course a sensationalist has to jump in and report the unreportable. This isn't news. It's social pathology that nobody pays attention to, because the reporters, when they can spell correctly, can hardly be expected to imagine that all of this might mean something.