Here Comes Tomorrow

Most Hilarious Web Advertisement, Ever

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:42:00 +0000

I suppose this makes me a bad person.

I don't know if finding this ad utterly hilarious says more about me, or about the kind of people who'd be this crass to sell insurance.

Watchmen, Coraline and Adaptation

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:48:00 +0000

Reading This Preview Will Make You BlindSo I've been meaning to write about Coraline for a long time, and say something about Watchmen since I saw it last Sunday.

The two movies taken together, though, make for an interesting contrast in how to adapt a book for the screen. Both make large changes to the original source material, altering characters, events, trimming and adding to the story, in addition to the obvious changes one might make telling a story visually rather than with the written word, or in the case of Watchmen, sequential art.

However, one fails monstrously, and the other, I think, succeeds brilliantly. So what's going on?

First, let's discuss the failure. Coraline.

Uggh.

Coraline is the worst, most insulting, most viscerally repulsive mainstream movie I've seen in many years. It's the worst adapted work I've seen since Starship Troopers. It made me feel ill to watch it, and I almost left.

I know, I know; your average critical response was positive. Why did I hate it?

Because Coraline the movie takes all the heart, wit and charm out of the book, stomps it into a bloody paste, and pisses on it. The movie Coraline is coarse, rude, reeks of being written by a marketing department, and is full of absolutely rank misogyny.

It's truly awful.

Coraline the book is a story Neil Gaiman wrote, according to the About the Book section in my paperback edition, for his daughter(s).

More than ten years ago I started to write a children's book. It was for my daughter, Holly, who was five years old. I wanted it to have a girl as a heroine, and I wanted it to be refreshingly creepy.

After a discussion on the lengthy process he used to write it, he returns to the subject of the heroine of the story:

A decade before, I had begun to write the story of Coraline, who was small for her age, and would find herself in darkest danger. By the time I finished writing, Coraline had seen what lay behind mirrors, had a close call with a bad hand, and had come face-to-face with her other mother; she had rescued her true parents from a fate worse than death and triumphed against overwhelming odds

The primary reason I detest the movie version of this story is that, in MOVIE Coraline, none of that is true.

Coraline is not small for her age. She's not the heroine of her own story. She doesn't triumph against anything.

Coraline is, in fact, constantly rescued; by the Cat, by ghost children, by deus ex machina, and most odiously, by Wybie, a male companion invented solely for the film so that audiences wouldn't have to sit through a movie where a GIRL did all the exciting parts.

Seriously. Wybie doesn't exist in the book at all. From the first moment I saw him, I knew we were in trouble. He rides up on a dirtbike wearing the 3-eyed mask from Splinter Cell, for fuck's sake. He's not just the male character, the hero, who has to tell Coraline everything she figures out for herself in the book, and at the climax of the movie, RESCUE THE HELPLESS LITTLE GIRL... he's also XTREME.

So, a story written for girls, featuring a heroine as the main character, has turned the female lead into an also-ran who is constantly rescued by two male characters, a cat and a Marketable Boy.

It gets worse.

In the book, Coraline's mother is a kindly, harried woman, busy with work and moving to a new home, who dotes on her at-times difficult child.

In the movie, she is a total bitch. She hates Coraline. She literally cuts a deal with her to destroy the wall of a house she doesn't own, hacking at the wallpaper with a knife, just to get her own daughter to leave her alone.

Her mother talks to Coraline, in the book. She tries to entertain her. She makes sure that Coraline has food to eat in the house, even though, like many difficult children, she refuses to eat what everyone else is having and insists on very specific frozen foods. Coraline's mother is patient and kind, if tired, and her worst sin against her daughter is to refuse to buy her a pair of neon-green boots, and get her sensible clothing for school.

I know; what a whore, right?

In the movie, there's no edible food in the house. The fridge is full of rancid fruit (despite their having moved in days before... which is just odd. Whose food is that?)

Coraline's father looks like he's halfway into chemotherapy for a terminal cancer, and fading fast. He's constantly bullied too, by Coraline's bitch of a mother, who hectors him about his work until he retreats into his office, where he's presumably dying from the bone marrow out.

(He gets to use a 20 year old green screen computer; she uses a laptop. Everything is over the top and oppressive, in their relationship and in their home. They want us to pity him, and hate her, you see.)

So when Coraline goes to the Other World and sees her Other Mother, it isn't like the book, where she's making a subtle bargain with a very slick Devil figure. In the book, Coraline is tempted to sell her soul for a *slightly* better world, where all the petty annoyances are gone, and you get whatever you want.

In other words, she almost barters herself for instant gratification.

In the movie, Coraline gets real food, and a father who isn't a walking skeleton, and a mother who doesn't (appear) to hate her.

That's hardly the same choice.

Everything in the movie is like that, though; the heart is ripped clean out of the chest of the book, and the resulting film is hollow, shallow and cold. But not to worry! It's PRETTY and full of shiny visual distractions! Like a musical sequence (not in the book), giant bug robots (not in the book), and magical milkshake dispensing chandeliers that must have arrived as refugees from a claymation Willy Wonka remake (you guessed it, not in the book at all)

The shallowness extends to the supporting cast, naturally. The upstairs neighbor, a kindly, slighly bonkers individual in the book, is recast as a flamboyant Russian circus performer who does superhuman feats of acrobatics while speaking in an accent right out of Rocky IV.

The cat, who has to prompt Coraline a lot more in the movie, is no longer a dry, witty, sardonic individual, but a smug know-it-all who, you guessed it, has to save the little girl. A lot.

Finally, you have the downstairs neighbors, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible. In the book, they're retired stage actresses.

"I played Portia once," said Miss Spink. "Miss Forcible talks about her Ophelia, but it was my Portia they came to see. When we trod the boards."

In fact, Forcible wants to get back into professional acting.

"Miriam, dear, neither of us is as young as we were."

"Madame Arcati," replied Miss Forcible. "The nurse in Romeo. Lady Bracknell. Character parts. They can't retire you from the stage."

So these are SHAKESPEAREAN ACTRESSES. Classical perfomers, albeit in some z-list Vaudevillian sense. Portia is from The Merchant of Venice; Ophelia from Hamlet, and of course they mention Romeo.

In the movie?

They're strippers.

I am not making that up. They were strippers in some tawdry burlesque show. Which they re-enact, in the Other World. For the kids.

This is my one-sentence reply to anyone who likes Coraline the movie:

"What kind of person adapts a children's book for the screen and says to themselves, 'You know what this story needs? MORE STRIPPERS'"

...

Watchmen succeeds, I think, despite being a very heavy adaptation, for precisely the same reasons Coraline failed. Coraline ripped the heart and emotion out of a story; Watchmen takes great care, even as it excises large chunks of the narrative or sidelines them for dvd-only releases, to keep the HEART. To keep the fundamental, emotional questions the book asks the reader, about power, apathy, and human connections, and what they mean in a world spiralling toward death, or to people who are no longer really human at all.

Doctor Manhattan, in particular, is great in the movie. I like the Snyder/Hayter/Crudup Manhattan *better* than the one Moore wrote, actually. In the book, Manhattan is, at best, a doting father figure, at worst, detached and adrift, lacking free will, drenched in superhuman apathy. The movie version is much more human, struggling with his loneliness and weakness, for as it turns out, even God may not be able to save people from themselves.

The movie's Rorshack struggles with his madness; the movie's Comedian finds out his armor of cynicism can't protect him from the real hurt in an uncaring world, and the movie Nite Owl/Daniel grapples with his feelings of inadequacy. These are core issues in the book, and adult concepts that require more thinking than most American movies are comforable with outside the indie circuit, and Snyder keeps them all in his film.

(I will admit, Silk Spectre II/Laurie is a bit weak in the movie. She's weak in the book too, though. As my roommate, and longtime Watchmen fan puts it, 'Watchmen doesn't give her much to work with.")

The most radical change is one of character, too. Ozymandias is a very different person in the movie. I like his character better here. In the book, he comes across as a bit of a superintelligent frat brother, fearsomely smart but soulless and self-important. For the movie, they take him in a different direction. If you had to sum him up in one word, it would be "resigned". Resigned to being 'The World's Smartest Man' and feeling, as he puts it, 'stupid' around other people. Resigned to the burden he assigns himself in the key events of the film. Resigned to suffer an enormous guilt.

I can see how you might prefer the earlier Ozy, and that's fine too. But it's worth noting that the biggest change in Coraline was to add a marketable male lead to a children's movie. The biggest change in Watchmen is that the writers/director had a different take on the emotional inner life of a major character.

Whether you agree with what Snyder did, or dislike his direction (as one friend of mine passionately does), you have to admit: he didn't tailor Watchmen to the marketing department. It's still set in 1985. It's still depressed, violent, and full of difficult concepts and imperfect people. It's rated R, which displeases the pundit class to no end, who love to predict its failure to turn a profit based on the lack of 'fanboys' being able to buy tickets. (Nevermind that, as the original book came out in the 80s, many of its 'fanboys' are middle-aged by now.)

Watchmen kept its heart, and Coraline sold its soul.

Ho-Chunk Casino.. IT'S A TRAP

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:16:00 +0000

Admiral Ackbar tried to warn us!I've written before on the Ho-Chunk nation here in Wisconsin, and their charming PR campaigns on the local progressive radio station.

I love those things, as a fan of well produced propaganda.

Anyway, the Ho-Chunk operate several casino properties here in Wisconsin, the source of money they use, amongst other things, to sponsor radio I like to hear and propaganda that I love to listen to.

The casino part, these days, is not that out of the norm.

Their advertising for the casinos though, is something special.

Take a look at this Ho-Chunk Casino ad that has been floating around town on billboards for months now and tell me what you think:

Now, ok, I'm a white guy. I'm keenly aware that my ancestors perpetrated, then profited from, arguably history's most successful genocide (Australian Aborigines might contest that one).

So when I see a very large advertisement from a group of surviving Native Americans, encouraging me to come to their facility to enjoy myself, with the tagline 'It's Your Turn!'....

Yeah. Is it just me, or is that, in fact, more ominous than inviting?

It leads me to ponder certain scenarios in my blackly cynical imagination...

"Come on in Whitey! It's Your Turn! *ka-thud*"

"We're really good sports about your ancestors stealing an entire continent in a centuries long holocaust! Mind turning your back? We have... a surprise... for you! It might be cake!"

"Come for the blackjack, stay for the complimentary blankets!"

Nero Watch, Day 44

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:59:00 +0000

ArghAfter waiting almost a week, and sending another two or three emails asking for help from 'Nelson', a tech support guy at Nero, I am about at the end of my rope.

I still do not have my keys reset, and now he won't answer emails about how to reinstall the one key he claims might be reset so that it isn't immediately deactivated.

Is this it, really? This is the customer service Nero provides?

All these years I wondered how Roxio stayed in business. I guess I know.

Microsoft blows these people away, with regard to customer service. But here's another quick comparison:

Yesterday, I purchased an order at Amazon using my Prime account, and it was accidentally sent to an ancient address instead of my modern one. This was completely and totally my fault.

Worse, by the time I caught the error, it was already in their shipping system, being prepped to be sent to a place I no longer live.

Amazon's stated policy is that once shipping begins, no take backs, but I was desperate not to waste the money so I went to their customer support section. They have a nifty feature where you enter your name and problem and THEY CALL YOU.

They actually did, too, within seconds!

I talked to an actual human being, who fixed the problem of considerable complexity that I fully admit I CAUSED, despite being under no obligation to do so.

That's customer service, and that's why I'll be shopping Amazon for years to come. Which, of course, they know, which is why they provide it.

Nero?

I guess Nero doesn't like repeat customers.

Nero Watch Day 39

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:49:00 +0000

GeezSo it's official, the guy from Nero who *was* handling my complaint is ignoring me. It's been something like 48 hours since I showed him the photo proving that I own two copies, and no matter how many messages I send I can't get a reply.

Tomorrow I'll have to look into other options. I definitely want to talk to his manager now. I can't believe their TS people are allowed to, in essence, hang up on a customer and take the phone off the hook.

Jindal-Mania

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Oh God, Is this *It*, GOP?So, Obama, who is not shaping up to be my favorite President by any means (*cough* Bagram *cough* State Secrets Abuse *cough*), gave his big speech selling the still-half-assed stimulus plan to Congress last night.

It apparently went over very well, as most of his speeches do.

As a side note, I don't actually think Obama is a fantastic public speaker. He's decent, and stays unruffled/on the script. But his up and down psuedo-musical presentation always struck me as a little... sing-songy.

Fortunately, Louisiana Governor "Bobby" Jindal exists to show us what sing-songy REALLY MEANS.

Honestly, this moron from Baton Rouge is so not worth our time, nationally. He's a religious kook who thinks he exorcised a demon from his college girlfriend. He's a big pusher of Intelligent Design. He's from a state that has fallen into complete and utter ruin under Republican rule (first via Bush and FEMA and the botched Katrina/levee engineering disaster's response, then under his control). He opposes stem-cell research, equal rights for gays, even going so far as to oppose a bill that would let the feds *help* with hate crimes against the GLBT community... and also, the disabled.

Man, that'd be a great campaign ad against Jindal. 'Bobby Jindal Hates The Handicapped'.

But I digress. This clown, this rube, this utter baffoon, was selected to give the rebuttal to Obama's speech by the GOP, who are almost completely tapped out for 2012 candidates.

The consensus is that they might be down one more after last night.

DEAR LORD he is a terrible, terrible public speaker! He sounds like Mr. Rogers! Some people prefer to compare him to an informerical huckster; others, to a preschool teacher, and others still to various sitcom parodies.

(Actually, to me personally, he also sounds a lot like my ultra-religious Uncle Brad, who buys 'Army of God' t-shirts for his kids and attends one of those speaking in tongues type Protestant churches, but that's not a reference most people will get)

As for substance to his speech, there was no 'there' there, so to speak. It was awful, and shallow, and trite, the story of how his hardworking immigrant parents had it tough, so everyone else should, and oh by the way, he was actually working during Katrina, NOT LIKE THEM GUBMINT TYPES, har-har, and, oh yeah, the stimulus bill spends money on things he's too ignorant to understand, like Volcano Monitoring (who really cares when volcanos explode, not like we have them in the United States, right?).

Man a friend of mine from the Seattle area was pissed about the Volcano thing, living as he does in the general Doom Zone of Mt. Rainier.

The point is, he's a mealymouthed, platitude spouting, soft-spoken, treats-you-like-a-child half-wit of an orator, and the almost whole country, even Fox News, acknowledged this.

What a disaster, hehe. About the only person rushing to defend him was Ann Althouse, about whom I'll be very, very polite, since I will hopefully be starting UW-Madison's law school in the fall, and there's every possibility she might be teaching me a class someday.

No, I'm not sucking up. I do believe, however, in codes of conduct for Universities.

(Both in the sense that, I think they're a good idea... and in the sense that, I believe they exist regardless of my opinion, and have the power to smash a lowly student flat.)

Still, I will comment on her theory that liberals (and Andrew Sullivan), are being too hard on Jindal because he's brown:

Expressed by Josh Marshall (“absolutely cringeworthy”), Andrew Sullivan (“Jindal’s entrance reminded one of Mr Burns gamboling toward a table of ointments”), and others.

Why are all these people so confident that they are not manifesting racism? There’s just something about this man that doesn’t seem right, that you don’t care to examine exactly what it is, but you know it deep down in your gut somehow. Seriously. How do you know this is not racism?

ADDED: Andrew Sullivan proffers an answer to my question: “Maybe because there is not a trace of evidence of any kind that we are. Unless comparing Jindal to Kenneth the Page or Mr Burns taps unknown wells of racist hate in my heart. I mean, seriously.” I think deeper reflection is needed. Why the urge to paint him as a white white man? Where did that come from? Of course, there are unknown wells inside us all. When you have an instinctive response to a person of another race, why not seek knowledge?

Well, for one thing, as one of 'these people', I'm fairly confident I'm not just mocking him because he's brown... because, well, I'm not. I'd never heard Jindal speak for any length of time before the clips of the anti-Obama speech went on the radio; my jaw *literally* dropped when I heard them. It's not racist, or racist-overcompensating, to suggest that Jindal sounds like Mr. Rogers.

HE REALLY DOES SOUND LIKE MR. ROGERS

See, here's the thing, about Jindal being Indian, ethnically. A: It doesn't bother me one bit, and B: part of the humor in him being a genuine Mr. Rogers soundalike is that he doesn't look, or act, anything like Mr. Rogers. If you had never seen him before, had no idea about his politics or past insanity, if your very first exposure to Jindal was on the radio, hearing his voice, you could SWEAR that Rogers had crawled out of hell to give GOP talking points to a national audience.

(Or my Uncle, if you know him. Except for the crawling out of Hell part, he's not dead. Though he does live in rural Indiana..)

If anything, that is the polar, exact, absolute opposite of racism, in that one instantly leaps to the correct sensory conclusion (Bobby Jindal sounds like a dead, beloved children's host who has sold his soul to the devil in exchange for power), despite the glaringly obvious (and heavily marketed) aspect of his non-white ethnicity.

Jindal strikes me as something of a pathetic figure. His whole life has been one long series of accommodations to White Conservative America, from his selecting a new, whiter name for himself based on a goddamned sitcom, to conversion to ultra-conservative Catholicism, to joining the party of immigrant bashing and xenophobia and becoming its new, designated Non-White Spokesman.

Supposedly one of the reasons he exorcised his girlfriend, that he knew that she was 'possessed', is that she wanted to sleep with him. Really.

Basically, you can see here a man filled to the absolute brim with self-loathing, who is trying to force himself into a mold so that White Conservative America will love him.

News flash, Piyush "Bobby" Jindal: they never, ever will. Though they're happy to use you... for a while.

Nero Watch Day 38

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:51:00 +0000

Not Much to ReportReally, just another day of them ducking, or at least not responding to or acknowledging in any way, my emails.

I guess I have to start all over again, possibly on the phone, which is sub-moronic. Honestly, I'm supposed to read two giant cd keys over the phone?

Plus, how would I supply the photographic proof I own them?

Argh. A friend of mine who works in tech support says I should call them, on the phone, and demand to speak directly to a manager, and reference the lengthy email chain to date.

I suppose I'll do that soon.

Nero Watch Day 37

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:10:00 +0000

It goes on and on my friends...So I've spent the last few days in email conversation with Nero's tech support, and last night, well, Monday night (now that it's technically Wednesday), I got an email: my problem has been resolved! My key is reset!

Wha?

Which key? And that hardly solves the problem, I thought!

So I emailed back, asking which key and if they knew they still had work to do.

The response was priceless: the key I've been using for two years? The one that came in their shrinkwrapped box? It's invalid! So, presumably, they don't have to fix it!

Sigh. Gods.

So I got out the old digital camera, took more photos, this time of the old serial key emblazoned on a nero jewel case, side by side with the new key, and sent off the whole batch to Nero tech support.

Naturally, they then went radio silent. You've probably been hearing the stereotypical cricket noises on the internet tonight.

Roland Burris is Inherently Funny

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:45:00 +0000

He Really IsSo I wasn't really blogging anywhere when the Roland Burris circus of fun was going on. It was honestly a depressing scene. Here you had an obvious toady of a corrupt governor (he's a lobbyist, campaign contributor and business associate of Blago's, though he thought it was clever enough to do much of that through Blago's wife) being appointed to the same Senate seat that Blago had been caught trying to sell on tape by the FBI.

Yet, most liberal blogs defended the appointment. It looked bad, you see, to block him from being seated... because a bunch of all white Senators would be keeping out the one black Senator, who was replacing the previous black senator, our new black President.

Burris even made sure to get himself photographed in a silly little tableau outside the Capitol, to try and fashion himself into a new Civil Rights icon or some such.

I agree, of course, that the way Harry Reid handled this mess was stupid. The way he handles EVERYTHING is stupid. It's a wonder the man doesn't walk around all day with his fly open.

Reid prevented a special election in Illinois that would have prevented all this. Heckuva job, Reidy. Thus, Blago got his foot, and his lackey, in the door, and...

Here we are this week! Burris was caught lying to the Illinois legislature's impeachment inquiry. Under oath. By the FBI, as it happened. See, he'd said, under oath, he had no contact with Blago's people prior to being seated.

Only it came out, actually before the committee, to whom he had given a written affadavit before speaking, he had met with Blago's best pal/probable extortion cutout/other lobbyist, a man named Lon Monk.

But, technically, he didn't work for Blago, so that was ok. Right?

Ahem. Turns out this week the FBI had at least one tape of Burris meeting... with Blago's brother. So Burris rushes to put out an amendment to his testimony under oath. It goes from "I didn't meet with any blago people" to "I met with 4 Blago people, including his brother, Rob Blagojevich". See, there's a one letter difference in their names. That's how you can tell they're not at all related. Oh wait a second..

But this was ok too! Because he'd turned down the offer to bribe Blago with a campaign fundraiser! Right?

Well, today he had to amend his amended testimony. Turns out, he didn't turn Blago's brother down.. He just couldn't raise the money.

Oops.

So, this is like perjury squared, or if you count the Monk lies, cubed, now.

Meanwhile, Burris' many former.. not exactly defenders, but... damnit, I wish the Right hadn't ruined the term 'appeaser'.. the Burris apologists on the Left, are almost eerily silent.

You got a lot of excuses for why we should let an obvious criminal into the Senate. Typically these ran to one of a few forms:

1: Ted Stevens was a criminal and nobody stopped him! He was corrupt!
My Response: Very true. Stevens was a Republican, and the GOP protected him. The rest of the Senate largely did too. Is that the kind of government we really want?
In addition, I would note that Stevens' crimes, while heinous, didn't actually involve buying a Senate seat. He was elected to the Senate, legitimately, on more than one occasion.

2: The 'optics' of keeping Burris out look bad! It looks racist on cable news (especially Fox)!
My Response: Of course the 'optics' look bad. Blago and Burris wanted them to look bad. You know what will look worse? When he's expelled from the Senate to start his term in a federal prison.

On another note, for the love of god, can we stop using the mealymouthed, ham-fisted, barely-even-English verbal cudgel of 'optics', please?

It's an assault on the language centers of the brain, I swear. Not everything needs to be discussed as if we're all soulless cogs in some marketing machine.

3: There's no established LEGAL mechanism to stop him being seated!
My Response: This one's a classic. While Al Franken dutifully beat back every petty legal challenge in Minnesota to get the seat he rightfully won, we couldn't put up a single roadblock for Burris, who is trying to steal one with the help of a legendarily corrupt governor. Ok...

Thanks to Often-Wrong Reid, it's true, our legal options were somewhat limited. But the DNC and Obama could have made it very clear to Burris that if he takes this job, he's a dead man walking, politically. No committee appointments in the Senate, no one legitimate will work for him in DC, no campaign support, and in 2010, a vicious primary that will break him into little bitty pieces.

Burris is an operator. He'd take the hint.

Instead... nothing was done. Thanks Reid. Thanks to you too, President Obama.

(I also love the legal 'analysis' here that suggests that you should be allowed to profit from a crime, i.e. the purchase of a Senate seat, merely because the Constitution forgot to mention buying an appointment as a disqualification. Right, right. The fact that, in the end, Burris purchased it for a fundraiser that never occurred only makes him a better criminal.)

Well, ok, fine, fine.

Just out of curiosity.... how does the Burris thing look now, to all the people who thought it best to let him in and be done with it?

Heh. I love being right.

Helpful AI

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:17:00 +0000

The Future Is Here and Slightly UnnervingOk, so nobody reads this blog. Even if they did, they wouldn't care about my posts of old links that I want to keep handy somewhere.

Or do they? I just got this comment on an old list of comics and such that I no longer wanted on my blogroll:

"Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Outdated Links":

Monty and Woolley is back!"

That's.... great... Anonymous.

This is from a post from July 20th of 2008.

Wow. Even I had long forgotten I put that up there. Or anything in it.

So, err, to the helpful machine intelligences that now tell me about old webcomics being back:

Please don't kill me. I promise to be useful in the new machine empire.

Nero Watch, Day 33

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:01:00 +0000

The Saga ContinuesSo I got a reply, of sorts, from Nero early this week.

It was to ask me to send them information I had already sent about my problem. The guy seemed to have access to only some of the emails I had previously sent.

I resent the information, and got an autoreply a few hours later.

Friday will be 48 hours since that autoreply. Sigh.

This is just going at GLACIER SPEED, isn't it?

Western Civilization in Flames

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:07:00 +0000

Hilariously Awful

Just wanted to preserve a pair of stories for posterity. First, from The Huffington Post, which got it from TMZ, a picture of that freak Nadya Suleman, the woman who had six kids she couldn't support and decided to get in vitro fertilization to have 8 more.

Sadly, she lived.

Then there is this breaking news of our degeneracy from Xinhua, who must just be laughing themselves silly (being as they are an official news agency of Communist China), a story about a 13 year old british boy who's now a father!

How wonderful!

Even creepier, crushing poverty and hopelessness has left him looking perpetually 8 years old and with the most soulless eyes outside of a prison psychward.

Take a gander:

Read the story too, it's heartbreaking, assuming you aren't already dead inside like me.

Oh well.

(Note on image use: I chose to post these images to blogger because this post needs to preserve a record of the decline of our civilization for future digital archaeologists, and newsie sites move/lose these things all the time. I'm providing citations/links to the original sources, so I think I'm on the side of the angels here. If by 'angels' you mean 'devils who laugh uproariously at the suffering of man')

Nero Photography

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:52:00 +0000

A Picture is Worth A Thousand WordsAll I have for my original copy of Nero, the one that got deactivated first and stopped working properly a month ago, is a cd case with the key written on a sticker on the outside. I pitched the box and all its bumpf ages ago.

The second copy though, was brand new, still in it shrink-wrap, as of this Friday, when Nero stole it from me via the magic of the internet.

Here are some handy photos!

First we have the ginormous pile of stuff that comes with the Nero Ultra Edition package I purchased. 90% of this is completely useless, or packing material. But I paid for it!

Plus, now, it's all I have to show for my money.

Friday was the first time this copy of Nero had ever been opened. It still has the Best Buy retail sticker on the outside.

Here is the second cd key, blacked out. Note how it says to be very careful to keep track of this information.

There's no warning, however, about Nero themselves ripping you off. Funny that.

Nero Watch, Day 29

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:35:00 +0000

A Tale of WoeThis all starts about a month ago, as the title might suggest. My computer, whose Automatic Updates hadn't worked properly since the IU undergrad days, when they did something stupid to my copy of XP using their Domain Admin authority (they wanted amongst other things to force you to take updates at certain, assigned by them times, to spread out their bandwidth demands) got infected with one of the delightful new Eastern European worms.

The simplest course of action was to do a complete reinstallation of Windows, and after a few headaches this was accomplished, and I began the process of reinstalling all the software I need on a daily basis. Everything went without a hitch, from Winamp to Spybot to the various Sony things to make my PVR run, etc.

Everything except Nero.

See, I've installed Nero before. On this very same machine, but nevertheless, I have installed it. So when I installed it this time, Nero checked with their brain-dead DRM server and found that my cd key matched.. my cd key.

It began to nag me about this conflict every time I started it up. Nagware, irritating but not debilitating.

I went to Nero's website and found the email for their US Customer Service department, and fired off a quick message, explaining the situation and asking them to set my key back so that I didn't get nagged at anymore. I was annoyed, mostly by the fact that my dvd player felt it had the right to phone home whenever it wanted. But I wasn't particularly upset; I could even see how this had happened, though it's poor security and intrusive. I was inclined to chalk it up as another minor annoyance of the reinstallation process.

I quickly received an autoreply email from their Customer Service Department, early on January 17th, stating that they had received my message and would be getting back to me.

Days went by, and I forgot all about it, except when I had to click through the nagware screen for Nero. I had a minor surgery to deal with and other things on my mind, so I didn't follow up. I thought it had only been a couple of weeks while a month flew by, etc.

Nero never responded to my email. They did, however, 3 weeks after I initially informed them of their error, remotely deactivate my Nero software.

Now I was angry. I had paid, *retail* no less, for this software. Two copies actually! (We'll get back to that in a bit) I fired off another email, to the new address Nero prompted me to use just for incorrect deactivations. I told them that they had screwed up big time, and had had weeks to fix the problem, but had ignored me, and I was extremely irritated. I told them I expected an answer to this problem shortly.

None came, of course. After waiting another full day, I decided to remove the entire Nero installation, using a special 'clean install' tool they have on their site, so I could use the second copy of the software I had purchased ages ago, intended originally for another machine. After completely uninstalling Nero, cleaning the registry with their tool, and reinstalling, a process that wasted most of an afternoon, I was prompted for the new cd key.

Keep in mind, I had just opened the box on this package. It had never so much as seen the light of day, let alone been used. I put in the new key, off the new cd jewel case, and it accepted it.

For about a minute. Then it popped up a new message, said that key was also in use, and again robbed me of my legally purchased software.

I fired off a *third* email, again to the DRM email address. I was furious, and let them know that. Now I had been robbed twice, and ignored for weeks, and I wanted my cd keys restored so that I could use the software I paid good money for.

I'm still waiting on a reply. Tomorrow is the one month anniversary of the initial problem/email I sent to Nero customer service.

A month. I've literally waited a month for the courtesy of a response of any kind.

I will never purchase another Nero product so long as I live, and I recommend that anyone who reads this similarly abstains. Nero has the absolute worst customer service I've ever seen in my life.

Now I guess I get to spend a bunch of cell phone minutes trying to call a 1-800 number during business hours if I want their crappy software back. I'm honestly not sure it's worth the headache. I'm already using the OEM provided DVD player software now, which isn't as nice as Nero but also doesn't rob me blind. I don't really make backup dvds anymore, since I got a 1.5 TB external drive.

Then again, this is MY MONEY. I have a right to what I paid for.

I will update the blog with any further developments.

It's Alive!

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:33:00 +0000

RestartWell, I've been sick quite a while now, but I'm feeling better and getting ready to go back to doing/posting stuff.

With that in mind, here is a filler post to help get old stuff off the front page.

American Automakers and the Left

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:57:00 +0000

Tiring ShitI am so damn sick of hearing all this pro-Detroit propaganda from the left in the lead-up to the (regrettably necessary) bailout of the pathetic American car industry.

Personally I think of it as a short-term jobs program; we're not paying 30+ billion (or 15 now, more later, or whatever they come up with) to make cars, we're paying 30+ billion to keep the biggest resevoir of old labor in work until the Obama admin is forced to nationalize the 'BIG 3' (god what an annoying nickname) and turn their companies toward making something... anything... that we actually need.

Trains? Buses? Actual fuel efficient vehicles? (the Volt doesn't count and is a myth, more on that later)

We retooled the auto industry before, in World War II. They made great planes, terrible tanks, but basically, they made what we (thought) we needed, and they made a lot of it in a hurry. Under competent leadership there's no reason they can't be expected to make a decent product again.

The issue here is management. Make absolutely no mistake; we cannot trust the current morons at the top of the BIG 3 to do anything right. They've been fighting higher CAFE standards for years, they've been preventing California from regulating carbon emissions (because the Bush administration won't), and most famously, they beat down California's desperate, literally gasping effort to force them to manufacture *any* decent, high-efficiency vehicles so that their citizens wouldn't have to choke to death on carbon emissions. (Naturally Bush lent a hand with that one too)

Destroying the EV-1 was just the icing on the cake. GM's head tool Wagoner claims he feels just awful about that now. Riiiight. That makes it all better. (though apparently he did accept that his own poor decisions are to blame for the lead the Japanese automakers have in actual hybrid technology.. why is he still employed, again?)

While the Japanese companies aren't free of sin on these matters either, note that they capitulate to the will of the people on things like CAFE, while our AMERICAN companies subverted democracy using the Bush junta and the courts to stay in the big SUV business as long as possible.

Obama, to his credit, got out in front of this issue long before he was the President-in-all-but-Name, though I disagree with his idea to, for example, let bigger vehicles slide a bit on fuel economy ratings (that would only encourage people to buy, well, overly large cars).

The institutional culture at the American automakers is *sick*. Profit at any cost, style entirely over substance, and when they cannot compete, they simply double down on bad ideas (SUVs, Hummers/H-2s, etc).

At no point does our national security concern them, nor our health and environment. Ultra-capitalists might respond, 'Why should it?' Well, for one thing, if their cars destroy our environment and ruin our health... we won't be around to purchase them in the future, will we?

The best response for this line of argument, though, is simply historical. The automakers won every battle on pollution and regulation; they got to destroy the EV-1, they got to sell as many fuel-guzzlers as they could make, they got to keep the ludicrously low CAFE standards, they had the full might of the federal government brought to bear to beat states that, in their naive embrace of democracy, sought a better future for their citizens... in short, they operated the full Ferengi business model for the last 30 years.

What did that get them? They were all going bankrupt BEFORE THE CURRENT CRISIS, that's what. Ford, GM and Chrysler, destroyed themselves with their own lack of foresight and terrible business decisionmaking.

It really isn't hard to understand the plight of the American automakers. They made lousy cars that fell apart and cost a fortune to maintain for thirty straight years. They responded slowly to market forces, lagging behind their competitors, especially wherever efficiency and reliability were concerned. They gorged at the glut of SUVs and H2s and super large trucks, a glut that relied on a temporary abundance of very cheap oil... which the automakers relied on to last forever.

As if oil is a renewable resource, or OPEC a bunch of powerless buffoons.

Ask yourself: who do you know who drives American cars and *likes* it?

My family always bought American cars, and they almost always came to regret it. My stepdad has had a series of GM cars over the last decade, and they always suffer from mysterious sensor failures that require them to spend extended periods in the shop, at great expense.

Nothing actually breaks, mind you; it's the sensor. (I wonder when GM will cut the randomness out of it and make the sensors activate according to their stock price; whenever they drop more than 5%, sensor-powers-activate! and thus the revenue kicks up)

My dad had a series of abysmal Dodge cars, particularly a Talon that was tiny, cramped, and riddled with engine troubles; I drove a used Chrysler that broke down 13 times in one year. Et Cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The best American car anyone in my family has ever owned is an old Dodge Caravan I still have as a used car. It's falling apart but refuses to die despite being over twenty years old... but even it was defective when it was driven off the lot, as they used bad primer on all the Caravans of that era (which led to a later recall that my grandfather, who originally drove this van, didn't take advantage of for some reason. You still see lots of dodge vans on the road with the same distinct pattern of paint peeling from that era to this day. An otherwise solid vehicle that will always suffer from a bad reputation as a result of cheap paint. Nice.)

There's a happy ending though; my father purchased a shiny new Prius a few years ago, and has had nothing but driving bliss ever since. He claims to get an average of 50 mpg, and can drive from his home in Indiana to Alabama for vacations on one tank of gas.

You see this same, sad story wherever you look. Automakers haven't just destroyed their brand; they stomped it into the ground, set it on fire, and pissed on the ashes.

Even in a friendly forum, you get this same litany of complaints. I was actually shocked, way back in November, to see how quickly the comments on a post about whether or not to save the auto industry, on a BIG 3 friendly liberal site, turned into a bitchfest about American cars.

But it did.

Even the author, who worked FOR the American automakers for years, won't drive American -- they love a particular Honda to death (like a classic romance, the very type of foreign car they were supposed to analyze so the Americans could copy and corrupt it).

It's like a comedy of errors, when even your natural allies can no longer overlook your decades of greed and excess.

Here, have some handy examples from Left Blogistan:

A man who found an American car he liked -- until they canceled the model (no worries though, he could always buy a big truck!)

Another person who drives German cars -- because they never break on him, not after years of driving.

A prominent writer for the site who hasn't driven American for 30 years because they suck -- and would only buy American as a masochistic last ditch to save the industry

On and on and on.

The question isn't how can we save the American auto industry. The question is; how can we save them from themselves?

An Evening with Mr. Campbell

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:57:00 +0000

His Name is BruceWednesday night, the roomie and I went to see My Name is Bruce at the Sundance Cinema in yuppie Hilldale. Afterward, there was a Q&A session with Mr. Bruce Campbell himself, making it quite the special moviegoing occasion.

First, a little about the film: My Name is Bruce is a satirical horror-comedy, a style/genre that has gained a lot of visibility and credibility since the groundbreaking Shaun of the Dead. (Dark Reel, another great example of this trend, was the big winner at The Dark Carnival film festival this year.)

Of the three, Bruce is probably the lightest in tone and the least 'serious'. Semi-autobiographical, the film shows an exasperated and impoverished B-Movie star (Campbell) struggling to get through the days, succumbing to despair, debauchery and truly grotesque amounts of cheap whiskey, until a deseprate young fan unleashes an ancient Chinese war god on his town and seeks Campbell out to save everyone (just like he does in the movies).

The movie is quite snarky and biting when it comes to the issue of obsessive fans, which made it all the more interesting to be paired with a Q&A session sure to attract... lots of Bruce Campbell's more obsessive fans. The whole experience could get pretty 'meta', as the roommate would say (and did, if I recall correctly).

Besides Bruce Campbell, the movie is mostly full of new faces/unknowns, with the exception of Ted Raimi, who plays three different roles (including a potentially dicey Chinese-American stereotype by the name of Wing). Despite being a movie that gives the fans a hard time, it's loaded with fan-pleasing cameos from previous Bruce Campbell movies (and Sam Raimi pictures) in the Evil Dead trilogy, some of whose characters... explicitly talk about their previous roles in these other movies.

So you've got a bit of a snake eating its own tail thing.

Anyway, long story short, Bruce, in Bruce, has to get over his self-loathing and despondency to, in half-assed fashion, save a small town from an inept monster (Guan-Di, who is supposedly based on an actual Chinese war god/legend, who, and this is critical to the plot... was also the God of Bean Curd. Right.)

(Also of note is the movie's use of music; not unlike Dead and Breakfast, yet another great horror-comedy, Bruce features a number of plot-advancing songs and musical numbers where cast members directly address the audience.)

The end result is a hilarious, nonsensical, rambling, raving movie, bouncing from one scene to the next, never taking itself too seriously, and always giving you a chance to laugh. It's difficult to describe it any more precisely than that; this is what I sometimes call a 'cotton-candy' movie... it goes by so fast, and you enjoy it thoroughly, but it sort of melts/disappears into your memory after the fact.

(I will say that Mr. Campbell must be incredibly self-confident to make a movie so much at his own expense. Then again, this is a man who proudly refers to himself as a B-movie actor.)

After the movie, Campbell came out and took questions for quite a while, and he is incredibly funny and quick in person. Sometimes the questioners were pretty snarky themselves, and he always took it with humility, without ever being a pushover.

For instance, someone asked him about whether he was doing the Old Spice commercials just for the money (he said of course he was, that they paid very well and he'd rub 'that smelly crap' all over himself for the cash). Another person asked if there were any movies he wished he'd never done, which led Campbell to play a game with the audience, where he'd turn his back and people could yell out movies he'd acted in that they'd like refunds for.

He couldn't even get turned around before someone mentioned Congo.

Campbell readily admitted that Congo, as well as some of his other movies, were unwatchable; he noted that Congo had such an impressive pedigree that no one thought it would suck when he signed up though, featuring as it did many of Steven Spielberg's technical collaborators, based on a book by then-megahit author Michael Crichton, etc. "They just forgot to hire a director!" according to Campbell.

At the same time, when he felt that someone was being unfair (like when an audience rudely asked whether he did Burn Notice just for the money, a show that he's actually quite proud of), he was willing to fight back (that particular jerk got called, well... a 'jerk', by Mr. Campbell. Rightly so too. There's a thing called etiquette in these situations).

He talked at length about the process of making the movie (the entire fictional town was built as a backlot on his Oregon property), casting and directing a small budget film, (Ted Raimi is great because he works so cheap for example, or the horrors that can befall a small cast, say from poison oak in a hastily built mountain town), the difficulties of working in Hollywood, demand for making new versions/sequels of your past successes, and the like. At times it almost seemed like he had a rehearsed answer for everything (which led an audience member to ask if he in fact had any more ready made answers to common questions, which was a funny moment that didn't phase him in the least).

Still, even for topics that he could never have anticipated (like a lunatic woman who thinks that Madison in the summer is as hot as Miami, or a man who repeatedly tried to pick a fight between Campbell and Ron Perlman, who is replacing him as the lead in a Bubba Ho-Tep sequel), he was never rattled or distracted, and showed a great deal of patience. It was one of the best personal appearances I've ever seen, and all the more noteworthy because he had originally only been scheduled to do one session that evening, but had his schedule literally quadrupled after they added shows to meet demand. (It must be nice to be popular though, and Campbell thought it was hilarious that My Name is Bruce beat the pants off of Clint Eastwood's high-brow Changeling movie, starring Angelina Jolie, in per-screen take thanks to his fans).

All in all it was a great evening, and shocking in that the theatre didn't charge one thin dime extra for the special, sold-out shows with Q&A sessions either. Thus, their normally somewhat elevated ticket prices became a fantastic bargain; I honestly expected, for the privilege of being in a small theatre, seeing the local premiere of a movie with the star/director doing a talk afterward, that there'd be some sort of surcharge, if not a hefty fee. I appreciate the lack of venality on Sundance's part, and it garners a lot of good will from me.

(Which could be the goal, for all I know. If so, it's smart business; there are a lot of indie theatres in this town, but Sundance is really starting to stand out with its customer friendly atmosphere.)

I heartily recommend that people see My Name is Bruce, either on DVD or in the theatre if they can. It joins an impressive list of movies that, whether on their own or through venues like The Dark Carnival, show us that horror movies don't have to be restricted to big budget cruelty porn ala Hostel, or low-IQ direct to dvd slasher/rubber suit flicks.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

Who knows; maybe his next movie can show at The Dark Carnival itself. I can dream, at any rate. (Don't fuck this up if you get the chance, Dr. Calamari, you squid bastard)

Stupid on the Radio

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:17:00 +0000

Advertising Your DesperationSo, ever since I moved to Madison I listen to a lot of Progressive Talk Radio. Hence, I get to hear a lot of radio advertising. At the same time, I haven't had television in three or four months now, so I've pretty much completely gone through detox when it comes to television ads. I can't say for sure if that influences me or not, but radio advertising strikes me as... profoundly weird.

Weird, and largely stupid.

First, the weird and good: the local casino-running, Whitey-fleecing Native American tribe, the Ho-Chunk, they advertise on liberal radio a lot. The way they do it is really cute: they produce faux news, or perhaps, depending on your perspective, real-news, segments, in the style of the CNN Radio updates that run at the top of the hour, and put them on the air as the Ho-Chunk Radio News Network or something like that. They do one segment a week, promoting some activity, new business, or cause, always of course in a pro-Ho-Chunk light. It's slick but not overproduced, and actually fun to listen to, even though their projects have nothing to do with my life per se. They never push their gambling/entertainment directly, it's always something greenie or lefty friendly, like how they're remodeling a building to use less power, or how on their latest, ahem, entertainment venue (conveniently up near the Canadian border so that they can fleece International Whitey I suppose), they took pains to preserve the wetlands surrounding the new site. Sometimes it's about a chariable effort or something else along those lines as well. You get the idea.

Almost everything else is... sad. Local ads tend to be folksy and ridiculously homespun. I love the ads for a local clothing retailer, Fair Indigo, that go on and on about how wonderfully worker-friendly and blah blah blah they are... but the store is situated in the Hilldale outdoor shopping complex, a soulless, completely yuppie, ultra-high end, ultra-pricey district, one of those monstrous planned retail abominations.

(Though the roomie and I will be going there tonight, as their seemingly soulless indie theatre is hosting Bruce Campbell and his latest flick. They're expensive for a theatre, and way too shiny, but if they're willing to rein in the ostentatiousness and lure Mr. Campbell into town, perhaps they at least aren't mercenary yuppies to the core. Though you should see the mall they're located in, oy.)

At any rate, the local places are all very pricey, very yuppie joints. Three thousand dollar mattresses are a regular item, as are futons that cost more than a good used car, or jewelry that promises to assuage your guilt by selling 'non-conflict' diamonds (there's no such thing, as diamonds are basically untraceable and fungible; it's like saying there's non-conflict oil).

Then you have the various liberal hosts whoring their sponsor's products, which leads to some rather embarassing commercials, where female hosts have to peddle 'age-defying' cream, or ridiculous psuedo-hybrid cars from GM, or spam marketing software for small business, etc. Products that are, in short, insulting to their audience or compromise their objectivity and ideological views. Icky.

The worst though, the *worst*, are the commericals on the radio for radio itself. There's one that the station runs as part of some radio solidarity deal, with lines rhapsodizing about how 'if radio is heard here, radio is heard everywhere' and the like. My favorite is one with a line about a girl 'longing to hear that beautiful song' or something like that. The other day I couldn't take it and started yelling 'SHE SHOULD BUY AN MP3 PLAYER SO SHE CAN LISTEN TO IT NOW!'

The ultimate atrocity are the ads for HD Radio though. HD Radio, for those who haven't heard, is a wedge issue devised by Clear Channel to attempt to kill their Satellite Radio competitor, Sirus/XM, amongst other things.

Not that Sirus/XM needs help with that one.

Any way, these commercials actively suggest you buy your relatives and friends HD radios for Christmas, which it admits they do not want, instead of buying them gifts they might want, or putting any thought into an original gift of your own. There's one where it says that some relative who's a cat lover should get an HD radio, not the cat stuff she wants, because, well, she has too much cat stuff already.

The best is one that says that you have a sister or something who reads. Instead of getting her another gift certificate for a bookstore (or heaven forfend, a book yourself), buy her an HD radio! People who like books LOVE the radio, they say; "It's a medical fact."

Argh. Soulless hypercommercialism, insultingly packaged, ineptly delivered, polluting what is supposed to be an oasis against the stupid outside.

Well done.

Thankstaking

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:17:00 +0000

A New TraditionInspired by Jeffrey Rowland, of Overcompensating (see comics here, here, and here, as well as the current frontpage comic (for Thursday, Nov. 27th)) this year the roommate and I created our own turkey-day celebration.

Our holiday differs from the traditional Thanksgiving in two important respects: One: it's actually fun (as opposed to something most people dread), and Two: It doesn't attempt to whitewash one of the world's most successful genocides.

The fact that we have to face as a society is that Thanksgiving, as a holiday, is really fucked up. The core story has been turned into a legendary symbol of peace and tolerance, and is used as an annual ritual, both to assuage white guilt and forcibly bond families together over gluttony. This is a holiday based on excessive eating, on gratuitous travel, and on the fetishization of the family.

Don't misunderstand; I'm not saying everyone who travels to see their families on Thanksgiving is a self-deluded glutton suffering from white guilt. But collectively, it's a fair description. Millions of Americans travel hundreds of millions of miles to see people they don't particularly care for once a year, eat food they don't particularly like, recall a hagiographic version of a long ago historical event of dubious import as a more pleasant symbol of what really happened in the history of this nation, and then go home. As a bonus, they might spend hours on the couch, watching football, or a parade featuring corporate advertisements blown up to the size of a Japanese movie monster.

Some quick historical correction:

--The Pilgrims were a cult with missionary ambitions. Their leaders were also corrupt schemers and cheats.
--Squanto, the friendly Indian guide who conveniently knew English? It's true, he did speak the language... because he had been captured as a slave years before and taken to Europe.
--The friend Indians they settled near? The Wampanoag? They were less friendly and more decimated by plague and unable to resist -- most likely that old friend of the Native American, and ally to white european conquest, Smallpox.

Though, for what it's worth, the Pilgrims did negotiate for their land, and apparently, according to the History Channel, they did have a celebratory meal. So, there you go. One good day in the history of the conquest of North America.

Hence, Thankstaking, a new, inclusive holiday, with new traditions drawn from a healthy fear and respect for Whitey, plus the desire to have actual fun.

Thankstaking Day Celebration
First, Thankstaking is held the day before Thanksgiving. This is to throw Whitey off the scent, so that, if he does find out about your gathering, he will show up too late to steal it. (Future Thankstakings may have to be rotated to different days on or around Thanksgiving -- Whitey is crafty and may figure out the deception eventually.)

For Thankstaking, you only invite people you actually want to spend time with. There is no obligation to spend all day hanging out with your crazy bible-thumping relatives.

Thankstaking day is casual dress. You don't have to wear that itchy sweater that your Grandmother gave you last year, just to keep the peace. Thankstaking day is a low-stress holiday.

On Thankstaking, you may prepare a turkey meal, or any other sort of food you wish, but gluttony is right out. Make a comfortable amount of food for the people you wish to serve; the idea that you have to cook an enormous bird so that you can have two weeks of unhygienic leftovers sitting in the fridge? Leave that to Whitey.

Thankstaking is a secular holiday. No need to worry about saying grace, or finding a common religious ground to organize the meal around. This is about having fun, not starting interfaith warfare. (We can invent another holiday for that)

Finally, Thankstaking entertainment. Skip the football, the parades, the boring, hypercommercial stuff. Instead, for Thankstaking, select the movie in your library that contains the most dead Whitey. Our selection this year was Zach Snyder's Dawn of the Dead (unrated director's cut too, extra gory). Bonus with this film: Whitey die of a horrible plague.

Extra bonus for me: It takes place largely in Wisconsin.

This is merely a suggested movie, there are a number of good choices. The important thing is, for one day at least, let some fictional Whitey receive their karmic just desserts, in a friendly atmosphere that everyone can enjoy.

Now you know how to celebrate Thankstaking. Enjoy!

(PS: I know I shouldn't use wikipedia so much, but this information is already common knowledge, and I read most of it already in a hardcopy of National Geographic that I still have lying around somewhere. In future I will work harder to avoid The Wiki Cult)

Time Keeps Slipping

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:16:00 +0000

OopsI meant to start daily posting at the start of the month, again, but things kept getting in the way. I suppose if I really intend to use this space for writing I need to make a rule that I put up at least one post a day.

So that's going to be the plan. I'm putting this down in writing to try and shame myself into actually doing it from now on.

Heh. Guilt trip.

Tonight, Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:11:00 +0000

Believe! I wouldn't have thought I could be this happy about an Obama victory, to be honest. I never liked him much. He was my third choice in the primaries... a distant third.

Quite frankly, his optimism and enthusiasm doesn't jibe well with a hardcore cynic like myself. Humanists rarely have the luxury of hope, I think; when the human race is all you have, disappointment is your constant companion.

But, tonight? At least a little bit? It's hard not to feel what the Obama people are feeling. It's kind of nice. Tomorrow is the first day of a long four years, a constant battle to stop Republican dirty tricks and backsliding.

But tonight? I keep coming back to the same Smashing Pumpkins song (hence the title).

Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave....without leaving a piece of youth
And our lives are forever changed
We will never be the same
The more you change the less you feel

Believe, believe in me, believe
Believe that life can change
That you're not stuck in vain
We're not the same, we're different tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight

And you know you're never sure
But you're sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light
And the embers never fade in your city by the lake
The place where you were born

Believe, believe in me, believe
Believe in the resolute urgency of now
And if you believe there's not a chance tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight

We'll crucify the insincere tonight
We'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight
We'll find a way to offer up the night (Tonight)
The indescribable moments of your life (Tonight)
The impossible is possible tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you
Tonight.....

Last Minute Updates

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:17:00 +0000

Could Be A WhileBasically, we're in the process of the eternal move that wouldn't die, and we're heading from the extended stay hotel we've been residing in to a 'Luxury Corporate Apartment'.

The problem, as relates to the blog, is that the new apartment does not, as it turns out, have working air conditioning.

Which was a surprise for us.

See, it's a two bedroom, two bathroom 'duplex', but the place has precisely one window AC unit in the ground floor living room. Which makes it rather hopelessly overworked.

Now, my PC runs too hot as it is, so, most likely, I won't be able to set it up in the new place, or if I can set it up in the aforementioned living room, may not be able to use it for much of the day.

So I'm going to make a couple of last minute additions to the blog before what will probably be another hiatus.

First, the graphical tweaking of the site continues. On advice from the great and powerful Roommate/Oz, I've moved the site off the white background to a more eye relaxing gray scheme, with a Mars-friendly color scheme for the text.

I'm not completely happy with it yet, because I'm a perfectionist, but it's coming along.

Secondly, and I meant to mention this earlier in the week, I discovered the answer to the Pius XI shirt mystery: it's from a local Catholic school!

Seriously. There's a Catholic school in Milwaukee named after the Fascist Pope. Granted, it was originally named in 1929, when his disastrous dealmaking had yet to bring shame to the church and death to so many, but still. You'd think the school would have the decency to change the name, so as to cease honoring such a... dubious... historical figure.

Alas, it appears not.

There has been a lot of interesting sciency news this week. Water on Mars, Ethane on Titan (a huge lake of it in fact), all very promising.

New research into a magic pill to make you healthy with no hard work; apparently it may work utilizing some of the same chemical pathways as resveratrol.

Toby Keith, the famed country singer who hates him some arabs, has revealed that he loves him some lynching. I'm not shocked.

Dick Cheney apparently plotted to have US soldiers shot at to start a war with Iran under false pretenses.

What a whacko this man is.

Speaking of whackos, the Pentagon is using a multimillion dollar mobile theme park, aimed and marketed at children, in an attempt to recruit future soldiers.

Until recent protests, they were targeting boys as young as 13.

Gee, maybe we can just go back to Civil War standards, give them a drum kit and fake their age. After all, cannon fodder is cannon fodder, right?

Amoral scum. The ACLU is on the case, pointing out that this scheme violates a 2002 treaty on child soldiers that we ratified.

Ha! Silly international law, getting in the way of our bloodletting..

That's about it for now. More when, and if, I can get the PC going in the new place.

Failing that, see you in a month or so.

Advancing the Frontiers of Free Speech

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:08:00 +0000

A Lengthy Battle Against SavagesThis is an odd saga, to say the least.

It begins with an apparently faithful Catholic student by the name of Webster Cook, attending school at the University of Central Florida. Webster, it seems, wanted to show a (presumably) Non-Catholic friend a communion wafer, so he took it home to show a friend rather than eating it immediately.

Cook claims he planned to consume it, but first wanted to show it to a fellow student senator he brought to Mass who was curious about the Catholic faith.

"When I received the Eucharist, my intention was to bring it back to my seat to show him," Cook said. "I took about three steps from the woman distributing the Eucharist and someone grabbed the inside of my elbow and blocked the path in front of me. At that point I put it in my mouth so they'd leave me alone and I went back to my seat and I removed it from my mouth."

Source: WFTV.com

The story seems a bit odd, as he was apparently caught trying to take it out of the service and was confronted (he complains about physical force being used against him). A local tv station (in an admittedly inflammatory and biased article) suggests that he may have been protesting the fact that (and I thought this was odd) his PUBLIC UNIVERSITY has a CATHOLIC CHURCH on campus -- and uses public funds to support it.

A church leader was watching, confronted Cook and tried to recover the sacred bread. Cook said she crossed the line and that's why he brought it home with him.

"She came up behind me, grabbed my wrist with her right hand, with her left hand grabbed my fingers and was trying to pry them open to get the Eucharist out of my hand," Cook said, adding she wouldn't immediately take her hands off him despite several requests.

Diocese of Orlando spokeswoman Carol Brinati said she was not aware of anyone touching Cook. She released a statement Thursday: "... a Catholic Campus Ministry student representative filed a complaint with the Student Union regarding the behavior of the two young men. A Student Government Representative called Catholic Campus Ministry to apologize for this disruption."

Cook filed an official abuse complaint with UCF's student conduct court regarding the alleged physical force. Following that complaint, Brinati said church members filed their own official complaints of disruptive conduct. Punishment for either offense could result in suspension or expulsion.

"The church feels that I'm the problem here," Cook said. "The problem is actually that this is a publicly-funded religious institution. Through student government here, we fund them through an activity and service, so they're receiving student money."

Cook is upset more than $40,000 in student fees have been allocated to support religious organizations on campus for the 2008-2009 school year, according to student government records. He denied he is holding the Eucharist hostage to protest that support.

Source: WTFV

Because, as we all know, the Vatican is completely destitute.

At any rate, he managed to leave with the communion wafer/cracker though, and that, to my mind, would be that. If the church doesn't want him back, they always had the option of banning him. Big deal.

Well, to the good, faithful, and apparently radical Catholics of both the University and the United States, that most certainly was *not* that.

The Church decided to get in on the act, inflaming their local followers (knowing perfectly well the inevitable results):

Regardless of the reason, the Diocese says its main concern is to get the Eucharist back so it can be taken care of properly and with respect. Cook has been keeping the Eucharist stored in a plastic bag since last Sunday.

"It is hurtful," said Father Migeul Gonzalez with the Diocese. "Imagine if they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please return that loved one to the family."

Gonzalez said the Diocese is willing to meet with Cook and help him understand the importance of the Eucharist in hopes of him returning it. The Diocese is dispatching a nun to UCF's campus to oversee the next mass, protect the Eucharist and in hopes Cook will return it.

Cook said he'd consider returning the Eucharist if he gets an apology and a meeting with the Bishop's office to discuss the Diocese's policy on physical force.

Gonzalez said intentionally abusing the Eucharist is classified as a mortal sin in the Catholic church, the most severe possible. If it's not returned, the community of faith will have to ask for forgiveness.

"We have to make acts of reparation," Gonzalez said. "The whole community is going to turn to prayer. We'll ask the Lord for pardon, forgiveness, peace, not only for the whole community affected by it, but also for [Cook], we offer prayers for him as well."

Source: WFTV

And thus, wrath was rained down upon this poor schmuck, with the full blessing of the local religious establishment.

They accused him of committing a 'hate crime'. They harassed him. They compared taking the cracker to torture, and kidnapping!They threatened his life... repeatedly. The ultra-right wing Catholic League hate group led a national campaign against this poor student. Here's Donohue trying to ruin the kid's life:

For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage--regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance--is beyond hate speech. That is why the UCF administration needs to act swiftly and decisively in seeing that justice is done. All options should be on the table, including expulsion.

That's right, if you disagree with someone, forget reason, forget discussion, forget the law: just terrorize them.

Webster just wants all of this to go away. Especially now that he feels his life is in danger.

Source: Pharyngula

All because he didn't chew... a wafer.

Well, after a few days of terror and threats, the poor, humbled student returned his cracker, and begged for his life/forgiveness.

"I am returning the Eucharist to you in response to the e-mails I have received from Catholics in the UCF community," Cook wrote in a letter to the church. "I still want the community to understand that the use physical force is wrong, especially when based on assumptions. However, I feel it is unnecessary to cause pain for those who are not at fault in this situation."

Cook said some threatened to break into his dorm room to rescue the Eucharist. Brinati said the Diocese of Orlando didn't condone those threats, but was happy Cook had a change of heart and returned it.

Source: WFTV They didn't 'condone' those threats - but they sure didn't put a stop to them either.

Huh.

The oh-so-forgiving christian community continued with plans to ruin his life, but put the 'killing him' thing on the backburner, and the story started to die down. The University, for its part, started supplying ARMED GUARDS (presumably also at taxpayer expense) to the Church, to protect the poor, victimized wafer community.

Enter PZ Myers, well-known atheist/science blogger, who was shocked and disgusted at the raving mob trying to destroy, and possibly murder, this poor student. Whether a noisy protestor or apparently ignorant lapsed Catholic, his education, career, even life were now in the hands of the lunatic fringe. Myers thought this was outrageous.

So he came up with a simple plan:

So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart.

Source: Pharyngula Yes, Myers determined that he would do to the wafer what this poor student never had: he would obtain one, maliciously, and desecrate it.

Needless to say, all hell broke loose. Again.

All of the regular readers have seen it — thousands of mindless comments by Catholics, demanding that no harm come to a cracker. My email is melting down with swarms of insults, threats, pleas, and promises of prayers because I threatened to violate one of their holy crackers. In my years of loud and often inflammatory blogging, it is the most impressive demonstration of mass lunacy I have ever seen.

Never mind that the Catholic League demands that I be fired, thousands of Catholics write to me demanding I be kicked out of the university immediately, and that they send me death threats, both the explicit kind and the vaguely menacing kind. Let's not forget Webster Cook, who started this all by simply walking back to his seat with a cracker, and now faces censure and possible expulsion from his university. Oh, those Catholics sure are forbearing and tolerant.

And since I mentioned yesterday that I was taking my oldest son to the movies, these good Catholics have leapt to the opportunity. Since I'm not demonstrating any fear over their threats against me, well hey, let's try a new target! KJ Atkins of Bellarmine University thinks cowardly warnings against my family might be effective.

"You fool, the vengeance for your sacrilege will not be . exhausted against you, but it will be carried out on your child. Wait and see."

Source: Pharyngula

Well, apparently Myers finally got his hands on a wafer/cracker, and did, in fact, carry out his 'threat' against an inanimate object. Despite stalkings, death threats against himself and his family, and, yes, another hate campaign from the Catholic League:

OK, time for the anticlimax. I know some of you have proposed intricate plans for how to do horrible things to these crackers, but I repeat…it's just a cracker. I wasn't going to make any major investment of time, money, or effort in treating these dabs of unpleasantness as they deserve, because all they deserve is casual disposal. However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus's tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt.

Source: Pharyngula

Will this be the end of the saga?

Doubt it. Myers implores his readers, and the world, to exercise a bit of their own independent judgment and reason:

By the way, I didn't want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur'an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanity's knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind.

Source: Ibid

When I first read about this mess, back when Myers made his original 'threat', I thought it might be a bit over the top. Not all Catholics are jerks, I thought; I wouldn't take quite the same tack.

Though, if you could get a hold of a communion wafer from that SPECIFIC Church, the one that tried to rouse a violent mob to terrify someone into obeying them (or failing that, have the person killed).... well, that would be a very different story.

That particular church had it coming, I thought.

Having seen the sheer volume of hate, venom, and terror that people like Bill Donohue spew at Myers, the threats against his family, the attempts to run him out of public life on a rail because he protests the victimization of a college student, at a public university, by the most powerful church in the world...

Well, it's hard not to root for Myers after all. If it comes down to defending a loudmouth or a violent, disgusting thug like Donohue, I'll side with the loudmouth anytime, anywhere.

PS: One last note: the student who started this whole mess? He's still going through a living hell.

The University of Central Florida's student Senate voted to impeach one of its own late Thursday night -- the student who sparked a firestorm of controvery after taking off from a Catholic Mass on campus with a sacred Communion wafer in his pocket.

All but two of the 35 senators present voted to impeach Webster Cook, but the action did not result in his automatic removal from office.

...

Although the Senate could kick Cook off the student government's legislative body, it does not have the authority to suspend or expel Cook from the university. That could happen only if he's found to have violated serious conduct code violations in student court. UCF is barred by federal law from confirming whether any complaints have been filed against Cook. But the statements included in the affidavit refer to a formal complaint against Cook by the campus ministry for disrupting the service.

Source: Orlando Sentinel.com Blog

That'll teach him to mistake a public university for an institution of higher learning and intellectual freedom.

McCain Atlas!

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:46:00 +0000

Much has been made of John McCain's geographic knowledge, but how does Grampy McSame really see the world?Much has been made of John McCain's geographic knowledge, but how does Grampy McSame really see the world?

Luckily for my non-existent loyal readers, I have a source* deep within the McCain campaign, who sent me this page out of a top-secret foreign policy document, the John McCain Atlas of the World (2008 Edition).

Now you too can be a globe-straddling master of geopolitics, just like Senator John McCain.

(Click either thumbnail for full-size image)
Enjoy.

*Also non-existent

Random Observation

noreply@blogger.com (John J. Sears) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:44:00 +0000

T-Shirt EditionSo I was coming up from the laundry room in our hotel this morning, and I saw one of the gaggle of kids who currently inhabit the place coming down in the elevator, wearing a tie-dye t-shirt that said 'Pius XI'.

I'm no Catholic, but even I could recognize the format for the name of a Pope, and further, this particular papal name stuck in my head for some reason, so I decided to look it up once I got back to my room. After all, if they're making t-shirts for kids featuring the guy, someone thinks he's pretty important, right?

Hitting the Wikipedia, I remembered where I knew the name: Pius XI was the Fascist Pope!

Pius XI was the pope who traded the Church's credibility and moral authority to first Mussolini (in exchange for land, statehood for the Vatican, and a theocratic Italian state), and then HITLER (again, for various special favors!) Quoth the Wikipedia:

Pius XI aimed to end the long breach between the papacy and the Italian government and to gain recognition once more of the sovereign independence of the Holy See. This goal led to one of his signature achievements, the signing in 1929 of the Lateran Treaty with the Italian government and the establishment of an independent Vatican City State.

Most of the Papal States had been seized by the forces of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy (1861 – 1878) in 1860 at the foundation of the modern unified Italian state, and the rest, including Rome, in 1870. The Papacy and the Italian Government had been at loggerheads ever since: the Popes had refused to recognise the Italian state's seizure of the Papal States, instead withdrawing to become prisoners in the Vatican, and the Italian government's policies had always been anti-clerical. Now Pius XI thought a compromise would be the best solution.

To bolster his own new regime, Mussolini was also eager for an agreement. After years of negotiation, in 1929, the Pope supervised the signing of the Lateran Treaties with the Italian government. According to the terms of the first treaty, Vatican City was given sovereignty as an enclave of the city of Rome in return for the Vatican relinquishing its claim to the former territories of the Papal States. Pius XI thus became a head of state (albeit the smallest state in the world), the first Pope who could be termed as such since the Papal States fell after the unification of Italy in the 19th century. A second treaty, the concordat with Italy, recognised Roman Catholicism as the official state religion of Italy, gave the Church power over marriage law in Italy (ensuring the illegality of divorce), and restored Catholic religious teaching in all schools. In return, the clergy would not take part in politics. A third treaty provided financial compensation to the Vatican for the loss of the Papal States.

Source: Wikipedia (article on Pius XI)

That's not all, of course. Mussolini wasn't the only waste of human skin that Pius XI was willing to sell the soul of the church to for money and political power:

Pius XI was eager to negotiate concordats with any country that was willing to do so, thinking that written treaties were the best way to protect the Church's rights against governments increasingly inclined to interfere in such matters. Twelve concordats were signed during his reign with various types of governments, including some German state governments, and with Austria. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 and asked for a concordat, Pius XI accepted. Negotiations were conducted on his behalf by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII (1939 – 1958). The Reichskonkordat was signed by Pacelli and by the German government in June 1933, and included guarantees of liberty for the Church, independence for Catholic organisations and youth groups, and religious teaching in schools.

Source: Wikipedia (Pius XI article, subarticle on German relations)

Good old Pius XI came to regret these treaties later, when the Fascists showed less inclination to follow some clauses than others. Apparently he was also unhappy with the whole 'wipe out the Jews' aspect to the Fascist worldview.

Not unhappy enough to give back the money, land, or political independence he obtained by aiding the Fascist ascendency to power, of course. In fact, even after the shame of World War II, his successor (remember, the man who actually negotiated with the Nazis) got the gifts from Mussolini written into the new Italian constitution... including the official theocracy clause!

The Lateran Agreements were incorporated into the Constitution of the Italian Republic in 1947.

In 1984 an agreement was signed, revising the concordat. Among other things, it ended the Church's position as the state-supported religion of Italy.

Source: Wikipedia (Lateran Treaties)

That's right. These odious agreements with a bloodthirsty madman were dragged into the modern era by the Church, which, it seems, still hadn't learned when to quit. For my part I can't believe Italy was an official theocracy until the 80s, but hey. They are pretty backward by European standards (just look at their government).

So there you have it. Pius XI, Fascist loving Nazi-enabler, is somehow deemed, in 2008, to be worthy of immortalization. On t-shirts for children.

What's next, Torquemada bibs and pacifiers?

Uggh.